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dency to relieve the wearied attention of the reader. Before bishop Newton breathed the contagious air of the house of Lords and the court of St. James's, he wrote like an ardent friend of liberty. In proof of this, I cite a passage from one of the more early of his Dissertations. It must,' says he, afford all readers of an exalted taste and generous sentiments, all the friends and lovers of liberty, a very sensible pleasure to hear the prophets exulting over such tyrants and oppressors as the kings of Assyria. In the xivth chapter of Isaiah there is an epinikion, or a triumphant ode upon the fall of Babylon. It represents the infernal mansions as moved, and the ghosts of deceased tyrants as rising to meet the king of Babylon, and congratulate his coming among them.The Greek poet Alcæus, who is so celebrated for his hatred to tyrants, and whose odes were animated with the spirit of liberty no less than with the spirit of poetry, we may presume to say, never wrote any thing comparable to it. But not only in this particular, but in general the scriptures, though often perverted to the purposes of tyranny, are yet in their own nature calculated to promote the civil as well as the religious liberties of mankind. True religion, and virtue, and liberty are more nearly related, and more intimately connected with each other, than people commonly consider12'

But a change of situation dictated a change of language, and insensibly produced an alteration of sentiment. In 1780 bp. Newton sounded the trumpet of alarm against the associations, which peaceably assembled to promote a parliamentary reform, and which were at that time zealously supported by the duke of Richmond and by William Pitt. In a letter3, addressed by the bishop of Bristol to the house of commons, and distributed among its members,

52 Diss. on the Proph. vol. I. p. 311. Equality, in its rational acceptation, as relating to civil privileges and impartial laws, is interwoven with Christianity itself: they must live or perish together.' Spirit of Christianity compared with the Spirit of the Times, by Gilbert Wakefield, p. 27.

53 Inserted in vol. I. of his Works.

he says, ' Assert your dignity, maintain your authority.— Without your exertions there will be an utter end of all law and of all government. All such associations should be suppressed and strictly forbidden in future, and all such committee-men should be punished as TRAITORS to their king and country.' The people cannot,' says the prelate in this letter, now complain of a corrupt parliament;' and he recommends, that the election of members of parliament should be rendered less popular. The greater the property, the greater in proportion should be the number of votes. It cannot be fitting or proper, that the needy and necessitous should enjoy the same privileges and prerogatives as the rich and opulent.' Convinced that servants in particular ought to be placed in a state of greater subjection to the rich, he asks, whether a law should not be framed, for granting to masters a just authority over them? It may also deserve consideration, whether some corporal correction, so many blows, so many lashes, may not be properly inflicted under certain regulations for certain faults, and have as good an effect in domestic as in military discipline?' Perhaps the mode of treating the Africans in the West-India islands would have furnished his lordship with some valuable hints for the completion of his plan. The propriety of shackling freedom of debate is another of the topics enforced by him in this curious. circular letter. There are schools of oratory,' says he, where men assemble, and harangue, and argue in imitation of the debates in parliament.' Shocked that they should have the impudence in this manner to imitate their superiors, the bishop recommends, that justices of the peace should be empowered to regulate, and, if they please, to suppress, all societies for public debate and discussion.

In this letter also he expresses his regret, that the power of ecclesiastics should have had so great a diminution in this country. Censures, penances, excommunications

have,' he exclaims, lost their force; the canons are become no more than bruta fulmina, and are no more regard

ed. If processes are commenced in the spiritual court, they are soon removed by appeals to the civil courts.' But that his lordship's readers will sympathise with him in his sorrow, or regard this as any very terrible evil is not perhaps perfectly certain, At Bristol, he had, however, the satisfaction of persecuting a number of Roman Catholics, and an opportunity of proving, that the prelates of this country have not lost all their authority. These Catholics of Bristol, it seems, had been guilty of the crime of preparing to open a public chapel. Having appointed the priest and the proprietor of the building to meet him at the house of the mayor of Bristol, his lordship there explained to them the heinousness of their offence. He told them, that 'to presume upon opening a public mass-house in such a public place was so daring an affront, so contemptuous a defiance of all law and authority, that no government would or could endure it;' and he declared to them, that if they should still persist in their purpose, he was authorised by the minister to declare unto them, that he would employ the whole force of government, and prosecute them to the utmost severity of the laws+ His lordship's threats produced their natural effect. Those, who had the audacity (I am using a word in unison with the prelate's own expressions) to form the design of publicly worshipping God in their own way, and of following the dictates of their consciences, in the city of Bristol, were compelled to abandon it, and to convert the building to a different purpose.

Speaking of those who conducted the opposition against Lord North's administration, our courtly prelate says; they

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54 These are the bishop's own words, as recorded by him in his Life, p. 88. This, which was written by himself, was published with his works in 1782. In one of the more early of his Dissertations on Prophecy (vol. I. p. 244), he says, they are only pretended friends to the church, but real enemies to religion, who encourage persecution of any kind.' Afterwards perhaps he thought, that he who has attained to the episcopal dignity is so far elevated above the mass of mankind, as to be exempted from the observance of those rules, which ought to regulate the conduct of common men.

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have advanced and propagated such levelling notions, as would not only be the ruin of our happy constitution, but are subversive of all law, of all government, of all society whatever; that all men are born equals; that every man is his own governor and legislator; that no man ought to pay taxes who is not represented; that elections of members of parliament should be annual; that every man of the age of twenty-one should have a vote; that the power of the people is supreme above all; that the people have a right to call their governors to account, and to redress all griev ances; that the King was made for the people, and not the people for the King; that the King is only a servant of the people; that the people have deposed and murdered Kings, and may again55. Little did this right reverend author suspect, that these detestable notions, before the expiration of the 18th century, would obtain throughout France a general currency. Apprised that the death of the bp. of Bristol took place in the year 1782, one should be tempted to conclude, were there not evidence to the contrary, that the passage recited above was copied from the debates in parliament, and from the speech of some living prelate, who had deemed it expedient to abuse the French nation, and to declaim against French principles.

There is also another prelate and writer on prophecy, from whom I have had very frequent occasion to quote, whose inconsistencies and degeneracy are well adapted for illustrating the baleful effects, which naturally result from

55 Thus he expresses himself in the Account of his own Life, p. 124 But his Life of Milton (p. 28), prefixed to his edition of the Paradise Lost, will prove, that there was a time, when he could speak even of the last of these opinions, without testifying the slightest disapprobation of it; and could express himself in such a manner, as if he believed it to be true, and that the truth of it was capable of proof. It was, says he, in a house in High Holborn, that Milton prosecuted his studies till the king's trial and death, when the Presbyterians declaiming tragically against the king's execution, and asserting that his person was sacred and inviolable, provoked him to write the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, proving that it is lawful to call a tyrant to account, and to depose and put him to death.'

a situation in the sunshine of the court, and from the possession of exalted rank in the church. It is the present bishop of Worcester to whom I refer, an ecclesiastic, certainly not less learned nor less enlightened than the late bishop of Bristol. The succeeding extracts transcribed from his works, and an acquaintance with the maxims by which his actions have been regulated, will be sufficient to shew, that there has been an entire want of harmony between his sentiments as a man, and his conduct as a bishop.

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When bp. Hurd was nothing more than the fellow of a College, and the minister of St. Andrew's the Little in Cambridge, he then asserted, that Rational Enquiry is the Pride and Prerogative of human nature;' and that Religion itself is founded in Free Enquiry, and the Liberty of Private Judgments. But when he was raised from the rank of a batchelor in Divinity to an episcopal throne, he then declared himself, in his primary visitation charge, to be an advocate for Compulsion in matters of religion, for that is the word his lordship has thought proper to employ. In this charge, he discovered himself to be of opinion, that the New Testament cannot safely be entrusted in the hands of mankind, until its doctrines have been modelled at the discretion of princes and priests; and prostituted his talents in defending the imposition of creeds and modern formularies of artificial theology"; formularies, which

56 See a Serm. on Prov. xxii. 6, preached at Cambridge by Richard Hurd, B. D. in 1753, p. 14.

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57 See the Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Litchfield and Coventry, at the bishop's primary visitation in 1775 and 1776. When 'persons in high stations in the church,' says Dr. Hartley (On Man, vol. II. p. 371), have their eyes enlightened, and see the corruptions and deficiencies of it, they must incur the prophetical censures in the highest degree, if they still concur, nay, if they do not endeavor to reform and purge out these defilements.' To the attention of bp. Hurd, and the other ecclesiastics, who occupy the episcopal bench, as to the persons principally accountable for a long list of theological dogmata being still arbitrarily imposed upon the minds of thousands, I would recommend one of our Saviour's most awful denunciations. Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh! Mat. xviii. 7.

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