sion, and, as it seemed, with a cold and stitches, which was indeed a pleurisy. The next day he sunk so fast that both his speech and sense went away on a sudden, and he continued panting about twelve hours, and then died without pangs or convulsions. Dr. Burnet was by him all the time, and he adds: Thus I lost him who had been so many years the chief guide of my whole life. He had lived ten years in Sussex in great privacy, dividing his time wholly between study and retirement, and the doing of good; for in the parish where he lived, and in the parishes round about, he was always employed in preaching and reading prayers. He distributed all he had in charities, chusing rather to have it go through other people's hands than his own, for I was his almoner in London. He had gathered a well-chosen library of curious as well as useful books, which he left to the diocese of Dunblane, for the use of the clergy there, that country being ill provided with books. He was in his last years turned to a greater severity against popery than I had imagined a man of his temper, and of his Jargeness in point of opinion, was capable. He spoke of the corruptions of the secular spirit, and of the cruelty that appeared in the Romish church with an extraordinary concern, and lamented the shameful advances which we seemed to be making towards popery. He did this with a tenderness and an edge, which I did not expect from so recluse and mortified a man. He looked on the state the church of England was in with very melancholy reflections, and was very uneasy at an expression then much used, That it was the best constituted church in the world.' He thought it was truly such with relation to the doctrine, the worship, and the main part of our government: But as to the administration, both with relation to the ecclesiastical courts, and the pastoral care, he looked on it as one of the most corrupt he had ever seen. He thought we looked like a fair carcase of a body, without a spirit, and destitute of that zeal, that strictness of life, and that laboriousness in the clergy, which became us.' Doctor Burnet had such an opinion of the excellency of this eminent man, that he not only has written largely in his commendation in his history, but he speaks of him in the same exalted, if not superior strain, in his pastoral care. I have now laid together (says he) with great simplicity what has been the chief subject of my thoughts for above thirty years. I was forced to them by a bishop that had the greatest elevation of soul, the largest com pass pass of knowledge, the most mortified and most heavenly disposition that I ever saw in mortal; that had the greatest parts as well as virtues, with the perfectest humility that I ever saw in man, and had a sublime strain of preaching with so grave a gesture, and such a majesty of thought, of language, and pronunciation, that I never saw a wandering eye where he preached, and have seen whole assemblies often melt in tears before him; and of whom I can say with great truth, that in a free and frequent conversation with him for above two and twenty years, I never knew him speak an idle word that had not a direct tendency to edification; and I never once saw him in any other temper but that which I wished to be in the last minutes of my life. For that pattern which I saw in him, and for that conversation which I had with him, I know how much I have to answer to God; and though my reflecting on that which I knew in him gives me just cause of being deeply humbled in myself, and before God, yet I feel no more sensible pleasure in any thing than in going over in my thoughts all that I saw and observed in him.' There were two remarkable circumstances in Dr. Leighton's death. He used often to say, that if he were to chuse a place to die in, it should be an inn, it looking like a pilgrim's going home, to whom this world was all as an inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion of it. He added, that the officiousness and care of friends was an entanglement to a dying man, and that the unconcerned attendance of those that could be procured in such a place would give less disturbance. He obtained what he desired, for he died at the Bell-inn in Warwick Lane, Another circumstance was, that while he was bishop in Scotland, he took what his tenants were pleased to pay him, so that there was a great arrear due, which was raised slowly by one whom he left in trust with his affairs there. The last payment which he could expect thence was sent up to him about six weeks before his death, so that his provision and his journey ended together. His Works, though not designed by him for the press, do indeed most justly praise him in the gate. The delight and edification (says the late Dr. Doddridge, in the preface to Leighton's Commentary on St. Peter) which I have found in the writings of this wonderful man, for such I must deliberately call him, would have been a full equivalent for my pains, separate from all prospect of that effect, which they might have upon others. For truly I know not that ever I have spent a quarter of an hour in reviewing any of them, but even amidst that interruption which a critical examination of the copy would naturally give, I have felt some impressions which I could always wish to retain. I can hardly forbear saying, as a considerable philosopher and eminent divine [Dr. Henry Miles, F. R. S.] said to me in a letter long ago, and when my acquaintance with our Author's works was but beginning: There is a spirit in Archbishop Leighton I never met with in any human writings, nor can I read many lines in them without being moved.' Indeed, continues Dr. Doddridge, it would be difficult for me to say where, but in the Sacred Oracles, I have ever found such heartaffecting lessons of simplicity and humility, candour and benevolence, exalted piety, without the least tincture of enthusiasm, and an entire mortification to every earthly interest, without any mixture of splenetic resentment. Nor can I ever sufficiently admire that artless manner in which he lays open, as it were, his whole breast to the reader, and shews, without seeming to be at all conscious of it himself, all the various graces that can adorn and enoble the Christian, running like so many veins of precious ore in the rich mine where they grew. And hence, if I mistake not, is that wonderful energy of his discourses, obvious as they seem, unadorned as they really are, which I have observed to be owned by persons of eminent piety in the most different ranks, and amidst all the variety of education and capacity that can be imagined. As every eye is struck by consummate beauty, though in the plainest dress, and the sight of such an object impresses much more than any laboured description of complexion, features, or air, or any harangue on the nicest rules of proportion which could come into consideration; so in the works of this Great Adept in true Christianity, we do not so much hear of goodness as see it in its most genuine traces; see him as a living image of his divine Master, for such indeed his writings shew, I had almost said demonstrated, him to have been, by such internal characters as surely a bad man could not counterfeit, "and no good man can so much as suspect.' We have seen only his "Exposition upon the first Epistle of St. Peter,"* and his "Select Works and Let ters;" Dr. Doddridge having occasion to speak of this "Commentary on the 1 Ep. of St. Peter," in his Family Expositor, Vol. VI. p. 273. in a note, says, 'I esteem it to be among the most instructive and useful books |