hypotheses, I gather these conclusions, which naturally follow the aforesaid premises.-(1.) That several Bishops and Doctors of the Church of England, as Dr. Floyd, Dr. Tillotson, Dr. Stillingfleet, Dr. Patrick, that are acknowledged by the Nonconformists to be persons of great learning, worth, and piety, but who are extreme admirers of the Episcopacy of England and all its consequences, and who have also preferred its government to all other establishments in Europe, have, by an unlucky accident, contributed more towards the reputation of the English hierarchy and its practices, and towards the perpetuating the feuds and quarrels between the Conformists and Nonconformists, than it has been possible for any other corrupted party to do by all their irregularities and advances towards Rome.

(2.) That it may be said of these good Bishops and Doctors before mentioned, what the politic sages have observed of Anselme, Bernard, Thomas Aquinas, John of Salisbury, and Gerson, that by their great repute of piety and learning, they have contributed more to the strengthening of the Pope's tyranny ' and religion, in the minds of the people, than a hundred such as Gregory the VIIth and Boniface the VIIIth were able to effect, by their tyranny and the wickedness and impurity of their lives, for the discrediting of the Pope and his religion.'

(3.) That it is not to be believed how much the Nonconformists of England suffer in the esteem of our great men of the Protestant party in Europe, who, hearing people talk of the learning and piety of so many English Bishops and Doctors, all Conformists, and who resemble those four Doctors I have just before named, say aloud, that the Nonconformists must needs be very unreasonable, and of a very nice and fantastical piety, for refusing to conform to the Church of England, after the example of those four Doctors.'

(4.) That how good soever the intentions of some of the Bishops and Doctors of the Church of England may be that are of the same temper of spirit with these four Doctors, and what kindness soever they may have for the Nonconformists, it is impossible they should ever come over to them, and consent to terms of reconciliation and moderation, so long as they remain in this judgment and opinion, that of all the established ecclesiastical governments in Europe, that of the Church of England is 'the most excellent, and the most Apostolical, and that there is nothing of defect in it;' and so long as the multitude of their benefices, and the great honour they are in in the world, blinds their judgment, there being no likelihood nor hopes, that those who are raised so high, and that live in honour and abundance, richly and fatly, (unless they will imitate good Dr. Floyd, who bestows most of his Church-revenues on the poor,) will diminish any thing of their greatness, both as to their retinue or their kitchen, and will descend from high to low; and that a Bishop,

who now goes before the Barons, will quit his place to be only á poor simple Moderator, and watchman over a small company of priests, such as were St. Cyprian and St. Austin. For this eminence of fortune and dignity does absolutely shut up the door to all the overtures of Reformation, which we learn from Monsieur CLAUDE in his Defence of the Reformation of the Churches of France, where he tells us, that the Cardinal du Prat, for this very reason, was the most violent of all men, and the most enraged against Luther's Reformation, because he was provided ' of five Bishopricks, and I know not how many other good and fat benefices.'

In another part of the same work, he observes, with all the naïveté of a Frenchman: "I will begin with the heat and passion of my friends against me, and with the judgment which they make upon my Short and True Account, &c. They say, that that book is altogether now unseasonable, when as persons of great learning, piety, and merit, and who, at the bottom, are very sincere and upright in the Church of England,-such as Dr. Floyd, Dr. Tillotson, Dr. Stillingfleet and Dr. Patrick,* to

In his Advances towards Rome, Du Moulin is particularly severe upon Dr. Patrick, for "joining hands with Sherlock, Bull, Bramhall," and other Divines, "in burlesquing upon the doctrine of Imputative Righteousness. For proof of this, he cites some passages from the Doctor's book called the Pilgrim," an allegory which served as a foundation for the " Pilgrim's Progress" by Bunyan. He then makes the following remarks, some of which are exceedingly judicious:

"If Dr. Patrick, who resembles Gregory the First, the best of bad Popes and the worst of good ones, does in so erroneous a manner run away from the Church of England, as it was about a hundred years ago, and from all the Protestant Divines, as well Lutherans as Calvinists, as well English as French; what sinister judgment may be made of a hundred of his colleagues, who are much inferior to him both in the profession of holiness of doctrine and of life? I would take for example Dr. JEREMY TAYLOR, Bishop in Ireland, one of the most learned men that England or Ireland ever produced, but yet who is the same, or rather vies with Dr. Patrick, about the doctrines that are quite different from the first Reformation in the time of Edward the Sixth; for he denies original sin: He says, with the Poet,

-Lex est, non pœna, perire;

that death is a law of nature, and not a punishment of sin; that concupiscence is not a sin, neither in those who are baptized, nor in those who are not. He establishes the works of supererogation, and the conjunction of the grace of God with the strength of man, which give their mutual assistance to the working of man's salvation.

"But he has set forth a large book, where he strongly proves, that religion ought not to be established by persecution, for it is contrary to the very spirit and temper of Christianity. Wherein the Doctor's conduct has been diametrically opposite to the carriage of those who are joined with him in the design and endea vour of his getting near to Rome: For these, at the same time that they have made shipwreck concerning the faith, as the Apostle speaks, have broken off all charity towards their brethren, and have clothed themselves with the spirit of animosity, malignity, and persecution; and, after they have abandoned God his truth, they have revenged themselves of that loss, by that of love and affec

whom I might join Professor Burnet,-are making it their 'business, as they think it their duty, to re-unite the two parties, the Conformists and the Nonconformists, and when they are most industriously employed in reducing to practice the means ' of peace and concord, according to Mr. Richard Baxter's model; and that, instead of lending them my helping hand, and assisting 'them in so good a work, I am doing what I can to divide both 'parties, and to exasperate and embitter them one against the other."

The book to which he refers is a vile publication, entituled, "A short and true Account of the several Advances the Church of England hath made towards Rome." Its design, he says, was "to disengage and free all honest persons, such as are the above mentioned doctors, from the corrupt party of their Church, to join and confederate themselves with that of the Noncon"formists; that so those two parties might consolidate in one, "and consequently be more capable to act with greater zeal and vigour against the third party, that are making their advances "towards Rome."-This will appear a vain attempt, if the reader seriously reflect on the noble account which those truly great men have given (page 798,) of their well-grounded and mature attachment to Episcopacy and Arminianism, when neither the one nor the other had any preferment to bestow. They had imbibed all the Christian liberality of the system of Arminius, while the Church of England lay in ruins; and some of them had quoted HALES's tract on Schism with approbation. It was not therefore to be expected, that they would be induced, by such weak arguments as those of Louis Du Moulin, and "others tion towards those whose purity of doctrine, and holiness of life, have been a. continual reproach and eye-sore to them: Which is a thing that Doctor Taylor has never done. For how erroneous soever that Doctor was as to matter of doctrine, he was yet endowed with two very excellent qualities;-the one, that he was of a most exemplary life, as he did sufficiently testify it in his carriage and by his writings; the other, that he had an affectionate tenderness, and love, and pity, for those who did not agree with him, either in the profession of the same doctrine, or in the practice of its ceremonies. In which he differed very much from his brethren in the work of the ministry, who satisfy themselves with the profession of a superficial piety; who easily do digest and swallow nonresidency, plurality of benefices, and preaching by a deputy, and the divertisement of the play-house, or of a pack of cards; and who insult over such as Baxter, Owen, Annesly, Jenkins, Bates, Watson, Howe, and the rest, for driving men to desperation, and so to hell, by too rigorously pressing the practice of piety. That is the irarum causa, et hinc illæ lachryma; and why they mortally hate those holy persons. But I cannot but strangely wonder, why they do not put St. Paul amongst such desperate Divines, from whose mouth and pen issued forth more severe and thundering doctrines and menaces than ever came from Mr. Baxter, &c., and that they do not blot out of their bibles this holy Apostle's rousing saying, (2 Cor. v, 10,) That we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive according to that he hath done, whether it be good or evil. And who tells us, that Those that live

after the flesh shall die.'"

of the Congregational way," to abandon the cause which they had deliberately espoused. His pamphlet, however, is a fair specimen of the indecent railing and ignominious treatment which Tillotson and the Latitudinarians were compelled to receive, from those who had at that æra chosen the road of Dissent. Du Moulin quotes the opinion which his elder brother Peter, the loyal divine, entertained of his scandalous conduct: "I consider my poor brother as a man raised by the evil spirit, for the destruc'tion of the Church: It would be a double fault in me to assist ' him to do evil. I alledge these words, not out of any ill-will to complain of my brother, but to advance and extol his kindnesses to me, which are so much the greater and more obliging, in that he acts quite contrary to what he threatens me with."

To understand this sentence, it is necessary to know, that Louis had been deprived of the Professorship of History at Oxford, and, like many worthies of his class, was then practising medicine in the metropolis. His brother Peter, who enjoyed considerable preferment in the Church, augmented Louis's precarious income by his opportune bounty, to which he thus refers in his Advances towards Rome: "As I was just shutting up this discourse, Monsieur de l'Angle, Canon of Canterbury and Minister of the French Church in the Savoy, gave me an entrance into another, in which, after he had declared to me the good intentions that my elder brother had to bestow upon me his liberalities, he thought he was obliged, as a Minister of Jesus Christ, and as my near kinsman, to tell me in good earnest, that the reason of "the diminution of my brother's bounty to me, proceeded from that enmity which I testified with so much heat and bitterness against the Church of England; that I, (more than all the men of the world amassed together,) had an account to make to Almighty God, for that my unchristian spirit and rude treatment of it; and hereupon, having represented to me that the time of my dissolution could not be very far off, being turned of seventy-four, he exhorted me, without any farther delay, to fall seriously to the work of making my peace with God, and getting my conscience into a calm and serene temper, by practising the duties of repentance, and by labouring to live and die in the persuasion of the pardon, not only of all my sins past, but especially of those which I had committed against the Church of England, which I had so much disparaged and scandalized, both by my writings and speech.""

This exhortation to repentance was not unseasonable, for the pragmatical old physician died about six months afterwards; and the reader will perceive an exact similarity between the spirit breathing in the two productions which I have quoted, and that which was displayed by his father, than whom the Church of England had not a more insidious adversary.

6. THE REV. WILLIAM ORME.

THIS gentleman's MEMOIRS of the Life and Writings of Dr. JOHN OWEN have been severely criticized by me in various parts of this volume: (See pages 91, 380, 389, 402, 416, 448, 504, 640, 747, 785.) I have more strictures yet to produce on a few other of his most glaring mis-statements, which (p. 787,) I have charitably imputed to Mr. Orme's weakness rather than to sheer wickedness. Indeed from "the getting-up" of his work, I perceive it to be one of the most easy literary enterprizes that was ever undertaken, to write the MEMOIRS of any eminent divine, who had distinguished himself early in life by his pragmatical and ambitious conduct, and afterwards by a forced kind of penitence, and by the composition of various devotional publications. When stubborn facts from all quarters, from Calvinistic friends and Episcopalian enemies, are marshalled in battle-array against such a character, the only thing necessary to repel the troublesome assailants, according to this modern practice of Biography, is, to substitute one's own unsupported denial of the circumstances adduced, and to say "I believe," or "I am quite satisfied to the contrary!" Another grand requisite in such productions seems to be, that of collecting together all "the thrice-refuted" slanders concerning other pious and accomplished individuals, whose misfortune it was to differ on some doctrinal or political matters from "the hero of the tale," and by a little address to make such censures bear the semblance of new and well-founded accusations. Petty tricks of this description, I might enumerate in abundance; but those to which I have alluded, sufficiently indicate Mr. Orme's style of writing, and the extent of his research, as they appear in his Memoirs of Dr. Owen.

In delivering such an opinion as this, concerning a cotemporary author, I know I am offending against very high authority: For the public has been somewhat ostentatiously informed, by a Review in the LONDON CONGREGATIONAL MAGAZINE for October 1822, (which Review, some of Mr. Orme's Independent associates rather shrewdly assert, was written by a very friendly hand,) that "in an article in the 71st number of the Edinburgh Review, generally ascribed to Sir JAMES MACKINTOSH, who is himself a host on any question relating to British History, speaking of the Memoirs of Owen, it is said, In this very able volume it is clearly proved, that THe Independents were the first teachers of religious liberty." If, however, Sir James should ever cast his eye on this Introduction, I would refer him to pages lxviii, and lxxxvi, in proof, that the Calvinistic part of the Independents were neither the first nor the best "teachers of religious liberty," but that "such honour" belongs in England to the Republican Statesmen, and the Arminians of the New School, nearly all of whom derived