C. Truly that was no bad plan. S. No indeed; for by this means our Church became not a new Church, but only the primitive Church of Christ revived in its purity; taken from the model of those ages, in which the example and practice of the Apostles themselves were fresh in memory.-The ministry of our Church is not a new ministry, but that which has proceeded from Christ and his Apostles, freed from the usurped power of the Bishop of Rome."

C. But do not you think it would be better, if we had something more edifying, and less formal?

S. I wish nothing better than the Church possessed in the apostolic ages

C. But I dike something lively and animating.

S. So do I; and what can be more so than our service, particu larly our Litany, and all those numerous parts in which the minister and people recite the service by turns.

C. Yes; but I object to set forms in general.

S. But did you never hear that the primitive Christians used to worship God chiefly by set forms? and had it not been for these forms, every wicked minister might have introduced new errors; so that, for all I know, we might have become long ago a nation of Atheists or Deists, or of Arians or Socinians. I therefore bless God for these forms; they have preserved the soundness and spirituality of our Church at the worst of times. But tell me, what kind of prayers do you like? 4

C. The minister whose preaching I attend, and whom you know to be a pious and sensible man, usually begins his prayer with an acknowledgment of sin, and of our unwor thiness to call upon God's name; after which, there is great comfort in pleading His promises of pardon and forgiveness to penitent sinners. And besides these, there are many things to pray for; such as, that God would turn away evil from us, and give us all necessary blessings for body and soul; and we ought to pray for all men, especially for our rulers, and our spiritual teachers; and we should praise God for mercies received, especially for any particular providences most fresh in our memory, such as deliverance from sickness, &c.

S. Before you proceed, let me ask if you have been at church lately?

C. No; I have not.

S. I thought so; for if you had, you would have known, that the prayers of the Church are much of that kind you have been mentioning, and drawn up with admirable order and method. We have confession, and prayer, and praise, and

C. You surprise me. So often as I used to go to church, I never perceived all this.

S. Perhaps it was in your days of ignorance and irreligion.

C. It was, I confess. I used often to go, but being a thoughtless young man, did not take the trouble to understand the service; and when I became more serious, and in earnest about my salvation, I left off going, because I longed for something more spiritual, and was afraid of becoming a pharisee if I went to my parish-church. This is near twenty years ago.

S. Permit me, neighbour, to tell you that you acted very wrong; for that was the very time in which the Church service would have appeared to you quite a new thing. I'm sure you would not have complained of any want of spirituality. I know at least how it was with me. C. Tell me; I should like to hear S. I went to church, like yourself, for many years, without understanding the service, or caring about it. I thought there was a great deal of goodness in going, even if I slept, or thought of something else the whole time. I have often thought how wicked this was, and how God might have justly punished me for profaning his house. But as I was saying, I used to go to church as a mere formalist; but when I was awakened to a concern for my salvation, I became more attentive. I plainly saw, that our Reformers meant something more by the service than I at first thought of. I found myself to be a sinner, and that unless I repented, I must perish for ever. The Bible, the Church-prayers, and the Minister's sermons, were all plain on this point. You may imagine what concer and alarm I felt; for I had all my life thought myself very good, because I was not worse than many others.

C. That is a very common and delusive error,

S. It is; for though outward decency of conduct may profit a man like oneself, it cannot extend to God, or merit heaven. You see I had no knowledge of the holiness and strictness of God's law, but thought I should be saved in a 'crowd with others. But when I discovered myself to be a sinner, unable of myself to help myself, I' found this would not do. I then longed to hear of the Scripturemethod of salvation through Christ. I listened to the prayers, the psalms, the lessons, and the whole service, including the sermon, with the ut most attention, because I found that they suited my case. Every thing acquired an interest which it. never before possessed. I repeated the Confession with much grief, for, I felt I had wandered from God's ways, and that there was no health in me. I knew if I were cut off in my sins, I must, perish for ever.. The sentences of Scripture, with which the service begins, seemed very suitable to me and while the minister was reading those words of the repenting prodigal, I determined with myself, that by the grace of God I would imitate his humble resolution, and would arise from my state of sin, and would go to my heavenly Father, confessing my sins before him, and praying for free, unmerited pardon, through his mercy in Christ. Well, so I did, and that most earnestly, in the words of the general Confession. Every sentence in it was the language of my very soul. It seemed made on purpose for me. If I had tried till now to express my feelings in my own words, I could not have described them so well. I was much affected, and began to think such a sinner as I knew myself to be, could scarcely be forgiven. But the Absolution, in which the minister, you know, addresses the penitent sinner in God's name, and tells him of the mercies of God in Christ, seemed to afford me some comfort. I saw my case was not utterly hopeless.

C. These convictions of sin were

must be confessed, but the assertion is literally true. The path which Sheridan trod, only Ignorance could worship. But it has conducted him to the grave; and therefore, whatever follies and whatever crimes characterized the man while living,— whatever, to adopt the phrase of the author of the Monody, "seemed" to be "vice," he is, it appears, no longer to be spoken of, but in the language of adulation, as one of the rarest specimens of humanity. We are to sigh

man,

And broke the die-in moulding Sheridan."

Yes; he was one of those thirty thousand deities to which modern idolatry has allotted an apotheosis; for this apparent reason, that their talents were somewhat above, and their vices somewhat below, the ordinary level of humanity. We have no Pagans now in this country, and therefore we have no priests to bring forth the sacrifice in honour of this demigod, and to shout, "The gods are come down in the likeness of men." Otherwise, it would seem that had Paul and Barnabas visited us, they would have been in less danger of being saluted with divine honours, than the poor shattered wreck of genius, the late manager of Drury-lane Theatre. So far from being Pagans, we profess to be even Protestants, and the farce of canonization is justly held in derision. Otherwise, like one of the crew of the Victory, who said he thought St. Nelson as good a saint as any in the calendar, we might have our St. Pitt, St. Fox, and St. Burke,

"The wondrous three, Whose words were sparks of immortality,"

Aye, and St. Sheridan also, enrolled in the Litany of the fashionable world; and Ora pro nobis devoutly warbled

at their names.

If this be thought an extreme supposition, we need only quote a few lines from Mister Phillips's Garland.

The welcome of Paradise pour.”

But it would indeed be an insult to the age to suppose that these Monodies could be received in any other light, than that of a decent ceremo nial tribute to a man of genius, in which courtesy demanded that the utmost pomp of panegyric should be used, of which the style and titles of the deceased would admit. It is but matter of course for the herald to proclaim, when the ashes of the peer are consigned to the family-vault, that the deceased was the Most Noble, or the Right Honourable, or His Grace, Duke, and Prince, or Earl, Viscount, and so forth. For "they are all, all honourable men." And would you but believe the escutcheon, and the marble, the weeping statues, the cherubs, and the achievement, there was grief on earth and joy in heaven at their departure.

!

Besides, in this present case, the Monody" was written to be spoken at Drury-lane Theatre. Surely, in a place where grief and madness, and prayers and imprecations, and death itself, are so often acted, it would have been out of the question to exhibit Sheridan unmasked and in his native character.. No; dresses enough were in readiness to lend dramatic effect to the veteran of the drama'; and the mimic clouds, the well-drest angels, and the unsubstantial heaven of the stage machinery, would serve to throw a fair illusion over his last scene and if the Monody was well spoken, who would think of inquiring -is it true? Phillips's Garland," take the prose and verse together, is one of the most exquisite pieces of tawdry bombast that ever gained a young writer's self-complacency. Putting aside the extreme folly of representing Sheridan's death as an occasion for triumph, and alleging that

"He lived mid corruption, yet cloudless his name;"

putting aside the impiety of the open-
ing stanza, what shall we say to the
taste displayed in the following lines,
in reference to his dramatic works ?
"Whose streams of liquid diamond roll'a
Their orient rill o'er sands of gold!"
Again:

"He is gone-but bis memory sheds a ray
That e'en in sorrow cheers;
As sinking in the ocean surge,
Beneath the dulcet sea-maid's dirge,
The glorious God of parting day
Blushes a beam o'er the evening grey,
To chase creation's tears.”
Once more te

*Erect not now earth's emblematic stone, The starry regions brighten in his fame; And ruin rolling o'er the crumbled throne, Can but regenerate that deathless name!" The name of the writer of such a stanza as this, certainly needs be regenerated before it will be deathless.

But let us present to our readers a specimen of the prose.

"What scene did not his life illumine!

What circle has not his loss eclipsed! Another Burke may chain the senate-another Shakspeare crowd the theatre another Curran fascinate the board-an other Moore enchant the fancy, or another Hampden vindicate the land; but where shall we behold their bright varieties again combined, concentrating, as it were, their several lights in one refulgent orb, that left no cloud untinged, no charm un

'created."

This is followed by a parallel between the character and the fate of Sheridan, who is styled "the human epitome of Ireland," and the "strange and peculiar characteristics" and pitiless condition of that unhappy island."

"But this," exclaims our orator," is a subject from which I must pass away I cannot write on it without danger; for, thank God, I cannot think on it without indignation."

Our readers doubtless recollect Dr. Johnson's laconic reply to the message he received from Millar the bookseller, that he "thanked God he had done with him"-" Dr. Johnson is very glad Mr. Millar has grace enough to thank God for any thing."

Mr. Phillips is known to the public, through the medium of the newspapers and of the Edinburgh Review, as the author of a speech in the case of Gu

thrie versus Sterne, and of others on the Catholic Claims.

As to poor Sheridan, although we have thought proper to bestow deserved ridicule on the courtly mockery with which his memory has been monodized, his death awakens reflections of unmingled melancholy. His talents were of the highest order. Whatever is included in the idea of genius, a most felicitous combination of faculty, and the rarest powers of social influence and attraction, were all his own. The annals of modern of an effect equal to that produced by forensic eloquence furnish no instance Mr. Sheridan's speech on the trial of Governor Hastings. It drew forth the unbounded eulogies of Fox, of Burke, and of Pitt; the latter of whom entreated the House of Commons to adjourn, in order to "give time for a calmer consideration of the question," than the state of feeling produced by that oration would allow. How splendid the career that then opened to the man thus invested by acclamation with the palm of oratory! What might not Sheridan have with such powers achieved in the national council of a free country, where mind still maintains a degree of ascendency, and opinion shapes the decrees and restrains the incursions of power? His life was indeed a miserable instance of "failing wisdom;" and were the world but capable of receiving the lesson of his example, the darkened close of that life which opened with so much splendour, would furnish the most salutary instruction. But the moral is too trite to be regarded: it is like the closing couplet of a sentimental drama, completely lost upon those who care only for the spectacle and the actor.

NEW-YORK, January 31, 1817.

Those Persons who are friendly to the dif fusion of RELIGIOUS TRUTH are earnestly requested to peruse the following.

The Board of Trustees of the PROTESagain to present their Institution before TANT EPISCOPAL TRACT SOCIETY beg leave the public for an increase of patronage. In the spring of the last year they ad