In preparation, A Short Postscript to the Letters of Calvinus, which either will be subscribed by the Author's name, or will otherwise announce it.

TWO MORE LETTERS, &c.

LETTER IV.

"Now we command you, brethren, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly ;"—" for yourselves know how you ought to follow us: for we behaved not ourselves disorderly." II. Thessal. iii. 6, 7.

SIR,

TO THE REVEREND DR M'CRIE.

You may perhaps have heard of a French author who published a tract entitled "Reponse

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au Silence de M. La Motte." I laugh at the title he chose; but I am going to follow his example and in answer to your silence on this occasion, I beg leave to tell you that you ought to "speak because you believe." I do not venture, you see, to set my opinion in opposition to yours, till I have given it a strength not its own, and clad it in armour borrowed from the Scripture. Thus armed, I presume to say that you should before now, in the way of reproof or disclamation, have con

veyed some explanation to the public respecting that gross scandal committed by a man who calls himself your literary partner and brother, and whose slander and blasphemy your name has contributed to spread. Some explanation has been expected from you, and the expectation is not unreasonable. "I my brother's keeper ?" is not a rejoinder that will satisfactorily account for your silence. You are his keeper; and you must "in any wise rebuke thy brother, and not "suffer sin upon him."

"Am

You belong to and adorn a function of which the members are emphatically declared to be" the salt of the earth -an emblem than which none could express more strongly the exalted purity of ministerial character, and the tendency of such character to communicate its excellence, and keep others from corruption. Nobody,, I am sure, knows better than you do, that the success of all those moral teachers, whether ministers or philosophers, who have laboured to improve the character and raise the value of mankind, has always depended much more on their conduct than their discourses, their example

than their precepts. The Romans were little purer for the voluptuous Seneca's sublime panegyrics on virtue-little more upright for the profligate venal Sallust's stern denunciation of dishonesty-little braver for the runaway Horace's lofty strains on the " dulce et "decorum" of courage. If Socrates was a successful moralist, it was less because he was an able teacher, than because he was a wise and good man. Having mentioned him at present, I shall just break the thread of these reflections to remind you of the ruin that accompanied a blemish in the purity of his example. Following a multitude to do evil, he patronized by his presence the infamous ribaldry of the Athenian drama, and died by an attack on his character, that first emanated from the stage.

All the preaching in the world will be utterly unprofitable, unless the living clerical salt itself retain the savour which it endeavours to impart to discourse. If preaching without example could have done, the Pharisees, with their long prayers and broad phylacteries, might have reclaimed mankind ; for the disciples were commanded by their