In a future chapter an account will be given of the societies which have been established in Surrey chapel, and of some of the blessed results which have followed the ministry of the word. The pastor has been removed, but the language of his surviving and united people is, “Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. For our brethren and companions' sake, we will now say, Peace be within thee."

CHAP. IV.

THE LABOURS OF MR. HILL AS AN ITINERANT.

THE REFORMERS-REVOLUTION OF 1688- STATE OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH DESCRIBED BY DR. GILLIES AND MIDDLETON-WESLEY AND WHITEFIELD-MR. JAY'S REMARK ON THE REVIVALISTS OF RELIGION-ITINERANT LABOURS OF MR. HILL, AND THE SUFFERINGS HE ENDURED-HAMPSTEAD HEATH AND CROYDON HIS GREAT ATTACHMENT TO FIELD-PREACHING, AND REMARKS THEREON-THE SERPENT-DEVIZES, INTERESTING CONVERSION PREACHING AT KINGSWOOD ANECDOTE OF SIR RICHARD HILL-LETTER FROM REV. JOHN BERRIDGE-SINGULAR SCENE AT WREXHAM-HIS SUCCESSFUL LABOURS IN WALES-OPPOSITION AT ABBERGELLE-KINGSWOOD GRAVE-YARD-FIRST TOUR IN SCOTLAND-IMPRESSIONS ON THE SOBER MINDS OF THE SCOTCH PEOPLE-PAISLEY AND CHRISTIAN LOVE-MR. HILL ADDRESSES FIFTEEN THOUSAND PERSONS ON THE CALTON HILL, EDINBURGH-THE GREAT GOOD WHICH RESULTED FROM THE TOUR-THE BAPTISTS OF NORTHAMPTON-SECOND TOUR IN SCOTLAND-MR. HILL'S SERIOUS CONTENTIONS WITH THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY, AND THE GENERAL ASSOCIATE SYNOD-REPLY TO DR. JAMIESON'S PAMPHLET THE BIGOT OF LIBERALITY-THIRD VISIT TO SCOTLAND-DR. CHALMERS AT SURREY CHAPEL-TOURS IN IRELAND-THE SWEARING CAPTAIN-MINISTERS NOT TO BE CONFINED TO GEOGRAPHICAL LIMITS-THE HONOURABLE B. NOEL'S LETTER TO THE BISHOP OF LONDON-REV. THOMAS SCOTT'S REMARKS ON ITINERANT PREACHING.

THE great Head of the Church has raised up,

in every age, suitable instruments to make

known the glad tidings of the Gospel to perishing men. The fathers of the church handed

down to their successors the great truths which the apostles had preached. After the errors of Rome had been extensively spread, Wickliff appeared as a light shining in a benighted world. "His preaching, at which all the succeeding reformers lighted their tapers, was to his countrymen a short blaze, soon damped and stifled by the pope and prelates."* The reformation in Germany, and the adjacent countries, was advanced by Luther, Melancthon, Zuinglius, Calvin, and Beza; whilst in England, Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, and in Scotland, Knox and Melville appeared as the great champions of the truth. The cause of Christ advanced, through many difficulties, until the Revolution of 1688, when King William landed in our happy land. He sustained the national church, but gave liberty of conscience to all who dissented from it.

* Milton's Prose Works, by Fletcher, p. 2.

+ The wisdom and power of God were very manifest in raising up and qualifying such instruments for his work. They received peculiar endowments for a peculiar service, and their very infirmities and defects were subordinated to the service of God. Such men

as Luther appear not now, nor are they necessary: when they are, God will raise them up.--Mann's Ecclesiastical Lectures, p. 231.

K

A state of peace is not always a season of prosperity to the church of Christ. She has flourished most in troublous times. After the Revolution of 1688, all denominations appear to have been in a lukewarm condition. Like the virgins in the parable, "they all slumbered and slept."

"Awful and gloomy was the period," remarks the biographer of Whitefield, "when Methodism first appeared in these kingdoms. Serious and practical Christianity appeared to be at the lowest ebb; vital religion, so flourishing in the last century, was scarcely known! and the only thing insisted on, was a defence of the outworks of Christianity against the objections of infidels. What was the consequence? The writings of infidels multiplied every day, and infidelity made a rapid progress among persons of every rank, not because they were reasoned into it by the force of argument, but because they were kept strangers to Christ, and the power of his Gospel. We have a most affecting description of this, given by Bishop Butler, in the Preface to his "Analogy," whom none will suspect of exaggerating the fact. "It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted, that Christianity is not so much a subject of

inquiry; but that it is, now at length, discovered to be fictitious; and accordingly they treat it as if in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of discernment; and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, and as it were by way of reprisals for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world.*

An impartial historian has also said, "the bishops, in their corporate capacity, were not conspicuous for evangelical purity of sentiment, or attachment to the distinguishing tenets of the Reformation, as expressed in the Articles of the religious community over which they were destined to preside. They drank too much into the spirit of the fashionable theology." "The doctrine of justification by faith alone was in general inadequately and imperfectly stated; the corruption of human nature was spoken of in qualified terms; and salvation was too often represented as the possible attainment of moral exertion, and the legal reward of a religious and virtuous conduct; they viewed

• Dr. Gillies' Life of Whitefield, 2nd edition, p. 4. + Middelton's Ecclesiastical Memoir of the first four decades of the reign of George the III. p. 10.