ters of religion, whose business is study and devotion, religious teaching and a religious example.

Lamentable ignorance, or criminal neglect of reflection!-The religion of the gospel is a generous and noble thing: it is of indispensable necessity for every person in every rank and station or possible mode of human existence, but to none more than the sons and daughters of anxious care or of tempting pleasure, exposed to the snares and contumelies and wrongs of indigence, to "the deceitfulness of riches, or to the lusts of other things:" it qualifies for the right discharge of every duty, the public and most conspicuous, as well as the simplicity of a private life on the smallest scale of connexion: it gives a directive principle, a set of motives intelligible, frank, honourable, and consistent in their operation, and rules of conduct founded on the immutable obligations of equity and kindness: it asks but to be uprightly observed, to be allowed its divine right of empire in the soul, and it would diminish suffering and increase happiness to the highest degree compatible with our earthly condition.

The truth, practicability, and reasonableness of all this, are shown in the Treatise of Dr. BATES now republished, on "SPIRITUAL PERFECTION." It is not the work of a gloomy recluse, an illiberal dogmatist, or a harsh and cold precisionist. The author was a gentleman, as well as a scholar and

a clergyman. He was a man who moved in a large and active sphere; he was no stranger to the polite world, and he had much intercourse with persons of superior talent and of rank and distinction, through the years of his public life. At the Restoration, he was appointed one of the king's chaplains, and was offered the deanery of Lichfield and Coventry, but which his conscientious scruples prevented him from accepting. By the lords chancellor Bridgman and Finch, by several of the nobility, and particularly by the duke of Bedford, he was held in much reverence, and his society greatly esteemed. He was the intimate friend of archbishop Tillotson. King William III. treated him with great respect, and frequently admitted him into the royal presence. The queen Mary was known to have been greatly attached to his writings, and to have made much use of them for her private edification. Though he could not comply with the requisitions of the Act of Uniformity, passed in 1662, and therefore of necessity became a nonconformist, it would probably be impossible to find a man in any denomination of Christians, who had less of bigotry in his spirit, or more of true candour, and an unaffected readiness to show honour to worth and virtue, wherever they were found. A passage in his farewell sermon to his parishioners, preached in the church of St. Dunstan's in the West, on August 17, 1662,

the Sunday before his ejectment, is worthy of being cited.

"It is neither fancy, faction, nor humour, that makes me not comply: but merely the fear of offending God. And if, after the best means used for my illumination (as prayer to God, discourse and study) I am not able to be satisfied as to the lawfulness of what is required; if it be my unhappiness to be in error; surely men will have no reason to be angry with me in this world, and I hope God will pardon me in the next."

Dr. Bates died on July 14, 1699, at the age of seventy-four years. Mr. Howe, his friend and fellow-nonconformist, preached the funeral sermon; a few sentences from which have a just claim to be transcribed. No one acquainted with the character and the writings of Howe, will question either his power of penetration into the true dispositions of men, or his fidelity in representing them.

In the dedication to the duke of Bedford, Mr. Howe, adverting to the respective opinions of churchmen and dissenters, says: "Such differences will be easily tolerable, where there is that mutual charity, as neither to think a different judgment to be bribed with dignities and emoluments, on the one hand; nor to be perverted by humour and affection of singularity, on the other.-[Dr. Bates's] great candour and moderation, in refer

ence to the things wherein he hath been constrained to differ from many excellent persons, and his remoteness from any disposition to censure them from whom he differed, have been-conspicuous to all that knew him: the apprehension having been deeply inwrought into the temper of his mind, that the things, wherein only it could be possible for truly good men to differ, must be but trifles, in comparison of the much greater things wherein it was impossible for them not to agree.

-I no way doubt but the things for which your grace most deservedly valued this excellent person, were such as have in them an inherent and immutable goodness, not varying with times or the changeable posture of secular affairs; but which must be the same in all times; and not appropriate to persons of this or that denomination, but that may be common to persons sincerely good, of any denomination whatsoever. Whereupon, the testimony, which your grace hath from time to time given, of your value of him on such an account, must have redounded to yourself; have reflected true honour on your own name; shown your discerning judgment of persons and things; and entitled you to his prayers, which I hope have been available to the drawing down of blessings on yourself and your noble family."

The Sermon was upon the text in John xi. 16. Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus,

b

unto his fellow-disciples: let us also go, that we may die with him.' At the close, the distinguished preacher draws a character of his deceased friend. The following extracts will properly accompany this reimpression of Dr. Bates's last and, it may be justly said, dying work.

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His natural endowments and abilities appeared to every observer great, much beyond the common rate his apprehension quick and clear his reasoning faculties, acute, prompt, and expert, so as readily to produce and urge closely the stronger and more pregnant arguments, when he was to use them; and soon to discern the strength of arguments, if he was to answer them: his judgment, penetrating and solid, stable and firm: his wit, never vain or light, but most facetious and pleasant, by the ministry of a fancy both very vigorous and lively and most obedient to his reason, always remote both from meanness and enormity.

"His memory was admirable and never failed, that any one could observe, and was not impaired by his great age of seventy-four; insomuch that speeches made upon solemn occasions, and of no inelegant composition, (some whereof the world hath seen, though extorted from him with great difficulty and with much importunity,) he could afterwards repeat to a word, when he had not penned one word of them before. His sermons, wherein nothing could be more remote from ram