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dom if any mortal men have such a power of legislation and judgment in it. This inquiry will bring us back to the first, which is the only true account of the church of Christ, or the kingdom of Christ, in the mouth of a Christian; that it is the number of men, whether small or great, whether dispersed or united, who truly and sincerely are subjects to Jesus Christ alone as their lawgiver and judge in matters relating to the favour of God and their eternal salvation.

contrary to the interests of true religion, as it is plainly opposite to the maxims upon which Christ founded his kingdom; who chose the motives which are not of this world, to support a kingdom which is not of this world. And indeed it is too visible to be hid, that wherever the rewards and punishments are changed from future to present, from the world to come to the world now in possession, there the kingdom founded by our Saviour is, in the nature of it, so far changed, that it is become, in such a degree, what he professed his kingdom was not-that is, of this world; of the same sort with other common earthly kingdoms, in which the rewards are worldly honours, posts, offices, pomp, attendance, dominion; and the punishments are prisons, fines, banishments, galleys and racks, or something less of the same sort.

[Ironical View of Protestant Infallibility.] [From the 'Dedication to Pope Clement XI., prefixed to Sir

The next principal point is, that, if the church be the kingdom of Christ, and this kingdom be not of this world,' this must appear from the nature and end of the laws of Christ, and of those rewards and punishments which are the sanctions of his laws. Now, his laws are declarations relating to the favour of God in another state after this. They are declarations of those conditions to be performed in this world on our part, without which God will not make us happy in that to come. And they are almost all general appeals to the will of that God; to his nature, known by the common reason of mankind, and to the imita-R. Steele's Account of the State of the Roman Catholic Retion of that nature, which must be our perfection. ligion throughout the World.'] The keeping his commandments is declared the way to life, and the doing his will the entrance into the kingdom of heaven. The being subjects to Christ, is to this very end, that we may the better and more effectually perform the will of God. The laws of this kingdom, therefore, as Christ left them, have nothing of this world in their view; no tendency either to the exaltation of some in worldly pomp and dignity, or to their absolute dominion over the faith and religious conduct of others of his subjects, or to the erecting of any sort of temporal kingdom under the covert and name of a spiritual one.

always in the right, without the pretence to infallibility, as it can be in you to be always in the wrong, with it.

Your holiness is not perhaps aware how near the churches of us Protestants have at length come to those privileges and perfections which you boast of as peculiar to your own so near, that many of the most quick-sighted and sagacious persons have not been able to discover any other difference between us, as to the main principle of all doctrine, government, worship, and discipline, but this one, namely, that you cannot err in anything you determine, and we never do: that is, in other words, that you are infallible, and we always in the right. We cannot but esteem the advantage to be exceedingly on our side The sanctions of Christ's law are rewards and punish-in this case; because we have all the benefits of inments. But of what sort? Not the rewards of this fallibility without the absurdity of pretending to it, world; not the offices or glories of this state; not the and without the uneasy task of maintaining a point pains of prisons, banishments, fines, or any lesser and so shocking to the understanding of mankind. And more moderate penalties; nay, not the much lesser you must pardon us if we cannot help thinking it to negative discouragements that belong to human so-be as great and as glorious a privilege in us to be ciety. He was far from thinking that these could be the instruments of such a persuasion as he thought acceptable to God. But, as the great end of his king dom was to guide men to happiness after the short Thus, the synod of Dort (for whose unerring deciimages of it were over here below, so he took hissions public thanks to Almighty God are every three motives from that place where his kingdom first be- years offered up with the greatest solemnity by the gan, and where it was at last to end; from those re- magistrates in that country), the councils of the rewards and punishments in a future state, which had formed in France, the assembly of the kirk of Scotno relation to this world; and to show that his king- land, and (if I may presume to name it) the convocadom was not of this world,' all the sanctions which he tion of England, have been all found to have the very thought fit to give to his laws were not of this world same unquestionable authority which your church at all. claims, solely upon the infallibility which resides in it; and the people to be under the very same strict obligation of obedience to their determinations, which with you is the consequence only of an absolute infallibility. The reason, therefore, why we do not openly set up an infallibility is, because we can do without it. Authority results as well from power as from right, and a majority of votes is as strong a foundation for it as infallibility itself. Councils that may err, never do: and besides, being composed of men whose peculiar business it is to be in the right, it is very immodest for any private person to think them not so; because this is to set up a private corrupted understanding above a public uncorrupted judgment.

St Paul understood this so well, that he gives an account of his own conduct, and that of others in the same station, in these words: Knowing the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men:' whereas, in too many Christian countries since his days, if some who profess to succeed him were to give an account of their own conduct, it must be in a quite contrary strain: Knowing the terrors of this world, and having them in our power, we do not persuade men, but force their outward profession against their inward persuasion.'

Now, wherever this is practised, whether in a great degree or a small, in that place there is so far a change from a kingdom which is not of this world, to a kingdom which is of this world. As soon as ever you hear of any of the engines of this world, whether of the greater or the lesser sort, you must immediately think that then, and so far, the kingdom of this world takes place. For, if the very essence of God's worship be spirit and truth, if religion be virtue and charity, under the belief of a Supreme Governor and Judge, if true real faith cannot be the effect of force, and if there can be no reward where there is no willing choice then, in all or any of these cases, to apply force or flattery, worldly pleasure or pain, is to act

Thus it is in the north, as well as the south; abroad, as well as at home. All maintain the exercise of the same authority in themselves, which yet they know not how so much as to speak of without ridicule in others.

In England it stands thus: The synod of Dort is of no weight; it determined many doctrines wrong. The assembly of Scotland hath nothing of a true authority; and is very much out in its scheme of doctrines, worship, and government. But the church

of England is vested with all authority, and justly challengeth all obedience.

If one crosses a river in the north, there it stands thus: The church of England is not enough reformed; its doctrines, worship, and government, have too much of antichristian Rome in them. But the kirk of Scotland hath a divine right from its only head, Jesus Christ, to meet and to enact what to it shall seem fit, for the good of his church.

Thus, we left you for your enormous unjustifiable claim to an unerring spirit, and have found out a way, unknown to your holiness and your predecessors, of claiming all the rights that belong to infallibility, even whilst we disclaim and abjure the thing itself.

As for us of the church of England, if we will believe many of its greatest advocates, we have bishops in a succession as certainly uninterrupted from the apostles, as your church could communicate it to us. And upon this bottom, which makes us a true church, we have a right to separate from you; but no persons living have a right to differ or separate from us. And they, again, who differ from us, value themselves upon something or other in which we are supposed defective, or upon being free from some superfluities which we enjoy; and think it hard, that any will be still going further, and refine upon their scheme of worship and discipline.

Thus we have indeed left you; but we have fixed ourselves in your seat, and make no scruple to resemble you in our defences of ourselves and censures of others whenever we think it proper.

We have all sufficiently felt the load of the two topics of heresy and schism. We have been persecuted, hanged, burned, massacred (as your holiness well knows) for heretics and schismatics. But all this hath not made us sick of those two words. We can still throw them about us, and play them off upon others, as plentifully and as fiercely as they are dispensed to us from your quarter. It often puts me in mind (your holiness must allow me to be a little ludicrous, if you admit me to your conversation), it often, I say, puts me in mind of a play which I have seen amongst some merry people: a man strikes his next neighbour with all his force, and he, instead of returning it to the man who gave it, communicates it, with equal zeal and strength, to another; and this to another; and so it circulates, till it returns perhaps to him who set the sport agoing. Thus your holiness begins the attack. You call us heretics and schismatics, and burn and destroy us as such; though, God knows, there is no more right anywhere to use heretics or schismatics barbarously, than those who think and speak as their superiors bid them. But so it is. You thunder out the sentence against us. We think it ill manners to give it you back again; but we throw it out upon the next brethren that come in our way; and they upon others: and so it goes round, till some perhaps have sense and courage enough to throw it back upon those who first began the disturbance by pretending to authority where there can be none.

We have not indeed now the power of burning heretics, as our forefathers of the Reformation had. The civil power hath taken away the act which continued that glorious privilege to them, upon the remonstrance of several persons that they could not sleep whilst that act was awake. But then, everything on this side death still remains untouched to us: we can molest, harass, imprison, and ruin any man who pretends to be wiser than his betters. And the more unspotted the man's character is, the more necessary we think it to take such crushing methods. Since the toleration hath been authorised in these nations, the legal zeal of men hath fallen the heavier upon heretics (for it must always, it seems, be exercised upon some sort of persons or other); and amongst these, chiefly upon such as differ from us in points in

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law in London, but afterwards turned his attention to divinity, and in 1680 took orders. As chancellor of the cathedral of Connor, he distinguished himself by several disputations with Catholic divines, and by the boldness with which he opposed the pro-popish designs of King James. Nevertheless, at the revolution, he adopted a decisive tone of Jacobitism, from which he never swerved through life. Removing to London, he was chiefly engaged for several years in writing controversial works against quakers, Socinians, and deists, of which, however, none are now remembered, besides the little treatise of which the title has been given, and which appeared in 1699. He also wrote many occasional and periodical tracts in behalf of the house of Stuart, to whose cause his talents and celebrity certainly lend no small lustre. Being for one of these publications obliged to leave the country, he repaired in 1713 to the court of the Chevalier at Bar le Duc, and was well received. James allowed him to have a chapel fitted up for the English service, and was even expected to lend a favourable ear to his arguments against popery; but this expectation proved vain. It was not possible for an earnest and bitter controversialist like Leslie to remain long at rest in such a situation, and we are not therefore surprised to find him return in disgust to England in 1721. He soon after died at his house of Glaslough, in the county of Monaghan. The works of this remarkable man have been collected in seven volumes (Oxford, 1832), and it must be allowed that they place their author very high in the list of controversial writers, the ingenuity of the arguments being only equalled by the

keenness and pertinacity with which they are on all occasions followed out; but a modern reader sighs to think of vivid talents spent, with life-long perseverance, on discussions which have tended so little to benefit mankind.

WILLIAM WHISTON.

WILLIAM WHISTON (1667-1752) was an able but eccentric scholar, and so distinguished as a mathematician, that he was made deputy professor of mathematics in the university of Cambridge, and afterwards successor to Sir Isaac Newton, of whose principles he was one of the most successful expounders. Entering into holy orders, he became chaplain to the bishop of Norwich, rector of Lowestoffe, &c. He was also appointed Boyle lecturer in the university, but was at length expelled for promulgating Arian opinions. He then went to London, where a subscription was made for him, and he delivered a series of lectures on astronomy, which were patronised by Addison and Steele. Towards the close of his life, Whiston became a Baptist, and believed that the millennium was approaching, when the Jews would all be restored. Had he confined himself to mathematical studies, he would have earned a high name in science; but his time and attention were dissipated by his theological pursuits, in which he evinced more zeal than judgment. His works are numerous. Besides a Theory of the Earth, in defence of the Mosaic account of the creation, published in 1696, and some tracts on the Newtonian system, he wrote an Essay on the Revelation of St John (1706), Sermons on the Scripture Prophecies (1708), Primitive Christianity Revived, five volumes, (1712), Memoirs of his own Life, (1749-50), &c. An extract from the last mentioned book is subjoined ::

[Anecdote of the Discovery of the Newtonian Philosophy.]

After I had taken holy orders, I returned to the college, and went on with my own studies there, particularly the mathematics and the Cartesian philosophy, which was alone in vogue with us at that time. But it was not long before I, with immense pains, but no assistance, set myself with the utmost zeal to the study of Sir Isaac Newton's wonderful discoveries in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, one or two of which lectures I had heard him read in

fall downward, and which we call gravity? taking this postulatum, which had been thought of before, that such power might decrease in a duplicate proportion of the distances from the earth's centre. Upon Sir Isaac's first trial, when he took a degree of a great circle on the earth's surface, whence a degree at the distance of the moon was to be determined also, to be sixty measured miles only, according to the gross measures then in use, he was in some degree disappointed; and the power that restrained the moon in her orbit, measured by the versed sines of that orbit, appeared not to be quite the same that was to be expected had it been the power of gravity alone by which the moon was there influenced. Upon this disappointment, which made Sir Isaac suspect that this power was partly that of gravity and partly that of Cartesius's vortices, he threw aside the paper of his calculation, and went to other studies. However, some time afterward, when Monsieur Picart had much more exactly measured the earth, and found that a degree of a great circle was sixty-nine and ahalf such miles, Sir Isaac, in turning over some of his former papers, lighted upon this old imperfect calculation, and, correcting his former error, discovered that this power, at the true correct distance of the moon from the earth, not only tended to the earth's centre, as did the common power of gravity with us, but was exactly of the right quantity; and that if a stone was carried up to the moon, or to sixty semi-diameters of the earth, and let fall downward by its gravity, and the moon's own menstrual motion was stopped, and she was let fall by that power which before retained her in her orbit, they would exactly fall towards the same point, and with the same velocity; which was therefore no other power than that of gravity. And since that power appeared to extend as far as the moon, at the distance of 240,000 miles, it was but natural, or rather necessary, to suppose it might reach twice, thrice, four times, &c., the same distance, with the same diminution, according to the squares of such distances perpetually: which noble discovery proved the happy occasion of the invention of the wonderful Newtonian philosophy.

DR PHILIP DODDRIDGE.

DR PHILIP DODDRIDGE, a distinguished nonconformist divine and author, was born in London, June 26, 1702. His grandfather had been ejected from the living of Shepperton, in Middlesex, by the act the public schools, though I understood them not at of uniformity in 1662; and his father, a man engaged all at that time being indeed greatly excited thereto in mercantile pursuits in London, married the only by a paper of Dr Gregory's, when he was professor in daughter of a German, who had fled from Prague to Scotland, wherein he had given the most prodigious escape the persecution which raged in Bohemia, commendations to that work, as not only right in all after the expulsion of Frederick, the Elector Palathings, but in a manner the effect of a plainly divine tine, when to abjure or emigrate were the only altergenius, and had already caused several of his scholars natives. The pious parents of Doddridge early into keep acts, as we call them, upon several branches structed him in religious knowledge. I have heard of the Newtonian philosophy; while we at Cambridge, him relate,' says his biographer, Mr Job Orton, poor wretches, were ignominiously studying the fic-that his mother taught him the history of the Old titious hypotheses of the Cartesian, which Sir Isaac Newton had also himself done formerly, as I have heard him say. What the occasion of Sir Isaac Newton's leaving the Cartesian philosophy, and of discovering his amazing theory of gravity was, I have heard him long ago, soon after my first acquaintance with him, which was 1694, thus relate, and of which Dr Pemberton gives the like account, and somewhat more fully, in the preface to his explication of his philosophy. It was this: an inclination came into Sir Isaac's mind to try whether the same power did not keep the moon in her orbit, notwithstanding her projectile velocity, which he knew always tended to go along a straight line the tangent of that orbit, which makes stones and all heavy bodies with us

and New Testaments, before he could read, by the assistance of some Dutch tiles in the chimney in the room where they commonly sat; and her wise and pious reflections upon the stories there represented were the means of making some good impressions upon his heart, which never wore out; and therefore this method of instruction he frequently recommended to parents.' In 1712, Doddridge was sent to school at Kingston-upon-Thames; but both his parents dying within three years afterwards, he was removed to St Albans, and whilst there, was solemnly admitted, in his sixteenth year, a member of the nonconforming congregation. His religious impressions were ardent and sincere; and when, in 1718, the Duchess of Bedford made him an offer to

and have none but the birds of the air, and the beasts of the field, for my companions.'

To another lady, whom he styles aunt,' he addressed the following complimentary effusion, more like the epistle of a cavalier poet than of a nonconformist preacher :

educate him for the ministry in the church of England, Doddridge declined, from conscientious scruples, to avail himself of this advantage. A generous friend, Dr Clarke of St Albans, now stepped forward to patronise the studious youth, and in 1719 he was placed at an academy established at Kibworth, Leicestershire, for the education of dissenters. 'You see, madam, I treat you with rustic simpliHere he resided three years, pursuing his studies for city, and perhaps talk more like an uncle than a the ministry, and cultivating a taste for elegant litera- nephew. But I think it is a necessary truth, that ture. To one of his fellow-pupils who had condoled ought not to be concealed because it may possibly with him on being buried alive, Doddridge writes disoblige. In short, madam, I will tell you roundly, in the following happy strain: Here I stick close that if a lady of your character cannot bear to hear to those delightful studies which a favourable pro- a word in her own commendation, she must rather vidence has made the business of my life. One day resolve to go out of the world, or not attend to anypasseth away after another, and I only know that it thing that is said in it. And if you are determined passeth pleasantly with me. As for the world about to indulge this unaccountable humour, depend upon me, I have very little concern with it. I live almost it, that with a thousand excellent qualities and like a tortoise shut up in its shell, almost always in agreeable accomplishments, you will be one of the the same town, the same house, the same chamber; most unhappy creatures in the world. I assure you, yet I live like a prince-not, indeed, in the pomp of madam, you will meet with affliction every day of greatness, but the pride of liberty; master of my your life. You frown when a home-bred unthinkbooks, master of my time, and, I hope I may add, ing boy tells you that he is extremely entertained master of myself. I can willingly give up the with your letters. Surely you are in a downright charms of London, the luxury, the company, the rage whenever you converse with gentlemen of repopularity of it, for the secret pleasures of rational fined taste and solid judgment; for I am sure, let employment and self-approbation; retired from ap- them be ever so much upon their guard, they cannot plause and reproach, from envy and contempt, and forbear tormenting you about an agreeable person, a the destructive baits of avarice and ambition. So fine air, a sparkling wit, steady prudence, and unafthat, instead of lamenting it as my misfortune, fected piety, and a thousand other things that I am you should congratulate me upon it as my happi- afraid to name, although even I can dimly perceive ness, that I am confined in an obscure village, see- them; or, if they have so much humility as not to ing it gives me so many valuable advantages to the talk of them to your face, you will be sure to hear most important purposes of devotion and philo- of them at second hand. Poor aunt! I profess I sophy, and, I hope I may add, usefulness too.' The pity you; and if I did but know any one circumobscure village had also further attractions. It stance of your character that was a little defective, appears from the correspondence of Doddridge (pub I would be sure to expatiate upon it out of pure lished by his great-grandson in 1829), that the young good nature.' divine was of a susceptible temperament, and was generally in love with some fair one of the neighbourhood, with whom he kept up a constant and lively interchange of letters. The levity or gaiety of some of these epistles is remarkable in one of so staid and devout a public character. His style is always excellent-correct and playful like that of Cowper, and interesting from the very egotism and carelessness of the writer. To one of his female correspondents he thus describes his situation:

'You know I love a country life, and here we have it in perfection. I am roused in the morning with the chirping of sparrows, the cooing of pigeons, the lowing of kine, the bleating of sheep, and, to complete the concert, the grunting of swine and neighing of horses. We have a mighty pleasant garden and orchard, and a fine arbour under some tall shady limes, that form a kind of lofty dome, of which, as a native of the great city, you may perhaps catch a glimmering idea, if I name the cupola of St Paul's. And then, on the other side of the house, there is a large space which we call a wilderness, and which, I fancy, would please you ex tremely. The ground is a dainty green sward; a brook runs sparkling through the middle, and there are two large fish-ponds at one end; both the ponds and the brook are surrounded with willows; and there are several shady walks under the trees, besides little knots of young willows interspersed at convenient distances. This is the nursery of our lambs and calves, with whom I have the honour to be intimately acquainted. Here I generally spend the evening, and pay my respects to the setting sun, when the variety and the beauty of the prospect inspire a pleasure that I know not how to express. I am sometimes so transported with these inanimate beauties, that I fancy I am like Adam in Paradise; and it is my only misfortune that I want an Eve,

From his first sermon, delivered at the age of twenty, Doddridge became a marked preacher among the dissenters, and had calls to various congregations. In 1729 he settled at Northampton, and became celebrated for his abilities, diligence, and zeal. Here he undertook to receive pupils, and was so successful, that in a few years he engaged an assistant, to whom he assigned the care of the junior pupils, and the direction of the academy during his absence. He first appeared as an author in 1730, when he published a pamphlet on the Means of Reviving the Dissenting Interest. He afterwards applied himself to the composition of practical religious works. His Sermons on the Education of Children (1732), Sermons to Young People (1735), and Ten Sermons on the Power and Grace of Christ, and the Evidences of his Glorious Gospel (1736), were all well received by the public. In 1741 appeared his Practical Discourses on Regeneration, and in 1745 The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul. The latter forms a body of practical divinity and Christian experience which has never been surpassed by any work of the same nature. In 1747 appeared his still popular work, Some Remarkable Passages in the Life of Colonel James Gardiner, who was slain by the Rebels at the Battle of Prestonpans, Sept. 21, 1745. Gardiner was a brave Scottish officer, who had served with distinction under Marlborough, and was aid-decamp to the Earl of Stair on his embassy to Paris. From a gay libertine life he was suddenly converted to one of the strictest piety, by what he conceived to be a supernatural interference, namely, a visible representation of Christ upon the cross, suspended in the air, amidst an unusual blaze of light, and accompanied by a declaration of the words, 'Oh, sinner! did I suffer this for thee, and are these the returns?' From the period of this vision till his death, twentysix years afterwards, Colonel Gardiner maintained

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the life and character of a sincere and zealous Chris- which was attended with convulsions. No one, my dear, tian, united with that of an intrepid and active can judge so well as yourself what I must feel on such officer. Besides several single sermons and charges an occasion; yet I found, as I had just before done delivered at the ordination of some of his brethren, in my secret retirements, a most lively sense of the Dr Doddridge published an elaborate work, the re- love and care of God, and a calm sweet resignation to sult of many years' study, entitled The Family Expo- his will, though the surprise of the news was almost sitor, Containing a Version and Paraphrase of the New as great as if my child had been seized in full health; Testament, with Critical Notes, and a Practical Im- for everybody before told me she was quite in a safe provement of each Section. This compendium of and comfortable way. I had now no refuge but prayer, Scriptural knowledge was received with the greatest in which the countenances of my pupils, when I told approbation both at home and abroad, and was them the story, showed how much they were disposed translated into several languages. Doddridge con- to join with me. I had before me Mr Clark's book of tinued his useful and laborious life at Northampton the Promises; and though I had quite forgotten it, for many years; but his health failing, he was, yet so it happened that I had left off, the Sabbath in 1751, advised to remove to a warmer climate for before, in the middle of a section, and at the beginthe winter. The generosity of his friends supplied ning of the sixty-fifth page, so that the fresh words ample funds for his stay abroad, and in September which came in course to be read were Matt. xxi. 22, of the same year he sailed from Falmouth for Lisbon. And all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, · ye abide He arrived there on the 21st of October, but sur- believing, you shall receive; the next, If vived only five days, dying October 26, 1751. The in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what solid learning, unquestioned piety, and truly Catholic ye will, and it shall be done to you;' then followed, Whatsoever ye shall ask my Father in my name, he liberality and benevolence of Dr Doddridge, secured for him the warm respect and admiration of his conwill give it you; Ask and receive, that your joy temporaries of all sects. He heartily wished and may be full Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name prayed for a greater union among Protestants, and that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the longed for the happy time when, to use his own words, Son; If ye ask anything in my name I will do it; the question would be, not how much we may and the Lord shall raise him up.' These scriptures and at last, The prayer of faith shall save the sick, lawfully impose, and how much we may lawfully dispute, but on the one side what we may waive, and falling thus undesignedly and unexpectedly in my on the other what we may acquiesce in, from a prin- way, at that moment, and thus directly following each ciple of mutual tenderness and respect, without dis-other, in the order in which I have transcribed them, pleasing our common Lord, and injuring that great felt great encouragement earnestly to plead them in struck me and the whole family very sensibly; and I cause of original Christianity which he hath ap- prayer, with a very firm persuasion that, one way or pointed us to guard. As an author, the reputation another, God would make this a very teaching cir of Doddridge depends chiefly on his Family Expositor, to which the only objection that has been cumstance to me and the family. Then Mr Bunyan urged, is the occasional redundance of some of his but I told him it was matter of conscience to me to came, and pleaded strongly against blistering her; paraphrases. His interpretation of particular texts follow the prescriptions of the doctor, though I left and passages may also be variously judged of; but the issue entirely to God, and felt a dependence in the solid learning and research of the author, his him alone. I then wrote you the hasty lines which I critical acuteness, and the persuasive earnestness of hope you received by the last post, and renewed my his practical reflections, render the work altogether applications to God in secret, reviewing the promises an honour to English theological literature. Dr which had so much astonished and revived me in the Doddridge was author of what Johnson calls one family, when those words, the prayer of faith shall of the finest epigrams in the English language.' save the sick,' came on my heart, as if it had been The subject is his family motto, Dum vivimus from the very mouth of God himself; so that I could vivamus, which, in its primary signification, is not not forbear replying, before I was well aware, then very suitable to a Christian divine, but he para- it shall; and I was then enabled to pray with that phrased it thus:— penetrating sense of God's almighty power, and with that confidence in his love, which I think I never had before in an equal degree; and I thought I then felt myself much more desirous that the child might be spared, if it were but a little while, and from this illness, as in answer to prayer, than on account of her recovery simply, and in itself, or of my own enjoyment of her. I lay open all my heart before you, my

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Live while you live, the epicure would say,
And seize the pleasures of the present day.
Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries,
And give to God each moment as it flies.
Lord, in my views let both united be;
I live in pleasure when I live to thee.

Our specimens of Doddridge are exclusively from dear, because it seems to me something of a singular his letters.

[The Dangerous Illness of a Daughter.] [Written from Northampton, August 1740, to Mrs Doddridge.] When I came down to prayer on Lord's day morning, at eight o'clock, immediately after the short prayer with which you know we begin family worship, Mrs Wilson (who has indeed showed a most prudent and tender care of the children, and managed her trust very well during your absence) came to me in tears, and told me that Mr Knott wanted to speak with me: I immediately guessed his errand, especially when I saw he was so overwhelmed with grief that he could scarcely utter it. It was natural to ask if my child were dead? He told me she was yet alive, but that the doctor had hardly any hopes at all, for she was seized at two in the morning with a chilliness,

experience. While I was thus employed, with an ardour of soul which, had it long continued, would have weakened and exhausted my spirits extremely, I was told that a gentleman wanted me: this grieved me exceedingly, till I found it was Mr Hutton, now of the Moravian church, whose Christian exhortations and consolations were very reviving to me. He said, among other things, God's will concerning you is, that you should be happy at all times, and in all circumstances; and particularly now, in this circumstance; happy in your child's life, happy in its health, happy in its sickness, happy in its death, happy in its resurrection!" He promised to go and pray for it, and said he had known great effects attending such a method.

So it was, that from that hour the child began to mend, as I wrote word to you by him that evening, and by Mr Offley yesterday morning. I cannot pre

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