Church of Rome, that awful warning, Rev. xviii. 4, Come out of her, my people, that ye partake not of her plagues.”

After such a display of urbanity and Christianity, to say nothing of the intelligence and ability contained in these letters, the Archdeacon would have been warranted in declining, as he had originally intended, all further controversy with a writer of this description; bat conceiving that the interests of religious truth might be injured by his silence, he condescended still farther to notice the Doctor's proofs and reasonings in support of his falling cause. He accordingly published another series of letters, which closed the dispute. On Christmas-day, in the year 1785, Dr. Horsley delivered a sermon in his church at Newington, on the Incarnation of Christ, which be shortly afterwards printed, as having an intimate connection with the controversy in which he had been recently engaged. In 1789, the Charge, with the Letters and this Sermon, were 'collected together, and published in one very elegantly printed volume, from the press of the benevolent Mr. Raikes at Gloucester. The service rendered to the cause of orthodoxy by the Archdeacon in these performances, procured for him, though unsolicited on his own behalf, or that of his friends, a prebendal stall in the cathedral of Gloucester. His patron on this occasion was the late Lord Thurlow, then chancellor, and the cause is said to have been this:-His lordship happened to be upon a visit to a nobleman in Norfolk; and being about to return

* As these tracts are now become very scarce, the possessors of them, whether in the original, or the collected edition, will be glad to have an opportunity of seeing the following correction, written in the author's own hand in the margin of a presented copy of the Collection of 1789.

At page 442, line 11, for "but what are read "what might be." At line 12 of the same page, after the word "Gnostics" add," From a passage, however, in Irenæus cap. xii. I am inclined to think the Ebionites were not included in that name. Having charged the Marcionites with the crime of rejecting a considerable part of the New Testament, he adds, that the other sects of the Gnostics received the whole New Testament, but perverted the sense by misrepresentation. Now the Ebionites received only the Gospel of St. Matthew, and that they received according to a mutilated and corrupt edition of their own. Yet the Ebionites were not Marcionites, consequently not Gnostics."

It may not be amiss to add in this place, that the author of the Strictures on Dr. Priestley's Letters, forming No. III. of the appendix to the first Collection of Dr. Horsley's Letters was Dr. Townson, author of the Discourse on the Four Gospels; and that Dr. Horsley's learned correspond ent mentioned in the postscript to the seventh letter, was Dr. John Erskine, one of the ministers of Edinburgh. 3 F2

let

1

to town, he requested the nobleman to lend him a pamph let to amuse him on his journey. By chance or design, his lordship put into his hands Dr. Horsley's letters to Priestley. Lord Thurlow was so struck with the uncommon eloquence, deep and various learning, and acute and solid reasoning, exhibited in the letters, that he frankly said to a friend," that man deserves to be a Bishop, and he shall be one; for they who defend the Church ought to be supported by the Church." The first fruits of this opinion was, as we have said, the prebend of Gloucester, notice of which preferment Dr. Horsley received one evening at his parsonage of South Weald, immediately on which he set out for London to pay his respects to the chancellor, with whom he kept up a most friendly intercourse till death parted them, but only for a few weeks.

In 1787 Dr. Horsley preached a most admirable sermon in Gloucester cathedral at an ordination held there, and this discourse gave such satisfaction to that learned prelate Dr. Samuel Hallifax, then Bishop of that church, that he requested the doctor to make it public. The sermon was accordingly printed at Gloucester with this title, "The Analogy between the Light of Inspiration and the Light of Learning as Qualifications for the Ministry." 4to. The principle assumed and argued upon in this ingenious and profound sermon is, that human learning has been substituted by the Almighty since the cessation of the apostolic gift of inspiration, as a qualification for the Christian Ministry. To the sermon is appended a view and explication of the spiritual gifts mentioned 1 Corinthians xii. and in which exposition Dr. Horsley in the main follows the learned Lightfoot.

This discourse received two answers from quarters very opposite to each other. The irascible and conceited Gilbert Wakefield attacked it on the Socinian side, and a divine, then popular in London as one of the Evangelical or Calvinistical preachers, levelled a quarto pamphlet against the sermon, in which he endeavoured to maintain the notion that divine inspiration is still continued to the Elect."

On the translation of Dr. Smallwell from the see of St. David's to that of Oxford, in 1788, Dr. Horsley was deservedly elevated to the episcopal bench, and that entirely through the strenuous exertions of the Chancellor, who had on the occasion to contend against very

strong

strong influence which was made use of in favour of some friends of the minister.

as to

Being thus placed in a situation for which his virtues and his talents were so eminently adapted, he directly applied himself to the duties of a christian bishop. His diocese was large, and its condition was such stand in need of much correction and improvement. Great carelessness had prevailed with regard to the appointment and salaries of the curates in consequence of which too many persons were admitted to holy orders whose qualifications were but indifferent. It had been very unwisely considered, that as the livings were in general small, and a knowlege of the Welch language was indispensible in the officiating ministers, it was, therefore, necessary to admit persons as curates whose acquirements in other respects were very slender. Bishop. Horsley was much concerned at this, and he took up the resolution, on which indeed he uniformly acted, of examining the candidates himself; he also looked very narrowly into the testimonials and titles of the candidates, as many abuses in both articles had prevailed till histime. And as he was thus circumspect, like his great predecessor Bishop Bull*, in endeavouring to prevent improper and unqualified persons from entering into the service of the sanctuary, so he was equally attentive to the comfortable condition and conduct of the clergy of his diocese. He raised the salaries of the curates, many of which were below ten pounds a year; and when some of the incumbents murmured at the regulation, the Bishop coolly informed them, that they had their remedy by residing on their livings, and performing the duty themselves.

His first charge delivered in 1790, was printed the same year, and attracted universal notice. It is, indeed, one of the best pastoral addresses that has been known. since the apostolical age; and it ought to be carefully and repeatedly perused by every one who is engaged in the office of dispensing the word of life. The Bishop pointed his exhortation principally to the matter of instruction necessary for ordinary congregations, and which he forcibly stated ought to be doctrinal as well as practical,

page 414.

See Mr. Nelson's Life of Bishop Bull, + The excellent Society for promoting Christian Knowledge have most judiciously adopted this valuable Charge into their catalogue of tracts, and caused it to be printed in a cheap form.

contrary

contrary to a very erroneous, but too prevalent notion, that "the laity, the more illiterate especially, have little concern with the mysteries of revealed religion, provided they be attentive to its duties."

But the most striking part of this charge, is that wherein the Bishop combats the delusive and dangerous maxim, that "morality is the sum of practical religion," which maxim ha been almost as much as any thing, the cause of that general indifference to Christian doctrine and Christian order, which is so visible in these planet-stricken times. This Charge, as we have already observed, on its appearance from the press, became the subject of general attention. The sentiments contained in it, and some expressions concerning the "Moralizing Unitarians," gave great offence to those who affectedly call themselves "Rational Christians." Gilbert Wakefield vented his indignation in a very scurrilous philippic against the Bishop; and a sturdy Socinian at Caermarthen published two pamphlets on the subject of the Charge, written in a very coarse style, under the title of a " Welsh Freeholder."

Of late this Charge has been pretty much quoted by those writers who assert the Calvinism of the Church of England, and who arrogate to themselves the name of "True Churchmen," on account of their own attachment to that system. Because Bishop Horsley maintains the doctrine of justification by Faith, and denies that morality is religion, or that works are meritorious, these gentlemen have very wisely concluded, that he is on their side. Nothing can be more unjust. The Bishop's ideas are perfectly scriptural, and in unison with the doctrine of the articles and homilies; but he never denied free agency in man, or the conditional obligation of good works for justification. Because he warned his Clergy against a corrupt mode of teaching, which made "morality all in all, and excluded the peculiar doctrines of revealed religion," these pretended True Churchmen have taken and applied particular passages of his Charge in favour of their tenets, to which, in fact, they have just as much relation as the sound doctrine of our Church with regard to the Euchacharistic sacrifice, has to the Popish error of the real

presence.

In 1789, the Bishop preached the anniversary sermon before the Royal Humane Society, of which he was vicepresident, on that appropriate passage, Ecclesiastes xiù

7. The title of the printed discourse is," The Principle of Vitality in Man, as described in the Holy Scriptures, and the difference between real and apparent death." This is, indeed, a most able and philosophical sermon, and it passed through several editions. From the description of the human system given by Solomon, the learned prelate infers, that he was acquainted with the true doctrine of the circulation of the blood.

This year he also dictated the address which was presented by the same society to their Royal patron, on ac count of his recovery.

The vigorous attempt made by the Dissenters in 1790 to obtain the repeal of the Corporation and Test acts, occasioned the Bishop to publish, but without his name,

A Review of the Case of the Protestant Dissenters;" a pamphlet of extraordinary merit, and distinguished by great novelty of argument on a subject which had repeatedly engaged the powers of the ablest reasoners. Though this tract was anonymous, all parties united in ascribing it to the real author, and some of the Dissenters directly replied to it as the production of the Bishop of St. David's.

All Europe was filled with astonishment at the atrocities which marked the French revolution; and deep, indeed, was the concern which every feeling mind expressed on the inhuman butchery of the mild and virtuous Louis the Sixteenth. The English parliament being then sitting, it was thought proper that the thirtieth of January should be observed with due solemnity by the two houses; and the Bishop of St. David's was accordingly appointed to preach the Sermon on the occasion before the Lords at the Abbey. The attendance was very numerous, the recent circumstance as it were, naturally recalling to general recollection the bloody stain which disgraces the English annals in the murder of a religious monarch, on a scaffold before his royal palace. The Bishop's sermon is a complete refutation of that preposterous, but too generally received hypothesis, that absolute liberty is natural to man. He proves that man never did exist in what is called a state of nature; consequently that " Civil Society, which always implies Government, is the condition to which God originally destined man. Whence the obligation on the citizen to submit to government, is an immediate result from that first principle of religious duty, which requires that

man