national interests of religion, and conciliating the suffrages of the country in favour of the Established Church. So thought not Lord Chancellor Eldon, of whose conscientious bigotry-for Lord Eldon is really a conscientious man— some remarkable examples might be produced, his own extant letters and speeches being the evidence. Some of the late Lord Liverpool's appointments, both to the higher offices of the church and to government livings, were highly honourable; but how powerfully the narrow and sectarian system which has been adverted to, infected even his cabinet, was pithily expressed by the late Bishop Hobart, of New York, whose testimony, as a shrewd judge, a disinterested foreigner, and an eminently high churchman, may at least shew what was a natural inference. "Lord Liverpool," said he, "tulit omne punctum: he knew that there were several thousands of what are called the evangelical clergy; that they were the popular men in the church; that they were dear to vast bodies of the people; that they were the chief leaders of Bible and missionary societies; and that they were the only men who could influence the Dissenters, or keep up the popularity of their order; and, therefore, he pleased them by giving them a speech at a Bible-society meeting; but he knew that there were others for whom speeches would not do, and them he conciliated by good livings, valuable sinecures, and high appointments in the church, taking especial care never to throw away upon evangelicals, whatever else their merits, deaneries or bishopricks."

Now, my Lord, is this species of cabinet proscription right, or religious, or politic? The bishop of Peterborough might, as a warm partizan, apply a new set of eightyseven articles to reduce all his clerical brethren over whom his influence extended to his standard; but ought a statesman, a prime minister, or lord chancellor, to

act upon the same narrow system? Might not Lord Liverpool have very justly said to the late Archbishop Sutton,-"It is not for me to interfere in the divisions of the church: I must appoint men whom the people love and revere. Your Grace may prefer the Arminianism of Laud and Sancroft to the Calvinism of Hooker, and Hall, and Beveridge, and Leighton; but some thousands of the clergy, and hundreds of thousands of the laity, are not of your Grace's mind on this subject. Your Grace disapproves of Bible Societies; but many other prelates, princes of the blood, noble lords, clergymen innumerable, and the great body of the laity who are at all thoughtful on the subject of religion, approve of them; and I see not why I am to carry these differences into the cabinet. We want pious, zealous, active, working clergymen ; we want bishops-your Grace knows better than I do what they ought to be; and such we must have, without sectarian prejudice, family interest, or political influence. If we do not, the church will be ruined, and we shall all go down together. We should not have had that vexatious matter the other day about the tithes of if we had not unfortunately offended the people of that important and populous parish, by putting into please instead of the curate who has been there a quarter of a century, and I believe is, after all, an excellent man, and well deserved the appointment." "But you know, my Lord Liverpool, there was somewhat aukward about him." "There was, your Grace: he was one of your article-and-homily kind of men; and so, to rectify the matter, the living being in a good pheasant country, we sent down Lord's young friend, just ordained, with his double-barrelled gun on his shoulder, to set the people quarrelling about the tithes. But then happily he is no Calvinist, and has driven all the methodists from the church, and made them build a large new chapel

for their own accommodation. He has also nearly overset the Bible society, so far at least as the church is concerned; but the Dissenters have taken it up, and acquired all the popularity. I doubt however, with submission to your Grace, whether we acted wisely."

Your Lordship's cabinet professes to be built upon public principles; to choose men for stations, and not stations for men. What may be your duty, my Lord, or what the public may require from you, as to the important matter of church reform, is not to the purpose of this address; nor even the tender and difficult subject of pluralities, except so far as to say that, if your exercise of patronage is not conducted with a severe regard to what both public feeling and the welfare of the church demand, you will help to antedate the ruin of the Establish ment. But it is within your reach to discard the intrigues of sectarianism; and earnestly are you implored to do so. It would argue a degree of virtue which the public will not give any cabinet credit for by anticipation, to suppose that nothing of private friendship, domestic feeling, parliamentary influence, or political expediency, will ever commix with its ecclesiastical appointments; but it is surely not too much to ask that it will not become a court of sectarian inquisition. Lord Chancellor Brougham is currently alleged to entertain peculiarities of theological opinion in one way, as did Lord Eldon in another; with the difference however, that as he "does not think men accountable for their opinions," he would have less excuse should he wish to mould others after his own fashion. But the great evil is, when an official patron allows his private feelings to interfere with his public duties. The following characteristic speech, whether real or apocryphal, is strongly to the purpose of the present argument. "Your friend, my good sir, I make no doubt, is an excellent, wellmeaning, and, I understand, learned

man; but I cannot give him the benefice, as I am told he belongs to a party." The good man himself knew nothing of party: he was living meekly and unostentatiously in the discharge of his pastoral duties; he was beloved and respected by all who knew him; he was the counsellor of the rich, and the friend of the poor; he was a man of ripe scholarship, of excellent talents, and of undoubted attachment to the church, and in former days he would have been called "a man of God;" but he belonged to a party, for, alas! "he did not approve of Bishop Mant's tract on baptism!”

What are the doctrines of the Church of England is a much contested question, and not to the present argument. But Bishop Horsley, who knew them well, knew also how grievously they are maligned when every thing that is spiritual and scriptural is called Calvinism. "Before you aim your shafts at Calvinism," said he (the passage is familiar to theologians, but may not be to statesmen)," be sure you know what Calvinism is." He shews that it is not, what some account it, all seriousness in religion, or that code of faith and practice which is embodied in the services of the Church of England. Yet the horror of Calvinism, not only in its technical meaning, but in the unintelligible jargon of irreligious prejudice, has terrified cabinet ministers from appointments which would have done themselves honour, have benefited the public, and consoled the minds of those who had the interests of religion and the real welfare of the national church at heart. It would be easy to specify instances, were it decorous or necessary.

If your Lordship and your colleagues have virtue enough to pass what the Puritans would have called a "self-denying ordinance," which would gratify the public and greatly benefit the church, let it be understood that in the government livings, whenever a curate has discharged his duty in a parish for a reasonable

period in an exemplary manner, and with satisfaction to his parishoners, and is well qualified to succeed to the incumbency, your cabinet will never put over his head a stranger, but will advance him to the post which he has so deservedly purchased. Let the same rule be adopted in regard to the preferments of a diocese, not sending strangers to occupy posts of dignity and emolument, which had better been conferred upon the most deserving clergy of the vicinity. You will thus have less to bestow among servile retainers, but you will most essentially serve your country, and prove that you view the official patronage of the land as confided to your trust for better purposes than to afford a maintenance to those who have no claim to it but personal or parliamentary interest.

Among the recommendations which our cabinets have been too ready to listen to in allotting ecclesiastical preferments, one has been celebrity in extra professional studies. It would not sound well to say a clergyman was made a bishop merely because he had the interest of some noble family in which he once officiated as tutor; but if it can be said that he is an accomplished scholar, that is supposed to gloss over the appointment to the public eye, though he may know little of theology, and be destitute of those tastes and habits which St. Paul enumerates in his estimate of the episcopal character. No man who knows what learning is will undervalue it; and your Lordship needs not go beyond the metropolitan see, to witness how admirably profound scholarship may be made to cohere with, and be absorbed by, the higher duties of the episcopate. But woe to the parish, or the diocese, that is put off with mere scholarship, or any other substitute for those religious and pastoral qualifications which become the Christian minister and prelate.

If it were inquired what has been the cause why the large class of

clergymen before adverted to have been systematically proscribed in certain influential and official quarters, the answer would often resolve itself into a prejudice rather than an argument. "There is a sad want of taste in some of those religious people;" an admirable reason, no doubt, why the writings of Mrs. Hannah More should be confined to plebeian eyes; and Mr. Wilberforce, had he been a clergyman, should have been condemned, so far as cabinet patronage was concerned, to wear out his days on a rustic curacy, where the simple people were not aware of the ill taste of being religious. "But the evangelical clergy do not preach the doctrines of the church." A statesman may not think it necessary to dive deeply into this question; but if one of our authorised Homilies, or Hooker's Sermon on Justification, or almost any other discourse of our old standard divines, were read, without the name, in his hearing, he might chance to take this for "an evangelical sermon;" he would not, at least, see so much difference as, on account of it, to make a Parriar caste in the church.

"But the evangelical clergy preach immoral doctrines." Does your Lordship, or does any reasonable man, believe this? Suppose that they chanced to preach those very doctrines respecting which the same accusation was urged in the days of St. Paul; as if they had actually said, not as if others injuriously said for them, "Let us sin that grace may abound;" would it follow that their doctrines were in reality as licentious as those who disliked their strictness were prone to urge? At all events, without dragging your Lordship into theological controversies, is there something so peculiarly atrocious in the morals of all this methodistical class of people, that for this

cause alone a statesman must in

duty proscribe them? The affirmative does no honour to the prelates of our church, who have let

into her pale hundreds and thousands of such clergymen, so as to require a government veto to prevent their doing mischief. What a clear head ought a lord keeper to possess, to decide that every bishop on the bench has transgressed his duty, by ordaining multitudes of men who are not fit to hold the smallest chancellor's living; men too, of good learning, earnest piety, and unimpeachable life! And whence comes it, my Lord, that so many good institutions are upheld by these licentious Calvinists, or methodists; and that there are not more poachers and smugglers in their crowded congregations; and that frame-breakers and incendiaries do not throng their churches; and that they and their flocks pay their debts and taxes so well; and that they are so conspicuous for peaceable and loyal conduct, and "submission to every ordinance of man for God's sake?" We might have supposed that, the soil and the culture being both so evil, worse fruits would have appeared than those which we witness. It is extraordinary too that clergymen of such immoral principles should form such excellent parish priests; that is, barring the crime of their making the people "righteous overmuch."

But, in seriousness, are the doctrines professed by what are called the evangelical clergy--themselves not assuming the name-calculated to subvert the foundations of morality? If the charge had not been thrown out in the virulence of controversy, and ignorantly taken up by some who knew nothing of theology, or its bearings, or who loved party spirit too well to wish to be undeceived, such a misrepresentation could not for a moment have been credited. As, however, this address to your Lordship is not intended to be theological, all that shall be said at present on the question is, that no Christian can seriously read the New Testament, and no statesman can cast an inquiring glance over the actual con

dition of society, without being convinced that, however distasteful may be thought the system of "evangelical religion," whether so called in honour or reproach, it is at least not hostile to virtue, or to any thing that a true lover of his country would wish to promote.

But perhaps, to be candid with your Lordship, the real cause of this unfair proscription has been connected with political rather than religious considerations. Many of the Puritans were republicans; they were also strict in religion: it is, therefore, only to assume that all persons who are strict in religion are Puritans, to come to the charitable conclusion that they are not fit to live under the British constitution. But, my Lord, it is evident that, whether among those called orthodox or those called evangelical, the men who are really in earnest in religion, and who do not view a church establishment as merely an engine for selfish purposes, will not connive at evil; and hence they are troublesome men to have to do with, where there is a wish to retain every incrustation of abuse as a sacred relic of the piety and wisdom of past ages, or at least as a very convenient and lucrative appendage to the present. But is it, my Lord, consistent with the impartiality of British law, or the purposes for which official patronage is confided to our public functionaries in church and state, to measure it out by an extra-judicial test act; and to make every candidate rehearse his political catechism, to prove that he reaches the meritorious standard of ultratoryism, and is as much opposed to a constitutional reform in parliament as he is to the incursions of methodism. It is a painful subject, and, having been thus adverted to, shall be passed over: but it is notorious that church appointments have been lamentably misused for the ends of political partizanship; and years must elapse, under the best regulations, before the evils resulting both to church and state

from this ill-advised system, will have died away. Should your Lordship's cabinet follow up the same system, the church is likely enough, before long, to sink altogether; for most certain it is, that elements of destruction are at work, which can only be set at rest by the public voice of the country declaring itself unequivocally in favour of the church, upon conscientious and religious principles, and apart from all the strife and turmoil of selfish interests and party politics.

ON THE APOCALYPTIC TRUMPETS.

(Continued from page 601.)

ITALY was delivered from the dominion of the Visi Goths only by the death of Alaric, and by their voluntary migration, under his successor Adolphus, into Gaul (A. D. 412); where, after rendering the western empire many eminent services as allies, they were finally settled, under the faith of treaties, in Aquitaine, under their distinguished leader Wallia (A. D. 419). In a similar manner Spain owed her deliverance from the yoke of the Vandals, to the avarice and ambition of the ferocious Genseric; who, tempted by the rich provinces of Africa, transported the whole of his followers across the Straits of Gibraltar (A. D. 428). This invasion of Africa by the Vandals, constitutes an eventful epoch in the history of the Roman empire: it exposed Africa to the cruel devastation of that barbarous people, and the whole coast of the Mediterranean to their piratical ravages; in the course of which Rome herself was once more sacked and her inhabitants butchered.

To this epoch, therefore, I would refer the sounding of the second trumpet: "And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea; and the third part of the sea became blood; and the

third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed." (Rev. viii. 8, 9.) The image of a "great mountain burning with fire" might well be applied to the furious Genseric and his barbarous host; and this "burning mountain" might properly be said to be first cast into the sea, when he conveyed his host across the Mediterranean. Like the burning lava of a volcano, he overwhelmed the maritime provinces of Africa, which for nine years were the scene of war and desolation, till the capture of Carthage (A. D. 438) completed his conquest of the country, and rendered him soon, as Gibbon well denominates him, "the monarch of the sea." "The seven fruitful provinces from Tangier to Tripoli" (says that historian, chap. xxxiii.) "were overwhelmed by the invasion of the Vandals... When they found resistance they seldom gave quarter; and the deaths of their valiant countrymen were expiated by the ruin of the cities under whose walls they had fallen. Careless of the distinctions of age, sex, or rank, they employed every species of indignity and torment, to force from the captives a discovery of their hidden wealth." Upon the capture of Carthage, "Genseric cast his eye towards the sea, resolved to create a naval power, and his bold resolution was executed with steady and active perseverance. The woods of mount Atlas afforded an inexhaustible nursery of timber; his new subjects were skilled in the arts of navigation and shipbuilding: he animated his daring Vandals to embrace a mode of warfare which would render every maritime country accessible to their arms: the Moors and Africans were allured by the hope of plunder; and, after an interval of six centuries, the fleets that issued from the post of Carthage, again claimed the empire of the Mediterranean.” (chap. xxxvi.) Thenceforward, for a period of nearly forty years till his