He doth not onely move the bread of life, and toss it up and down in generalities, but also breaks it into particular directions. Drawing it down to cases of conscience; that a man may be warranted in his particular actions, whether they be lawfull

or not.

His similes and illustrations are always familiar, never contemptible. Indeed reasons are the pillars of the fabrick of a sermon, but similitudes are the windows which give the best lights. He avoids such stories, whose mention may suggest bad thoughts to the auditours; and will not use a light comparison to make thereof a grave application, for fear lest his poyson go further than his antidote.

He provideth not only wholesome, but plentifull food for his people. Almost incredible was the painfulnesse of Baronius, the compiler of the voluminous annals of the church, who, for thirty years together, preached three or four times a week to the people. As for our minister, he preferreth rather to entertain his people with wholesome cold meat, which was on the table before, than with that, which is hot from the spit, raw and half roasted. Yet, in repetition of the same sermon, every edition hath a new addition, if not of new matter, of new affections. "Of whom (saith St. Paul) we have told you often, and now we tell you weeping.'

He makes not that wearisome, which should ever be welcome. Wherefore his sermons are of an ordinary length, except on extraordinary occasions. What a gift had John Halseback, professour at Vienna, in tediousnesse! who, being to expound the prophet Esay to his auditours, read twenty-one years on the first chapter, and yet finished it not.

He counts the success of his ministry the greatest preferment. Yet herein hath God humbled many painful pastours, in making them to be clouds to rain, not over Arabia the happy, but over the stonie or desert: so that they may complain with the herdsman in the poet :

'Beu mihi, quam pingui macer est mihi taurus in arvo!'

Yet such pastours may comfort themselves, that great is their reward with God in heaven, who measures it not by their successe, but endeavours. Besides, though they see not, their people may feel benefit by their ministry. Yea, the preaching of the word in some places is like the planting of woods, where, though no profit is received for twenty years together, it comes afterwards. And grant that God honours thee not to build his

temple in thy parish, yet thou maist with David provide metall and materialls for Solomon thy successour to build it with.

He is moderate in his tenets and opinions. Not that he gilds over lukewarmnesse in matters of moment, with the title of discretion; but withall he is carefull not to entitle violence in indifferent and inconcerning matters to be zeal. Indeed men of extraordinary tallness (though otherwise little deserving) are made porters to lords: and those of unusuall littlenesse are made ladies' dwarfs; whilst men of moderate stature may want masters. Thus, many notorious for extremities may find favourers to prefer them, whilst moderate men in the middle truth may want any

to advance them.

As

Lying on his death-bed he bequeathes to each of his parishioners his precepts and example for a legacie; and they, in requital, erect every one a monument for him, in their hearts. for outward estate, he commonly lives in too bare pasture to die fat. It is well if he hath gathered any flesh, being more in blessing than in bulk."

We will set by the side of this the character of

THE GOOD PARISHIONER.

"THOUGH neare to the church, he is not far from God. Like unto Justus, Acts xviii. 8. One that worshippeth God, and his house joyned hard to the synagogue.' Otherwise, if his distance from the church be great, his diligence is the greater to comc thither in season. He is timely at the beginning of prayer. Yet as Tullie charged some dissolute people for being such sluggards, that they never saw the sun rising or setting, as being always up after the one, and abed before the other: so some negligent people never hear prayers begun, or sermon ended; the confession being past before they come, and the blessing not come before they are passed away.

In sermon, he sets himself to heare God in the minister. Therefore divesteth he himself of all prejudice; the jaundice in the eyes of the soul presenting colours false unto it. He hearkens very attentively. 'Tis a shame when the church itself is cœmeterium, wherein the living sleep above the ground, as the dead do beneath.

At every point that concerns himself he turns down a leaf in his heart; and rejoiceth that God's word hath pierced him, as hoping that whilest his soul smarts, it heals. And, as it is no manners for him that hath good venison before him, to ask whence it came, but rather fairly to fall to it; so hearing an excellent sermon, he never enquires whence the preacher had it, but falls aboard to practise it.

He accuseth not his minister of spight in particularising him. It does not follow, that the archer aimed because the arrow hit. Rather, our parishioner reasoneth thus: If my sin be notorious, how could the minister misse it? If secret, how could he hit it without God's direction? But foolish hearers make even the bells of Aaron's garments "to clink as they think." And a guilty conscience is like a whirlpool, drawing in all to itself, which otherwise would passe by. One, causelessly disaffected to his minister, complained that he in his last sermon had personally inveighed against him; and accused him thereof to a grave religious gentleman in the parish. Truly (said the gentleman) I had thought in his sermon he had meant me; for it touched my heart.' This rebated the edge of the other's anger.

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He is bountiful in contributing to the repair of God's house. For though he be not of their opinion, who would have the churches under the gospell conformed to the magnificence of Solomon's temple; and adorn them so gaudily that devotion is more distracted then raised, and men's souls rather dazzled then lightened; yet he conceives it fitting, that such sacred places should be decently and properly maintained.

He is respectfull to his minister's widow and posterity, for his sake. My prayer shall be, that ministers' widows and children may never stand in need of such relief; and may never want such relief, when they stand in need of it."

REVIEW.

1

ARTICLE IX.

A Statement of the Proceedings in the First Church at Dedham, respecting the settlement of a Minister in 1818, with some considerations on Congregational Church polity. By a Member of the said Church and Parish, at the request of a multitude within and without. Cambridge: printed by Cummings and Hilliard.

A Discourse delivered before the Convention of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts, at their Annual Meeting in Boston, June 1, 1820. By AARON BANCROFT, D. D. Pastor of the second Congregational Church in Worcester. Boston: printed by Wells and Lilly. 1820.

It is difficult to say, which is the most remarkable, the sudden stop which was put to the progress of reformation in the middle New Series-vol. II.

33

of the seventeenth century, the period of the emigration of our ancestors, or the rapid change which has taken place in this respect within the last few years. That the bold and fearless spirit, which distinguished Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, and the early reformers, should have been so soon subdued, can only be accounted for by political causes, or by the operation of human passions, such as we shall endeavour to explain.

The arm of civil authority in Great Britain, supported and encouraged as it was by the joy of the whole nation, at being relieved from the hypocritical and heartless tyranny and nonsense of the Roundheads and Levellers, was too strong for the few serious and enlightened friends of rational religious freedom, and the thinking part of the Dissenters have since that period been sufficiently thankful in being freed from actual persecution, and in being gradually restored to a very limited portion of their civil rights.

It is not wonderful, therefore, that in England, the hierarchy, with all its strange and unscriptural doctrines and forms, half popish, and half protestant, should have continued to this day to check the progress of free inquiry, and to prevent the adoption of the pure and simple forms of worship and doctrine of the primitive church. Such has been the case, and such most assuredly is the cause of it.--We might indeed add, that ambition having been satisfied by throwing off the Romish yoke, it was exceedingly convenient for the support of the throne and of the aristocracy, to retain the patronage derived from the power of making so many ecclesiastical lords, and of giving away one tenth part of all the revenues of the land.

It is a little more difficult to account for the intolerant spirit of our persecuted ancestors, a spirit which prevailed in our country from its first settlement till within the last half century, and whose speedy extinction may be hoped for and argued from the convulsive paroxysms under which it is at present suffering.

The prevalence of this odious and unchristian spirit, may be in part attributed simply to the love of power, a love, the most cherished, and the most universal. This was encouraged by the existence of a single, overpowering sect; and we may ascribe our gradual liberation from ecclesiastical domination, and our restoration to the rights of conscience, in no inconsiderable degree, to the fantastic multiplication of different opinions and persuasions, (some indeed not entitled to much respect, except for the sincerity of those who hold them,) which now renders combination to oppress and tyrannize, difficult, if not impossible.

Had there been but one sect in our country, it is probable that it would always have had it in its power, as in the early period

of our history, to avail itself of the arm of flesh, and the sword of the civil magistrate, to teach what the doctrines of scripture are, and to suppress all opinions contrary to the lawful human creed. Dissenters from the established faith, (no matter how established) have in all ages been deemed "heretics,”-it being as true in religious disputes, that those who fail of procuring a majority to their sentiments are heretics, as that those, in civil contentions, who are not successful, are deemed rebels. Names, in all such cases, change with power.

This is the great secret of the authority ascribed to the practice and opinions of the church. Out of the 1800 years since our Saviour's death, and that of his apostles and disciples, there has only been a short period of fifty years, and that in America alone, in which opinion has been truly free; and even here, it is not free now, except in a small spot in Massachusetts; for though we have no longer the prison and the faggot, we have the averted eye, the affected sneer, the refusal of courtesy, to those who dare to interpret the scriptures for themselves.

These things may explain in some degree, the paradox, that error should so long have usurped the place of Divine revelation.

But it was not probably a love of power alone, which excited and inflamed the persecuting and narrow spirit of the early divines and brethren of the New England churches. Though persecuted themselves, they had not imbibed the truly catholic spirit of the gospel. Ages are necessary to effect any important changes in the characters of nations, or in opinions. Many of their early prejudices were too deeply rooted, to be suddenly, or by a hasty effort, torn up. They required something like the process of subduing our forests; the trees must be first girdled, then cut down and burnt; but the cultivator must wait patiently, till the roots and stumps are rotten, before he can hope to have a smooth and even field, yielding readily to the plough, and offering no obstacles to his industry and skill. Our ancestors, though they deemed it horrible to have 2000 pious ministers, of their own opinions, ejected in one day for nonconformity, and though they shuddered at the picture in their primers, of the pious Rogers, with his nine children, at the stake; yet would have deemed it a pious work to burn an organ, or a cassock, or a quaker who should return after expulsion, because their dread of episcopal power, with all its abominations of tythes, and simony, and plurality of benefices, and the consequent and indeed shameful poverty of the inferior clergy, were still fresh and festering in their minds; and as to the quakers, they were afraid that their own infallibility should be called in question; for it was, till within