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necessity in the present times, of taking every measure to uphold the Church Establishment, and of avoiding every measure which may tend to destroy or even weaken it. And if his clergy should infer from this general principle, that a Society which tends to maintain the Establishment, is preferable to one which cannot have such a tendency, we trust that the "godly admonition," as Mr. G. contemptuously terms it, will not be construed into the mandate of a pope, but received as good advice, which is so much the more to be regarded as proceeding from a Bishop of our Established Church.

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At page 21, Mr. G. laments that a comparison should ever have been made, between the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, and the Society of which he is the advocate. He even asserts that they who have made the comparison, are "the worst enemies of the credit and respectability of the elder Society. We are well assured that the elder Society entertains a very different opinion of its defenders: and we are equally assured, that in the elder Society no small indignation will be excited, when the members of it hear the reason assigned by Mr. G. why they ought likewise to support the younger Society. He says at page 22; "Each Society has a department which the other cannot occupy." Now the elder Society has not less than four different departments; 1. The distribution of the Bible; 2. The distribution of the Prayer-book; 3. The distribution of Religious Tracts, in unison with the principles of the Established Church; and 4. The promotion of Christian Missions. That the elder Society therefore has three departments, which the younger cannot occupy, is very true: for the first of these departments, is the only one which can be occupied by the younger Society. But what Mr. G. means, when he says, that each Society has a department which the other cannot occupy, we are quite unable to comprehend. We are not ignorant that many advocates of the younger Society would gladly degrade the elder Society into a mere Society for the distribution of Tracts; and confine the distribution of Bibles to the younger Society. But we never heard before that this was a department, which the elder Society cannot occupy. If Mr. G. should explain himself by saying, that he means the distribution of Bibles in foreign languages, this again is a department which was occupied by the elder Society, and in which the elder Society exerted itself to the extent of its means, more than half a century before the younger Society existed. It is true that the younger Society, partly by taking credit for numerous translations, which would have been equally made, if no such Society had existed, and partly by the immense contributions, which it has received from every quarter, has been enabled to produce a list of biblical versions, of which

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the elder Society cannot boast. But let not the elder Society be charged with neglect on this account, and still less with the inability to promote translations of the Scriptures, when its career has been arrested by those very persons, who now preténd that the younger Society has a department, which the elder cannot occupy. If the immense funds, which Churchmen have bestowed on the former, had been bestowed on the latter, we should have seen, that no other Bible Society was wanted, for any purpose, which could be contemplated by a true Churchman.

Mr. Gisborne then proceeds to argue, that if a Society composed of Churchmen and dissenters united for the exclusive purpose of distributing the Bible be dangerous to the Established Church, then is the Naval and Military Bible Society, which was instituted in 1780 for the purpose of distributing Bibles alone among the Army and Navy, to which Churchmen and Dissenters indifferently belong, an institution dangerous and prejudicial to the Establishment. And yet many of the opposers of the British and Foreign Bible Society are active supporters of the Naval and Military.

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To the premises of this argument we fully agree, but we object to the inference for a reason which we are assured will appear conclusive. It is true that Churchmen and Dissenters may unite in this institution, but we shall recur to our former argument, and enquire into the consequences of such an union. Though men of all denominations are admitted both into the army and into the navy, yet the religious observances there enforced are those of the Established Church. To Roman Catholics alone the liberty of attending their own chapel is by a recent act allowed. The Bibles therefore thus distributed by the joint contributions of Churchmen and Dissenters, must be accompanied by the prayers, the ordinances, and the doctrines of the Established Church. Thus then in this Society the sacrifice is made by the Dissenters, and if we inspect the reports, we shall find that there are few enough who have ever thought it worth while to make it. For this reason therefore the very same Churchmen who oppose the one Society, are fully justified in supporting the other. As we conceive that this reason alone is of itself sufficient to establish the distinction, we shall not enter into a further demonstration of the practical difference which appears in the conduct and in the spirit of the two Societies.

We should now proceed to animadvert upon the attack which Mr. Gisborne has thought proper to make upon the Bishop of Lincoln, were not all his inuendos conceived in a strain of such flippant vulgarity, as to disarm insolence of its sting, and to render malignity itself contemptible. Of the good intentions of Mr. Gisborne we have no doubt, but the next pamphlet which he

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may undertake, we should advise him to submit to some judicious friend, who by fresh arrangement and free alteration, may enable him to give his good intentions their due effect.-We will present our readers with a specimen.

"Were we to represent to ourselves the object of the enemies of the British and Foreign Bible Society accomplished; their feelings on the event would form a curious subject of contemplation. What if we suppose the case, and contemplate an individual under it? What if, by way of adding a little dignity to our fiction, we imagine the individual a bishop? See him entering his library, with looks of astonishment at the wide and lofty pile of letters on his table. He opens them in rapid succession, and reads them with an increasing glow on his countenance. The first announces that the Archbishop of Georgia, and the Heads of the Greek, Catholic, and Armenian churches, who lately united in the Russian Bible Society, having each become convinced of the sinfulness of joining his heretical and schismatical associates, have published an ana thema against the impious Parent of the evil, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and have seceded; and that the Emperor has abolished the institution, and sent its president, Prince Gallitzin into Siberia. The next brings intelligence from Berlin, that, with similar anathemas against our British Society, and in consequence of a similar conviction that the iniquity of orthodox and heterodox association is the same with that of joining in a political union, and furnishing with money and arms, men known to be exciters of sedition, abettors of privy conspiracy, and promoters of rebellion the Bible Society in Prussia is dissolved. Another bears tidings, in every point corresponding, from Wurtemburg; another from Sweden; another from Copenhagen; another from Poland; another from Bavaria; another from Switzerland; another from Saxony, another from Hanover. Another imparts the extinction from the same identical cause, and with the same anathemas, of every Bible Society in North America. Others prove the Declaration of the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, and the Letter of the Shah of Persia to Sir Gore Ouseley, to be forgeries. The final packet, 'stretching the parent on the slaughtered children, conveys a joint resolution of the two Houses of Parliament in favour of a bill for the immediate abolition of the British and Foreign Bible Society; and for the resumption and the conflagration of all copies of the Scriptures issued from that contaminated and contaminating Source. O joyful hour for the expectants of the mitre! For on finishing that concluding letter, the good Bishop inevitably drops from his chair suffocated by transports of pious exultation." P. 29,

Such an effusion as this would doubtless have been received with all the tumultuous applause which it deserves, at an auxiliary meeting in the county hall of Stafford, but Mr. Gisborne should remember that what be prints and publishes is subject to

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the examination of a higher tribunal. If however the blindness of his friends, or the flattery of his enemies should induce him again to print, we should advise him to chuse a safer and more appropriate channel for the overflowings of his eloquence, in the pages of the Examiner, or of Mr. Drakard. The latter gentleman will thank him much for any opportunity of revenging himself on the name of LINCOLN.

It would be somewhat amusing to cull the simples of Mr. Gisborne's rhetoric, and to dedicate the bouquet to the travelling orators of Mr. Gisborne's favourite Society. In one place he wishes to say, " that he has heard of a charge lately delivered by the Bishop of Lincoln to a certain import." The reader will admire the ingenuity of Mr. Gisborne in throwing so simple a proposition into the sublime.

"And little as I am disposed or accustomed to yield credence to reported prodigies; I am informed on authority which I know not how I am absolutely to gainsay, that a voice articulately speaking to that import has recently been audible amidst a succession of low thunders, which have rolled from the Humber to the Thames," P. 7.

Again he wishes to say that "the Bishop's arguments in support of the accusation have not reached him."

"Perhaps these were too weighty to be sustained by the gale of rumour, and have dropped down to the earth on their way, so that nothing has floated onward to our notice except the attenuated and vapoury forms of suspicion and assertion."

"Here," as Mr. Puff says, "you have tropes and metaphors as plenty as noun substantives." Mr. Gisborne indeed has many obligations to his classical education, which he takes the opportunity of a citation from the Greek Grammar (not indeed very accurately printed) to acknowledge. We are the more happy to find Mr. Gisborne not ashamed of his Greek, as the time may come, when such a qualification will be considered not only as superfluous, but even as injurious in the character of a Bible Minister. As the passage, however, in which this learned citation appears, is somewhat remarkable, we shall transcribe it for the benefit of our readers.

"I remember from my youth an apophthegm in the Eton Greek grammar,-one of the many instances in which the judicious compiler, while teaching us that verbs and nominatives ought to agree, and adjectives to accord in number and case and gender with their substantives, studied to fix on the impressible mind some condensed and pithy lesson of morality or of prudence :

Πολλακι τοι και χωρος ανήρ κατακαίριον είπη,

I am aware of human frailty: and dare not positively to contend that there may not exist wise men, by whom, in some solitary in stance, the reverse of the maxim may be verified." P. 20.

For what purpose this Greek citation was introduced, we are at a loss to comprehend. We have often heard the English proverb, "A fool's bolt is soon shot," and accordingly he seldom hits the mark. Mr. Gisborne has been good enough to allow the Bishop of Lincoln to be a sensible man; how far, therefore, Mr. G. may think that the converse of the proposition may be applicable to his Lordship, we cannot tell; but he will pardon us if we declare, that, by his own admission, the reverse is not verified in the CHARGE of his Lordship; the compliment, therefore, is returned upon himself, and, indeed, a better proof of the reverse of the proposition cannot be found than in his own pamphlet.

But it is not by weapons like these, that the character of such a prelate is to be overthrown. The best answer which can be rendered to the calumnies of all his assailants, is the Charge itself, which, is the object of their attack. From all that we have seen of its tendency and spirit, in the best authenticated reports, we would implore his Lordship to satisfy the general expectation of the Church by its speedy publication. The language of his Lordship is the result of reason and experience, and as such, it will ever command the attention of these kingdoms. Upon every point in which the cause of our holy religion, either spiritually or temporally, has been involved, he has spoken with a penetrating, calm, and masterly decision. With an understanding too keen to be deceived by specious appearances, and with a mind too firm to be swayed by the vanity of popular applause, he has ever maintained the high principles of truth against the spirit of sophistry and declamation which has infected the age. Nor let it be forgotten, that not only on the great questions of the day have his labours been expended, but that to the improvement of the rising clergy, and to the general diffusion of scriptural knowledge, his powers have been directed. It is from his, plain and perspicuous Exposition of the Elements of Christian Theology that a clergyman, even of the lowest abilities, is enabled to defend his holy cause against the cavils of the acutest infidel, or the perversions of the wildest enthusiast. From his writings, in short, the cause of true Religion and of the Holy Scriptures has derived a support more than proportionate to the injury which it has sustained from the despicable cant of false and inflated fanaticism. The studied insolence of Mr. Gisborne and his party has betrayed us into expressions of feeling to which we are not accustomed; but they will disgrace neither his Hh Lordship

VOL. IV. NOVEMBER, 1815.

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