account of the unfair and angry treatment (I may say, persecution) some of them had suffered, and the dislike and aversion which their principles had met with from persons of established reputation. The modest and civil Letter to a Bishop, from the Lord President of the Court of Session in Scotland, the Honourable Ducan Forbes, had met with little or no attention; which, with many other slights and provocations, contributed to keep them in no very good humour: so that it was to be feared they would be too ready to hear, what others might be too ready to suggest. With some of our dissenters, it is too much the custom to turn the clergy of the church and their profession into ridicule; a sort of behaviour which should always be avoided by religious men, when religion is the subject. A piece was handed about, which calls itself a Dialogue upon Bishops; a sly and malignant invective, in a strain of irony, and by no means destitute of wit, against the prelates of this church. The thing is written in the same spirit with the Martin MarPrelate of the old Puritans, though in a superior strain of irony; and had for its author a man whose name was Biron, a dissenting teacher of eminence; whose works are collected together, and published, under the terrific title of The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken. The Church of England, whose religion is here intended by the word priestcraft, never had a more willing adversary than this man; unless it were Gordon, the author of the Independent Whig; whose writings, plentifully dispersed there, contributed not a little to the revolt of America, by rendering the Americans more disaffected to the religion of the mother country.

VOL. I.

d

So long as a connexion remained with the nonconforming readers of Mr. Hutchinson, it was expected by them, that all church differences would be laid aside, as matters of no signification; and that both parties would join hands against the common enemies of Christianity. Things being thus disposed, an occurrence intervened, to which Mr. Horne, as it appears from some of his letters, imputed the breach which afterwards took place, and his own deliverance, in consequence of it, from all danger of fanatical infection.

Dr. Clayton, then Bishop of Clogher in Ireland, in the year 1750, published his Essay on Spirit, with design to recommend the Arian doctrine, and to prepare the way for suitable alterations in the Liturgy. The favourers of heresy are seldom found to be the enemies of schism: this author, therefore, to strengthen his party, distinguished himself as a warm friend to the cause of the sectaries; intimidating the Church with the prospect of destruction, unless the safety of it were provided for by a timely compliance with the demands of its adversaries. This Essay, being reported to come from a person of such eminence in the Church alarmed her friends and animated her enemies. It carried with it a shew of learning, and some subtilty of argument: an answer to it was therefore expected and wished for.

It happened at this time, that I was settled at Finedon in Northamptonshire, as curate to the Rev. Sir John Dolben; which I have reason to remember as a most happy circumstance in the early part of my life. In this situation I was frequently visited by my friend and fellow-student Mr. Horne. He came to me, possessed with a desire of seeing

an answer to this Essay on Spirit; and persuaded me to undertake it. All circumstances being favourable, no objection was made; and accordingly down we sat together for a whole month to the business. The house of my patron, Sir John Dolben, had an excellent library; a considerable part of which had descended from Archbishop Dolben; and it was furnished with books in every branch of reading, as well ancient as modern, but particularly in divinity and ecclesiastical history. In a country parish, without such an advantage, our attempt had been wild and hopeless: but with it, we had no fear of being at a loss concerning any point of learning that might arise. What Bishop Clayton (supposing him to be the author of an Essay on Spirit) had offered in favour of the non-conformists, obliged us to look into the controversy between them and the Church, which as yet we had never considered; and to consult such historians as had given a faithful account of it. This inquiry brought many things to our view, of which we had never heard; and contributed very much to confirm us in the profession to which we had been educated: but, at the same time, it raised in our minds some new suspicions against our nonconforming friends; and the occasion called upon us to say some things which it could not be very agreeable to them to hear, so long as they persisted in their separation. In every controversy, there will be some rough places, over which the tender-footed will not be able to pass without being hurt; and when this happens, they will probably lay upon others that fault which is to be found only in themselves. It happened as might be expected. When the Answer was published, great

offence was taken; and they who had argued for us, as Christians, in a common cause, began now to show themselves as enemies to the Church of England. They addressed themselves to us in such a strain, to the one by letter, to the other in conversation, as had no tendency to soften or conciliate; for it breathed nothing but contempt and defiance. It had therefore the good effect of obliging us to go on still further in our inquiries, that we might be able to stand our ground. To this occurrence it was at first owing, that Mr. Horne became so well learned in the controversy between the Church and the sectaries, and was confirmed for life in his attachment to the Church of England.' It was another happy circumstance, that

The following extract from a long letter will show how his mind was employed at the time when it was written :-" I have been reading some of the works of Dr. George Hickes against the Romanists. He is a sound and acute reasoner, and differs from Leslie in this, that whereas Leslie's method was, to single out one point which he calls the jugulum causa, and stick to that; Hickes follows them through all their objections; unravels their sophistry, and confirms all he says with exact and elaborate proofs. He shows the greatest knowledge of primitive antiquity, of fathers, councils, and the constitution and disci.. pline of the Church in the first and purest ages of it. This kind of learning is of much greater value and consequence than many now apprehend. What next after the Bible, can demand a Christian's attention before the history of the Church, purchased by the blood of Christ, founded by inspired apostles, and actuated by a spirit of love and unity, which made a heaven upon earth even in the midst of persecution, and enabled them to lay down their lives for the truth's sake? Much I am sure is done by that cementing bond of the spirit, which unites Christians to their head and to one another, and makes them consider themselves as members of the same body, that is as a church, as a fold of sheep, not as straggling individuals. What I see of this in a certain class of writers determines me to look into that affair." Such a man as this, so far advanced in the days of his youth, would pay but little regard to shallow reasonings and hasty language from the enemies of uniformity.

in the issue, by persons of more impartiality, the Answer to the Essay on Spirit, on which we had bestowed so much labour, was very favourably received, especially in Ireland, where it was most wanted. The work was rendered more useful by the opportunity it gave us of explaining some abstruse articles in the learning of antiquity; particularly, the Hermetic, Pythagorean, and Platonic trinities; which the writer of the Essay had pressed into his service, to distract the minds of his readers, without pretending to know the sense of them. We had the advantage of the author in this subject, from having been permitted to look into some manuscript papers of a learned gentleman, who had spent several years of his life in studying the mysteries of the ancient Greek Philosophy; which, at the bottom, always proved to be materialism. In this the speculations of heathen philosophers naturally ended; and so do the speculations of those moderns who follow them in their ways of reasoning.

From our frequent intercourse with the library above mentioned, we had the good fortune to meet with the works of the Rev. Charles Leslie in two vols. fol. which may be considered as a library in themselves to any young student of the Church of England; and no such person, who takes a fancy to what he there finds, can ever fall into Socinianism, fanaticism, popery, or any other of those more modern corruptions which infest this Church and nation. Every treatise comprehended in that collection is incomparable in its way and I shall never forget how Mr. Horne expressed his astonishment, when he had perused what Mr. Leslie calls the History of Sin and Heresy; which, from