Ib. p. 114.

The catalogue of authors, which this Rev. Gentleman has pleased to specify and recommend, begins with Homer, Hesiod, the Argonautics, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, Theognis, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus. * * *.  ’This catalogue,’ says he, ’might be considerably extended, but I study brevity.  It is only necessary for me to add that the recommendation of these books is not to be considered as expressive of my approbation of every particular sentiment they contain.’  It would indeed be grievous injustice if this writer’s reputation should be injured by the occasional unsoundness of opinion in writers whom it is more than probable he may never have read, and for whose sentiments he ought no more to be made answerable than the compiler of Lackington’s Catalogue, from which it is not unlikely that his own was abridged.

Very good.

Ib. p. 115-16.

These high-strained pretenders to godliness, who deny the power of the sinner to help himself, take good care always to attribute his ’saving change’ to the blessed effect of some sermon preached by some one or other of ‘their’ Evangelical fraternity.  They always hold ‘themselves’ up to the multitude as the instruments producing all those marvellous conversions which they relate.  No instance is recorded in their Saints’ Calendar of any sinner resolving, in consequence of a reflective and serious perusal of the Scriptures, to lead a new life.  No instance of a daily perusal of the Bible producing a daily progress in virtuous habits.  No, the ‘Gospel’ has no such effect.—­It is always the ‘Gospel Preacher’ who works the miracle, &c.

Excellent and just.  In this way are the Methodists to be attacked:—­even as the Papists were by Baxter, not from their doctrines, but from their practices, and the spirit of their Sect.  There is a fine passage in Lord Bacon concerning a heresy of manner being not less pernicious than heresy of matter.

Ib. p. 118.

But their Saints, who would stop their ears if you should mention with admiration the name of a Garrick or a Siddons;—­who think it a sin to support such an ‘infamous profession’ as that through the medium of which a Milton, a Johnson, an Addison, and a Young have laboured to mend the heart, &c.

Whoo!  See Milton’s Preface to the Samson Agonistes.

Ib. p. 133.

In the Evangelical Magazine is the following article:  “At——­in Yorkshire, after a handsome collection (for the Missionary Society) a poor man, whose wages are about 28s. per week, brought a donation of 20 guineas.  Our friends hesitated to receive it * * when he answered * *—­’Before I knew the grace of our Lord I was a poor drunkard:  I never could save a shilling.  My family were in beggary and rags; but since it has pleased God to renew me by his grace, we have been industrious and frugal:  we have not spent many idle shillings;