CORRESPONDENCE.

J. M.'s Replies to the Clergyman are postponed, with his consent, for insertion in our next volume, in which they wil follow each other without interruption.

Our correspondent, the Clergymar, has favoured us with an Examination of the Rev F. Stone's Statement of his Case," in our last number, which, with the same impartiality, that has, we flatter ourselves, hitherto distinguished us, we shall insert in the next and concluding number of the present volume.

We are much pleased with the " Three Contemplative Walks," and the " New Pilgrim's Progress;" but their length necessarily renders them unsuitable to the Monthly Repository. The worthy author will not, we trust, consider this as a check to his sensible and pleasing pen. His communications are returned to the Printer.

A letter has been sent us under the signature of Theophilus, pointing out a supposed misrepresentation of Dr. Doddridge's Exposition on John iii. 13, and vi. 62, by Mr. Belsham, in his "Strictures on Mr Carpenter's Lectures," in pp. 545_and 546 of our Magazine. Mr. Belsham asserts that the phrase "ascend up to hea ven," in those passages is interpreted figuratively by Dr. Doddridge; this is denied by Theophilus, who makes several quotations from the Dr.'s Paraphrase and Notes, on the text in question, to shew that he believed in the pre-existence (or rather the divinity) of Christ, a point which Mr. Belsham, assuredly, never intended to deny: but Theophilus does not quote, and appears to have overlooked Dr. Doddridge's note d on John iii 13, which puts it out of all doubt that Mr. Belsham's interpretation of him is correct. Theophilus extracts also Dr. Clark's Paraphrase of these places, for the purpose of shewing (what is surely needless) that all expositors are not Unitarians. In spite however of his obvious error, and of his tedious diffuseness,we should have inserted his letter had it not been bothungrammatical and intemperate. He appeals to our impartiality, and upon this we certainly pride ourselves; but let it be remembered that while we disclaim all judgment upon the theological opinions of our correspondents, we profess to be rigorous judges of the literary composition and the temper of their papers. The Monthly Repository aspires to respectability, at the same time that it studies impartiality. Theophilus gives much good advice to Mr Belsham, and points out to his notice some very profitable reading; not considering how truly idiculous such a strain of writing is, even when well done, in an an nymous remarker upon a writer who has always given his name with his communications. If beophilus be dissatisfied with the Editor's rejection of his letter, he may have it returned by applying at the Printer's: or, if he choose, it shall lie there for the inspection of any of our readers, who may call our judgment in question.

The questions of the "Modest Querist," in our next. We thank him for the advice suggested by the question concerning the Monthly (not Theological) Repository, but this part of his paper, not belonging to the public, will not be published with

the rest.

A correspondent inquires very anxiously "What has become of Gigmagog?" He that writes under a fictitious name, wishes, of course, to be concealed: and therefore we are not at liberty to divulge any thing concerning this, or any other contributor, who does not choose to appear before the public in his own persen. In the main, Amicus is, we believe, right in his conjectures. We heartily wish his inquiry, thus publicly noticed, may have the effect of re-engaging in our service a writer, who has unquestionably the power and the merit of drawing attention.

A

HISTORY, AND BIOGRAPHY.

SKETCH OF THE STATE OF CHRISTIANITY IN WALES, FROM THE TIME OF PELAGIUS AND AUSTIN OF HIPPO, TO THAT OF AUSTIN OF ROME, COMMONLY CALLED AUSTIN THE MONK; WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LATTER, AS ALSO

OTHERS.

IT

OF ST. GERMAIN, ST. DAVID, AND

(Concluded from p. 516.)

T has been already observed that after the enemies of the Pelagians had prevailed on the higher powers to proscribe and suppress their opponents, they turned their attention to Britain, which they seemed to consider as the nursery or fountain-head of the reputed heresy which they were opposing. This seems the real truth of the matter; though some historians have represented the attention then paid by the continental Christians to Britain, and the mission they set on foot

The following character of ST. AUSTIN, by our Correspondent, was intended to be subjoined to the article of which this is the conclusion, but reached us too late. We are therefore obliged to throw it into a note in this place. EDITOR.

As the name of St. Austin makes so conspicuous an appearance in the preceding account of Pelagius, being the principal opponent of him and his followers, as well as the chief cause of their persecution and suppression, it may not be improper or ungratifying to the reader, before we proceed to resume the thread of this history, to subjoin here a brief sketch of his life and character, taken chiefly out of a late learned and respectable publication t.

He was born in the year 354, at Tagaste, in Africa, of poor but Christian parents. His father was a soldier named Patricius, his mother was called Monica, celebrated for her eminent superstition, which her party called piety. His parents forced him to go to school, but he discovered no inclination for learning. He had a fit of sickness in his youth, in which he was very near being baptized, being in fear of death; but his mother, as he got better, persuaded him to defer it, for she knew him and the world better than he knew either. He recovered, and justified her fears, for he became a debauched, unsettled, profligate yon man, to the excessive grief of his mother. In the sixteenth year of his age he began to plunge into vice, and though he was very poor, and partly supported by the charity of one Rominian, yet he kept a mistress. He picked up a few scraps of learning at Carthage, and after that lived a rambling life, teaching what little he knew of † Robinson's Hist. Bapt. chap. xxili, 4 M

VOL. IF

to that country, as the result of a previous application from the British Christians; but of this we find no clear or good proof advanced; and it appears most likely, that it originated in the forward and violent zeal of the adherents of the pope and St. Austin to improve the advantage they had already gained, and follow up the blow to the utter destruction of the party and principles against which they had conceived so strong and deadly an antipathy.

After the emperor and the pope had espoused the cause of St Austin, St. Jerom and their adherents, and become parties in the contest against the Pelagians, the continental Churches, and those of Gaul among the rest, being under their influence and power, would naturally and zealously embark in the same cause, and readily contribute as much as in

grammar and rhetoric, first at Tagaste, then at Carthage. His mother, whose husband had died when her son was about eighteen, more concerned about the profligacy of her son than the loss of her husband, went to Carthage to try, if possible, to reform him. He, without acquainting his mother, or Rominian his benefactor, got aboard a vessel, crossed over to Italy, and went with his lady to Rome where by some means he became acquainted with Symmachus the præfect of the city, who knowing they wanted a teacher of rhetoric at Milan, sent him thither. His mother hearing he persisted in his former course of life, crossed over to Milan, to try once more to reform him. She found he went sometimes to hear Ambrose the bishop, at Milan, but this did not satisfy her, as he continued in his former course of living, and kept the woman whom he had brought from Carthage, and the child which she had by him, now about thirteen years of age. She, good woman, lamented his condition, and besought him to marry and reform his life. He pretended that he was not a pagan, that indeed he was not of his mother's church, but however he was of one much better; he was of the Manicheans, a people so remarkable for love of virtue, that they were called Puritans. This did not content the old lady, who thought, let him be of what denomination he would, he was of the class whom God had threatened to judge. At length he gave out that, as he was walking in a garden, he heard a voice from heaven, calling to him and saying, "Take up the epistles of Paul and read them!!" He obeyed the voice, opened the book, and found out what any pagan might have told him without a revelation from heaven, that rioting and drunkenness, chambering and wantonneas were grievous crimes. He determined therefore to marry, and as a proof of his sincerity, he put his name on the list of Catechumens. He now fixed his eyes on a girl who would be marriageable in two years. He sent his old mistress back to Carthage. He kept the child and put him also into the Catechumen's list; and while father and son were preparing for baptism, he took another mistress into keeping, till the young lady should come of age. Meantime he wrote books in defence of that religion he was about to embrace He understood neither Greek nor Hebrew, however he expounded both the Old Testament and the New. In the end he became intimate with Ambrose the bishop, set his heart on the ministry, renounced rhetoric for a better trade, laid aside his proposed marriage, turned off his mistress, vowed he would become a monk, and in company with his bastard son, then fifteen years of ae, and his friend Alypius, was baptized by immersion in the baptistry at Milan, by Ambrose, at Easter, in the year 387, and in the thirty-third year of his age. Soon after he became assistant to Valerius bishop of Hippo, in his own country, and lastly his successor, and continued almost half a century the light and glory of Hippo and of Africa!

Austin," says Le Clerc, "was one of the very first who promoted two doctrines which took away all goodness and justice both from God and man. By the one, God is represented as creating the greatest part of mankind to damn them, and to sen

them lay toward the completion of the work, by the reduction or conversion of the heterodox Britons to the catholic faith. Councils or synods were accordingly convened in Gaul on the occasion; and in one of them, held in 429, it was agreed to send over certain missionaries to this country, to promote the favourite object, and bring the erring inhabitants into the right way.

At the head of this mission was placed the celebrated ST. GERMAIN, or GARMON, as the Britons usually call him. Of this orthodox and renowned ancient missionary, the following account has been given by a modern author, on the authenticity and accuracy of which the reader, it is presumed, may pretty

tence them to eternal torments for sins committed by another, and which they themselves could not avoid. By the other he stirred up magistrates and all who have the administration of public affairs to persecute those who differ from them in religion." Austin and his company also were the first who ventured to attack at law believers, baptism. They did not pretend to ground infant baptism on scripture, but tradition, and they affirmed it to be an universal custom: but with what possible decency could Austin dare to affirm this? Was he himself then bap tized in his infancy? Was Ambrose who baptized him baptized in his infancy? Was his own natural son baptized when he was an infant? Was his father Patricius baptized when an infant? Had he who pretended to have been of the Manicheans, never heard that they did not baptize infants? Had all other heretics escaped his notice? Had he forgot himself when he taxed, the Pelagians with denying infant baptism? And when he complained in another book of people who opposed it? If it were an established universal custom, for whose use was the law made to compel it? A thousand more such questions might be put, all serving to contradict this falsehood. He continued to be the oracle of the orthodox to the day of his death, and long after, even to modern times. His works are numerous, consisting of many folios. The Jansenists among the Papists, and Calvinists among the Protestants, appear to owe to him their distinguishing dogmas and peculiarities, from whose works they were adopted by Calvin and Jansenius. Even his very bones were long revered by multitudes, most devoutly sought after, purchased at vast expense, and preserved as most precious relics. An archbishop of Canterbury, called Agelnoth, being at Rome, in 1021, and commissioned by the king of England, gave the Pope for one of Austin's arms, the enormous sum or price of one hundred talents, or six thousand pounds weight of silver, and one talent, or sixty pounds weight of gold. "A prodigous sum! greater (says Granger) than the finest statue of antiquity would then have sold for." Such was the high estimation and veneration in which the name of the bishop of Hippo was held in this island, (and all over christendom, so called) in the eleventh century, and 500 years after his death! But it needs not to be much wondered at: others, of as little worth or merit have acquired in the world, and even here in Britain, immense fame and veneration, very undeservedly. Among them we may reckon another Austin, called the Monk, an apostle of the Anglo-Saxons, who was canonized, as well as his African namesake; and so was aiso Thomas-a-Becket, a character more worthless, if possible, than either of the others. Too often has it happened that men who have proved the scourge and curse of their species, have yet been deemed and termed heaven-born, and obtained the general admiration and blessing of their contemporaries, as if they had been indeed their real friends and benefactors. So easy it often has been, in all departments, to acquire popularity, or a high and general reputation, without deserving it; which surely exhibits hu man nature in no very proud or flattering aspect. We will now return, and resume the proposed narrative; leaving the reader to judge which of the two characters appears on the whole, the more estimable, that of the persecuted Pelagius, or of his far-famed and intolerant opponent St. Austin.

safely rely. After telling us that he was the son of Rhedyw, otherwise Ridicus, and uncle of Emyr Llydaw, being his mo ther's brother, and one of the most distinguished British saints, to whom many of the Welsh churches are dedicated, and after whose name the ancient cathedral of the Cornish Britons was called St. Germain's, he adds as follows:-" He was sent over to Britain in 429, by a council of the Gallican Church, to preach against what was called the Pelagian heresy, but which was in reality the ancient and common doctrine of the British Church, which blended many of the bardic principles with christianity, and which, at the period under consideration, was successfully diffused by Morgant or Pelagius. The true object, therefore, of the mission of Garmon, was to bring the British Christians under the discipline and power of the Catholic Church, then beginning to aspire to that universal dominion which it soon after established over the western empire. How far Garmon was successful in this mission is not very clear; but his stay in the island was not very long. In the year 447, he was sent over a second time by another council of the Church of Gaul, and probably with more extensive powers. He now established many Colleges, as those of Llancarvan and Caerworgorn, at the head of which he placed his most experienced disciples, such as Dyfrig, Illtyd, Bleiddan, or Lupus, and Catwg, who taught agreeably to the tenets of the Church of Rome. Bishops were also consecrated by him, the Chapters of whose dioceses formed ecclesiastical courts, which till then were unknown in Britain.*" Garmon himself was a Gallican bishop, of the see of Auxerre, 23 Bleiddan, or Lupus, his companion, was of that of Troyes t.

Upon the first arrival of these strangers in this island, a council was assembled at Verulam, or St. Albans, in which it was managed to have Pelagianism solemnly condemned, (which shews that they had already a party formed in this country); after which they proceeded vigorously in the work of converting the inhabitants and confuting the heretics; and, by the report of catholic writers, their labours were attended with no small success. However that was, their stay here, as was before suggested, does not appear to have been long: most, if not all of them, and Germain among the rest, returned home again after a while; nor do we find that they afterward paid this country another visit for many years. Among their chief opponents here, was a person named Agricola, said to have been a man of no mean abilities, and a warm friend of Pelagius. Though they are reported to have confuted him

* Owen's Cambrian Biog. article Garmon. + Carte. 1. 183.