"But alas! how is this general joy damped, and the pleasing prospect almost totally eclipsed, by a late melancholy scene exhibited in that very place, from whence, as from a fountain, many of their preachers frequently and expressly pray that pure streams may for ever flow, to water the city of the living God. You need not be told, reverend Sir, what place I mean; it was the famous university of Oxford. Nor need I mention the scene exhibited, it was a tribunal, a visitatorial tribunal, erected in Edmund-Hall. Six pious students, who promised to be the salt of the earth, and the lights of the world, entire friends to the doctrines and liturgy of our church, by a citation previously fixed upon the college door, were summoned to appear before this tribunal. They did appear; and as some were pleased to term it, were tried, convicted, and to close the scene, in the chapel of the same hall, (consecrated and set apart for nobler purposes,) had the sentence of expulsion publicly read and pronounced against them.

"So severe a sentence, in an age when almost every kind of proper discipline is held with so lax a rein, hath naturally excited a curiosity in all that have heard of it, to inquire of what notable crime these delinquents may have been guilty, to deserve such uncommonly rigorous treatment. But how will their curiosity be turned into indignation, when they are told, that they were thus rigorously handled for doing no evil at all, and that no fault could be found in them, save in the law of their God?'

"It is true, indeed, one article of impeachment was, that some of them were of trades before they entered into the university.' But what evil or crime worthy of expulsion can there be in that? To be called from any, though the meanest mechanic employ, to the study of the liberal arts, where a natural genius hath been given, was never yet looked upon as a reproach to, or diminution of, any great and public character whatsoever. Profane history affords us a variety of examples of the greatest heroes, who have been fetched even from the plough to command armies, and who performed the greatest exploits for their country's good. And if we examine sacred history, we shall find that even David, after he was anointed king, looked back

with sweet complacence to the rock from whence he was hewn, and is not ashamed to leave it upon record, that God took him away from the sheep-folds, as he was following the ewes great with young ones;' and as though he loved to repeat it, 'he took him,' (says he,) that he might feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance.'

"But why speak I of David? when Jesus of Nazareth, David's Lord and David's King, had for his reputed father a carpenter, and in all probability, as it was a common proverb among the Jews, that he who did not teach his son a trade, taught him to be a thief,' he worked at the trade of a carpenter himself. For this indeed he was reproached and maligned; 'Is not this,' said they, 'the carpenter's son?' nay, 'Is not this the carpenter?' But who were these maligners? The greatest enemies to the power of godliness which the world ever saw, the scribes and Pharisees, that generation of vipers,' as John the Baptist calls them, who upon every occasion were spitting out their venom, and shooting forth their arrows, even bitter words, against that Son of man, even that Son of God, who, to display his sovereignty, and confound the wisdom of the worldly wise, chose poor fishermen to be his apostles; and whose chief of the apostles, though bred up at the feet of Gamaliel, both before and after his call to the apostleship, laboured with his own hands, and worked at the trade of a tent-maker.

"If from such exalted and more distant, we descend to more modern and inferior, characters, we shall find that very late, not to say our present, times furnish us with instances of some, even of our dignitaries, who have been called from trades that tended to help and feed the body, not only to higher employs of a spiritual nature, but even to preside over those that are intrusted with the care of souls. And who knows but some of these young students, though originally mechanics, if they had been suffered to have pursued their studies, might have either climbed after them to some preferment in the church, or been advanced to some office in that university from which they are now expelled? One of the present reverend and worthy proctors, we are told, was formerly a lieutenant in the army, and as such a military employ was no impediment to his being a minister or proctor, it

may be presumed that being formerly of trades could have been no just impediment to these young men becoming, in process of time, true gospel ministers and good soldiers of Jesus Christ.

"Their being accustomed to prayer, whether with or without a form, would by no means disqualify them for the private or public discharge of their ministerial functions. For if it did, what sinners, what great sinners must they have been, who prayed in an extempore way before any forms of prayer could be printed! Why also are not some few others expelled for extempore swearing?" Lett.

Of the six exiles from Edmund-Hall, Erasmus Middleton was the most distinguished. He was sustained at Cambridge by Fuller the banker, a dissenter; and ordained in Ireland by the bishop of Downe. In Scotland, he married a branch of the ducal family of Gordon. In London, he became curate to Romaine and Cadogan, and compiled his well known " Biographia Evangelica." The Fuller family presented him, in his old age, with the living of Turvey in Bedfordshire.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

WHITEFIELD'S LAST VOYAGE.

MANY things conspired to enable Whitefield to embark again for America, without suspecting that he was not likely to return. Both his health and spirits were unusually good. He had often raised his old war-cry, "Field preaching, field preaching for ever!" and followed it up with the shout," Ebenezer, Hallelujah, Pentecost!" on the spots of his former triumphs. His chapels in London also were well provided with acceptable supplies, and his affairs at Georgia all prosperous. Indeed, he appears to have had nothing to vex him but the heavy expense incurred for coach-hire, in making his last excursions. It had mounted very high," he says; "and means must be found to save the late great expense." This proves that he expected to return; and none of his letters at the time indicate any misgivings of heart, or breathe even his usual longing for heaven. "I am brave as to my bodily health, and have not been in better spirits for years," is his own account of himself, when he went on board the Friendship; and of his prospects, he said, “ I am persuaded this voyage will be for the Redeemer's glory, and the welfare of precious and immortal souls." It was-but not in the way he anticipated. Cornelius Winter's account of his general tone of mind and body agrees, on the whole, with Whitefield's own account of himself. He had occasional seasons of "remarkable lowness and languor," at sea; but he was able to spend much of his time in close study of the History of England, and in preparing sermons; and was in better health at the end of the voyage, than he had been after the generality of his former voyages.

Thus the only thing which really oppressed him, on leaving, was the pain of parting from his friends for a time. But this was nothing new with him. What he said now, he had said often; "Oh these partings! without a divine support they would be intolerable. Talk not of taking personal leave: you know my make. Paul could stand a whipping-but not a weeping farewell." Letters.

The parting scene at the Tabernacle and Tottenham Court was awful, and seems to have been repeated: for he says, in his own manuscript journal, that he preached on the vision of Jacob's ladder, at both places; and Winter says, that "The Good Shepherd" was his farewell sermon. Indeed, Whitefield himself, in a letter, calls this his "last sermon." Thus there must have been "more last words" than his journal records. He himself was " disgusted" with the manner in which this farewell sermon was reported and printed. Well he might, as to the latter, if the first edition was like the second, which is now before me. Still, with all its faults, it is characteristic; and, therefore, I will give some specimens of it, as few persons have ever seen it.

The text is, John x. 27, 28. These words, it will be recollected, were uttered by Christ, at the feast of dedication. "This festival," says Whitefield," was of bare human invention; and yet I do not find that our Lord preached against it. And I believe, that when we see things as we ought, we shall not entertain our auditories about rites and ceremonies-but about the grand thing. It is the glory of methodists, that whilst they have been preaching forty years, there has not been (that I know of) one single pamphlet published by them about the non-essentials of religion."

On the words, "My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me," he says, "There are but two sorts of people. Christ does not say, Are you an independent, a baptist, a presbyterian, or are you a church of England man? Nor did he ask, Are you a methodist? The Lord divides the whole world into sheep and goats. O sinners, you are come to hear a poor creature take his last farewell: but I want you to forget the creature and his preaching. I want to lead further than the Tabernacle-even