society of London; and York and Canterbury would still be prizes. The temptation, then, to bishops to sacrifice their independence in parliament, or to leave the spiritualities of their dioceses, that they might continue in attendance at court, (allowing, for argument's sake, the coarse calumny conveyed in such imputation to be just) would remain; abated, indeed, under an equalized revenue, but not destroyed.

With the parochial clergy there is, it must be confessed, some danger of political dependence, arising from the inequality of church preferments; but though they were strictly equalized, the evil would not be wholly abolished: for one living is eligible above another, on other grounds than value alone. But apart from this consideration, to an imperfect being like man, actuated by mixed motives, a ne plus ultra in the comforts of life, a consciousness that no talent, no zeal, no exertion, can lift him one step above his present condition, is in danger of teaching his faculties to collapse and to slumber; while the hope of some advancement, even in temporal good, might, to the very best, prove a needful stimulus to duty, and seasonable reinforcement of principle.

But, after all, it is much to be questioned, whether a general elevation of clerical emoluments, either equalized or graduated, would advance the real welfare of the church. That a man should support HIMSELF until his thirtieth

year, that for several of the first years of his active life, his professional income should not recompense his education, or equal his expenditure, is a principle on which mainly depends the high respectability of the law, the army, and the church. The curate, the cornet, and the briefless barrister, uphold the dignity of their several professions. If the first-fruits of these professions were made worth looking to as a support, it is to be feared, that the professions would be sought as a support exclusively; and as the general rise of emolument could not, at best, be great, they would be sought by a body of mercenaries of an inferior class in life, who would sit down to calculate and balance the advantages presented by the counting house on the one hand, and by the bar, the army, or the pulpit on the other. Now as inequality leaves an opening to activity, and secures a press of well-bred gentlemen and scholars into the church, in like manner, the depression of the large majority of emoluments, so low that no one could in likelihood be sought after as in itself a provision for a gentleman, raises the church on a pedestal of respectability, draws into it some men of unmixed zeal, and many possessing fortunes which render ecclesiastical advantages a matter of inferior consideration. The church is thus established as a liberal profession, in opposition to a livelihood of calculation.

We have discussed this whole subject without taking credit to the clergy, for pure, disinter

ested zeal,-for piety, defecated from any alloy of earth. That 'every diocese contains numbers of unboastful labourers answering to this description, we might produce examples to prove; but as they with whom we differ would stop their eyes and ears, we have argued the question on other grounds.

Watson considered Episcopacy as a mere matter of expedience, and in the Senate House prevented candidates for degrees from appealing to the Articles of their own Church; while he held up a Bible, uttering his favourite phrase, "Mind the sacred volume." This is certainly latitudinarianism, and spurious liberality. By a bishop, by a professor of divinity in an English university, it ought to be presumed that the Articles are founded in Scripture; and to forbid an appeal to them, especially by young candidates for orders, was virtually to deny their authority. It is idle to say, let us reject subscription, and refer only to the sacred volume; this would fill the Church with Catholics, Antinomians, and Socinians; for they all appeal to the Bible. It would destroy all unity and certitude; and the disciples, in any congregation, tossed about by every wind of doctrine, would find no anchor for their souls.

VII. While Watson, in ably combating infidel writers, opposed argument to sophistry, and gravity to petulance, others were not less sedu

lous, by different methods, to restore solidity to the unsettled minds of their countrymen.

Arthur Young diverted his attention from earthly to spiritual husbandry; and Sir Thomas Bernard instituted the Society for bettering the condition of the Poor; in whose reports he wrote many valuable articles. He had but to look back upon his life, and inwards upon his mind, to find materials for his Spurina, or the Comforts of old Age. Mrs. Hannah More, whom we have already mentioned with praise, became the patroness of Sunday Schools, in the west of England. "Under the charge of Methodism, she may console herself," says an eulogist, "by remembering that it came from the curious, the ignorant, and the gay;" but, unhappily, she has not escaped that charge from the sober, the learned, and the orthodox.

Calebs, published at a later period, was a religious novel, wherein acrimonious remark was substituted for solemn censure, cold-blooded speculation for generous affection, and a worldlyminded marriage dignified as the prudence of entering a wider sphere of beneficence. This authoress has likewise published a work on Education, Hints for the Instruction of a young Princess, and Observations on the Writings of St. Paul; all evincing superior intellect employed as a handmaid to pious zeal.

Another caterer for the intellectual improve

ment of the poor was found in the Rev. W. Gilpin. That taste for the pleasures of picturesque nature, which prompted him to settle at Boldre, in the New Forest, produced his Sermons to country Congregations, and his Lectures on the Catechism; the purest models of simple pastoral instruction. He constructed a house of industry, and built a school house; which he supported by his publications in the departments of taste and theology. He is the biographer of Bernard Gilpin his ancestor, of Wickliffe, Huss, Jerome of Prague, and Cranmer. His life was protracted to the term of eighty years; he was liberal, tolerant, devout, ORTHODOX; but, as the writer who gives this character adds, occasionally defective in his Evangelical views.

Among those who laboured with prudent zeal to neutralize the poison of French principles, Mr. Jones, of Nayland, was conspicuous as the author of a Letter from Thomas Bull to his Brother John; and the collector of a volume of tracts by eminent divines, entitled, "The Scholar armed against the Errors of the Time." In conjunction with Beloe, Nares, Gleig, Robertson, Woollaston, Vince, and Rennell, he planned and instituted the British Critic, as an antidote to the democratical and Socinian tendencies of the Monthly and Crical Reviews*; but its honest warmth against en

Reviewer reviewed, p. 42.