other instances, exposed themselves to just chastisement, but, in the present case, they have exceeded the usual measure of misrepresentation, which reveals the nature of their spiritual wrath.

The personal hostility they have manifested is a matter of little moment; but nothing can be more amusingly absurd than the cool effrontery with which these nameless people affect to sit in judgment on the character of Dr. Doddridge. The reputation of that good and learned man did not depend upon the system of pious fraud and artful concealment they advocate; nor would he have thanked them for the hollow professions and needless apologies with which they have honoured him.*

Many worthy persons have expressed their chagrin

The party leaders of what are called the orthodox dissenters, have secretly been, for many years, in a sad dilemma with regard to Dr. Doddridge. His works were too important, and their value already too well appreciated, by men of real piety and learning, to render silence safe. At the same time the manly, critical, and candid examination of the scriptural records, of which his Expositor presents an example, was a humiliating contrast with their own practice of dogmatical assertion, and unchristian reproach in matters of biblical inquiry.

The remarks of these people on the Family Expositor are, accordingly, full of that self-contradiction, specious adulation, and depreciating insinuation which show that the writer has far more cunning than honesty, and that his object is to pervert the better judgment of his reader.

Among much trash of the same sort, we have a striking specimen of this puritanical duplicity in the Eclectic Review for November, 1829, page 418. "His (i. e. Dr. Doddridge's) Lectures and Family Expositor have procured him an extensive celebrity as an accomplished divine and biblical critic." "No part of Dr. Doddridge's fame is derived from any peculiar elegance or nervousness of style, any

at the conduct alluded to, but to me it has proved, in one sense, a matter of satisfaction.

In proportion as these volumes exhibit the merits of the old Nonconformists, and may thus awaken the present race to a sense of those fanatical innovations, which, while the Dissenters have infinitely increased in wealth and number, have actually lowered their rank and influence as a class in society, so far was I prepared to expect, and in this sense am I happy to find that these pages are obnoxious to the self-interested zealots who have abused their confidence.

The former Nonconformists were attached to the National Church, from which the Act of Charles the

brilliancy of genius, or commanding reach of thought!" "Nor is he an expositor who can always be safely followed. His Family Expositor has been of immense practical utility in promoting very-materially the study of biblical criticism, and the spirit of religious inquiry. But Dr. Doddridge's excessive CANDOUR, and his educational bias, have often led him to adopt criticisms of very doubtful propriety !”

It is almost unnecessary to inform the reader that this declaimer has not ventured to quote a single word, or referred to a single line of the learned work he has slandered, in confirmation of opinions so arrogantly expressed. It, however, happens that, in the succeeding page, he throws off the Lion's hide in which he had roared so melodiously, and stands in his own words, convicted of more than assinine stupidity. "He (i. e. Dr. Doddridge) lived in an age barren of greatness; and his name serves to cast a ray over a dark and cheerless portion of our ecclesiastical annals." One would suppose that the most purblind among the provincial disciples of this orthodox oracle, the far famed Eclectic, would be somewhat startled with this sweeping sentence, which has consigned the once honoured names of Lardner, Neal, and Watts to an eternal silence! and asserts that neither they nor Warburton, nor Secker, nor Wesley, nor Whitfield, who, with many other eminent men, were the contemporaries of Doddridge, could even twinkle distinctly in that stygian darkness to

Second had divorced their founders, and which they hoped to rejoin, on a revision of its articles and canons compatible with their just ideas of Christian liberty; their loyalty and patriotism were not only sincere, but ever active principles; they fostered a system of general information and of candid theological inquiry; their piety was practical and unobtrusive; their manners affectionate, hospitable, and cheerful; and their orthodoxy attempered with that charity which" thinketh no evil."

The effects of that enthusiastic extravagance of religious conceit which followed in the train of Methodism, has been before alluded to. We have

which the goose-quill wand of this critical magician had transformed one of the most brilliant portions of our ecclesiastical annals.'

Perhaps a more signal but less amusing instance of the dread of that renovated spirit of candour, and that abhorrence of party distinction with which a general knowledge of the liberal sentiments of Dr. Doddridge, would inspire the dissenting world was betrayed by this, and most of the other religious periodicals, in their mode of noticing his Posthumous Sermons published in 1826.

It is hardly possible to imagine that any work could be more interesting to the religious world than these four volumes, the printing of which was enjoined by their pious author, in his will, with touching solemnity. "Which I would not appoint, (i. e. their publication) if I did not hope that it might be yet more for the benefit of the world; and that fruit may thereby abound to me in the day of the Lord." This clause is in itself their best recommendation; but these sermons were examined, previous to their publication, by some dissenting ministers of distinguished worth and character, and by a learned divine of the established church, of high literary reputation, who all concurred in expressing the strongest opinion of their great practical value. Yet, on their appearance, these journals, some of which now shower their hollow adulations on the name of Dr. Doddridge, scarcely vouchsafed, to these his important Discourses, a single page of churlish notice.

found that, in some instances, it excited infidelity, and its injurious influence on the character of the Dissenters, has been pointed out. With regard to the growth of an intolerant spirit, in any religious community, nothing can be more evident than the mode of its production, where the seeds of fanaticism have been already sown.

The solemn mummery which disgraced the Puritans, during the usurpation of Cromwell, evidently arose from the arrogance of vulgar persons, who, having wealth and power "thrust upon them," sought at once to gratify their pride, and conceal their native insignificance, by a profane assumption of superior sanctity. The intolerant cruelty of the early Protestant refugees in America, towards their unfortunate brethren of rival creeds, had much the same origin; and if we recollect the great and sudden changes in the aspect of society, which the artificial state of mercantile affairs in this country, during the late war, induced, we can feel but little surprise that "zeal without knowledge" hath abounded.

Yet, after all, the pharisaical spirit we deplore is already on the wane; in excess it grows ridiculous: people become ashamed of it, and it dies a natural death. Nor are the great body of the Dissenters to be estimated by the tone of a few ill supported periodicals, or busy partisans. They are uninfluenced by them, and, in a round of happy duties, pursue "the noiseless tenor of their way."

In the great essentials, the Nonconformists are yet the same. Glory to God, and good will to

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men" is still the motto on the banner they follow into action. They remain the staunch friends of civil and religious freedom, and are loyally and sincerely devoted to the happy Constitution of their country. Their energies have been somewhat misapplied, but not exhausted; and were some few trifles reformed, and were they again directed by such men as Dr. Doddridge and Dr. Watts, they would step forward in the practical service of society, as a giant refreshed from his slumbers. Knowing this, and it is no more than what a little reflection would force every honest man to admit, I want words to express the astonishment with which I read the following passage.

"The principle of nonconformity in religion is very generally connected with political discontent; the old leven is still in the mass, and whenever there is thunder in the atmosphere, it begins to work. In the time of the American war, they were wholly with the Americans; and during the French Revolution, their wishes were not with the Government, nor their voice with the voice of the Country. At contested elections, their weight is uniformly thrown into the opposition scale; at times when an expression of public opinion is called for, their exertions are always on the factious side. They are what Swift called them, schismatics in temporals, as well as spirituals. The truth is that, as Burleigh said of the English Papists, they are but half Englishmen at heart; for they acknowledge only one part of the two-fold Constitution under which they live, and, consequently, sit loose in their attachment to the other. Of the