scheme has been more carefully preserved than he imagined.. I have it at my elbow, but as it appears to have been drawn up almost ten years before he left the see, I hope he will indulge me with the liberty of considering it some months before I lay out a sum, which he thought fit to bestow in another way. The good man certainly meant very well : though it is yet a secret to me that the rights of the see were preserved by his leaving the settlement of all differences with the Londoners, to the wisdom and moderation of the Earl of Rochester and his chaplain. My plain dealing with the clergy here, upon my first coming among them, seems thus far to have had as good an effect as I could wish. To-morrow the dean accompanies me in the payment of our duty to Lord Justice Conolly, who is now in the neighbourhood, and is expected as knight of the shire, and alderman of the city, to repay our visit before he returns to Dublin. After this waits upon your Grace I beg you will not trouble yourself by directing any answer this way. Till 1 write from Rose Castle, let me have no other return than your for prayers Grace's your obedient servant, most W. DERRY. (To be continued.) And offer no man vilanie. 22 To learne howe foe to pacifle, But trust him not too trustily. 23 To keepe thy touch substantially, And in thy worde use constancie. 24 To make thy bondes advisedly, And come not bounde through surety. 25 To hate to live in infamie, Through craft and living naughtilie. 26 To banish home of blasphemie, Least crosses crosse unluckely. 27 To stop mischance through policie, For worldly thinges are slippery. That vertue vice may qualifie. 30 To bridle wilde oates fantasy, To spend thee nought unthriftily. 31 To pray to God continually, To aide thee against thine enemie. 32 To spend the Sabboth holily, And helpe the poore in miserie. 33 To live in conscience quietly, And keepe thy selfe from malady. tions of the people. But I shall rather speak to you as you are in a capacity of union and of government; for as now you have a new power, so there is incumbent upon you a special duty. "1. Take care that all your power and your counsels be employed in doing honour and advantages to piety and holiness. Then you obey God in your public capacity, when by holy laws and wise administrations you take care that all the land be an obedient and a religious people. For then you are princely rulers indeed when you take care of the salvation of a whole nation. Nihil aliud est imperium nisi cura salutis aliena, said Ammianus; government is nothing but a care that all men be saved. And therefore take care that men do not destroy their souls by the abominations of an evil life: see that God be obeyed, take care that the breach of the laws of God may not be unpunished. The best way to make men to be good subjects to the king is to make them good servants of God. THE following extract forms the Suffer not drunkenness to pass with impunity; let lust find a public shame; let the sons of the nobility and gentry no more dare to dishonour God than the meanest of the people shall; let baseness be basely esteemed; that is, put such characters of shame upon dishonourable crimes, that it be esteemed more against the honour of a gentleman to be drunk than to be kicked, more "God hath put a royal mantle, and fastened it with a golden clasp, upon the shoulder of the KING, and he hath given you the judges robe; the King holds the sceptre, and he hath now permitted you to touch the golden ball, and to take it a while into your handling, and make obedience to your laws to be duty and religion: but then remember that the first in every kind is to be the measure of the rest; you cannot reasonably expect that the subjects should obey you, unless you obey God. I do not speak this only in relation to your personal duty; though in that also it would be con- shame to fornicate than to be caned; sidered, that all the bishops and mi- and for honour's sake and the repu nisters of religion are bound to teach tation of Christianity, take some the same doctrines by their lives as course that the most unworthy sins sermons; and what of the world have not reputation the matters of doc- added to them by being the prac also to do in matter of tice of gentlemen and persons of is reasonable for the good birth and fortunes. Let not of religion, is also the them who should be examples of ethod for the advantages of holiness have an impunity and a we must preach by our licence to provoke God to anger; ample, and you must govern lest it be said that in Ireland it is not your good example in lawful for any man to sin, unless he the laws of religion will be a person of quality. Optimus est endear them to the affec- reipublicæ status, ubi nihil deest nisi they do by their we are trine, laws; wha best goverment ex and good by it: observing rangely licentia pereundi; In a commonwealth, that is the best state of things, where every thing can be had but a leave to sin, a licence to be undone. "2. As God is thus to be obeyed, and you are to take care that he be, so God also must be honoured, by paying that reverence and religious obedience which is due to those persons whom he hath been pleased to honour, by admitting them to the dispensation of his blessings, and the ministries of your religion. For certain it is, this is a right way of giving honour and obedience to God. The church is in some very peculiar manner the portion and the called and the care of God; and it will concern you in pursuance of your obedience to God, to take care that they in whose hands religion is to be ministered and conducted, be not discouraged. For what your judges are to the ministry of laws, that your bishops are in the ministries of religion; and it concerns you that the hands of neither of them be made weak; and so long as you make religion your care, and holi. ness your measure, you will not think that authority is the more to be despised because it is in the hands of the church, or that it is a sin to speak evil of dignities, unless they be ecclesiastical, but that they may be reviled; and that though nothing is baser than for a man to be a thief, yet sacrilege is no dishonour; and indeed to be an oppressor is a great and crying sin, yet to oppress the church, to diminish her rents, to make her beggarly and contemptible, that is no offence; and that though it is not lawful to despise government, yet if it be church-govornment, that then the case is altered. Take heed of that, for then God is dishonoured, when any thing is the more despised by how much it relates nearer unto God. No religion ever did despise * Seneca. their chiefest ministers; and the Christian religion gives them the greatest bonour. For honourable priesthood is like a shower from heaven, it causes blessings every where: but a pitiful, a disheartened, a dis. couraged clergy, waters the ground with a water-pot, here and there a little good, and for a little while ; but every evil man can destroy all that work whenever he pleases. Take heed; in the world there is not a greater misery can happen to any man, than to be an enemy to God's church. All histories of christendom and the whole Book of God have sad records, and sad threatenings, and sad stories of Corah, and Doeg, and Balaam, and Jeroboam, and Uzzah, and Ananias, and Sapphira, and Julian, and of heretics and schismatics, and sacrilegious; and after all, these men could not prevail finally, but paid for the mischief they did, and ended their days in dishonour, and left nothing behind them but the memory of their sin, and the record of their curse. 3. In the same proportion you are to take care of all inferior relatives of God and of religion. Find out methods to relieve the poor, to accommodate and well dispose of the cures of souls; let not the churches lie waste and in ruinous heaps, to the diminution of religion, and the reproach of the nation, lest the nations abroad say, that the Britons are a kind of Christians that have no churches for churches, and courts of judicature, and the public defences of an imperial city, are res sacra; they are venerable in law, and honourable in religion. "But that which concerns us most is, that we all keep close to our religion. Ad magnas reipublicæ utilitates retinetur religio in civitatibus, said Cicero; by religion and the strict preserving of it, ye shall best preserve the interests of the nation: and according to the precept of the Apostle, Mark them which cause divisions amongst us, contrary to the and what other effects ye know not. But Leontinus bishop of Antioch stroaked his old white beard and said, When this snow is dissolved, a great deal of dirty weather will fol low; meaning, that when the old religion should be questioned and discountenanced, the new religion would bring nothing but trouble and unquietness: and we have found it so by a sad experience. doctrine that ye have received, and avoid them*. For I beseech you to consider, all you that are true protestants; do you not think that your religion is holy, and apostolical, and taught by Christ, and pleasing unto God? If you do not think so, why do you not leave it? But if you do think so, why are ye not zealous for it? Is not the government a part of it? it is that which immures, and adorns, and conducts all the rest, and is established in the thirty-sixth article of the church, in the public service book, and in the book of consecration: it is therefore a part of our religion, and is not all of it worth preserving? If it be, then they which make schisms against this doctrine, by the rule of the apostle, are to be avoided. Beatus qui prædicat verbum inauditum, blessed is he that preaches a word that was never heard before; so said the Spanish Jesuit: but Christ said otherwise; No man having drunk old wine straight desires new, for he saith the old is better. And so it is in religion, Quod primum verum, truth is always first: and since episcopacy hath been of so lasting an abode, of so long a blessing, since it hath ever combined with government, and hath been taught by that Spirit that hath so long dwelt in God's church, and hath now according to the promise of Jesus, that says, the gates of hell shall not presail against the church, been restored amongst us by a heap of miracles, and as it went away, so it returned again in the hand of monarchy, and in the bosom of our fundamental laws; suffer no evil ak against this truth, A so long a testimony tongue 10 which hath from experience, and from God from the of all t་ A dom of so many ages, ancestors and all your est ye be found to speak laws, our "4. Ye cannot obey God unless ye do justice: for this also is better than sacrifice, said Solomon, Prov. xxi. 3. for Christ, who is the Sun of righteousness, is a sun and a shield to them that do righteously. The Indian was not immured sufficiently by the Atlantic sea, nor the Bosphoran by the walls of ice, nor the Arabian by his meridian sun; the Christian justice of the Roman princes brake through all inclosures, and by justice set up Christ's standard, and gave to all the world a testimony how much could be done by prudence and valour, when they were conducted by the hands of justice. And now you will have a great trial of this part of your obedience to God. "For you are to give sentence in the causes of half a nation: and he had need be a wise and a good man that divides the inheritance amongst brethren; that he may not be abused by contrary pretences, nor biassed by the interest of friends, nor transported with the unjust thoughts even of a just revenge, nor allured by the opportunities of spoil, nor turned aside by partiality in his own concerns, nor blinded by gold which puts out the eyes of wise men, nor cozened by pretended zeal, nor wearied with the difficulty of questions, nor directed by a general measure in cases not measurable by it, nor borne down by prejudice, nor abused by resolutions taken before the cause against God, and neglect the things he heard, nor overruled by national that belon nothing unto your peace, * Rom, xvi. 17. interests. For justice ought to be the simplest thing in the world, and is to be measured by nothing but by truth and by laws, and by the decrees of princes. But whatever you do, let not the pretence of a different religion make you think it lawful to oppress any man in his just rights: for opinions are not, but laws only, and doing as we would be done to, are the measures of justice: and though justice does alike to all men, Jew and Christian, Lutheran and Calvinist; yet to do right to them that are of another opinion is the way to win them; but if you for conscience sake do them wrong, they will hate you and your religion. Lastly, as obedience is better than sacrifice, so God also said, I will have mercy and not sacrifice; meaning that mercy is the best obedience. Perierat totum quod Deus fecerat, nisi misericordia subvenisset, said Chrysologus; all the creatures both of heaven and earth would perish if mercy did not relieve us all. Other good things more or less, every man expects according to the portion of his fortune: Ex clementia omnes idem sperant, but from mercy and clemency all the world alike do expect advantages. And which of us all stands here this day, that does not need God's pardon and the king's? Surely no man is so much pleased with his own innocence, as that he will be willing to quit his claim to mercy; and if we all need it, let us all shew it. the light of heaven shines upon it, it may produce a rainbow to be a sacrament and a memorial that God and the sons of God do not love to see a man perish. God never rejoices in the death of him that dies; and we also esteem it undecent to have music at a funeral. And as religion teaches us to pity a condemned criminal, so mercy intercedes for the most benign interpretation of the laws. You must indeed be as just as the laws, and you must be as merciful as your religion: and you have no way to tie these together, but to follow the pattern in the mount; do as God does, who in judgment remembers mercy. To conclude; If every one in this honourable assembly would join together to promote Christian religion in its true notion, that is, peace and holiness, the love of God and the love of our brother, Christianity in all its proper usefulness, and would not endure in the nation any thing against the laws of the holy Jesus; if they were all zealous for the doctrines of righteousness, and impatient of sin in yourselves and in the people, it is not to be imagined what a happy nation we should be. But if ye divide into parties, and keep up useless differences of names or interests; if ye do not join in the bands of peace, that is, the king good of the nation, you can never and the church, religion and the hope to see a blessing to be the end of your labours. Remember the words of Solomon, Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people *: but when righteousness is advanced in the hearts and lives of the nation, who shall dare to reprove your faith, who can find fault with your religion? "God of his mercy grant that in all your consultations the Word of God may be your measure, the Spirit of God may be your guide, and the glory of God may be your end: He of his mercy grant that modera * Prov. xxiv. 34. |