LETTERS OF JOHN HUSS, WRITTEN DURING HIS EXILE & IMPRISONMENT, &c. By EMILE DE BONNECHOSE. Translated by CAMPBELL MACKENZIE, B.A. Edinburgh: William Whyte & Co.

The letters of John Huss furnish an interesting contribution to our knowledge of a dark and perplexed period in Church History. It is usual, in tracing the succession of the Reformers from Wicliff to Luther, to connect the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries by means of John Huss and Jerome of Prague in the beginning of the fifteenth. Nevertheless though there is no doubt that Huss was an ardent and enlightened Reformer of the practical abuses of the Church of Rome, there is no reason to believe that he was in the correct sense of the word, a Protestant. He protested against taking the cup from the laity in the Sacrament-against the abuse of indulgencies; he held what were then considered latitudinarian notions about the power of the succession of St. Peter; but all these opinions have been avowed by stanch Romanists. On the other hand, he appears to have adhered to all the doctrines upon which Popery is built; and he repelled as calumnies all the charges brought against him by his enemies, of being unsound in the faith.

Huss is represented as having introduced the writings of Wicliff amongst his countrymen-and to have warmly recommended and advocated his doctrines. From all the collected writings and sentiments of the Bohemian Reformer, it is pretty clear that it was Wicliff's doctrines concerning the reform of abuses in the hierarchy that Huss had became enamoured of. "In speculative points," says Dr. Jortin, in his Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, "he was nearly orthodox, according to the orthodoxy of the day." To this testimony we may add that of M. de Bonnechose, who tells us that "All the doctrines and peculiar opinions of John Huss are to be met with in his celebrated Treatise on the Church, and in his Answers to Paletz, to Stanislaus de Znoima and The Eight Doctors. It may be discovered, on perusing them, that, on a great number of points, which a century later separated the Reformers from the Roman Catholic Church, Huss shared the opinion of the latter, or at least did not believe that it was allowable to oppose it; he attacked it, consequently, much more for its abuses than for its errors."

A variety of causes combined in bringing on the death of this distinguished man. His vehement harangues against the vices of the clergy; his opposition to the Pope's authority over the University of Prague; his influence in expelling the Germans from that University; and the virulence with which, as the leader of the Realists, he had attacked the Nominalists; and something in himself which, amidst our imperfect knowledge of the circumstances, appears like a courting of martyrdom-for he refused to abjure certain errors which were imputed to him, on the ground that he had never held these errors; and, therefore, did not require to abjure them; all these things combined together in making him a marked man, and his fate, there can be little doubt, was sealed before he appeared at the Council of Con

stance.

The letters of Huss were collected by his friend Peter Maldoniewitz, and were translated into Latin, and published by Martin Luther in 1537. Luther and Huss had many characteristics in common-the same undaunted courage-the same simplicity of manners the same tenderness of feeling, and the same generous open-heartedness. The whole, however, of Luther's eulogy on Huss shews that it was in their virtues that the resemblance held good, and not in their theology. It is worthy of note, that Huss claimed for the Epistle of St. James something of a dignity superior to the other Apostolic epistles. Luther certainly did not agree with him on this point, though his famous depreciation of that Epistle was only comparative, not absolute, as it is usually represented to have been.

"Though

The letters of Huss here translated from the French of Emile de Bonnechose, bear evidence of their having been intended only for the Reformer's private friends. They furnish abundant testimony to the noble Christian character of their author. they are not remarkable," says M. de Bonnechose, "either for profundity of thought, or for style and singularity of doctrine, there nevertheless exhales an innocent candour, and an angelic piety, like a fragrant perfume, from every page." "We behold in his correspondence," he elsewhere remarks. a soul superior to seduction, as well as to terror; a firm and upright reason which penetrates every subtilty, originates in the conscience alone, clings tenaciously to what appears to it to be truth as to man's most precious possession,

as to the treasure which has nothing to fear neither from riot nor robber." Indeed, in a moral point of view, these letters are of the highest excellence, and justly the encomium pronounced on the writer by Luther, when he said, "If this man was not a generous and intrepid martyr and confessor of Christ, certainly it will be difficult for any man to be saved."

THE THREE GRAND EXHIBITIONS OF MAN'S ENMITY TO GOD. By DAVID THOM, Bold Street Chapel, Liverpool. 8vo; pp. 558. London, 1845.

The Three Exhibitions alluded to in the title to the above book, are, first-The Violation of the Divine Prohibition by our First Parents in Paradise; second, Disobedience to Divine Command, in the case of the Jews; and, third, The Denial of Divinely Revealed Fact under the Gospel.-The author contends that man was created with not a Spiritual but only a Sailical nature-alluding to the distinction of St. Paul, 1st Cor. xv. 45-and that the Fall deprived their nature of no property or power with which it was originally endowed, but only manifested that condition in which it was created. And, therefore, the author argues, that the effect of redemption by Christ is not the restoration to humanity of any thing which it had lost by sin, but the acquisition by it of what it never had before-its being endowed with an altogether new, and a higher principle -"The Spirit," or, "The Divine Nature." The purpose accordingly of all laws which God has given to men, has been not to secure their obedience, which was impossible, but only to manifest their enmity to God. Obedience was possible to Christ, and to none other. We need not say that the opinions here propounded are violently opposed to the orthodox doctrines. Urging, indeed, unless we mistake their tendency, towards Manichæ

ism. We regret this the more, as the work displays throughout an earnest spirit, and striking literary ability; and it is impossible to read it without instruction, even when we deem the author's views most erroneous.

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN GRAKAM SPEIRS, Esq., Convener of Site Committee, and JAMES E. DALRYMPLE, Esq., IN REGARD TO A SITE FOR A FREE CHURCH IN THE PARISH OF OYNE.

This Correspondance is valuable as shewing how groundless have generally been the complaints of the Free Seceders in regard to the refusal of sites. That some hesitation should have been entertained by landed proprietors to afford a fixed position to a party, many of whose members professed such bitter hostility to the Establishment, and such fixed determination to subvert it, is not to be wondered at; nor could we ever see the justice of demanding from a landlord as of right what he might bestow or not at his pleasure. The case treated of in this pamphlet, is one of the very worst kind for the parties who have uttered such loud complaints. Sir Robert Elphinston, offered, on application, to give a spot of ground convenient for a church, manse, and glebe; but his liberal offer was rejected, apparently for no other reason than that thus the Free Seceders would not be set down so near to the Parish Church as to cause the annoyance and rivalry they desire; although it lay most convenient for that part of the popu lation of Oyne who have been induced to follow the out-going minister. The letters written by Mr. Dalrymple, on the part of his father, are excellent-highly creditable to his good sense and sound principles; those issuing from the "Site Committee" of the Free Church are pertinacious, often inconsistent with other declarations of the party; and, in our opinion, in many respects a contrast to those of Mr. Elphinston Dalrymple.