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ject, he must, under these circumstances, as to what concerns credence, content himself with trusting to that superiority, which, in its contest for credence, truth possesses over falsehood, and to that complexion of sincerity, which, upon a view taken of the whole work, the wishes and desires that gave birth to it, will, it is hoped, be found to have given, to the language in which it is expressed.

Be the opinions and assertions what they may, the cause of their being published is one thing: the cause of their having been framed and entertained, another, and in respect of time, frequently a very different

one.

As to the opinions and assertions here brought to view, the cause of their being thus made public, the principal at least, if not the only cause, or at any rate, the occasion, isthe observation made of that system of exclusion, of which the formulary in question has been and continues to be the instrument: the exclusion, by which the benefit of the capital and new-invented instrument of virtue and happiness is denied to all those children whose parents choose not to see it perverted, as it seems to them, to the production of the

opposite ill effects. But of this, more in its more appropriate place.

In the formation of these opinions and these affections, no prepossessions adverse to the system thus censured can have had any the smallest share. In the instance here in question, all prepossessions were, in an eminent degree, favourable to it.-But it is time to substitute the first person to the third.

Of my four great-grandfathers, two were Clergymen of the Established Church: both beneficed both of them men of more than ordinary estimation in their calling: men whose love and reverence for that establishment, to the reputation of which their own deportment gave increase, stood abundantly expressed in the deportment and language of their respective daughters. In the lap of one of these daughters, I learnt for my first lesson, the matter, in so far as it was learnable -of this formulary. Of their devotions, and those, not weekly only but daily-and in every part accordant to the rites of the established Church,—was I, at all times when the suspension of school-instruction renewed the domestic intercourse, in the instance of both of them, an affectionate, reverential, and con

tinual witness: and by these passionately beloved, eminently virtuous, as well as pious authors of my being, were the same affections and opinions transmitted to both my immediate parents, to the son of the one, and the daughter of the other.

At my birth, and till he quitted the neighbourhood, which was not till I had been some years at the university, my father belonged to a club, in which he was the only member that was not a clergyman—a clergyman of the Church of England.

Walking one day with him in London, upon our passing near a building, which had something public in its appearance, he motioned to go in. To a question of mine, what it was, the answer was-a Dissenting Meeting House." Sir," said I, “would it be altogether "right for us to enter into such a place?"-His answer was a smile:-but the departure was immediate.

A recollection, but though considerably less remote, much less distinct,-is that of the period at which, on the occasion of a ceremony called a Confirmation, my head received the sanctifying touch of a Right Reverend hand. On the occasion, and for the purpose

of its receiving this mysterious touch, the supposition is, that the contents of the Catechism have all of them received a permanent, and, by divine grace, an everlasting habitation in every head thus sanctified. For my own part, I remembered as well as I couldI understood as much as I could-I believed as hard as I could-and if any thing was wanting to belief, it was made up by trembling.

In the Church itself-in its discipline and its doctrine-and, in particular, in a particular exercise, which, in the last stage and highest seat of my education, I saw given to that discipline,-in those things which, in relation to those objects, my own individual observation, not only uninfluenced, but unaccompanied by the application of any exterior influence, presented to my reflection,-did the unfavourable impressions,-the unfavourable opinions, and thence, and thence only, the unfavourable affections, in which this work originated, take their rise.

No: incredible as it may appear-incredible as it may so naturally be pronounced, by those whose orthodoxy is made sure, by the hope of preferment, combined with the

fear of ruin,-to no motive, to which any such epithet as sinister is wont to be affixed, -no, not to prospect of profit in any shapenot to resentment, envy, or any affection of the dissocial stamp, can either the affections or the opinions, have, in the smallest degree, been indebted for their existence.

In the seat of instruction, in which these opinions and these affections (adverse as they unwillingly were and are) were formed, no cause of personal enmity, or so much as ill humour, no disappointment-unless it were the finding bad instruction where I had expected good, and next to no instruction where I had expected much,-did I ever experience. Of no one member of the governing body did I ever so much as imagine myself to have, on any personal account, any reason to complain. On the contrary, from that quarter more offers did it happen to me to receive, and those of a very friendly and substantial nature, than I thought it advisable to accept. Even to this hour I continue, and without any intervening interval of an opposite description, on terms of friendship with some-on terms other than those of friendship, with

none.

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