capable of error, as they claim to be. They would be no more than brethren to all other bishops and Christians, if they continued sound in the faith and holy in practice. If they had been the most holy and the most sound of all bishops, they would have been only examples, and not rulers of others. They have been most corrupt, unholy, and unsound, and yet have set up this bold pretence, this strange and entirely unwarrantable claim to rule all Churches, all consciences in the Christian world, to alter doctrines, to add new ones, to set up new mediators between God and man, to deny the people the cup in the sacraments, to make a sacrifice of the mass, to order the worship of images, and even of their own persons, together with many other things which our Church, in the thirty-nine Articles, declares are "blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits." May God always preserve us as Protestants, that is, protesting and prepared to protest even to death against the claims of the Roman Church! SELECTIONS FROM DIFFERENT AUTHORS. E. WIT, without wisdom, is salt without meat.-Bishop Horne. He who sacrifices religion to wit is like the people mentioned by an ancient author, who worshipped a fly, and sacrificed an ox to it. The same. What enabled Dr. Birch to get through such a variety of undertakings was his being an early riser. By this means he had executed the business of the morning before numbers of people had begun it. And, indeed, it is the peculiar advantage of rising betimes, that it is not in the power of any interruptions, occupations, and engagements whatsoever to deprive a man of the hours which have already been well employed, or to rob him of the consolation of reflecting that he hath not spent the day in vain.-Biographia Britannica. Imitation requires judgment to discern when the circumstances are exactly equal; for, if they are not, it will be absurd and ridiculous: as a goose that sees another goose drink will do the same, though he is not thirsty. The custom of drinking for company, when drink is dis agreeable and prejudicial, seems to be a case of the same kind, and to put a man (feathers only excepted) upon a footing with a goose.-Bishop Horne. To be of a Catholic spirit is to unite in one religionnot to jumble together the errors, inconsistencies, and heresies of all. This must end in indifference. It may bring the people of the Church nearer to the sects; but the present times do not give us any hope that it will bring the sects nearer to the Church.-Bishop Horne. A neglect of duty to our friends and families, or to any person who may justly expect it from us, cannot be excused by allotting those hours to meditation, to prayer, to religious studies, which belong properly to society and to the exercise of social virtues.-Jortin. When we peruse the history of Israel in the Scriptures, we behold the working of Providence in every event. The history of other nations would appear in the same light, if the same persons were to write it, and unfold in like manner the reasons of his proceedings with them.-Bishop Horne. There is no state of life that does not furnish employment for care and industry. The low must serve the great out of necessity; the great are equally bound to serve the low out of justice and charity.-Heylin. The morning after the massacre at Paris, in the reign. of Charles IX., when the streets were covered with the bodies of the slaughtered Protestants, men, women, and children, before they were thrown into the river Seine, the Roman Catholics bethought themselves of a charitable device, which was, to strip them naked, in order to distribute their bloody clothes to the poor.St. Foix's History of the Order of the St. Esprit. A person coming into Melancthon's house found him holding a book with one hand and rocking a child with the other. On his expressing some surprise, Melancthon made such a pious discourse to him about the duty of a father and the state of grace in which children are with God, that this stranger went away much more edified than he came.-Bayle. We have all some special business; and how to dis-. charge it faithfully, without giving too much to outward things and too little to God, is the question. Why not give all to God? Business, as well as recreation, dealings with others, as well as prayers, may be offered up to God if undertaken with a proper spirit.-Hooker. Gardening, as it was the primitive employment of man, so it is what great geniuses, after having passed through the busiest scenes in the political and military world, retire to with pleasure towards the close of their days. Sir Wm. Temple. To the hasty correctors of the text of the Bible we may apply what an ingenious author has observed in speaking of the critics on ancient heathen authors-the learning of the ancients would have been long ago blotted out, had every man thought himself at liberty to corrupt the lines which he did not understand. Bp. Horne. It is an odd circumstance, that in China, when a man dies, the relations and friends wait three days to see whether he will rise again before they put the corpse into the coffin. The scholar and the Christian would do well to reflect upon a piece of discipline in the Chinese army, by which a soldier, who suffers his arms to contract the least rust, is punished on the spot with thirty or forty blows of the baton.-History of China. Noxious creatures, in proportion as they are so, teach us care, diligence, and wit. Weazels, kites, &c., induce us to watchfulness; thistles and moles to good husbandry; lice oblige us to cleanliness in our bodies, spiders in our houses, and the moth in our clothes. Things often become hurtful, not of necessity, but by accident, through our own negligence or mistake. Let us apply this in the moral world to the concerns of our souls and of the Church.-Bp. Horne. To admit all the jarring sects and opinions into the Church by a comprehension would be to jumble together an undigested heap of contrarieties into the same mass, and to make the old chaos the plan of a new reformation. Quoted by Bishop Horne. Sent by a Correspondent. "AS THY DAYS, SO SHALL THY STRENGTH BE." TAKE no thought, no anxious, distressing, harassing thought for the morrow; suffer not your minds to be torn. asunder by doubt or apprehension. Consider, rather, what is the present will of God, and rest satisfied and content, without anticipating evils which may never arrive. Do not heighten your present sorrows by a morbid imagination. You know not what a day may bring forth. The future is likely to be better than you expect, as well as worse. The real victory of Christians arises from attention to present duty. This carries them from strength to strength. Some are alarmed at the thought of death; they say, How shall I meet the agonies of dissolution? But when you are called to die, you will, if among God's children, receive dying consolation. Be satisfied if you have the strength to live to God, and God will support you when you come to die. Some fear persecution, lest, at such a season, they should "make shipwreck of faith and of a good conscience." "As thy days, so shall thy strength be." Consider to what it is we owe our success. If we are nearer our salvation than when we believed, let us not ascribe it to ourselves, to our own arm, but to the grace of God: "Not I, but the grace of God with me," enabling me to sustain, and to conquer. If we continue, it is because "we have obtained help of God;" we are "kept by his mighty power unto salvation." In all our sufferings, if Christians, we are perpetually indebted to Divine grace. Let us habitually look up to God, in the exercise of faith and prayer. Instead of yielding ourselves to dejection, let us plead the promises, and flee to the Divine Word. He has been accustomed to sustain the faithful; and He is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." He is never weary; look to him; "They that wait on him shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." Go to Him in prayer-cling to His strength-lay hold of His arm. You have a powerful Redeemer; "be strong in the power of His might!" Draw down the succours of His grace, which will enable you to go on "from strength to strength," until you appear before God in Zion.-R. Hall. C VOL. XXXI. RICHMOND PROVIDENT AND CLOTHING CLUB. THIRTEEN years have now elapsed since the attempt was first made in Richmond "to help the poor, by teaching them to help themselves," and it has been most eminently successful in securing the confidence of those for whose benefit it was made. Eight hundred and sixty individuals have, during the past year, voluntarily sought admission as members of this institution, and have deposited, on an average, nearly 12. (or at about the rate of 3d. each) weekly, amounting to the sum of 6057. 10s. 7d. Had it been proposed to raise this sum for the relief of the Poor--the idea would have been at once pronounced impracticable, and, even if raised, its distribution would have been attended with many difficulties and perplexities; yet the sum has been raised by the poor themselves and a glance at the appearance of the School Children, attired in the clothing purchased by their own savings a visit to dwellings formerly destitute of bedding-a few moments' conversation with such of the members as have devoted their deposits to the payment of rent, or other just debts-will convince the most sceptical that while the plan ensures an amount of real comfort, which the most active benevolence might fail to bestow, it also prevents a far greater amount of distress, than any charity, however extensive, can relieve. The business of the Institution, though necessarily arduous, is yet simple and straightforward, and is conducted on a system which effectually checks fraud and imposition; the details are entrusted principally to ladies, among whom are numbered several daughters of highly respectable tradesmen of Richmond, whose assistance is found invaluable in receiving with accuracy and regu larity the weekly deposits from so large a number of persons. The Committee have therefore thought it necessary to make this detailed statement, in the hope of obtaining increased support to an institution which is founded on the scriptural precepts, to "gather up the fragments, that |