1

41. 10s. annual rent, besides keeping it in repair. It was now become too small for the audience, and several of the new auditors being men of fortune, in 1764 they purchased the place of Mr. Alderman Alstead for 701. rebuilt the house at their own expence, which amounted to five hundred guineas, and on Lord's day, August 12, 1764, they met for the first time for public wor ship in their new meeting-house.

* Mr. Robinson had not been long settled at Cambridge before his singular talents and excel·lent qualifications as a preacher, began to be taken notice of; and at the desire of the gown and town, he set up a Lord's day evening lecture, which is crowded, and it is supposed that not less than 150 or 200 gownsmen, from different motives, generally attend. His preaching is altogether without notes; a method in which he is peculiarly happy, not by trusting to his memory entirely, nor by working himself up to a degree of warmth and passion, to which the preachers, among whom he first appeared, in general owe their ready utterance; but by thoroughly sudying and making himself perfectly master of his subject, and a certain faculty of expression which is never at a loss for suitable and proper words in short, his manner is admirably adapted to enlighten the understanding, and to affect and reform the heart. Such a plainness of speech, such

:

*The subsequent part of this account was written by the late Rev. Josiah Thompson, of Clapham.

an easy and apparent method in dividing a discourse, and such a familiar way of reasoning as discovers a heart filled with the tenderest concern for the meanest of his hearers, and yet such a decency, propriety, and justness, that must be approved by the most judicious.*

Unhappily for the dissenting interest in this county, for almost a century the congregations have been supplied by ignorant laymen, whose want of knowledge has been more observed and rendered more galling by being under the immediate notice of a celebrated university, by which means the knowledge of their weakness has been more diffused, and the mischief they have occasioned to the character of dissenting ministers in general more painfully felt. To be diverted with the peculiar oddities of these preachers has, time immemorial, drawn numbers of the gownsmen to the dissenting places of worship in Cambridge. Mr. Robinson's lectures had been frequently disturbed by them. After complaining to no purpose to the vice chancellor, he at length determined to try another method, and addressed a discourse to these sons of Belial, upon a becoming

Dr. Randal, the present professor of music (1774) in this university, who worships with this people constantly, (except when his office in the university obliges him to be absent) hath examined, altered and even composed music for this assembly The pious professor hath beautified this ordinance and sown the seeds of knowledge in the minds of many of the children, servants and gentlemen of the university, who have at first learnt the hymn only for the sake of the tune.

behaviour in religious assemblies, which is allowed by the best judges of composition, who have seen it, to be the most complete piece of argument, genteel satire, and christian oratory that ever was read.

Upon his coming to Cambridge, his first employment was to reconnoitre the religious state of the town and county, in order the more properly to adapt his ministry to all. He found the generality of the people grossly ignorant of religion, and very immoral; and the dissenters themselves with an orthodoxy outrè to have a very faint and languid morality, and to be greatly negligent of those essential duties, and of cultivating that christian temper which forms and constitutes the truly religious character, honourable in the eyes of the world, and in the sight of God of great price. Deeply affected with this state of things, and touched with a compassionate concern for such numbers of immortal souls that were perishing for lack of knowledge, with a zeal proportioned to the importance of the occasion, Mr. R. set up several lectures in the adjacent villages; the good effects of which multitudes can happily testify.

These village lectures in private houses or in country barns have proved the nurseries of his church; and indeed no where are they more needed than round Cambridge: for whether it be owing to the non-residence of the clergy or to any other cause, it has been often remarked, and the present bishop of Ely, Dr. Keen remarked

it, in a printed charge to his clergy at his first visitation at Cambridge, that the people round Cambridge have less knowledge of religion than is to be found in any other parts of the kingdom, the other university adjacencies excepted!

The lectures attended by Mr. R. are either annual or occasional, which he appoints as it suits the people or himself, never going on a week day in hay-time, harvest, saffron time, &c. or stated on fixed days. The usual time is half an hour past six in the evening, when the poor can best spare the time; and sometimes at five in the morning for one hour before they go to work, and now and then in the summer at two in the afternoon, for the sake of far comers. These meetings generally consist of scores, often of hundreds of people. A list of them follows.

Fen Stanton is the only one of the above places. where there is a dissenting congregation statedly supplied every Lord's day. They embodied themselves into a regular church state, 1774. The whole country round about is an encouraging field to cultivate; for in all the villages almost, as well as in the town, there are great numbers of serious attentive hearers, and many excellent christians, who, till lately, were wholly unacquainted with the principles of non-conformity: and could there be even a very moderate provision made for the support of a serious evangelical ministry, there is the highest reason to believe in a few years several numerous congregations of protestant dissenters might be formed in these parts, where till within these fifteen years a dissenter was not known.

I shall conclude this article with the following extract from Mr. R's. church book at Cambridge.

"In the year 1765, William Howell Ewen, Esq. LL. D. one of his majesty's justices of the peace, in Cambridge, advised the dissenting ministers in town, to qualify as the act of toleration required. Dr. Ewen's advice which was quite friendly, was sent by Mr. Ivatt to me, and was meant to preserve us from trouble on account of the omission; accordingly Mr. Darby, the then independant minister, and I went to the Shire Hall at the sessions, on Friday, October 11, 1765, and in the presence of the right honourable the earl of Hardwicke, chairman, and several other of his Majesty's justices of the peace, took the oaths