BEUCY BERENGARIUS. 



505 



other provisions from distant regions. He fitted up 

 the palace Buchlowitz on his estate Buclilau in Mo- 

 ravia, as an hospital for the sick and wounded Aus- 

 trian soldiers. Here this patriot and philanthropist 

 was carried off by a contagious nervous fever, July 

 26, 1809. 



BERCY ; a village on the Seine, at its confluence 

 with the Marne, in the neighbourhood of Paris. The 

 Parisian wine merchants have here their stores of 

 wine, wine-vinegar, distilled liquors, &c. ; so that 

 the intercourse with B. and the capital is ex- 

 tremely active. It is increased also by several im- 

 portant tanneries, sugar refineries, and paper-mills, 

 A large palace, Le grand Bercy, was built by Levau 

 at the close of the I7th century. The park which 

 belongs to it, containing 900 acres, was planted by 

 Lenotre. 



BEREANS, in ancient church history, the inhabitants 

 of Bereea. They are highly commended in scripture 

 for their ready reception of the gospel, upon a fair and 

 impartial examination of its agreement with the Old 

 Testament prophecies. Sopater, a Berean, attended 

 the apostle Paul to Asia. Acts xvii. 10-13, and xx. 4. 



Bereans, in modern church history, a sect of pro- 

 testant dissenters from the church of Scotland, who 

 take their title from, and profess to follow the exam- 

 ple of the ancient Bereans, in building their system 

 of faith and practice upon the scriptures alone, with- 

 out regard to any human authority whatever. 



The Bereans agree with the great majority of 

 Christians, both Protestants and Catholics, respecting 

 the doctrine of the Trinity, which they hold as a 

 fundamental article of the Christian faith ; and they 

 also agree in a great measure with the professed 

 principles of both our established churches respecting 

 predestination and election, though they allege that 

 these doctrines are not consistently taught in either 

 church. But they differ from the majority of all 

 sects of Christians in various other important particu- 

 lars. Such as, 



1. Respecting our knowledge of the Deity. Upon 

 this subject, they say, that the majority of professed 

 Christians stumble at the very threshold of revelation ; 

 and, by admitting the doctrine of natural religion, 

 natural conscience, natural notices, &c., not founded 

 upon revelation, or derived from it by tradition, they 

 give up the cause of Christianity at once to the infi- 

 dels ; who may justly argue, as Mr Paine in fact does 

 in his Age of Reason, that there is no occasion for any 

 revelation or word of God, if man now can discover 

 his nature and perfections from his works alone. But 

 this, the Bereans argue, is beyond the natural powers 

 of human reason ; and therefore our knowledge of 

 God is from revelation alone ; and that without reve- 

 lation man would never have entertained an idea of 

 his existence. 



2. With regard to faith in Christ, and assurance 

 of salvation through his merits, they differ from 

 almost all other sects whatsoever. These they 

 reckon inseparable, or rather the same ; because, 

 they argue, God hath expressly declared, " He that 

 believeth shall be saved ;" and therefore it is not 

 only absurd, but impious, and in a manner calling 

 God a liar, for a man to say, " I believe the gospel, 

 but have doubts nevertheless of my own salvation." 

 With regard to the various distinctions and definitions 

 that have been given of different kinds of faith, they 

 argue, that " there is nothing incomprehensible or 

 obscure in the meaning of this word as used in scrip- 

 ture ; but that as faith, when applied to human testi- 

 mony, signifies neither more nor less than the mere 

 simple belief* of that testimony as true, upon the 

 authority of the testifier ; so, when applied to the 

 testimony of God, it signifies precisely the belief of 

 his testimony, and resting upon his veracity alone, 



without any kind of collateral support from concur- 

 rence of any other evidence or testimony whatever." 

 And they insist, that as faith is the gift of God alone, 

 so the person to whom it is given is as conscious of 

 possessing it, as the being to whom God gives life is 

 of being alive ; and therefore he entertains no doubts 

 either of his faith or his consequent salvation through 

 the merits of Christ, who died and rose again for 

 that purpose. In a word, they argue that the gos- 

 pel would not be what it is held forth to be, " glad 

 tidings of great joy," if it did not bring full personal 

 assurance of eternal salvation to the believer : which 

 assurance, they insist, " is the present infallible pri- 

 vilege and portion of every individual believer of the 

 gospel. 



3. Consistently with the above definition of faith, 

 they say, that the sin against the Holy Ghost, which 

 has alarmed and puzzled so many in all ages, is 

 nothing else but unbelief; and that the expression, 

 that k< it shall not be forgiven, neither in this world 

 nor that which is to come," means only, that a person 

 dying in infidelity would not be forgiven, neither un- 

 der the former dispensation by Moses (the then pre- 

 sent dispensation, kingdom, or government of God), 

 nor under the gospel dispensation, which, in respect 

 of the Mosaic, was a kind of future world or king- 

 dom to come. 



4. The Bereans interpret a great part of the Old 

 Testament prophecies, and in particular the whole ot 

 the Psalms, excepting such as are merely historical 

 or laudatory, to be typical or prophetical of Jesus 

 Christ, his sufferings, atonement, mediation, and king- 

 dom : and they esteem it a gross perversion of these 

 psalms and prophecies to apply them to the experi- 

 ences of private Christians. In proof of this, they not 

 only urge the words of the apostle, that " no prophe- 

 cy is ot any private interpretation," but they insist 

 that the whole of the quotations from the ancient 

 prophecies in the New Testament, and particularly 

 those from the Psalms, are expressly applied to 

 Christ. In this opinion many other classes of Protes- 

 tants agree with them. 



5. Of the absolute all-superintending sovereignty 

 of the Almighty, the Bereans entertain the highest 

 ideas, as well as of the uninterrupted exertion thereof 

 over all works in heaven, earth, and hell, however 

 unsearchable by his creatures. " A God without 

 election (they argue), or choice in all his works, is a 

 god without existence a mere idol a nonentity. 

 And to deny God's election, purpose, and express 

 will in all his works, is to make him inferior to our- 

 selves." For farther particulars respecting the Ber- 

 ean doctrines, we must refer the reader to the works 

 of Messrs Barclay, Nicol, Brooksbank, &c. Their 

 mode of practice and church government has little 

 that is different from many other dissenting sects. 



BERENGARIITS, or BEREXGER, of Tours, a teacher in 

 the philosophical school in that city, and, in 1040, 

 archdeacon of Angers, is renowned for his philoso- 

 phical acuteness as one of the scholastic writers, and 

 also for the boldness with which, in 1050, he declared 

 himself against the doctrine of transubstantiation, 

 and for his consequent persecutions. He was several 

 times compelled to recant, but always returned to 

 the same opinion, that the bread in the Lord's supper 

 is merely a symbol of the body of Christ, in which 

 he agreed with the Scotsman John Erigena (called 

 Scolus). The Catholics ranked him among the most 

 dangerous heretics. He was treated with forbear- 

 ance by Gregory VII., but the scholastics belonging 

 to the party of the great Lanfranc, archbishop or 

 Canterbury, were irritated against him to such a de- 

 gree, that he retired to the isle of St Gosmas, in the 

 neighbourhood of Tours, in the year 1080, where he 

 closed his life at a great age, in pious exercises 

 3s T 



