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CHAPTER XXXIV.

OBITUARY OF LEARNED DIVINES.

Contents.

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I. Swartz.-II. Garickè.-III. Parkhurst.-IV. Horsley.-V. Beattie.-VI. Carlyle, Graves.-VII. Archbishop Moore.-VIII. Kirwan.-IX. Paley, Campbell, Robinson.-X. Porteus.-XI. Laymen and Dissenters ; Cowper, Kirke White, Elizabeth Smith.-XII. Priestley.-XIII. Pitt and Fox.-XIV. Winter.-XV. Macleane, Erskine.

I. WITH the eighteenth century, were closed the labours of the venerable Swartz, who for many years had discharged, in the eastern world, the functions of a Protestant missionary, from the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge. Born in Germany in 1725, he had arrived at Madras, and assumed his calling in his twenty-fourth year. Never was life more useful, career more glorious, character more Apostolic, or death more deplored. He had usually preached four times in a week, in English, German, Portuguese, and Tamulian; besides visiting the different churches, attending the sick, and instructing the Malabar scholars, for whose use he wrote an " Explanation of the

chief Doctrines of Christianity," and an "Abridgement of Newton on the Revelations." He had travelled many thousands of miles exposed to a burning climate, and was blest with innumerable seals to his ministry.

Though deeply grieved, he was not dismayed. by the difficulties which arose in his way.

"When

Must they appear
How little do they

I consider," said he, "the high and the low, the rulers and the ruled, I say to myself, My God, must all these people die! before the tribunal of Jesus! mind the end! What blindness, insensibility, and rapaciousness!" But perseverance and integrity removed mountains. The church at Tanjore, on receiving certain regulations, observed, that "the presence of Mr. Swartz had precluded all rules;" and the road from Trichinopoly to Tanjore, formerly very unsafe, was wholly free from robberies, after he had formed congregations in those districts. "Send me Swartz," said Hyder Aly, when a treaty was proposed to him; "with him I will treat, for him only can I trust." When Tanjore was besieged, and the garrison perishing with hunger, Swartz prevailed with the country people to bring in corn, by the simple guarantee of his word for the payment. To his care the Rajah committed his son; who afterwards favoured the Christian cause. Among Protestants, Papists, and heathens, Swartz walked like a primitive Apostle. "Doctor," said he to his physician, a few days

before his death, "in heaven there will be no pain."

"True," replied Dr. K.

" but we must keep you

here as long as we can."

"But O!" rejoined the

dying man, "let us take care that we be not missing there." He died at Tanjore, in the seventy-second year of his age. The Rajah shed a flood of tears over the body, and covered it with a cloth of gold. Flaxman commemorated this friendship in a monument, representing the Rajah's last visit to the missionary.

How should this example stimulate the languid minister to run the race set before him, disentangled from the present world; to watch the upward flight of the parting prophet, and eagerly to catch his mantle; to stand in the breach where he has fallen, and to fill the gap he has left!

II. Gerické, who followed the steps of Swartz, as a faithful pastor, and unwearied evangelist, survived not long his predecessor. Having performed a journey through the southern countries of Hindostan, during which several thousand heathens had been converted to the true religion, he died at Vellore, in his sixty-first year, on Oct. 2, 1803. During a ministry of thirty-six years, he had engaged the hearts of all, by his meek and benevolent disposition. His frugality was the treasury of his bounty. He went by the name of "The primitive Christian."

III. At home, Parkhurst also expired with the eighteenth century. With his friend, Bishop

1

[19th Cent. Horne, he inclined to the sentiments of Hutchinson. His chief works were, a Greek and English, and a Hebrew and English Lexicon, an "Answer to Priestley, on the Pre-existence of Christ," and a Pamphlet against John Wesley.

IV. Bishop Horsley died 1806. In a primary charge of 1790, Horsley combated the maxims, that "practical religion and morality are one and the same thing; and that moral duties constitute the whole or chief part of practical Christianity." This haughty and violent divine, who confirmed with his cap on his head at the altar, treated not his clergy with respect. To tell them they were the apes of Epictetus,-to banter them with a list of controversial books, whose hard names they had never heard,-to say a man must have run over all these tomes, before he ought to touch the disputed points, was language too nervous, and reproof too faithful. This charge occasioned the publication of a work, addressed by seven Evangelical ministers to his lordship, entitled, "The Nature, Extent, and Province of human Reason considered."

Horsley was independent and severe; bold in avowing, and tenacious in maintaining his opinion. He was proudly zealous for episcopacy, and an enemy to heretics. In Parliament, and in the pulpit, he uttered the language of disdainful truth; whether in advocating the cause of the Scottish bishops, in denouncing French and

English Jacobinism, or in defending the rights of the London clergy. Like Bishop Burnet, he stood on neutral ground between the Calvinists and Arminians; and manifested a false liberality, and an erroneous judgment, in declining to decide between them, on a question of so high importance. He gave too much to critical nicety, and too little to moral application. Like some earlier prelates, he railed against puritans for dissent, and inclined towards puritan doctrines. As a domestic character, he was deficient in meekness, and possessed no controul over his tongue. These blots are to be lamented in the conqueror of Priestley, the champion of our Establishment, the commentator on Hosea, the biographer of Newton, and the successive ornament of the sees of St. David's, Rochester, and St. Asaph. This last cathedral he beautified at his own charges. A diocese, where all the livings, except three, are in the bishop's patronage, was too well suited to his domineering spirit.

V. Beattie, whose "Minstrel" establishes his fame as a poet, died in 1803. His "Essay on Truth," contains an able answer to the infidel philosophy of Hume*: while his " Evidences," de

• David Hume (honest man +), in his metaphysical Essays, aimed a severe blow at Christianity; and it would have been more injurious than it proved, had she not found an able

+ Scottish Novels, "Rob Roy."

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