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off,"—a growl of thunder would have burst upon the head of the ill-mannered Curate.

But let us now turn altogether from the politician to the theologian. And when it is considered what substantial benefits Richard Watson has bestowed on the cause of truth, all that we have now reluctantly stated to his disadvantage, may well be forgotten, or at least, remembered without bitterness of blame. His Apology for Christianity is, we think, a very successful reply to the insidious and cowardly reasoning of Gibbon. He does not, like some of that historian's feeble antagonists, accuse him of gross ignorance, or of wilful misrepresentation of facts. But he takes him up on broad and severe principles; and writes like a man who understands the genuine character of Christianity, and of the age when it was promulgated to mankind. The Bishop of Landaff was not a profound nor extensive scholar; but, on occasion, he could with great celerity collect knowledge, and bring it, with consummate skill, to bear on the main question. Gibbon, though not convinced, was convicted. While he treated his other adversaries with silent scorn, or cut them into pieces as with a twoedged sword, in this case he stood aloof, and courteously declined any farther contest with so formidable a champion. The letters to Gibbon ought to be read by every young man, while he peruses the fascinating history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. We believe that, when thus read, they have often prevented the poison of infidelity from sinking into the minds of ingenious youth. Every thing in Gibbon seems so fair, and candid, and artless,—is said, at the same time, with such flowing and musical eloquence, that too easy credence is given to his most pernicious and fatal words, and they have often won their way into the hearts of those who would have been preserved by the goodness of their natures from the low and loathsome wickedness of Paine. Against such infatuation Richard Watson has lifted a warning voice,—and though greatly inferior to Gibbon in genius, yet so much is divine truth superior to human sophistry, that no triumph in the history of letters was ever more complete than that achieved by this plain, rational, and devout Christian, over an adversary in whose person were united, in an unequalled degree, perverted genius, self-blinded erudition, and impious zeal.

The service done to religion by Bishop Watson, in his masterly refutation of all the vile blasphemies of Paine, was perhaps still more important and unequivocal. That bad man possessed just such faculties as were fitted to render a deistical writer most pernicious to ignorant, or superficial, or half-informed minds. Utterly unacquainted with the languages of the Old and New Testament,—with the history both of the Jewish and Christian dispensations,—and still more deplorably and fatally incapacitated by the hardness and callousness of his heart, to feel and understand the beauty, and sublimity, and truth of the word of God, that audacious infidel had sufficient sagacity to detect imaginary or seeming flaws in evidence, and command enough of striking illustration to startle, and overpower, and perplex the faith of those little accustomed to think for themselves, and who therefore had, as in duty bound, believed what good and wise spirits had taught them was the Truth, on the authority of that virtue and that wisdom. He pulled up with wicked hands the anchor with which faith had bound their vessel to the Rock of Salvation, and sent them adrift, without needle or compass, into that misty sea where certain shipwreck awaited the wretched voyagers. The time, too, which he chose for his diabolical attempt, was most favourable. And certain it is, that his unhallowed designs were meeting with melancholy success among the peasantry and the artisans of these kingdoms. Many of his objections seemed plausible,—contradictions existing but in words, and which the most ordinary scholar knew how to reconcile, had a miserable effect on those utterly ignorant creatures, before whom, for the first time, they were brought; and arguments which had been over and over again refuted and consigned to scorn, when stated in his plain and perspicuous language, startled into painful and distressing doubts the thousands whose guileless minds knew not how to disrobe error and falsehood of their specious garments, and to whom details, of which every single assertion was a lie, did often, from their mere novelty, appear entitled to