gunpowder treason; and on the 30th of January, in the following year, another on the martyrdom of King Charles I. In that august assembly he attended as often as the duties of his bishopric would permit him On every occasion he evinced himself a steady defender of the rights and privileges of the church of England; and in the debates on the union of England and Scotland, he opposed that measure on account of the danger which he apprehended the church might sustain if it were carried into effect. The last time he was able to appear in the house of lords was on the 20th of January, 1707-8. Bishop Beveridge held the see of St Asaph only three years, seven months, and twenty days, dying at his apartments in the cloisters in Westminster-abbey, on the 5th of March, 1707-8, in the seventy-first year of his age.

Bishop Bull.

BORN A. D. 1634.-DIED A. D. 1709.

GEORGE BULL, bishop of St David's, was born at Wells, in Somersetshire, on the 25th of March, 1634. He was dedicated by his father to the church from his infancy; the parent having declared at the baptismal font, that if it pleased God to spare his son's life, he would educate him with a view to his entering into holy orders. The father died while his son was a mere child; but the wish which had been so near his heart, with regard to him, was ultimately gratified, young Bull having pursued his studies at Oxford with a steady view towards the ministerial profession. Previous to his being sent to the university, he had laid the foundations of his classical learning at the free school of Tiverton, the master of which, Samuel Butler, was an excellent classical scholar, and a successful teacher of youth. It was Butler's usual method, when he gave his boys themes for verses, to press the to exert themselves and do their best, because he judged how far each boy's capacity would carry him: but he always told George Bull that he expected from him verses like those of Ovid, "because," said he, "I know you can do it ;" intimating that his scholar had a capacity and genius that enabled him to excel in such exercises.

While at Oxford, Bull attracted the notice of his tutors and sup riors by his skill in dialectics, and his readiness and success as a disputant. He continued at Oxford till 1649, when he retired with the other members of the university who declined to take the new oath imposed by the parliament. Bull, accompanied by his tutor, Mr Ackland, withdrew to North Cadbury in Somerset, where he devoted his retirement to the further prosecution of those studies which he had begun at the university. About the age of twenty, he began to study the fathers of the English church, such as Hooker, Hammond, Taylor, and others, and shortly afterwards was ordained deacon and priest on the same day by Dr Skinner, the ejected bishop of Oxford. Bull was at this time short of the age required by the canons of his church in candidates for the priesthood; but the bishop thought that the pressure and difficulty of the times, and the need that the church was in of ministers with qualifications for the sacred office, of a stamp similar to those of Bull's,

authorised him to depart from the strict letter of the canon in his ordination.

His first benefice was that of St George's near Bristol, where he soon acquired great popularity by his assiduous attention to his parochial duties. As a preacher, too, he was highly popular. An incident which occurred soon after his coming to this living, contributed very much to the establishing of his reputation as a preacher. One Sunday when he had begun his sermon, as he was turning over his Bible to explain some texts of Scripture which he had quoted, it happened that his notes, contained in several small pieces of paper, flew out of his Bible into the middle of the church, upon which many of the congregation fell into laughter, concluding that the young preacher would be nonplussed for want of his materials; but some of the more sober and better-natured sort gathered up the scattered notes, and carried them to him in the pulpit. Bull took them, and perceiving that most of the audience— consisting chiefly of sea-faring persons were rather inclined to triumph over him under that surprise, he clapped them into his book again and shut it, and then, without referring any more to them, went on with the subject he had begun. It happened once, while he was preaching, that a quaker came into the church, and in the middle of the sermon, cried out, 66 George, come down, thou art a false prophet and an hireling!" whereupon the parishioners, who loved their minister exceedingly, feil upon the poor quaker with such fury, that Mr Bull was obliged to come down out of the pulpit to quiet them, and to save him from the effects of their resentment. After they were somewhat pacified, Mr Bull began to expostulate with the quaker concerning his misbehaviour; but the people perceiving the silly enthusiast to be perfectly confounded, and not able to speak a word of sense in his own defence, fell upon him a second time with such violence, that had not Bull, by great entreaties, prevailed upon them to spare him, and to be satisfied with turning him out of the church, he would hardly have escaped with his life: Bull then went up again into the pulpit, and finished his sermon. These incidents, which we give nearly in the words of his biographer, Nelson, are sufficiently characteristic of the temper and spirit of the times in which Bull commenced his pulpit-ministrations. In 1658 he was presented to the rectory of Suddington-StMary, near Cirencester in Gloucestershire.

The Restoration opened the way for Bull's preferment in the church. In 1662, the lord-high-chancellor, Clarendon, presented him to the vicarage of Suddington-St-Peter's, at the special request of the diocesan, Bishop Nicholson. It was during the twenty-seven years that Bull held this vicarage and the adjoining rectory, that he wrote most of those works which have given him a high place among English episcopalian divines. His study, says Nelson, was at this period the scene of his most exquisite pleasure, and he would often declare that he tasted the most refined satisfaction in the pursuit of knowledge, and that, when his thoughts were lively and lucky in his compositions, he found no reason to envy the enjoyment of the most voluptuous epicure. His course of study, indeed, proved prejudicial to his health, because, for many years together, he dedicated the greatest part of the night to that purpose, and contented himself with little sleep.

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In 1669 he published his Harmonia Apostolica,' in which he chiefly

laboured to reconcile the apostles Paul and James on the doctrine of justification, by this theory, that good works which proceed from faith, and are conjoined with faith, are a necessary condition required from us by God, in order to our justification. We need scarcely say that this proposition met with many opponents. It was particularly opposed by Morley, bishop of Winchester; by Dr Barlow, Margaret professor of divinity at Oxford; by Charles Gataker; by Joseph Trueman, whom Nelson aptly describes as a person of a deep and searching genius;" by Dr Tully, principal of St Edmund's hall; John Tombes, Louis Du Moulin, and by De Marets, a French writer. Bull replied to some of these opponents in his Examen Censuræ,' and his Apologia pro Harmonia.'

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In 1680 he finished his next celebrated work, entitled 'Defensio Fidei Nicenæ ex Scriptis quæ extant Catholicorum Doctorum, qui intra tria prima Ecclesiæ Christianæ sæcula floruerunt,' i. e. 66 A Defence of the Nicene Faith, from the writings, which are extant, of the Catholic Doctors who flourished within the three first centuries of the Christian Church." After Bull had finished this work, he offered the copy to three or four booksellers successively, who all refused it, being unwilling to venture the expenses of the impression; so that he brought it home, and entirely laid aside all thoughts of printing it, being in low circumstances himself, and having a large family to support. Thus this learned book might have been buried for ever, had not a worthy friend of the author's, some few years after, advised him to put his neglected copy into the hands of Dr Jane, then regius professor of divinity in the university of Oxford. Accordingly Mr Bull committed his papers to the professor, who, highly approving them, recommended this work to the pious and learned Bishop Fell. That prelate wanted no solicitation to undertake the whole expense of printing it, which was accordingly done at the theatre in Oxford in the year 1685. This book is written against the Arians and Socinians on the one hand, and the Tritheists and Sabellians on the other. The author of Bishop Bull's life has given us a history of the controversy, which occasioned the writing this book, together with a plan of the work, and an account of the uses made of it by some later writers, particularly Dr Samuel Clarke in his Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity,' and Dr Edwards of Cambridge in his Animadversions' on Dr Clarke's book. The Deence is an able, acute, and learned work. But the critique of Father Simon in his Nouvelle Bibliotheque choisie,' upon this piece of English divinity, is well-founded:-"Perhaps," says that learned writer, 'it would have been better if the author had proved the mystery of the Trinity against the Socinians, by clear and formal passages of the New Testament, rather than have opposed against them a tradition, which does not appear altogether constant." And again, “if the learned Bishop Bull had been well skilled in the critique of the Greek copies of the New Testament, and of the ancient Latin copies, he would not have affirmed so positively, that Tertullian and Cyprian have quoted the 7th verse of the fifth chapter of the first epistle of St John, nor would he have alleged that passage against those who believe that it is not genuine."

In 1686 Bull was presented by Archbishop Sancroft to the archdeaconry of Landaff; soon after, the university of Oxford conferred on

him the degree of D. D., " as an acknowledgment of the singular honour done that university, and of the lasting service done to the whole church, by his excellent Defence of the Nicene creed.'" All Dr Bull's Latin works were collected and edited by Dr John Ernest Grabe, in 1703.

In 1705 Bull was elevated to the see of St David's; but he enjoyed the honour of the prelacy only two years. He died on the 27th of September, 1709. The following sketch of this prelate's character is given by the writer of his life, in the Biographia Britannica :'-“ He was tall of stature, and in his younger years thin and pale, but fuller and more sanguine in the middle and latter part of his age; his sight quick and strong, and his constitution firm and vigorous, till indefatigable reading and nocturnal studies, to which he was very much addicted, had first impaired, and at length quite extinguished the one, and subjected the other to many infirmities; for his sight failed him entirely, and his strength to a great degree, some years before he died. But whatever other bodily indispositions he contracted, by intense thinking, and a sedentary life, his head was always free, and remained unaffected to the last. As to the temperature and complexion of hus body, that of melancholy seemed to prevail, but never so far as to indispose his mind for study and conversation. The vivacity of his natural temper exposed him to sharp and sudden fits of anger, which were but of short continuance, and sufficiently atoned for by the goodness and tenderness of his nature towards all his domestics. He had a firmness and constancy of mind, which made him not easily moved when he had once fixed his purposes and resolutions. He had early a true sense of religion; and though he made a short excursion into the paths of vanity, yet he was tirely recover considerable time before he entered into holy orders. His great learning was tempered with that modest and humble opinion of it, that it thereby shone with greater lustre. His actions were no less instructive than his conversation; for his exact knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and of the writings of the primitive fathers of the church, had so effectual an influence upon his practice, that it was indeed a fair, entire, and beautiful image of the prudence and probity, simplicity and benignity, humility and charity, purity and piety, of the primitive Christians. During his sickness, his admirable patience under exquisite pains, and his continual prayers, made it evident that his mind was much fuller of God than of his illness; and he entertained those that attended him with such beautiful and lively descriptions of religion and another world, as if he had a much clearer view than ordinary of what he believed."

Archbishop Sharpe.

BORN A. D. 1644.-DIED A. D. 1713.

JOHN SHARPE was born at Bradford, on the 16th of February, 1644. His father was inclined to puritanism, and a staunch supporter of the parliament party; his mother was an equally zealous royalist. In 1660 young Sharpe was sent to Cambridge, where he pursued knowledge of every description with avidity and proportionate success. The Newtonian philosophy, especially, engaged his attention; but he continued to indulge himself, at the same time, with the lighter branches of literature and science. Burnet says, "he was a great reader of Shakspeare;" and adds, "Dr Mangey, who had married his daughter, told me, that he used to recommend to young divines, the reading of the Scriptures and Shakspeare." In 1667, he took the degree of master of arts; soon afterwards he was ordained deacon and priest on the same day, and became chaplain and tutor in the family of Sir Heneage Finch, then solicitor-general. Through Finch's interest he was appointed to the archdeaconry of Berks, and, in 1675, to the rectory of St Giles in the fields. In 1681, he was presented with the deanery of Norwich. About this period he published some works

upon the subject of schism.

In 1685, on the death of Charles II., he drew up an address for the grand jury of London, upon James's accession, in which he indulged in the strain of affected and servile loyalty of the day. Next year, happening to treat upon some points of the Romish controversy in a manner which gave offence to the king, he was threatened with suspension, and only escaped by petitioning his majesty in a very abject style of submission and flattery. Soon after the accession of the prince of Orange, Sharpe was appointed to the deanery of Canterbury, on the removal of Dr Tillotson to that of St Paul's, and within a short period thereafter he was selected by the king to supply one of the sees vacated by the deprivations of the bishops. The latter preferment, however, met with a peremptory refusal; but Tillotson interposed his influence on behalf of his refractory friend so effectually, that a still more unexpected dignity was soon after conferred upon him; for, on the death of Archbishop Lampleugh, Sharpe was, in May, 1691, appointed to the see of York, which he held for twenty-two years.

At his entrance upon this charge, he laid down to himself certain rules. One was for the encouragement of the clergy, namely, to bestow the prebends in his gift upon such only as were either beneficed in his diocese, or retained in his family Another more properly respected the laity, namely, never to meddle, or anywise concern himself, in the election of members of parliament. It would scarcely be fair to the memory of the archbishop, to say that he was a thoroughgoing tory in his political principles; for, although he generally voted with the high-church party, and was recognised by them as one of their leaders, yet, in a few instances, he did exert his interest in opposition

History, vol. iii. p. 100