way to retribute unto his Creator; for if not he that sayeth, Lord, Lord, but he that doeth the will of his Father, shall be saved; certainly our wills must be our performances, and our intents make out our actions; otherwise our pious labours shall find anxiety in their graves, and our best endeavours, not hope, but fear a resurrection."

From the noble and sublime confession of his faith, which our philosophic physician has given us, in relation to the attributes of God, and the nature of man, let us now turn to what he has left recorded of his creed on the equally momentous subject of revealed religion. After a mature consideration, then, of the various religions of the earth, having in his riper years, and confirmed judgment, seen and examined all, he finds himself obliged, he tells us, by the principles of grace, and the law of his own reason, to embrace no other faith than that of Christianity. But as this had been, through the folly and iniquity of mankind, grossly corrupted from its original purity, he thinks it necessary to state that he is of the Reformed. Religion: "Of the same belief our Saviour taught, the

Apostles disseminated, the Fathers authorized, and the Martyrs confirmed; but by the sinister ends of Princes, the ambition and avarice of Prelates, and the fatal corruption of the times, so decayed, impaired, and fallen from its native beauty, that it required the careful and charitable hands of these times to restore it to its primitive integrity." And yet, as there were not only many reformers, but likewise many species of reformation, "every country proceeding in a particular way and method, according as their national interest, together with their constitution and clime, inclined them, — some angrily, and with extremity, others calmly, and with mediocrity," he feels it incumbent upon him to be still more explicit, and to say, "there is no church whose every part so squares unto my conscience, whose articles, constitutions, and customs, seem so consonant unto reason, and, as it were, framed to my particular devotion, as this whereof I hold my belief,- the Church of England, to whose faith I am a sworn subject; and, therefore, in a double obligation, subscribe unto her articles, and endeavour to observe her constitutions. Whatso

ever is beyond, as points indifferent, I observe according to the rules of my private reason, or the humour and fashion of my devotion, neither believing this, because Luther affirmed it, or disproving that, because Calvin hath disavouched it. I condemn not all things in the council of Trent, nor approve all in the synod of Dort. In brief, where the scripture is silent, the church is my text; where that speaks, it is but my comment; where there is a joint silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates of my

How would the author of the Religio Medici have been delighted, could he have seen what the Bishop of St. David's has lately so decisively proved; namely, that the church of Britain was founded by St. Paul; that it was established anterior to the Church of Rome; that it was perfectly independent of any other church, as long as Christianity maintained its primitive simplicity, and that when, as late as the seventh century, error and innovation had sullied the purity of the Romish Church, the British was "a truly Protestant Church, protesting against

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the corruptions of superstition, images and idolatry, and refusing all communion with the Church of Rome." The Bishop then proceeds to state seven epochs, reaching from the first to the seventh century, during which the Church of Britain existed independent of all other establishments. His enumeration is as follows:

Century 1. St. Paul's preaching of the Gospel in Britain.

Cent. 2. Lucius's public protection of Christianity.

Cent. 3. and 4. The Dioclesian persecution. Cent. 4. The councils of Arles, Sardica, and Ariminiuin.

Cent. 5. The suppression of Pelagianism. Cent. 6. The Synod of Llanddewi Brefi. Cent. 7. The rejection of Popery by the British bishops.

a

"In these seven epochs," observes the Bishop of St. David's, "we have very ample and substantial evidence of Christianity, Christian Church in Britain founded by St. Paul, and subsisting for near six centuries before the arrival of Austin the monk, and in that subsistence a proof of its entire independence on any foreign jurisdiction.”

His Lordship's second publication on this subject closes with a postcript devoted to an elaborate discussion of the meaning of the phrase "The utmost bounds of the west," adopted by Clemens Romanus when speaking of the extent of St. Paul's journeys. It is with the highest satisfaction we add, that his Lordship appears to have demonstratively proved, that the above expression was, in the age of Clement, always understood as including not only Spain but Britain.*

Attached, however, as Sir Thomas Browne was, and justly so, to the Church of England, no man could be more free from bigotry, or more liberal in his sentiments with regard to the creed of others. He very rightly considered, that, however divided on minor points were the various denominations of Christians, and, in our present imperfect state, indeed, almost necessarily so, they were, as to the great outlines of our faith, nearly agreed; and that with

* "Second Letter from the Bishop of St. David's to the Clergy of his Diocese; on the Independency of the Antient British Church on any Foreign Jurisdiction: with a Postcript on the Testimony of Clemens Romanus.”