justify those who by their own confession neither feared God nor wrought righteousness. Is this an exception to the general rule?

"It is a doubt God makes any exception at all. But how are we sure that the person in question never did fear God and work righteousness? His own saying so is not proof: for we know how all convinced of sin undervalue themselves in every respect.

"8. Does not talking of a justified or of a sanctified state tend to mislead men; almost naturally leading them to trust in what was done in one moment? Whereas we are every hour and every moment pleasing or displeasing to God, according to our works? According to the whole of our inward tempers, and outward behaviour."

After much controversy, Mr. Wesley and his friends were induced, in the Conference of 1771, to explain these official statements as follows:

"Whereas the doctrinal points in the Minutes of a Conference held in London, August 7, 1770, have been understood to favour Justification by works,' now the Rev. John Wesley and others, assembled in Conference, do declare that we had no such meaning, and that we abhor the doctrine of 'Justification by works,' as a most perilous and abominable doctrine. And as the said Minutes are not sufficiently guarded in the way they are expressed, we hereby solemnly declare in the sight of God, that we have no trust or confidence, but in the alone merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, for justification or salvation, either in life, death, or the day of judgment. And though no one is a real Christian believer, and conscquently cannot be saved, who doeth not good works where there is time and opportunity; yet our works have no part in meriting or purchasing our justification from first to last, either in whole or part.'

As men ought best to know their own meaning; and as Mr. Wesley and his friends admitted that the statements, so justly objected to, were not sufficiently guarded, and did not do justice to their sentiments; we accept the explanation, but we cannot wonder that the litigants in the controversy were not satisfied. Sir Richard certainly gave a home

thrust in publishing a singular dialogue held with the Superior of the Benedictines, at Paris, upon these exceptionable Minutes.

"No person expressed a stronger sense of indignation than Mr. Richard Hill. He adopted a singular and original method of testing the Wesleyan opinions. In the summer of 1771, he went with his friend Mr. Powys and a clergyman to Paris, carrying out with him a copy of the Minutes. While there, he was curious to see what impression they would make on a Roman Catholic, so he took his friends to the convent of English Benedictine Monks, when the following conversation took place between two of them and Father Welsh, the Superior :

Clergyman. Sir, I suppose you have often heard of the different sects amongst the Protestants in England? Superior. Very often, Sir.

C. Have you ever heard of the Methodists?

S. Yes, Sir, very often.

by some of their chiefs at their last C. I can shew you their tenets,settled Conference at London. Here they are.

After the Superior had carefully perused them, he was asked by the clergyman;

C. Do you agree with that doctrine, Sir?

S. No, indeed, Sir, we do not hold such principles as those.

C. What fault do you find with them?

S. They are too near Pelagianism. Mr. Hill. The principles of the Roman Catholic Church are nearer the Church of England than those?

S. A great deal, Sir. Those of that paper are too near Pelagianism; the author is a Pelagian.

C. What do you think of the author's asserting that those who are convinced of sin undervalue themselves in every respect; do you think sinners can undervalue themselves?

S. No, by no means; having too high thoughts of themselves makes them live

in sin.

C. Can we have any good in us before Justification?

S. Certainly not; our justification is by Christ alone; for if St. Paul says,

that we are not sufficient of ourselves to have a good thought, how much less to perform good works?

C. Can we cease to do evil and learn to do well, before faith?

S. No, we cannot.

C. St. Paul saith, whatsoever is not of faith, is sin.

S. Undoubtedly.

C. I wish, Sir, you would favour us with strictures upon that paper in writing?

S. Sir, I am so taken up that I have not time, or I could say a great deal upon it.

Mr. Hill. Your doctrine is nearer that of the Protestants?

a few particulars of his parliamentary career, the tenour of which may however be inferred from the remarks already quoted from Mr. Sidney. His speeches were often powerful; generally humorous; frequently blemished,

Sir R. Hill was engaged in another remarkable controversy, that respecting the six young men expelled from St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, in whose defence he published his Pietas Oxoniensis and other works. The facts are so well known that we need not detail them; but We cannot but express our deliberate conviction that the sentence was

harsh, unjust, and disgraceful to the University. The young men had certainly offended against ecclesiastical and academical discipline; but they pledged themselves to be regular in future; and the whole course of proceeding was marked by party-spirit and the grossest unfairness. Sir R. Hill defended them ably and nobly; though with the characteristic faults of his writings.

We wish we had space to add

ready specified; but always on the side of religion, morality, and ardent patriotism.

We find no account of his dying hours. Mr. Sidney merely says:

"After passing two years in this tranquil enjoyment of rural life, he was taken ill upon one of his favourite excursions, and returned home to the chamber of his last sickness. He died on the 28th day of August, 1808, and was buried in the vault at Hodnet

church."

Whether this illness was long or short, painful or easy; and whether his intellect was bright or clouded, and his soul anxious or peaceful, cast down or rejoicing, we are not told. But it does not matter. He had lived the life of the righteous, and his end was in the highest sense peace, whatever might be its external concomitants.

THE session of Parliament is closing, and before our remarks reach our readers, will have closed. It is everywhere iterated as a great national loss, that the legislature has done little amidst its much talking; but the essence of the grievance is not so much the adoption of some bad measures, or the rejection of some good ones, as the existence of party contrarieties which prevent the efficient carrying out of any solid steady course of public policy. Her Majesty's government, which ought to be the centre of national wisdom and strength, is not able to effect anything; being itself retained in power, not because it has decent support even in the Commons, while it is powerless in the

Lords, but because its Court intrigues have rendered the accession to power of any other body of men for the present impracticable. The Duke of Wellington, whose genuine patriotism and dignified forbearance elevate him far above party strifes, has strikingly observed that what he desires is a government;" an executive competent by talent, and character, and influence, to transact the public business; which the present weak and deserted cabinet cannot do. He has very reasonably advised Lord Melbourne not to put into speeches from the throne, what he has not duly worked out in his own mind, and embodied in bills with a fair expectation of carrying them through parlia

ment. Lord Lyndhurst also, in a speech of great ability, has shewn how impotent the cabinet has proved in its efforts to accomplish various measures which it declared to be essential to the national welfare. Its Irish municipal bill was so altered in the House of Lords, that it has been relinquished: the Canada bill, the Church-discipline bill, the Law Reform bill, all represented as of pressing urgency, have been put off; and no bill has been carried which the conservative opposition determined to arrest. Surely this is not a satisfactory state of government or legislation.

And what are the consequences? Why this among others, that the weakness of the cabinet has been the strength of the lawless opposers of peace and good order. The government which, to use too gentle a word, had connived at, we might say patronised, political and other agitators, has been bearded by Chartists, Socialists, and anti-Poor-law factionists; the manufacturing districts are convulsed with riots; Birmingham had well nigh been desolated by fire and slaughter; and had the rising in any one place been for the moment successful, the whole body of organised and armed conspirators would have started up simultaneously throughout the land, and nothing short of the special providence of God could have prevented direful mischief in the unprepared state of the country for such a conflict; a conflict which must have proved in the result, fearfully disastrous to the unhappy men who had provoked it; yet in the meantime alarming and dangerous to the peaceful part of the community; and this, however prompt and effective might be the public determination to quell the disturbance.

Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell have at length felt that there must be a government for business, as well as a cabinet for state etiquette. The unpopular demand for five thousand additional troops for home service shews their sense of the urgency of the danger; as well as the several Police bills which have been hurried through parliament to meet the emergency. These bills are not unexceptionable; and the whole question of police centralization, to which they partially tend, requires to be well considered before it advances farther for as was observed in the House of Commons in Sir R. Walpole's time, "a standing army is still a standing army by whatever name it may be called;" and blue uniforms and truncheons under a Secretary of State, may be perverted to objects hazardous to liberty, as much as red ones and firelocks. But in these days the balance

of danger is not on the side of legislative or administrative coercion; but of popular tumult of faction turning to its purpose the elements of discontent which exist in all communities; the real suffering which, alas! must always pervade vast masses of mankind; and the honest ignorance which believes that legislatures can banish poverty and sorrow from a land. Sir Robert Peel, in voting for the Birmingham Police bill, justly remarked: “The real question is, shall we, or shall we not, protect the peaceable inhabitants of the country from the arbitrary despotism to which they are at present subjected day after day? We may talk of despotism, and all the terrors and oppressions that it may inflict; but there is no despotism half so grinding-half so oppressive-as that to which those are subjected who day after day find their persons and their property exposed to danger from the violent aggressions of physical force, without there existing any power on the part of the law to afford them protection. Indeed, I very much doubt whether any despotism, whether any oppressions, come home so closely to men's bosoms, and to all the details of their domestic feelings, as when they find themselves, and their families, and their property, daily exposed to this kind of tyranny."

We would hope that the strength and confidence of these anti-English confederacies have been materially reduced by the trial, conviction, and punishment, though lenient, of so many of the offenders. The profane invasion of churches, and mockery of divine worship, by the Chartists, though intended to exhibit their strength, has in most cases shewn their weakness; and the proceeding is so obviously offensive to all decent classes of the community, that we should not think their numbers would be augmented by the demonstration. Such revolutionary conspiracies have, however, like Whiteboyism in Ireland, been allowed to advance too smoothly; but the eye of the nation is now upon them, and they ought to be effectually repressed. That the laws of the land, if duly carried into force, have power to put them down, cannot assuredly be doubted; for self-preservation is the first principle of every social body; and England is not quietly to submit to have her constitution overturned by force of arms, and liberty, property, and life put into peril, because conspirators may have the cunning to abstain from open violence till the time is ripe for the execution of their avowed projects. Their whole banding together, their arming, their training, their

tampering with treason. We trust that the nation is at length aroused to a sense of its danger and its duty. Some of the sermons addressed to the Chartists have contained excellent instruction and advice; and we think that much more might be done than has been attempted, to shew the misguided portion of the confederacythe victims, not the ringleaders-the sinfulness and the folly of their con duct. When we think of the physical wretchedness of vast masses of our dense population, we cannot wonder that they are open to the seductions of designing men, who take advantage of their necessities to inflame their minds with anti-social principles, under the preposterous fancy that a revolution would better their condition; more especially when we consider that for want

We do not however recommend political sermons. Some of the discourses delivered at churches into which Chartists have intruded, or in places where they are rife, have been very ill-judged. One clergyman so far forgot discretion and good feeling as to display bis wit in taking for his text,

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inflammatory speeches, are one continued course of sedition and treason, even had no partial out-breaks of violence taken place in particular instances, as in Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, and elsewhere. The community ought not to be exposed to the terror and danger of sudden risings, attended with bloodshed, conflagration, plunder, and anarchy; while honest men are silently watching the preparations, and not venturing to oppose them till it is too late to prevent their mischievous effects. It is well that, even though tardily, the law is beginning to exert its authority; that many both of the ring-leaders and their deluded followers have been convicted, and that others are about to be arraigned: but a system of prevention ought to be adopted; and instead of Chartist meetings being all but encouraged till they proceed to acts of open violence, they should be prevented or dispersed at the outset, by a constant system of precaution and vigilance. To take the case of the tumultuous invasion of churches; ought such an outrage to be permitted in any country which boasts of its laws, liberties, and municipal regulations? Why are peaceable and devout worshippers to be put to flight by a revolutionary mob, which is only more dangerous because trained to obey the word of command, and to be silent and orderly till the signal is given for simultaneous attack? Assuredly such outrages might be easily and legally prevented, if the well-disposed inhabitants of every town and parish where they are likely to occur would resolutely address themselves to their duty. At first such proceedings are only laughed at as ridiculous; but they afford portentous precedents and examples. It is absurd to say that Chartists have as much right to go to church as other people; and that if they proceed thither in an orderly manner, they cannot be legally dispersed, any more than a school or a benefit club. It is thus that, under the technical phrases of liberty, true liberty is violated. Chartists have a right to go to church, but not as Chartists; as worshippers, but not as invaders; nay, even in the strictest technicality of law, any person dispossessed of his legal right of pew or sitting, by force or terror, in consequence of their incursion, may indict the whole body present, or abetting, for a conspiracy. But we speak not of such technicalities; but of the undoubted right and duty of every body politic to preserve its own peace, and to punish wrong-doers. There has been too much laughing at riot, coquetting with sedition, and

My house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves." The Chartists quitted the church in a body upon its announcement; and thus far he triumphed; but he lost an excellent opportunity of addressing to them what might have benefited their souls. In most cases we believe that most good would be done by preaching as though no Chartist was present; avoiding all topics of secular strife; speaking to men as fallen, guilty, and sorrowing creatures; guilty and needing pardon and cleansing; sorrowing and needing consolation; and shewing how the Gospel of Christ, the glad tidings of salvation, meet these exigencies. Many of the religious poor endure severe privations, yet they do not become Socialists or Chartists; for they find in the instructions and comforts of religion that which guides and consoles them amidst their difficulties. Of the Chartists many probably are avowed and hardened infidels; and many more are utterly ignorant upon the subject of religion; a word spoken in season might, by the Divine blessing, be of great utility to the latter if not the former: some who came to scoff, might remain to pray; a countenance more in sorrow than anger might soften down hostile feelings; and the hope set before men in the Gospel be seen to be a brighter prize than the delusive phantoms of political perfectionism.

of churches and adequate means of religious training they have been allowed to grow up in a state of vice and ignorance, which prepares them to be the tools of infidels and political demagogues. Let it be remembered also how much these evil doers have been encouraged by some who, to say the least, ought to have known better. The recent presentation of Mr. Owen, the Socialist, to the Queen a young and maiden Queen-by the prime minister, as the bearer to the royal ear and eye of an address from "The Congress of the Universal Community Society of Rational Religionists"-the abettors of a system which inculcates republicanism, levelism, avowed deism, and the most brutal licentiousness-even to the extinction of marriage, and the substitution of concubinage in its place, was an offence against public decency and national feeling, so gross and unpardonable that Talleyrand would have told Lord Melbourne that it is worse than a crimethat it is a blunder. And this when Chartists are parading our streets; and Unionists, invested with municipal authority, are seeing the dire conclusion of their own schemes; and the riotous scenes in Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, and elsewhere, are preluding the too natural results of that tampering with evil instead of repressing it, which has been among the most marked features of the policy of her Majesty's present advisers. These things are very distressing and very alarming; our best hope, under the merciful overruling of the Most High, is that the nation is becoming sensible of the impending perils, and is arousing itself to avert them.

We will now mention in brief a few other matters.

Preparations are making for carrying into effect the Uniform Penny Postage act. The measure will be a great public benefit; nor do we believe that there will ultimately be any serious loss to the revenue, as the enlargement of correspondence will be incalculably great.

In the New London Police act there is a clause forbidding the sale of spirituous and fermented liquors between the hours of twelve o'clock on Saturday night and one on Sunday after noon. We cannot admit any principle which distinguishes one part of the hallowed day from another; but we are thankful even for this partial boon. Only one Sunday has elapsed since the Act came into effect; but the newspapers tell us that the streets of London were never seen in so tranquil a

state on a Sunday morning.-We earn estly wish we could add that Sunday travelling by rail-road were restrained, either legislatively or by the respective companies; but, with a few partial exceptions, the crime is persisted in, and its extension is fearfully enlarging, notwithstanding the earnest remonstrances of the religious portion of the nation, and of many concientious shareholders who have exerted themselves to prevent it. But even the testimony is of great value; and if duly sustained may in the end prove effectual; or if not, may lead to a better observance of the Lord's-day in other ways.

We lament to say that our legislation has been equally barren in regard to church extension; but Sir R. H. Inglis has given notice of a motion on the subject for next session. The Hon. and Rev. B. Noel has addressed a letter to Lord Melbourne full of important facts and arguments; and a cheap tract also has been issued by the Christian Influence Society, urging a general application to parliament by petitions; and the speeches delivered at the Church Extension meeting in Freemason's Hall have been published. Good use may be made of these and other publications; more especially in aid of the Queen's letter, which we trust will be responded to throughout the land with a warmth of zeal proportioned to the wide-spread religious destitution of the country.The check given to the exceptionable education plans of the cabinet has been of great service; but let it not be forgotten that the apparatus is fitted up, and that constant vigilance will be necessary to prevent its application to injurious uses.

We are much concerned to state that the House of Lords, chiefly at the instance of the Duke of Wellington, rejected a bill for enabling her Majesty to repress the Portuguese slave-trade, according to treaties: but the error has been retrieved by the adoption of a second bill for the same object, notwithstanding the continued remonstrances of the illustrious duke. The Bishop of London made a truly humane, Christian, and British speech upon the question.

We are sorry to say that on another recent occasion his Grace took the wrong side, by opposing the motion of the Right Reverend prelate just mentioned, for papers relative to the coerced attendance of the East India Company's Christian servants upon idolatrous rites. His Lordship's address was eminently able, eloquent, and Christian; and we venture to hope that, after this debate, the East India Company will take measures to carry into