have it copied as accurately as possible.

I set out for Egypt early in October, and on the 19th of November I presented to their Imperial Majesties, in the Winter Palace at Tsarkoe-Selo, my rich collection of old Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, and other manuscripts, in the middle of which the Sinaitic Bible shone like a crown. I then took the opportunity of submitting to the Emperor Alexander II. a proposal of making an edition of this Bible worthy of the work and of the Emperor himself, and which should be regarded as one of the greatest undertakings in critical and Biblical study.

I did not feel free to accept the brilliant offers that were made to me to settle finally, or even for a few years, in the Russian capital. It was at Leipzig, therefore, at the end of three years, and after three journeys to St. Petersburg, that I was able to carry to completion the laborious task of producing a fac-simile copy of this codex in four folio volumes.

In the month of October, 1862, I repaired to St. Petersburg to present this edition to their Majesties. The Emperor, who had liberally provided

for the cost, and who approved the proposal of this superb manuscript appearing on the celebration of the Millenary Jubilee of the Russian monarchy, has distributed impressions of it throughout the Christian world, which, without distinction of creed, have expressed their recognition of its value. Even the Pope, in an autograph letter, has sent to the editor his congratulations and admiration. It is only a few months ago that the two most celebrated Universities of England, Cambridge and Oxford, desired to show me honour by conferring on me the highest academic degree. "I would rather," said an old man-himself of the highest distinction for learning-"I would rather have discovered this Sinaitic manuscript than the Koh-iNoor of the Queen of England."

But that which I think more highly of than all these flattering distinctions is the conviction that Providence has given to our age, in which attacks on Christianity are SO common, the Sinaitic Bible, to be to us a full and clear light as to what is the Word written by God, and to assist us in defending the truth by establishing its authentic form.

FORSOOK

DISSENT.

Samuel Westley, according to the decisive evidence of the parish register, was born at Winterborn Whitchurch, on December 17th, 1662. When his father died (in 1678), he was a pupil at the Dorchester Free School, and "nearly ready for the university." Some friends of his family sent him, thereupon, to London, to be entered at one of the Nonconformist private academies as a candidate for the ministry among the Nonconformists. Reaching town in March, 1678, he found that the divine under whose care he was to have been placed had recently died. For a time he went to a grammar school, probably as an assistant, where he had the prospect, if he thought fit, of proceeding to the university. The Nonconformists; however, seem to have been anxious, as well they might be, to secure for their ministry the scion of such a stock; and offered a provision of thirty pounds a year, if he would go to Stepney Academy, at that time under the care of the Rev. Edward Veal. To Stepney he went accordingly.

In London he would have the entry, as the son and grandson of distinguished confessors, and for the

sake of his mother's kindred no less than his father's, into the best Nonformist circles, including, as among the most distinguished families, that of Dr. Annesley. Here, too, he heard such men as Charnock preach, and once heard Bunyan. His mind must have been greatly quickened, his powers highly stimulated. Academies and colleges, moreover, always have been and are always likely to be, from the zest and competition of their common life, a sort of forcing-houses for youthful minds, not often conducive, unless powerfully qualified and counteracted, to the truest and best development of their powers. Young men in such places often become fond of "chop logic" and of satire, disputatious and presumptuous, "heady, high-minded.” As to young Westley-he was a bright, sharp youngster; he had a turn for verses; and soon, accordingly, he became "a dabbler in rhyme and faction." In this he was encouraged and applauded; sometimes even received cash payment for his " silly lampoons." His effusions were printed; and grave divines suggested subjects, and corrected some of his productions for the press.

Upwards of two years Samuel Westley thus spent with Mr. Veal, when this minister having suffered prosecution and being compelled to break up his "academy," Mr. Westley transferred himself to a similar institution at Stoke Newington, conducted by the Rev. Charles Morton. Here he remained more than a year longer. Meantime, however, he was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with himself, with Nonconformity, and with his position and prospects.

The simple fact is that young Westley had been placed in a position which could only be made congenial and happy by deep religious convictions of duty. Such convictions he did not possess. He was designated to the office of a Christian minister; but at this time and for some years afterwards it is evident that he was destitute of any sense of a true and spiritual vocation to that ministry. He had taken to it professionally, not, as his father and grandfather had done, for the sake of God's glory and with a heart full of steadfast passionate devotion. A merely professional preference for the office of "the priesthood" would be no disqualification for an aspirant to a benefice in the Established Church; but no man could worthily, usefully, or happily, tread in the steps of the Baxters, Howes, and Charnocks, or the Annesleys, Calamys, and Westleys, of the age preceding, whose heart had not been kindled by Divine fire, who had not the burning inner vocation of a New Testament prophet. John Westley, his father, had spoken of himself to the Bishop of Bristol 66 as a son of the prophets." His son Samuel was certainly not as yet in the succession. Matthew Henry, at the time a law

VOL III.-NEW SERIES.

student, was intimate with some of the students at Stoke Newington, and seems to have been indebted to their learned and excellent tutor for occasional lessons in theology. How he profited in the Nonconformist ministry we know well; he had the vocation, Samuel Westley was out of his element. Uneasy where he was, he cast longing eyes towards the University, where his ancestors had been trained. There was life and learning; the young life of the choicest of the nation, the learning of centuries. Once at least before, he had hoped to secure his entrance there, but had been disappointed. With such views, and with defective spiritual convictions and aims, what wonder that Samuel Westley grew disgusted with his "academies," and dreamed and yearned after Oxford. Moreover, it appears that some of his kinsmen, probably on his mother's side, who resided in a remote part of the country, we may presume somewhere about Dorsetshire, were ministers of the Established Church. One of these "reverend and worthy kinsmen visited him at Morton's seminary, and gave him such arguments against that schism in which he was then embarked, as added weight to his reflections when he began to think of leaving it." But beyond all these considerations, the Nonconformity of 1682 was very inferior in strength and grandeur to the Puritanism of fifty years before. The nation was no longer capable of such fruit as it had borne in the last generation. It was passing through a stage of deepening degeneracy. The Commonwealth, with all its glories, had in part prepared the way for this. There was probably less religion, and certainly more

D

hypocrisy, in 1659 than in 1640. A show of austere and punctilious godliness had become fashionable; the result was a wide-spread growth of sanctimonious hypocrisy, and, on the part of a large section of the nation, a rooted disgust at everything like moral restraint or religious solemnity. Then followed the Restoration, with its floods of unbridled licentiousness and its fashion of unbelief. Then St. Bartholomew's Day silenced by thousands the holiest and ablest preachers in the land, and suppressed the growth of godly ministers who should have risen up into the offices of the Church. Twenty years had passed since that period, years of increasing irreligion and corruption of every kind. The king was a pensioner of Louis of France; French manners and French morals had debased the dignity and purity of the country of Cecil and Hampden; the manliness of the nation was in process of decomposition; the Christian faith and heart of the people were dying out: a downward course had been entered upon, so far as respected the national life and character, which neither the Revolution of 1688 nor the victories of Marlborough could effectually arrest, which reached its lowest point in the reign of George II., and from which England was only redeemed by the religious movement of which Methodism was the chief instrument and the representative. Great principles could not maintain their ground in such an age; the more noble or sacred any course might be, the less likely was it to obtain popular support. Hence, in 1682, Nonconformity was fast losing its grandeur. It had no political party to sustain it. It had lost the heart of the nation. Puritanism

had been identified with a great struggle for political liberty, with gallant resistance against a crushing and cruel despotism. cruel despotism. Hence, in great part, its hold upon the nation at large; hence its grandeur and sacredness in their eyes. But that great movement had worn itself out, Puritanism under the Commonwealth had done violence to national prejudices, offended popular taste, proscribed the pastimes and pleasures alike of high and of low. This, in the case of a nation not as yet very far removed from Popish times, and from the licence of Popish and mediæval manners, whose squires and yeomen were still in a high degree coarse, ignorant, and jovial, was more than could be endured. "New wine" had been "put into old bottles," and the result was that the bottles burst and the wine was spilled. Moreover, the multiplicity of dissenting sects, and the ignorance, fanaticism, and presumption of not a few self-constituted sectarian teachers, had disgusted the rude but useful common sense of the average Englishman of the period. From the combined effects of these causes, and causes such as these, Puritanism lost its hold upon the people of England.

Not only did the Dissenters, as in 1682 they were beginning to be called, decline in general influence; but the life and purpose which animated their organizations became a much smaller and less noble force than it had been.

The academies became to a large extent political. Pasquils were written against the bishops and clergy; political satires were in vogue; those who were not devoted to spiritual selfculture and to preparation for a godly and soul-saving ministry, relieved in this way their tedium and employed

their spare hours. Young Westley did all this. He also wrote foolish verses, verses sometimes indelicate as well as foolish. It would appear, moreover, from his own circumstantial accounts, published in after life, that coarse and lewd conversation was by no means uncommon among the students. After making every deduction on account of the circumstances under which he, as a Churchman, was led to write, and afterwards to vindicate, his account of his education among the Dissenters, we fear so much in general must be accepted as undoubted. The radical evil, however, was that neither Samuel Westley nor his offending companions were truly converted, or had a sense of their Divine vocation to the work of the ministry.

The turning-point came at last. "Being a young man of spirit," writes his son John, "he was pitched upon to answer some severe invectives" recently published against the Dissenters. He had, as we have seen, for some time had his misgivings about Dissent; to him, at any rate, it was not the holy thing it had been to his forefathers. He had seen the seamy side of a worn garment. True, it had been hallowed by the sufferings of his ancestors, and had still the love of many of, the excellent of the earth. But the education of Samuel Westley, a smart, wilful, and fatherless lad, had not been such as to teach him humility. His self-confidence had been nurtured; his powers of disputation had been unduly stimulated. What wonder then, that he soon discovered himself to be "wiser than all his teachers?" 66 During his preparation for the task which had been assigned him," Mr. Kirk tells

"he

us "he saw reason to change his opinions." The result was that, instead of writing the answer, renounced the Dissenters and attached himself to the Established Church." This was in 1683, when, according to Mr. Kirk's reckoning, he was twentyone years of age.

At this time he lodged in London with his mother and an old aunt, both strong dissenters. Not daring to tell them of his change of views, he "rose betimes one August morning (1683), walked all the way to Oxford," and entered himself as a "servitor of Exeter College." Here he maintained himself partly by helping other students, and partly by his pen, as is shown at large by Dr. Clarke in his Wesley Family. He took forty-five shillings to college, but he left it with a much better furnished purse. Here, too, his character seems to have ripened and improved. Among his Dissenting friends he had been peevish and violent; the University took this out of him. Moreover, he gave evidence of the awakening within him of a true pastoral feeling of compassion and responsibility by visiting the prisoners confined in the castle, as his sons did fifty years later.

The important change in the opinions of Samuel Westley, which we have endeavoured to elucidate, had its counterpart in the case of a very young, but very superior and precocious damsel, belonging to one of the most distinguished families among the London Dissenters; and it seems not improbable, as Mr. Kirk suggests, that the two ecclesiastical conversions stand to each other in some degree in the relation of cause and effect. Westley was intimate at Dr. Annesley's. When Dunton,