one which, in my eyes, was but too plainly irreconcilable either to reason or to Scripture. Communicating my distress to some of my fellow collegiates, I found them sharers in it. Upon inquiry it was found, that among the Fellows of the College there was one, to whose office it belonged, among other things, to remove all such scruples. We repaired to him with fear and trembling. His answer was cold: and the substance of it was-that it was not for uninformed youths such as we, to presume to set up our private judgments against a public one, formed by some of the holiest, as well as best and wisest men that ever lived. When, out of the multitude of his attendants, Jesus chose twelve for his Apostles, by the men in office he was declared to be possessed by a Devil: by his own friends, at the same time, he was set down for mad. The Mark iii. 14 to 22. And he ordained twelve ....(14.) and they went into a house (19.) And the multitude cometh together again, so that they could not eat bread. And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, he is beside himself. And the Scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, he hath Beelzebub....(20, 21, 22.) like fate, were my conscience to have shewed itself more scrupulous than that of the official casuist, was before my eyes. Before the eyes of Jesus stood a comforter-his Father— stood no comforter. In my father, in whom in other cases I might have looked for a comforter, I saw nothing but a tormenter: by my ill-timed scruples, and the consequent public disgrace that would have been the consequence, his fondest hopes would have been blasted, the expenses he had bestowed on my education bestowed in vain. To him, I durst not so much as confess those scruples. I signed :—but, by the view I found myself forced to take of the whole business, such an impression was made, as will never depart from me but with life. Mendacity and insincerity-in these I found, and it will be seen how far I experienced,the effects-the sure and only sure effects—of an English University education: of a Church of England education of the first quality: these, sooner or later, I could not but see in the number, not only of its effects, but of its objects of mendacity, a forced act or two: : C and the object of it the securing of an habit of insincerity throughout life. Another thing, which I moreover beheld most certainly among the effects, and but too probably among the objects, of Church of England doctrine, enforced by Church of England discipline, was,-that "humble docility" as towards its rulers and their subordinates that "prostration of the understanding and will," which, in so many words, with an intrepidity that cannot sufficiently be admired, the Bishop of London, on a late Charge, some passages of which will here be more particularly brought to view, has published as the avowed object of their endeavours their National Society's Schools, and this their Catechism, being employed as instruments to this purpose. The more closely I looked into the controversial doctrine thus forced into my hands, the more fully I saw reason to be substantially confirmed, in that general conception of them, which had from the first presented itself to me :-some of them not true-others, whether true or false, not susceptible of application to any particularly useful purpose: many of them to much bad purpose: those, which were at the same time true and useful, so plainly true and so plainly useful, that no fear could be entertained of their commanding instantaneous assent, but for that suspicion, which is the natural concomitant of bribery and intimidation-of reward—of punishment-or of a compound of both—when seen to be employed to operate upon conscience. In mendacity and habitual insincerity is there any thing of vice? He who has entered into that fold cannot have entered into it without having sold himself to the practice and service of vice. This done, to drag down into the same, abyss as many others as possible, is a policy, the urgency of which cannot reasonably be expected ever to be resisted. In any one who follows the same course, instead of that accuser or condemning judge which he would have beheld otherwise, each man beholds an accomplice: an accomplice, the surest and most zealous of all advocates and defenders. Trained up in insincerity-attached to it by principle-by practice and above all, were it only because before all, by interest that sinister interest, to which the vicious principle owed its birth,-the more acute hist sense is of the absurdity, and groundlessness, and mischievousness, of the doctrines to which his outward assent has been compelled, the more determinately-taking the weakness of St. Peter for the model of his strength,—yes -the more determinately, will he insist on the reasonableness of them-on their necessariness to salvation-and on the impossibility, that either of those qualities can really experience a denial, from any cause, but either a degree of profligacy deserving of punishment under the name of punishment, -or insanity, calling for the like punishment under the name of necessary care.* * In regard to these Articles and these Subscriptions, a few words, having for their object the mitigation of the evil, may perhaps be not altogether without their use. In and by the act of subscription, what is the fact asserted? It is-for what else can it be?-It is-that at the moment at which the last stroke of the pen is given to the signature, the persuasion, of the person whose signature is attached to it, is that the propositions, to which it is thus attached are, all of them, true: ---At that same moment?-Yes?-At any subsequent one? No:-for to no subsequent one is it possible that the assertion thus expressed can have any application. The very next moment, or if this be as yet too near for sincerity, the next |