could induce the Mahometan to accept the offered acknowledgment. "I will have no return," said he; for it is reward enough, to do good to a good

man."

Mr. Whiston accounts for bishop Wilson's commitment to prison, in a different manner from the authors of Biographia Britannica. Probably, both he and they were equally in the right. The offence taken by the governor's lady was, perhaps, the real, and the civil claims of the governor himself might be the pretended, cause of that brutal and unwarrantable persecution. Mr. Whiston's own words deserve to be transcribed." About this year, it might be, that Dr. Wilson the bishop of Man, was heard before the privy council, in a cause wherein he had been put in prison, by the earl of Derby's governor of the Isle of Man; for executing, as tenderly as he could, the ecclesiastical law, for defamation of an innocent woman by the governor's wife. I heard the cause; and, with Dr. Nathaniel Marshal, did the bishop what good offices I could. He carried his cause: but was almost ruined by the suit; the charges were so great. The bishop had long been my acquaintance; and had, many years before, given me the first, or rather the only book then printed in the Manks language; being an Explication of our Church Catechism.-He has always appeared to me, as one of the best bishops of our modern ages and so much the better, as he is clear of the snares and temptations of a lord of parliament. His great worth has been principally acknowledged, in the plentiful provision made for his †son; who told me, very lately, that his father still preaches, every Lord's day, at eighty-three years of age. May the Divine Providence" [adds honest

* Memoirs, vol. i. p. 317, 318.

The present venerable and munificent Thomas Wilson, D. D. prebendary of Westminster, minister of St. Margaret's in that city, and rector of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, London.

VOL. IV.

H

Whiston] "send forth more such labourers, as this bishop, into his vineyard: which, perhaps, never stood in greater need of them, than at this day." What would Mr. Whiston have said, had he lived to our day, 1776?

Having seen the bishop honourably and happily extricated from the principal difficulty that ever befell him, we will attend him back to the Isle of Man; where, on his return from London, he was received with the most affectionate demonstrations of joy. The iniquitous hardships, which he himself had experienced under colour of legal authority, made him, thenceforward, peculiarly attentive to the due execution of equitable law: for, in that island, the bishop has some share in the public administrations of justice *.

To all his other great and useful talents, he added the cultivations of learning; and, in particular, a deep acquaintance with history and antiquities. He was the person, who furnished bishop Gibson with those particulars, concerning the Isle of Man, which that prelate inserted into the second edition of his Camden's Britannia.

The high esteem in which bishop Wilson was held, may appear from the following instance. As queen Caroline, consort of his late majesty, was once in conversation with several of our English bishops,

*The two principal judges, in the Isle of Man are called deemsters whose oath, at their admission is, You shall do justice between man and man, as equally as the herring bone lies between the two sides of that fish.-Herrings were the chief food of the aneient inhabitants; and the tithe of them is still a good part of the bishop's revenue. Biogr. Britann.

To have rendered this little history as complete as possible, Dr. Wilson addressed an elegant Latin epistle, dated May 1, 1710, to the archbishop of Drontheim in Norway (episcopo Nidresensi), to which see, the bishopric of Man had formerly been a suffragan; desiring to have copies of such abstracts, papers, &c. relating to the bishopric of Man, as were in the archives of that metropolitan : but was answered, that the old register proofs of Drontheim had been burnt." Biogr. Britann.

his lordship of Man came in to pay his respects. She no sooner glimpsed him at a distance, than she said, to the prelates who were present, "My lords, here comes a bishop, whose errand is not to apply for a translation; he would not part with his spouse (his diocese), because she is poor *."

No pastor could be more intensely vigilant. Scarcely a Sunday passed, without his preaching himself, either at his own cathedral, or in some of the parochial churches. Exclusive of his general visitations of his whole diocese (which visitations he constantly held four times in every year); he privately visited each parish church, occasionally, that he might judge how both clergy and people went on. With regard to the rights of conscience in others, he exercised the most candid and benevolent moderation. He admitted dissenters to the holy communion; and administered it to them, either sitting, or standing, as they themselves approved. Such amiable and uniform moderation had so favourable an effect, that, a few years after his settlement in the island, not a single dissenting congregation, of any kind, was to be found in it. Never was episcopal authority (which he knew how to maintain, when occasion required) more happily blended with paternal mildness. Nor was the learned lord chancellor King at all beyond the mark, in declaring, that, under this bishop, the true form of the primitive church, in all its purity, might be found in the Isle of Man.

* The queen seems to have taken this phrase, from the usual saying of Fisher, bishop of Rochester, whom Henry VIII. beheaded: who, in the days of his prosperity, was more than once offered a translation to a richer see; but his answer constantly was, I will not forsake my little old wife, to whom I have been married so long, for a wealthier. And, to his friend, bishop Fox, he wrote thus: If other bishops have larger revenues, I have fewer souls to take care of: so that, when I give up my account for both to God, which I must soon do, I shall not wish my condition to have been better than it is.-Biogr. Brit. vol. iii. p. 1929.

At length this excellent prelate, having served his generation, by the will of God, all the days of his appointed time, was translated to heaven, the beginning of March, 1755, in the ninety-third year of his age, and the fifty-eighth of his episcopate. He died of a cold, which he caught by taking an evening walk in his garden, after having read prayers in his domestic chapel.

101

SOME OUTLINES OF THE

LIFE OF DR. ISAAC WATTS*.

THIS great and good man was born at Southampton, July 17, A. D. 1674, of eminently religious parents; who being conscientious non-conformists, had suffered much, by those persecuting measures, which dishonoured the reign and will for ever disgrace the memory of Charles II.

It is unspeakably beneficial to a man, that he bear the yoke in his youth. Whoever is entrusted with the education of a young person, and wishes him to excel in solid literature, should take particular care, to initiate him betimes. By which just precaution, useful knowledge becomes insensibly familiar, and almost natural to the mind; before the poisonous habits of ease, idleness, and trifling (so hostile to every

* Dr. Gibbons, in his Memoirs of Dr. Watts, attacks the validity of two anecdotes, and the date of a piece of poetry, which was printed in Mr. Toplady's Outlines of Dr. Watts, with a disposition bordering on asperity; the littleness of criticism upon such trifles are certainly derogatory to the dignity of a biographer. They may be false, or imperfect, from mistake or misinformation. To whatever cause they may be ascribed, it cannot be deliberate misrepresentation; they do not, in the least, affect to take one flower from the wreath which encircles the doctor's brow, whose name is enrolled in the tablet of literary merit, by the united suffrages of the public. The hints derived from them, were made use of as a palliative for that eminent character's defalcation, respecting the Trinity, which the doctor published to the world. These few incidental remarks, which are exhibited to the reader, and delineated with a bold and masterly hand, has received no alteration except the expunging of the objectional parts. EDITOR.