most earnestness on the Episcopal office and the Ministerial Commission, as necessary for the due possession of the Sacraments by the people. They taught plainly that priests were nothing by themselves, that their value is derived from their office, and from the commission to minister in their Master's name which that office gives, and that Laws can no more make a Priest than they can make a Sacrament. And Hooker, and Hall, and Pearson, and Leslie, were not thought either ignorant, or foolish, or extravagant. But when the new school had possession of the divinity of the Church, and such men as Hoadley (the lowest minded of all low minded men) of its high stations, Hooker, and Hall, and Pearson, and Leslie, were corrected by Balguy and Powell, and taught that one form is just as good as another; that the Church is a sort of club, which must have some laws and some orders, because even a club cannot go on well without, but that the laws of one club are as good as those of another. They were taught that the directions of the Apostles, and the constant and undisputed practice of the whole Church of Christ for fifteen centuries, cannot be of any consequence, if we think in our wisdom that a Church can subsist without a Bishop, and a priest without ordination;

that the state can manufacture ministers of God's word at its own pleasure, and after its own fashion; and that they are fully qualified to dispense the word of life, and the sacraments of the Gospel. Talk to too many churchmen, and find whether this is not too often their notion. Consider how such miserable degradation entered at all into the Church which once heard the truth from Hooker and Pearson, and be assured that it was let down by degrees through this clever, low minded race of divines, who made it their boast and pride to take what they called the common sense and tangible view of every question, and laughed down every one who believed and taught that there are things, which we can neither touch, nor taste, nor handle, as necessary to our spiritual life as the air we breathe, and as true as the truth of God. I must not stay to describe the effects of this low-minded and tangible divinity farther than to say that we owe to it, and to the ignorance of the real meaning of the words Church and Commission of the clergy, which it caused but too generally, what is one of the greatest curses of Protestantism, the setting up preaching above prayer, the gratification of the itching ear above the elevation of the careless heart, the magnifying the man and despising

his office, the monstrous and godless belief tacitly indeed, but firmly, held, that we derive a greater share of the covenanted gifts and graces of God's spirit, accordingly as we happen to be more or less pleased with the elocution, or style, or manner of the PERFORMER.

This was an unintentional consequence of their views and proceedings, but a natural one. They had no evil intention of any sort—they were only contented to keep, on the lowest terms, such a condition of things as they found, and found tolerable. Their wish was to appear reasonable, as if the highest truth was not the highest reason. Their wish was to be candid and liberal; i. e. to declare, that they who are in power are always wrong, and that they who oppose them are always right; always to decide for what was new against what was old, for what was expedient against what was on principle, for what was convenient against what was generous, for what, in a word, put it as we will, was low-minded and selfish, and worldly, against what was lofty, and noble, and heavenly.

Such men could not write a history of the Christian Church, for that is the history of the progress and struggles of Christian truth, and they had no fond or overflowing love for it. They

could not write a history of the Christian Church, for her proud, and happy, and holy days are her primitive days; and they had no reverence, and no love for primitive antiquity. They could not write a history of the Christian Church, for that is the history of stern principle, and lofty bearing, and zealous faith, and glowing love, and angelic devotion; and they could only sneer and scoff at what, judging from their own cold hearts and decent lives, they would deem to be the fancy of the visionary, or the fond dream of the lonely student.

Of this school came Jortin', and to me he seems to unite every quality which ought to have forbidden his ever touching the pen of the historian. It would be enough to mention, when one considers the high moral qualities which an historian ought to possess, that there is nothing coarse and loathsome on which he does not dwell with the greatest pleasure-and that his language is throughout offensive and vulgar

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I speak of Jortin in this way with deep regret, and in the full and serious remembrance of Dr. Parr's anathema against those who assail him. To speak ill of the dead, especially of so elegant a scholar as Jortin was, must always be painful, even where, as in this case, it is a duty to the living to warn them against error and mischief.

to the greatest degree. It might be enough, when one considers how large a grasp an historian ought to be able to take, that Jortin had but one narrow common place view, which is repeated ten thousand times over; viz. that heretics were always right, or at least excellent people, that they who opposed them were always in the wrong, or at least bigots and tyrants, who put down argument by force. Page after page, we have to go through with a weariness which can hardly be described, the regular common places, that men should always listen to argument, and that persecution is very bad, and freedom very good.

One might, however, endure this with some patience; but there are far graver charges behind. If Gibbon is a book likely to injure Christianity in a young mind, Jortin will do ten thousand times more harm. Gibbon's insinuations are so covert and so veiled, that it often requires a long sight and a large view to understand all their malevolence and mischief. Jortin's sneer is open, plain, and perfectly intelligible. It is true that Jortin's sneer is not against Christianity itself but against particular persons, whom he chooses to think