"There were in the small kingdom of Israel at one time 38,000 Levites above the age of thirty. England would require many more to perform their function as they ought, to the profit of the people. And all the patrimony that ever the church had in England would not overdo it, to be divided among so many as would be needful of the clergy, and for maintaining the poor besides, together with the building and repairs of churches, schools, colleges, libraries, and many other charges profitable to the nation.

"And another consideration; if there were such a number of the clergy, there| would be more provision for many of our sons, whom we cannot now dispose of, at least not so well.”—LESLIE, (Divine Right of Tithes) 2, 876.

[Poverty of the Clergy.]

THE income of the clergy was so very low that in some places they were allowed a whittle-gate, that is, the minister was privileged to go from house to house in the parish, and for a certain number of days enter his whittle (knife) with the rest of the household, and live with him; this has been abolished within the memory of man.1

1 “An harden sark, a guse grassing, and a whittle gait," were all the salary of a clergyman, not many years ago, in Cumberland: in other words, his entire stipend consisted of a shirt of coarse linen, the right of commoning geese, and the privilege of using a knife (A. S. whytel,) and fork at the table of his parishioners."-BROCHETT's Gloss. inv. J. W. W.

[An everyday Advertisement in 1849.] Ad Cleros.

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"SEXAGINTA Conciones ad Fidem et usum Christianæ religionis spectantes, novis typis accurate Manuscripta in imitantibus mandatæ, a Presbytero Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ compositæ: veneunt apud Ostell, Avemaria-lane, Londini, Pretium £3.

"Hæ Conciones aptantur ad omnes Dies Dominicas totius Anni, et ad Occasiones tam speciales, quam consuetas. Prostant venales, simul sub involucro sigillato cui inscribitur Sexaginta Conciones, &c."Courier, Saturday, May 9, 1807.

[Les Discernans et les Mélangistes.]

In the strange exhibitions which were made by the Deacon Paris, "On voulut savoir quel étoit le principe dominant qui opérait le merveilleux de la convulsion. Cette question très-importante, fut long-temps agitée dans les diverses synagogues des secouristes. Les uns voulaient que ce fût l'œuvre du démon; les autres soutenaient qui c'était uniquement l'œuvre de Dieu. Au milieu de ce conflit d'opinions parurent les discernans, qui prétendirent que toute convulsion accompagnée de secours était une œuvre mêlée, d'où ils conclurent que dans le merveilleux de la convulsion, il y avait le diable dominant, et le diable dominé. Ceux qui embrassèrent ce sentiment se nommèrent les mélangistes." DUVERNET, Hist. du Sorbonne, tom. 2, p.

310.

[Triumph of Vice.]

"VICE," says SOUTH (vol. 4, p. 135), "has clearly got the victory, and carried it against all opposition. It rides on successfully and gloriously, lives magnificently, and fares deliciously every day; and all this in the face of God and man, without either fear of one or shame of the other. Nay, so far are our modern sinners from sneaking under their guilt, that they scorn to hide, or

so much as hold down their head for less crimes than many others have lost theirs.

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Such a rampancy of vice has this age of abused mercies, or rather miracles, brought England to. While on the other hand, the widows and orphans of many brave and worthy persons, who had both done and suffered honourably for their prince, their church, and their country, as a reward for all this, live in want and misery, and a dismal lack of all things, because they had rather work or beg, do or suffer any thing, than sin for their bread."

[Divers Religions the Spawn of Faction.] "THE Hierarchy and English Liturgy being voted down, there was a general liberty given to all consciences in point of religion. The taylor and shoemaker might have cut out what religion they pleased; the vintner and tapster might have broached what religion they pleased; the druggist and apothecary might have mingled her as they pleased; the haberdasher might have put her upon what block he pleased; the armourer and cutler might have furbrished her as they pleased; the dyer might have put what colour, the painter what face they pleased upon her; the draper and mercer might have measured her as they pleased; the weaver might have cast her upon what loom he pleased; the boatswain and mariner might have brought her to what deck they pleased'; the barber might have trimmed her as he pleased; the gardener might have lopped her as he pleased; the blacksmith might have forged what religion he pleased. And so every one according to his profession and fancy was tolerated to form what religion he pleased."-Sober Inspections, &c. p. 105.

[Conformist and Nonconformist on Obedidience and Disobedience.]

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Conformist. Was not there a time when this was a principle among your ministers, that they should obey the orders of the magistrate under whom they lived, if they were not sinful?

"Non Conformist. I am not much acquainted with their opinions in those mat

ters.

"C. You may know them then by their practises, which I suppose you will by all means have to be consistent with their principles.

"N. C. What practises?

"C. I think there were orders in the late times that no man should pray publicly for King Charles, and they obeyed them. They were required also to keep a thanksgiving for the victories at Dunbar and Worcester, with which I believe the most, if not all, complied. Nay, that thanksgiving was repeated every year at Whitehall, and I believe Cromwell found some among you that would not deny to carry on the work of that day.

"N. C. What do you infer from hence? "C. That they have forsaken their principles: for now they will not obey the king's orders. Mark what I say. They would obey usurpers, because they had a power for the time being; and now they disobey their sovereign, whose power they acknowledge to be just, and who commands things that are not unlawful."-Friendly Conference, p. 53.

[Hospitality of Bishop Seth Ward.]

"BISHOPS are commanded by St. Paul to be hospitable: never did any yield more punctual obedience to that apostolical injunction than this Bishop of Salisbury (Seth Ward); for, be it spoken without any reflection, no person in that county, or the diocese, that ever I heard of, kept constantly so good a table as he did, which also as occasion required was augmented. He used to say, that he expected all his brethren of the clergy who upon any business came to Salisbury should make use of his table, and that he took it kindly of all Scarce any person the gentry who did so. of quality passed betwixt London and Exeter but, if their occasions permitted, dined with him. The meanest curates were wel

DR. JOHN MOORE (Sermon preached before the Lord Mayor at Guildhall Chapel, May 28, 1682) quotes this monstrous proposition from Archer's Comfort for Believers, "that God is the author not of those actions alone, in and with which sin is, but of the very pravity, ataxy, anomy, irregularity and sinfulness itself, which is in them; yea, that God hath more hand in men's sinfulness than they themselves." And from Dr. Twiss's Vindic. Gratia, he quotes these words, fatemur Deum non modo ipsius operis peccaminosi, sed intentionis malæ authorem

esse.

[Interpreting Gifts of Fanatical Preachers.] "ABOVE all for their interpreting gift," says SOUTH, “ you must take them upon Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation; and from thence, as it were, out of a dark prophetical cloud, thundering against the old cavaliers and the church of England, and (as I may but too appositely express it) breaking them upon the wheels in Ezekiel, casting them to the beasts in Daniel, and pouring upon them all the vials in the Revelation.". Sermons, vol. 3, p. 446.

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[Extemporary Prayer.]

"In extemporary prayer," says FULLER, "what men most admire, God least regardeth; namely, the volubility of the tongue. Oh, it is the heart keeping time and tune with the voice which God listeneth unto. Otherwise the nimblest tongue tires, and loudest voice grows dumb before it comes half way to heaven."-Good Thoughts.

[Infallibility of Dissent.]

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"To them Scotus and Aquinas are sots, cardinals veil your caps: a conventicle can furnish you with doctors more seraphick, more irrefragable. The phanatick that they say went to convert the pope doubtless outfaced the old chair at Rome with much more infallibility than ever pretends to sit there. For most of those that dissent from us are infallibly sure they are in the right.-These are the men whose uncontroulable conscience is above all law: or but for one law, and that is, that it should be passed into a law that their consciences shall be bound up by no law. Shall Mahomet go to the mountain, or the mountain come to Mahomet? Shall these men's consciences come to the law, or the law to these men's consciences? A garment may as soon be fitted to the moon as such a system of laws framed as shall fit every man's conscience. It pinches here,-widen the law: now it pinches as much there, widen that too: till at last the law grows so much too wide, as that the man's conscience having got room enough to turn itself with freedom, wholly shakes off all law, and that which at first pretended only to liberty, shall very fairly end in licentiousness."CREYGHTON's Sermon. 1682.

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[Proposal that the Archbishops and Bishops should be of Noble Blood.]

THIS odd, and not very wise proposal occurs in England's wants. "That as among the Jews, where, by immediate Divine appointment, the chief clergyman, Aaron, was brother to the supreme magistrate, Moses, and the priests and the Levites were all of noble stock; and as amongst Christians even here in England antiently, and at this day in foreign Christian states, the chief clergy have been oft of noble, and sometime of royal blood, and the ordinary priests usually sons of the gentry, whereby they come to be more highly honoured, and their

be

just authority better obeyed, so now in England, that the two archbishops may (if possible) of the highest noble (if not royal) blood of England, and all the bishops of noble blood, and the inferior priests sons of the gentry, and not after the example of that wicked rebel Jeroboam, and our late republicans, to make priests of the lowest of the people, whilst physic and law, professions ever acknowledged in all nations to be inferior to divinity, are generally embraced by gentlemen, and sometimes by persons nobly descended, and preferred much above the divine's profession."

[Men's Hearts must be in Heaven before their Bodies can be.]

"LET men rest assured of this, that God has so ordered the great business of their eternal happiness, that their affections must still be the forerunners of their person, the constant harbingers appointed by God to go and take possession of those glorious mansions for them; and consequently that no man shall ever come to heaven himself, who has not sent his heart thither before him. For where this leads the way the other will be sure to follow."- SoUTH'S Sermons, vol. 4, p. 541.

[Wanderers from Church to Church.] "WHAT a devout company of saints are Rebecca, her book, her pattens, and her stool! for all must together; nor would you think her going to church, but removing house. I wonder she is never apprehended for carrying burthens upon the Sabbath-day. Well, this coif and crosscloth, this blue-aproned saint is as much in the church as the parson's hour-glass, the hassocks, or the people that are buried there. Nor will she tire with a single hearing, but trudge from Tantlins to Tellins, and hold out killing of a brace or two, and all long courses. Thus are they carried from ordinance to ordinance, like beggars from one church to another, that they may ply at both places."-Hudibras in Prose.

[Taking Notes at Church.]

In a squib upon the expenditure of the Committee of Safety during the Commonwealth, among the items charged to the Lord Fleetwood's use is one "for a silver inkhorn, and ten gilt-paper books, covered with green plush and Turkey leather, for his lady to write in at church, - seven pounds, three shillings, and three pence." -Harleian Miscellany, 8vo. edition, vol. 7, p. 149.

[Worldly Wisdom of the Romish Church.]

"I WISH," says SOUTH, "that while we speak loud against those of the Romish Church, we could at the same time inwardly abhor and detest their impieties, and yet imitate their discretion; and be ashamed

that those sons of darkness should be so much wiser in their generation than we, that account ourselves such children of light. For be they what they will, it is evident that they manage things at an higher rate of prudence than to fear a change in their church government every six months, or to be persuaded by any arguments to cut their throats with their own hands, or amongst all their indulgences, to afford any to their implacable enemies."—Vol. 5, p. 341.

[One Day as a Thousand Years.] "WITH the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. And from this very expression some of the ancient fathers drew that inference, that what is commonly called the Day of Judgement, would be indeed a thousand years. And it seems they did not go beyond the truth; nay, probably they did not come up to it. For if we consider the number of persons who are to be judged,