Sed somno nondum excusso exculptas fuisse ex omni parte sui indicant, atque præcipue ex clausula: Ea est, (quanquam piget ascribere) (let me not want your blessing) Hem! Nec interjecto quidem vel Quæso ? Me sancta Fides! Ut par unquam quicquam cuiquam vigilanti exciderit puero ad parentem suam? Crederes peri imperia esse ad servolum! Tam familiariter, tam contemptim, tam ab omni officio, Reverentiâ, pietate alienissimum! Sciat igitur per hæc velim, haut leviter me commotum esse jam cum forte legerem, neque posse pati tales (non dicam mores, sed) insolentias. Illum ego meum tantioper dici volo, dum quod se dignum est faciat, atque eum ingenuitate, sedulitate, probitate, pietate conjunctum. Verum ita usu venire amat miseris mortalibus; Ex familiari studiorum atque quotidiani officii tædio, et neglectu, proclive est etiam nec opiniantem dilabi in parentum, atque inde (ni bonus avertat Deus) in ipsius Dei denique. Ut avertat vero denique Deum pronus veneror, utque sanam ei ex hoc monito, et piam mentem indat atque memorem suique et nostri. Erat nonnihil quod te volebam, de aliis rebus meis; sedquia in hoc fermentum conjectus sum distuli in sequentem. Salute dicta nostris, valeatis cum Deo. On the Observance of GOOD-FRIDAY. TO THE EDITOR OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCHMAN'S SIR, MAGAZINE. In your number for March last, you inserted two very proper and useful letters on the observance of Good-Friday. If you think that the design of those letters will in any degree be promoted by the insertion of the following one on the same subject, which a recent occurrence in this neighbourhood incited me to write, you will, I am persuaded, stand in need of no other inducement to insert it. Rempston, I am, Sir, Your's &c. E. PEARSON, To the Printer of the Nottingham Journal. SIR, IN your paper of the 5th inst. I observed, with great satisfaction, the order of the magistrates acting for the town of Nottingham, for the religious observance of Good Good-Friday. It was with a very different sentiment that I heard of an attempt, which was made I believe on the day immediately preceding that of the solemnity, to counteract their pious intention by the distribution, &c. of a hand-bill*. Not to notice the indecency of such an attack on the religion of the country, and on the authority of the civil magistrates of the town and district, I wish to make a few remarks on the reasoning and language employed on this occasion. The first thing in this extraordinary composition, which calls for our attention, is the misapplication of two passages of scripture+. The remonstrance, which St. Paul so justly made to the Jews, against the observance of the ceremonial part of the Mosaic law, which was abolished by the death of Christ, can have nothing to do with the fasts and festivals of the Christian Church. As the obligation to observe these depends on the decision of the persons who are invested with authority for that purpose, so the propriety of directing them to be observed must rest on the nature of the solemnities themselves, and on the ends which are proposed to be answered by them. Now, there seems an evident propriety in commemorating, by the appointment of such a solemnity as Good-Friday, those sufferings of our Lord, from which the whole human race derive, or may derive, the most important benefits. Accordingly it appears from Eusebius (Eccles. Hist. b. 2. c. 17.) that the fast of GoodFriday was observed in the very earliest ages of Christianity; a circumstance which, independently of the reason of the thing, justly entitles the observance of it to our respect and reverence. The writer of the hand-bill speaks of the "evidence on which this superstitious holyday of the Church of Rome rests." What is meant by a "holyday resting on evidence," or how, though a man or an observance may be superstitious, a "holyday," can be so, is not very easy to discover. If the writer mean, that he is in doubt about the propriety of observing Good-Friday, and that The hand-bill referred to was printed in large letters, in the form of a play-bill, and pasted upon the wall in various parts of the town of Nottingham. The name of the printer, mentioned at the bottom of the bill, is J. Dunn, Nottingham. + Gal. iv. 10, 11. Rom. xiv. 5. he suspects the observance of it to be superstitious, I recommend to his attention a little tract, written by the present Bishop of London, entitled, "An Exhortation to the religious observance of Good-Friday," the perusal of which will probably remove from every "impartial mind," all such doubts and suspicions. As to its being a holyday of the church of Rome, we ought to recollect, that, if we reject it on this ground only, we must, in order to be consistent with ourselves, reject the observance of the Lord's day also, and, indeed, all the institutions of Christianity; for they are all to be found in the church of Rome, though many of them are there mixed with great corruptions. In our zeal to avoid these corruptions let us be careful to reject no institution, which can be defended on the principles of reason and scripture, lest, in divesting ourselves of superstition, we cast off our religion at the same time. But the magistrates of Nottingham, it seems, are deserving of peculiar blame for this measure, because they, or some of them," conscientiously profess to dissent from a venerable establishment;" or, as was probably intended to be said, because they profess adissent from the establishment on principles of conscience. Is it then true, that magistrates (by which term I here mean members of the executive government) are bound to enforce those parts only of our laws and authorized customs, which they happen to approve of in their private opinions? If so, a conclusion will follow, which, I suspect, this shrewd reformer did not foresee, and which, I believe, he would be very unwilling to admit. We are referred, for information on this subject, to a writer, whom the author of the hand-bill styles "that truly-celebrated divine, Robert Robinson*." If Mr. Robinson be celebrated at all, he must be truly, i. e. really celebrated; but this does not determine, either that he is much celebrated, or deservedly so, one or other of which, if not both, was probably meant to be asserted. Be this, however, as it may, and admitting Mr. Robinson to have been a man of considerable talents and extensive reading, the authority of such a proteus in religion can be but of little value. Mr. Robinson set out a furious and bigotted Calvinist, and ended as furious and bigotted a Socinian. The "History and mystery of Good-Friday," by the late Mr., R. Robinson, of Cambridge. At At Cambridge he wrote warmly in defence of our Saviour's divinity. At Birmingham he spoke as warmly against it. It is no wonder, that a man, who denied the propitiation which Christ made for our sins by his death, should depreciate the solemnity by which that propitiation is commemorated; that he, who denied the divinity of our Saviour, should discountenance every observance, by which an acknowledgment of his divinity is implied. Where there are evidences of good sense and a right intention, I would by no means be fastidious with respect to modes of expression. But it seems not unreasonable to require of him, who opposes himself to established opinions, and particularly on so important a subject as religion, that he be master of the language in which his sentiments are delivered. Now, it sufficiently appears, from what has been said, that, unless this writer's knowledge of divinity greatly exceed his proficiency in English, he is but ill qualified, either to improve the established religion of his country, or to judge of the merits of those, who have undertaken to improve it. I am, Sir, (Though no friend to superstition) A LOVER of RELIGION and ORDER. April 15, 1805. EXTRACTS. SELECT THOUGHTS, by BISHOP HALL. I. F miracles be ceased, yet marvels will never cease. not see enough to wonder at; for there is no worm of the earth, no spire of grass, no leaf, no twig, wherein we may not see footsteps of a deity: the best visible creature is man; now what man is he that can make but an hair, or a straw, much less any sensitive creature; so as no no less than an infinite power is seen in every object that presents itself to our eyes: if therefore we look only upon the outsides of these bodily substances, and do not see God in every thing, we are no better than brutish; making use merely of our sense without the least improvement of our faith, or our reason: Contrary then to the opinion of these men, who hold that a wise man should admire nothing, I say that a man truly wise and good, should admire every thing, or rather that infiniteness of wisdom and omnipotence, which shews itself in every visible object; Lord what a beast am I, that I have suffered mine eyes to be taken up with shapes, and colours, and quantities, and have not looked deeper at thee (with awful adoration and wonder) in every parcel of thy great creation: Henceforth, let me see nothing but thee, and look at all visible things, but as the mere shadows of a glorious omnipotence. II. When I am dead and forgotten, the world will be as it is, the same successions and varieties of seasons, the same revolutions of Heaven, the same changes of earth and sea, the like occurrences of natural events and human affairs. It is not in my power to alter the course of things, or to prevent what must be: what should I do? but quietly take my part of the present, and humbly leave the care of the future to that all-wise Providence, which ordereth all things, (even the most cross events) according to his most holy and just purposes. III. When I saw my precious watch (now through an unhappy fall grown irregular) taken asunder, and lying scattered upon the workman's shop-board; so as here lay a wheel, there the ballance, here one gimmer, there another, straight my ignorance was ready to think when and how will all these ever, piece together again in their former order? But when the skilful Artisan had taken it awhile in hand, and curiously pinned the joints, it now began to return to its wonted shape, and constant motion, as if it had never been disordered: How could I chuse, but see in this the just emblem of a distempered Church and State? Wherein, if all seem disjointed, and every wheel laid aside by itself, so as an unknowing beholder would despair of a redress, yet if it shall please the great |