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    « Country Clergyman , " yet his letter is so admirably calculated to expose and counteract the odium iheologicum > which , even now , disgraces and injures the world , nor least our own nation , that we must bestow upon it our humble but cordial praise , and are much better pleased to contemplate the points where we meet , than those frotn which we mutually , and , we hope , amicably , diverge , N .

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    ( Continued from p . 425 . ) We resume with pleasure our analysis of this interesting work . The reader has already been furnished , in our last number , with a general idea of its object and character , and with the outline and copious specimens of the first three sections , which treat of Enthusiasm , secular and religious ; Enthusiasm in Devotion ; and Enthusiastic perversions of the doctrine of

    Divine Influence . The fourth section contains an interesting history of the various forms of Heresy originated by Enthusiasm . The author reverts to the persuasion , which he believes to be generally entertained , that a change and renovation presently awaits the Christian church . He states that ther various forms of ancient heresy having disappeared , all « differences now draw round one great controversy—relating to the authority of the Scriptures . On this controversy , he anticipates , ere long , a coalescence of the whole

    Christian world ; the Romish doctrine of the subordination of the authority of the Scriptures to that of the priest being likely to be overthrown by the progress of knowledge and of civil liberty , if not previously exploded by other means ; the sceptical sects of Christianity falling back into the ranks of infidelity ; and the great Protestant bpdy agreeing to bury their differences in oblivion , and to acknowledge ** one Lord , one faith , one baptism . " In these anticipations we cannot altogether sympathize . We see no reason to believe that the abolition of the Romish domination is near at hand , though doubtless advancing to its overthrow . What sects of the Protestant world those are " which agree in affirming the subordination of Scripture to the dogmas of Natural Theology ; in other words , to every man's notion of what

    religion ought to be , " we do not distinctly perceive ; nor can we agree that the great majority of the Protestant body " knows of nothing in theology that is not affirmed or fairly implied in the Bible . " It may be true that divisions arise * from mere misunderstandings of abstract phrases—unknown

    to the language of Scripture ; " but while these phrases are pertinaciously retained , as they still are , the prospect of union in religious faith is yet distant ; and though fully convinced " that this trifling with things sacred must come to an end , " we fear it will yet be long before the body is so fitly joined together as to make perpetual increase of itself in the fulfilment of the law of love .

    No subject of speculation affords a wider field for the extravagances of enthusiasm than Prophetical Interpretation . The process is thus described : " Disappointment is , perhaps , the moat frequent of all the occasional causes of insanity ; but the sudden kindling of hope sometimes produces the same lamentable effect . Yet before this emotion can exert so fatal an i n fluence , the expected good must appear in the light of the strongest probability ; and

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    Natural Ftistoty of Enthusiasml . 4 ^ 3

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    NATURAL HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1829, page 473, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2574/page/25/