cage of every unclean and hateful bird;' a departure from the one to occupy the other, must have been a sacrifice, the greatness of which is not to be estimated. It should be remembered too, that the Redeemer's perceptions of excellence and of evil, were infinitely stronger than we can form an idea of. In heaven, he beheld the reign of love,-pure, perfect, and ever flowing! On earth, he witnessed the empire of hatred and malevolence, ever active and deadly. In heaven, all was calmness, enjoyment, and harmony! On earth, discord, turbulence, and confusion. Every creature he left, was worthy of his highest complacency: every soul to which he came, only fitted to excite loathing and abhorrence. Above, God was in every heart, and his glory in every eye; beneath, he found all hearts estranged, and every eye averted from him. The perfection and infinite purity of his own nature, must have rendered association with sinners, and the endurance of their contradiction, inconceivably painful. What was it, then, which prompted to such a sacrifice, and sustained in the making of it? Love; boundless and incomprehensible love. Regardless of loss, and superior to shame, it flew to the relief of wretchedness and guilt.”—Orme, pp. 289-292. "There is no doubt that the Apostles were qualified, in a miraculous manner, for the work in which they were employed; but the qualifications thus communicated, were chiefly of an intellectual kind. In addition to these, they needed such moral qualifications, as have just been referred to; and it does not appear that these were imparted, unless the case of Paul be considered an exception, by supernatural means. The personal sanctification of the Apostles, was effected in the same manner with that of the people of God in general; and since high attainments in personal holiness, would more eminently fit them for the labours and toils to which they were about to be called, our Lord prayed for them in the words of the text, Sanctify them through thy truth.'

་

And eminent personal religion is as necessary, in this point of view, in the present day, as it was in the times of the Apostles. It will be generally found, that the most holy man, is the most useful man,-that the individual who has made the greatest progress in knowledge, and faith, and conformity to the image of God, all other circumstances being equal, will labour most effectively in promoting the extension of the Redeemer's kingdom. At all events, it is perfectly certain, that eminent personal piety cannot but prove, as indeed it always does, a powerful auxiliary to any person in his efforts to reclaim his fel

low-creatures from the paths of darkness, folly, and vice. Is it, then, our desire, to prove signal blessings in the various stations in which divine Providence has placed us? We learn, from the language and conduct of our blessed Lord, that we must desire increasing sanctification. Growing holiness precedes, and is essential to, growing usefulness; which depends, perhaps in all cases, more particularly upon the qualities of the heart, than those of the head. A clear and perspicacious judgment, a bright and piercing intellect, au understanding capable of embracing almost every subject, in its wide and capacions grasp, is a blessing of no ordinary magnitude; but a heart, purified from irregular, and debasing, and unholy desires, a heart, expanded by divine truth, and glowing with the love of God,--a heart, in which the altar of self-devotion has been overthrown, and the fire of holy consecration to God kindled by the Spirit of Jehovah, is a blessing whose magnitude is still immensely superior. The light of intellect is far less valuable, and truly beautiful, than the light of moral purity; and it is only when the fires of the former are directed and governed by the latter, that they bring either good to man, or glory to God."-Payne, pp. 324–326.

"O my friends! what a vast difference there is between the case of a man on land, fancying himself on the mighty waters, in danger, and about to sink still he is on land, and he knows and feels himself safe-and that of a man in the circumstances of Peter, actually in the midst of the boisterous storm, on the surface of the chafed and roaring surge, and feeling the cold wave yielding beneath him! Then he is in earnest. What was before fancy and supposition, is now felt reality. Then his cry is, 'Lord save me,-I perish!'-What a vast difference there is between a man talking of another under sentence of death, and being under sentence of death himself! In the former case, the situation of the poor unhappy criminal draws forth the expressions of sympathy and concern.- 'What a melancholy state! how awful the anticipation to the man himself! how shocking to his friends! how precious would a pardon be to him!' But such remarks, though made with feelings of the most sincere compassion, are no sooner uttered, than they are forgotten. He who makes them, has his own affairs to mind: he cannot help the man; and things must take their course. He is himself at large; he feels his liberty and safety: the case is not his own; it does not come home, to him. But let him be placed himself in the very situation ;-immured in the dark and grated cell ;-loaded with irons ;--count

ing over the hours of his destined time;

each hour that strikes, a certain deduction from a limited and determined number;-every minute bringing him nearer to a painful and ignominious end, and to the bar of an angry God, and a dreadful eternity; let the very hour arrive; let his ear, in the stillness of the morning, catch the sounds of the scaffold and gibbet erecting for him ;-let him hear the buzz of the gathering

crowd without ;--let the clock strike his

last warning of the progress of time;

let his arms be pinioned and his dress adjusted for death.--then let faces enter his cell with an unwonted expression ;let his bewildered eye catch a glance of the packet with the red seal;-let him learn that a pardon has, at that critical moment, been just received for him! O my brethren, how different are his impressions now! What before he but

half attempted to conceive of for another, he now feels for himself:-and of his feelings, experience alone can give the conception."--Wardlaw, pp. 550, 551.

If any inducement were wanting, beyond that which is to be

found in the intrinsic excellence of its contents, to the purchase of this cheap and well printed volume, it of its publication. The profits of would be supplied by the motives its sale are to be appropriated in aid of the Benevolent Fund for the relief of the Widows and Children of the Ministers connected with the Congregational Union of Scotland."

Latimer's Sermons.

(Concluded from 497.)

WHILE engaged in an active discharge of the duties of a pastor and preacher, Latimer's bold and conscientious" conduct in propagating the true gospel of Christ, brought on him, in the year 1535, the envy, malice, and persecution of all the country priests in his neighbourhood." Some of these were men of note, and they succeeded in procuring a citation, summoning him to appear before the consistorial court in London. Latimer, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, and "grievously troubled with the colic and stone," appeared on the appointed day, and certain articles were tendered to him for signature. These he peremptorily rejected, and after a succession of hearings, being tired out with "attending and refusing," he seems to have applied to the king's favourites, Doctor Butts and Lord Cromwell, who put an effectual stop to the persecution, by procuring for him a nomination to the bishopric of Worcester.

In 1536 Latimer was appointed to preach before the Convocation which agreed on articles of reformation, and he thundered in his usual intrepid style against the corruptions of Rome and the vices of the clergy. This sermon was preached in Latin, but a spirited translation appears in the first of the volumes before us.

*

What a thing was that, that once every hundred years was brought forth in Rome by the children of this world, and with how much policy it was made, ye heard at Paul's Cross in the beginning of last Parliament. How some brought forth canonizations, some expectations, some pluralities and unions, some totquots, and dispensations, some pardons, and those of wonderful variety; some stationaries, some jubilaries, some pocularies for drinkers, some manuaries for handlers of relicks, some pedaries for pilgrims, some oscularies, for kissers; some of them ingendered one, some other such features, and every one in that he was delivered of, was excellent, politic, wise; yea so wise, that with their wis

*This word is compounded of the two Latin adjectives, tot, so many, and here to mean, the many ways and artifices quot, how many; and may be supposed the Priests of this age had of getting money by imposing on the people.

dom they had almost made all the world fools.

"But yet they that begot and brought

forth that our old antient Purgatory pick-purse, that was swaged and cowled with a Franciscan's cowl, put upon a dead man's back, to the fourth part of his sins, that, that was utterly to be spoiled, and of none other, but of our most prudent Lord the Pope, and of him as oft as him listed that satisfactory, that missal, that scalary: they 'I say, that were the wise fathers, and genitors of this purgatory, were, in my mind, the wisest of all their generation, and so far pass the children of light, and also the rest of their company, that they both are but fools, if ye compare them with these. It was a pleasant fiction, and from the beginning so profitable to the feigners of it, that almost, I dare boldly say, there hath been no Emperor, that hath gotten more by taxes and tallages, of them that were alive, than these the very right and begotten sons of the world, got by dead men's tributes and gifts."-pp. 30, 31..

The following anecdote is finely characteristic of the individual.

"He sought all opportunities to reprove vice, in every one, even in kings, as appears from the following story. It was the custom in those days, about new year's tide, for each Bishop to make the King a handsome present of a purse of gold, some more and some less, according to their desires of preferment; but honest Latimer being to make his present, instead of gold, presented King Henry with a New Testament, neatly bound and gilt, with a leaf turned down, in the most conspicuous manner, pointing to these words. Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.'"-p.

xxxvii.

In 1538 the Bible was published in English, by royal authority, and about the same time, occurred an event in which we are afraid that Latimer had too decided a share. When Forrest, the friar, was burnt in Smithfield for denying the king's supremacy, the bishop, who had been previously busy in urging him to recantation, preached the usual sermon before the condemned heretic. Latimer was a forward champion of that absurd tenet, and we fear that he still retained so much of the taint of Rome, as to consider the stake as an approved nostrum

for the cure of heresy. In all the Cromwell, for the furtherance of measures adopted by Cranmer and the Reformation, he joined with hand and heart, and, in 1539, as Lent preacher before the king, distinguished himself by the fearlessness of his rebukes and censures. Accused of seditious expressions, by the malignant Bishop of Winchester, and questioned by Henry himself, he made the following manly and successful defence.

"I never thought myself, great Sir, worthy, nor did I ever sue to preach before your Grace; but I was called to it, and would be willing, if you mislike me, to give place to my betters; for I grant there be a great many more worthy of the room than I am. And if it be your Grace's pleasure to allow them for preachers, I could be content to hear

their books after them. But if your

Grace allow me for a preacher, I would desire you to give me leave to discharge my conscience, and to frame my doctrine according to my audience. I had been a very dolt indeed, to have preached so at the borders of your realm, as I preach before your Grace."-p. xlii.

When the "six bloody articles," confirming in their main points the doctrines of Popery, appeared, Latimer resigned his bishopric and retired into privacy, but, in 1540, being under the necessity of visiting London, for surgical advice, in consequence of an accident, he was discovered and thrown into prison, where he remained till the death of Henry in 1547. At the accession of Edward, it was proposed to reinstate him in his bishopric, but he declined the offer, and accepted an invitation from Cranmer to take up his residence at Lambeth, where he assisted in the compilation of the Homilies. For several successive years he preached the Lent Sermons before the young king, and distinguished himself by the singular honesty of his coarse but energetic appeals.

"Wherefore,' he exclaims in the second of the published sermons, shall

a king fear God, and turn neither to the right hand nor to the left?' Wherefore, shall he do all this? That he may reign a long time, he and his children.' Remember this, I beseech your Grace, and when these flatterers and flibbergibes another day shall come, and claw you by the back, and say, Sir, trouble not yourself? What should you study? What, should you do this, or that? Your Grace may answer them thus, and say: What, Sirrah? I perceive you are weary of us and our posterity. Doth not God say in such a place, that a King should write out a book of God's law, and read it? Learn to fear God, and why? That he and his might reign long. I perceive now that thou art a traytor. Tell him this tale once, and I warrant you he will come no more to you, neither he, nor any after such a sort." -p. 96.

Latimer seems always to have been anxious for the rigid and impartial administration of justice. When in high office, he had frequently interfered in behalf of the oppressed, and he now pleaded their cause powerfully in the presence of the King.

"Now-a-days," he breaks out in his third sermon, "the Judges be afraid to hear a poor man against the rich, insomuch, that they will either pronounce against him, or so drive off the poor man's suit, that he shall not be able to go through with it. The greatest man in a realm, cannot so hurt a Judge as the poor widow; such a shrewd turn can she do him, and with what armour, I pray you? She can bring the Judge's skin over his ears, and never lay hands upon him.

"And how is that? The tears of the poor fall down from their cheeks, and go up to heaven,' and cry for vengeance, before God, the Judge of widows, the father of widows and orphans. Poor people be oppressed even by laws. Wo work to them, that make evil laws against the poor: what shall he be to them that hinder and mar good laws? What will ye do in the day of God's vengeance, when God shall visit you?' He saith, he will hear the tears of poor women when he goeth on visitation. For their sake, he will hurt the Judge, be he never so high. God gives kingdoms to whom he pleases. He will for widows' sakes change realms, bring them into troubles, and pluck the Judges' skins over their ears."

"Cambyses was a great King, such another as our master is, he had many Lord Deputies, Lord Presidents, and

Lieutenants under him. It is a great while ago since I read the history. It chanced he had under him in one of his dominions, a briber, a gift taker, a gratifier of rich men, he followed gifts as fast as he that followed the pudding, a hand maker in his office, to make his son a great man; as the old saying is, Happy is the child, whose father goes to the devil. The cry of the poor widow came to the Emperor's ear, and caused him to flee the Judge quick, and laid his skin in his chair of judgment, that all Judges that should give judgment afterward, should sit in the same skin : surely it was a goodly sign, a goodly monument, the sign of the Judge's skin.

I

pray God we may see the sign of the skin in England. Ye will say, peradventure, that this is cruelly and uncharitably spoken: No, no; I do it charitably, for a love I bear to my country. God saith, "I will visit." God hath two visitations: the first is, when he revealeth his word by preachers, and where the first is accepted, the second

cometh not. The second visitation is

vengeance."-pp. 122, 123.

He would often interlard his sermons with odd stories, cutting gibes, and quaint and vulgar sayings.

"I read once (he tells us) a story of a holy man, some say it was St. Antony, which had been a long season in the wilderness, neither eating nor drinking any thing, but bread and water; at the length he thought himself so holy, that there should be no body like unto him. Therefore, he desired of God to know who should be his fellow in heaven. God made him answer, and commanded him to go to Alexandria, there he should find a cobler, which should be his fellow in heaven. So he went thither and sought him out, and got acquainted with him, and tarried with him three or four days to enjoy his conversation. In the morning, his wife and he prayed together, then they went to their business, he in his shop, and she about her housewifery. At dinner time they had bread and cheese, wherewith they were well content, and took it thankfully. Their children were well taught to fear God, and to say their Pater-noster, and the Creed, and the ten commandments; and so he spent his time in doing his duty truly. I warrant you, he did not so many false stitches as coblers do now-adays. St. Antony perceiving that, came to the knowledge of himself, and laid away all pride and presumption."— pp. 400, 401.

He styles John the Baptist, a

hardy knight." When describing Lutheranism, he calls it "a mangle and a hotchpotch," and illustrates the phrase by addressing his noble auditors as follows.

"They say in my country, when they call their hogs to the swine-trough; Come to thy mingle-mangle, come pus, come pus; even so they made a minglemangle of it. They could clatter and prate of the Gospel, but when all cometh to all, they joined popery with it, that they marred all together: they scratched and scraped all the livings of the church, and under a colour of religion, turned it to their own proper gain and lucre." p. 124.

We might fill many paragraphs with oddities of this kind, but we must confine ourselves to one more extract, as a fair specimen of his general style. He is enforcing the prayer, lead us not into temptation.

“When a man is in honour and dignity, and in great estimation, this serpent sleepeth not, but is ready to give him an overthrow. For though honour be good unto them which come lawfully by it, and though it be a gift of God, yet the devil wills more that man's heart which hath honour, to abuse his honour; for he will make him lofty, and high-minded, and fill his heart full of ambition, so that he will have a desire ever to come higher and higher; and all those which will withstand him, they shall be hated or ill-entreated at his hand; and at length he shall be so poisoned with this ambition, that he shall forget all humanity and godliness, and consequently fall into the fearful hands of God. Such a fellow is the devil, that old doctor. If it cometh to pass that a man fall into open ignomy and shame, so that he shall be nothing regarded before the world; then the devil is at hand, moving and stirring his heart to irksomeness, and at length to desperation.

"If he be young and lusty, the devil will put in his heart, and say to him; What? thou art in thy flower, man; take thy pleasure; make merry with thy companions; remember the old proverb. Young saints, old devils; which proverb in very deed is naught and deceitful, and the devil's own invention, who would have parents negligent in bringing up their children in goodness, he would rather see them to be brought up in illness and wickedness, therefore he found out such a proverb to make them careless of their children. But as I said before, this proverb is naught, for look commonly where children are brought

up in wickedness, they will be wicked all their lives after, and therefore we may say thus, young devil, old devil; young saint, old saint. The earthen pot will long savour of that liquor that is first put into it,' and here appeareth how the devil can use the youth of a young man follow the fond lusts of that age. to his destruction, in exhorting him to

"Likewise when a man cometh to age, that old serpent will not leave him, but he is ever stirring him from one wickedness to another, from one mischief to another; and commonly he moveth old folk to avarice and covetousness, for then old folk will commonly say by the inspiration of the devil, now it is time for me to lay up, to keep in store somewhat for me, that I may have wherewith to live when I shall be a cripple; and so under this colour they set world, forgetting their poor neighbours, all their hearts and minds only upon this which God would have relieved by them." But, as I told you before, this is the devil's invention and subtilty, which blindeth their eyes so, and withdraweth their hearts so far from God, that it is scarce possible for some to be brought back again; for they have set all their hearts and fancies in such wise upon their goods, that they cannot suffer any body to occupy their goods, nor they themselves use them not; to the verifying of this common sentence: vetous man lacketh as well those things which he hath, as those things which he hath not.' So likewise when we be in health, the devil moveth us to all wickedness and naughtiness, to whoredom, letchery, theft, and other horrible faults, putting clean out of mind the remembrance of God and his judgments; insomuch that we forget that we shall die and be judged.

The co

"Again, when we be in sickness, he goes about like a lion, to move and stir us up to impatience and murmuring against God; or else he maketh our sins so horrible before us that we fall into desperation. And so it appeareth that there is nothing either so high or low, so great or so small, but the devil can use the self same thing, as a weapon to fight against us withal, like as with a sword. Therefore our Saviour, knowing the crafts and subtilties of our enemy the devil, how he goeth about day and night, without intermission, to seek our destruction, teacheth us here to cry unto God, our heavenly father, for aid and help, for a subsidy against this strong and mighty enemy, against the prince of this world, as St. Paul disdained not to call him; for he knew his power and subtil conveyances; be like St. Paul had some experience of him.

"Here by this petition, when we say,