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be done in the way of piecing and explaining, condemns the result as an abortion. That result is not a history of the first two centuries, but a fai cy of the nineteenth. Those, meanwhile, who think they shew at once their liberality and their piety by rounding off the corners of the Tubingen theory, taking part, and leaving part, merely evince their incapacity for apprehending the conditions of the argument. The boldest flights of that theory are strictly connected with the nature of the problem to be solved, which is a unity, however many elements it may include. All those elements must be provided for; otherwise, the whole breaks down. Still the demand comes back peremptorily, "You that stand for natural law, for uninterrupted human development, for strict and regular evolution of characters, ideas, literature, events, revolutions, you that will have no revelations and no miracles, shew us, then, shew us A HISTORY of the first two centuries !"

ART. II.-Francis Hutcheson.

DURING the greater part of the seventeenth century there was a constant immigration into the north-east of Ireland of Scotchmen, who carried with them their hardy mode of life and persevering habits; their love of education and their anxiety to have an educated ministry; their attachment to the Bible and the simple presbyterian worship. This movement commenced with the attempt of the first James of England to civilise Ireland by the Plantation of Ulster, and was continued during the period of the prelatic persecution in Scotland, whereby not a few sturdy adherents of the Solemn League and Covenant were driven for refuge to the sister isle. The Scottish Church kept a watchful guardianship over her scattered children, and sent after them a succession of ministers to preach the gospel, for a time in the Established Church, and when churchmen from England (such as Jeremy Taylor) would not tolerate this any longer, to set up a presbyterian organisation. Among these was the Rev. Alexander Hutcheson, the second son of an old and respectable family at Monkwood, in Ayrshire, who became minister at Saintfield, in the heart of county Down, and purchased the townland of Drumalig. His second son, John, was settled at Ballyrea, within two miles of Armagh, and ministered to a presbyterian congregation in the archiepiscopal city, where he was known by his church as a man of retiring habits and of superior abilities, and a firm supporter of Calvinistic doctrine. His second son, Francis, was born

August 8. 1694, it is said in his grandfather's house in Drumalig.* When about eight years of age, he (with his elder brother Hans) was put under the care of the same grandfather, and attended a classical school kept by Mr Hamilton in the "meeting house" at Saintfield. He was afterwards sent to Killyleagh, in the same county, to an academy kept by the Rev. James Macalpin, said to be a man of virtue and ability, and who taught the future metaphysician the scholastic philosophy. We have it on record, that the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, seeking now, after coming through a long period of harassment and trouble, to work out its full educational system, did about this time set up several such schools for philosophy and theology. However, the great body of the young men intending for the ministry did then, and for more than a century after, resort to the University of Glasgow for their higher education. Of this college Hutcheson became a student about 1710 (he does not seem to have matriculated till 1711). During his residence with his grandfather he became such a favourite with the old man, that when he died in 1711, it was found that he had altered a prior settlement of his family affairs, and, passing by the older grandson, had left all his landed property to the second. Francis, though a cautious, was a generous youth: he had all along taken pains, even by means of innocent artifices, to uphold his brother in the old man's esteem; and now he refused to accept the bequest, while Hans, with equal liberality, declined to receive what had been destined for another, and the friendly dispute had at last to be settled by a partition of the lands, which again became united when Hans, dying without issue, left his share to the son of Francis.

Francis Hutcheson thus sprang, like Gershom Carmichael (and we shall afterwards see George Turnbull), from the old orthodox Presbyterian Church and its educated pastors; and both were early nurtured in the scholastic logic, from which they received much benefit. But Hutcheson comes an age later than Carmichael, and falls more thoroughly under the new spirit which has gone abroad.

At Glasgow the youth followed the usual course of study in the classical languages and philosophy, and enjoyed the privilege of sitting under the prelections of Carmichael. In

* Sir James Mackintosh says in his Dissertation, "The place of Hutcheson's birth is not mentioned in any account known to me. Ireland may be truly said to be incuriosa suorum.' Had Sir James made inquiries in the likely quarter, he would have found the place of his birth and the leading incidents of his life mentioned in an article signed M. in the Belfast Magazine (for August 1813), edited by Dr Drennan, a man of superior literary ability, and son of the Rev. Thomas Drennan, one of Hutcheson's most intimate friends.

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after years, when called back to be a professor in the college, he gives in his introductory lecture a glimpse of the books and branches in which he felt most interest in his student life. After referring to the pleasure which he experienced in seeing once more the buildings, gardens, fields, suburbs, and rivers' banks (more pleasant then than now), which had been so dear to him, he expresses the peculiar gratification which he felt in revisiting the place where he had drunk the first elements of the quest for truth; where Homer and Virgil, where Xenophon, Aristophanes, and Terence, where the philosophy of Cicero and the discussions of the Fathers, had been opened to him; and where he had first been taught to inquire into the nature and reasons (rationes) of virtue, the eternal relations of number and figures, and the character of God. Having taken the Master's degree in 1712, he entered, the following year, on the study of theology under Professor John Simson. This professor was at that time, and, indeed, for the greater part of the period from 1712 to 1729, under prosecution before the ecclesiastical courts for teaching doctrines inconsistent with the Confession of Faith. It appears from the charges brought against him, and from his shuffling and vacillating explanations (he was often in a shattered state of health), that he took a favourable view of the state of the heathen; that he was inclined to the doctrine of free will; he maintained that punishment for original sin alone was not just; he held that rational creatures must necessarily seek their chief good-always under subserviency to the glory of God, who cannot impose a law contrary to his own nature and to theirs, and who cannot condemn any except those who seek their chief good in something else, and in a different way than God has prescribed; but the special charge against him was, that he denied that Jesus Christ is a necessarily existent being in the same sense as the Father is. The lengthened process concluded with the General Assembly declaring, in 1729, that Mr Simson was not fit to be entrusted with the training of students for the ministry. It does not appear that young Mr Hutcheson ever threw himself into this agitation on the one side or other, but it doubtless left its impression on his mind; and this, we rather think, was to lead him to adopt, if not the doctrine, at least some of the liberal sentiments of Simson; to keep him from engaging in religious controversy; and to throw him back for certainty on the fundamental truths of natural theology and the lofty morality of the New Testament.

To the teaching of Simson the historians of the Church of Scotland are accustomed to trace the introduction of the "New Light" theology into the pulpits both of Scotland

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and Ulster. But there were other and deeper causes also at work, producing simultaneously very much the same results all over the Protestant Continent of Europe, and in England both in the Church and among non-conformists. It was a period of growing liberality of opinion, according to the view of the rising literary men of the country. It was a time of doctrinal declension, followed rapidly by a declension of living piety, and in the age after of a high morality, according to the view of the great body of earnest Christians. In the preceding age Milton, Newton, and Locke had abandoned the belief in the divinity of Christ, and the great Church of England divine of that age, Samuel Clarke, was defending the Arian creed, and setting aside the Reformation doctrine of grace. Francis Hutcheson, by this time a preacher, writes from Ireland to a friend in Scotland in 1718, of the younger ministers in Ulster: "I find by the conversation I have had with some ministers and comrades, that there is a perfect Hoadley mania among our younger ministers in the north; and what is really ridiculous, it does not serve them to be of his opinions, but their pulpits are ringing with them as if their hearers were all absolute princes going to impose tests and confessions in their several territories, and not a set of people entirely excluded from the smallest hand in the government anywhere, and entirely incapable of bearing any other part in the prosecution but as sufferers. I have reason, however, to apprehend that the antipathy to confessions is upon other grounds than a new spirit of charity. Dr Clarke's work (on the Trinity), I'm sufficiently informed, has made several unfixed in their old principles, if not entirely altered them." Hutcheson never utters any more certain sound than this on the religious controversies of his day. It is evident that his mind is all along more inclined towards ethical philosophy and natural theology.

It is interesting to notice that, in 1717, he wrote a letter to S. Clarke stating objections to his famous Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, and that he received a reply, both of which are lost. We are reminded that, about four years before this, Joseph Butler, then a youth of twenty-one, at a dissenting academy, had written Clarke, taking exception to certain points in his Demonstration, and had received answers to his letters. The objections of Hutcheson must have been more fundamental as to method than those of Butler. He was convinced that, as some subjects from their nature are capable of demonstration, so others admit only of probable proof, and he had great doubts of the validity of all metaphysical arguments in behalf of the existence of Deity, Dr Leechman tells us: "This opinion of the various

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degrees of evidence adapted to various subjects first led Dr Hutcheson to treat morals as a matter of fact, and not as founded on the abstract relation of things."

During his student life he was tutor for a time to the Earl of Kilmarnock. Leaving college about 1716, he was licensed to preach the gospel by the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. His preaching does not seem to have been acceptable to the people, who were alarmed at the New Light doctrine which was creeping in among them, and felt that the young preacher's discourses were scarcely in the spirit of the Scriptures, as they were not after the model of the ministers and divines whom they reverenced. However, he received a call from a country congregation at Magherally, in his native county, but was easily persuaded to accept instead an invitation to open an academy in Dublin, to give instruction in the higher branches. About the time he settled there the protestant nonconformists, aided by the government, but after a keen opposition from the Irish bishops, had succeeded in obtaining a parliamentary repeal of the Acts which required all persons to resort to their parish church every Sunday, and imposed a fine of £100 upon the dissenting minister who officiated in any congregation. But the young teacher had to suffer two prosecutions in the archbishop's court for daring to teach youth without subscribing the canons and obtaining a licence. These attacks upon him. came to nothing, as they were discouraged by the Archbishop Dr King, author of the metaphysical work on the "Origin of

* "His father, labouring under a slight rheumatic affection, deputed him to preach in his place on a cold and rainy Sabbath. About two hours after Francis had left Ballyrea, the rain abated and the sun shone forth, the day became serene and warm, and Mr Hutcheson feeling anxious to collect the opinions of his congregation on the merits of his favourite son, proceeded directly to the city. But how was he astonished and chagrined when he met almost the whole of his flock coming from the meeting-house, with strong marks of disappointment and disgust visible in their countenance. One of the elders, a native of Scotland, addressed the surprised and mortified father thus: 'We a' feel muckle wae for your mishap, reverend sir, but it canna be concealed. Your silly loon Frank has fashed a' the congregation wi' his idle cackle; for he has been babbling this oor about a gude and benevolent God, and that the sauls o' the heathens themsels will gang to heeven, if they follow the light of their own consciences. Not a word does the daft boy ken, speer, nor say, about the gude auld comfortable doctrine of election, reprobation, original sin, and faith. Hoot mon, awa' wi' sic a fellow.'" The only members who waited for the end of the sermon were Mr Johnson of Knappa, Mr M‘Geough, and the clerk. (Stuart's History of Armagh.) This story may be made somewhat more pointed in the telling, but is, we have no doubt, substantially correct. It will be remembered that Professor Simson held similar views in regard to the heathen; and in the Introduction to the Translation of Antoninus by Hutcheson and Moor, the authors maintain-""Tis but a late doctrine in the Christian church that the grace of God and all divine influences were confined to such as knew the Christian history, and were by profession in the Christian church.