and published within the present century, extends from the middle of the reign of the second Charles, to the early part of the reign of the second George. Without the thrilling interest of such autobiographies as "Augustine's Confessions," it yet possesses no inconsiderable amount of attraction in the picture which it presents to us of a learned, polished, devout Nonconformist pastor, in London, sometimes admitted within the circle of Court acknowledgment, and exercising large influence over the views of his younger and provincial brethren.

were

Edmund Calamy, whose father and grandfather, of the same name, both ejected by the Bartholomew Act, was born in 1671. He lost his father when only fourteen years of age; and having received his elements of educa tion at Merchant Tailors' School, he passed over to Holland, like many others of the Presbyterian youth on both sides of the Tweed. At Utrecht he enjoyed the advantage of the instruction given by Witsius and Mastricht. "I have often thought it," says he, "very unhappy, that when there were so many at that time in Utrecht, who designed for the ministry, we should have no meeting among ourselves, in order to praying together and Christian conversation, that so we might have warned, and quickened, | or watched over one another, as there was occasion." He returned to his native land in 1691, and had the privilege of occasionally listening to the dying earnestness of Baxter. For a short time he pursued, in a private manner, his studies at Oxford, where he came into occasional contact with Henry Dodwell, the younger, and other academical celebrities. The examination in that anti-Presbyterian atmosphere of the controversy between Prelacy and Presbytery, convinced him of the unscripturalness of the former, and the study of Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity" confirmed him in his attachment to Dissent. We do not learn that he looked with at all a cultivated eye on the architecture of that most splendid of academical cities, where now the admiring visitor sees the finest specimens of Gothic and Italian architecture, not opposing but blending gracefully with one another. One of England's noblest spectacles is awaiting the man who has yet to make acquaintance with the Highstreet of Oxford, or to enjoy the view from Christ Church meadows.

In some humble back street in Oxford,

doubtless, was situated the Presbyterian chapel, where Calamy preached, from Heb. ii. 3, his first discourse. His repu tation as a preacher increased, and the descendant of confessors for the good cause was soon looked upon by the leading members of the denomination as one likely to reflect credit on their interest. Declining, on account of congregational divisions (which even thus early in Dissenting history were beginning to vex the Church), a call from Andover, he was, for a while, not disinclined to entertain the offer of a congregation in Bristol to receive him as their minister. "They offered me 100%. a year, a house rent free, and the keeping of a horse." Domestic reasons, however, prevailed with him to prefer the call of a congregation in London, where he became assistant to the Rev. Matthew Sylvester, at a stipend of 40l. a year. He tells us that he lived in Hoxton-square, in the same lodgings with Thomas Reynolds, assistant to John Howe. With other six candidates for the ministry, he was ordained in June, 1694, in the chapel of Dr. Annerley, Bishopsgate. The services lasted from before ten until after six o'clock. The practice of ordaining several at once, and not in the place of worship where any of them was to minister, appears to have more or

less continued throughout Calamy's time, as we find various references to it in his Memoirs.

In the same year he mentions the great noise which, especially in the metropolis, the controversy about Antinomianism occasioned. His attachment to Mr. Daniel Williams, whose assistant in Hand-alley Chapel he soon afterwards became, makes him somewhat bitter in his reflections upon those who took an opposite view of truth. The honoured name of Robert Traill meets with little respect at his hands. Soon after he married, and gives, somewhat naively, the following account of his wife :-" She had universally a good character, was a member of Mr. Shower's congregation, of a singular good temper, and one of my mother's recommending; and our match was generally applauded. We lived together seventeen years."

No mention of license or ordination by a Presbytery is made in Calamy's Life, and we find him lamenting that efforts

For an account of this controversy the general reader is referred to "Traill's Select Writings," published by the Free Church.

made to draw "the Dissenting interest more closely together, failed of success. The difference between the Presbyterians and Independents seems to have been little more than nominal.

In the year 1702 he gave to the world his "Abridgment of Baxter's Life," with an Account of Nonconformity from the Bartholomew Act until 1691, the year of Baxter's death. In connexion with this work he animadverts, in language by no means stronger than the occasion justified, on the unfairness with which, in Lord Clarendon's History of the "Rebellion," the Presbyterians are continually assailed. That noble author is ever ready to pay a compliment to the Congregationalists at the expense of their Presbyterian contemporaries. In the following year he was elected pastor of the Westminster congregation, in the place of Mr. Alsop, and shortly afterwards published his "Defence of Moderate Nonconformity."

A memorable event in Calamy's history was his journey on horseback, according to the custom of the time, into Scotland, in 1709. At great length the incidents of this tour are recorded. He had, at setting out, to obtain a pass from Lord Sunderland, to certify that he was a true friend to the Government, and free from all suspicion of Jacobitism. At York he met with Dr. Coulter, the Presbyterian minister, but did not enjoy the pleasure of an interview with Lady Hewley, she being in delicate health. Newcastle is described as a close and smoky town, remarkable for traffic. Mr. Barnet, the author of the "Christian Oratory," was then minister of the chapel, which, as the Hanover-square Chapel, has been of late well known as the head-quarters of Socinianism in the north. At Morpeth he met with Mr. Horsley, the eminent antiquarian, and at Alnwick with Dr. Harle, the Presbyterian minister of the place; but does not seem to have been aware how many confessors to the Presbyterian cause the county of Northumberland had furnished in the preceding age. These confessors have left their stamp on the county still. Arriving at Edinburgh, Calamy found the General Assembly sitting, and, unacquainted with the proceedings of Church Courts as he was, felt not a little interested and surprised at what he there witnessed. In the case of Crawford, John, which the Assembly decided against the chief rector, Lord Selkirk, an appeal was taken by his

Lordship's agent to the Lords in Parliament-a significant foretaste of what was preparing for Church Courts, on the part of self-sufficient men of rank. It is too plain, from Calamy's account, that the leaven of Moderatism was already beginning to work. He advised, in private, "humouring the great," as, no doubt, he would have taken the side opposed to the Marrow-Men, a few years later. The opponent of Traill would have been the opponent of Boston. Calamy animadverts upon the fondness of young men for speaking, and mentions one in particular, whom several rebukes from the Moderator did not make abashed of his presumption. Modesty seems even then to have been getting rather an oldfashioned virtue. From Edinburgh, Glasgow, and King's College, Old Aberdeen, Calamy obtained the degree of D.D. On Messrs. Joshua Oldfield and Daniel Williams, at the same time, the distinction was conferred by the first-mentioned seat of learning.

Four years after his Scottish tour, Calamy travelled into the West of England, and there acquired that interest in Devonian dissent which made him afterwards feel the more nearly the controversy which arose about the Arianism of Mr. James Pierce, of Exeter. The ministers of the three denominations in London met together, in regard to these Exeter dissensions, which had been referred to their advice; and the consequence was a separation into two bodies

Subscribers and Non-subscribers, both parties professing their abhorrence of all Arian views. Here we see the evil arising from the want of a thorough Presbyterian organization. An Exeter Presbytery, or a West of England Synod, would have gone far towards crushing heresy in the bud.

Even in moderate times in Scotland, the Socinianism of Dr. Macgill, of Ayr, was effectively checked; to escape deposition he had to make an ignominious retractation of the heresies which he had dared to vent.

In 1724, Dr. Calamy published his "Life of John Howe," from which, and from the Memoir by that most accomplished writer, Henry Rogers, a fitting estimate of the great Puritan can be formed. His eldest son, of the same name with himself, became assistant to Dr. Grosvenor, in Crosby-square Chapel.

In the beginning of George the Second's reign there was a good deal of discussion about the decay of the Dissent

ing interest, and the occasion of it. Nearly twenty ministers and students are enumerated as having about the same time gone over to the English Establishment, and the names of Secker and Butler occur among them. It was Nonconformity that gave his earliest education to the author of the "Analogy of Religion." No effective means, however, seem to have been adopted for the revival of the cause; and the too obvious decline both of orthodoxy and of spirituality among the Dissenters of that period, would only tend to make matters worse. It needed the powerful impulse which a few years after Calamy's death was given by Wesley and Whitfield to the religion of England, to bring matters, so far as regarded the Independents and Baptists, into a more hopeful condition. The testimony of President Davies, of Princeton, who visited London while Whitfield was in the full zenith of his usefulness, is, that the Metropolitan Presbyterians had rejected all tests of orthodoxy, and were believed to be generally Socinians. On them no revival of religion could be expected to tell; heresy only gets embittered by the working of God's Word.

In June, 1732, Dr. Calamy died, in his

seventy-second year.

one

His funeral sermon was preached by Daniel Mayo, on of the continuators of Henry's "Commentary.'

In reviewing his life, we can plainly see that he had no thorough view of the excellence of a well-organized Presbyterianism. The Scottish Assembly and the Irish Synod, which he has occasion to mention, are more frequently dispraised than commended. When Dr. Vaughan says, referring to the shrunken condition of Socinianism, "English Presbyterianism, which once seemed to take half the kingdom with it, becomes an affair confined to one of the most diminutive of modern sects," he altogether puts out of view that our system was never, after the Revolution, properly administered. What a contrast to the mode in which Exeter heresy was dealt with in Calamy's time, is afforded by the mode in which Brighton heresy was condemned in our time! Let our Church be faithful to that high trust so admirably stated last Synod by Dr. Cunningham, and she will doubtless gradually fulfil her mission in England.

"Religious Parties in England," published fourteen years ago, when our Synod had scarcely began to exist.

REAP AND PRAY.

Minister. Well, John, how are you today? Your wife and children all well, I hope?

John. Middling fair, Sir. Little Tommy had a sore throat, and we were afraid it would turn out scarlet fever; but, thank God, it did not.

M. So the harvest will be some days later this year than it was last year?

you had for some time been more serious than you used to be; but, with his usual caution, he said, "You know he works on another farm, and I cannot speak of him as a near neighbour could do."

J. Well, Sir, people should not be forward to speak about themselves, but I have heard it said there may be evil in their being too backward.

M. Whether sooner or later, the harvest of wheat and barley should remind us of that other harvest where the reapers are the angels.

J. That is true, Sir; and I hope I have been giving a thought more to these matters than I did.

M. I am glad to hear so. The elder of your district, Farmer Hudson, was telling me the other Sabbath, that he thought

bank, and I'll hear your story.

J. It is nothing more than this.-You mind, Sir, when that sad accident happened at Hannington Moors? You would see it in the papers, when the inquest was mentioned. Our master's son, going out to shoot ducks, was accidentally killed by his companion's gun.

M. I think I do remember the circumstance, but as it did not happen in this neighbourhood, and I did not know the

J. True, Sir. But though I tried to forget the death, it would not forget me. At work, at my meals, in my dreams, that poor lad's corpse was very often before ine. I sometimes was more anxious, and sometimes less anxious, when I went to the Meeting, to hear Mr. Cuthbertson. But, though I believe he was a godly man, and a real Gospel preacher, he never did me any good. I dare say it was my fault far more than his.

M. Could you at all explain how the sermons failed to benefit you?

J. Well, Sir, if I may be so bold as to say so, I do not know then; but I was reading out of the "Congregational Library," lately, the "Life and Remains of Mr. Mc Cheyne," and there was a sermon preached at the settlement of a minister (I think he is now in Newcastle), where Mr. McCheyne says that many ministers lay down the Gospel beautifully, but do not urge men to enter in. Now, if I may be so bold as to say, that I think now, though I could not see it then, that Mr. Cuthbertson's fault lay there. He did not make us feel that Christ wanted us now to be saved.

M. It might be so; I knew but little of Mr. C., and never heard him preach.

J. However, I lived some years, no better in my soul; striving at times, and striving more at other times. But when I came, May-day was a twelvemonth, to this quarter, I came to hear you. I began to find a difference in myself; I felt that I must go through a change. I tried the working plan for a while; but God, I trust, began to show me about last New Year time that conversion could not be done on that plan, and so I came to see it must be on the believing plan. You once said, at the end of a sermon, "My friends, it is either Christ or Hell; take your choice." Some folks said, "that is very hard, and very harsh;" but I felt that it was both true and right. I asked

M. I am delighted to hear it; but "be not high-minded, but fear." We are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end." You, of course, set up family worship when you got light from God, and peace with Him?

J. That I did, Sir. I used whiles to read a chapter to Peggy; indeed, mostly on the Sabbath night. But now we have both singing and reading, and prayer; and though the neighbours used to come to the door at first, and laugh, and bawl, and carry on; yet, when they found we never heeded them, they soon gave it over. The master used to joke me at first about my religious fancy; but now he never does it; and though I was often tempted to tell him, and thought religion as good a fancy as either horse-racing or fox-hunting, I never did it. It might have done him more harm than good; and I think, Sir, we are on safer ground when we pray for his conversion.

M. And you are really getting on in religion?

J. The Bible is quite a different book now, Sir, to me. I often can hardly lay it down when once I take it up; and I am never wearied of thinking about "the unsearchable riches of Christ," and how I can best show some thankfulness to Him for His divine love. But, if you'll allow me, Sir, to say, I think ministers and private Christians should pray for us more at harvest-time. I see that I will need reaping-grace; for it is a time of danger for the soul, what with the hard work and the long hours, and the queer, unsettled, irregular characters that come to help us in shearing at that time. I have seen plenty of what I dare not name going on at that season; and masters and stewards thinking it only fine fun.

I dare say you

M. Well, John, that is very sad; but reap and pray. There are few masters like Boaz now, and few harvest-fields like that at Bethlehem, as the second chapter of Ruth tells us about. would be much better off for your soul if you were at Ruddington with Mr. Hudson. You would value being under a praying master more than, I fear, most of his ploughmen do. But God has ordered it otherwise. If you are the only praying

man in the village, you will have great difficulties, no doubt, but "they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength." Go in faith to God in Christ, and never fear that He will suffer you to be overcome, even by the temptations of the harvest-field. Try and do good. Here are a few "Wayside Tracts," easily read, for they are generally only two pages in length. Give them away prudently and prayerfully. Never forget that the same blessed Spirit is the Author both of zeal and of wisdom, both of earnestness and of prudence.

J. Thank you, Sir. I whiles try to repeat a word for Jesus and His grace, and my neighbours listen more attentively than they did at first. But I am sometimes afraid of a fall, like that of Bill Purves; he lived in my former quarter. Somebody left him a little money. He thought himself pious, and left off being a steward, and turned preacher on his own hand. I fear he was only a conceited self-deceiver; for I know he had to fly the country for debt, and people said there were even worse things against him. M. I never heard of the man before; but people that become hinderances to the ministry, instead of helps, are more likely to be the slaves of vanity, than the subjects of grace. When you return M'Cheyne's Life, ask the librarian to give you, if it is in, the Memoir of Sandie Paterson. That book will show you what a converted ploughman can do for Christ. Be thankful you live in a decent dwelling, though it might be more air-tight and water-tight; though the byre does form the first apartment, so that, as I sometimes say, the cow is the first member of the household we come acquainted with. You have never known the wickedness and the wretchedness of the Scotch bothy system. What that is, Sandie Paterson's Life will show you; yet, even there, he was enabled to lift up an earnest, a believing, and a successful testimony for God. He never set up for a minister, and never found that our good old, tried, and time-hallowed Presbyterian system needed to be exchanged for any newfangled plans. An elder, in due time, he became; and, as an elder, and a home missionary, his own minister found him a

pluck up courage to speak to the minister about their souls. I think I know of more than one that is under concern just now; but I'll not say who they are, They'll may be tell you themselves; or perhaps you'll find it out some other way, I hope you'll not go soon away from your present charge, for I don't go in with the translation of ministers, if they are doing good where they are; and if they are not doing good, are they worth trauslating?

M. There is not much danger, John, Your minister can say truly, as he looks on his income and his influence taken together, "I dwell among my own people."

J. I once heard old Mr. Cuthbertson say, there were, in Scotland, two kinds of Moderatism - Established Moderatism, and Dissenting Moderatism. The one was frigid, and the other was flashy. I should be sorry to see a flashy Moderate come into your pulpit: but who could tell; for if men are carnal, they like fine language in prayers, and flowery speaking in sermons, far better than plain, solid, spiritual truth.

M. Let us improve the present, John. The future is in God's hands. No soul elected by the Father, redeemed by the Son, shall fail of being effectually called by the Spirit. Moderatism of both kinds has been a fearful curse: let us pray that the Lord may keep every approach to Moderatism out of our Synod; and that He may so strengthen and bless our ministers, that, "taking heed unto themselves, and unto the doctrine, continuing in them, they may both save themselves and them that hear them;" showing themselves to be elected, redeemed, and called; ever diminishing in their flocks the number of Satan's slaves, and increasing the number of Christ's followers. Good day.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PRES

BYTERIAN CHURCH IN IRELAND. THIS venerable body commenced its annual sittings in May-street Church (Dr. Cooke's), Belfast, on Tuesday, the 5th, and continued the same by adjournments until Thursday, the 14th of July. There was a very large attendance of ministers and elders, who exhibited a

to Peggy, and tell her to get 1 Peter iii., at the beginning, well engraven, through grace, on her heart. Good day.

J. Good by, Sir. I believe it would be well if folks that are over-timid would

their places at the commencement, and generally remaining patiently to the close of each diet. These were ere hour of meeting o'clock, adjournment

the

seven

nine, meeting