most infamous he has rendered him; but though he had tasted of every vice; indulged all passions; reduced his father and sister to beggary; challenged, fought, and fallen; this same wretch goes, directly upon his fall, to heaven. "The highwayman had as much right as he."

Let none suppose that it is enough to repent when all hope of earthly joys has vanished. Let none suppose that it is enough to repent on the bed of death. Let all be convinced that only uniform, stedfast, constant adherence to the ways of virtue, in godliness, can carry us to heaven; and not that, nor all we frail, blind creatures can do, unless Almighty God be pleased mercifully to accept us.

The confessionalist seems to have given this subject much consideration. It was one of the leading topics on which he exercised his understanding in the first relapses of his mind from infidelity to the faith. Still he was much perplexed. For a year or more after he wrote the letter in which the confession of his unbelief in the efficacy of a death-bed repentance occurs, he "hovered over the true faith, without being satisfied that it was of God*." Nay it was with difficulty that he prevailed on himself to avow his change of sentiments; though powerfully operated by the books in defence of divine revelation and the authors on practical divinity which he now read. At last, however, he wrote to an old acquaintance avowing his conversion, and exhorting him likewise to return to God. His acquaintance was in

* Socinus.

Taunton work-house at the time when he wrote; he relieved his necessities a little; and then in his letter, over and over again, admonishes him of the terrible dangers of infidelity—ascribing both Atheism and infidelity to French philosophy and philosophers-whose witty remarks, as well as those of his freethinking acquaintance, he deems less worthy to be listened to than the remarks of poor ignorant enthusiastic David Burford. Old David, living in the fear of God, lived soberly and righteously, which the confessionalist adjured his old acquaintance and all people to do. By this, and holy living, the way of which we are taught in the Bible;-that book for which the most learned, the wisest, and best of men (who, withal, were Christians), have thrown aside all other books; we ensure to ourselves an eternal state of felicity in heaven-in the realms of everlasting light and love.

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The answer to this letter informs the confessionalist that an alteration, towards godliness, has taken place in the sentiments of his old acquaintance. The confessionalist, in a second letter, felicitates his acquaintance on this happy change; and recommends the perusal of such books as Paley's Evidences of Christianity; Bishop Watson's Apology for the Bible, in letters to Thomas Paine; Bishop Porteus's Compendium of the Evidences of Christianity; Addison's Evidences of the Christian Religion; Madam Genlis' Religion the only basis of Happiness and true Philosophy, a book full of good sense, in which the ingenious authoress refutes and lays open the principles of modern pretenders to philosophy; Butler's Analogy; Bently against Collins; Bentley's Sermons on

the Folly of Atheism. These works are all valuable in their kind, but none of them is equal to the great work of Jenkin on the Reasonableness and Certainty of the Christian Religion. This book, in two volumes, treats in a clear manner of the necessity of a divine revelation, antiquity of the Scriptures, God's dispensations under the Patriarchs, Moses, Judges, Kings, and Christ; in the manner of the promulgation and preservation of the Scriptures, this wisdom and goodness of God are admirably displayed; various objections are answered and various difficulties cleared. Of this, his favourite work, the confessionalist informs us that, were he still a bookseller, he would have a very large impression worked off, sell them cheap, and transmit them to every part of the world.

The confessionalist's zeal is throughout manifest. He quotes largely the writings of Young, the author of the Night Thoughts; who is undoubtedly an exceeding good poetical reasoner, and has written, with great felicity of number and expression, on most of the leading religious questions. An anecdote from Madam de Genlis has been with much propriety introduced by the confessionalist into his work: for it both exemplifies the power of language, by ardour and sublimity, to bring back man to his God, and the efficacy of often appealing, by song and hymn, to those latent feelings, those innate, if dormant, principles of our nature which render man a religious being, by physical constitution, and which, once awakened, gradually yield to the facinations of those divine raptures, wherein a Milton, a Young, and a Cowper have severally excelled. The anecdote

from Madam de Genlis occurs in her book, entitled “Religion considered as the only Basis of Happiness and of true Philosophy," and is of an Atheist whom one word converted. The Atheist believed himself incapable of conversion, but an ecclesiastic, in whose presence he had avowed his own hardiness, exclaiming, if you could but hope!" gave an instant turn to his atheistical notions. He even the day following sought, with much assiduity, the presence, conversation, and counsel of the venerable ecclesiastic; to whom, listening with attention, he submitted himself; owned his errors; and renounced for ever false philosophers and their vain sophisms.

After much that can be interesting to no one beyond the confessionalist himself and his fire side, if we except half a dozen lines concerning Mr. Wesley, Messrs. Hill and Co. and Mr. Fletcher, having dozed through a succession of few less than ten score pages, we meet with a rather particular account of the modes of self-discipline used by him, to render him, what he in the close avows himself, a Methodist. To the Methodists he is by no means a niggard of his concessions, confessions, and contritions. And here Mr. Lackington does himself much honour. The Methodists had been sufferers by his dereliction from their tenets and worship; great, very great sufferers; the least to which they were entitled was the utmost degree of zeal for their interests upon his re-egress into their congrega tions. He is very zealous, not however more than laudably so, With a view to their good, talking of the controversy between the Hills and Mr. Fletcher, he

declares his admiration of the passage in a speech of Mr. Wesley's, which first gave offence to Messrs. Hill and Co. was the first occasion of the controversy between them and Fletcher; and which the confessionalist thinks ought to be printed in letters of gold, and hung up in the preaching houses of all the followers of Mr. Wesley. No Methodist, and now possibly not several of any denomination of well informed christians, who must not have either read, or heard of, the passage in question. In the minutes of the conference held in August 1770, it runs thus: "Does not talking of a justified or sanc tified state tend to mislead men? Almost naturally leading them to trust in what was done in one moment? Whereas we are every hour and moment pleasing or displeasing to God according to our works, according to our inward tempers and outward behaviour."

The confessionalist attributes much of the progress of infidelity to that habit of disputation, which, with the progress of reading, if not learning, has become in recent periods almost universal. We are poor purblind mortals; we wish to extinguish the sun and walk by a taper; the necessary restraints enforced on our violent, headlong passions, grows not only tiresome to us, but we grow to vilify the precepts as we neglect the example of Christ. Public worship is now deserted, and, by the artful blending of wrong propositions with, frequently, good reasoning, conscience is by degrees laid asleep; infidelity, is established; faith and godliness, dismissed. That progress the confessionalist himself has made; but he has retraced his steps, and is now