THE LATE BISHOP OF LICHFIELD.-Samuel Butler was born at Kenilworth, in Warwickshire, the 30th of January, 1774, of highly respected parents, residing in that famous village. He was educated under Dr. James, at Rugby School, where his rapid progress in sound and elegant learning gave promise of his future distinction. In 1792 he entered into residence at St. John's College, Cambridge. His career at that University was brilliantly successful. He obtained three of Sir W. Browne's medals: two for Latin Odes and one for a Greek Ode. In 1793 he was elected to the Craven University scholarship, after a competition with eighteen distinguished candidates; among whom where Dr. Keate, afterwards Head Master of Eton; Dr. Bethell, now Bishop of Bangor; and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the eminent poet and philosopher. At the Mathematical Examination for the degree of B.A. his name appeared in the list of Senior Optimes; and he soon after gained

the first of the Chancellor's two gold medals for the best classical scholars of the year. In 1797 and 1798 he carried off the members' prize for the best Latin Essay by Bachelors of Arts. In the former year he was elected Fellow of St. John's College, and in 1798 he accepted the Head Mastership of the Royal Free Grammar School in Shrewsbury, vacant by the death of the Rev. Mr. Atcherley. About the same time that Dr. Butler accepted the Head Mastership of Shrewsbury School, he was selected by the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press to undertake a new edition of Eschylus, with the text and notes of Stanley. This arduous task he gradually achieved, and thus be queathed to posterity an enduring monument of his great and various learning. Mr. Butler was presented by the Earl of Clarendon, a few years later, to the vicarage of his native place, Kenilworth. In 1811 he proceeded to the degree of Doc

tor in Divinity, and on that occasion preached the sermon at the installation of his Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. Dr. Butler was presented by the Bishop Cornwallis to a Prebendal stall at Lichfield, and in 1822 to the Archdeaconry of Derby, in discharging the duties of which office his zeal, diligence, and faithfulness were universally acknowledged. In 1836, he was promoted, on the recommendation of Viscount Melbourne, to the Episcopal See of Lichfield and Coventry, vacant by the death of the pious Bishop Ryder. The Archdeaconry of Coventry being severed from this diocess and annexed to that of Worcester by Act of Parliament, his lordship possessed the single title of Bishop of Lichfield. Dr. Butler married, in 1798, Sarah, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Apthorp, by whom (who survives him) he has left issue Mary, wife of the Venerable Archdeacon Bather; Harriet, relict of the late John Lloyd, Esq., of Shrewsbury; the Rev. Thomas Butler, Rector of Langar.

BISHOP LATIMER'S DISAPPROBATION OF LORD ADMIRAL SEYMORE'S OPINION OF COMMON PRAYER."The Lord Admiral Seymore was a back-friend to common prayer; and old Latimer takes him and others up for it." I have heard say, when that the good queen that is gone, had ordained in her house daily prayers, both before noon and afternoon; the admiral getteth him out of the way, like a mole digging in the earth: he shall be Lot's wife to me as long as I live. He was, I heard say, a covetous man, a covetous man indeed: I would there were no more in England. He was, I heard say, a seditious man, a contemner of common prayer. I would there were no more in England. Well! he is gone; I would he had left none behind him."-Lloyd's Sufferings of Excellent Personages in the Civil Wars from 1637 to 1660.

Bishop Jewell, riding to preach

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at Lacock, in Wiltshire, a gentleman that met him, perceiving his feebleness, advised him for his health's sake to turn home again: to whom he answered, Oportet Episcopum concionantem mori; a Bishop should die preaching," and so indeed he did; for presently after the sermon, by reason of his sickness, he was forced to bed, from which he never came off, till he was translated to glory.-Looking-glass both for Saints and Sinners, p. 28.

A GOOD DEFINITION OF POPERY. "A heap of unmeaning ceremonies, adapted to fascinate the imagination and engage the senses; implicit faith in human authority, combined with the utter neglect of divine teaching; ignorance the most profound joined to dogmatism the most presumptuous; a vigilant exclusion of biblical knowledge, together with a total exclusion of free inquiry; present the spectacle of religion lying in state, surrounded with the silent pomp of death."

BISHOP HALL'S OBJECTION TO THE BROWNISTS, OR INDEPENDANTS OF HIS DAY.-"I objected separation to you; yet not so extreme as your auswer bewrays; a late separation, not the first: my charity hoped you less ill, than you will needs deserve. You grant it odious because it casts imputation of evil upon the forsaken: Of evil? Yea, of the worst, an estate incurable and desperate. He is a bad physician that will leave his patient upon every distemper; his departure argues the disease helpless; were we but faulty as your landlord churches, your own rules would not abide your flight. Hence, the Church of England justly matches separatists with the vilest of persons. God himself does so. Who are more vile than patrons of evil?

Yet no greater woe is to them that speak good of evil, than those that speak evil of good. So wise generals punish mutinous persons worse than robbers and adulterers. So Corah and his company, for their opposition to Moses, were more fearfully plagued than the idolatrous Israelites. These sins are more directly against common society, the other more personal and if both have like iniquity,

yet the former have both more offence and more danger. And if not so, yet who cannot rather brook a lewd servant than an undutiful son, though pretending fair colours for his disobedience ? At least you think the Church of England thinks herself God's church as well as your saints of Amsterdam: you that so accurse apostacy in others, could you expect she would brook it in you? But your reasons are just and well-grounded: every way of a man is right in his own eyes; said we not well, that thou art Samaritan, and hast a devil,' said the Jews? What schism ever did not think well of itself? For us, we call Heaven and earth to witness, your cause hath no more justice than yourselves have charity."-Bishop Hall's Apology against Brownists.

CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE CHURCH.

The Dissenting Ministers of Leicester held a meeting on Monday, "for the purpose of taking into consideration the case of the Churchrate-rate victim," Thorogood, a Chelmsford cobbler. At this meeting the most vulgar and stupid rant was employed as the vehicle of the most deadly hatred towards the Church of England.

Thorogood is a man who, after a long course of contumacy, was imprisoned in January last for refusing to pay five shillings and sixpence, the amount of a charge for church-rates. This man of tender conscience has chosen to remain in gaol ever since. The smallness of the sum at issue, as well as the length of the incarceration to which this man has subjected himself, have, of course, been dilated on as proofs of rapacity and cruelty on the part of Churchmen. It is important that this question should be thoroughly understood; and that no portion of public sympathy should be wasted who, like Thorogood, seek to convert martyrdom into a source of pecuniary profit, or into a means of ministering to their foolish craving for notoriety.

on men

The Dissenters in England are busied in railing at the church-rates. The Papists in Ireland find occupa

tion in denouncing tithes. The cry in both cases is the same. "Free dom of conscience"-the hardship involved in maintaining a Church, by the ministrations of which they do not profit:-these, together with charges of covetousness and hardness of heart, directed against the clergy of the Established Church, constitute the burden of the song which Papists and Dissenters chaunt in chorus.

Now, the complaints of these enemies of the Church of England rest upon a falsehood. The payment of tithes and of church-rates involves no hardship upon Dissenters of any kind. Tithes constitute a reserved right of property, to which the title is in the Church; while church-rates are a tax affecting certain kinds of property-a tax, subject to which, the property of the men who claim exemption from its operation, was bought. Tithes and church-rates lessen the market value of the various kinds of property liable to these imposts—the purchase-money, by consequence, is lessened by the amount of such charges. It is a gross mistake, therefore, to allege that church-rates and tithes are paid by Dissenters and by the Papists.

But if these burdens were, in reality, borne by the classes which indulge in such loud complaints, how could the refusal to pay imposts sanctioned by the State, ever afford scope to the play of "tender consciences ?" If it be a matter of conscience to refuse payment of tithes, or of church-rates, it ought to be deemed equally imperative on tender consciences to refuse payment of state taxes, and of private debts! The man who defrauds his private creditors-the man who resists the call to contribute to the necessities of the public service-is equally meritorious with Thorogood, the cobbler, and "Church martyr!" The agitation against church-rates rests on an assumption which is fatal to the institution of property; not that the anti-church-rate agitators contemplate the subversion of property. No: these men are amongst the fervent cultivators of moneyworship. They only contemplate

the subversion of the Established Church; and the daily-increasing activity which they exhibit in their attempts to effect that end, is a direct consequence of that false "liberality " which gave rise to the Test and Corporation Acts, and to the fatal Act of 1829.

We desire to place before our readers one or two brief specimens of the rabid stuff which the swaggering champions of dissent poured forth in behalf of the "martyr" Thorogood. Thus speaks a “reverend " anti-churchman in reference to the Church:

to

"What meddling, what officious, what tyrannical body originated those laws, and still applies them? The Church? O! let us not desecrate a name so sacred! No, sir, it is not the church, if by that term of designation be meant the great body of the faithful. No, sir, it is a thing that has usurped a title a thing of earthly parentage, greedy of wealth, ambitious of power, decked in the trickery of worldly honours, the mere creation of princes-a thing which, destitute of the vestments of piety, pompously wraps around it, conceal its nakedness, the cloak of apostolical succession (cheers)--a thing that stimulates Christianity for political purposes, in all ages the pander to oppressors, and the jackal to worldly might and the powers that be-(loud applause)-in one word, an Establishment. Its howl is for prey-its office, to lure the people into the fangs of political power; and its reward, mammon! This, sir, and not the Church-this, the puppet of those who would enslave the nation-this is the magician that calls the spirit of persecution from the vasty deep. Christianity washes her hands of the foul imputation. It is a libel, a base libel upon her heavenly pretensions-(hear, hear)."

The utterer of this stuff rejoices in the name of Miall. He was kept in countenance by another equally reverend " spouter, named Legge, who, in the following choice phrases, made the Established Church his theme:

"He would not sanction à system which, calling itself apostolic, brand

ed him and his minister as vile schismatics, guilty of a crime worse than drunkenness. He would not give his sanction to a system which, in its union with the state, is the masterpiece of hell-loud cheers)—which is pervaded by the spirit of antiChrist; which, while arrogating to itself the exclusive possession of Christianity, has left the greater part of the land in worse than heathen darkness -(hear, hear): the foundation of all infidel principles; the great obstacle to the progress of true religion; the fosterer of all feuds amongst the disciples of Jesus"-(cheers).

A sample of this Dissenting minister's charity towards other Dissenters, is worthy of quotation :"It may suit Churchmen, great and small, who swallow the Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty nine Articles, and the Athanasian Creed (laughter); it may suit them, too, to mock at the consciences of Dissenters-aye, and it may suit some Dissenters too-white-livered, pigeon-hearted,addle-headed, powerworshipping, rank-admiring, moneyloving, knee-cringing, mealy-mouthed, lick-spittle Dissenters (loud laughter and cheers)- it may suit such as they to sneer at the consciences of other Dissenters."

These are the chosen friends-the allies the props of her Majesty's ministers. Such are the sentiments which exert an active influence over all the movements of the present cabinet! Conservative Journal.

TRUTH IS GREAT, AND IT WILL PREVAIL.-Truth may be despised -may be opposed; but it contains an imperishable germ of greatness and of empire. The acorn falls upon the ground, vegetates in the soil, and presently a seedling plant appears, liable to destruction from every blast; but, notwithstanding frosts and snows, its roots infix themselves more deeply in the earth, its branches extend, its head towers to the sky, every revolving year adds to its magnificence, till, venerable in the growth of centuries, it stands the father of the forest. So religious truth may be accounted contemptible-may be slow in progress -may be often threatened with an

nihilation from the sophistries of error and rage of persecutors; but, nurtured by an unseen and almighty influence, its grasp of the human intellect extends-its attributes of grandeur and beauty are unfolded-its head rises in triumph over all its rivals-and, ultimately, it appears enthroned the universally confessed monarch of the globe.

"THEY JOY BEFORE THEE ACCORDING TO THE JOY IN HARVEST, AND AS MEN REJOICE WHEN THEY DIVIDE THE SPOIL."-When the waggon of God's love in Christ, drawn by the hand of the Holy Spirit, comes into the heart, loaded with the sheaves of eternal salvation, and the blessed treasures are deposited in the garner of the renewed soul; when the soul rejoices according to the joy in harvest; or as when soldiers, after much fatigue, hunger, and severe contest, gain a complete victory over a powerful and numerous enemy, are permitted to make themselves masters of all their inestimable valuables, and so they sit down and rejoice as men that divide the spoils;-such is the nature of Christianity; it is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

"ALL THAT I HAVE IS THINE." Luke xv. 31. Interpretation. Which must be understood with great limitation; for it cannot mean that he had all the perfections of God, as Christ the Son of God has; nor all spiritual blessings as the adopted sons have nor indeed any of them, but all the outward ordinances of the legal dispensation which belonged to the Jews; particularly those that are enumerated in Rom. ix. 4, 5. "To whom pertain the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the Fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever." Hence, they had as much as they could have in an external way, or as they could desire to have. Therefore the meaning is, "All that I have seemeth to be thine," a similar interpretation to the one received of Matt. xiii. 12. "From him shall be taken away

even that which he hath," that is, that which he seemeth to have, as St. Luke hath it, chap. viii. 18. "From him shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have," or as translated in the margin, 66 even that which he thinketh he hath." It is also said, in the 7th verse of the chapter, that the Pharisees "need no repentance," that is, they "seem to need no repentance;" or they think they need no repentance:" so "all that I have seemeth to be thine."

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S SENTIMENTS ON THE SUBJECT OF MAR

RIAGE, AS DELIVERED TO HER FIRST

PARLIAMENT.-The historian having stated that "the education of Elizabeth, as well as her interest, led her to favour the Reformation, and that she remained not long in suspense with regard to the party which she should embrace," describes the proceedings of her first parliament, concluding with a subject which interested the nation, in the passage we here subjoin. "The House (of Commons) in no instance departed from the most respectful deference and complaisance towards the queen. Even the importunate address which they made her on the conclusion of the session, to fix her choice of a husband, could not, they supposed, be very disagreeable to one of her sex and age. The address was couched in the most respectful expressions; yet met with a refusal from the queen. She told the Speaker that, as the application from the House was conceived in general terms, only recommending marriage, without pretending to direct her choice of a husband, she could not take offence at the address, or regard it otherwise than as a new instance of their affectionate attachment to her; that any further interposition on their part would have ill become either them to make as subjects, or her to bear as an independent princess; that even while she was a private person, and exposed to much danger, she had always declined that engagement, which she regarded as an incumbrance; much more, at present, would she persevere in this sentiment, when the charge of a great kingdom was com

mitted to her, and her life ought to be entirely devoted to promoting the interests of religion and the happiness of her subjects; that as England was her husband, wedded to her by this pledge (and here she showed her finger with the same gold ring upon it with which she had solemnly bethrothed herself to the kingdom at her inauguration), so all Englishmen were her children; and while she was employed in rearing and governing such a family, she could not deem herself barren, or her life useless and unprofitable; that if she ever entertained thoughts of changing her condition, the care of her subjects' welfare would still be uppermost in her thoughts; but should she live and die a virgin, she doubted not but Divine Providence, seconded by their counsels and her own measures, would be able to prevent all disputes with regard to the succession, and secure them a sovereign who, perhaps better than her own issue, would imitate her example in loving and cherishing her people; and that, for her part, she desired that no higher character or fairer remembrance of her should be transmitted to posterity, than to have this inscription engraved on her tombstone, when she should have paid the last debt to nature:- Here lies Elizabeth, who lived and died a maiden Queen.'"-Hume's History of England.

The late Earl of Eldon, in his last address on the third reading of the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill, said, with solemn energy, "I would rather hear that I was not to exist to-morrow morning, than awake to the reflection that I had consented to an act which had stamped me as a violator of my sacred oath, as a traitor to my Church, and a traitor to the constitution." Having failed in alarming the King, by a private interview at Windsor to exercise his vote, though he abhorred the measure as much as his faithful counsel. lor, and the startling majority of one hundred and nine having sealed its fate in the Lords, he bade the House farewell in a moment of despair, and expressed his sorrowing conviction that the sun of England had set.