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would be quite hopeless. The article is evidently so bad that all the party are ashamed of it, and hardly venture to allude to it. The only thing worth notice in it, is the horrible temper. It looks exactly like the talk, or rather the drivel, of some very feeble creature who has been put into a violent passion, and cannot refrain from exposing its spite and itself.

In the article on Corporations, again, there is what is meant to be a most furious assault on the Universities. To shew the sort of information of these persons, who speak so confidently about the English Universities, it may be mentioned that the writer puts Oxford in the diocese of Lincoln! and talks of the caput at Cambridge having thrown out a placet about medical degrees! The great object is to shew the right of Parliament to send down a commission and alter the objects and purposes of the University fund! This, however weak, might be mischievous, and it would be necessary to answer it, but that the Edinburgh Review has provided an antidote for its own poison, which it is only necessary to extract. How carefully does the editor labour to preserve an unity of tone in the articles.

From the Article on Corporations.

To call a charity private, because its object has been selected, and its funds derived from a private person, is an unfortunate misnomer. Coke and Holt may make it law, (common law, if they please,) but can never make it reason. A testator can be scarcely in his grave, before occasions must be frequently arising, in which his particular intentions will have become so far impracticable, that an approximation to them can only be reached by conjectures about what he may be supposed to have generally intended. The notion of delivering up the nineteenth century, bound and manacled, to the ignorance of the middle ages is pre-eminently absurd. If we have any right to legislate at all upon these establishments at the present day, it is worse than solemn trifling to preface our legislation by antiquarian discussions. The earth is for the living, not the dead. What have we to do with the tapers, monks, and the Aristotelian worship-with the probable predilections of the wealthy warden of a guild-or with the motives by which an architectural abbot, or literary chaplain, may have worked on the liberality of the Countesses of Richmond and of De Clare? A nation must take higher ground than this, and more comprehensive views. Besides, it is only attempting what it is impossible to perform. No institution of charity or of learning can, at the close of five hundred years, fulfil the intentions, and represent the opinions which prevailed when its corner-stone was laid. It is idle to imagine that the proper removal or mitigation of this difficulty is to be found in giving more extensive powers of visitation to the heir of the family, or to the successor in a bishopric. Is there a single instance worth mentioning on record, among the thousand anomalies, deviations, and corruptions of our system, where the heir of the founder has had the piety to interpose? The Bishop of Lincoln and of Ely, as the respective diocesans of Oxford and Cambridge, are the most frequent visitors of the colleges in their respective Universities. Is there a founder who would have chosen to be represented by a Tomline and a Sparke? or who would have committed his lamb (?) to their generous example and parental visits? We are sick of hearing of the fraud of disappointing the pious intentions of antiquity.

From the Article on the Bridgewater

Treatises.

The injudicious appropriation of a sum of nearly ten thousand pounds, which might have been made truly useful both to science and religion, is of itself a sufficient evil to demand the censure of public criticism; but we have been induced to notice it more particularly at present, because many instances have recently occurred, in which public bodies have unnecessarily and injuriously thwarted the obvious intentions of testators. If money is bequeathed for purposes which have a tendency to promote vice or foster error, it would be wise, if not legal, to alter its destination. But if a bequest has been long and usefully devoted to special purposes; and, still more, if its change of destination is rash or even doubtful; and if it has excited a difference of opinion among those who are entitled to express it,-we think it would not be wrong or unbecoming to restore such trusts to their former channels, whether they be trusts of science or of charity.

There is strong reason for suspecting that many advertisments and paragraphs, professing to come from the clergy, are inserted by their good friends, who afterwards appeal to them as proofs of clerical profligacy. Such must be the following, which appeared in a respectable paper in January last:

"WANTED TO PURCHASE, the ADVOWSON of a LIVING, in a healthy situation, within 100 miles North of London, the incumbent of which is about immediately to resign. Any clergyman desirous of receiving ample remuneration for his benefice, will find the advertiser ready to enter into treaty with him, upon promise of a resignation which will ensure for him immediate possession. An excellent house is required, and the living would be preferred of from 3004. to 500l. per annum.

"Address, post paid, to X. Y. Z., Post-office, Market Deeping, Lincolnshire."

The most ignorant and unblushing clergyman who ever shamed the profession could never dare to insert such an advertisement as this. These things should be narrowly looked to.

CAUTIONS TO CLERGYMEN.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE STANDARD."
Parsonage,

March 3. SIR,-Your well-known zeal for the church of England induces me to trouble you with a little information as to the proceedings of the Congregational Union, at the Library, Bloomfield-street, London.

Late on Saturday evening last, I received, by the hands of a worthy young man, an application which " a friend" requested him to make as to the size of my chapel, the numbers attending our services, our schools, our sacrament, the sacramental collections, and the religious institutions in connexion with my clerical district. As soon as I perceived that the real inquirer was desirous to conceal himself, I at once suspected his intentions, and wrote to ask a few questions as to the quarter from whence the inquiry proceeded, and I thought it my duty to rebuke this person behind the scenes. This brought out the document which I inclose; and it would seem that the " Congregational Union" are putting forth these inquiries throughout the kingdom. Now, Sir, I regard this proceeding, and the sly manner of conducting it, with great disgust, and I would guard my brethren against committing themselves by answering these questions, over which they have no control, and with the authentication of which they are not permitted to meddle.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE STANDARD."

***

SIR,-In the course of the past week a somewhat singular application has been made in this town, and, probably, a like application will have been made in other towns also, by the dissenters to the clergy, to furnish them with returns of the number of marriages, baptisms, and burials, in the several churches, to be put into the hands of Mr. Wilks, the member for Boston, to aid him in obtaining redress of the dissenters' "grievances." On this proceeding I make no comment; but I have further to state, that in the first instance the application was not made to the clergy, but to their respective clerks, and that the inquiries then made were extended to various other particulars the amount of fees charged in each case, the number of sittings in each church, and of the congregations usually attending, the number of communicants, &c. PAROCHIALIS.

EFFECTS OF AN ESTABLISHED CHURCH.

"THE County of Suffolk," says Mr. Cobbett, "is the crack county of England. It is the best cultivated, most ably, most carefully, most skilfully, of any piece of land of the same size in the whole world; its labourers are the most active and most clever; its farmers' wives, and women employed in agriculture, the

most frugal, adroit, cleanly, of any in the whole world; it is a county of most frank, industrious, and virtuous people; its towns are all cleanliness, neatness, and good order." But, say the Voluntaries, why attribute these benefits as resulting from the established church? We will allow Mr. Cobbett to reply: "In the county of Suffolk there is a parish church in every three square miles, or less; and it is thus divided into parishes so numerous, as for the people every where to be almost immediately and constantly under the eye of a resident parochial minister."

THE LANCASHIRE RETURNS OF 1830.

As the Returns made to Parliament of the number of Dissenters in Lancashire have been so often referred to, the following summary of the final results may be interesting to some of the readers of the British Magazine :

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Number of the Sectarians.

9248 7569 144244 24299 55083 3954 1969 5099 3946 255411

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THE following table is extracted from the "Churchman's Almanack for 1834," an admirable almanack, printed at New York. It is curious as a statistical document; and while we hear of the 17,000 churches in the United States, this table rather lets in a little light on the subject, by stating the number of ministers at about 10,000. The number of square miles, also, is an element which the thorough-going advocates of the voluntary church system are inclined to overlook. But one remark must be made, also, which the writer makes on the authority of a clergyman thoroughly acquainted with our Colonies in the neighbourhood of the United States,-that "the ministers of the other denomination" includes, in the numbers that swell its amount, many who are utterly unable to read; that many of these ministers are blacks of fluent tongue, who are absolutely obliged to have the chapter which they expound read for them, because they are unable to do it for themselves.

*N. B. The Population is given as in the census of 1821.

VOL. V.-April, 1834.

3 Q

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The Geographical and Moral Extent of the several Dioceses in the United States, with a View of their small Supply of Clergy.

III.

POPULATION, LAST CENSUS, 1830.

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As reported by name, at the last General Convention, Oct. 1832.

11,893,278 104,278 144 588 about 1,000 about 20,000 10,055

average.

average.

The District of Columbia is comprised, partly in the Diocese of Md., and partly in that of Va. Its extent is 100 square miles; total population, 39,834: these are not included in the above estimates.

Beside these, there is one residing in Michigan: he is included in the number of the clergy of that diocese.

Beside these, there are also 8 in the Territories: the total number is 596.

ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON DR. WARDLAW.

THE chapter on the Identity of Religion and Morality is of great value and truth. But even here is reasoning to which one cannot readily assent. In speaking of the characters often called amiable people by the world, though without religion, Dr. W. says, that if a man, who neglects his duty to his family, is spoken of in the harshest terms, the man who does the ordinary duties of life, and neglects what he owes to God, ought, without hesitation, to be still more harshly stigmatized. It may be doubted whether the reasoning here is safe. It is this:-The man who neglects the greatest duties is guilty of the greatest sins. Now, before this is granted, it ought to be shewn that the greater duties are as much brought home to him, that he is as much cognizant of them. But the fact is, that the corruption of our nature has not destroyed our instinct, and by instinct, like the brutes, a man loves his children, and takes care of them. Obeying instinct is certainly not doing our duty; but it so happens, that here instinct and duty lead the same way; and, when led to do our duty, we are soon (by God's providence) led to see that it is our duty, and therefore have an additional motive for doing it. But, by the corruption of man, his nature does not lead him to God, but inclines him to earthly things. It need not be said, as Dr. W. says, that it leads directly, or usually, to active hatred to God, (this is one of the over-statements directly contradicted by every man's experience); but it certainly fills the mind with low and distracting cares, and leads it away from God. Now, if we are born with dispositions that lead us to do, and therefore to know, our duty in the lesser case, and that lead us from our duty in the greater, it may not be clear without other proof that we are more guilty in neglecting the greater duty, though it is quite true that we are fallen lower, and are entitled to more pity, when we are ignorant of what we owe to God than when we are ignorant of what we owe to men. There are, it may be added, means by which we might know our duty to God, though the carnal heart does not turn to him. But this applies to the other case also.

One word more on Dr. W.'s notions of men being haters of God. There is a good deal of verbal dispute connected, probably, with the expression. Satan hates God. This means that he knows him and his perfections, and hates him. To say that they, who are taken up with the common cares of the world, hate God in this sense, is absurd. In a Christian land, they may be without excuse. The calls to them have been frequent, and they are guilty for not listening. But if they have not listened, and really know nothing of God's character, because they have never thought of it, (which is the case with a vast majority of those who do not love God,)—whether equally guilty, more or less guilty is not the question,-but it is in vain, as a matter of fact, to say that they hate God in the same sense that the enemy of good hates him. It seems to the writer as if Dr. W. here wrote from theory rather than experience. And, in the same way, (p. 300,) where he speaks of those who love God, because they imagine him so kind that he will allow them to go on sinning and yet forgive them, and so that he lays them under no necessity to renounce any evil desires or acts, and that consequently they love God for the sake of sin, he is appealing very much to the imagination. Practically, no doubt, too many are willing to hope that God will not be extreme to mark what is done amiss. But does Dr. W. really believe that the case, with those who unite feelings of affection to God with an unsteady and unholy life, is, that they believe that God does not disapprove of such a life, and does not call on them to renounce it? It is surely better not to express things so as to provoke opposition on very plausible grounds.

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