regulate its disorders, and restore to it a form more worthy of itself.

Sermon on Candour and Unanimity.

PHILIP DODDRIDGE was born, 1702, in London, where his father was an oilman, and his grandfather a minister ejected for nonconformity. When born he was laid aside as dead, and was the twentieth and only surviving child of the family! He was taken up as an orphan by Dr. Clarke of St. Alban's, who proved a parent to him, and trained him to the ministry. He was educated under the Rev. John Jennings at Kibworth, Leicestershire, rejecting some flattering prospects of entering the established church. Having preached at Hinkley, Kibworth, and Harborough, he, in 1729, settled at Northampton, where he opened a flourishing academy: thence issued, for twenty years, some of the first ministers of the age for talents, attainments, and respectability. He was indefatigable in discharge of his duties, both as tutor and minister, which shortened his days. A cold, caught by going to St. Alban's to bury his patron, Dr. Clarke, brought on a consumption. He was at the Hot-wells, Bristol, and thence went to Lisbon, where he died, October 26, 1751, in the fiftieth year of his age. He was interred in the cemetery belonging to the British factory; and his tombstone, sunk into the earth through length of time, has been lately raised, and restored so as to be rendered more worthy of his memory! His miscellaneous WORKS have been

published in five volumes, octavo; and his Exposition on the New Testament, six volumes, octavo. He was a man universally beloved and respected. Moderately Calvinistic, he hated no man for his sentiments, and wished well to the religious world. Few lived a better life, none died a better death, and all denominations revere his memory! Dr. Kippis, who was his pupil, thus concludes his Memoirs of him in the Biographia Britannica:-" A better Christian and Christian minister never lived." His Family Expositor has been lately republished, in an elegant manner, with superior embellishments; it is a work admired by Churchmen and Dissenters: and his Lectures on Ethics and Divinity have been eminently useful to young men training up to the Christian ministry.

72.

JAMES FOSTER, D. D.
DIED 1753.

To agree in opinion is entirely out of our power; to profess alike, whilst we believe differently, is base and dishonest, and destructive of the most sacred obligations, and upon that account ought never to be the matter of our choice. So that neither of these can be any part of that unity which we are bound to cultivate as a religious or moral duty; but the whole sum of it must be resolved into this, that

condescension, mutual forbearance, and an harmony of mild benevolent affections, supply the place of that uniformity of faith and profession, which are, morally speaking, impossible.

When the professors of our most holy and excellent religion are imperious and domineering, and foment cruel and unnatural divisions; when they break the one body of Christ, and multiply it into little cabals, reviling and disclaiming all relation to each other; when they are contentious, and, without thinking of charity and moderation, engage in violent disputes about the holiness of days, and gestures, and garments, and crossings, or the orthodoxy of sounds that have no determinate meaning, or the several ways of explaining what is allowed to be inexplicable; and instead of humility and peace, gentleness and simplicity of manners, the real characters of corrupt and degenerate Christians are haughtiness, impatience of contradiction, and an implacable stubborn spirit: the cause of Christianity is more dangerously wounded by such excesses as these, than by all the heart and arguments of its most ingenious and subtle opposers ;and notwithstanding its truth and divinity, infidels will load it with contempt; nor indeed can it be expected to flourish and gain proselytes, while it is thus dishonoured and betrayed by its pretended friends. Add to this, that divisions and animosities obstruct the increase of Christian knowledge, by infusing strong prejudices, by inflaming the passions, and darkening the understanding, and by

withdrawing the attention from the essential doctrines of the gospel, and fixing it on those minute and trifling points, which are generally the subjects of most furious and scandalous debates. No less fatal are they to the Christian virtues of righteousness, long-suffering, meekness, fidelity, and goodness, which are all obliterated and effaced in proportion to the increase of discord and variance. Strife and faction are therefore condemned in the New Testament in the severest terms, because of their manifest contrariety to true religion, and the Christian character, and their dreadful and destructive consequences. And on the contrary, the strictest unity and most affectionate regard for each other are frequently and earnestly recommended.

We are exhorted to follow after the things which make for peace, to put away evil speaking, wrath, anger, clamour, and malice. And the Apostle Paul, with the most beautiful and pathetic tenderness, entreated the Philippians, if there was any consolation in Christ, any comfort of love, any fellowship of the spirit, to be like minded, having the same law (i. e. reciprocal and universal charity), being of one accord and of one mind; and the Colossians to put on (as the elect of God, holy and beloved) bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, and iong-suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another. He reproved the Corinthians for their contentious principles with great sharpness and severity, in the following passage: Whereas there is among you envying and strife,

and divisions, are ye not carnal and walk as men? For, while one saith I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos, and I of Cephas or Peter, and I of Christ; are ye not carnal? Is CHRIST divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? And in another of his epistles he enjoins it on the Christian brethren to walk worthy of the cocation wherewith they were called, because there is one body and one spirit even as they were called in one hope of their calling.

This is the glorious spirit, this the divine temper of the Christian religion, strongly inculcated and brightly exemplified by the first preachers of it. And if the time should ever come, when not only the members of particular churches, but whole Christian societies, shall live in this amiable and blessed concord one with another: this will be the strongest and most transporting resemblance of which we can at present form any idea of the Future life, in which social affections will be exerted, and social pleasures enjoyed, in their utmost purity and perfection!

Discourses on Social Virtue.

JAMES FOSTER was born, 1697, at Exeter; his grandfather was a clergyman, but his father was a Dissenter at Kettering, Northamptonshire. Educated by Mr. Hallett, he, in 1718, entered on the Christian ministry. He settled with a small congregation in the Mendip Hills, publishing his Essay on Fundamentals, which brought him into notice; he became a Baptist, and removed to Trowbridge,