JOHN WHITE, whom Clarendon calls "a grave lawyer, but notoriously disaffected to the Church," was member of the House of Commons for the borough of Southwark, and chairman of the Grand Committee of Religion. This committee ejected many of the clergy for incompetency and bad lives. Mr. White published, in vindication of the committee, "The First Century (or Hundred) of Scandalous, Malignant Priests." He was a Puritan from his youth. He died 1644, and was buried in the Temple Church with great funeral solemnity.

Dr. WILLIAM TWISSE was vicar of Newbury, Berks, near to which he was born, and prolocutor of the Assembly of Divines, which met at Westminster. This appointment shews his reputation as a theologian. He was considered the ablest disputant of the day against the Arminians. He was marked and plundered by the royal soldiery, and died in very necessitous circumstances in 1646, in the 71st year of his age. He was buried at the request of the Assembly, who attended his funeral, in Westminster Abbey; there his body rested till the Restoration of Charles II., when, agreeably to the magnanimous policy of that period, which the Common Prayer-Book still calls upon us to celebrate by a special religious service, as happy, joyful and glorious, his bones were dug up by order of Council, and thrown, with those of several others, into a hole in the churchyard of St. Margaret's!

"After the same sort shall we be renewed by Christ in another life, and shall know our parents, wives and children, &c., much more perfectly than Adam did then know Eve. Yea, and angels as well as saints will be our blessed acquaintance and sweet associates. We have every one now our own angels there beholding our Father's face: and those who now are willingly ministering spirits for our good will willingly then be our companions in joy for the perfecting of our good: and they who had such joy in hea ven for our conversion, will gladly rejoice with us in our glorification. I think, Christian, this will be a more honourable assembly then you ever here beheld, and a more happy society then you were ever of before. Surely Brook, and Pim, and Hambden, and White, &c., are now members of a more knowing, unerring, well-ordered, right-aiming, self-denying, unanimous, honourable, triumphant Senate, than this from whence they were taken is, or ever Parlia

ment will be. It is better to be door-keeper to that Assembly, whither Twisse, &c., are translated, then to have continued here the Moderator of this. That is the true Parliamentum Beatum, the blessed Parliament, and that is the only church that cannot err.

"Then we shall truly say as David, I am a companion of all them that fear thee, when we are come to Mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling. We are come thither already in respect of title and of earnest and first-fruits; but we shall then come into the full possession.

"O beloved, if it be a happiness to live with the saints in their imperfection, when they have sin to imbitter as well as holiness to sweeten their society, what will it be to live with them in their perfection, where saints are wholly and only saints? If it be a delight to hear them pray or preach, what will it be to hear them praise? If we thought ourselves in the suburbs of heaven when we heard them set forth the beauty of our Lord and speak of the excellencies of the kingdom, what a day will it be when we shall join with them in praises to our Lord in and for that kingdom? Now we have corruption and they have corruption, and we are apter to set awork each other's corruption than our graces, and so lose the benefit of their company while we do enjoy it, because we know not how to make use of a saint; but then it will not be so. Now we spend many an hour, which might be profitable, in a dull, silent looking on each other, or else in vain and common conference; but then it will not be so. Now the best do know but in part, and therefore can instruct and help us but in part; but then we shall with them make up one perfect man. So, then, I conclude, this is one singular excellency of the rest of heaven, that we are fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God. Eph. ii. 19."

MR. WARNER ON EVANGELICAL PREACHING.

[This veteran author and divine has once more ventured to attack the self-named "Evangelical" party,* and has already incurred no small share of their obloquy. He has in view the "Evangelical" clergy, of whom, as an aged minister of the Established Church, he is both qualified and entitled to give his fearless opinion. The following extract is from the Prefatory note to the 2nd edition.]

Or the Clergy denominated EVANGELICAL, and of the results of their pulpit ministration, I have known, seen, and heard much; and from all that I have thus known, seen, and heard, I feel myself to be fully justified in having made those statements respecting both which are now before the public.

With regard to these ministers themselves, no man can be more inclined than I am to give them full credit for conscientious motives, warm piety, pure morality, and a zealous attention to the duties of the pastoral office; nay, I will go further and add-for their voluntary sacrifice, in many instances of health, and not infrequently of life itself, to their ministerial labours; so that, if every cause made the Martyr, many of them might fairly claim the honours and rewards of such self-devoted characters. But, on the other hand, with all my respect for this class of my clerical brethren, I cannot blind myself to their lamentable want of HUMILITY and CHRISTIAN CHARITY; two spiritual graces, for the absence of which, in the believer's character, nothing can atone; since, if I read the Scriptures aright, it is upon these virtues that all pure and acceptable religion must be founded. As proofs of their deficiency in the first of these qualities, I would adduce-their arrogant pretensions to a deeper insight into Holy Writ, and to a greater portion of spiritual light, than those Clergy of the Establishment have obtained, who do not adopt their peculiar doctrinal views-their proud and dogmatical confidence in the infallibility of their interpretation of scripture, and of the doc

* Evangelical Preaching; its Character, Errors, and Tendency; in a Letter to the Bishop of Bath and Wells. By the Rev. Richard Warner, F.A. S., Hon. Mem. of the IMP. Cæsar. Soc. of Nat. Hist. Moscow, &c.; Rector of Great Chalfield, Wilts; and of Croscombe, Somerset. 1828. 2s. Second Edition.

trines which they infer from that interpretation—and their affectation (in very numerous instances) of a practice not customary with the Ministers of the Church of England, EXTEMPORANEOUS PREACHING, which, generally speaking, is nothing more or less than the sacrifice of common sense on the altar of vanity, all which is so strikingly opposed to the meekness of Moses (Numb. xiii. 3), the lowliness of David (Psalm xxxi. 1, 2), the diffidence of Paul (Philipp. iii. 13), and the humility of the Son of God (Matt. x. 29, xxi. 5), that it would not be injustice to apply to the mi nisters in question the reproving language of Jesus Christ to the over-zealous disciples on a memorable occasion, "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of." Nor are the EVANGELICAL CLERGY (as a class of divines) less wanting in Christian charity than in humility. To say nothing of their too frequent insinuations of "the true Gospel being preached by them alone," to the disparagement of other regular ministers, who (speaking with all possible modesty) are certainly equally gifted and enlightened with themselves; their restriction of salvation to those exclusively who receive and avouch the strange tenets of their own school, savours so strongly of Pharisaical bigotry and spiritual pride, and approaches so nearly to one of the worst principles of the Romish church, that we cannot attribute to them (however desirous we may be to do so) that fundamental Christian virtue which is so luminously and beautifully analyzed by St. Paul, in the 13th chapter of his first Epistle to the Corinthians, and without which, the holy apostle declares, that he himself would be "nothing."

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That the preaching of the EVANGELICAL CLERGY (in the second place) has, in too many cases, wrought evil rather than good on the dispositions and manners of its hearers and admirers, may be boldly asserted, without a breach of either truth or charity. Every tree is known by its fruits," saith our blessed Lord and Saviour; and tried by this test, there will appear to be little doubt that EVANGELICAL PREACHING is a spurious plant, corrupt in root, branch, and product; since discords in neighbourhoods, divisions in families, alienations in natural affection, and unbecoming self-conceit, and harsh judgments respecting others, have almost invariably been its results, wherever it has insinuated itself and spread its insalutary influence.

Its growth, indeed, is rapid, and its popularity threatens to be overwhelming; but these are no proofs of its intrinsic worth; for such is frequently the history of error. When the silversmith, in the Acts of the Apostles, asserted the divinity of Diana, the feeling ran through the city of Ephesus with the speed of lightning, and all the inhabitants quickly joined in the senseless cry, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians ;" and when the Almighty, in the book of Jeremiah, denounces the prophets of Judah, who "prophesied falsely," he adds, as another cause of his indignation, that "his people loved to have it so."

MR. JEVANS ON THE LOGOS, OR WORD, JOHN i. 1.

SIR, Bloxham, August 13, 1828. A CERTAIN author, speaking of John i. 1, to those who believe it refers to our Lord, and proves him to be the Supreme Being, says, "What could ever possess any writer to begin a book without any preface or previous explanation of his meaning, with In the beginning was the word,' if he meant to say by that expression, 'In the beginning was Jesus Christ'? And yet, from the mere effect of habit, the orthodox are grown quite insensible to the harshness of the expression."

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John i. 1—3, “In the beginning was the word," &c.— If this passage refers to the natural creation, the term Word signifies the power of God. This is to be proved.

1. The Holy Scriptures speak of a natural, civil, and moral creation. Gen. i., Isa. xliii. 1, Eph. ii. 10.

2. Our heavenly Father was the sole Creator of the natural creation. Gen. i. 1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Exod. xx. 11, "In six days Jehovah made the heavens and the earth." Job xxxviii. 4, Jehovah said to Job, "Where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the earth?" Isa. xlii. 5, "Thus saith God Jehovah, he that created the heavens and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth." Chap. xliv. 24, "Thus saith Jehovah, thy redeemer," &c., "that stretched forth the heavens alone, that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself." Chap. xlv. 11, 12, "Thus saith Jehovab, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker," &c., “I have made the earth and created man upon it; I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host