_>. 
 
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 RELIGIO CLERICI 
 
 CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 
 
 ce These went about in quest of fools, whom they had the 
 art to turn into madmen : an art which is not to be reckoned 
 among the deperditar 
 
 Jortin. 
 
 THIRD EDITION, 
 
 CORRECTED AND ENLARGED, WITH NOTES AND 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET. 
 1819.
 
 +55 
 IB 13 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The Author of the following lines has 
 purposely chosen the most obvious argu- 
 ments in favour of Revealed Religion. He 
 claims no farther originality therefore for 
 the first part of his poem, than as it contains 
 the genuine answers which suggested them- 
 selves to his own mind in reply to the 
 question, " Why are you a Church of Eng- 
 land Christian V Many more and many 
 better reasons might doubtless be given, 
 but perhaps not so much to his purpose. 
 In the latter part he has thought it his 
 duty to express firmly, though he hopes 
 not uncharitably, his opinion of the perils 
 to which the Established Church is ex- 
 
 87151 

 
 [iv] 
 
 posed, by the rapid progress of modern 
 Puritanism. 
 
 March, 1818. 
 
 In the present edition the Notes have 
 been much enlarged, and placed at the 
 bottom of the page, in order to render 
 the First and Second Epistles uniform. 
 
 January, 1819.
 
 RELTGIO CLERICI. 
 
 EPISTLE THE FIRST. 
 
 l o u ask me how, in these our canting times, 
 A Parson dares be thought a man of rhymes ? 
 How Grace and Pagan inspiration fit, 
 Or things divine with toys of human wit ? 
 You say the Kirk, with Puritanic frown, 
 Stripp'd her one Poet of his scanty gown ; 
 And evil eyes on careless Churchill fell, 
 Not that he liv'd too ill, but wrote too well. 
 
 v. 7 Churchill] The fate of the author of Douglas 
 
 is well known. It may be asserted of Churchill, and I fear 
 with too much truth, that his habits were those of extreme 
 profligacy ; but his vices would have been forgotten long ago, 
 if his distinguished talents had not kept their memory alive. 
 " The evil that men do lives after them, 
 The good is oft interred with their bones," 
 B
 
 2 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 True all you urge ; but still, in wisdom's spite, 
 Unlucky nature forces me to write. 10 
 
 Turn where I will, the officious Muse is near, 
 And verse, unbidden, warbles in mine ear. 
 In sober prose ev'n now when I begin 
 To yield some reason of my hope within, 
 Grave truths to measur'd strains themselves convert, 
 And I must rhyme where others would dissert. 
 
 Shame to our days, that with degenerate views 
 Profane and prostitute the suffering Muse, 
 
 v. 16. dissert.'] I am told that there is no such word 
 
 in our language ; if so, I am sorry for it ; for the word is a 
 good word, and as Justice Shallow says, " it comes of the 
 Latin." For the art itself I have but little respect, for 
 whenever the title " Dissertation" is prefixed, dullness is 
 pretty sure to follow. Bishop Home was much of my opi- 
 nion ; in the first of his admirable Letters on Infidelity, he 
 makes this remark to his friend : " A few strictures on the 
 nature and tendency, the principles and reasonings of such 
 (infidel) performances, thrown out from time to time, in a 
 concise and lively way, you observe, are better calculated to 
 suit the taste and turn of the present day than long and ela- 
 borate dissertations ; and you see no reason why a method 
 practised by Voltaire, and so much recommended by D'Alem- 
 bert against Religion, should not be adopted by those who 
 write for it."
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 3 
 
 Curtail her privilege of heavenly birth, 
 
 And bar her flight beyond this speck of earth ! 20 
 
 Not thus of old, when with unshrinking eyes 
 
 She darVl the full Shechinah in the skies; 
 
 Commun'd above with disembodied thought, 
 
 And echoed lessons purer spirits taught. 
 
 Her voice, sole herald of the Eternal Mind, 
 
 Convey M his will and nature to mankind : 
 
 Her lips with utterance bless'd the raptur'd seer, 
 
 And lent the suppliant, language Heaven might hear : 
 
 Each torch was kindled at a common flame, 
 
 And Prophet, Priest, and Poet were the same. 30 
 
 Thus too, when darkness in the Gentile skies 
 Obscur'd the wisdom of the worldly wise ; 
 And blundering sophists, lacking eyes to see, 
 Denied the blaze of immortalitv : 
 If some faint gleam of dim-reflected light 
 Glanc'd indistinctly on their mental night, 
 Unheeded died away the ray divine, 
 Or rested only on the Poefs shrine. 
 Then, deep within Eleusis' mystic cell, 
 The trembling novice heard the measure swell 40
 
 A RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 Dwelt with keen ear upon the solemn strain, 
 
 Which whispered truths unknown to the profane : 
 
 Exploit a passage which obscurely led 
 
 To some half-doubted state beyond the dead ; 
 
 And saw Creation bend before the throne 
 
 Of one pure Essence, self-sprung, and alone. 
 
 Shame to our days I Oh ! where is He whose hand 
 The golden gates of Eden could expand ? 
 Where he whose rugged harmony has told 
 The faith he deem'd a layman ought to hold ? 50 
 
 V. 46. SELF-SPRUNG AND ALONE.] Such WcLS the dis- 
 
 closure of the unity of the Deity made at the Eleusinian 
 mysteries, at least if we believe the fragment preserved by 
 Clemens Alexandrinus and Eusebius to be part of the hymn 
 sung during the celebration of them : 
 
 EJ is \0y0V 0eOV /3A\I/J, TOl)TCp7rpO<TS^p0y 
 
 rtvvcuv xpctlwtf voepov xorog' so V ewifitxivz 
 
 utccwtov MOTNON A'ESOPA KO^MOIOANAKTA, 
 
 E12 A'EST, ATTOrENHS, ENOS EKTONA 
 
 nANTA TETTKTAI. x. t. A. 
 
 I quote from Warburton (note to book ii. sect. iv. D. L.) 
 to whom I am perhaps indebted for the first suggestion of 
 the preceding lines. 
 v. 49. rugged harmony'] 
 
 " And this unpolish'd rugged verse I chose, 
 As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose." 
 
 Dryden. Religio Laici. ad finem.
 
 A CHURCHMAN S FIRST EPISTLE. 5 
 
 Fled is the genuine Muse, and in her place 
 A brisk pretender blurts her shameless face : 
 Fair in her outward cheek, and painted skin ; 
 Foul as Duessa if you look within. 
 
 So speaks this mighty master of himself; and yet there are 
 few passages in English verse more finely harmonized than 
 the forty opening lines of this admirable poem. To say the 
 truth, however Dryden intended to walk, whether in full 
 buskin'd dignity, or with a lighter tread incomposito pede 
 his march here and there became majestic in spite of him- 
 self 3 incessu patuit Dea. It is not too much to pronounce 
 that his is the only legitimate model of versification which 
 we possess ; and they who would fully enjoy, or faintly echo, 
 all the varieties of English Rhythm must listen to and study 
 them day and night, in the pages of Dryden. He who forms 
 himself on our earlier poets alone, may acquire raciness of 
 diction, and occasional delicacy of measure but the instru- 
 ment which he has chosen is limited in its powers, and may 
 be improved by additional keys. The copyist of Pope will 
 most probably mistake his path, and grow purblind amid the 
 glitter of Darwinianism. Of latter days it ill becomes a 
 contemporary to speak, but we do not just now appear very 
 solicitous about versification. We hold it as an infallible 
 sign of genius, to neglect high finishing, and to prefei 
 daubing into effect ; as if of necessity, he who is rough and 
 coarse must also be vigorous. 
 
 v. 54. Duessa) Faerie Queen, Book I. Canto 2. St 
 
 40 ; and Book I. Canto 8. St. 46. &c.
 
 6 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 Caught by some light and meretricious tale, 
 
 The full-breath'd town inflates the rhymer's sail ; 
 
 And as the breeze of fashion round him plays, 
 
 Lends, for a season, false and fading bays. 
 
 Full slowly grows that never-dying bough, 
 
 The laurel meed which binds the Poet's brow : 60 
 
 Shadow'd awhile by some obtrusive green, 
 
 It strikes its roots most deeply ere 'tis seen ; 
 
 And fresh when lighter leaves around it fall, 
 
 It dreads no winter and outlives them all ! 
 
 Then leave, my friend, for you can leave, the song 
 Whose fumes intoxicate the grosser throng ; 
 And hear these unpretending strains, which teach 
 Why I believe the doctrines which I preach. 
 
 Prove there's a God ! the frantic atheist cries ; 
 And his heart trembles, while his lip denies. 70 
 
 Fool ! in thine own conceit so subtle, prove, 
 First, that you live, and breathe, and speak, and move ! 
 Is't not enough we find within our will 
 A void no being, save a God, can fill ; 
 And while some partial lights illume the soul, 
 She pants insatiate for the brigher whole ?
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 7 
 
 Is't not enough a world without we find, 
 
 Which Heavenly skill alone could have design'd ; 
 
 And hear great Nature's universal cry 
 
 Proclaim her source to be Divinity ? 80 
 
 If proof of God's existence you expect, 
 
 First ask another, larger intellect, 
 
 v. 81. proof of God's existence] Introducitur ecclesise 
 asinus animal, sed stolidus, volens caudam aliam, et am- 
 pliorem quam Natura contulerit, contra Naturam sibi inseri. 
 Speculum Stultorum, MS.Harl. 2422. But we need not go 
 so far for illustration ; the great Poet whom, at however 
 humble a distance, I have in some measure endeavoured to 
 follow, has a magnificent passage to the same purpose ; " So 
 that we have not lifted up ourselves to God by the weak 
 pinions of our reason, but he has been pleased to descend to 
 us. That there is something above us, some principle of 
 motion, our reason can apprehend, though it cannot discover 
 what it is by its own virtue. And indeed it is very improba- 
 ble, that we, who by the strength of our own faculties cannot 
 enter into the knowledge of any Being, not so much as of our 
 own, should be able to find out by them that supreme nature 
 which we cannot otherwise define, than by saying it is 
 infinite ; as if infinite were definable, or infinity a subject for 
 our narrow understanding. They who would prove religion 
 by reason do but weaken the cause which they endeavour to 
 support : it is to take away the pillars from faith, and to 
 prop it only with a twig ; it is to design a tower like that of
 
 8 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 This, brief and bounded, never can ascend 
 To Him no space can limit, time can end. 
 Who tells the deaf there's thunder on the wind ? 
 Or prates of noonday brightness to the blind ? 
 
 O'er Nature's work how nice a law presides ' 
 Her world of worlds what goodly music guides ! 
 
 Babel, which if it were possible, as it is not, to reach 
 Heaven, would come to nothing by the confusion of the work- 
 men. For every man is building a several way ; impotently 
 conceited of his own model, and his own materials ; reason is 
 always striving, and always at a loss ; and of necessity it must 
 so come to pass, while it is exercised about that which is not its 
 proper object. Let us be content at last to know God by his 
 own methods : at least so much of him as he is pleased to re- 
 veal to us in the Sacred Scriptures : to apprehend them to be 
 the word of God is all our reason has to do ; for all beyond 
 it is the work of faith, which is the seal of Heaven impressed 
 upon our human understanding." 
 
 Dryden, Preface to Religio Laici. 
 v. 87. O'er Nature's works .'] This discrepancy between the 
 natural and moral economy of the universe, was the crux of 
 pagan philosophy. The tacit and orderly course of physical 
 events, contrasted with the tumultuous and contradictory 
 workings of the passions the majestic and well-regulated 
 march of Nature, with the " quaint tricks and pretty anticks" 
 of man, formed a problem not to be resolved, and the difficulty
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 9 
 
 Seasons and times in measur'd moments run, 
 
 Orbs roll on orbs, and sun succeeds to sun ; 90 
 
 of explaining it, forced many who made the attempt, from 
 Pyrrhonism into a total rejection of the Deity 3 if the writer 
 of these lines may be permitted to speak of himself, he 
 would say that one of the earliest strong-holds which Reve- 
 lation obtained upon his own mind, was the satisfactory ac- 
 count which it gave of the introduction of evil into our 
 system. If the Bible came from God, this of necessity 
 would be the first doubt which it undertook to remove, and 
 it is so ; however metaphysical subtilties have endeavoured 
 again to involve and obscure it. 
 
 It is not from Young (as has been said) that this or any 
 other passage has been borrowed : for strange as it may seem 
 (and the confession is made with some degree of shame) the 
 author is unacquainted with the " Night Thoughts," though 
 he will not long be so. If the reader at all cares to know 
 by what recollections this passage most probably was sug- 
 gested, he may take the trouble, if trouble it can be called, 
 of perusing below the finest lines of a very fine ancient 
 Poet, to whom no modern, excepting Gibbon, has yet done 
 justice : and he experimentally knew the full extent of his 
 value: 
 
 Sffipe mihi dubiam traxit sententia mentem, 
 Curarent superi terras, an nullus inesset 
 Rector, et incerto fluerent mortalia casu. 
 Nam cum dispositi quaesissem foedera mundi 
 Prsscriptosque mari fines, annisque meatus,
 
 10 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 Fresh as in youth revolves the mighty frame, 
 
 Unchang'd though changing ; many, but the same. 
 
 Turn inward now with curious eye, and scan 
 
 The maze of mind, the moral world of man ! 
 
 See jarring passions toss\l in wild turmoil, 
 
 And Reason thrown to appetite a spoil ; 
 
 Here aspirations Heaven could scarce refine, 
 
 There our brute nature lording o 1 er divine ; 
 
 Hands which incline, but balance not the beam ; 
 
 And Vice, or Virtue, ever in extreme : I 00 
 
 Creation^ monarch to himself a slave, 
 
 And Man immortal only in the grave ! 
 
 Mark this array of misery, pain, and sin ; 
 Think you God made it, or Man brought it in ? 
 
 Et lucis noctisque vices : tunc omnia rebar 
 Consilio firmata Dei, qui lege moveri 
 Sidera, qui fruges diverso tempore nasci, 
 Qui variam Phoeben alieno jusserit igni 
 Compleri, solemque suo : porrexerit undis 
 Litora : tellurem medio libraverit axe. 
 Sed cum res hominum tanta caligine volvi 
 Adspicerem, laetosque diu florere nocentes, 
 Vexarique pios : rursus labefacta cadebat 
 Religio. Claudian. In Rufinum, L. 1 . ad init :
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 11 
 
 If God a chaos such as this could frame, 
 My Devil and your God are much the same ; 
 But if from us the hideous rout began, 
 I seek no farther for the fall of man. 
 
 It little matters what from Eden hurl'd 
 Figure, or fact; an apple, or a world. 110 
 
 With signs and symbols others may be smitten, 
 I always read my Bible as 'tis written : 
 A golden rule from heresy to 'scape, 
 When some would prove the Serpent was an Ape. 
 
 v. 114. the Serpent was an Ape.~] If the reader would 
 
 pursue this truly edifying subject still farther, he may find 
 it amply discussed in Dr. Adam Clarke's Annotations on the 
 Book of Genesis, or " the Ophion" of a yet profounder 
 writer, Mr. John Bellamy, author of "Biblical Criticisms, in 
 the Classical, Biblical, and Oriental Journal," and the New 
 Translation of the Bible. This latter gentleman is convinced 
 that " whoever has seen a monkey, must be sensible that, 
 among all creatures, it is the least calculated, on account of its 
 ugly face, to succeed in prevailing on the woman to disobey 
 the divine command ;" (p. 6) Without inquiring which of the 
 two disputed animals has the greater "sensibility," or set- 
 tling the claims to precedence among the " black Ape of 
 Kiangsi," " the great Gibbon of Molacca and Molucca," 
 " and the Pongo-jacko of Java," we had better leave the
 
 12 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 Enough for knowledge is in this convey'd, 
 That God created, and man disobey 'd. 
 
 Is there no hope ? can nothing then regain 
 Our former innocence, nor cleanse our stain ? 
 Has the one taste of that forbidden tree 
 Lost all that are, and have been, and shall be? 120 
 
 Useless the piety whose hand adorns 
 With costly wreaths the gilded altar's horns : 
 Vain the rich pomp of sacrificial show, 
 Vain all the blood which can from heifers flow : 
 From purer springs the saving virtue glides, 
 And God atonement from himself provides ; 
 His one oblation all our loss supplies, 
 The cross our altar, Christ our sacrifice ! 
 Bred in this faith, Oh, let it guard me still, 
 Watch o'er my heart, and regulate my will ! 1 30 
 
 Keep me alike from either false extreme, 
 The sceptic's torpor, or the zealot's dream ! 
 
 matter as we find it. How often are learned triflers of this 
 kind to be told., that such wire-drawing of obscure passages 
 is but useless pain and grief, for in Scripture, " whatever is 
 obscure may be concluded not necessary to be known."
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 13 
 
 Let not my stubborn pride refuse to bend 
 To truths I was not meant to comprehend ; 
 Nor let the Reason, form'd to be my guide, 
 To hot-brain'd fancies e'er be misapplied ! 
 
 So fram'd, our holy temple rose on high, 
 Purg'd from the foulness of the Papal sty. 
 Faith's living rock its ample base supplied, 
 And Love and Hope supported either side : 140 
 
 Just rules of noblest art adorn 'd its face, 
 Each part was symmetry, the whole was grace. 
 
 v. 437- Papal sty."] Our more moderate ancestors were 
 
 contented with a mystic abuse of the Bishop of Rome : his 
 church was only the scarlet woman, and himself but the beast, 
 at the worst ; but the Deputies lately sent from the Missionary 
 Society, to the Netherland Society at Rotterdam, &c. " with 
 a view to advance the kingdom of Christ in the world," are 
 much more outrageous. These gentlemen inform us in their 
 Report, that " the Roman Catholic Religion is a system 
 more guilty and intolerant than Judaism, Paganism, Maho- 
 metanism, or Infidelity." This is holding out the right hand 
 of fellowship, and dropping non -essentials with a vengeance. 
 But it should be remembered that the Papists are not sub- 
 scribers to the Bible Society, and as they have no chance of 
 overturning the Church of England just now, they take 
 very little trouble to find fault with it.
 
 14 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 No glittering front, in gaudy taste design'd, 
 
 Conceal'd some rottenness which lurk'd behind : 
 
 No dark pollution, in recesses pil'd, 
 
 Its ill-according majesty defil'd. 
 
 There, letter'd priests, with firm, but sober zeal, 
 
 Held up the book of life, and broke its seal : 
 
 The veil which dimm'd and shadow^ God withdrew, 
 
 And pour'd our ark's full glories on the view. 1 50 
 
 Then Nebo bow'd, then stoop'd reluctant Bel, 
 
 And prostrate Dagon's shatterM image fell ; 
 
 Crowds to their Maker's open courts repair, 
 
 No more a den of thieves, but house of pray'r. 
 
 Fix'd on this rock, for ever might it brave 
 The floods which threaten, and the winds which rave : 
 But treacherous arts with baffled force combine, 
 And those who cannot storm, may undermine. 
 Skilled in this secret, now the rabble rout 
 Howls round the pale, and ravages without; 160 
 
 And the sick flock, which daily grows more thin, 
 Bears witness of some " privy paw" within. 
 
 v. 162. privy paw."] 
 
 " Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 
 " Daily devours apace." Lvcidas.
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 15 
 
 Time was, and pity 'tis such times are fled, 
 When none explained the Scriptures but who read : 
 Another rule our wiser moderns teach, 
 What matters reading ? They profess to preach. 
 All are expounders now, and children prate, 
 Where grey-beard wisdom us'd to hesitate ; 
 And teening Misses, for a day-school prize, 
 Transpose the Types, and mar the Prophecies. 170 
 But little needs there for a Churchman now, 
 The classic guidance of the birchen bough ; 
 But little needs there for a Clerk's renown, 
 The seven long years' probation of the gown, 
 
 v. 168. teening Misses,] The new world has caught 
 
 this contagion., if it did not indeed first inoculate us on the 
 older side of the water. " A very interesting instance of 
 religious attention has taken place in a celebrated Boarding 
 School, for young ladies, inConnecticut, which gives the friends 
 of Zion reason to hope that fifty of the pupils have become 
 (what does the reader think V) followers of Christ. Another 
 instance of a similar nature, embracing twenty-five young 
 ladies, has also happened in another Boarding School in the 
 same state. How greatly should we rejoice to hear that the 
 spirit of God is poured out in the numerous Seminaries in 
 England, where so many young ladies," &c. &c. &c. Letter 
 from a gentleman in North America. Evan. Mag. May, 1816. 
 
 v. 174. - seven long years' probation of the gown,"] Our
 
 16 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 And the close wooing Science made us pay, 
 Till Cam or Isis blazon'd us M. A. 
 Ah ! how unfitting for more saintly ken, 
 This carnal scholarship of worldly men ! 
 
 brethren are qualified for ecclesiastical purposes now-a-days 
 much sooner than they used to be : I omit those blots 
 upon the Universities, the Ten-year men, as they are called, 
 and look only to the younger aspirants. In the Chr. Obs. 
 February, 1816, are the following advertisements : " Edu- 
 cation. Serious Young Men who wish to obtain Holy Orders, 
 ivithout University expences, &c. may be expeditiously qualified, 
 &c. &c. &c." " Wanted a Writing Assistant. The duties 
 of the school affording considerable leisure, it is presumed 
 that, to a person desirous of acquiring a knowledge of the 
 classics, with a view to future usefulness in the Ministry, 
 the present might be a desirable situation." 
 
 v. 178. carnal scholarship /] The reverend father 
 
 Petroni, an Evangelical personage of the fourteenth century, 
 very nearly produced a most fearful reformation in Boccaccio, 
 by arguments of this kind. He had never seen him, but he 
 dispatched a brother Carthusian to say that if he did not 
 speedily amend his life and writings, " qui sont des instru- 
 mens dont le diable se sert pour attirer les hommes dans ses 
 pieges, les exciter au peche de la chair, et accelerer la de- 
 pravation des mceurs," if he did not renounce " la poesie et 
 les lectures profanes," God had expressly revealed to him, 
 through a vision of his Son, that he (Boccaccio) had but a
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 17 
 
 Why waste our youth on learning, when we see 
 
 All knowledge jumps to them, extempore ? 1 80 
 
 short time to live, and would be speedily transferred to eternal 
 punishment. Boccaccio was so terrified by this denuncia- 
 tion, that in the first impulse of terror he resolved to burn 
 all his books ; this, however, was too much for the second 
 thoughts of so hearty a Bibliomaniac, and he wrote to offer 
 his friend Petrarch the refusal of his Library. As I have 
 not Petrarch's letters by me, I must give his manly answer 
 in the translation of De Saade, from whom I derive the 
 story. After impugning the reality of the vision, he pro- 
 ceeds as follows : " Je sais par experience combien les 
 lettres humaines peuvent contribuer a donner des notions 
 justes a rendre un homme Eloquent, a perfectionner les 
 mceurs, et, qui plus est, a defendre notre religion. S'il n'est 
 pas permis de lire les poetes et les auteurs payens parce qu'ils 
 ne parlent pas de Jesus Christ, qu'ils ne connoissent pas, a 
 plus forte raison doit il etre defendu de lire les heretiques qui 
 combattent sa doctrine ? C'est cependant ce qui font avec 
 soin les defenseurs de la foi. II en est des lettres humaines 
 comme de certains alimens solides qui nourissent bien un 
 homme qui a l'estomac bon, et fatiguent un estomac foible, 
 qui ne peut pas les digerer. Telle lecture utile et salutaire 
 pour un esprit sain, est un poison pour un esprit foible. Je 
 sais bien qu'on peut se sanctifier sans les lettres ; nous en 
 avons plusieurs exemples ; mais je sais aussi qu'elles ne sont 
 pas un obstacle a la saintete, comme on voudroit le faire 
 croire. II y a plusieurs routes pour arriver au ciel, longues 
 
 C
 
 18 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 Each pious 'prentice freely may dispense 
 Salvation, licens'd now for eighteen-pence ; 
 
 et courtes, claires et obscures, hautes et bases ; 1' ignorance 
 est la route qui prennent les paresseux ; les sciences peuvent 
 produire autant de saints que l'ignorance, et il faut bien se 
 girder de comparer une devotion ignorante a une piete 
 eclairee." Mimoires pour la Vie de Petrarque, vol. ill. 
 p. 606. 
 
 By the trouble which has been lately taken to reprint Sam 
 How's Tract ; " The sufficiency of the Spirit's teaching 
 without human learning, or a treatise tending to prove human 
 learning to be no help to the spiritual understanding of the 
 word of God, first seen, approved, and printed, by his friends 
 in the year 1639," we may reasonably suppose that there 
 are still many supporters of father Petroni's opinions. The 
 new edition informs us that " Samuel How was a pastor of 
 a Christian people that were called Puritans : he had no 
 school learning, being by trade a shoe-mender, vulgarly called 
 a Cobler, and worked at it to administer to his necessities, 
 as the great Apostle Paul did." 
 
 Mr. Goodwin who did not believe in his pretensions, gave 
 him as a text to preach from, 2 Peter iii. 16, and being 
 " greatly offended" at the sermon when he heard it, said 
 " ye have made a calf, and dance about it. Whereat he 
 was desired, by Samuel How's friends, to show wherein they 
 had made a calf. But Mr. Goodwin went away in a huff." 
 I am sorry Mr. Goodwin put himself out of temper, but I 
 shrewdly suspect that he was right in calling Sam How a
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 19 
 
 And should Devotion tempt him from his awl, 
 He'll get his Orders, if he gets his call. 
 
 calf 5 my readers perhaps may agree with me when they hear 
 that besides " dung and filthiness," he thinks human learning 
 " is a part of that tail with which the dragon drew the stars 
 after him with" p. 51. 
 
 v. 180. extempore ?] Fanatics of all times have 
 
 treated human learning as unnecessary for those who wish 
 to grow in real spiritual grace $ but perhaps the most extra- 
 ordinary instance of self-taught theological acquirement on 
 record, is to be found in " The Memoirs of William Church- 
 man, a poor cripple, who never read any book but the Bible, 
 never heard a sermon, nor entered a place of worship ; by 
 Thomas Bingham, Minister of the Gospel at Whitchurch, 
 Hants." This wonderful cripple was intuitively versed in 
 the quinquarticular controversy, and had learned to decide 
 as dogmatically as any synodist : moreover he had framed a 
 scheme of a Gospel Church, which is omitted in one edition 
 of this tract, (and reinserted after ten thousand copies were 
 sold) in order " to make it more acceptable to our pious 
 friends of the Establishment." So astonishing is the tale, that 
 its Reviewers in the Ev.Mag. almost express a doubt whether 
 " the whole is not a pious fraud, invented to support the 
 credit of the Bible Society." 
 
 v. 184. his awl,~\ This is an old complaint, and from 
 
 a quarter in which we should scarcely expect it. " Under 
 this notion" (that of the Independents) says a Presbyterian 
 writer, " Weavers and Taylors may become pastors ; so that
 
 20 RELTGIO CLERICI, 
 
 With what presumption this empiric tribe 
 All disagree, and yet. must all prescribe ! 
 So body-quacks delude the gaping throng, 
 Right, but in calling one another wrong. 
 Truth is but one, the focus of the mind, 
 Heat, flame, and radiance, in a point combin'd ; 1 90 
 
 if some stop be not put, the issue may be that one may bind 
 his son apprentice to a cobler, and at seven years end he may 
 go free a minister." Hopes deferred and dashed., a Fast 
 Sermon before the Commons, July 30, 1645, by Thomas 
 Coleman, preacher of the Gospel at Peter's Cornhill, p. 27". 
 To a Missionary of this kind, however, the mechanical know- 
 ledge, which he most probably has gained, before his en- 
 trance upon sacerdotal functions,may be eminently useful. Bro- 
 ther Barker writes thus in a letter from Iloogs Kraal, August 
 14, 1815. " Brother P. has built a very neat chapel. Brother 
 W. has made him a table for the chapel: and Brother H. 
 painted the doors and window shutters. As he has no glass 
 windows, permit me to beg for him some glass to make 
 windows, and a bell to call the people together, which is 
 now done by sounding a cow's horn." 
 
 v. 188. Right, but in calling one another wrong."] " A cloud 
 indeed of authors, both for their number and the variety of 
 their opinions ; the most of them covering rather than dis- 
 covering the truth (which can be but one), and more to be 
 believed in their confuting others than in proving their own 
 assertions." PuRcnAS. Pil. 1. 2.
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 21 
 
 But Error, glittering with unsteady blaze, 
 Splits the diverging beam ten thousand ways. 
 Each sect united 'gainst the Church alone, 
 Deals some specific nostrum of its own ; 
 
 v. 1S9. the focus of the mind,'] " Pereant qui ante nos 
 
 nostra dixerunt !" I am by no means certain that the above 
 thought does not in some degree belong to a gentleman 
 much admired as a Poet by the Eclectic Reviewers, and as 
 an Orator, by the worthy manufacturers of Sheffield. The 
 following passage occurs in a report of one of his speeches 
 at a Missionary Society Meeting in that town. " In the 
 Bible Society, all names and distinctions of sects are blended 
 till they are lost, like the prismatic colours in a ray of pure 
 and perfect light. In the Missionary Society (vice versa) 
 though divided they are not discordant ; but like the same 
 colours displayed and harmonized in the rainbow, they form 
 an arch of glory ; ascending on the one hand from earth to 
 heaven, and on the other descending (naturally enough) 
 from heaven to earth. A rainbow, gentlemen, &c. &c. &c." 
 like so many other things that they are too many for quota- 
 tion. If this be not sublimity, Longinus must have written 
 in vain ! 
 
 v. 193. Each sect vnited,] The advantages of this mutual 
 co-operation are sufficiently clear : first take the spoil ; it 
 will be time enough afterwards to quarrel about the division 
 of it. In May, 1817, a premium of twenty guineas was 
 offered by public advertisement from an anonymous bene- 
 factor, (" F. V. a friend to villagers, 60, Paternoster-row,"') 
 for the choicest essay on the following subject : " What are
 
 22 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 Varies the mixture and the dose at will, 
 
 And shews how many means there are to kill. 
 
 On strong digestions one professor tries 
 
 Fumes which transport, and gas which mystifies ; 
 
 Or, for a valetudinarian soul, 
 
 Warm cordial drops, which cherish and console ; 200 
 
 Sermons for saints whose fervour needs repose, 
 
 And glowing hymns to waken such as doze. 
 
 the best means for facilitating the introduction of divine truth, 
 and the establishment of Sunday Schools in the numerous 
 unenlightened villages of Britain j of strengthening Associa- 
 tions already formed, effecting the formation of others, of 
 uniting Christian Churches for these important ends in their 
 respective neighbourhoods, and of encouraging zealous mi- 
 nisters to extend their sphere of usefulness ? to include a 
 reference to the advantages of a domestic nature, (Qu. 
 What are these ?) which have resulted from the various 
 Missionary and Bible Societies now in operation." 
 
 It does not appear very necessary that Churchmen should 
 belong to a Society expressly framed to protect what is called 
 the liberty of dissent, yet in the Resolutions agreed to by 
 the " Protestant Society for the protection of Religious 
 Liberty," the meeting at which they were passed is recog- 
 nized as consisting of " Members of the Established Church, 
 Dissenters and Methodists." 
 
 v. 201. Sermons,'] Such as " the fiery mirror," "a Ram's 
 horn trumpeter at the walls of Jericho." Evan's Sermon 
 on Trafalgar, in which (( the destruction of the combined
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 28 
 
 Another gives you, proud to pay his court, 
 Some Bible Meeting's neatly stitch'd Report ; 
 Where, by the doctors cunningly devis'd, 
 Cases and cures are yearly advertis'd; 
 Or asks, however low your pur3e, and spare is, 
 Your mite to furnish slops for Missionaries. 
 
 Fleets of France and Spain is shewn to be described in the 
 Revelations." Hunt's " Infinite treasure in earthen vessels, 
 or the Church of Jesus Christ dwelling with the spirit of 
 salvation in the tents of the flesh." Burgess's (the vene- 
 rable Minister of Haughfold Chapel., Lancashire) " Beelze- 
 bub driving and drowning his hogs j" in which three prin- 
 ciples are distinctly proved : " 1st. That the Devil will play 
 at small game rather than none. 2nd. That they run fast 
 whom the Devil drives. 3rd. That the Devil brings his 
 hogs to a fine market }" and last upon the list " The Coal- 
 heaver's Cousin delivered from the Bats," by James Barry. 
 
 Gentle reader, I assure you in sober truth, that all these 
 are works of our own days, and, however you may marvel, 
 they find purchasers and admirers. 
 
 A good reason for occasional slumber during sermon is 
 given in a note in Fawcett's Life of his Father : " Some of 
 the friends of an old gentleman who professed the highest 
 regard for a certain divine of high Calvinistic principles, 
 noticing that he frequently slept under his ministry, while 
 he was all attention when any stranger officiated for him, 
 could not forbear expressing their surprise at what appeared 
 to them so inconsistent. His reply was that he was so well
 
 24 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 Witnin some tavern, whose presiding dame 
 Their worships license to a year's good fame, 210 
 
 satisfied of the orthodoxy of his favourite preacher, who he 
 well knew would admit nothing contrary to his views, that 
 he did not see the necessity of such diligent attention ; but 
 that he must listen to others, in order that he might be able 
 to ascertain whether they were sound or not." 
 
 v. 202. glowing hymns.'] My collection of spiritual 
 
 songs I must needs confess is exceedingly defective. I have 
 not been able to find in London one of the terrific genus 
 which I am credibly informed is performing at Hull with great 
 applause : it is addressed ' * to the Devil," and accompanied, 
 no doubt, on the organ from some of the last movements in 
 Don Giovanni. Of the Amatory class I only know the 
 customary death song: " Jesu lover of my soul, let me to 
 thy bosom fly, &c. &c. " Awake my love, my fair one 
 rise. " Sweetly awhile in thee we rest, the bridal bed not 
 half so blest. " Love, thou strange mysterious thing. 
 " Encircle me round with the arms of thy love." 
 
 " Not all the feather' d quire, 
 Nor human voice divine, 
 Nor flute, nor dulcet lyre, 
 Can utter sounds like thine." 
 
 " The winter is over and gone, 
 
 The thrush whistles sweet on the spray, 
 The turtle breathes forth her soft moan, 
 And the lark mounts and warbles away j" 
 And a translation from the last four lines of " Donee gratus 
 eram tibi :"
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 25 
 
 Where two small chambers into one combine, 
 Reeking with smoke, and fumes of yester wine, 
 
 " Henceforth, dear Lord, for ever thine, 
 
 That love constrains which made thee mine 5 
 Since thou hast lived and dy'd for me, 
 I'll live not to myself but thee." 
 Nothing can be closer to "Tecum vivere amem, tecum 
 obeam libens," unless perhaps the following dexterous imi- 
 tation of a well known profane stanza : beginning " The 
 Sun's perpendicular heat," 
 
 " Perspiring at every pore, 
 
 Alternately parched with heat, 
 My temples with fever throbbed sore, 
 Convulsive I felt my heart beat." 
 In the miscellaneous class, there is one upon the model of a 
 very pretty nursery Poem, " My Mother :" 
 ' ' Thy tender ear thou dost incline, 
 Whene'er I seek thy grace divine, 
 And gently whisper I am thine, 
 
 My Jesus." 
 And one more, apparently adapted to a West Indian Mis- 
 sionary or Merchant : 
 
 " Saviour, visit thy plantation, 
 
 Grant us, Lord, a gracious rain, 
 All will come to desolation, 
 
 Unless thou return again." . 
 
 v. 208. slops for Missionaries.'] Dr. Vanderkemp's 
 
 Report for 1809 states that the call for stockings and night-
 
 26 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 Or where at each assize the sessions-hall 
 
 Gladdens the county with its law and ball, 
 
 Where wretches hear at morn their gibbet doom, 
 
 And nymphs at night are waltzing round the room ; 
 
 Here, in full cry together blatant, run, 
 
 A deep-mouth , d pack of every creed, or none. 
 
 The motley offspring of a common sire, 
 
 Baptists, and Arians, and Seceders dire ; 220 
 
 caps at Bethelsdorp was more than could be supplied. 
 This is supposed to be owing to a visit from Brother Kiche- 
 rer, which " created a great stir among several who heard 
 him, and who by the enemies of religion are termed mad, this 
 is a favourable sign." It is also a favourable sign according 
 to Brother Smart, (in a letter from Elizabeth Town, Sept. 
 17, 1812) when their preaching " breaks up the fallow 
 ground, and makes a great shaking among the dry bones." 
 Cupido Kakkulah, the converted Hottentot, having less need 
 of clothes, writes to his employers for powder and shot only, 
 his companions ask for " box coats." 
 
 v. 219. motley offspring,'] What sort of progeny this 
 is likely to be, we may learn from their own expressions, 
 when we are told of " the confluence of Christian doctrine," 
 of " Catholicism," of " Churchmen and Dissenters uniting 
 their efforts in one common cause," of " candid Christians 
 and liberal religionists ;" or when we read an advertisement 
 for " a Clergyman of Evangelical principles, either of the 
 Church of England, the Independent, or the late Lady Hunting-
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 2/ 
 
 Fierce Independents, whose ambition crost, 
 Like Satan's, hates the kingdom it has lost ; 
 
 don's connection, to preach in a small chapel in a village ten 
 miles from Hull." (Ev. Mag. May, 1805) And again for 
 ' ' an Evangelical Minister, who has been episcopally ordained, 
 and has no objection to preach in an unconsecrated place." 
 (Ev. Mag. Jan. 1806.) 
 
 The composition of the well-known ' ' Assembly" is de- 
 scribed by Foulis, in very similar terms : " They jumbled 
 up a pack of stiff Presbyterians, under the title of an As- 
 sembly, dappled here and there with Independency and Ana- 
 baptism, and a little to allay the censures of some people, two 
 or three were added to them of good learning and princi- 
 ples." History of our Pretended Saints, Book i. c. 4. This 
 leaven of the establishment (care always being taken that it 
 is not enough to ferment the whole mass) is still mixed up 
 in most of our modern " Committees." 
 
 v. 221. Fierce Independents ,] The Independents were not 
 always on such good terms with the other Archischismatics. 
 Bastwick, (cited by Burton in his Brief Answer, p. 28) thus 
 characterizes that motley sect, " Independents are beasts, 
 grolls, pyffoists, (Qu. ?) wild geese, a company of jugglers, 
 sticklers against Parliament and Presbyterians ; a generation 
 of cunning deceivers and fighters against God ; a company 
 of rats among joined stools ; a generation of men not fit to 
 give guts to a bear (surely they were), moon-calves ; a 
 wheelbarrow, such as they trundle white wine vinegar on, is 
 fitter for them than a coach." The lapse of one hundred
 
 28 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 Churchmen, who fain would work their church's fall, 
 And those who never bow'd to church at all; 
 Sure of their own salvation, such as labour 
 With most officious pains to save their neighbour ; 
 
 and fifty years may perhaps have modified the character of 
 this sect, but they are said to pride themselves much upon 
 steady adherence to their original principles. 
 
 v. 225. Sure of their own salvation, ,] In a posthumous 
 " Letter," the professed object of which is to explain "the 
 superiority of what is called the Evangelical Religion over 
 every other," which has run through five, if not seven, edi- 
 tions much within a year, with a pompous accompaniment 
 of testimonia obscurorum virorum et foeminarum, and 
 which its profound editor intends to " reprint in America," 
 and get " translated into foreign languages," are some cu- 
 rious specimens of this very humble assurance of salvation. 
 " If we do obtain it, (the faith which is peculiar to Evan- 
 gelical persons) from that moment we are safe, as safe as if 
 we were actually in heaven, and if it should please Gted to take 
 us immediately from this world, after we have obtained this 
 precious faith, we should immediately be with our Saviour 
 in Paradise." p. 13; again the true believer " when he is 
 listening to an Evangelical preacher, almost feels as if he 
 were already transported to that heaven to which his thoughts 
 habitually tend," p. 19. If heaven is to be so cheaply pur- 
 chased, we need do little more than walk on Thursday 
 evenings to church, or St. chapel.
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 29 
 
 The hollow friend, and unsuspected foe, 
 
 And all who dare not what they would be, shew. 
 
 Here cold Socinus, with his cunning turns, 
 
 Swindling salvation from the God he spurns ; 230 
 
 There Calvin, haughty with predestin'd stride, 
 
 And sullen grin of self-elected pride ; 
 
 And last, regardless be they right or wrong, 
 
 The fools who always multiply a throng. 
 
 v. 229. cold Socinus,] Of the zealous co-operation 
 
 of these rational Christians, who deny no part of our religion 
 but its essence, every new Report and Anniversary Meeting 
 gives sufficient evidence. A writer who calls himself " a 
 Member of the Church of England," on no other ground than 
 because in the course of little more than thirty pages he mis- 
 represents, or controverts every doctrine we profess, and who 
 in any three separate paragraphs of his pamphlet, as they 
 happened to turn up, might be called Arian, Socinian, or 
 Deist, and perhaps in his own mind knows not whether he 
 is each or all, has at last these vigorous expressions "supple- 
 mentary eke-out creeds, and catechisms, and articles have had 
 well nigh their day. A Bible only a?ra has almost sud- 
 denly burst upon a tradition-benighted and besotted world : 
 and an Apostolic faith in all its native purity and integrity 
 awaits its meridian illumination. Away, away, all that be- 
 clouds here and there its glorious dawn. May the day spring 
 from on high once more visit the world in all its unadulte- 
 rrttedaffulgence, and Trinitarians, Arians, Socinians, and a
 
 30 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 Around on cushion'd forms the movers sit, 
 While barer benches stimulate the pit ; 
 And rang'd aloft, in rich and beauteous store, 
 Bright eyes rain influence on the crowded floor : 
 Well knows the Saint how female arts prevail 
 Without the ladies, Heaven itself must fail ! 
 
 thousand unscriptural denominations chaunt an unanimous 
 Hosannah to the brightness of its rising." Half a dozen odd 
 Thoughts on a National Liturgy, p. 35. 
 
 v. 285. movers] No president in England can hope, 
 
 alas ! to be so magnificently supported as the chairman of the 
 Bible Society at St. Petersburgh. A Reverend Correspondent 
 writes to the Committee of the British and Foreign Bible So- 
 ciety in his account of the Fourth Russian Anniversary, that 
 the noble president was supported on his left " by the Me- 
 tropolitan Sestrenevich Bogush, and on his right by the 
 Archbishops Michael and Seraphim." 
 
 v. 240. the Ladies'] Below are two passages, one 
 
 from a modern tongue, the other from an ancient pen ; the 
 first may have the advantage in trope and metaphor, but 
 the last, 1 fear, is a more correct account of those wan- 
 dering damsels who forget the precept of the Apostle, and 
 are not content if they would learn any thing, to " ask it 
 at home." 
 
 " What may not be anticipated from the future exertions 
 of a Society under such high patronage, and with such pow- 
 erful support ! A Society, which to the commanding ener-
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 31 
 
 Now lift the curtain nothing need be chang'd, 
 The strings are fasten'd, and the puppets rang'd ; 
 
 gies of man now combines the more imposing influence of 
 female grace, and zeal, and industry. The experience of 
 years had proved that even in the capacity of a Bible Society, 
 it was not good for man to be alone : the harmony of nature, 
 however, is now happily completed. The hardy and mas- 
 culine trunk which was found to be deficient in that nourishing 
 moisture which brings the blossom to the maturity of fruit, has 
 at length received a graft from a young and enriching species, 
 and the union promises to contribute largely to the abundance 
 and excellence of their common productions." Speech at Liver- 
 pool Anniv. B. S. April 1818. 
 
 But what says the less declamatory Baxter ? " I have 
 known too many very honest hearted Christians, especially 
 melancholick persons and women, who have been in great 
 doubt about the opinions of the Millennium, the Separatists, 
 the Anabaptists, the Seekers, and such like, and after ear- 
 nest prayer to God, they have been strongly resolved to the 
 way of error, and confident by the strong impression that it 
 was the Spirit's answer to their prayers." Self-denial, Epistle 
 Monitory, 162. And again, " it is very ordinary with poor 
 fantastical women and melancholick persons, to take all their 
 deeper apprehensions for Revelation." Ibid. 167. 
 
 I must not quote a very applicable passage from Butler, 
 but I will recommend my Readers to consult it, Hudibras, 
 Part 2 Cant. 2, 775. Greek will give less offence, as it is
 
 32 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 Plann'd are the bows, the pauses, and the starts, 
 
 And cast the characters, and conn'd the parts. 
 
 First, like the Prologue of some Attic scene, 
 
 Rises the chairman, slow, and grave of mien ; 
 
 Content the plot and persons to unfold, 
 
 And bid them see what soon they shall behold. 
 
 Next, strong in limbs, and brawny-knit of frame, 
 
 Some stuttering German, with a sounding name, 225 
 
 Rumbles and vomits his unmeaning note, 
 
 A wordy flood which struggles in his throat. 
 
 A sea of consonants, in rugged trim, 
 
 Where vowels thinly scatter'd, sink or swim. 
 
 He tells, what grace the Gentiles shall imbibe, 
 
 If they and theirs but largely will subscribe : 
 
 not so generally intelligible. Human nature is always the 
 same : if Strabo had lived in the nineteenth century he need 
 not have altered the following passage in his 7th book : 
 
 AitavTcg yap rr^ 8r<o"jai//.ovjaj apyyywe, oiovrai rue, yvvai- 
 xx$' avrai 8e xxi roog avdpag TipoxaXowTai irgo; Tag snmXsov 
 Stqaiisiag tcuv dscov, xai eograg, xai noTVia<T[J.ovs' (nraviov Se 
 sin; ayy\q xaS? avrov cov evgnrxsrai toiovto;. 
 
 v. 254. sink or swim,'] 
 
 Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto. 
 
 v. 255. Gentiles'] The great work proceeds rapidly
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 33 
 
 How, through their bounty, missions have been sent 
 To all remoter villages in Kent ; 
 
 in Otaheite. Hear what is written in a Letter brought by 
 the Maguarie to the Director of the M. S. dated April 21, 
 1817} "so wonderful has been the change, that it may be 
 truly considered a miracle has been wrought on the minds of 
 the people" Reader, look as you may for some marvel, 
 which shall surpass the Thundering legion, Blaise Pascal's 
 niece, et quidquid Grsecia mendax, you will still be beneath 
 the mark " the women are now allowed to eat pork 
 
 AS WELL AS THE MEN." 
 
 V. 258. Kent ,-] This is not the only favoured County. 
 
 The following are some of the Institutions by which the 
 Gentiles of England may hope to be gradually enlightened ; 
 "West Kent Union, for promoting village preaching;" 
 " Cheshire Union, for the spread of the Gospel in the dark 
 parts of the County, by means of itinerant preaching j" 
 " Association for the spread of the Gospel in those benighted 
 parts of the kingdom, Cumberland } and Westmoreland 3" 
 " Cambridgeshire Association for promoting Christianity 
 among the peasants ;" "London Association, for extending 
 the knowledge of the gospel in the metropolis and its envi- 
 rons ;" " Hampshire Association, for extending the Gospel 
 in the county and its vicinity 3" In Ev. Mag. Sept. 1809, is 
 an advertisement, u To the friends of the Gospel. From 
 very serious motives, an inquiry is proposed, where there is 
 any populous town or village within a few miles of London 
 destitute of a preached Gospel ? &c." In the Report for 1817* 
 D
 
 34 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 And in the next report he hopes to state, 
 Whitechapel's self is made regenerate ! 
 
 Unus'd to public speaking and display, 
 Some modest youth then tries his first essay ; 
 Smoothly and sweet his honey'd accents flow, 
 His lips are faltering, and his tone is low ; 
 His looks ingenuous " gentle Pity" win, 
 And " gentle Pity" wakes her nearest kin : 
 The soft contagion strikes the yielding fair, 
 And doubtful sighs their certain zeal declare ; 
 
 of the Cornwall Aux. M. S. it is stated that " now about 23 
 towns and villages are statedly favoured with the Gospel's 
 joyful sound." The North Devon Association on the same 
 year declares that " in that county alone, there are 40,000 
 souls perishing for lack of knowledge, and destitute of the 
 light of divine truth." 
 
 v. 266. " gentle Pity , ~\ Every body knows what 
 
 " gentle Pity" is akin to. It is unnecessary to remind my 
 Readers of the gallant Doctor, who at one of the Anniversary 
 Auxiliary meetings at Hertford, assured the ladies that if 
 they were active in the cause of the B. S. " God would be 
 their lover/' but they may not be aware that Miss T. W. of 
 Durham has realized this assertion, " but two days before 
 her death she burst out into rapturous exclamations, The 
 Lord is my husband, he has told me so, he is mine, and I am 
 his." Ev. Mag. 1805.
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 35 
 
 Till, as at last, the lessening stream subsides, 
 
 And the brisk nonsense into nothing glides, 270 
 
 v. 270. brisk nonsense] Below are a few similitudes by 
 
 which the friends of the great Societies have at various times 
 represented these Institutions and their supporters. They 
 may be accepted as a specimen of an Evangelical Gradus, 
 from which future spouters may borrow their declamatory 
 centos. The Bible Society is like " our Lord himself, ap- 
 pearing in the midst of a storm 5" (Chr. Obs. vol. XV. 729.) 
 like " an unheeded flower 3 " " the birth of our Saviour 3" 
 ' ' the knowledge of the one true God in a little ark of bul- 
 rushes}" (ibid. 730.) like " a goodly tree/' (ibid. Appen- 
 dix, 1817j) " a city set on a hill;" (Vth Report.) " an har- 
 monious centre 3 (Report of Evan. Society in Sweden, 
 printed in Vllth Report.) " a day-star rising in the heart of 
 the poor Esquimaux j (Report of Manchester and Salford 
 Auxiliary B. S. 181 1.) '.' the day of Pentecost :" " a majes- 
 tic oak j" w the first preaching of the divine word 3 (Speeches 
 at the foundation of Hertfordshire Auxiliary B. S.) " a tall 
 cliff 3 " a rainy cloud 3" " a little cloud j" (Speech at 
 VHIth Anniversary Meeting.) ' ' the standard lifted up by 
 the Son of Jesse j" (IXth Report.) " a new garden for God 3" 
 (Report at 2d Meeting of Blackheath Auxiliary Society.) 
 " an astonishing Society," (who shall deny it ?) (Letter 
 from New Jersey, IXth Report.) " a holy flame 3" "an Alp 
 upon Alp ;" " a mountain touched with a light from 
 Heaven ;" " the meridian sun 3" " the song of the Angels 
 at the Nativity 3" (Speeches at formation of Suffolk Auxi- 
 liary B. S.) " a great river 3" " a wheel dropping fatness 3"
 
 36 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 Some raptur'd zany claps his hands, and cries, 
 " A god again hath taught us from the skies !" 
 
 'f an electric shock 3" (Speech 3rd Cambridge Anniversary.) 
 "a rainbow 3" (3rd Report Massachuset's Society.) "the 
 glittering sword of the Almighty, with the scabbard thrown 
 away 3" (Love's Sermon XVIIIth Anniversary of M . S.) 
 "the fire of Heaven 3" "the rapidity of lightning ;" (Philips's 
 Sermon, XlXth Anniv. of M. S.) "a lodge of Freemasons j 
 " a temple with one wing in St. Petersburg, and the other 
 in the Mississippi j" " a panoramic building, encircling the 
 globe j (Speech B.S. Anniversary Meeting, 1^14.) " like a 
 Society which ought to be suspended in letters of gold from 
 the wings of Angels 3" (Speech, Anniversary M. S. 1817-) and 
 " a soft and beauteous sunrise 5" (Speech, Anniversary 
 B. S. 1817-) 
 
 The Missionary Society is like " souls sitting together in 
 Abraham's bosom 3" (Mr. C. de Forestier's Letter.) " the 
 Nile 5" " infant Rome 3" " a corn of wheat 3" (Collyer's 
 Sermon, 1810.) "the Spartans at Thermopylae 3" "Gi- 
 deon's fleece;" (Speech XlXth Anniversary, M.S.)- "a 
 gospel tent ;" (Fletcher's Sermon.) " Cherubim lifted from 
 the earth 3" " the vertical sun, which catches upon its wing 
 other Institutions, and bears them aloft j" " music of the 
 spheres;" " a thing which makes our little fingers larger 
 than our fathers loins 3" (Speeches, XXIst Anniversary, 
 M. S.) " waters ancle deep 3" " gunpowder to destroy the 
 wall of China 3" and " a rendezvous of angels 3" (Speech, 
 Anniversary M. S. 1817-
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 37 
 
 Each has his portion ere the scene be clos'd, 
 And Peter seconds that which Paul propos'd ; 
 One puts the question, others grant assent, 
 This name's a Patron, that a President ; 
 
 The two together are like something " laying and unit- 
 ing, by lateral communication, that long train of truth to 
 which the Angel of God shall one day apply his match from 
 Heaven ;" (Speech, Anniversary M. S. 1817) "any attempt 
 to inform the B. S. would be like an attempt to enlighten 
 the source of that light which itself has enlightened the 
 world 3" (Speech, XHIth Anniversary;) its members are 
 like " God's army of Reserve ;" (Letter from a Roman Ca- 
 tholic Priest in Suabia, First Report.) Its Vlth Anniversary 
 Meeting was like " some idea of the peace, and love, and 
 joy, we are taught to expect in that glorious period which 
 animates the hopes of the Saints;" (Chr. Obs. 1810.) Its 
 triumphs are like, (very like indeed) " the enthusiasm of 
 the Crusades :" (Three Letters to Dr. Marsh and J. Coker, 
 Esq.) its members, are connected with " the goodly fellow- 
 ship of prophets, the noble army of martyrs, the glorious 
 company of apostles, with saints, confessors, reformers, mi- 
 nistering Angels, and the Father of light;" (Speech at form- 
 ation of Southwark Auxiliary Society.) A Sermon in its 
 behalf is like " another star in the east;" (Chr. Obs. June 
 1813.) Evangelical ministers in general are like fishermen, 
 not anglers for amusement, but trading cod-catchers ; (Chr. 
 Obs. Nov. 1816.) And the ex officio defender of the Church
 
 38 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 One hands the poor-man's penny box around, 
 One chuckles o'er a more substantial pound ; 
 
 Missionary Society (and it would be rude to express 
 any doubt as to the resemblance,) as far as the simile 
 is intelligible, is very like " the Minotaur." (ibid, May 
 
 1817.) 
 
 v. 272. " A God again,'] The apotheosis of the young 
 gentleman is well known, who was described by the extatic 
 Secretary at one of the Bloomsbury Auxiliary Meetings, to 
 " have wrapped himself in the skirts of that garment with 
 which the Father of light is covered ;" and to whom, " while 
 he appeared to reflect a lustre borrowed from Divinity it- 
 self," he could " have found it in his heart to exclaim, men 
 are come among us in the likeness of God !" An elderly gen- 
 tleman too is canonized in similar strains, in the Report of 
 the 8th Anniversary Meeting of the B. S. while he spoke 
 e< he seemed to have entered a higher region, within the 
 beams of celestial light, and to have left the clouds and 
 storms of the lower world beneath him." 
 
 v. 277- poor man's penny-box,'] " Throw the little you 
 can spare into the treasury of Christian beneficence let me 
 suppose that God enables you to lay by a single penny a 
 week to the cause I am now pleading for the individual 
 offering may be small, but would give a mighty energy 
 to the benevolent enterprises that are now afloat in the 
 country ; and the combined efforts of our poor men and la- 
 bourers would do more for the cause of God than all the 
 splendid offerings the rich have yet thrown into the trea- 
 sury," (Chalmer's Sermon before Dundee M. S. 1812 5) An
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 39 
 
 This votes their holy homage to the fair. 
 
 This thanks the landlord, That approves the chair : 280 
 
 The many shout Hosanna to the cause, 
 
 And swell the Christian clamour of applause ! 
 
 Oh ! were this all ! did juggles such as these 
 Alone inform us of our sore disease ! 
 Folly, like heady beer, must find a vent, 
 And heat, we know, by nature will ferment. 
 But would you see what heavier ills abound, 
 Walk with a parish priest his daily round. 
 In yonder garret, whose abode of pain 
 By four steep flights of winding steps you gain ; * 290 
 Where, on its single hinge, without a bar, 
 The crazy door for ever stands ajar ; 
 
 useful lesson this to Turn-outs and discontented manufac- 
 turers ! we still recollect how a noble demagogue's fine 
 was discharged by the ' ' combined efforts of poor men and 
 labourers." The Papists also have profited by the advice ; 
 in 1815, a " Purgatorian Penny Society" was instituted at 
 Dublin, to relieve souls suffering in purgatory, 
 v. 283. Oh ! were this all /] 
 
 " Atque utinam his potius nugis tota ilia dedisset 
 Tempora saevitia?, claras quibus abstulit urbi 
 Illustresque animas impune et vindice nullo." 
 
 Juvenal, Sat. IV. ad finem.
 
 40 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 And to the window's broken frame assign'd 
 
 A rug excludes the light, but not the wind ; 
 
 Around bare walls, perhaps once whiten'd, show 
 
 All the foul stains which damp and dirt bestow ; 
 
 And from the roof, 'twere hopeless now to mend, 
 
 Unwholesome dews with every shower descend : 
 
 There, on his pallet, some poor being thrown, 
 
 Watches for death, unheeded and alone ; 300 
 
 Without one hand his drooping lids to close, 
 
 One breast to pity or partake his woes, 
 
 One voice, whose cheering accents might assuage 
 
 The griefs of penury, disease, and age ; 
 
 Whence should a wretch like this refuse to die ? 
 
 What to such lifeless life can be his tie ? 
 
 Long has he learnt what years like his must lend 
 
 The bitter lesson, Man was not his friend : 
 
 Yet other countries may with hope be trod, 310 
 
 And all his burdens rested on his God. 
 
 Void of offence of dark and deeper hue, 
 
 Some natural frailties struck him in review ; 
 
 v. 306. lifeless life,'] 
 
 /30f ou (5k*)tos. 
 
 OiS. sm KoXum 1699
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 41 
 
 And these, with penitence and faith sincere, 
 
 He humbly whisper'd to his Maker's ear. 
 
 Yet 'tis not now the fever's flush which speaks 
 
 In signs of living flame upon his cheeks ; 
 
 'Tis not the bodily disease which ploughs 
 
 Convulsive furrows on his throbbing brows. 
 
 No ! 'tis the soul's worse agony which tries 
 
 His bosom strings, and flashes from his eyes ; 320 
 
 And clenches fast his hand, as he would strive 
 
 With fancied fiends who drag him down alive. 
 
 Some fierce and gloomy zealot has been there, 
 
 And clogg'd his feeble spirit with despair ; 
 
 v. 323. Some fierce and gloomy zealot has been there.'] The 
 following are extracts from one of the Reports read at the 
 Surry Chapel, January 1, 1807, before a " Calvinistic Be- 
 nevolent Society." Their patient, after a few preparatory 
 visits to bring him into a state of excitement, exclaimed, 
 " send for some one to pray by me, I shall be lost, I am in 
 Hell already." Such were his cries and groans, that he terrified 
 all about him. We found him in a deplorable state, sitting in 
 a chair covered over with a sheet. We asked him why he sent 
 for us ? he replied, to pray for him, for the wicked one was 
 within him, and that he would drag him soon to Hell. His 
 cries were so loud that some of his neighbours came in. He 
 said he could do nothing but curse and swear ; we said he
 
 42 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 With garbled Gospel and perverted text, 
 And scripture strangely to his turn perplext, 
 Chang'd into threats the tidings of great joy, 
 And taught the Saviour came but to destroy : 
 
 must be eternally lost ; that what he then felt was an earnest 
 of the torments due to sinners, and which they must suffer to 
 all eternity. He then swore at us, and said we were come 
 to torment him. He seemed, however, at times to pay 
 attention to what we said, but often cried and groaned in a 
 deplorable manner." On a subsequent visit, " he told us he 
 was the greatest sinner that ever lived j that he could not 
 pray ; that there was something within him that told him to 
 curse God, and that he was such a sinner that there was no 
 mercy for him. All we said seemed to no purpose ; he con- 
 tinued crying that there was no mercy for him, and that he 
 should be lost for ever. The horrors and distress that ap- 
 peared on his countenance cannot be described." Yet after 
 all these fearful notes of preparation it is implied that 
 he was left in a state of " blessed hope, and joyful assur- 
 ance of his salvation." 
 
 If the Reader wishes for horrors by wholesale, let him 
 turn to the most terrific manual which Calvinism ever pro- 
 duced, whimsically enough entitled " The Consolations of 
 Gospel Truth, exhibited in various interesting anecdotes, 
 respecting the dying hours of different persons who gloried 
 in the Cross of Christ ; to which are added, some affecting 
 narrations, describing the horrors of unpardoned sin, when
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 43 
 
 Yell'd out perdition in bis phrenzied ears, 
 
 And made his heart the very Hell he fears. 330 
 
 Oh ! if there yet be time, some balm convey 
 
 Ere yet his tortur , d soul shall pass away ; 
 
 Heaven will be merciful to faults like thine ; 
 
 Think upon Christ " He dies, and makes no sign !" 
 
 death and eternity approaches. By John Pike, Minister of 
 the Gospel, Derby." 
 
 v. 334. makes no sign .'"] Henry VI. Part 2. Death 
 
 of Cardinal Beaufort. 
 
 " And then this rhyming Clergyman quotes Shakspeare !" 
 Such is the serious accusation which has been preferred 
 in print against this unlucky passage ; and such very nearly 
 was the Puritanic charge against Charles I. The days of 
 the Histriomastix, both in the closet and on the stage, are 
 by no means passed away. " A valuable minister," is re- 
 ported by the Christ. Obs. April 1817, to have expressed him- 
 self in the following manner concerning our immortal Poet : 
 c ' As my children have grown up around me, my copy of 
 Shakspeare has been ascending the shelves of my library ; 
 it has now reached the highest, and 1 must shortly discard 
 it wholly, lest they should touch that mass of fascinating 
 mischief." Truly this is the " bandbox and white counter- 
 pane" education, which would breed up its pupil in igno- 
 rance of human nature, till they burst out at the first sight
 
 44 RELIGIO CLERICT, 
 
 Next try the pulpit; but enough of these, 
 I'll sketch a portrait which is sure to please : 
 Mine be the man whose doctrine pure and sound, 
 No tropes distract, no metaphors confound ; 
 So plain, the simplest understand and love, 
 So just, the wisest cannot but approve : 340 
 
 Who with a keen, but nicely judging art, 
 Steals to the bosom and unlocks the heart ; 
 And holds a mirror up where each may see 
 Both what he is, and what he ought to be. 
 Not his the text which language overpowers, 
 Like some old sampler border'd round with flowers ; 
 Where holy truths in measur'd periods shine, 
 And scripture stares to see itself so fine. 
 Not his the saintly leer, the well smooth'd band, 
 And the coy whiteness of a half shewn hand ; 350 
 
 The lengthen'd tone, the modulated clause, 
 The dull, unmeaning energy of pause; 
 The lifted eye, the slyly stolen look, 
 And all the frauds of preaching without book. 
 
 of " Father Philip's geese j" for where in the whole circle 
 of literature shall we find the moralist of life as it really is, 
 unless it be Shakspeare ?
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 45 
 
 Who never puts his Bible out of joint, 
 
 To try his skill on some disputed point ; 
 
 Nor starts a doubt, to prove he can unravel, 
 
 While son.e his answer catch, but all his cavil. 
 
 Christ is his stem, and would we win the skies, 
 
 He shews what branches upon Him must rise ; 36'0 
 
 No barren faith, unculturM into fruit ; 
 
 No sapless virtue, void of strength and root : 
 
 Vain all that either by itself can do, . 
 
 The Christian moralist must join the two. 
 
 He, when he chides, affectionate and mild, 
 
 Like some fond parent o'er a truant child, 
 
 With mercy tempers every sound of fear, 
 
 And wins to penitence the slowest ear. 
 
 Yet far less prompt to chasten than console, 
 
 Like Hermon's dew, his words refresh the soul ; 370 
 
 Quench the parclfd lips of him who burns within, 
 
 And slake the fever of remember'd sin. 
 
 v. 366. Like some fond parent o er a truant child, ~\ This 
 was the genuine expression of an unlettered person, after 
 hearing the Preacher whom I have here attempted to de- 
 scribe.
 
 46 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 How must we joy in such a man to find 
 His life a comment with his faith combin'd ! 
 How pleas'd the bard of Twifnam would have seen 
 His sharp-edg'd satire blunted by a Dean ! 
 
 Safe is our Chuch while such as these remain, 
 And all my fears, you promise me, are vain ; 
 Soon may we tell the mouths of Nile look round 
 And mark how many such as these are found 380 
 Harder the task to number those unclean 
 Who leap the pale at once, or crawl between ; 
 The busy foes each passing hour presents, 
 To summon Israel to her leaguer'd tents ; 
 The self-stil'd Serious, who to swell their band 
 With one new convert, compass sea and land ; 
 
 v. 376. a Dean f] 
 
 " To rest the cushion and soft Dean invite, 
 Who never mentions Hell to ears polite." 
 
 Pope, Mor. Ess. IV. 150, 
 
 v. 379. soon may we count the mouths of Nile ,] 
 " Rari quippe boni : numerus vix est totidem, quot 
 Thebarum portoe, vel divitis ostia Nili."
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 47 
 
 Harder to count the beasts who whet their fang 
 Where'er our vineyard's tempting clusters hang, 
 Grin round its venerable fence, and press 
 To make our Eden one rude wilderness. 31)0 
 
 Not such the visions which in earlier days 
 The sacred charge I long'd for us'd to raise ; 
 Not such the dreams you shar'd, for known to you 
 The tranquil future which my fancy drew, 
 And all the vivid images of joy 
 Which throng'd my beating bosom while a boy : 
 Then for these hours I panted, fram'd my plan 
 Of after life, and wish'd myself a man. 
 Methought some village home like that dear spot 
 Which held me then might sometime be my lot ; 400 
 Free from the din of town, yet not so far 
 That any friend might fancy it a bar ; 
 
 v. 386. one new Convert,"] 
 
 " And that if one live well and virtuously, 
 In way of grace like as he ought to go, 
 
 The remanent assaile him with envy, 
 
 And him oppresse with grievous payne of woe, 
 Until he followe like as the other do." 
 
 Barclay's Ship of Fools, 256, b
 
 48 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 My house, a cot as cottages are now, 
 Some little glebe for pasture, and a cow ; 
 Hedges of living quick, a yew alcove, 
 Tall elms, bright apples, and a poplar grove. 
 
 v. 404. a cow/} My cow, when I get her, will not, 
 
 I hope, throw me as much under the power of Satan as a 
 similar animal did the late Reverend Dissenter, Mr. G. That 
 eminently spiritual personage " had a cow, to which he was 
 remarkably attached, and the thoughts of her often inter- 
 rupted his most serious meditation." He used to say of her 
 " she follows me into the pulpit." Ev. Mag. Sept. 1806. 
 
 v. 406. Tall elms, fyc] A poplar grove, as I well know, 
 is not in good taste, but I cannot help wishing for it. May 
 I be forgiven for bringing from my portfolio the stanzas 
 below, which perhaps, like the lines above, may be too much 
 fwvavTX (TVVStoktw for the public ear. 
 
 STANZAS, 
 On quitting M . 
 
 Swiftly, though silently, the foot of Time 
 Falls on its path ; and ere it treads again, 
 
 Some few brief circles more, the happy clime, 
 Our little empire, and our childhood's reign, 
 
 May pass, unheeded, to another's hand, 
 
 And stranger steps profane our Fathers land .
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 49 
 
 A smiling country, and a civil squire, 
 
 Who thought the labourer worthy of his hire ; 
 
 My infant thought, the wish which earliest grew 
 
 As if instinctive on my boyish heart, 
 The dream my youth, the hope my manhood knew, 
 
 Ah ! who from these without a tear can part ! 
 Sadly I turn away my lingering eyes, 
 Before the enchanted land for ever flies. 
 
 The boughs, with golden-sprinkled apples bright, 
 Fairer to us than those which Hesper bore ; 
 
 The modest Clematis, whose virgin white, 
 
 Veil'd with its cluster' d locks our eastern door; 
 
 The garden's prickly rampart ; and behind 
 
 The cottage front with honey-suckles twined ; 
 
 The antique Yew, trimm'd into quaint alcove ; 
 
 The Church-yard Elm- rows venerable pride ; 
 The Poplar, giant of our humble grove, 
 
 Sure landmark in our voyagings and guide ; 
 The gravell'd bank, where still I seem to lie, 
 Bedew'd with morning dreams of poesiej 
 
 Oh ! were ye mine ! but now another sways, 
 
 Who little recks, your consecrated pale ; 
 Hears not sweet voices of departed days, 
 
 Nor peoples with remember'd joys your vale. 
 Oh ! were ye mine ! but he who best decides 
 Spreads all the world before, and Eden only hides. 
 
 181 G. 
 E
 
 50 RELIGIO CLERICI, 
 
 Half of my dues without a curse could spare, 
 
 Nor storm'd if now and then I kill'd a hare. 410 
 
 And when the Sabbath's holy feast was spread, 
 
 A ready flock, and willing to be fed, 
 
 Who lik'd their Parson better than the next, 
 
 And not too often carried home my text : 
 
 At the church-porch, with frocks and faces clean, 
 
 A row to greet me, as I pass'd between ; 
 
 v. 410. kilVd a hare."] This it seems is a subject of 
 
 great offence with the serious Professors. I will not enter 
 into a dispute with the author of the Dialogue on the 
 amusements of Clergymen, who leaves us few in-doors di- 
 versions on a rainy day but battledore and shuttlecock, and 
 few out of doors employments in fine weather, but spudding 
 thistles. How far these are occupations " worthy of beings 
 destined to immortality," those who object to shooting, as 
 unworthy of them, will easily determine. Fishing, for 
 which unfortunately I have neither taste nor skill, accord- 
 ing to an Epigram in the Chr. Obs. Oct. 1805, may afford a 
 theme for the moralist, 
 
 " On the method of catching Fish by a worm. 
 Some of the finny race are caught, 
 Whilst on the worm they look ; 
 The worm of sin did we behold, 
 We never should be took."
 
 A CHURCHMAN'S FIRST EPISTLE. 51 
 
 And bows of rustic courtesy, to tell 
 
 They humbly hop'd that Madam too was well : 
 
 For by my side I pictur'd one to make 
 
 All that I lov'd, more lovely for her sake ; 420 
 
 One whom my soul was fashion'd to adore ; 
 
 What Psyche is I could not picture more. 
 
 Such still the lot I covet, nor repine 
 
 If Heaven in wisdom choose not to assign, 
 
 So might I wear away my coming time, 
 
 Stain'd with no blacker sins than sins of rhyme ; 
 
 To wandering sheep the fold of Life display, 
 
 Nor, tending others, lose myself the way, 
 
 And when mine own green turf above me spread, 
 
 Some abler Pastor lays me with the dead, 430 
 
 This be my record ; " Sober, not austere, 
 
 " A Churchman, honest to his Church lies here : 
 
 " Content to tread where wiser feet had trod, 
 
 " He lov'd establish'd modes of serving God, 
 
 v. 426. sins of rhyme; " I begin shrewdly to suspect 
 
 the young man of a terrible taint Poetry with which idle 
 disease, if he be infected, there's no hope of him." Justice 
 Overdo. Bartholomew Fair.
 
 52 RELIGIO CLERICI. 
 
 " Preach'd from a pulpit rather than a tub, 
 " And gave no guinea to a Bible Club." 
 
 v. 433- Content to tread where wiser feet have trod,] 
 " Talia Theologis excutienda relinquo ; Mihi Puero et 
 Idiotae sufficit majorum Auctoritas." 
 
 Erasmus Pietas Puerilis. 
 
 London Printed by W. Bulnier and Co 
 Cleveland Row, St. James's.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Form L9-50m-7,'54 (5990)444 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 HNIVfiBSIlT OF CALIFOK&U2 
 U LOS ANGELES
 
 PR 
 
 5153 
 S197r 
 
 1819