Windsor. When he was made Bishop of Bangor, in 1743, he continued to hold a Prebend of York, two benefices in Anglesea and Denbighshire, and the Rectorship of Spofforth; till, after four years, he followed his predecessor to York. A man who attained the very highest stations in the English Church left no trace of his character, or powers upon its history; but he is described as attracting the notice of the great and the regard of his Sovereign by well-digested learning, knowledge of men and things, a clear understanding, a tenacious memory, and a constant but very decorous cheerfulness. A more eminent name is that of Zachary Pearce, at whose consecration the sermon was preached by Jortin. Bishop Pearce was the son of a wealthy distiller, in St. Giles', who was still living; and he had received a large fortune by his marriage to the daughter of Mr. Adams, another London distiller. From Westminster School he had proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he attained a Fellowship. On being ordained, he found a liberal patron in the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Macclesfield, who gave him the benefice of Stapleford Abbott in Essex. His early distinction was in the character of a classical scholar; for, he published editions of "Cicero de Officiis," and of Longinus; he wrote a masterly criticism on Bentley's Milton, and on the text of Milton; and a few of his lighter compositions appeared in the "Spectator," and the "Guardian." But he also published a reply to the unbelieving Woolston; and he defended Waterland against Middleton; whom, clergyman as he was, he regarded and treated as an infidel in disguise. His greatest service to Theology was his Commentary on the Historical Books of the New Testament; a work of consummate judgment. From 1725, he was Vicar of St. Martins in the Fields; and he preached at the consecration of the stately Church of that great Metropolitan Parish. His voice was too feeble to allow him to become a distinguished preacher; but his conscientious activity, and marked discretion placed him amongst the most useful of the prominent Divines of his day. For two years he was Dean of Rochester; for nine, Dean of Winchester; and now with reluctance he accepted a Bishopric. Tall, and of a benign aspect, he knelt for ordination at the age of fifty-eight, with the prospect of an honorable and beneficent age, a prospect which was fulfilled; but he remained at Bangor but eight years; and then, still with reluctance, was transferred to Rochester.

At thirty-five, borne on by family influence, John Egerton, son

of the former Bishop Egerton of Hereford, son-in-law of the Duke of Kent, and a near kinsman of the Duke of Bridgewater, was raised, in 1756, to the mitre. From Eton to Oriel College, Oxford, to the Rectorship of Ross in the Diocese, and gift of his fathers, to a Prebend, and to the Deanery of Hereford, his path had been open and easy. He held his benefice, and his Prebend with his See; and at Ross, where, while yet a Parish minister, he had been very exemplary and contented, he was a friend, benefactor, and almost a father, to his people. His frame was elegant and strong, his countenance animated and ingenuous, his manners kind and polished; he was active, good-tempered, vivacious, self-possessed; firm in his duties, and accustomed to recommend nothing to his clergy which he did not practice in his life and approve in his closet. Such is the description of contemporary eulogy; and while Secker, Butler, and Benson had been his friends, his adversaries framed no more bitter charge than those of courtliness, narrowness, and the absence of mental vigor. He was twelve years in this See, through the Seven Years' War, and on to the year 1768, when he succeeded Archbishop Cornwallis in that of Lichfield.

Then, for five years, Bishop John Ewer, who was translated from Llandaff, presided at Bangor. On the twenty-eighth of October, 1774, a painful illness, which had continued for several months, brought him to the grave.

From an humble origin to the highest responsibility of the English Church, John Moore, arose, by the aid of one powerful patron, and of his own amiable and estimable qualities. His father, a glazier of Gloucester, was unable to sustain him at Oxford, where he obtained some place in Pembroke College, applied himself to mathematics, and became a Student of Christ Church. The Duke of Marlborough sought a Tutor for his son; Moore became an inmate of the family; and, after the death of the Duke, acted, under circumstances of difficulty, with so much honorable and conscientious delicacy, that his pupil presented him with a handsome annuity, and obtained for him preferment. He was a Canon of Christ Church and a Prebendary of Durham; and in 1771, was made Dean of Canterbury, and now Bishop of Bangor, where he remained from the age of forty-two to that of fifty-one. By his first marriage, he was the brother-in-law of Sir James Wright, Minister at Vienna; by his second, of Lord Auckland and Lord Henley. Bishop Moore was an esteemed preacher, and a conscientious

officer of the Church; and when he preached, in 1782, before the Propagation Society, he spoke of slavery with just horror, and of the duties of masters with zealous solemnity. In the following year, he was summoned to the Primacy.

Bishop John Warren was then transferred from St. Davids. He nobly repaired the Cathedral, and kept for five months in each year a seat of hospitality, where the Clergy were entertained with plenteous elegance, and the sound of the harp of Wales was heard in the summer evenings. It is noted of him, that he gave attention to the welfare of humble curates, and that most of the benefices at his disposal, which were numerous, were bestowed on Welshmen. In Parliament, he spoke rather often, and disclosed some interest in legal questions. His legal propensities were more disagreebly called into action, in a dispute with his Registrar. He sent, on that occasion, for the key of the office; and on the refusal of the Registrar to deliver it, ordered that the lock should be removed, and a new one substituted, the key of which was in his possession. The Registrar, armed with pistols, broke open the office; and the Bishop, going to him with several clergymen, showed some anger, but withdrew. It was mortifying that he was indicted at Shrewsbury for an assault, riot, and rout in thus endeavoring to eject his officer; and although he was acquitted, yet the Judge seemed to blame him for mistaking the title of the Registrar, and for employing force. He gave the Deanery of Bangor to his nephew, who seems to have been his nearest representative; and died on the twenty-seventh of January, 1800; leaving a See, the pecuniary emoluments of which had much risen within a century, so that it was now one of the wealthiest.

Thus it was, that while, two centuries before, Bellot and Vaughan had been successively translated from Bangor to Chester, the process was now reversed. The See of Chester was now by far the more laborious, and the less lucrative; and it is most painful to think how much it had passed into a maxim to study considerations like these, when Bishoprics were offered and accepted. Bishop William Cleaves now made this exchange; and in 1806, accepted the still richer See of St. Asaph. While he was at Bangor, he preached, in 1802, before the University of Oxford, a sermon of some celebrity, on the Thirty-Nine Articles; maintaining that they were not articles of peace, nor ambiguous, but limited and moderated in their statements, because designed to unite all

who agreed in the necessity of the Reformation. It was through him that, in 1805, the Welsh Clergy applied to the Christian Knowledge Society for a new edition of the Welsh Bible, after the want of it had suggested the great design of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

Bishop John Randolph was translated in 1806 from Oxford to Bangor, and in 1809 from Bangor to London. Within that short space, he censured, in a charge, with his accustomed vigor and even with vehemence, a class of clergymen, known under the name of "evangelical," whom, throughout his Episcopate, he labored to repress.

From Chester, came also Bishop Henry William Majendie, who survived twenty-one years, and died in 1830, at the age of seventyfive. He added many decorations to the Cathedral. In the

decline of his life, he lost two sons; and he died at the house of another, a clergyman near Lichfield. He held till the last the opinions of George the Third; and one of his last acts was his vote against the bill for Roman Catholic relief.

On this vacancy, Bishop Christopher Bethell, who had just been removed from the See of Gloucester to that of Exeter, received, in preference to Exeter, that of Bangor. He could say, in 1833, that there resided not in his Diocese one beneficed clergyman who could not speak Welsh; and, as by far the greater part of the benefices were at the disposal of the Bishop, this circumstance indicates, in several preceding Prelates, a conscientious fidelity to the spiritual interests of their charge. In the Cathedral, besides its own appropriate services, the Worship of a congregation is also offered in their ancestral language. The generous regard of Bishop Bethell for that laborious class of ministers by whom many of the Welsh Parishes were served, was shown by a gift of a thousand pounds. to the Society within the Diocese of Bangor for the aid of the families of deceased Clergymen. His position in Theology commanded reverence; but in the great discussions of the time his Clergy were probably but little involved, and he forbore any suspicious action.

ART. III. ECCLESIASTICAL TRIALS OF PRIESTS AND

DEACONS.

In the Primitive Church, and for a long time after that name had ceased to be strictly applicable, the discipline of the Church was administered upon the true principles of paternal government. This was practicable, because the Dioceses were then small, the relation between the Bishops and their Clergy intimate, and in worldly matters, all were upon one very humble level. There were no formal Ecclesiastical Trials, and no Ecclesiastical Courts. The Bishop of each Diocese admonished, suspended, or deposed his Clergy as he thought fit. But parental government was a fact, and the Bishop did nothing without the advice of his Clergy. Yet, even then, the decision of the Bishop was not final, but might be revised in the Provincial Synod, which met regularly twice a year.

When, under Constantine, the State began to interfere in Church affairs, a great change took place. About the same time, and partly, though not altogether, in consequence of that interference, party spirit entered into the Church. Its great manifestation was in what have been called the trials of Bishops. These could scarcely be called trials. Their nearest analogy was to the expulsion of members of deliberative bodies. In that case, expediency is the resulting idea, and there is little of either the form, or spirit of a judicial proceeding. In such a state of things the paternal government of Dioceses became impossible. The Bishops, at least the more eminent of them, were at once partisans and candidates for court favor. The bond of love between them and their Clergy was weakened, and the moral characters of the Bishops lowered. In the West, there were other causes at work. The large size of the Dioceses, the rising of a Parochial Clergy, and the introduction of lay patronage, all tended to a separation between the Bishops and the Presbyters. The Bishop of Rome, and many other great Bishops, became temporal Princes. The second class of Bishops became great Lords. Others were Courtiers or Statesmen, or temporal Judges; some were even Soldiers.

Thus Ecclesiastical Courts became a necessity, as the only possible mode of enforcing discipline. The Bishops had neither time,