ble of performing the statuable exercises of the said Hall: and moreover, it having appeared by his own confession, that he had frequented illicit conventicles in a private house in this town, and that he had himself held an assembly for public worship at Wheat Aston; in which he himself, though not in holy orders, had publicly expounded the Scriptures to a mixed congregation, and offered up extempore prayers-therefore I, D. Durell, by virtue of my visitatorial power, and with the advice and opinion of each and every one of my assessors, the reverend persons afore-named, do expel the said Thomas Jones from the said Hall; and hereby pronounce him also expelled.

"III. It having also appeared to me that Joseph Shipman, of St. Edmund Hall aforesaid, had been a draper, was very illiterate, and incapable of performing the statutable exercises of the said Hall:-moreover, it having appeared by his own confession, that he had expounded publicly, though not in holy orders, the Holy Scriptures to a mixed congregation, and offered up extempore prayers:therefore I, D. Durell, by virtue of my visitatorial power, and with the advice and opinion of each and every one of my assessors, the reverend persons aforenamed, do expel the said Joseph Shipman from the said Hall; and hereby pronounce him also expelled.

IV. It having also appeared to me that Erasmus Middleton, of St. Edmund Hall aforesaid, by his own confession, had formerly officiated in the chapel of ease belonging to the parish of Chevely, in the county of Berks, not being in holy orders; that he had been rejected from holy orders by the Bishop of Hereford for the said offence; that he was discarded by his father for being connected with the people called Methodists; and that he still is under his father's displeasure for the same :-moreover, it having appeared by credible witnesses, that he is still connected with the said people, and professes their doctrines, viz., that faith without works is the sole condition of salvation; that there is no necessity of works; that the immediate impulse of the Spirit is to be waited for :-therefore I, D. Durell, by virtue of my visitatorial power, and with the advice and opinion of each and every one of my assessors, the reverend persons afore-mentioned, do expel the said Erasmus Middleton from the said Hall; and hereby pronounce him also expelled.

"V. It having also appeared to me that Benjamin Kay, of the said Hall, by his own confession, had frequented illicit conventicles in a private house in this town, where he had heard extempore prayers frequently offered up by one Hewett, a staymaker:moreover, it having been proved by sufficient evidence that he held Methodistical principles, viz., the doctrine of absolute election; that the Spirit of God works irresistibly; that once a child of God, always a child of God; that he had endeavoured to instil the same principles into others, and exhorted them to continue stedfast in them against all opposition :—therefore I, D. Durell, by virtue of my visitatorial power, and with the advice and opinion of each and every one of my assessors, the reverend persons before-mentioned, do expel the said Benjamin Kay from the said Hall; and hereby pronounced him also expelled.

"VI. It having also appeared to me that Thomas Grove, of St. Edmund Hall aforesaid, though not in holy orders, had, by his own confession, lately preached to an assembly of people called Methodists in a barn, and had offered up extempore prayers in that congregation-therefore I, D. Durell, by my visitatorial power, and with the advice and opinion of each and every one of my assessors, the reverend persons afore-named, do expel the said Thomas Grove from the said Hall; and hereby pronounce him also expelled.

"If the prejudices which led to this hard sentence are not sufficiently visible, as I think they are, in the very terms in which it was pronounced, they will appear distinctly enough when put in juxta-position with the record of the ViceChancellor's dealings with a young man of very opposite character, and a witness against the expelled students. This was the individual named Welling, mentioned before, of whom it was proved by credible testimony that he had been drunk, and called one William Wrighte a fool' for professing belief in the miracles of Moses. He excused himself by saying that he was unhappily in liquor, and declared his unfeigned assent to the whole of Scripture. His apology was accepted; but though the praying students declared their willingness to give up their irregular proceedings if deemed contrary to discipline, they were turned out of the University! The drunken scoffer was admitted to forgiveness on asking pardon; but the sober youths had committed an unpardonable fault in meeting for prayer, and acknowledging the work of the Holy Spirit! Who can deny the fact after this, that the powers that then were in Oxford treated dispa

ragement of Scripture, under the influence of wine, as much less criminal than Methodism?

"In his answer to Pietas Oxoniensis, Dr. Nowell defended the lenity shewn to Welling, while he approved the severity upon the students expelled. Well did Mr. Richard Hill observe, in a pamphlet he called 'Goliath slain,' and in which he replied to Dr. Nowell's Strictures on his former publication:-'You say Mr. Welling expressed concern for his crime, and did not Mr. Middleton express concern for his? Did not all the young men express concern that they had displeased their seniors, and did they not all abstain from the meetings as soon as they were informed that their going to them was contrary to the will of their governors in the University? Yea, had they not all proved the sincerity of their acknowledgments, by abstaining from these meetings, for a long time before they were summoned to attend Mr. Vice-Chancellor and his Assessors? Did they not declare, as well upon their trial as before, that it was their determination not to attend them again? And did not Dr. Dixon, their Principal, urge this on their behalf before the court? Surely, then, if the Reverend Mr. Welling's black and horrible offences were so easily passed over upon his own acknowledg. ment of his fault, the well-meant mistakes of these youths, against whom no one act of immorality is alleged, might also have been overlooked; or if there had been any expelling in the case, it ought to have begun with Mr. Higson, by whose advice Mr. Jones had acted in attending the meetings, and who had himself (in the religious qualm spoken of in the second edition of Pietas) caused one of his pupils frequently to pray by him extempore?

"Again, if we consider the time between the young men's crime of praying and their expulsion, and Mr. Welling's crime of blaspheming and his ordination, we shall find that the former had at least given as long a proof of their regularity as Mr. Welling had of his repentance; since it could not be more than a few weeks, or at least a few months, between that gentleman's first declaration that whosoever believed the miracles of our Lord and of Moses, must be a fool,' and his second declaration of being inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon him the office of the ministry, and of his unfeignedly believing all the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament.'

* At the present day, when doctrinal orthodoxy is common even where there is not personal piety, we are apt to forget how much we owe to those of our clergy and laity who were called Methodists, Fanatics, and the like, for their zealous stand for those doctrines of the Gospel and of the Church of England, which (as Secker, Horsley, and other eminent divines attest) had been nearly lost sight of; nay, were too often disparaged as enthusiastic and better forgotten. When we remember how many divines of repute joined the Feathers Tavern Pelagian and Arian association; and contrast this state of things with the auspicious aspect of our church in the present day, when, amidst the wildest outcries of reform, no body of persons among us has urged the “rationalizing" the Prayer-book and Thirty-nine Articles; we feel much gratitude to those who were branded as enthusiasts for maintaining the doctrine of justification by faith and the work of the Holy Spirit. Sir R. Hill had a controversy with a clergyman, who considered that he was speaking the language of his truly moderate and respectable brethren, as opposed to the revived puritanism of the Reformers and their Articles. This clergyman, Dr. Adams, who we remember wrote in reply to Hume so very moderately, that Dr. Johnson complained of his giving his opponent improper advantages, had attacked Mr. Romaine for some statements in a sermon. As the sermon was only preached, not printed, we cannot say whether it was exceptionable or not; but the following particulars of the controversy, as given by Mr. Sidney, will shew the boldness with which latitudinarian notions were put forth by divines professing to be the true sons of the church:

"Dr. Adams failed to state all the points of Mr. Romaine's sermon with which

"However, to remedy all defects in point of time, Mr. Higson solemnly attests to the Bishop, that ever since he had been at College, he had known him to be of sober life and conversation, and that he never held any doctrines but those of the Thirty-nine Articles: and others of his clerical friends as solemnly give a like testimony of his sound principles and holy practice for the space of three years, according to the usual form in such cases required."

"Mr. Hill charged the proctors with most unjustifiable conduct. These officers sheltered themselves under a profession of zeal to put down illicit conventicles,' which, after all, could not be proved to be so, but the very reverse; yet their real object is too apparent in proceedings thus exposed by Mr. Richard Hill in one of his addresses to Dr. Nowell: But, however the natural enmity of the carnal mind would shelter itself under the notion of suppressing illicit conventicles, yet that the same enmity is equally predominant against all experimental religion, whether in private or in a church, was very discernible, when the Rev. Mr. Haweis was Curate of Magdalen parish at Oxford, into which church the Reverend Proctors have frequently come during the time of divine service, and irreverently driven out before them all the young men, who were weak enough to imagine that they were spending a leisure hour much better in the house of God, than at the coffee-house or billiard-table. Mirabile dictu! Egomet hisce oculis vidi.'

"When a person of such high respectability as Mr. Hill, declares that he saw these proceedings with his own eyes, and when we know that Mr. Higson received the thanks of the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford for his conduct towards the expelled students, we can only tremble at the recollection of the awful danger our Church was in from such demonstrations on the part of persons who ought to have known that the very doctrines they so violently opposed, were what they had actually promised to defend, as sons of their reformed Alma Mater.”

he was offended, professing to forbear to mention particular tenets and unguarded expressions contained in it. The acknowledgment of this omission Mr. Hill called an 'ingenuous confession,' and added, I will as ingenuously inform you, that whatever other excuses may have been given for your dislike to that gentleman's sermon, I doubt not but it was chiefly owing to his so strenuously maintaining and defending the Divinity and Godhead of our blessed Saviour.' He founded this surmise on certain expressions uttered by Dr. Adams to Mr. Romaine in the vestry, and a conversation which took place between him and the friends of the latter, on the road home, and in his own house. There, Dr. Adams was pressed hard on these points from the Articles and Liturgy, and particularly from the Communion Service, with the words, That which we believe of the glory of the Father, the same we believe of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, without any difference or inequality.' Finding it difficult to evade the force of these testimonies of his own Church, he answered hastily, The compilers of the Articles and the Liturgy were only fallible men, and Divinity is much better understood now than at the time of the Reformation.' 'You may remember, Sir,' says Mr. Hill, that hereupon the honesty of your confession was much commended; and had you in consequence of your disapprobation of the doctrines of the Church of England, immediately resigned all the rich preferments which you hold by your subscriptions to those very doctrines, in that very Church, the whole kingdom must have echoed with encomiums upon your honest, upright, and disinterested behaviour.' But it seems that not only did Dr. Adams understate, if he did not actually deny, the divinity, and atonement of Christ, but that he became also the strenuous advocate of what is called rational religion. To his arguments Mr. Hill replied in a very convincing manner, but not altogether in the spirit best suited to engage his opponent's deliberate attention. Upon the whole, however, his letter displayed much reading and piety, as well as a bold determination to assist in upholding the truth.

"With some humour he called the Doctor's avowed notions his real creed, and the articles he had subscribed, his convenient creed, whereby he held two livings. He drew up also a comparative view of each, to shew their utter dis crepancy. And certainly with such divines belonging to her, the Church was in the lamentable condition described by South with so much feeling- impugned from without, and betrayed from within.' Dr. Adams went so far as to say, It is still pain and grief to ingenuous minds to subscribe to forms, which in their first appearance they cannot approve. I must therefore earnestly join with those who wish to see the ministers of our Church relieved from this burden.' Mr. Hill 4 G

CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 22.

ON LAYING UP FOR OURSELVES TREASURES UPON EARTH. To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

THERE are few passages of Scripture respecting which questions have been more frequently put to me than concerning Matt. vi. 19, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." Such interrogatories have been made chiefly by two classes of persons; by those who are "rising in the world," and who shrewdly suspect that the Divine commandment may stand in the way of their pursuing a plan of mere self-aggrandizement; and by those who are conscientiously afraid of transgressing the will of God, whilst laboriously endeavouring to provide "things honest" for themselves and their families. The motives of these two classes, in ascertaining the meaning of "laying up treasures upon earth," is therefore of a very different character. The former wish to know how far the Scripture can be interpreted so as to meet their own wishes; the latter desire to avoid the sin of accumulating unnecessary wealth on the one hand, and of neglecting the proper interests of their household on the other. Now, as the above passage is not the only one which affords us direction upon this important subject, we have it in our power, by" comparing spiritual things with spiritual," to ascertain the " mind of the Spirit" upon the subject.

fully acquiesced in the opinion here expressed, that there were many clergymen in those days who did not approve the articles on their first appearance, but yet approved of them on a nearer view, as approving of the good things to be obtained by subscription. In dealing with what Dr. Adams had said about not approving the articles at first appearance, he thus indulged his characteristic love of humour. Here I must beg leave to introduce a story, founded upon fact, of one whom I call a real enthusiast. This man's father built a house of stone, and after he had finished it, his son disliked both the materials and the colour of it, and mightily wished that it had been built with red bricks. Well, what should he do? It was too late to alter it, and to effect the change by human art was quite impracticable. Why, truly, he persuaded himself, that if he had but a proper degree of faith to believe it, this white stone house would soon become a red brick house. Accordingly out he goes and views the structure; still nothing appears but whited walls; he chides his unbelieving spirit, and views it a second time; when, behold, the house looks more and more of a reddish cast, and the mortar begins to appear between the joints of the bricks. And now nothing is wanting but the third review to turn the stone into perfect brick.-'Tis done, and the delighted visionary lives as comfortably in his imaginary house of red brick, as if there really were not a white stone belonging to it.

"With such like enthusiasts does this nation abound. Our good forefathers, at the time of the Reformation, builded a Church on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone. This Church they walled round with Articles, Homilies, and the Liturgy, in order to keep out Arians, Pelagians, Socinians, &c. ; but many of her late born sons who live under her roof, and feed themselves at her table, not well relishing those articles, &c., set themselves to take another view of them, and so view and review them, till they work themselves up into a persuasion that those very doctrines which once appeared in such frightful colours, instead of discountenancing, were really intended as an introduction for every heresy, to which in their plain, literal, grammatical sense, they are so diametrically opposite. And so the poor dreaming enthusiasts at length become happily persuaded that white is black, and black white.' Odd as such an illustration may appear, it contained much of truth; for it is certain that the fury of the (so-called) orthodox party in those days, was excited by the laudable attempts made by the revivalists to bring the attention of the country and its spiritual teachers, to the acknowledged doctrines of the Church."

But let us first examine the import of the words themselves, and the circumstances under which they were delivered. The original meaning of "treasure" is a heap, accumulation, or store; being also applied to the chamber or repository where goods are laid up for future use. The verb " lay up is merely a verbial form of the same word; so that, by changing the term into one of more precise import, it might be rendered, "Store not up for yourselves stores upon earth.' And if we compare the last expression upon earth" with the corresponding one "in heaven" (where we cannot literally deposit any substance), we shall see that it manifestly denotes "for an earthly purpose." The passage therefore simply implies, that we are not to accumulate wealth for a mere worldly object, or to store it up for the future with a similar design. And that this is the true meaning of our Lord's command will be made manifest when we compare it with other passages of Scripture.

But here we would remark, that all kinds of accumulation are not forbidden; such as those which have any benevolent or religious object in view, or which are needful for the carrying on of business, or are demanded by the duties that we owe to our families. The former of these accumulations was directly sanctioned by God, with respect to the "treasury" of the temple, and by St. Paul in regard to contributions for the poor. The latter were not required by those persons whom the Saviour addressed. The condition of the Jews as a pastoral people was very different from that of a commercial nation, where it is often necessary to provide for future contingencies, in the " mere way of business." The fluctuating nature of trade, and the frequent dependance of helpless members of a family upon some provision made for them by its head, requires a little foresight, in order to comply with the Apostolic injunction of " providing things honest." Thus also, "if any provide not for his own, and epecially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." (1 Tim. v. 8.) The law of inheritance amongst the Jews, and the temporal blessings (of good seasons and increase of corn and flocks) directly promised them by God, upon condition of their faithfully serving Him, not only made all " laying up" an unnecessary waste of the talents committed to their care, but caused it to savour of unbelief in God's providential promises.

But whilst we admit that accumulation is lawful, in so far as necessary to subserve the cause of religion and humanity, and to provide things that are "honest" (that is, decent or befitting), we must beware of stretching this "liberty" into licentiousness. A safe-guard on this dangerous side is to be found in other passages of the Bible. The first we shall advert to is," make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts (or desires) thereof." (Rom. xiii. 14.) If" laying up' therefore be practised in order to our living softly or luxuriously, or to increase the provisions of our table beyond that which is a comfortable supply of our wants-if it be adopted in order to flatter " the pride of life" (1 John ii. 16), and to live in a more splendid style than decency requires of us in our respective situations; or if it be used to minister to our own or our children's future indolence, and freedom from honest labour—such accumulation becomes a criminal violation of the will of God: for it is made to fulfil " the desires of the flesh."