is due to the "tender mercy of our God," since towards the production of it man could do no more than he can do towards causing the natural sun to rise upon the earth. The blessed effects of the day-spring which then dawned from on high, and gradually increased more and more nto the perfect day, were the dispersion of ignorance, which is the darkness of the intellectual world; the awakening of men from sin, which is the sleep of the soul; and the conversion and direction of their hearts and inclinations into "the way of peace," that is, of reconciHation to God by the blood of Christ; to themselves by the answer of a conscience cleansed from sin, and to one another by mutual love." Happy is the people that is in such a case; yea happy is the people, whose God is the Lord. They are the children of the light and of the day. Their sun shall no more go down, neither shall their moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be unto them an everlasting light, and the days of their mourning shall be ended.".

LETTER from Dr. SAMUEL JOHNSON to a YOUNG. CLERGYMAN.

DEAR SIR,

NO

OT many days ago Dr. L. shewed me a letter, in which you make kind mention of me: I hope, therefore, that you will not be displeased that I endeavour to preserve your good will by some observations which your letter suggested to me.

You are afraid of falling into some improprieties in the daily service, by reading to an audience that requires no exactness. Your fear, I hope, secures you from danger. They who contract bad habits, are such as have no fear. It is impossible to do the same thing very often, without some peculiarity of manner; but that manner may be good or bad, and a little care will at least preserve it from being bad: to make it very good, there must, I think be something of natural or acquired casual felicity, which cannot be taught.

Your present method of making your sermons seems very judicious. Few frequent preachers can be supposed

to

to havé sermons more their own, than your's will be. Take care to register somewhere or other, the authors from whom your several discourses are borrowed; and do not imagine that you shall always remember even what perhaps you now think it impossible to forget.

My advice however is, that you attempt from time to time an original sermon, and in the labour of composition do not burden your mind with too much at once; do not exact from yourself at one effort of excogitation, propriety of thought and elegance of expression. Invent first, and then embellish. The production of something where nothing was before, is an act of greater energy than the expansion or decoration of the thing produced. Set down diligently your thoughts as they rise, in the first words that occur, and when you have matter you will easily give it form; nor perhaps will this method be always necessary, for by habit your thoughts and diction will flow together.

The composition of sermons is not very difficult; the divisions not only help the memory of the hearer, but direct the judgment of the writer; they supply sources of invention, and keep every part in its proper place.

What I like least in your letter is your account of the manners of the parish; from which I gather, that it has been long neglected by the parson. The dean of Carlisle*, who was then a little rector in Northamptonshire, told me that it might be discerned whether or no there was a clergyman resident in a parish, by the civil or savage manners of the people. Such a congregation as yours stands in much need of reformation and I would not have you think it impossible to reform them. A very savage parish was civilized by a decayed gentlewoman, who came among them to teach a petty school. My learned friend, Dr. Wheelert of Oxford, when he was a young man, had the care of a neighbouring parish for fifteen pounds a year, which he was never paid; but he counted it a convenience, that it compelled him to make a sermon weekly. One woman he could not bring to the communion, and when he reproved or exhorted her, she only answered that she was no scholar. He was advised to set some good woman or man of the parish, a little wiser than herself, to talk to her in language level to her mind.

* Dr. Percy, afterwards Bishop of Dromore.

Late Poetry Professor at Oxford. He died the 21st of July, 1783. Vol. X Churchm. Mag. April 1806.

Such

Such honest, I may call them holy artifices, must be practised by every clergyman, for all means must be tried by which souls may be saved. Talk to your people, however, as much as you can, and you will find, that the more frequently you converse with them upon religious subjects, the more willingly they will attend, and more submissively they will learn. A clergyman's diligence always makes him venerable. I think I have now only to say, that in the momentous work that you have undertaken, I pray God to bless you.

OHN Parkhurst, a name on more accounts than one,

dear to biblical scholars, was born at Guildford in Surrey, and sent when very young to Oxford, where he was educated in grammar learning in the school adjoining Magdalen College, under Mr. Thomas Robertson. In 1529, he was elected probationer-fellow of Merton College, and after proceeding to his degree of M. A. he entered into holy orders. He obtained the rectory of Cleve in Gloucestershire, where he did a great deal of good by his hospitality and charity. After the death of King Edward VI. he went into voluntary exile, and did not return till the accession of Elizabeth, by whom he was made Bishop of Norwich in 1560. He translated the apocryphal books from Wisdom, to the end in the Bishop's Bible; and published besides, 1. Epigrammata in Mortem duorum Fratrum Suffolciensium, Caroli et Henrici Brandon, 4to. 1572. 2. Ludicra sive Epigrammata juvenilia, 4to. 1573. 3. Epigrammata Seria, 8vo. 1560. Bishop Parkhurst died in 1574, and was buried in Nor wich Cathedral.

The

The mention of this worthy bishop, naturally brings to our grateful remembrance a learned divine of both his names, who lived in our own times. We advert to John Parkhurst, A. M. who died at Epsom in 1797. This pious and ingenious man was a native of London, and educated on the foundation of Clare Hall, Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship in 1751. He distinguished himself by two excellent works, viz. a Hebrew and English Lexicon, in one volume quarto; and a Greek and English Lexicon, likewise in quarto. They have been reprinted in large octavo, and are of inestimable value; though the worthy author was but too fond of obtruding the peculiar notions and fanciful etymologies of Hutchinson, Holloway, and Bate, as indisputable authorities. Mr. Parkhurst was likewise the author of a well-reasoned pamphlet in vindication of the doctrine of the pre-existence of Christ against Priestley.

SAMUEL HOARD.

At a time when the Calvinistic controversy has been revived, and agitated to a considerable extent, it would not be amiss to reprint this able writer's unanswerable book entitled "God's Love to Mankind manifested by disproving his absolute Decree for their Damnation," London, 1633, 8vo. and again in 1673, 4to.

Mr. Hoard was born in London; and in 1614 became clerk or chorister of All Souls College, Oxford, where he took his degrees in arts. Afterwards being made chaplain to Robert Earl of Warwick, he was presented by him to the rectory of Moreton, near Ongar, in Essex, and about the same time he was admitted to the degree of B. D. He died at Moreton, in 1657. He was at first a zealous Calvinist, but afterwards he changed his sentiments; and opposed the predestinarian scheme with great strengh of argument. Dr. Thomas Pierce, in his controversy with Dr. Edward Reynolds, speaks thus of Hoard and his book: "Behold the liberal and ingenious confession of that conscientious and learned Calvinist [Hoard], I say conscientious, because he was not ashamed to retract his errors, nor to publish his retractation; nor did he fear what might follow by his contracting the displeasures of a revengeful party. Next I say learned, because he confuteth his former judgment, in an unanswerable manner, which is the likelier to be so, because an answer

002

hath

hath been attempted by the learned men of that party, who could arrive no higher than to attempt it (neither of them avowing the very same doctrines which he opposed), and betray a dissatisfaction in other performances; why else was it not attempted by more than one? Last of all, I say Calvinist; and then discover the reasons why the motives to his repentance must needs precede the change of life. He disliked that sect before he left it, however his leaving of it might tread upon the heels of his dislike."

THOMAS WEAVER.

This poet, now forgotten, deserves to be remembered for his loyalty and his narrow escape from the fury of the fanatics. He was a native of Worcester; and educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his master's degree in 1640; about which time he became a canon of the cathedral there; but was rejected by the parliamentary visitors in 1648. He then, says Wood, shifted from place to place, and lived upon his wits, a specimen of which he published to the world, entituled "Songs and Poems of Love and Drollery," 1654, 8vo. But the said Songs and Poems being looked upon by the godly men of those times as seditious and libellous against the government, he was imprisoned and afterwards tried for his life. Whereupon his book being produced in open court (after it had been proved that he was the author of it), the Judge read some pages, and then spake to this effect:"Gentlemen, the person that we have here before us is a scholar and a man of wit. Our forefathers had learning so much in honour, that they enacted, that those that could but as much as read, should never be hanged, unless for some great crime; and shall we respect it so little as to put to death a man of parts? I must tell you, I should be very unwilling to be the person that should condemn him, and yet I must be forced to it if the jury bring him in guilty." So upon this speech the jury brought him in not guilty. He died in 1662.

ARCHBISHOP DOLBEN.

John Dolben was educated at Westminster School, and next at Christ Church, Oxford. In the civil war, when that city was made a garrison for the king, he entered a volunteer into the royal army; and acquitted

himself