celebrate him as a martyr; but I trace a very different character. I ask not where is the Christianity of a Socinian? but where is manly firmness, where is common honesty, in that person, who has continued, even to old age, to eat the bread of the Church, which he has invariably endeavoured to subvert; and who, at last, declares, with meanness and pusillanimity, his unwillingness to relinquish his preferment? This is not the spirit of a martyr! The case is calamitous ;-but it will do good. It will rouse us to consider what are our principles; and the world shall know that there still exists among us a firm regard to the Doctrine of our Articles; -that we honour the Son, even as we honour the Father; and that we preach redemption only through his blood!' How different is the Visitation Sermon of Thomas Robinson, from the Visitation Discourse of Francis Stone !

Such, however, was the humanity of his diocesan, that, commiserating the situation of a numerous family, Francis Stone was not rejected from the temporalities' of his benefice; but is said still to eat,' contrary to conscience, the bread of the Church which he endeavoured to subvert.'

Bishop Porteus had long felt his health decay. 'The unavoidable suspension of the Bishop's visitation

at the customary period,' says the Archdeacon of Middlesex (George Owen Cambridge, M. A. and F. A.S.), in his last Charge, 1808, to the Clergy, left the performance of that duty, last year, to the Archdeacons of the diocess, and gave me the unexpected pleasure of meeting you sooner than I should otherwise har done.' 'It must, I am sure,' he shortly after adds,' be a matter of general and sincere regret, that our venerable Diocesan should still find himself unequal to the fatigue of visiting his extensive and populous diocess.' Only two days before his death, however, he arrived at Fulham, from London. He died very early on the morning of the 14th of May, 1809. It was Ascension Sunday, when he happily ascended to his Father and his God!

Like many pious men, who think soon and much of death, he died as it was his wish to die. His early 'Death' contained his final prayer for poem on death.

At thy good time,

Let Death approach; I reck not-let him but come

In genuine form, not with thy vengeance arm'd,

Too much for man to bear. O rather lend

Thy kindly aid to mitigate his stroke :'

- But chiefly Thou,

Whom soft-eyed Pity once led down from Heav'n

To bleed for man, to teach him how to live,

And oh! still harder lesson! how to die;
Disdain not thou to smooth the restless bed
Of sickness and of pain. Forgive the tear
That feeble Nature drops, calm all her fears,
Wake all her hopes, and animate her faith;
Till my rapt soul, anticipating heav'n,
Bursts from the thraldom of incumb'ring clay,
And, on the wings of ecstacy upborne,
Springs into liberty, and light, and life.'

1

It was thus that he passed imperceptibly away from this world to the next. He did not die—he slept.

His earthly remains were silently removed, from his house to his tomb, at about two o'clock on the morning of Tuesday the 22d of May. His burial took place at Sundridge in Kent; where he had for some time attended the erection of a vault, with that view. It is in the chapel there; to which, report avers, he has bequeathed £252 yearly, for the better maintenance of its minister. Bishop Porteus is stated to have been very partial to Sundridge, where he preached his first sermon; and where, rurally retreated, he always spent some part of each summer, in a small house of his own, removed from every species of ostentation.

St. Paul's great bell announced the Bishop's decease, to the metropolis; and the pulpit of Fulham was hung

with black, in respect to him. Otherwise the known worth of this Prelate, I must say, has been strangely left without due commemoration. It is still in the Rev. Mr. Usko's power, himself mastering as many as fifteen languages, to pay some Lasting Tribute, meritoriously and extensively, to the character of one to whom he owes his own great advancement in the church.

The person of Bishop Porteus is described as having been handsome in his youth; and that, until of late, he preserved a florid hue, and features that bespoke a manly beauty.'

He was, at the time of his death, Dean of the Royal Chapel; a Member of the Privy-Council; a Governor of the Charter-House; Provincial Dean of Canterbury; a Trustee of the British Museum; President of the Society for the Conversion of Negro-Slaves, and Vice-President of the Asylum, and of the General Lying-in-Hospital at Bayswater; one of the Court of Assistants of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy; President of the Society for maintaining, educating, and apprenticing Poor Orphan-Children of Clergymen ; Associate of Bray's Institution for Parochial Libraries, and President of the Proclamation-Society against Vice.

!

GERRARD ANDREWES, D. D.

'Towards the conclusion of the present volume, the reader will find some account of this preacher's Lectures on the Liturgy, during the Lent of 1809, in St. James's Church.’- -See page 28.

LECTURES ON THE LITURGY:

BY

GERRARD ANDREWES, D.D.

OF ST. JAMES'S CHURCH, IN PICCADILLY.

Began on February 14th, and ended on March the 21st, 1809.

PRAYER, presenting the sole medium of intercourse between the creature and his Creator, between humanity and Divinity, forms one of the most important offices in which the race of man can possibly engage. Numerous are the formularies of devotional intercession, national as well as individual, written y