ARCHDEACON BLACKBURNE.

FEW persons have written with more ability, or engaged with a warmer zeal, in the cause of religious liberty, than FRANCIS BLACKBURNE, Archdeacon of Cleveland. His long and active life was passed within the pale of the established Church of England, but his liberal spirit and comprehensive charity were restrained by no barriers, either of forms or names. The right, which he had exercised in choosing his own mode of worship, he cheerfully granted to others. With him the Bible was the only proper formulary of faith, and the true christian church was the whole body of sincere believers and faithful followers of Jesus.

He was born at Richmond, Yorkshire, 1705; and, after a preparatory course of classical education in the neighbouring schools, he entered the university of Cambridge, 1722, as a pensioner of Catherine hall. He remained at the university five years, during which period he took his bachelor's degree, and at the expiration of which he was ordained a deacon in the church. He had already gained a high repu

tation for his attainments and devotedness to study; but, being disappointed in his expectation of a fellowship, by reason of the sentiments, which he had openly avowed, concerning church power and civil liberty, he left the university and lived nearly ten years in retirement with his uncle in Yorkshire.

He had early acquired a fondness for the writings of Locke, Hoadly, and others of the same character, who were distinguished for the freedom and power with which they spoke of a general toleration and religious liberty. The sentiments derived from these sources were strengthened by his own vigorous understanding, and confirmed by a course of reading, in which he was soon afterwards accidentally engaged. Several volumes of the old Puritans fell into his hands, which he perused with eagerness. He admired the independent principles of these writers, their plainness of manner, their simplicity, and unaffected piety. The spirit, which he imbibed from works of the above description, gave a tone to his future character, and was the groundwork of that toleration and love of liberty, which he ever after manifested.

In the year 1739, he was settled as a clergyman in Richmond, his native place; and eleven years after, he was appointed archdeacon of Cleveland by the archbishop of York. His residence was always at Richmond. At no distant date from his first settlement he commenced his labours as an author, and, as would be natural to expect, was soon drawn into

the field of controversy. A translation of Erasmus's preface to his paraphrase of Matthew was made at his request, and one of his first publications was a discourse prefixed to this translation. The tendency of this discourse was rather practical, than controversial, and was chiefly designed as a preservative against the influence of popery, and an encouragement to study the Scriptures.

The two or three succeeding pieces, which he published, were chiefly aimed at the abuses of church power, faults of discipline, errors of systematic forms of worship and faith, impropriety of certain ceremonies, and, in short, all the ecclesiastical encroachments, which had grown bold and strong with time, and all the unmeaning and cumbersome additions to the original church of Christ, which ignorance had invented and custom sanctioned. On these subjects he took the Bible for his guide, and did not hesitate to follow his principles to their proper consequences.

His next subject of controversy was the intermediate state of the soul. Bishop Law, in the Appendix to his Theory of Religion, had defended the doctrine of the unconscious being of the soul between death and the resurrection. This appendix was attacked with vehemence. Blackburne defended it, and attempted to show, that the Scriptures afford no proof of an intermediate state of happiness or misery. The controversy was protracted, and Blackburne came forward several times to meet the arguments of his

opponents. In the progress of the discussion, he published remarks on certain passages in Warburton's Divine Legation, and on the account given by that writer of the opinions of the Jews concerning the soul. He at last wrote a historical view of the whole controversy.

But the work, which has gained him greater celebrity than any other, is "The Confessional; or a full and free Inquiry into the Right, Utility, Edification, and Success of establishing systematical Confessions of Faith and Doctrine in Protestant Churches." This was published in 1766, and passed through three editions in four years. Its object is well expressed in the title. The author first traces the history of Confessions of Faith in protestant churches; he next considers the right to establish them as tests of orthodoxy; and then examines their expedience and utility. This branch of the inquiry occupies the three first chapters, and these constitute the portion, which has been selected for the present work. They embrace a distinct topic, and contain the clearest views and best reasoning, perhaps, which can be found within the same compass, on the subjects of which they profess to treat.

These three chapters do not make more than one fifth of The Confessional, but the remainder, although written with equal learning and ability, has a particular and exclusive bearing on the English church. It goes into a full and ingenuous examination of the va

rious opinions, which have prevailed respecting the terms of subscription to the articles, and searches for the reasonings and casuistry by which it came to pass, that they were conscientiously subscribed in different senses. This investigation is pursued with much acuteness, and with no little severity against the modes by which the consciences of some churchmen had been satisfied.

This work was the beginning of a controversy, which sent many publications into the world, and did not terminate for several years. The following is the language of the author in his preface to the second edition.

"The favourable reception, which The Confessional hath met with from the public, though it will not be admitted as an argument of the merit of the book, is undeniably an argument of something of much more consequence. It is an argument, that the love of religious liberty is still warm and vigorous in the hearts of a considerable number of the good people of England, notwithstanding the various endeavours of interested and irreligious men, in these latter as well as in former times, to check and discourage it; and notwithstanding the desponding apprehensions of some good men, that these stiflers had well nigh succeeded in their unrighteous attempts."

"The Confessional hath likewise had the good fortune to make another valuable discovery; namely, that encroachments on religious liberty in protestant