have been raised against it, or enforcing the arguments on which it rests. If such was the conviction of the most profound and vigorous of recent theologians, minor understandings can have little hope of success. On this account, it might be supposed that we consider the present tract as altogether superAuous; particularly as Mr. Morton, not professing to be much acquainted with the standard works on the subject of which he treats, and not having had the advantage of a regular education, cannot be expected to present his thoughts in the most advantageous light. Our estimate of his labours, however, is by no means so unfavourable. When error, a thousand times refuted, is daily repeated, when objections that have been times without number exposed, are boldly and clumsily brought forward as new, it is expedient to re-state old arguments and re-apply old solutions. If this be tolerably well done, in small tracts, by persons of sound judgement, who walk in a beaten path without being implicitly guided by others, the advantage may be very great. We are therefore disposed to receive with cordiality the pamphlet before us—the work, if not of a learned, at least of a vigorous and exercised mind. The object of it is to show that no objection can be made on the ground of reason to the doctrine of the Trinity, supposing, as the author believes, that it is plainly taught in scripture ;-and in this object we think he has fully succeeded. In lately reading several Socinian works, Mr. Morton found with regret, that a large portion of them was taken up with this notable enthymeme, "the doctrine of the Trinity contradicts the common rules of arithmetic, and therefore it is not true.” The utter inapplicability of this paltry sophism is evinced in a very satisfactory manner. That "The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God; yet that there are not three Gods, but one God," Mr. Morton readily allows, is a doctrine most mysterious; but it is not, he contends, on that ground to be rejected. Human reason, he observes 'is feeble, compared with the objects of her contemplation, is weak iu her operations, slow in her progress, and mutable in her decisions.' After illustrating this proposition, (of itself sufficient to expose the folly of rejecting any principle made known by the perfect reason, if it accord not with our limited conceptions) he concludes thus: • How very unreasonable then must it be, to prefer this evidence to all others, on the subject of the Unity of the Godhead. Is not He an object to which we are perpetually complaining, that our ideas are defective and inadequate. Do not we allow Him to be infinite? a quality to which it is impossible we should ever find an analogy. Do not we believe that He has no relation to time? Do not we believe that He has no relation to place? And is it not equally certain, that he has no relation to num- ber? It is certain, that our senses can never bear evidence on the subject of the Deity's non-relation to number, any more than they can on His non-relation to time and place: but, that the senses do not help us, is no proof that reason is our sole guide in this enquiry. Mortals are undoubtedly capable of receiving testimony on this subject; and this is certainly a subject on which testimony, compared with reason, is a superior and more valid species of evidence.' pp. 10, 11. He adds that the sphere of human observation is very narrow; and concludes by remarking the total dissimilarity subsisting between matter and spirit, from which it follows that the Deity is not subject to the laws that govern matter; and, con-sequently that those laws afford no rule or analogy whereby we are to form our ideas of His nature, or the modes of His existing or acting. Nor does the human soul furnish any but faint and distant analogies to assist us in forming a notion of the divine nature. What ideas can we form of the mode in which that being exists who is not a part in one place and a part in another; and yet his presence in one place does not necessarily imply his absence from another: or of His conceptions, whose ideas do not flow in a suc cessive series; but to whom the lapse of all ages, the slumbers of oblivion, and the blindness of futurity, are equally and perpetually present. These are inconceivable properties, and in fact, metaphysical impossibilities, which can be expressed only by language that contradicts itself.' pp. 16, 17. Having shown that human reason is inadequate fully to comprehend the attributes that are universally ascribed to God, our author remarks that, to be consistent, a Socinian ought to exclude many of those attributes (such as eternity, infinity, &c.) from his notion of the Supreme Being. And truly, after what has already taken place, there is no reason to despair of this improvement in the Socinian creed. To these remarks, subversive of the argument from reason against the Trinity, Mr. Morton subjoins an extract, relating to the analogy of the Trinity, afforded by the human mind, from aphorismal thoughts of Lessing, published in a work called the "Monthly Repository of Theology, and General Literature." This analogy is not uncommon in the Fathers. It is illustrated with great felicity by Bossuet, in his "Discours sur L'Histoire Universelle," and with much acuteness and perspicuity by Leslie in his Socinian Controversy. In Bishop Horsley's Tracts, also, in controversy with Dr. Priestly, the subject is handled with that prelate's characteristic ability. The remainder of Mr. Morton's tract is taken up in replying VOL. IX. * Fourth Supplemental Disquisition. 3 B to objections he has heard advanced by Socinian teachers. Of these objections the first is as follows. "You say, that the reasonableness of a doctrine is not the sole criterion of its truth: I therefore wish to know, what standard it is by which you form your opinions. Do you not believe what you do, because reason dictates it? And are you not attempting to prove the rationality of holding doctrines which are contrary to reason?" To this Mr. Morton replies: P. 26. 'To make reason, i. e. the conformity of a doctrine to the knowledge we possess, the sole rule of belief, is to avail ourselves of no more than one kind of evidence: yet those Unitarian philosophers do this; and presume, that every person, when he begins to read his Bible, be his knowledge what it may, is provided with a sufficient test, whereby all its facts, and all its doctrines, are to be decided true or false.' pp. 26, 27. Any rational being who should know the value of wheat, and not know the manner in which it is produced; who should see the quantities that are in every Autumn thrown upon the ground, where it rots: any rational being who should know this, and not know that it would grow and produce a greater quantity, or that the men who squandered it were rational beings; would infer, that it is an unprofitable practice: and, if he knew that these same men subsisted principally upon it, he would think them stupid and foolish in the extreme. But the practice would not be less beneficial, though any rational being should actually possess just so much knowledge, and no more, that by a strictly proper exercise of his reason he should draw the above inference. If this being should know that farmers were rational beings, he might possibly suspect a de ficiency of his own knowledge, and give them some credit for knowing more of what belonged to their own sphere, than himself. But tell the same being the consequence of this agricultural operation, and he will immediately draw an inference directly opposite to that which he had drawn before; and think the people so employed, very thoughtful and provident. Exactly similar is the rationality displayed by the Trinitarian, in the belief of a doctrine which the Unitarian calls irrational. For a being to destroy that which it subsists on, is as opposite to rationality, as that three are one. The consequence of the foregoing operation in husbandry, is the fact which proves is rationality; and the superiority of divine revelation, to logical inference without it, as evidence on the nature of the Deity, is the fact which, when admitted, shields the Trinitarian from every charge of irrationality. And amongst common professors of revealed religion, that sect cannot surely deserve much reproach for any extraordinary stretch of faith, which merely asserts, that God himself is most to be depended upon, as evidence on his own attributes.' pp. 28, 29. To the second objection "How can that be a revelation which we cannot understand?" It is answered that The doctrine of the Trinity is not a greater mystery, than the fact of Christ's walking on the sea, or his raising Lazarus from the dead; and the language which expresses the former is as easy to understand, as that which expresses either of the latter; and, as Unitarians believe the latter, I should leave it to themselves to explain, how that can instruct us which we cannot understand; were it not proper to observe, to more humble enquirers, that a fact may be revealed, and of course understood, though the preparatory knowledge which would make that fact appear rational to our minds, may not be revealed, and not understood. And this knot of difficulties may be unravelled by observing, that the fact which is revealed, may be understood, and does instruct us; though its circumstantial relations, such as the manner of an action, may not be revealed, consequently not understood, and then cannot instruct us." pp. 30, 31. The last objection, "I will not believe any thing which I cannot understand," forms the basis of the Socinian faith, a sort of armour consisting of ignorance, conceit and presumption, equally proof against the attacks of reason and revelation. It would have been well, had Mr. Morton used with a little more caution the term contradictory in relation to the doctrines of scripture. He may be enabled to improve his Essay by perusing the seventh dialogue of Bishop Berkley's Minute Philosopher, the fourth chapter of the second part of Bishop Butler's Analogy, and the fourth of Dr. Gregory's Letters on the Evidences, Doctrines and Duties of the Christian Religion. Art. X. The Queen's Wake: A Legendary Poem. By James Hogg. 8vo. pp. 353. Price 12s. Longman and Co. 1813, WE think the public begin to have enough of ghosts and goblins, of spirits of the storm, and ladies of the glen, and wraiths, and second-seers, and wee wee men. The circumstances which originally gave these gothic beings the ascendancy over their brethren of Greece, were undoubtedly the implicit belief reposed in them, and the air of awful mystery that hung about them. The first (natural enough among a people residing in a gloomy climate, and picturesque country, and besides under the dominion of monks and superstitious terrors) was an indispensable requisite. It was necessary to the poetical existence of these dark and shadowy personages, that they should be supposed to have a real existence. What is not believed excites but little feeling, and what does not interest the feelings does not long detain the attention. The Arabian Nights and Ovid's Metamorphoses are thrown away before we leave school. Now the day of superstitious credulity is, in southern land at least, and among the tribe of readers who have any thing to do with tales of wonder, and border minstrelsy, and legendary poems, well nigh over and a southern begins to smile at the gravity with which his northern neighbour can repeat such a tale as that at p. 345 of the present volume, of a girl who disappeared while talking to her father, who was searched for far and near in vain, but at length by dint of prayers offered, the next sabbath, with unusual vehe mence, in seven Christian churches, was brought back again, without having met with any other misfortune, than her skin's having acquired a blueish cast, which wore gradually off in the course of a few weeks!' The other circumstance, which we mentioned as having contributed to the popularity of the northern mythology, is the mystery connected with it. There is much in this. By means of hymns and epics, the gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome were as familiarly known to their votaries, as the great of our own country are to the readers of court-calendars and peerages of Great Britain. But poetry delights in the shadowy and the half-known, and the undefined; and therefore turned away from Olympus, whose secrets had been so often and so injudiciously laid open, to the clouds and storms of a Scandinavian heaven. And here, among forms scarcely seen in the dim evening, and wailings of viewless spirits, witches, like Shakespeare's that have no local habitation, and elves, like Ariel, in the Tempest, whose genera and classes are unknown, she found enough of the wild and the wonderful, for her most wayward children. But that happy time of ignorance is at an end the poets in piercing the wilds and the caves have let in the daylight, and the commentators and antiquarians have followed with their glimmering tapers, till the whole region is discovered, and ghosts and brownies, and vampires, and grim-white women are grown as familiar as cats and dogs that sleep upon the parlour rug. If any one doubts of the effect which this mystery and indistinctness produces in poetry, let him compare the Rape of the Lock and the Triumphs of Temper, and then let him say, whether he be pleased with the Rosicrusian system, faintly and delicately sketched by Pope, or strongly outlined and heavily coloured by Hayley: most Ghosts, however, and goblins, are not yet quite out of date, and here is a volume full of them, mixed, however, with Highland chiefs and border forays. The story is simply this. Queen Mary, on her first landing in Scotland, is mightily taken with the country which she is to govern : • When Mary turned her wondering eyes |