ardice. Mr. Newton is said to have endured a very severe operation without a groan. The operator expressed surprise at his fortitude. "Why, Sir," said this excellent man, "I have preached some years from my pulpit about divine support, and shall I live to negative all by my cowardice." Alas! my frame is not braced up to a firm endurance, but is dissoluble and weak. I have not a bit of back bone in me. There is a noble hardihood, but I shrink from a man with his instruments. God saw my weakness, and saved me from the trial. He may yet bring me into it. Be it so: He can carry me safely through; and if he leaves me to discredit myself, his name shall some way or other be glorified. Let the whole earth keep silence before him. He can make a man timid as a hare, to be bold as a lion. He won't leave me: I am satisfied he will stand near me in a more terrible condition than man can put me, even in the dark valley of the shadow of death; thither shall I descend after a few years at most, and there shall his

staff support me. O how little does the world and all its concerns appear by the side of such thoughts -such expectations.

How unspeakably precious did opportunities of preaching Christ seem to me, in a moment when I feared I should never more be allowed to preach him! I am permitted to enter my pulpit again; and if the savour is still in my remembrance, I begin to feel my

spirit gliding away to this and that wearying vanity. I have long done with vows and resolutions.

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They are deceitful upon the weights." But to thee, O Lord, do I turn for life and power, to keep me to dying thoughts and feelings. O that I may die daily, and live every hour as if it were my last.

Calvinists and Arminians, said Mr. S. are both wrong, and both right. They are right in what they assert, and wrong in what they deny. There is a preordination to eternal life, says the Calvinist, You are right; Scripture is full to the point. I deny it, says the Arminian.

Then you are

wrong. Rom. viii. 19. I assert, says the Arminian, that God willeth the salvation of all men. You are right; it is expressly affirmed in Holy Writ. I deny it, replies the Calvinist. Then you deny what is affirmed and implied throughout the Bible. Ezek. xviii. 23, 32. 2 Pet. iii. 9. Then, exclaim both, you are inconsistent. I am content. I dare not evade or shuffle, or explain away, or charge God foolishly. I will submit my opinions to Scripture, and not torture the Scripture to meet my wisdom. I see through a glass darkly, and I wait with patience to see face to face.

Works foreseen or works done, it is still work; and if God's purposes are formed on either, man has whereof to glory. Salvation is not of grace.

CLERICUS OXONIENSIS.

for the accomplishment of designs, which shall at last fill heaven and earth with admiration and delight. I, Sir, am old enough to remember almost the first measures which were adopted for terminating the Slave Trade, that curse of Africa and disgrace of Europe. In every step that was taken I felt the most lively interest; and when the British Parliament decreed its termination, my heart leaped for joy. In this I only shared the feelings of thousands and tens of thousands of my countrymen; and 1 have an equal number of associates in lamenting the continuance of the horrid traffic by other European nations; and in deploring the miseries which that unhappy portion of the earth still seems doomed to suffer, to gratify the avarice of men called Christians. This is one of the mysterious events of Providence, to which we ought to bow with silent submission; assured that "the Judge of all the earth will do right," though we cannot understand the reasons of his decision.

But while we thus adore the depths we cannot fathom, it will still be very satisfactory to see some rays of light issuing out of this thick darkness-to trace out some purpose of mercy, which the dispensation may be intended to answer. With this view I would beg leave to call your attention to the accounts with which the Re-ports of the Church Missionary Society furnish us, relative to the state of things at Sierra Leone. Had our wishes and prayers for the complete extinction of the Slave Trade been granted; had the powers of Europe agreed to brand it as piracy, and punished with just severity all engaged in it, which was undoubtedly their bounden duty, how very different would the state of things have been! It is true, Africa would have been greatly benefited. The predatory wars, which have constantly been carried on to procure Slaves, would

have ceased. Cultivation and commerce might gradually have been introduced. But still an almost insurmountable obstacle to her being Christianized, arising from the want of persons whose constitutions would bear the climate, or who could accommodate themselves to the habits of the natives, would remain. God, however, seems to be overruling the iniquity of the European nations, and of some of the natives of our own land, so as to remove this mighty impediment to the spread of the Gospel in that large portion of the earth.

At Sierra Leone are collected together a vast number of native Africans, from the various tribes that inhabit the country. They are receiving instruction in the arts of civilized society; and more than all, they are taught that which is "able to make them wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus." The success which has attended the labours of the Missionaries among them is most cheering. Is it then too much to hope, that from amongst these recaptured negroes many will be found to convey back to their countrymen that knowledge which they themselves would not have attained if they had not been once the wretched inhabitants of a slave ship? Is it enthusiasm only which leads me to expect, that many more successful preachers of the Gospel to the African tribes will be found among them, than we could ever hope to export from the shores of Europe? I confess I cannot help indulging the expectation, that from the colony of Sierra Leone (a colony which may be called the child of many prayers, though they remained many years unanswered) light will burst in upon the dark regions of Africa; and that ere long its "wilderness shall blossom as a rose, and its desert be like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be heard therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.".

If this anticipation should be realized, then shall we adore that wisdom and goodness, which now permits such hinderances to be thrown in the way of the final extinction of the Slave Trade.

Perhaps I may be permitted, through your pages, to suggest to the Committee of the Church Missionary Society the importance of using means to keep up the native languages among the emancipated negroes. I do not know that the hint is needed; but I have not seen, at least not noticed, any

thing upon the subject. It must be very delightful to see these poor creatures, snatched from the most wretched situation, and from the brink of most degrading Slavery, dwelling together in peace and harmony, and not a few of them rejoicing in "the glorious liberty of the children of God;" but this is not all we hope for from them: we hope that they will " go home to their neighbours and friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for them, and had compassion on them."

Q.

"Some erroneous maxims are gone abroad, which, for several years past, if my observation deceive me not, have very much governed the conduct of the parochial Clergy in the ministration of the word.

"One is, that the laity, the more illiterate especially, have little concern with the mysteries of revealed religion, provided they be attentive to its duties. Whence it hath seemed a safe and certain conclusion, that it is more the office of a Christian teacher to press the practice of religion upon the consciences of his hearers, than to inculcate and assert its doctrines.

"Another is, the dread of the pernicious tendency of some extra

BISHOP OF ST. DAVID'S
HIS CLERGY.

vagant opinions, which persons, more to be esteemed for the warmth of their piety than the soundness of their judgment, have grafted, in modern times, upon the doctrine of justification by faith, as it is stated in the 11th, 12th, and 13th Articles of our Church (which, however, is no private tenet of the Church of England, but the doctrine of all the first Reformers, not to say that it is the very corner-stone of the whole system of redemption); a dread (I say) of the pernicious tendency of those extravagant opinions, which seem to emancipate the believer from the authority of all moral law, hath given general credit to another maxim; which I never hear without extreme concern from the lips of a divine, either from the pulpit or in familiar conversation; viz. that practical religion and morality are one and the same thing; that moral duties constitute the whole, or by far the better part, of Christianity.

"Both these maxims are erroneous. Both, as far as they are received, have a pernicious influence on the ministry of the word. The first, most absurdly, separates practice from the motives of practice. The second, adopting that

separation, reduces practical Christianity to heathen virtue; and the two, taken together, have much contributed to divest our sermons of the genuine spirit and savour of Christianity, and to reduce them to mere moral essays; in which moral duties are enforced, not, as indeed they might be to good purpose, by scriptural motives, but by such arguments as no where appear to so much advantage as in the writings of the heathen moralists, and are quite out of their place in the pulpit.

"Thus, under the influence of these two pernicious maxims, it too often happens that we lose sight of that which is our proper office to publish the word of reconciliation to propound the terms of peace and pardon to the penitent; and we make no other use of the high commission that we bear, than to come abroad one day in the seven, dressed in solemn looks, and in the external garb of holiness, to be the apes of Epictetus. I flatter myself that we are at present in a state of recovery from this delusion: yet, still the dry strain of moral preaching is too much in use; and the erroneous maxims, on which the practice stands, are not sufficiently exploded.

"That faith and practice are separable things, is a gross mistake, or rather a manifest contradiction. Practical holiness is the end; faith is the means and to suppose faith and practice separable, is to suppose the end attainable without the use of means. The direct contrary is the truth. The practice of religion will always thrive in proportion as its doctrines are generally understood and firmly received; and the practice will degenerate and decay in proportion as the doctrine is misunderstood and neglected. It is true, that it is the great duty of a preacher of the Gospel to press the practice of its precepts upon the consciences of men; but it is equally true that it is his duty to

enforce this practice, by inculcating its doctrines. The motives, which the revealed doctrines furnish, are the only motives he has to do with, and the only motives by which religious duty can be effectually enforced.

"It has been very much the fashion to suppose a great want of capacity in the common people, to be carried any great length in religious knowledge, more than in the abstruse sciences. The peculiar doctrines of revelation; the Trinity of persons in the undivided Godhead; the incarnation of the Second Person; the expiation of sin by the Redeemer's sufferings and death; the efficiency of his intercession, the mysterious commerce of the believer's soul with the divine Spirit :-these things are supposed to be far above their reach.

"If this were really the case, the condition of mankind would indeed be miserable, and the proffer of mercy, in the Gospel, little better than a mockery of their woe. For the consequence would be, that the common people could never be carried beyond the first principles of what is called natural religion. Blessed be God, the case is far otherwise. As we have, on one side, experimental proofs of the insignificance of what is called natural religion; so, on the other, in the success of the first preachers of Christianity, we have an experimental proof of the sufficiency of revealed religion to those very ends, in which natural religion failed. In their success we have experimental proof, that there is nothing in the great mystery of godliness, which the vulgar, more than the learned, want capacity to understand; since, upon the first preaching of the Gospel, the illiterate, the scorn of pharisaical pride, who knew not the law, and were therefore deemed accursed, were the first to understand and to embrace the Christian doctrine.

may be improved by exercise; but in its beginning it is unquestionably a distinct gift of God. By faith, the people's minds are opened to apprehend all that is revealed of the scheme of redemption, no less than the very first principles, the doctrine of a resurrection, or the first creation of the world out of nothing. Let me entreat you therefore, my reverend brethren, to discard these injurious uncharitable surmises of a want of capacity in your hearers.

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Pray earnestly to God to assist the ministration of the word, by the secret influence of his Holy Spirit on the minds of your hearers; and nothing doubting that your prayers are heard, however mean and illiterate the congregation may be, in which you exercise your sacred function; fear not to set before them the whole counsel of God. Open the whole of your message without reservation; that every one of you may have confidence to say, when he shall be called upon to give an account of his stewardship, "Lord, I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart, I have not concealed thy loving kindness and truth from the great congregation." "The second maxim, that mere morality makes the sum and substance of practical religion, carries in it a double falsehood. It contracts the range of Christian duty, and it totally misrepresents the formal nature of the thing. In direct contradiction to this wicked maxim, I affirm, that although religion includes morality, as the greater perfection includes the less, so that an immoral man cannot be religious, yet a man may be irreproachable in his moral character, and at the same time perfectly irreligious and profane; irreligious and profane in that extreme, as to be in danger of being cast at last into outer darkness, with his whole load of moral merit on his back.

"Does morality say, Thou shalt not covet.' Does the control

of moral obligation reach the secret meditations of the mind, and the silent desires of the heart? Does it impose restraint upon the sensuality of the imagination, and the private prurience of appetite? Like the divine law, does it extend to every secret energy of the mind, the will, and the appetite, and require the obedience of the inner, no less than of the outward man? Does morality say, Thou shalt love thy enemies; thou shalt bless them that curse; do good to them that persecute?' Doth morality enjoin forgiveness of injuries, or the giving of alms to the poor? Truly, morality careth for none of these things.' How small a part then of Christian duty is the utmost which morality exacts; and how fatally are they misled, who are taught that mere morality satisfies the law by which the Christian shall be judged, even in the inferior branch of the love of our neighbour!

"With the higher branch of duty, with the love of God, and of consequence with the duties of the first table, morality hath evidently no concern or connexion. The worship, which I owe to God, is certainly no part of the duty which I owe to man. It is indifferent to morality, whether I worship one God or many. Morality enjoins no observance of one day in seven; no feast of faith, in sacramental rites, upon the body and blood of the Redeemer. For reason, from which morality derives her whole authority and information; reason knows not, till she hath been taught by the lively oracles of God, that the Creator of the world is the sole object of worship; she knows of no prohibition of particular modes of worship; she knows nothing of the creation of the world in six days; nothing of redemption; nothing of the spiritual life, and the food brought down from heaven for its sustenance. Morality, therefore, having no better instructress than this ignorant Reason, hath no sense