with themselves. In short, there were but few points of agreement between these eminent men. They disputed, as we have seen, on passive obedience and other topics peculiar to the religious and political state of the times. Hoadly was in favour of the sentence of perpetual exile passed against Atterbury by the house of lords, on a charge of being engaged in a conspiracy to restore the Stuart family. In the year 1717, Hoadly preached before the king his celebrated sermon on the Nature of the kingdom, or church of Christ.' With this discourse commenced the famous Bangorian Controversy, so called from the circumstance of the author's being at that time bishop of Bangor. As this sermon embraced all the important topics then pertaining to the relations subsisting between church and state, it brought into action, on one side or another, many of the most able and learned men in the kingdom. No controversy, probably, ever attracted so much attention for the time it continued, nor enlisted so large a number of combatants. Hoadly was attacked from every quarter. He was put upon his defence against Sherlock, Snape, Hare, Potter, Wake, Cannon, Law, and a host of others. In all these contests he acquitted himself with great dignity and credit. It was the purpose of the author, in the sermon which gave occasion to this controversy, to make it appear from the scriptures that the kingdom of Christ is in all respects a spiritual kingdom, in which Christ himself is the only king and lawgiver. Temporal governments and laws have no just control in this kingdom. The authority of Christ and his apostles demands our undivided respect and submission. Human penalties and encouragements to enforce religious assent, are not consistent with the principles of the gospel. They may produce a unity of profession, but not of faith; they may make hypocrites, but not sincere Christians. These sentiments were thought by many to be a direct attack upon all religious establishments, and especially on that of the church of England. They were not intended as such by the author. He approved of establishments under certain conditions and modifications, and defended most ably all that was defensible in the English church. Yet we cannot wonder that tenets like these should have met with strenuous opposition from the credulous and timid on the one hand, and from the discerning, bigotted, and suspicious on the other. So great was the offence taken by the body of the clergy at the sentiments contained in this sermon, that it was resolved to proceed against the author in convocation, as soon as it should be convened. The lower house appointed a committee to draw up a representation, which was unanimously accepted. But when the king saw to what unreasonable length the clergy were suffering themselves to be carried, he exercised his royal authority, and prorogued the convocation before the subject was brought into the upper house. At this period may be dated the downfall of the convocation. It has never met since, except on business of form; and, if the Bangorian controversy had resulted in no other good, it would have been no trifling achievement to destroy the power of this engine of persecution and ecclesiastical tyranny. "We of the present day," says Mr Hughes in his memoir of Sherlock, "who happily are strangers to the disastrous scenes of an unsettled government, and are accustomed more to form our opinions from conclusions of the understanding, whether rightly or wrongly drawn, than to defer implicitly to authority, can scarcely gain a proper notion of the heats and animo ! sities which this dispute excited. To attempt it, we must take into consideration the peculiar state of parties, or rather of factions, which then existed both in church and state. The doctrines of the Revolution were at that time but partially admitted; the Jacobites were strong in many parts of the kingdom, and existed in all, while they sedulously fomented disaffection in other parties, and attached themselves to cach as it seemed disposed to encourage their pretensions; non-jurors, non-conformists, and sectarians of every description, were constantly breaking out into acts of animosity against the established church and the government which protected it; nor did the popish pretender fail to take advantage of these circumstances, by hovering around the coasts, stirring up rebellion within the realm, and the hostility of foreign potentates from without. In the meantime, the country was divided generally into two great parties, tories and whigs,-terms which might be taken as synonymous' with those of high and low churchmen, so thoroughly were political opinions identified with theological tenets and rules of ecclesiastical discipline. The former of these, or at least the greater part of them, upheld the doctrines of indefeasible hereditary right, unlimited non-resistance, and inherent ecclesiastical authority, to a degree which went to chain down man's free spirit, and render him at once the slave and instrument of tyranny; a majority of the latter, on the contrary, in their hatred for popery, and love of that blessed Revolution which liberated us from its fetters, would have loosened the bands of churchauthority inconsistently with the safety of the protestant establishment." We dissent entirely from the opinion that Hoadly and his party placed the establishment in peril; but the general view taken of the state of parties is correct and instructive. A short time before this controversy commenced, Hoadly wrote a 'Dedication to the Pope,' which, for a deep knowledge of human nature, for wit and grave satire, has seldom been surpassed. It was prefixed to a short treatise by Sir Richard Steele, entitled 'The Romish Ecclesiastical History of late years.' This work professes to be a translation of an Italian manuscript, giving an account of the ceremonies attending a canonization of saints at Rome. The original narrative is occasionally broken by humorous descriptions and pointed reflections of the translator, designed to place in a strong light the absurdity and imposture of those ceremonies. The dedication appeared in Steele's name, and went out to the public as his own, although some few persons were in the secret. When the real author was generally known, Steele was severely censured, particularly by Hare and Swift, for shining in this borrowed dress. Hare, as the account says, "looked with an evil eye on this piece, as if his own province of wit were invaded," and Swift could not let so good an opportunity pass without taking his usual mode of revenge by hooking the matter into a rhyme, in which he holds up Steele as one "who owned what others writ, And flourished by imputed wit." The Dedication never was published in Hoadly's name during his life time, but it is contained in the folio edition of his works. The follow 1 Not absolutely so in every case, as we have already had occasion to remark. ing is an extract from a letter written by Hoadly to Lady Sundon, nearly twenty years after the Dedication first appeared:-" I remember, when I last waited on you at Kensington, you were willing to see a certain dedication which you could not find among your books. Be pleased to accept of this, and, as you read it, remember that it had never been printed if it had not been first read over, and received the approbation of some of the best judges, in your parlour. Call to mind the excesses of joy with which Dr Clarke then received it." This extract, the testimony of his son, and the general consent of his friends, are a sufficient proof that he was the author of the Dedication, although he never published it with his name. In 1719, Bishop Hoadly published, in one vol. 8vo, The Common Rights of Subjects defended; and the nature of the Sacramental Test considered; in answer to the Dean of Chichester's (Sherlock) Vindication of the Corporation and Test Acts.' In the preface to this very able performance, Hoadly says, "The following book is an answer to the most plausible and ingenious defence that, I think, has ever yet been published, of excluding men from their acknowledged civil rights, upon the account of their differences in religion, or in the circumstances of religion; and of making the sacrament of the Lord's supper, instituted by our Lord for the remembrance of himself, the instrument of this exclusion, by a new human institution." The bishop afterwards says, "In the course of his work the dean is repeatedly careful to observe, that, in vindicating the test and corporation acts, he endeavours to justify the legislature, and to justify the laws of his country, which he represents me arraigning and condemning. I beg leave, therefore, here to tell him, once for all, that there was a time when the laws of this country were on the side of a popish establishment; and that the writing on any side of any law, as such, is not a thing greatly to be boasted of; and that the whole of the question is, Whether the laws we defend be good and just, equitable and righteous? and not, Whether they be the laws of the land or not? I shall also observe, that it is so far from being a crime, or an affront to any legislature, to endeavour to show the evil consequences, or iniquitableness of any law now in being, that all law-makers, who act upon principles of public justice and honour, cannot but esteem it an advantage to have such points laid before them and as to myself, I shall ever, I hope, esteem it as great an honour to contend against debasing any of Christ's institutions into political engines as others can do to plead on the side of an act of parliament. And I shall add farther, that I enter into this cause both as a Christian, and, I trust, as one truly concerned for the public good of the society to which I belong; considering it not as the cause of any particular body of men, or any particular sort of Christians distinct from others, but as the cause of all men equally, and of all sorts of Christians, who, in several places, and at several times, have an equal interest in it." After having very particularly and satisfactorily refuted the different arguments advanced by the dean, Hoadly concludes in the following words :--" I have now examined Dr Sherlock's arguments: first, for the exclusion of good civil subjects from offices, merely upon account of their disaffection to a church establishment; or rather of their lesser degree of affection for one church than for another: and then, for employing to this secular purpose the communion, a sacred institution of our Lord himself, appointed for another purpose, wholly relating to another world. And I have shown that his arguments are inconsistent with the rights of all Christians, and contrary to the principles of the whole Reformation: that his plausible arguments for exclusive laws upon religious considerations, drawn from self-defence, or former behaviour of predecessors, hurt the church of England itself in other places, times, and circumstances, as much as they can pretend to help it here now: that they justify the heathen's exclusion of Christians, the papists' exclusion of protestants, and the worst of protestants' exclusion of the best from all offices, whenever power may be in their hands. I have also shown, that it is a prostitution of the holy sacrament to apply it to a purpose of a different nature from what the great Institutor solemnly appropriated it to; and to make that the tool of this world, which he ordered to have respect only to another. And I have proved that the test and corporation acts are repugnant to reason and to justice. What I have written may probably be misrepresented, but whatever imputations may be thrown out against me, neither the dean of Chichester, nor any one else, can rob me of the inward satisfaction I enjoy, in the sincere endeavours I have used in this piece, and in my former writings, to propose and recommend such principles as may at length, with the assistance of more able hands, effectually serve to establish the interests of our common country, and our common Christianity, of human society and true religion, of the present generation and the latest posterity, upon one uniform, steady, and consistent foundation." An abridgment of this work was published in 8vo, in 1787. Besides his controversial and political writings, Hoadly published several works as aids to practical religion and a right understanding of the scriptures. At an early period of his life he wrote, besides pieces in defence of miracles and prophecy, four sermons on impartial inquiry in religion. He published two or three volumes of discourses, and many single sermons at different times, and also a life of Dr Samuel Clarke, prefixed to an edition of his sermons. But one of his most celebrated and laboured performances was 'A Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.' The character and objects of this work may be understood from the following remarks of the author. "As, for the sake of one sort of Christians," says he, "I never ceased to inculcate the necessity of universal obedience to the will of God, that there might be no help left to them of acceptance without this; so, for the defence and support of others in their sincere endeavours to please God, against all those uneasy impressions of superstition which they had a right to be freed from, I made it my care to state and explain the commands peculiar to Christianity, from the first declarations of Christ himself and his apostles, in such a manner, as that they might appear to honest minds to nave as little tendency to create distress and uneasiness, as they were designed in their first simplicity to have." Of the same work, Dr Middleton observes, in a letter to Lord Hervey, "I like both the design and the doctrine, as I do every design of reconciling religion with reason, or, where that may not be done, of bringing them as near together as possible. His enemies will insult him with the charge of lessening Christian piety, but the candid will see, that he only seeks to destroy a superstitious devotion by establishing a rational one in its 6 place." As the Plain Account' is elaborate, and not well-adapted to common use, it was abridged and put into a more popular form by Di Disney, in 1774. The last publication of Hoadly was a spirited letter, written after he was eighty years old, vindicating himself from misrepresentations which had gone abroad, by reason of an impostor having forged a note against him. This letter was considered a remarkable performance, both in regard to its ability and the knowledge it discovered of the technical mysteries of the law. Horace Walpole said, in alluding to it, "the bishop has not only got the better of his adversary, but of his old age." The humanity and kind temper of the writer towards the person who had attempted to deceive and defraud him, are not the least striking excellences of this vindication. Dr Akenside wrote an ode to Hoadly, in which he has not been unsuccessful in portraying some of the bolder features of his character. The lines quoted below are from this piece. "O nurse of freedom, Albion, say, What man among thy sons around, Than that where truth, by Hoadly's aid, "For not a conqueror's sword, Nor the strong powers to civil founders known, Could longer guard from reason's warfare sage; Nor synods by the papal genius taught, Nor St John's spirit loose, nor Atterbury's rage." Bishop Sherlock. BORN A. D. 1678.-died A. D. 1761. THIS illustrious prelate was a younger son of Dr William Sherlock, dean of St Paul's, the author of the well-known and popular treatise on Death. He was born in London in 1678. At Eton, where he was educated, he had Townshend, Pelham, and Walpole, amongst his school-companions; and to the intimacy thus formed in early life with individuals who afterwards acted such conspicuous parts in the government of the country, did Sherlock owe much of that good fortune which attended him throughout life. Among his class-fellows, the future prelate excelled not only in learning, but also in the more boisterous sports and games with which they filled up their hours of recreation. Warton, on the authority of Walpole, interprets Pope's expression, the plunging prelate,' applied to Sherlock in |