a zest to your retirement. This indeed renders it-Otium cum dignitate.

It was, my Lord, as you well know, the opinion of an illustrious temporal Peer, the late earl of Chatham, and avowed by him in the senate, that "HISTORY affords no proof that Sects have ever proved mischievous, when they were not oppressed and persecuted by the ruling church." And the highest spiritual Peer, the present Archbishop of Canterbury, hath declared more recently, in the House of Lords, that

THE SACRED WRITINGS are allowed by all Protestants to be the great standard of religious doctrine, but the interpretation is liable to error, and that uniformity of religious belief was not to be expected, so variously constituted were the minds of men, and consequently religious coercion was not only absurd and impolitic, but for all good purposes impracticable." This declaration is wor

thy of a Christian prelate, and creditable to the venerable establishment over which he has the honour to preside. Happily the bolts and bars of the Lollards' Tower are now only the memorial of former days, the awful relics of besotted ignorance, and anti-christian bigotry. They are merely shewn (as the implements of cruelty belonging to the Spanish Armada, preserved in the Tower of Loudon,) among the ancient curiosities of the British Metropolis. Indeed, "the world, under the banners of reformed Christianity," as you, my Lord, have admirably expressed it,

has struggled through Persecution to the noble eminence on which it now stands at this moment, shedding the blessings of humanity and science upon the nations of the earth !"*

* Mr. Pennant, in his Account of London, justly remarks, "Neither Protestants nor Catholics, should omit visiting the Lollards' Tower, at Lambeth Palace,

But how, my Lord, would our Forefathers, harassed with fines, and worn down with imprisonment, have rejoiced to see this day! Their hardships and sufferings are the tale of other times. The fires of Smithfield are extinguished, ne-. ver I hope to be rekindled. Even the few Penal Laws now remaining,, and which have, like a solar eclipse, obscured the splendour of the Sun of Righteousness, are, we trust, soon to pass away. I see as it were the last streaks of the darkness hovering on the verge

the cruel prison of the unhappy followers of Wickliffe." I have just seen it and beheld it with horror. The staples and rings to which the victims were chained, before they were brought to the stake, are even now disgusting to the sight; whilst the eye tremulously runs over the half sentences, as well as the names and letters cut with a knife on the wainscot, which is of oak-doubtless the solitary amusement of the prisoners. Sacred sufferers! You have been long ago raised to the ever-during crown of martyrdom.

of the horizon, about to disappear for ever. United in the bands of love and charity, Catholics, Churchmen, and Dissenters of every description, are beginning to recognize the evangelical maxim; ONE IS YOUR MASTER-EVEN CHRIST! We are realizing the gold. en age of primitive Christianity. "I would have Christians united," said the penetrating Mr. Burke; "I would have them join in every attempt to crush the powers of darkness, and trample under foot the foe of God and man. a tender mother, tender of her children, I would have THE CHURCH, with wide-extended arms, receive in her bosom every believing son-not with unnatural austerity, reproach her offspring, and drive them to seek for ease, for pleasure, and for comfort in the harlot lap of INFIDELITY."

Like

The BRUNSWICK FAMILY, my Lord, under whose auspices it is our happiness

to live, have held sacred the dictates of conscience, in the worship of the Supreme Being, and are on this account entitled to the gratitude of every subject of these realms. History tells us, that soon after George the First had ascended the throne, he made this declaration to his privy council-that as it was "his firm purpose to do all that was in his power for supporting and maintaining the Churches of England and Scotland, as they were severally by law established," so HE was of opinion, "that it might be effectually done without the least impairing THE TOLERATION ACT, allowed by law to Protestant Dissenters, so agreeably to Christian charity, and so necessary to the trade and riches of this Kingdom!” And George the Second, in his first speech from the Throne, declared, that "it should be his constant care to secure to ALL his subjects, the full enjoyment of their