position to charity continued amongst Protestant Dissenters, but he could not say much as to their faith. He observes, that some charged their fathers with having put believing in the place of doing; he wished the men of his day might not put giving in the place of believing. In the following year, 1744, the same writer exclaimed, “The Dissenting interest is not like itself." He hardly knew it. It used to be famous for faith, holiness, and love. He had known the time when he had no doubt, into whatever place of worship he went amongst Dissenters, his heart would be warmed and comforted, and his edification promoted. “Now,” he says, "I hear prayers and sermons I neither relish nor understand. Primitive truths and duties are quite old-fashioned things. One's ears are so dinned with reason, the great law of reason, the eternal law of reason, that it is enough to put one out of conceit with the chief excellency of our nature, because it is idolized and almost deified. How prone are men to extremes! What a pity it is, that when people emerge out of an ancient mistake, they seldom know where to stop! Oh for the purity of our fountains, the wisdom and

diligence of our tutors, the humility, piety, and teachableness of our youth!"

The period has justly been designated one "of gathering gloom and spiritual decay;" yet the lamentations of Barker and others, together with the appeals of Dr. Conder, in his "Serious Address," occasioned by the decline of ministerial piety, published in 1775, and other expostulations of the same nature, show there were men who, Elijah-like, were zealous for the Lord of Hosts. Nor should it be forgotten, that it is possible they were a little like Elijah in another point of view,—that they might draw too unfavourable conclusions in reference to the state of religion in those times. Yet, with every abatement that charity can suggest, a large indictment, sufficiently sustained, lies against the spiritual condition of that age. Historic truth compels us to add, that Arianism, at the time we are now speaking of, was considerably on the increase among the Presbyterian Dissenters. Moral decorum, politeness of demeanour, affability of intercourse, and intelligent instruction on general religious topics, sufficed to recommend the minister and to secure his influence. The absence of evan

gelical truth, the want of an earnest, positive strain of teaching, paved the way to the denial of Christ's proper divinity, and with that the rejection of the related truths of the atonement, justification by faith, and renewal through the Spirit. The ministry, in many cases, went gliding down into Socinianism; and Priestly, in his Memoirs, with singular candour traces the progress of the descent. Nor would this negative and lifeless scheme of Christianity have sufficed to keep together the people who professed it, or to have secured support for the ministry, had not endowments, those pillowy props of heterodoxy and formalism, preserved the system in existence.

To the churches of the Congregational order these statements, in reference to the growth of heterodoxy, do not at all apply. There is no evidence of their departure from the evangelical creed. But it is to be, feared, that though the Arian and Socinian heresies were repelled from the borders of the Congregational department in the church, the dull, soporific, and death-like spirit which those heresies engendered, inflicted its torpedo touch on not a few of the pastors and people. Orthodoxy.

was preserved, but it was cold. Truth was watched over, defended, cherished, but it was truth asleep.

Yet to some Independent congregations happily this charge of lukewarmness did not apply; neither were all the Presbyterians infected with error, and smitten with the palsy which it brings. The doctrines of the Puritans continued to be proclaimed from certain pulpits, both Presbyterian and Independent, with an unction and fervour which would have been distinguished even in earlier and better days. Darracott and Fawcett,* and afterwards

The following able sketches of these two worthy men are taken from the article in the "North British Review," before noticed:

"With moderate scholarship, and with nothing brilliant in his thoughts, his eager aspect and glowing countenance gave to truths oft-told a freshness equal to originality, and even to the coarsest minds there was something irresistibly captivating in the suavity of his spirit and the refinement of the Christian gentleman; and as that gospel which he preached had a constant exponent in an eye ever beaming, and in a frame ever bounding with active benevolence, it is not wonderful that the common people heard him gladly. When he perceived any one unusually attentive or solemnized, it was his plan to write a letter or pay an early visit, in order to urge the impression home; and he was unwearied in his efforts to bring amiable or awakened hearers to the grand decision which divides the church from the world, and formality from faith. His paramount zeal for his Master was nobly displayed in his anxiety to bring to Wellington preachers more

Lavington, are names in the history of evangelical dissent, during the second half of the last century, which shine with a brilliant lustre.

On the whole, Doddridge's indefatigable and zealous labours for reviving spiritual life in the Dissenting interest, do not appear to have produced immediate results. The decline over which he mourned at the beginning of his ministry, continued at its close; and clouds of thicker gloom were gathering in certain

powerful than himself, and a visit which he secured from Whitfield was the means of a memorable and salutary excitement in that little town. It was chiefly among the poor and illiterate that Mr. Darracott's ministry prospered; but among preachers and vagrants, foreign mountebanks and clod-poles, who could not read the alphabet, as well as among farmers and tradesmen, he saw many triumphs of the all-transforming gospel." Another likeminded pupil was Benjamin Fawcett. "His sphere for five-andthirty years was Kidderminster, and the charge immortalised by the name of Baxter. Never had a minister a more kindred successor. Not only did Mr. Fawcett adopt the Baxterian theology, and attain a goodly measure of the Baxterian importunity and pathos in preaching, but it was the labour of his leisure to abridge such works as the 'Saint's Rest,' and the 'Call to the Unconverted,' and Converse with God in Solitude.'-In his own ministry, Mr. Fawcett was eminent for his abundant labours and physical energy. In his hale constitution and hardihood only he was not a successor of Baxter. Like his tutor, he used to rise every morning at five, and, even in the coldest weather he never had a fire in his study; and three sermons on Sabbath, with several through the week, seemed only to have the effect of a wholesome exercise."