my church and in Mr. Harley's, Gabriel," said Mr. Clareton, "than when you left us. There is a new preacher at Fernley, who has drawn away many of our hearers, and his church is crowded. I wrote to you of the death of good old Mr. Ashurst, of Fernley, but I had seen so little of Mr. Moleville, his successor, at the time I sent my letter, that I did but mention his name. Even now I scarcely know what to say of him. He is an educated mangentle and courteous in his manners; overmuch so at times to please me: but I hear he is a most vehement preacher, bringing forward, at times, some strange opinions, and making startling assertions, and boldly upsetting, or endeavouring to do so, the doctrines which our dear brother Harley and I have been long preaching. What his own views are I have not been able to learn, for he seems to speak often at random. The effect, however, of his preaching has deeply pained us; for a spirit is growing up in this neighbourhood the very opposite of that humble, serious, loving character which Mr. Harley and I have laboured to inculcate. Some of the most ignorant and inconsistent of our people have taken upon themselves to teach and to rebuke us. I must own I nearly lost my patience and my temper only this morning, during a visit which Elkanah Simmons chose to pay me. He made a long harangue, the upshot of which was, to accuse me of handling the word of God deceitfully. I was never so lectured in my life. I was mute from sheer astonishment, at the cool and consummate effrontery of the fellow at first; and then I thought within myself that I would hear him without interrupting his attack, and be at the pains to consider what it was about. But it was a hopeless task : such a handling of solemn scriptures, such a jumble of crude notions, such a violent distortion of sacred and symmetrical truth, was surely scarcely ever

heard; and all was propounded with a look of such conscious superiority, and a tone of such authoritative insolence, that, after gravely bidding him to be silent, and take himself off-an order to which he gave no heed, if he heard it-I sat down to my writing-table, and took up my pen. The good old sergeant happened to come in with the news-book from Cleveden, just at the time when, in a louder voice, I had a second time commanded the fellow to hold his peace; for I found it impossible to write with the din of his voice in my ears. The sergeant

looked for awhile as amazed as I had been. He stood and listened to the fellow for a few minutes; but he who had been a hearer of Dr. Owen and Mr. Howe, and accustomed to the clear, sound teaching of those great divines, was not to be imposed upon by the declamatory jargon of that empty-headed fanatic. He did not trouble himself to speak, but without more ado he took him by the shoulders, and marched him out of the room. could give you many such instances of the state of things now prevailing around us, but this is the freshest. I would judge no man, but these are not the fruits we look for from a sound and wise preacher of Christ crucified."

I

CHAPTER II.

CLEVELAND HOUSE.

THERE was a cheerful party at Cleveland House. Sir Ralph Cleveland had come back from London a few days before. He had been returned as member for the county, and had been up to attend the meeting of the new Parliament. His

house had been the home of more than one godly clergyman during the civil war. There they had found a retreat, and had been welcomed and entertained as honoured guests, who were conferring rather than receiving a favour. Sir Ralph was in the highest sense given to hospitality. His wealth was great, and he was a lover of all good men, so that his heart and his hand were always open to relieve the wants of the distressed, and for few he felt more deeply, than for those pious, learned, and excellent pastors of Christ's church, who suffered for conscience' sake. At the time that Hammond and Gunning, and Fell were the honoured inmates of Westwood, in Worcestershire, living on terms of delightful intimacy with Sir John Packington and the "good Lady Packington," and Usher found a refuge with the noble Countess of Peterborough, in whose house he remained till he died, Cleveland House was as hospitably opened to the suffering ministers of Christ.

Many of the ejected clergy had no such refuge. The admirable Bishop Hall retired to a cottage at Higham, a village by the river side, not far from Norwich, and there ended his blameless and edifying course almost in poverty. Cleveland House was still the home of one of the most single-minded clergymen of those times, a true successor of the martyrs and confessors of the great English Reformation. He had won for himself, from those who really knew him, the title of a man of God. He was wise in that wisdom which is from above; which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated; full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy ; and God had given him that child-like humility which is the usual accompaniment of a great mind and of high spiritual attainments. He was one of a body of men then almost extinct; though we rejoice to think that

C

such men abound in our own days. "Amidst formalists," says an admirable writer, now living, "they were spiritual; in times of faction, they were peaceable; in an age of violence, they were calm and moderate. They scrupled not to wear the surplice, to kneel at the Eucharist, or to sign the cross in baptism. Chanting or singing hymns was alike welcome to them, provided the congregation 'made melody unto the Lord in their hearts. They had no suspicions of episcopacy as a relic of anti-Christ, for not a few of them adorned the episcopal office: they were devout men; and prayers read from a liturgy, or uttered from the fulness of the heart in unpremeditated words, were prayers to them, for they were 'the pure in heart, to whom all things are pure; they taught the doctrines of the Reformation, and in their own lives they revived the spirit of the reformers. Their historical fate is that which generally befalls good men whose lot is cast among the violent and factious. They rushed into no extremes; they set up no popular cry; they headed no party, and they followed none. When the king was under an evil influence, they remonstrated; when Laud played the tyrant, they withstood him to his face; when the House of Commons, in its turn, entered upon its career of violence, they again protested, were insulted, imprisoned, and ruined. Whatever may be said of the peculiar views of other good and holy men of that age, these men were the true successors

-Cranmer, and Ridley, and Bradford, and Latimer, and Jewel they were the true successors of those great men who bore the forefront of the battle against the most persecuting and schismatic church that ever perverted and prostituted the truth and faith which is in Christ Jesus, namely, the Church of Rome; for they were valiant for the truth, and loved not their lives unto the death, enduring

hardness as good soldiers on the battle-field, and the fiery trial at the stake. Whatever other men have been, or whatever other men have done, the reformers were the men who, by God's grace, lighted such a candle as shall never be put out.' Mr. Davenant was, both in doctrine and in discipline, their true successor.

One of the warmest and most cheerful apartments in Cleveland House had been allotted to this venerable servant of Christ, as his sitting-room. It was light and lofty, with a southern aspect; and had a door opening upon the alcove which extended along that side of the mansion. The door stood open on that sweet summer morning; and through that open door-way and the arches of the alcove there was a pleasant home view of a garden full of flowers, shut in on every side by a screen of evergreens, except where here and there a vista opened, carrying the eye onward to some lovely view of the landscape beyond the wild deep ravines of the park, where the rocky sides rose abruptly from the green sward, and the old trees interlaced their spreading branches from either side above-and where, still farther on, glimpses of the open country might be seen, with its wood-crowned hills and mountain slopes and summits, all tinted or partially veiled by the aërial blue of the distance. That pleasant parlour was the retreat of Mr. Davenant, and there he spent the calm close of his long and eventful life. He was much alone, and he desired to be so-waiting, he would say, for his summons to his Father's mansions above.

He was an early riser, and deemed no season of his day so delightful as the morning hours which he passed in that quiet room. There he would sit, with the earliest beams of the sun lighting up pages of that one book, in which he loved to read again and again his title to an inheritance in

the