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the Turk entered Egypt. In verse 45 there is a clear reference to the Holy Land, to Acre, and to the site of Constantinople.

CHAP. XII.

It only remains to observe, that each accomplishment of a spiritual and political resurrection to the church is typical of the last resurrection, and that each judgment or regeneration of Antichrist is typical of that great day, when they that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to everlasting contempt.

My limits, Gentlemen, only allow me to add, that I shall think myself highly honoured by your acceptance of this commentary, and that you will favour me by correcting or omitting any passages which may appear to you fanciful or incorrect.

I am, Gentleman,

Your obedient humble Servant,

JUVENIS.

REVIEWERS REVIEWED-CHRISTIAN OBSERVER.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCHMAN'S MAGAZINE.

GENTLEMEN,

THANK most heartily the excellent Author of "Unity the Bond "of Peace," for the handsome way in which he has been pleased to notice my endeavours to counteract the practices of schismatics and to expose the Jesuitical Duplicity of the Christian Observer's Review of his admirable book. I am proud to be called the Friend of such a Man whosoever he be, for I know neither his name nor his person; his zeal kindles mine, whilst his information instructs, his reasoning convinces, and his moderation delights me. To be so dealt with, as he deals with the existing disturbers of the Church's Peace, one might hope would have subdued their animosity, pacified their resentment, and have obtained for him a fair hearing at least. No such thing! They strike at him without remorse, whensoever they imagine they can inflict a blow; their resentment glares through the thin colouring of liberality with which it is overlaid; and his arguments are slightly treated, his statements are affectedly deplored, or flatly denied, as admission or reprobation suit the miserable purpose of schismatics and their adherents, comforters and supporters; which is, to blunt, to deaden, or to turn aside the powerful shaft which he has launched at the hydra-headed monster, "the blatant beast," whose pestilential breath would blast, whose teeth would devour, the members of that church, which is " a praise in all the earth.”

The title of the 3d chap. of " Unity," is "the consequences of schism, confirmed by the experience of our own church and country." The "Observer" admits that the Author asserts" with great justice the progressive spirit which characterizes revolutions; and that he has brought together a number of facts illustrating, in no small degree, the positions which it is the object of his work to establish." I believe

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there are schismatics who view, with hope and not with horror, the progressive spirit of revolutions; and who look forward with palpitating expectation, to the day which shall complete the downfal of our church. But what is this "faint praise?" illustrating in no small degree?" Gentlemen let your Readers "know assuredly" that the Author fully establishes, on most impregnable ground, his positions. He shews how schism first commenced, how parties were formed in the church after the reformation, how the spirit of dissention increased, how it was fostered, and by what artifices dissenters promoted their cause; how they vilified prelacy, how they quarrelled with decency, and outraged order; how they deviated into non-conformity, set up lectures, held prophecyings, professed the great purity and profitable ness of their own modes of worship, and depreciated the doctrines and ritual of the church they had left, as superstitious, unedifying, and corrupt; how they at last, got the upper hand, and overwhelmed the throne with the ruins of altars. In what, Lask, does methodism differ from puritanism? Is there a truer proposition, or one more supported by the test of experience than this, viz. that similar causes produce similar effects? If the proceedings of schismatics had such a terrible issue in King Charles's days- what is to hinder a similar catastrophe in our own? I aver that nothing can hinder it, but great exertion on the part of ORTHODOX CHURCHMEN; great vigilance in the State; and a firm persuasion in the minds of all men, that the welfare of the Church of England is necessary to the well-being of the Realm of England, and that, in order to prevent rebellion, schism must be extinguished.

The "Observer" says that " the occurrences of those woeful days, whose records are here summarily traced, are probably unknown to a large majority of those whose principles and practices are considered by this writer as tending to the reproduction of the anarchy and licentiousness which heretofore subverted the Church, and brought a Monarch to the scaffold." Credat Judæus! Who that knows any thing of the Methodists, especially of such of them, whose cause even Mr. Overton does not venture to advocate, (I think he undertakes but for some half dozen) but must be persuaded, that they are fully aware of the lamentable consequences of the schism which they so industriously foment. They lightly regard the sacraments of the Church, they mutilate her liturgy, they ridicule her priesthood, they revile her discipline, they distort and aggravate her doctrines; and to what purpose? To make her a desolation; and as surely as she is subverted, so surely falls the Monarchy with her. Democracy in the Church, as Sir Francis Walsingham long since denominated it, ("Unity" p. 65.) is nearly akin to Jacobinism in the State; they have a natural tendency to produce one another, and are alway disposed most cordially to coalesce. Can the Methodists be ignorant of all this? No, Mr. Observer, they are not;or if they be, they must be such ignorant wretches, as none but creatures ignorant as themselves can listen to;-just as Caliban took Stephano for a god." "Hast thou not dropped from Heaven?"—" Out of

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the moon I do assure thee; I was the man in the moon when time was.""I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee."-0, woe to that land where zealous ignorance is allowed to teach, and where the dogmata of schism, pregnant with destruction to the State, are taken for

sound

sound doctrine! Woe to the disciples of perverting error, and indefatigable enthusiasm! The mouth of wisdom has already spoken of them, the teachers and the taught; calling them" blind leaders of the blind," and has foreshewn their fate-" they shall fall into the ditch ;-but my object is to prevent them from dragging others after" them into the pit of destruction."

The plausible" Observer" disscusses the merits of the important 3d chap. of "Unity," in thirty three lines; and furnishes no specimen of its contents. With your good leave, Gentlemen, I will cut a pattern out of the tissue of the work, which will enable your Readers to judge of the entire piece. They will see that I do not praise it too highly; and they will remark how closely it resembles the web which the methodistical faction are weaving at this day,-intended for the winding sheet of the Church, and the shrowd of the Crown of England; the which unclean cloth, if it please Providence to lengthen my days, and continue to me my faculties and my habits of industry, shall be cut into shreds and patches by Jonathan Drapier's shears.

"The Puritan party, we are told, had gathered such strength, and was in such reputation with the people, that they were more in number than all the other parties in the kingdom put together *."

"But how had they gained this strength, and by what means had they so alienated the public mind from their National Church and their appointed teachers?

"One of the means was the pamphlets and publications which were pointed against the Church and Clergy, with the design to bring them both into contempt, and prepare the people for the part which they had to take in the future changes which were in contemplation. Though these had at different times received some check from the Civil Power, still their effect was not wholly lost. They always left some impression on the public mind, and paved the way for further attempts. But from the state of learning at that time, and the few to whom the advantages of education were extended, the effect of publica tions must be very confined, compared with the present day, when almost every one is taught to read, and there are so many channels to diffuse the poison of disaffection which were not then known. When the lower orders of the people were not, as now, able to read the pamphlets and papers which the zeal of proselytism might be disposed to put into their hands, the effect of such publications, however dangerous, was not so general as it is at present. Few of that description could be reached by such means, and therefore the poison must be conveyed to them through other channels.

"One of these was the formation of Separate Societies, and the opening of places of worship where their own opinions and their own modes would be extolied and recommended with all the powers of art and address, at the expence of the national establishment. It has been observed in the preceding Chapters, that it is in the nature of Schism to aim at the increase of its own numbers and strength: and the very separation furnishes one of the most successful means of doing it. By setting up a worship of their own, the opportunity is given to expatiate upon its greater purity and profitableness, and to depreciate the Doc

*Neal's Hist. of the Puritans, p. 150.

Vol. V. Churchm. Mag. Dec. 1803. 3 D

trine

trine and Worship of the Church they have left, as superstitious, unedifying, and corrupt. An opportunity so favourable is never neglected, and it seldom fails of success. By little and little, a society is formed, and its numbers increase in proportion to the diminution which invective and art are able to make from the members of the Church. "By these means they did pick, I will not say steal, hence a master, thence a a mistress of a family, a son out of a third, a servant out of a fourth parish, all of which met together in their congregations +." Such was the complaint of the Presbyterians when they were established in power, and exposed to like danger from the Sectaries which then divided the nation; for they justly feared, saith Fuller, if this fashion continued, the falling of the roof, or foundering of the foundations of their own parishes, whence so many corner stones, pillars, rafters, and beams, were taken by the other to build their congregations. They complained that these new pastors (the Independants), though slighting tithes and set maintenance, yet so ordered the matter by gathering their churches, that these gleanings of Ephraim became better than the vintage of Abiezer‡.

But the number of conventicles, or separate places of worship, before the fall of the Church, was small compared with the great increase which it received from the licentious disposition of after times. To get access to the minds of the public at large at this time, it was necessary to get admittance into the very Churches whose discipline and government they were labouring to overturn, and to carry on their operations in a more silent and less suspicious way.

"One of the modes in which they began to lay their mine under the old foundation of superstition and error, as a Reformer of our own times very significantly describes the operations of modern hostility, was that of Prophecying; which was a very plausible scheme of introducing their own Forms and Modes without innovating too much at once upon the constitution of the Church: and, carrying upon the face of it an appearance of greater piety, recommended itself to the Godly party, without awakening their suspicion that it was sapping the foundation of Church discipline and government.

"These Prophecyings, which began about the year 1571, were Associations of the Clergy in districts of their own appointment, in which se veral of them in succession, beginning with the youngest, treated upon a portion of Scripture, and some grave Divine as Moderator, closed the meeting with his Determination and Prayer. At their dinner, which was attended by many of the Laity, the next meeting was appointed, a text assigned, and a new Moderator chosen. But, however gratifying to the feelings of the Godly party, and unsuspected as the tendency might be to the generality of the friends of the Church, veniences were seen, and more foreseen, or at least suspected by fearful men, if these prophecies might generally take place in the land. Among others, being accounted the fairs for spiritual merchandizes, they made the weekly markets for the same holy commodities on the Lord's day to be less respected, and ministers to be neglected in their respective parishes §." The Queen, who considered them as no better than seminaries of Puritanism, was so perfectly prepossessed with prejudice

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"Novelty captivates the superficial and thoughtless, vehemence delights the discontented and turbulent. He that contradicts acknowledged truths, will al ways have an audience. He that vilifies established authority, will always find abettors."-Dr. Johnson.

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Fuller, B. xi. p. 211.

Ibid.

§ Ibid. B. ix. P. 123,

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against these Prophecyings, as if they foretold the rise of Schism and Faction, that she was implacably incensed against Archbishop Grindal, as the principal patron and promoter thereof *.' And 'so jealous were some Bishops of that age of these Prophecyings, as having too much Presbyterian analogie and classical constitution therein, they decried the notion of them as Schismatical †,"and in the year 1580 they were, by the Queen's order, put down.

"Another of the means which they had recourse to, to increase their party, was that of meeting together in Private Families, for the purposes of Prayer and such other exercises as might seem to conduce to mutual edification, while they served to weaken the discipline and authority of the Church.

"Archbishop Whitgift, on his succeeding to the Metropolitan See, directed that all Preaching, Catechizing, and Praying in any Private Family, where any are present besides the family, be discontinued. And the same Prelate, in his letter to the Lords of the Council, who had interfered in the case of some Ministers in Suffolk whom the Archbishop had silenced, thus vindicates his proceedings against them: "They say they are no Jesuits from Rome, &c.; true it is; neither are they charged to be so: but notwithstanding, they are contentious in the Church of England, and by their contentions minister occasions of offence to those who are seduced by Jesuits, and give the arguments against the Form of Public Prayer used in this Church, and by law established, and thereby increase the number of them, and confirm them in their wilfulness. They also make a Schism in the Church, and draw many of her Majesty's subjects to a misliking of her laws and government in causes Ecclesiastical. So far are they from persuading them to obedience, or at least if they persuade them to it in one part of her authority, it is in causes Civil they dissuade them from it as much in the other, that is, in causes Ecclesiastical: so that indeed they pluck down with the one hand that which they seem to build with the other."

"One of the Canons of 1603 is pointed at both these innovations, which, though in themselves they did not seem to have any other end in view than the use of edifying, had been found detrimental to the Peace and Unity of the Church, and attended with danger to its constitution. The title of the Canon (LXXII.) runs thus :

'Ministers not to appoint Public or Private Fasts or Prophecies, or to exercise but by Authority.'

And the Canon forbids them, without the license and Direction of the Bishop of the Diocese, to appoint or keep any solemn Fasts, either pub lickly or in any private houses, other than such as by law are, or by public authority shall be appointed; or wittingly to be present at any of them, under pain of suspension, &c.

"A farther means of promoting the cause of Dissension was the setting up of Lectures in towns and populous places, and putting in those Nonconformists to preach them who, from their objection to the Government or Ceremonies of the Church, were not in a capacity to be admitted as Incumbents.

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"To effect this, about the year 1629 certain Feofees were invested with power to purchase Impropriations with their own and other welldisposed persons money, and to set up and maintain a constant Preaching Ministry, in places of greatest need, where the Word was most wanting. S'

* Fuller's Ch. Hist. B. ix. p. 125. Fuller, B. xi. p. 136.

Ibid.

3 D 2

Ibid. P. 146. ·

"Archbishop

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