souls than it had saved." The controversies of former times were conducted by gentlemen, as well as Christians, and by scholars as well as saints. The change which has taken place among you, Dissenting fellow subjects, is neither honourable to your convictions, your churches, your seminaries, or your controversialists. What would such men as Watts, Doddridge, Howe, or Baxter, have said to Dissenting clubs assembling at taverns, with Papists and Freethinking members of the House of Commons to meet them, to take measures for preventing, if possible, the needful reparation of the national churches? If in another and a blessed state such facts could reach them, they would be ready to descend from their happiness and their glory, to entreat you to abandon your present worldly, carnal, and intemperate opposition.

What can you hope to obtain from such collisions but strife, heart-burnings, retaliation, opposition for opposition, censure for censure, exposure, obloquy, contumely, and reproach? Can you believe that the nobility, clergy, gentry, yeomanry, country gentlemen, old families, landed proprietors, and even wealthy and influential manufacturers, to say nothing of the largest portion of the middling classes, and nine-tenths of the poor, will all quietly submit to be scolded, frightened, and ridiculed out of their ancient,

venerable, orthodox, and Evangelical Church? you imagine that all the piety of the country, we mean that piety which is of no doubtful interpretation, is confined to the square-built meeting-houses which you are accustomed to frequent? Do you think that in those venerable structures, in which the old Nonconformist divines delighted to preach before the Act of Uniformity, all is cold, lifeless, graceless, and mere formal worship? You cannot be so ignorant as this. Do you believe, in your consciences, that the regular, consistent, pious, converted, and evangelical frequenters of our churches, will abandon but with their lives those hallowed spots where God has visited them with his salvation, and renewed them with his Spirit? If such be your hopes, you are mistaken; for, believe us, the Church will not abdicate. Or do you hope that the Wesleyan Methodists will join your ranks, assist in your work of destruction, and seek to profit from the confusion and anarchy your leaders hope to introduce? If so -you are again much mistaken. Consult Dr. Bunting, consult Mr. Beecham, consult Dr. Sandwith, Dr. Alder, Mr. Jackson, and the other leaders of the Wesleyan body and they will tell you that never since the death of John Wesley, was their body less disposed than at present to a junction with yourselves. But why do we tell you this? You know it. You com

plain twice a week of their Episcopalian tendencies, in your organ "The Patriot."-You have no fellowship with them, and no love for them; and in proportion as you advance in your violence and hatred to the Church, in the same proportion will the Wesleyans retreat from your societies, discard your views, and proclaim their total independence of all your theories and projects. Or do you rely on political movements—on the progress of democracy—on the triumph of clamour, the ballot, mob domination, and club law, to secure the accomplishment of your wishes, and the realization of your hopes? If this be the case, again you will be confounded-for ninetenths of the population of the country would on such grounds be opposed, both physically and morally, to your projects. We ask you then, what do you hope to effect? You may bring about civil war -but you will be exterminated in the conflict. You may so disturb the country by your vehemence, as to unsettle all men's minds, and derange all the efforts of Bible, Tract, School, and Missionary Societies. You may substitute the sword of man for the word of God; and the Christian may weep for years over both churches, chapels, and meeting-houses, neglected and deserted. But this will not be the end. The people of Great Britain will return to their clergy, their churches, their altars, their sacraments,

F

MY LIFE.

PART I.

FAMILY ANNALS AND EARLIEST YEARS OF A MODERN DISSENTER.

I HAD the happiness to draw my first breath on the Protestant shores of dear old England. My father resided in a populous town in the county of Wiltshire, and belonged to the Independent congregation "meeting for divine worship" under the pastoral care of the Rev. Mr. Hawthorne. My mother, though belonging to a Baptist family, was no advocate for close communion, i. e. she just believed it possible for an individual to be a Christian, and therefore entitled to receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, who had not been baptized by immersion. Her eldest brother entertained very different opinions, regarded Robert Hall as a