two extremes," says Mr. Knox, (that is, between the sublimely pious persons of high intellectual powers, and those who, to use Mr. Knox's words, have just preserved "the idea that there is a God to go to, and such general notions respecting Him as may be afterwards made efficient,") "between these two extremes it is necessary that there should be an energy, an explicitness, a forwardness and familiarity of religious instruction, adapted to produce strong, though not refined, feelings of devotion, and suited to train up the less abstracted and contemplative mind." It is impossible to mistake this, even if it were disjoined from the precious declaration about "Sects and Societies." It is but too plain that Mr. Knox considers all those whom nature or fortune has disqualified for high intellectual occupations, as disqualified likewise for a high station in the kingdom of Heaven. It is impossible to deny that this is [the] spirit of the passage which has just been quoted. Mr. Knox evidently considers, that the highest state of moral and religious elevation can be attained only by the educated and polished classes of society, and even among these by none except persons of higher intellectual powers; while the rest of the congregation of Christ's little ones, the poor, the illiterate, the slow of thought, the "less abstracted and contemplative minds," are grouped together in a body, and consigned over to "strong though not refined feelings of devotion."

This is really such a flight as I should scarce expect to find sanctioned by a Christian Bishop.

What are we to be told that the Fishermen of Galilee were strangers to the high devotion of a modern philosopher? Is the Gospel of St. John a Methodistical rhapsody, resulting from "strong though not refined feelings of devotion?" and what shall we say of Mary, the sister of Lazarus, and of that other Mary, whom "all generations shall call Blessed?" and who are they that shall "sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel," when "the last shall be first and the first last?"

In fact, this notion is one which cuts at the very root of the Christian spirit; and instead of teaching us to love the thing which Christ commands, and to desire that which He doth promise, proposes to us a new calling, whereunto He hath not called us. "Ye see your calling, Brethren," says one incapable of abstracted contemplation, “how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised hath God chosen, yea the things that are not, to bring to nought the things that are: that no flesh should glory in His presence."

The religion of Jesus Christ is in an especial manner the religion of the poor; and it was to these that the Gospel was first preached; it was these that heard it gladly. The fisher's cot by the

lake of Gennesareth, the shop of the wandering tent-makers at Corinth, and of the purple-seller of Thyatira, these were the good ground where the seed of the true Faith fell, and brought forth its thirty, and its sixty, and its hundred fold: and Mr. Knox, when he sets up, in opposition to these, "the deep inward philosophical cordial piety" of his "abstracted and contemplative minds," has exhibited to us a very deplorable example of a "man of higher intellectual powers framing his own religion for himself."

This I conceive to be the foundation of Mr. Knox's errors; but it has led him into others, which I shall proceed to notice as they occur, and which are all traceable to the same spirit of undue partiality towards cultivation and refinement

Mr. Knox seems to augur some great advantage from the universal diffusion "of a low form of religion...of which men have it in their power to make all the use they please, without being disgusted at its obtrusive and imperious implicitness." Without stopping to inquire whether Mr. Knox did not mean explicitness, I will ask attention, to the question, whether this low form of Religion, if truly predicated of the general state of baptized persons, in acknowledged possession of the full privileges of Church membership, may not likewise be truly predicated of the Church itself, which acknowledges them. I believe it will be found that in the Scripture language, when any fault or excellence is attributed to great bodies of men, as cities, nations, and, in the New Testament, Churches, it is attribu

ted, not to every individual member of those bodies, but to the generality; and that it alludes not to the inward tempers and characters, but to their superficial developement, to the broad and obvious features which are obtruded on the public view: and if, notwithstanding the sublime piety which Mr. Knox speaks of as existing in the Church of England, still it may be truly said of the great body of its members, that the form of religion diffused among them is "low;" if for fear of " disgusting"

these half-converted votaries "with its forwardness," it silently countenances their gross and public vices; then, according to the Scriptural method of judging, it cannot be acquitted of their sins.

I put it to Mr. Knox's admirers; have we any good reason for feeling certain, that in the Church of Laodicea, there may not have been among those whom Jesus loved, (Rev. iii. 19.) some persons as sublimely pious as any of Mr. Knox's self-tutored philosophers? Is there any thing in the description of that Church which proves its religion to have been worse than generally "low," its zeal feebler than to shrink from the imputation of "forwardness?" May there not have been in Laodicea, as in the days of Ahab, "seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal?" And may it not be that, in spite of all the " deep inward philosophical piety" which Mr. Knox discerns among ourselves, we nevertheless may in too many points resemble the devoted Laodiceans? May it not be, that if the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, should in

His goodness deign to utter His warning voice against the Angel of the Church of London, it would run in terms similar to the following? "Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked, I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich, and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear.'

In another of Mr. Knox's remarks, he displays a peculiar tenderness for what he calls, "the scrupulousness of a hesitating and bashful mind," and "that sort of nervous delicacy which is peculiar to some constitutions." One would have thought, that when Mr. Knox wrote this, he must have been thinking on matters very different from the stern intercourse of Priest and penitent;

οὐ μέν πως νῦν ἐστιν ἀπὸ δρύος οὐδ ̓ ἀπὸ πετρῆς

τῷ ὀαριζέμεναι, ἅτε πάρθενος ἠθεός τε,

πάρθενος ἠθεός τ' ὀαρίζετον ἀλλήλοισιν.

I am indeed aware, (as who is not?) that persons in the higher and more refined ranks of life do feel a certain awkwardness and reluctance as to acknowledging their filial relation to the Clergy. Το associate with their Parish Priest on the footing of a gentleman they do indeed sometimes condescend, when his education and habits of life seem to entitle him to that character; or even should he in these respects fall something short of the standard re