: first credit and fundamental authority to the test and rate you and me for ever. But in what part of the testimony of reason. Sound reason is the touchstone world soever I am, I will live mindful of your sincere to distinguish that pure and genuine gold from baser kindness to me; and will please myself with the metals; revelation truly divine, from imposture and thought that I still live in your esteem and affection enthusiasm so that the Christian religion is so far as much as ever I did; and that no accident of life, from declining or fearing the strictest trials of reason, no distance of time or place, will alter you in that that it everywhere appeals to it; is defended and respect. It never can me, who have loved and valued supported by it; and indeed cannot continue, in the you ever since I knew you, and shall not fail to do it Apostle's description (James i. 27), 'pure and unde-when I am not allowed to tell you so, as the case filed' without it. It is the benefit of reason alone, will soon be. Give my faithful services to Dr Arunder the Providence and Spirit of God, that we our- buthnot, and thanks for what he sent me, which was selves are at this day a reformed orthodox church: much to the purpose, if anything can be said to be that we departed from the errors of popery, and that to the purpose in a case that is already determined. we knew, too, where to stop; neither running into the Let him know my defence will be such, that neither extravagances of fanaticism, nor sliding into the in- my friends need blush for me, nor will my enemies differency of libertinism. Whatsoever, therefore, is have great occasion to triumph, though sure of the inconsistent with natural reason, can never be justly victory. I shall want his advice before I go abroad imposed as an article of faith. That the same body in many things. But I question whether I shall be is in many places at once, that plain bread is not permitted to see him or anybody, but such as are bread; such things, though they be said with never absolutely necessary towards the despatch of my so much pomp and claim to infallibility, we have private affairs. If so, God bless you both! and may still greater authority to reject them, as being conno part of the ill fortune that attends me ever purtrary to common sense and our natural faculties; sue either of you. I know not but I may call upon as subverting the foundations of all faith, even the you at my hearing, to say somewhat about my way grounds of their own credit, and all the principles of of spending my time at the deanery, which did not So far are we from contending with our adversaries racies. But of that I shall consider. You and I have seem calculated towards managing plots and conspiabout the dignity and authority of reason; but then we differ with them about the exercise of it, and the subjects; and, that I may preserve the old custom, spent many hours fogether upon much pleasanter extent of its province. For the deists there stop, and I shall not part with you now till I have closed this set bounds to their faith, where reason, their only letter with three lines of Milton, which you will, I guide, does not lead the way further, and walk along know, readily, and not without some degree of conbefore them. We, on the contrary, as (Deut. xxxiv.) Moses was shown by divine power a true sight of the cern, apply to your ever affectionate, &c. promised land, though himself could not pass over to Some natural tears he dropped, but wiped them soon; it, so we think reason may receive from revelation The world was all before him where to choose some further discoveries and new prospects of things, His place of rest, and Providence his guide.' and be fully convinced of the reality of them; though itself cannot pass on, nor travel those regions; cannot penetrate the fund of those truths, nor advance to the utmost bounds of them. For there is certainly a wide difference between what is contrary to reason, and what is superior to it, and out of its reach. civil life. DR FRANCIS ATTERBURY. [Usefulness of Church Music.] The use of vocal and instrumental harmony in divine worship I shall recommend and justify from this consideration: that they do, when wisely employed and managed, contribute extremely to awaken the attention and enliven the devotion of all serious and sincere Christians; and their usefulness to this end will appear on a double account, as they remove the ordinary hindrances of devotion, and as they supply us further with special helps and advantages towards quickening and improving it. DR FRANCIS ATTERBURY (1662–1731), an Oxford divine and zealous high churchman, was one of the combatants in the critical warfare with Bentley about the epistles of Phalaris. Originally tutor to Lord Orrery, he was, in 1713, rewarded for his By the melodious harmony of the church, the ordiTory zeal by being named Bishop of Rochester.nary hindrances of devotion are removed, particuUnder the new dynasty and Whig government, his larly these three; that engagement of thought which zeal carried him into treasonable practices, and, in we often bring with us into the church from what we 1722, he was apprehended on suspicion of being last converse with; those accidental distractions that concerned in a plot to restore the Pretender, and may happen to us during the course of divine service; was committed to the Tower. A bill of pains and and that weariness and flatness of mind which some penalties was preferred against him, and he was weak tempers may labour under, by reason even of deposed and outlawed. Atterbury now went into the length of it. exile, and resided first at Brussels and afterwards at Paris, continuing to correspond with Pope, Bolingbroke, and his other Jacobite friends, till his death. The works of this accomplished, but restless and aspiring prelate, consist of four volumes of sermons, some visitation charges, and his epistolary correspondence, which was extensive. His style is easy and elegant, and he was a very impressive preacher. The good taste of Atterbury is seen in his admiration of Milton, before fashion had sanctioned the applause of the great poet. His letters to Pope breathe the utmost affection and tenderness. The following farewell letter to the poet was sent from the Tower, April 10, 1723: Dear Sir-I thank you for all the instances of your friendship, both before and since my misfortunes. A little time will complete them, and sepa When we come into the sanctuary immediately from any worldly affair, as our very condition of life does, alas! force many of us to do, we come usually with divided and alienated minds. The business, the pleasure, or the amusement we left, sticks fast to us, and perhaps engrosses that heart for a time, which should then be taken up altogether in spiritual addresses. But as soon as the sound of the sacred hymns strikes us, all that busy swarm of thoughts presently disperses: by a grateful violence we are forced into the duty that is going forward, and, as indevout and backward as we were before, find ourselves on the sudden seized with a sacred warmth, ready to cry out, with holy David, 'My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise.' Our misapplication of mind at such times is often so great, and we so deeply immersed in it, that there needs some very strong and powerful charm to rouse us from it; and perhaps nothing is of greater force to this purpose than the solemn and awakening airs of church music. For the same reason, those accidental distractions that may happen to us are also best cured by it. The strongest minds, and best practised in holy duties, may sometimes be surprised into a forgetfulness of what they are about by some violent outward impressions; and every slight occasion will serve to call off the thoughts of no less willing though much weaker worshippers. Those that come to see, and to be seen here, will often gain their point; will draw and detain for a while the eyes of the curious and unwary. A passage in the sacred story read, an expression used in the common forms of devotion, shall raise a foreign reflection, perhaps, in musing and speculative minds, and lead them on from thought to thought, and point to point, till they are bewildered in their own imaginations. These, and a hundred other avocations, will arise and prevail; but when the instruments of praise begin to sound, our scattered thoughts presently take the alarm, return to their post and to their duty, preparing and arming themselves against their spiritual assailants. Lastly, even the length of the service itself becomes a hindrance sometimes to the devotion which it was meant to feed and raise; for, alas! we quickly tire in the performance of holy duties; and as eager and unwearied as we are in attending upon secular business and trifling concerns, yet in divine offices, I fear, the expostulation of our Saviour is applicable to most of us, What! can ye not watch with me one hour? This infirmity is relieved, this hindrance prevented or removed, by the sweet harmony that accompanies several parts of the service, and returning upon us at fit intervals, keeps our attention up to the duties when we begin to flag, and makes us insensible of the length of it. Happily, therefore, and wisely is it so ordered, that the morning devotions of the church, which are much the longest, should share also a greater proportion of the harmony which is useful to enliven them. But its use stops not here, at a bare removal of the ordinary impediments to devotion; it supplies us also with special helps and advantages towards furthering and improving it. For it adds dignity and solemnity to public worship; it sweetly influences and raises our passions whilst we assist at it, and makes us do our duty with the greatest pleasure and cheerfulness; all which are very proper and powerful means towards creating in us that holy attention and erection of mind, the most reasonable part of this our reasonable service. Such is our nature, that even the best things, and most worthy of our esteem, do not always employ and detain our thoughts in proportion to their real value, unless they be set off and greatened by some outward circumstances, which are fitted to raise admiration and surprise in the breasts of those who hear or behold them. And this good effect is wrought in us by the power of sacred music. To it we, in good measure, owe the dignity and solemnity of our public worship; which else, I fear, in its natural simplicity and plainness, would not so strongly strike, or so deeply affect the minds, as it ought to do, of the sluggish and inattentive, that is, of the far greatest part of mankind. But when voice and instruments are skilfully adapted to it, it appears to us in a majestic air and shape, and gives us very awful and reverent impressions, which while they are upon us, it is impossible for us not to be fixed and composed to the utmost. We are then in the same state of mind that the devout patriarch was when he awoke from his holy dream, and ready with him to say to ourselves, 'Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not! How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.' Further, the availableness of harmony to promote a pious disposition of mind will appear from the great influence it naturally has on the passions, which, when well directed, are the wings and sails of the mind, that speed its passage to perfection, and are of particular and remarkable use in the offices of devotion; for devotion consists in an ascent of the mind towards God, attended with holy breathings of soul, and a divine exercise of all the passions and powers of the mind. These passions the melody of sounds serves only to guide and elevate towards their proper object; these it first calls forth and encourages, and then gradually raises and inflames. This it does to all of them, as the matter of the hymns sung gives an occasion for the employment of them; but the power of it is chiefly seen in advancing that most heavenly passion of love, which reigns always in pious breasts, and is the surest and most inseparable mark of true devotion; which recommends what we do in virtue of it to God, and makes it relishing to ourselves; and without which all our spiritual offerings, our prayers, and our praises, are both insipid and unacceptable. At this our religion begins, and at this it ends; it is the sweetest companion and improvement of it here upon earth, and the very carnest and foretaste of heaven; of the pleasures of which nothing further is revealed to us, than that they consist in the practice of holy music and holy love, the joint enjoyment of which, we are told, is to be the happy lot of all pious souls to endless ages. Now, it naturally follows from hence, which was the last advantage from whence I proposed to recommend church music, that it makes our duty a pleasure, and enables us, by that means, to perform it with the utmost vigour and cheerfulness. It is certain, that the more pleasing an action is to us, the more keenly and eagerly are we used to employ ourselves in it; the less liable are we, while it is going forward, to tire, and droop, and be dispirited. So that whatever contributes to make our devotion taking, within such a degree as not at the same time to dissipate and distract it, does, for that very reason, contribute to our attention and holy warmth of mind in performing it. What we take delight in, we no longer look upon as a task, but return to always with desire, dwell upon with satisfaction, and quit with uneasiness. And this it was which made holy David express himself in so pathetical a manner concerning the service of the sanctuary: As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. When, oh when, shall I come to appear before the presence of God?' The ancients do sometimes use the metaphor of an army when they are speaking of the joint devotions put up to God in the assembly of his saints. They say we there meet together in troops to do violence to heaven; we encompass, we besiege the throne of God, and bring such a united force, as is not to be withstood. And I suppose we may as innocently carry on the metaphor as they have begun it, and say, that church music, when decently ordered, may have as great uses in this army of supplicants, as the sound of the trumpet has among the host of the mighty men. It equally rouses the courage, equally gives life, and vigour, and resolution, and unaniinity, to these holy assailants. DR SAMUEL CLARKE. DR SAMUEL CLARKE, a distinguished divine, scholar, and metaphysician, was born at Norwich (which his father represented in parliament) on the 11th of October, 1675. His powers of reflection and abstraction are said to have been developed when a mere boy. His biographer, Whiston, relates that one of his parents asked him, when he was very young, Whether God could do every thing? He answered, Yes! He was asked again, Whether God could tell a lie? He answered, No! And he understood the question to suppose that this was the only thing that God could not do; nor durst he say, so young was he then, that he thought there was anything else which God could not do; while yet he well remembered, that he had even then a clear conviction in his own mind, that there was one thing which God could not do-that he could not annihilate that space which was in the room where they were.' This opinion concerning the necessary existence of space became a leading feature in the mind of the future philosopher. At Caius' college, Cambridge, Clarke cultivated natural philosophy with such success, that in his twenty-second year he published an excellent translation of Rohault's Physics, with notes, in which he advocated the Newtonian system, although that of Descartes was taught by Rohault, whose work was at that time the text-book in the university. And this certainly,' says Bishop Hoadly, was a more prudent method of introducing truth unknown before, than to attempt to throw aside this treatise entirely, and write a new one instead of it. The success answered exceedingly well to his hopes; and he may justly be styled a great benefactor to the university in this attempt. For by this means the true philosophy has, without any noise, prevailed; and to this day the translation of Rohault is, generally speaking, the standard text for lectures, and his notes the first direction to those who are willing to receive the reality and truth of things in the place of invention and romance.' Four editions of Clarke's translation of Rohault were required before it ceased to be used in the university; but at length it was superseded by treatises in which the Newtonian philosophy was avowedly adopted. Having entered the church, Clarke found a patron and friend in Dr Moore, bishop of Norwich, and was appointed his chaplain. Between the years 1699 and 1702, he published several theological essays on baptism, repentance, &c., and executed paraphrases of the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These tracts were afterwards published in two volumes. The bishop next gave him a living at Norwich; and his reputation stood so high, that in 1704 he was appointed to preach the Boyle lecture. His boyish musings on eternity and space were now revived. He selected as the subject of his first course of lectures, the Being and Attributes of God; and the second year he chose the Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion. The lectures were published in two volumes, and attracted notice and controversy from their containing Clarke's celebrated argument a priori for the existence of God, the germ of which is comprised in a Scholium annexed to Newton's Principia. According to Sir Isaac and his scholar, as immensity and eternity are not substances, but attributes, the immense and eternal Being, whose attributes they are, must exist of necessity also. The existence of God, therefore, is a truth that follows with demonstrative evidence from those conceptions of space and time which are inseparable from the human mind. Professor Dugald Stewart, though considering that Clarke, in pursuing this lofty argument, soared into regions where he was lost in the clouds, admits the grandness of the conception, and its connexion with the principles of natural religion. For when once we have established, from the evidences of design everywhere manifested around us, the existence of an intelligent and powerful cause, we are unavoidably led to apply to this cause our conceptions of immensity and eternity, and to conceive Him as filling the infinite extent of both with his presence and with his power. Hence we associate with the idea of God those awful impressions which are naturally produced by the idea of infinite space, and perhaps still more by the idea of endless duration. Nor is this all. It is from the immensity of space that the notion of infinity is originally derived; and it is hence that we transfer the expression, by a sort of metaphor, to other subjects. When we speak, therefore, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, our notions, if not wholly borrowed from space, are at least greatly aided by this analogy; so that the conceptions of immensity and eternity, if they do not of themselves demonstrate the existence of God, yet necessarily enter into the ideas we form of his nature and attributes.'* How beautifully has Pope clothed this magnificent conception in verse!— All are but parts of one stupendous whole, The followers of Spinoza built their pernicious theory upon the same argument of endless space; but Pope has spiritualised the idea by placing God as the soul of all, and Clarke's express object was to show that the subtleties they had advanced against religion, might be better employed in its favour. Such a mode of argument, however, is beyond the faculties of man; and Whiston only repeated a common and obvious truth, when he told Clarke that in the commonest weed in his garden were contained better arguments for the being and attributes of the Deity than in all his metaphysics. The next subject that engaged the studies of Clarke was a Defence of the Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul, in reply to Mr Henry Dodwell and Collins. He also translated Newton's Optics into Latin, and was rewarded by his guide, philosopher, and friend, with a present of L.500. In 1709 he obtained the rectory of St James's, Westminster, took his degree of D.D., and was made chaplain in ordinary to the queen. In 1712 he edited a splendid edition of Cæsar's Commentaries, with corrections and emendations, and also gave to the world an elaborate treatise on the Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity. The latter involved him in considerable trouble with the church authorities; for Clarke espoused the Arian doctrine, which he also advocated in a series of sermons. He next appeared as a controversialist with Leibnitz, the German philosopher, who had represented to the Princess of Wales, afterwards the queen consort of George II., that the Newtonian philosophy was not only physically false, but injurious to religion. Sir Isaac Newton, at the request of the princess, entered the lists on the mathematical part of the controversy, and left the philosophical part of it to Dr Clarke. The result was triumphant for the English system; and Clarke, in 1717, collected and published the papers which had passed between him and Leibnitz. In 1724, he put to press a series of sermons, seventeen in number. Many of them are excellent, but others are tinctured with his metaphysical predilections. He aimed at rendering scriptural principle a precept conformable to what he calls eternal reason and the fitness of things, and hence his sermons have failed in becoming popu *Stewart's Dissertation, Encyclopædia Britannica. Essay on Man.-Ep. L. tosh, that Dr Clarke was a man eminent at once as a divine, a mathematician, a metaphysical philosopher, and a philologer; and, as the interpreter of Homer and Cæsar, the scholar of Newton, and the antagonist of Leibnitz, approved himself not unworthy of correspondence with the highest order of human spirits.' [Natural and Essential Difference of Right and Wrong.] lar or useful. 'He who aspires,' says Robert Hall, 'to a reputation that shall survive the vicissitudes of opinion and of time, must aim at some other character than that of a metaphysician.' In his practical sermons, however, there is much sound and admirable precept. In 1727, Dr Clarke was offered, but declined, the appointment of Master of the Mint, vacant by the death of his illustrious friend, Newton. The situation was worth £1500 a-year, and the disinterestedness and integrity of Clarke were strikingly evinced by his declining to accept an office of The principal thing that can, with any colour of such honour and emoluments, because he could not reason, seem to countenance the opinion of those who reconcile himself to a secular employment. His deny the natural and eternal difference of good and conduct and character must have excited the admi- evil, is the difficulty there may sometimes be to deration of the queen, for we learn from a satirical fine exactly the bounds of right and wrong; the allusion in Pope's Moral Epistle on the Use of variety of opinions that have obtained even among Riches (first published in 1731), that her majesty understanding and learned men, concerning certain had placed a bust of Dr Clarke in her hermitage in questions of just and unjust, especially in political the royal grounds. The doctor duly frequented matters; and the many contrary laws that have been the court,' says Pope in a note; but he should made in divers ages and in different countries conhave added,' rejoins Warburton, with the inno- cerning these matters. But as, in painting, two very cence and disinterestedness of a hermit.' In 1729, different colours, by diluting each other very slowly Clarke published the first twelve books of the Iliad, and gradually, may, from the highest intenseness in with a Latin version and copious annotations; and either extreme, terminate in the midst insensibly, and Homer has never had a more judicious or acute so run one into the other, that it shall not be possible commentator. The last literary efforts of this inde- even for a skilful eye to determine exactly where the fatigable scholar were devoted to drawing up an one ends and the other begins; and yet the colours may Exposition of the Church Catechism, and preparing really differ as much as can be, not in degree only, but several volumes of sermons for the press. These entirely in kind, as red and blue, or white and black: were not published till after his death, which took so, though it may perhaps be very difficult in some nice place on the 17th of May 1729. The various talents and perplexed cases (which yet are very far from ocand learning of Dr Clarke, and his easy cheerful curring frequently) to define exactly the bounds of disposition, earned for him the highest admiration right and wrong, just and unjust (and there may be and esteem of his contemporaries. As a metaphy-some latitude in the judgment of different men, and the sician, he was inferior to Locke in comprehensive-laws of divers nations), yet right and wrong are neverness and originality, but possessed more skill and logical foresight (the natural result of his habits of mathematical study); and he has been justly celebrated for the boldness and ability with which he placed himself in the breach against the Neces sitarians and Fatalists of his times. His moral theless in themselves totally and essentially different; even altogether as much as white and black, light and their youth to steal, may, as absurd as it was, bear darkness. The Spartan law, perhaps, which perinitted much dispute whether it was absolutely unjust or no; because every man, having an absolute right in his doctrine (which supposes virtue to consist in the society may agree to transfer or alter their own proown goods, it may seem that the members of any regulation of our conduct according to certain fit-perties upon what conditions they shall think fit. But nesses which we perceive in things, or a peculiar if it could be supposed that a law had been made at congruity of certain relations to each other) being Sparta, or at Rome, or in India, or in any other part inconsequential unless we have previously distin- of the world, whereby it had been commanded or guished the ends which are morally good from those allowed that every man might rob by violence, and that are evil, and limited the conformity to one of murder whomsoever he met with, or that no faith these classes, has been condemned by Dr Thomas should be kept with any man, nor any equitable comBrown and Sir James Mackintosh.* His specula-pacts performed, no man, with any tolerable use of tions were over-refined, and seem to have been coloured by his fondness for mathematical studies, in forgetfulness that mental philosophy cannot, like physical, be demonstrated by axioms and definitions in the manner of the exact sciences. On the whole, we may say, in the emphatic language of Mackin his reason, whatever diversity of judgment might be among them in other matters, would have thought that such a law could have authorised or excused, much less have justified such actions, and have made them become good: because 'tis plainly not in men's power to make falsehood be truth, though they may alter the property of their goods as they please. Now * See Brown's Philosophy and the Dissertations of Stewart if, in flagrant cases, the natural and essential differand Mackintosh. Warburton, in his notes on Pope, thus sums ence between good and evil, right and wrong, cannot up the moral doctrine: Dr Clarke and Wollaston considered but be confessed to be plainly and undeniably evident, moral obligation as arising from the essential differences and the difference between them must be also essential and relations of things; Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, as arising unalterable in all, even the smallest, and nicest and from the moral sense; and the generality of divines, as arising most intricate cases, though it be not so easy to be solely from the will of God. On these three principles practi-discerned and accurately distinguished. For if, from cal morality has been built by these different writers.' and wrong in many perplexed cases, it could truly be the difficulty of determining exactly the bounds of right! concluded that just and unjust were not essentially and custom, it would follow equally, that they were different by nature, but only by positive constitution not really, essentially, and unalterably different, even in the most flagrant cases that can be supposed; which is an assertion so very absurd, that Mr Hobbes himself could hardly vent it without blushing, and discovering plainly, by his shifting expressions, his secret self-condemnation. There are therefore certain has God been pleased, adds Warburton, to give three differThus ent excitements to the practice of virtue; that men of all ranks, constitutions, and educations, might find their account in one or other of them; something that would hit their palate, satisfy their reason, or subdue their will. But this admirable provision for the support of virtue hath been in some measure defeated by its pretended advocates, who have sacrilegiously untwisted this threefold cord, and each running away with the part he esteemed the strongest, hath affixed that to the throne of God, as the golden chain that is to unite and draw all to it.'-Divine Legation, book i. necessary and eternal differences of things, and certain fitnesses or unfitnesses of the application of different things, or different relations one to another, not depending on any positive constitutions, but founded unchangeably in the nature and reason of things, and unavoidably arising from the differences of the things themselves. DR WILLIAM LOWTH. took up Hoadly's works with warmth, and passed a censure upon them, as calculated to subvert the government and discipline of the church, and to impugn and impeach the regal supremacy in matters ecclesiastical. The controversy was conducted with unbecoming violence, and several bishops and other grave divines (the excellent Sherlock among the number) forgot the dignity of their station and the spirit of Christian charity in the heat of party warfare. Pope alludes sarcastically to Hoadly's sermon in the Dunciad'— DR WILLIAM LOWTH (1661-1732) was distinguished for his classical and theological attainments, and the liberality with which he communicated his Toland and Tindal, prompt at priests to jeer, stores to others. He published a Vindication of the Yet silent bowed to Christ's no kingdom here. Divine Authority and Inspiration of the Old and New The truth, however, is, that there was 'nothing Testaments (1692), Directions for the Profitable Reading of the Holy Scriptures, Commentaries on the Pro- whatever in Hoadly's sermon injurious to the estaphets, &c. He furnished notes on Clemens Alex-blished endowments and privileges, nor to the disandrinus for Potter's edition of that ancient author, cipline and government of the English church, even remarks on Josephus for Hudson's edition, and an- been reproached with some inconsistency in becomin theory. If this had been the case, he might have notations on the ecclesiastical historians for Reading's Cambridge edition of those authors. He also ing so large a partaker of her honours and emoluments. He even admitted the usefulness of censures assisted Dr Chandler in his Defence of Christianity for open immoralities, though denying all church from the Prophecies. His learning is said to have authority to oblige any one to external communion, been equally extensive and profound, and he accompanied all his reading with critical and philological condition of men with respect to the favour or disor to pass any sentence which should determine the remarks. Born in London, Dr Lowth took his depleasure of God. Another great question in this grees at Oxford, and experiencing the countenance and support of the bishop of Winchester, became controversy was that of religious liberty as a civil the chaplain of that prelate, a prebend of the right, which the convocation explicitly denied. And another related to the much debated exercise of cathedral of Winchester, and rector of Buriton. private judgment in religion, which, as one party meant virtually to take away, so the other perhaps unreasonably exaggerated."* The style of Hoadly's controversial treatises is strong and logical, but without any of the graces of composition, and hence they have fallen into comparative oblivion. He was author of several other works, as Terms of Acceptance, Reasonableness of Conformity, Treatise on the Sacrament, &c. A complete edition of his works was published by his son in three folio volumes; his sermons are now considered the most valuable portion of his writings. There can be no doubt that the independent and liberal mind of Hoadly, aided by his station in the church, tended materially prevailed in the church of England. DR BENJAMIN HOADLY. DR BENJAMIN HOADLY, successively bishop of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester, was a prelate of great controversial ability, who threw the weight of his talents and learning into the scale of Whig politics, at that time fiercely attacked by the Tory and Jacobite parties. Hoadly was born in 1676. In 1706,* while rector of St Peter's-le-Poor, London, he attacked a sermon by Atterbury, and thus incurred the enmity and ridicule of Swift and Pope. He defended the revolution of 1688, and attacked the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience with such vigour and perse verance, that, in 1709, the House of Commons recommended him to the favour of the queen. Her majesty does not appear to have complied with this request; but her successor, George I., elevated him to the see of Bangor. Shortly after his elevation to the bench, Hoadly published a work against the nonjurors, and a sermon preached before the king at St James's, on the Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ. The latter excited a long and vehement dispute, known by the name of the Bangorian Controversy, in which forty or fifty tracts were published. The Lower House of Convocation * Hoadly printed, in 1702, A Letter to the Rev. Mr Fleetwood, occasioned by his Essay on Miracles.' In the preface to a volume of tracts published in 1715, in which that letter was reprinted, the eminent author speaks of Fleetwood in the following terms:-This contains some points, relating to the subject of miracles, in which I differed long ago from an excellent person, now advanced, by his merits, to one of the highest stations in the church. When it first appeared in the world, he had too great a soul to make the common return of resentment or contempt, or to esteem a difference of opinion, expressed with civility, to be an unpardonable affront. So far from it, that he not only was pleased to express some good liking of the manner of it, but laid hold on an opportunity, which then immediately offered itself, of doing the writer a very considerable piece of service. I think myself obliged, upon this occasion, to acknowledge this in a public manner, wishing that such a procedure may at length cease to be uncommon and singular.' to stem the torrent of slavish submission which then The first extract is from Hoadly's sermon on The Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ, preached before the king on 31st March, 1717, and which, as already mentioned, gave rise to the celebrated Bangorian controversy. [The Kingdom of Christ not of this World.] If, therefore, the church of Christ be the kingdom of Christ, it is essential to it that Christ himself be the sole lawgiver and sole judge of his subjects, in all points relating to the favour or displeasure of Almighty God; and that all his subjects, in what station soever they may be, are equally subjects to him; and that no one of them, any more than another, hath authority either to make new laws for Christ's subjects, or to impose a sense upon the old ones, which is the same thing; or to judge, censure, or punish the servants of another master, in matters relating purely to conscience or salvation. If any person hath any other notion, either through a long use of words with inconsistent meanings, or through a negligence of thought, let him but ask himself whether the church of Christ this notion of it doth not absolutely exclude all other be the kingdom of Christ or not; and if it be, whether legislators and judges in matters relating to conscience or the favour of God, or whether it can be his king * Hallam's Constitutional History of England. |