in a trice, and tithes are nothing but the dust beneath his feet. He has already swept away half a dozen Bishops in Ireland, what will he not do when he steps over the channel?

And here, my Lord, I pause to express my astonishment at the conservatives, who now praise Lord Stanley as the great prop of the ChurchLord Stanley, who has abolished bishoprics-he a friend of the Church!

The historian Collier, a high Church clergyman, has spoken pertinently to the point. "As to the parallel between the Princess Elizabeth and her sister Queen Mary, may it not be affirmed that one made martyrs in the Church and the other beggars; the one executed the men, and the other the estates? And therefore reserving the honour of the Reformation to Queen Elizabeth, the question will be whether the retaining the first fruits and tenths, putting many of the vicarages in this deplorable situation, and settling a perpetuity of poverty upon the Church, was not much more prejudicial than fire and faggot-whether DESTROYING BISHOPRICS is not a much greater hardship than destroying Bishops? because this severity affects succession, and reaches down to future ages; and lastly, whether, as the world goes, it is not more easy to recruit Bishops than the revenues to support them ?"

In other words, the hanging a Bishop is only hanging a John or a Thomas, but the extinction of a bishopric is a large massacre, the whole breed of Bishops in that diocese extirpated for ever; a crime of huge iniquity-an act of most blood-thirsty and barbarous cruelty. But if crimes like these are perpetrated by the friends of the Establishment, what will its enemies do? If the lovers of "time-hallowed" institutions give us this deadly hug in the way of affection, what will the great Boa-constrictor, Radical Reform, effect, when it comes to squeeze the Church in its voluminous embrace?

My Lord, these thoughts are somewhat of a melancholy strain, and indeed what Churchman in these days can be very jocund when he looks at the prospect before the Church? That pernicious method of arguing with Churchmen on first principles is now so common, and so universal is the cry to try the prelacy by the Gospel, that we are already condemned in every town and village, and held up as deceivers in every parish. They compare the Church and the clergy with the Church and the clergy of the New Testament, and will hearken to none of our exceptions, allegories, and metaphors. They declare that our ghostly authority is all a trick; they laugh at the white sheet, the turnip, and the tallow candle,

and are come to that point which Strabo* never anticipated-to ridicule all contrivances of superstition, and yet to adhere more than ever to solid piety.

Against this spirit it is most difficult to contend; if the quarrel were in the old style about a heresy, a point in metaphysics, a vowel, or a diphthong-if it were about the precedence of metropolitans, the proper days to keep a festival, or the orthodox way of breaking an egg, one might have some hope of getting out of the difficulty; but when they attack the very foundation, and boldly assert that the Gospel doth not allow such a thing as a Priest, it shows that the old Quaker leaven hath leavened the whole lump, and that the candle of priesthood is in danger of being overwhelmed with a broad-brim extinguisher.

My Lord, I finish these remarks, by earnestly requesting your Lordship to bestir yourself; for the voluntary system is at the door, loudly knocking for admittance. If ever that monster should pass

* "Women," says Strabo, "and the promiscuous crowd cannot be actuated by the lessons of philosophy, nor by these be led to religion, sanctity, and faith. They must be urged by superstitions, and this cannot be done without legends and miracles. The thunder, the ægis, the trident, the torches, and the serpents; the ivy-circled spears and the fabled arms of the Gods, were used by the founders of politics as hobgoblins for infantile minds."

the threshold, we are all undone-ruined horse

and foot, root and branch. A Gospel Reformation will be inexpressibly horrible; it will be like the entrance of the Medes into Babylon to sweep all clean "with the besom of destruction." The Bishops will have to leave their palaces, the chapters must quit the cathedrals, the clergy their pluralities; no more tithes great or small; no agistment, valuation, dilapidations, fines, or fees; no sale of livings; no knocking down of immortal souls by the auctioneer's hammer; no translations; no letters demissory, licenses, or certificates: farewell glebes and parsonage houses! farewell warrants, policemen, and soldiers! farewell mitres and titles! farewell grants of Parliament! We shall be left to our own resources, our corks will be taken away from us, and we must either sink or swim; and then indeed shall we at last be compelled "to watch in all things, to endure afflictions, to do the work of Evangelists, and to give full proof of our ministry."

I have the honour to be,

Your Lordship's,

Obedient humble Servant,

March, 1835.

THE EDITOR.

POSTSCRIPT.

AFTER the above prefatory address had been written and put into the printer's hands, the Editor heard with amazement that "My Lord of London" had sung his palinody on the subject of the letters of L. S. E.

His Lordship's first recommendation was in these words:- "Other instances (of Dissenters' delinquencies) are given in a publication which I RECOMMEND as containing a great deal of USEFUL INFORMATION and SOUND REASONING, set forth with a little too much warmth of invective against the Dissenters, entitled, 'Letters to a Dissenting Minister of the Congregational Denomination, by L. S. E.'"

In the second edition of the Charge in which this recommendation had appeared, and after the publication of " A Remonstrance addressed to the Lord Bishop of London by Charles Lushington, Esq.," his Lordship — quantum mutatus ab illo Hectore!-utters this lamentable strain :-" In the first edition of this charge reference was made to a publication which contains some other instances of the disingenuous proceedings of the Society in