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the rich man sent himself there; but it is equally true that Christ could have stopped him as He did stop Mary Magdalene, out of whom He cast seven devils.

God reprobates innocent people for his own wise purpose. He hated Esau, He says, while "in the womb, and before he had done good or evil." Innocent Job suffered, and he was reprobated for a time. The man who was born blind had done nothing, Christ says, nor yet his parents, to cause his blindness (John ix. 3).

As you are the clay, you can do no good until God, the potter, operates on you or moves toward you first. Adam the clay, or red-earth, was dead and powerless, and he made no move until "God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and made him a living soul." Adam, by his fall, became clay again, for his curse or reprobation was to become dust (Gen. iii. 19). Such are we in consequence, and we cannot become good until He breathes the breath of life and grace into us.

The use He makes of you is to require you, with His grace helping you, to try to "enter in at the strait gate." But if you are foolish enough to work for the devil, and to reply against God, and to dispute and argue with Him, similarly as Irishmen do, when they want to become potters and masters over lands and houses, your warming-pan in hell-fire will be hot enough to roast you. Depend on it, every bad thing you have done, and every good thing which you have left undone, will be in hell a greater torment than Paul's thorn was to him in this life, the goad in the ox, or the pins and needles stuck into the flesh of the donkey by the wild Irish. Do not fall into the mad notion of doing nothing good, or of growing reckless, by fancying

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that if you are to be saved you must be saved, and that if you are to be damned you cannot avoid being sent to hell. If you go to hell your saying this will torment you there. On the other hand, do not be so blasphemous as to say you can save yourself, for no one can pardon the soul but Christ, or purify the character but the Holy Ghost. Be not worse than the clay, for it becomes no worse than what it was when God cursed it. In your fall, in Adam, you reached the very verge of hell. Throw not yourself into it; but if you drop down, it is only a matter of losing your balance. Blame not God, therefore, for your warm new lodgings. I advise you to keep a good balance in natural religion, conscience, moral feeling, justice, goodness, almsgiving, especially towards poor clergymen. Be as good as Cornelius at natural religion, of whom God made good use. Be good at saving religion, like the Ethiopian Eunuch, who read the Bible, and to whom God sent Philip to preach Jesus and his blood, saying, that He was "a lamb led to the slaughter."

You must believe in Reprobation, for you own that God and the Prince of Wales can make to dishonour or honour by the good pleasure of their will. The Prince of Wales is using you and your services in feeding his game, and my preaching in preserving them from thieves. You and I cannot see through the plans of God or of the Prince of Wales, no more than the clay can see the potter's design when making cups and saucers for the Prince's breakfast table, and other earthen vessels for less honourable use for the Prince's bedroom, and more vessels for dishonour for the servants' use. Even common people who have much

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business on their hands, as well as the great, good, and clever Prince of Wales, can notice only what is brought before them. And, as it is God alone who knows all things, let us not murmur at His arrangement, or condemn Reprobation, until we see both sides of the picture, or know as much as God. That God elects some and reprobates others, you can see from the fact that there are parts of your body not as pretty as your face. The pretty peacock has ugly reprobated feet. Our Church theology is far harder than St. Paul, for our XXVI. Article says that the "evil is ever mingled with the good"; or that the dishonourable is always mixed with the honourable to form one bad lump, or to make every vessel to dishonour. Because the bowl over which the little fly travels is circular, it thinks that, therefore, it has gone over the round world, and that it has seen everything. Like the little fly, you can never see the why and the wherefore of all God does.

The doctrine of Reprobation is my own great comfort, for it reconciles me to everything which comes upon me. Instead of committing rash acts, or taking trials to heart, as those do who commit suicide, I say that all my losses and woes are God's acts of Reprobation and Providence.

I have thus proved to you the great doctrine of Reprobation in Nature, in worldly and religious matters, or in the ways of Society, and in the teaching of Scripture. Many believe in Reprobation who say they do not. The man who does any unkind thing reprobates the ill-treated. The wild Irish believe and act it by shooting landlords. The Pope denies it, but his Inquisition acts it.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Places reprobated by God as well as persons-Cardinal Wolsey and a reprobated church-Archbishop Potter and his materials for helping poor vicars, and the character of his earnestness in their behalfHis powerful arguments in favour of maintaining poor clergymen -The materials for public worship in a disendowed church— Strange marriages and a second baptism in a poor vicar's parish.

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S God reprobated Jericho as well as its builder by cursing both, I have been for a long time of opinion that He reprobates certain countries, towns, and villages, as well as people. It is impossible to make one soil as fertile as another. I believe that Ireland and the Irish are reprobated; for both are in such an unimprovable state that the improving power of the English, which is almost miraculous, cannot make them better, but apparently worse.

The following curious document shows that Cardinal Wolsey complains of the regard paid by all to reprobated Flitcham, and to God's religion and clergymen in it. This reprobation caused him to join the Flitcham Abbey to that of Walsingham for protection.

(COPY.)

"State Papers, Domestic, Henry VIII.: 20 Henry VIII., No. 66 5129. St. Mary, Walsingham.

"Decree of Wolsey, as Legate, granting to Ric. Vowell, Prior, and the Convent of St. Mary, Walsingham (considering that the

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Universal Devotion by which it was first sustained is now cooled by the perverse reviling of some, and the pestiferous preaching of others), the Augustine Priory of St. Mary ad Fontes Flitcham, Norwich Dioc., which has fallen into decay through neglect; and the possessions of which are adjacent to those of the former. Four resident canons must be maintained for the celebration of Divine Service. The Prior promises to have daily mass performed for Wolsey, and to pay 10/- yearly to Rich. Bp. of Norwich and his successors."

Archbishop Potter, who lived about 150 years ago, wrote a book about the duty of people to maintain the poor vicars, when he had a rich church under him, and a seat in the House of Lords for enabling him to move Parliament in their behalf, and when he had power to allot a maintenance for vicars out of the tithes taken by laymen. In his day England had less dissenters than now. Consequently less of Englishmen's money was spent upon building dissenting chapels, and upon paying ministers in them. Neither was churchmen's money laid out at that time upon schoolboards and schoolmasters for dissenters. Our churches were not left destitute when he had the care of them, without church rates, as they are now. We were not burdened at that time with the very many church societies which we have to support now, and which do cost us some millions of pounds yearly. He had inexhaustible resources to find their wants for poor vicars; but he preferred to make money for himself, for the good purpose of industry, by asking sympathy for them, in selling his book. Archbishop Potter writes, in his book on Church Government, as follows:

"It is certain that God has an absolute right to