doubted affectation and cant, and yet, they are not more interlarded with Scripture, while they are far less affected, than the speeches of King James. Add to this, that the English Bible was then a new book, and there was consequently a peculiar interest attaching to it, which may partly account for the frequency of quotation. But the phrases themselves which are now so repulsive to the fastidious ears of men of taste, were for the most part as familiar English as any which could now be employed to express the same idea. Godliness did not savour a whit more of any theological school, than piety does now. Divine grace was not more technical a term than Divine favour. The terms which are most remote from our vernacular idiom, come to us obviously from the Vulgate and the Latin Fathers. Of this description are justification, election, predestination, for which there is reason to regret that our Translators did not find substitutes more purely English. But these theological terms were by no means of Puritan origin, nor were they restricted to any theological school. We attach ideas to them in the present day, which could not have been associated with them in the seventeenth century, and imagine that they must have sounded strange to that generation, because they are antiquated to us. The ridicule then, attached to the doctrine, not to the phraseology. Those who now ridicule the phraseology, affect to reverence the doctrine. The wits and cavaliers of those days laughed at the Bible itself, and honestly hated all who pretended to believe its doctrines. Impiety has now-a-days grown more modest, and quarrels only with the nomenclature of religion, sneering at the odd dress and antiquated manner which piety may seem to assume. This is something better, as regards the malignity of the intention ; but the effect of ridicule is much the same, whether it be aimed at the doctrine, or at the phrase. It is only a more decent way of exploding the thing. With how keen a relish for the venerable language of the Authorized Version, must the Author of Old Mortality and Peveril of the Peak, have sat down, after composing those works, to the perusal of the Scriptures! How admirably prepared must his readers have been to listen the next Sunday to Mr. Craig, or Mr. Thomson, enforcing the necessity of regeneration, and inculcating a godly life!

The present memoir, though never before printed entire, has been made considerable use of by Noble in his Memoirs of the Protector, and subsequently by Walter Wilson and Mr. Ivimey. We shall not, therefore, enter into the details of the narrative. As an illustration of the history of the times, it will be found highly interesting. Mr. Kyffen or Kiffin appears to have been a simple-minded, prudent, generous, and bene

volent man, uniting the noble qualities of the English merchant to the devout character of the Puritan. By a combination of functions not very unusual in those days, he was at once a merchant, a soldier, and a preacher. But it should be added, that he preached without fee or hire, and that his military service was confined to the militia, in which he was first a captain, and then a lieutenant-colonel. It is probable that he regarded himself as a layman. In his old age, he had civic honours thrust upon him much against his will, being by royal commission appointed one of the aldermen of the City of London, a justice of the peace, and one of the Lieutenancy. But with neither of the latter two places, he tells us, did he ever meddle; and he obtained his discharge from the office of alderman about nine months after his appointment, laying down his gown with as much pleasure as some persons manifest to obtain one. It is somewhat remarkable, that he does not himself advert to his personal interview with King James on this occasion, which Noble has preserved on the authority of one of his family.

Kiffin was personally known both to Charles and James; and when the latter of these princes, after having arbitrarily deprived the city of the old charter, determined to put many of the dissenters into the magistracy, under the rose he sent for Kiffin to attend him at court. When he went thither in obedience to the king's command, he found many lords and gentlemen. The king immediately came up to him, and addressed him with all the little grace he was master of. He talked of his favour to the dissenters in the court style of the season, and concluded with telling Kiffin, he had put him down as an alderman in his new charter. "Sire," replied Kiffin, "I am a very old man, and have withdrawn myself from all kind of business for some years past, and am incapable of doing any service in such an affair to your majesty or the city. Besides, Sir," the old man went on, fixing his eyes stedfastly upon the king, while the tears ran down his cheeks," the death of my grandsons gave a wound to my heart which is still bleeding, and never will close but in the grave." The king was deeply struck by the manner, the freedom, and the spirit of this unexpected rebuke. A total silence ensued, while the galled countenance of James seemed to shrink from the horrid remembrance. In a minute or two, however, he recovered himself enough to say," Mr. Kiffin, I shall find a balsam for that sore, and immediately turned about to a lord in waiting."

We should much have liked this striking anecdote in the good old man's own words. His two grandsons were executed for high treason, as adherents of the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth. A very affecting account of their last moments is given by Mr. Kiffin, in the present memoir. We subjoin from

the Notes appended to it by the Editor, two other characteristical anecdotes. Mr. Orme is already well known to our readers as the author of one of the most valuable pieces of ecclesiastical biography which have appeared: he has now laid the religious public under a fresh obligation by the manner in which he has brought out and illustrated this interesting document.

It is said that King Charles at one time, when much in want of money, sent to Mr. Kiffin, requesting the loan of 40,000l. Kiffin excused himself by declaring that he had not such a sum; but that if it would be of service to his Majesty, he would present him with 10,000l. It was accepted of course; and Kiffin used to say, that by giving ten, he had saved thirty thousand pounds. This perhaps partly accounts for the favour which he enjoyed at court.'

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When the French Protestants were driven to England for refuge, William Kiffin received into his protection a numerous French family of considerable rank. He fitted up and furnished a house of his own for their reception, provided them with servants, and entirely maintained them at his own expense, in a manner which bore some proportion to their rank in France. When this family afterwards recovered some part of their ruined fortune, he would not diminish it a single shilling, by taking any retribution for the services he had done them. Such were the city patriots of those times!'

Art. V. An Ecclesiastical Memoir of the first four Decades of the Reign of George the Third; or, an Account of the State of Religion in the Church of England during that Period: with characteristic Sketches of distinguished Divines, Authors, and Benefactors. By the Rev. John White Middelton, A.M. 8vo. pp. xvi. 898. Price 9s. London. 1822.

A COMPETENT and impartial memoir of the state of re

ligion in England during the reign of George the Third, would be extremely valuable and instructive. It seems to be pretty generally admitted, that, previously to the rise of Methodism, a lamentable declension had extensively taken place, in point as well of purity of doctrine as of zeal, in both the established and the tolerated churches of this country. The causes which led to that state of things, have never been satisfactorily investigated. As regards the National Church, however, little obscurity hangs over them. The Act of Uniformity and the Test Act were followed by their natural consequences: they were the triumph of high-church intolerance, and they issued, as the former was expressly intended to operate, in the exclusion, during a century, of evangelical preachers from the pulpits of the Establishment. From the effects of those Acts,

the Church of England has never recovered, and it is quite visionary to suppose that it ever can recover. Though still the Established, yet, it never can be in fact the national Church. The evangelical ministers within its pale, do not now number so many as were madly and wickedly ejected from her communion; and if they were twice as numerous, the population has since become treble what it then was, and, of the great mass of the nation, a very large proportion has become irreclaimably attached to Dissenting communities. Almost all that distinguishes England as a religious nation in the eyes of foreign countries, originated with Dissenters, or is mixed up with Dissenters; so that the Episcopal Church can never be considered in future as any thing more than what Mr. Middelton aptly styles it, the ascendant division of Christianity' in this country. The ascendancy, the precedence, and the civil deference which it claims on the ground of its connexion with the State, Dissenters cheerfully concede to it; but they hold themselves to form a section of the nation rather too considerable to allow of their being put quite out of sight by the designation applied to that ascendant division, of the national Church. The nation does not go along with the Church of England; and that Church must submit to many modifications, before it shall be able to overtake and re-absorb the vast portion of the community which has departed from it. It has not the power of Aaron's rod to swallow up the other rods. It must always be indebted to those whose alliance it repels, and whose assistance it disclaims, the Dissenters, to meet the religious wants, and to maintain the social order of the community.

It is well known to have been the anxious wish of John Wesley, especially in the beginning of his career, to prevent a total separation from the Episcopal Church. And there are individuals of the Wesleyan body, who still affect to speak of themselves as Church of England men, while they worship every Sunday in a conventicle, and their recognised ministers take out licences under the Toleration Act. We have never been able to understand the consistency or the uprightness of such pretences. Occasional communion with the Church of England, was not scrupled by the most decided and exemplary Nonconformists, till the Test Act made the Sacrament a 'picklock to a place.' This, therefore, though it may qualify for office, does not make a man a churchman. The Church is generally understood in the sense of the clergy. We do not say that this is the proper sense, but, in point of fact, the people go with their clergy, and are characterized by them.

Had Wesley been able to procure the ordination and sanction of the Church of England for his preachers, (which he always did whenever he could,) he would never have separated from the Church; and the consequence would have been, that the great body of the Wesleyan Methodists would have been retained, in connexion with their preachers, within its pale. But it is the preaching of the Dissenters, the Methodists, and the evangelical clergy, which the policy of the Establishment leads its rulers especially to discountenance. And while this is the case, it can never be a national or a popular church. The people ask for teachers; they will flock to hear energetic, impassioned, evangelical preachers. They will follow such men into the Church; they will follow them out of the Church. The Church which does not recognise or employ ministers of this description, will find herself presently deserted by the people. The revival which has taken place within the Church of England, has been chiefly brought about by means of such preachers, who have risen up among her parochial clergy. Now the probabilities with regard to the growing prosperity of the Church, or the increase of Dissenters, may be summed up in this; whether that effective pulpit instruction which is found to lay hold of the attention and affections of the people, and to outweigh the considerations respecting minor differences, is ever likely to be identified with the pulpits of the Establishment; or, if not confined to them, to prevail in them, so as to characterize the Church, and give it an eminence over other divisions of the religious world. Any plan of comprehension which should have this effect, would give a death-blow to Dissent, considered as a party interest, though its principles would remain as true and as important as ever. But such an expectation we should deem very chimerical. It is to keep out and keep down this preaching, that the Act of Uniformity is continued; and while this policy is persevered in, the growing population must fall chiefly into the ranks of the Dissenters.

And yet, there are good men who speak of this Act of Uniformity, and of the still more iniquitous Test Act, as the magna charta and palladium of the Church. Acts which, judging from those who have got into the Church, have never sufficed to keep any wicked man out of it, but have excluded thousands of learned and pious men, and were meant to exclude them, these Acts are the pillars of the Establishment, the safeguard of all that is venerable and apostolical in our constitution ecclesiastical! In these her ministers glory, of whom it may be truly said, that, in this instance, they glory in their shame. Mr. Middelton, after giving an account of the failure of the clerical petition for relief from subscription in 1772, and