And oh! still harder lesson! how to die; Springs into liberty, and light, and life.' It was thus that he passed imperceptibly away from this world to the next. He did not die-he slept. His earthly remains were silently removed, from his house to his tomb, at about two o'clock on the morning of Tuesday the 22d of May. His burial took place at Sundridge in Kent; where he had for some time attended the erection of a vault, with that view. It is in the chapel there; to which, report avers, he has be- ́ queathed £252 yearly, for the better maintenance of its minister. Bishop Porteus is stated to have been very partial to Sundridge, where he preached his first sermon; and where, rurally retreated, he always spent some part of each summer, in a small house of his own, removed from every species of ostentation. St. Paul's great bell announced the Bishop's decease, to the metropolis; and the pulpit of Fulham was hung with black, in respect to him. Otherwise the known worth of this Prelate, I must say, has been strangely left without due commemoration. It is still in the Rev. Mr. Usko's power, himself mastering as many as fifteen languages, to pay some Lasting Tribute, meritoriously and extensively, to the character of one to whom he owes his own great advancement in the church. J9 The person of Bishop Porteus is described as having been handsome in his youth; and that, until of late, he preserved a florid hue, and features that bespoke a manly beauty.' He was, at the time of his death, Dean of the Royal Chapel; a Member of the Privy-Council; a Governor of the Charter-House; Provincial Dean of Canterbury; a Trustee of the British Museum; President of the Society for the Conversion of Negro-Slaves, and Vice-President of the Asylum, and of the General Lying-in-Hospital at Bayswater; one of the Court of . Assistants of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy; President of the Society for maintaining, educating, and apprenticing Poor Orphan-Children of Clergymen ; Associate of Bray's Institution for Parochial Libraries, and President of the Proclamation-Society against Vice. GERRARD ANDREWES, D.D. Towards the conclusion of the present volume, the reader will find some account of this preacher's Lectures on the Liturgy, during the Lent of 1809, in St. James's Church.'- -See page 28. GERRARD ANDREWES, D.D. OF ST. JAMES'S CHURCH, IN PICCADILLY. Began on February 14th, and ended on March the 21st, 1809. PRAYER, presenting the sole medium of intercourse 'between the creature and his Creator, between humanity and Divinity, forms one of the most important offices in which the race of man can possibly engage. Numerous are the formularies of devotional intercession, national as well as individual, written by U 6 divers pious persons, which have accordingly appeared in aid of religious prayer. Christianity has been eminently productive of such compositions. Many of our most distinguished characters, among the laity as clergy, in state as in church, have bequeathed to us inestimable examples of pious prayers. As to this part of national devotion, common-prayer, it is difficult to conceive, at the present distance of time, the veneration in which it was held by our venerable ancestors. It is not without a mystery,' said the noble Bacon, when he was Chancellor of England, in one of his Charges to the King's Verge, that Christ's coat had no seam; nor no more should the Church, if it were possible. Therefore if any Minister refuse to use the Book of CommonPrayer, or wilfully swerveth, in Divine Service, from that book; or if any person whatsoever doth scandalize that book, and speak openly and maliciously in derogation of that book; such men do but make a rent in the garment, and such are by you to be enquired of.' One of Queen Elizabeth's courtiers, according to the same authority, besought her, with much voice, on the morning of her coronation, before numbers of her courtiers, that in this good time, it being customary to release prisoners then, there might be four or five principal prisoners more released; which were the four Evangelists and the Apostle St. Paul, who had been long shut up in an unknown tongue, as if they were in prison. We live in other times. Centuries of delusion, the ages of priestcraft, are passed away; and our national CommonPrayer, as well as the Evangelists and Saint Paul, emancipated from their imprisonment, cordially address us in our mother-tongue! This is our boast, religiously and politically, that we know the grounds upon which we are to act. 6 Among other reasons for set Forms of Prayer,' observes Addison, I have often thought it a very good one, that by this means the folly and extravagance of men's desires may be kept within due bounds; and not break out in absurd and ridiculous petitions, on so great and solemn an occasion.' Here then, as far as reason looks, is one of the principal arguments in support of set Forms of Prayer' altogether. Piety, nevertheless, might start some objections to any system, however in itself excellent, which tends to restrict the unstudied ebullitions of the heart, when aspiring, either in praise or prayer, imploration or thanksgiving, to the Divine Author of all its mercies, and the Rock of its refuge! He who alone can hear the soul's returning sigh,' who is not only the giver of all good things, but the author of all good thoughts, will doubtless prefer, 6 |