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and in the most unqualified terms express his astonishment, that any sober-minded man, sitting down without prejudice to the study of the Sacred Writings, should so explain and understand them*.

He was not less attached to the Church of England in its Discipline, which he thought formed altogether on the Apostolical model; and no one was ever more strenuous in resisting any departure from it on the part of its established Ministers. Amongst other numerous proofs of this

fact,

The world has lately been favoured by an admirable treatise on this subject from the pen of the excellent and learned Prelate, who now presides over the Diocese of Lincoln. It contains a most profound, laborious, conclusive investigation of an intricate and long-agitated question, and must set it, I think, at rest for ever. It is in fact, what it claims to be, "A Refutation of Calvinism; "—a system of religion, as a Writer of great eminence has most justly defined it, "consisting of human creatures without libertydoctrines without sense-faith without reason—and a God without mercy."

fact, I shall introduce in this place the following letter, which he wrote to a Gentleman, who had applied to him in behalf of Dr. Draper, an episcopally ordained clergyman, whom he had expressly prohibited, on асcount of some very irregular proceedings, from officiating in any church in his diocese.

"As I understood that Dr. Draper was what you represent him to be, a man of piety and a good preacher, it gave me, I assure you, no small pain to feel myself under the necessity of excluding him from the pulpits of my diocese: but his own conduct rendered it in me an indispensable duty. Instead of confining himself, which as a Minister of the Church of England he ought to have done, to the celebration of divine service in places of worship licenced or consecrated

crated by his Diocesan, and authorized by law, he chose to become the President of a College, and Preacher in a Chapel, founded by Lady Huntingdon, for the purpose of training up lay-preachers for conventicles, licensed as Dissenting Meeting-houses. Lady Huntingdon, though a pious woman, was unquestionably not a member of the Church of England, but what is strictly and properly so called, a Methodist; professing the doctrines of one of the first founders of Methodism, George Whitfield, and educating young men to preach those doctrines without episcopal ordination. There could not therefore be a more injudicious and offensive measure, or more hostile to the Church of England, than to become the President of such a College, and the Preacher in such a Chapel, founded for such purposes.

"What

"What Dr. Draper has done, is moreover directly repugnant to the Canons of the Church of England, which prohibit every minister of that church from preaching in any chapel that is not sanctioned and allowed by the ecclesiastical laws of the realm, under very severe penalties; and were I to proceed to extremities, those penalties must be inflicted. But I have taken a milder course. I have only excluded from the parochial churches of my diocese a Clergyman, who has separated himself for a considerable part of the year from the Established Church, and set up a church of his own, neither licensed nor consecrated by his Diocesan. I neither blame Dr. Draper nor any other man for following the dictates of his own conscience in matters of religion. I would have every man permitted to worship God without interruption or molestation in the

manner

manner he most approves. But then let him be consistent. Let him not halt between two opinions. Let him not vibrate between two modes of worship. Let him not be a Methodist in the morning, and a Church-of-England man in the afternoon. I never can consent that any clergyman in my diocese should so divide himself between Sectarism and the Establishment-between the Church of England and the church of Lady Huntingdon. Let him take his part, and adhere to it steadily and uniformly throughout.

"In this, I hope, there is nothing like intolerance. It is nothing more than what common decency and common sense require. There cannot be a more determined enemy to persecution of every kind, and a more decided friend to toleration, than myself. Every one that has

known

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