*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 63746 ***

Transcribed from the [1850?] James Nisbet and Co. edition by David Price





                                 A REPLY
                                    TO
                              DR. VAUGHAN’S
                     “LETTER ON THE LATE POST-OFFICE
                               AGITATION.”


                                * * * * *

                                    BY
                        JAMES ROBERT PEARS, M.A.,

          MASTER OF THE BATH GRAMMAR SCHOOL, AND LATE FELLOW OF
                        MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD.

                                * * * * *

                                * * * * *

                                * * * * *

                                 LONDON:
                           JAMES NISBET AND CO.
                         BATH: BINNS AND GOODWIN.

                                * * * * *

                            _Price Sixpence_.

                                * * * * *

                   BATH: PRINTED BY BINNS AND GOODWIN.

                                * * * * *




A REPLY, &c.


REV. SIR,

Three years ago the Hon. GRANTLEY F. BERKELEY published a letter to the
Postmaster-General in opposition “to the attempt (as he wrote) which was
making in Bath and its vicinity to prevent the delivery of letters on a
Sunday.”  And we were taught by this publication that there were men, and
perhaps many men, among our legislators, who were uninformed as to the
origin, nature, and moral effects of that precious ordinance of a day of
rest.  Such men needed to be instructed with kindness, and patience, and
compassion.

We must, indeed, be fearfully devoid of the best gift of God to man, if
we do not feel compassion for men who, in a land of open bibles, and
professed obedience to the Gospel, have been deprived, by a vicious
education, a life of excitement, and the cold indifference of those about
them, of the vast enjoyment realized by the spirit of man when it rests
in communion with the Almighty.

But when I undertook the easy and pleasant task of replying to that
opponent, I certainly thought that the sentiments of that gentleman were
confined to men whose education had been so unhappily restricted.

It would have been to me utterly incredible, if I had been told that his
views would find sympathy and support in a man educated in the most
liberal course, and trained to the full exercise of intellectual energy,
accepted as a popular instructor of the rising Aristocracy, and even
accounted an able preacher of the Gospel of HIM, who gave the day of rest
and blessed it.  And here you must accept the assurance of my unfeigned
regret if the following remarks necessarily assume somewhat of a personal
character.  My own feelings would lead me to limit myself entirely to the
discussion of facts, principles, causes, and results: but that period in
the discussion is past.  The nature, obligation, privilege, and blessing
of the Lord’s day has been the subject of deep interest and enquiry to
every temper of mind, with an infinite variety of views, among all
classes of men from the palace to the workshop.

Nothing remains for us but to apply to individuals principles already
admitted, and arguments no longer disputed.  Nor is any exception to be
made in favour of a disputant, who has contrived to escape from all
perception of the various stages of the enquiry, and with feminine
pertinacity repeats at the end the question which opened the discussion.

The debate has come to a close, and the question is now put to the vote.
The multitude catch at every leading voice which authorizes their
self-indulgence, and neglect of duty, and our only effort is to make such
leaders retract their vote with honest repentance, or to make the many
ashamed to follow them in palpable error.

Your name and reputation make it indeed imperative on us to notice, in
the fulness of courtesy, the points you have brought forward; but I
cannot conceal from myself that the only conceivable importance to be
attached to the publication before me arises from your personal position
and personal character: it begins and ends with yourself.

The letter itself would be a harmless echo of the minute of Mr. ROWLAND
HILL but for the Preacher’s name on the title-page, and the
advertisements of sermons, by the same Author, on the cover.  To that
sacred document, “_the minute_,” you are willing to be indebted for
facts, principles, and arguments;—an implicit submission to the written
word of authority, which in the sermons would be the wisdom of faith, but
in the present instance savours more of the simplicity of credulity.
“You could wish that that minute had been more generally studied by those
who pronounced a judgment upon the question.”

A wish in which I heartily concur, under the fullest conviction, that
every honest and intelligent mind would pronounce it to be as
contemptible a piece of official mystification as ever proceeded from a
public office.

We have in one paper a desultory reference to every part of the
Post-office duties; facts the most unconnected in their nature united
together; and conclusions arrived at by a process peculiar to those who
know the credulity of the many; while the only thing which we learn with
any degree of certainty, we ascertain from its ostentatious repetition,
that to compensate for the contempt of the command of Jehovah, and the
ruin of men’s souls, we shall have a saving of £148 per annum _by the
discontinuance of the Newport-Pagnell Mail-cart_.

One principle, however, shows itself in something like a definite form,
which you have yourself adopted—the principle of compensation in the
matter of obedience to the word of God;—of striking a balance with
Jehovah.  It runs through the minute, it constitutes the only approach to
an argument in your letter.  Is it possible, Sir, that your mind was not
startled by the train of thought which you permitted to pass through it?
A man, whose whole energies have been unhappily devoted to secular
business; whose affections are wrapped up in questions of profit and
loss; who forgets the eternity which is to come in the contemplation of
the saving of the Newport-Pagnell Mail-cart: such a man may, perhaps,
think that “the Lord is even such an one as himself.”  But you know that
the Spirit of our Creator, and our Judge, has asked, “What is a man
profited if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

You cannot go into your closet, and meet the God of your salvation there,
with an offer of a lesser sin instead of a greater.  You shudder at the
thought, or smile at the absurdity, as your temper may be; but this is
merely the specious profession of Mr. HILL’S minute, as adopted by
yourself, stripped under the light of Divine truth.

You have yourself spoken with approbation of those in whom is “a
trembling anxiety to be right for eternity, which forbids them to rest in
that dim unrealized twilight which satisfies the eye less intently fixed
on the future and the spiritual.” {7a}  And if these words are anything
beyond an elegant close to a period, you will agree with me, that it is a
fearful calamity for a teacher of God’s truth to have vague and
indefinite notions of duty towards God; and an awful offence in such a
man to consent to and to authorize the prevalence of such uncertainty.

Man, when once brought to a sense of responsibility, is too ready to
escape from it under the cloudy varieties of opinion.  The poor country
labourer defends his carelessness by asserting that “we must do the best
that we can;” and his educated fellow-man tells us that “the question is
whether, on the whole, the aggregate of gain or loss will preponderate.”
{7b}  No, Sir, that may be the question for Mr. ROWLAND HILL; but it is
not the question for you or me.  I earnestly entreat you to consider this
matter again.  The elegant poet of a heathen court declared of the
virtuous man, which his imagination delighted in, “_Si fractus illabatur
orbis_, _impavidum ferient ruinæ_.”  We have repeated, as before God,
thousands of times, “Thy will be done.”  And what did we mean?  Less than
Horace?  I trust not.  “Thy will be done;”—though all the conveniences of
society are sacrificed,—all the communications of friends cut off,—all
the prosperity of nations overthrown:—“Thy will be done.”

“If twenty-five _additional_ servants are required in the _London_ Office
on the Sunday, and _twice_ twenty-five can be _relieved_ on that day in
the Provincial Offices, the change, so far as it extends, is salutary.
Now if this obvious principle be granted, the question is decided at
once,” {8} is your own statement of the matter; and though I utterly deny
that such a relief can be realized, or was expected, I am willing to take
it as a mere moral thesis of your own, that I may remind you that very
_obvious principles_ in the matters of this world are not very obvious
principles in our dealing with God.

You dare not go into the presence of God with this obvious principle in
the face of His express and unqualified command.  You tell me that “it is
necessary to take a national view of such a question.”  I answer, that
for us, Ministers of the Gospel, it is necessary to take a scriptural and
spiritual view of this and every question.  And you must not suppose that
I am assuming anything here as to the obligation of the Lord’s-day.  You
admit that the increase of work in the London Post Office is an _evil_,
and you look upon the relief from such work in the country offices as a
counterbalancing _good_.  As a minister of Christ, you must mean _good_
and _evil_ in reference to the will of the God of the Bible; you must
therefore understand _positive_, _eternal_, _unchangeable good and evil_.
You incur a vast and fearful responsibility if you teach man that man’s
obedience, in regard to Divine declarations of good and evil, is left
undefined, and dependent upon circumstances, or man’s judgment.  You must
not teach them to seek a good of their own by a balance of disobedience
and obedience, and such an approximation to the Divine will as they find
convenient.

Of all the forms in which the perverseness of man’s nature is exhibited,
none is so painful to contemplate as the incapacity of an acute intellect
and cultivated mind for comprehending the nature and power of the
communication between the Creator and the spirits of His creatures.  We
read the clearest statements of the one truth that “the world by wisdom
knew not God,” and we submit to them rather as a salutary warning against
possible error, than as declaratory of a sure result.  But when we see
the truth exemplified in an individual; when we look upon faculties and
qualities which we are led to envy, to admire, and to love, and find the
man even in one point closed against the communication of God; our spirit
endures the most bitter disappointment of which it is susceptible.  We
see strength which defies our efforts, and a moral and intellectual
position above our reach, and yet feel that such strength is the
intensity of weakness, and such a position the most slippery of those
“slippery places,” of which the Psalmist was instructed in the sanctuary
of God.

Few years have passed since we rejoiced in the emancipation of minds from
the thraldom of the traditionary ideas of the past; men began, after a
long interval, to think for themselves.  We have already lived to see
many of the finest minds lost through their liberty.  It is better to be
limited to the well defined truths borrowed from other minds, than to
wander in a wilderness of free thought, where truth and error, good and
evil, are undistinguished but by the casual intuitive perception of the
wanderer.

It is a matter of vast national importance that one of the first
instructors of youth should subdue his own mind to well defined
conceptions of duty.

Surely there must have been something which materially interfered with
the calmness of your judgment when you stated conspicuously that the
alteration in the transmission of letters would cause a great diminution
of the former amount of letters written and read in the country on
Sunday!  And when you intimated that the opponents of the measure, who
will not consent to the doing of evil that good may come, are chargeable
with the same folly.  You ask, “Are you not, in _resisting_ the proposed
relief of the country offices, on the plea of regard for that of London,
doing, in fact, a great evil—not that a small good may come; but that a
small evil may not come?” {10}

Whence did you learn, Sir, that we resist the proposed relief of the
Country Offices, for which we have contended for years?  Who told you
that we dared impiously to resist any act of obedience to the Lord?
Nothing could be further from my mind.  Many of us, as I can venture to
assert, whether right or wrong in our judgment, have a clear, defined,
invariable rule of obedience to the will of God, by which we desire to be
guided, and desire others also to be ruled, as the best wish we can
express for them.

It is impossible from your letter to conjecture what may be your view of
the ordinance of the Lord’s-day.  You have indeed told us in another
place, in sufficiently general terms, that “without that ordinance,
indeed, without that weekly memento, visible in all things around us, of
realities unseen but eternal, no other memorial of God’s love could, in a
world like ours, find room and scope for its operations.” {11}  But this
does not supply the want.  I cannot conjecture whether you look upon the
observance of that day as enforced by command, or instituted as a
privilege, or appointed as a type, or a mere human institution.  I reject
the latter supposition as impossible, for I cannot suspect a minister of
our church of the base hypocrisy of using her services while he holds the
Lord’s-day to be merely of man.  You therefore think that, in one way or
other, it has a Divine sanction, and is a part of the Divine purpose.
The Word of the Spirit appears to give great latitude upon the subject,
when we read, “One man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth
every day alike.”  But we must read on, “Let every man be fully persuaded
in his own mind.”  Yes, Sir, we have surely a right to expect from a
teacher of Divine Truth a clear expression of _the full persuasion_ of
his own mind, when he publicly treats on such a subject.

There is nothing which irritates an earnest, intelligent mind more than a
weak exhibition of moral duties upon untenable grounds, or by unsound
arguments.  It is possible that a vague outcry upon the subject of the
Post Office desecration of the Lord’s-day may have provoked you to make
and print the inconsiderate reply, which is now before me.  And all who
esteem your reputation will regret that any outcry, however vague and
unreasonable, should have drawn from an instructed mind a reply without
one single definite statement of truth, or of duty.  You must pardon me,
therefore, if I state for you a few positions, which you certainly do
hold in common with myself.

                                * * * * *

You will not hesitate to assert,

  I.  That no combination of circumstances can possibly make it right to
  do that which is evil in the sight of God.

  The contrary supposition necessarily asserts imperfection in His mind,
  or His government.

  II.  That our obedience to His will is no obedience, unless it be in
  spirit and in truth, without even a desire for evasion.

  III.  That each human being shall exist to eternity, in the blessedness
  of the kingdom of Christ, or in the misery of the damned.

  IV.  That they shall perish eternally who know not God, and obey not
  the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

  V.  That God has mysteriously connected deliverance from eternal death
  with the hearing of the Gospel.

  VI.  That He has likewise connected obedience to His will, and His own
  glory in His people, with the knowledge of His word.

  VII.  That it is of _infinite_ importance that every man should hear
  the Gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation to them that
  believe.

  VIII.  That the Lord’s-day is especially set apart, under Divine
  sanction, for the hearing of the word, and for the turning the mind of
  men from the things of the world to God.

  IX.  That it is better for “sixty thousand letters” to be burned,
  unopened, than for one Post Office Clerk to perish in hell for ever.

I can venture, Sir, to tell the world that your mind is quite made up on
all these points.  And the world will wonder that you should hitherto
have failed to use all your faculties and influence for the deliverance
of those poor men, whom the requirements of a godless or thoughtless
multitude have shut up in the Post Office from the sound of the Gospel.

You have told us most truly of the effects of six days’ worldly
excitement.  “Who has not found himself, at the end of the week of hard
work, or of abounding excitements, left cold and almost lifeless towards
God?  Who has not found himself, at such a time, so tied and bound with
the chain of this world, that, without some change, some voice coming and
speaking to him, whether he will hear or no, he could not shake off the
yoke with which he is fettered?” {13}

And what must be the effects of months and years uninterrupted by one
real Sabbath from such excitement and fatigue?  Practical men know the
effect,—they have seen one after another demoralized, degraded,
brutalized, in this life.  And what can they hope is to follow in the
next?  A liberally-minded man is disgusted at the idea of wearing out the
life of his horse, using him up—as men say.  What do you think of
wilfully employing fellow men in a work, which wears out physical energy
and moral sense,—which _uses up_ body, _mind_, and _soul_,—and consigns
the poor exhausted wretch to destruction?  But I am met by these words,
“that attendance, you will observe, is voluntary.” {14}  And I read them
with feelings of the most hearty sorrow, that such words could have
fallen from the pen of a brother in the ministry of the blessed Gospel of
Love—from his _pen_—for I am sure that your heart never conceived
them—your head never weighed them—and yet what was a mere specious
afterthought of Mr. HILL’S, is put prominently forward by yourself—_their
attendance voluntary_—their ignorance voluntary too?—their ungodliness
voluntary too?—their eternal ruin voluntary too?  One moment’s thought
would have made you tremble at the consequences of this defence.
Multitudes of the young prefer a course of idleness and folly which will
inevitably lead to ruin.  Let them alone!  _You observe that it is purely
voluntary_.  Multitudes of our hearers prefer to live according to the
lusts of the flesh—let them alone! . . . their destruction is _entirely
voluntary_.  The hardened reprobate, who seduces the simple country girl
by gratifying her taste for finery and idleness, may attempt to throw off
the guilt by the cruel retort that she was willing to sin; but he only
calls forth a double portion of indignation and contempt from every
honest man by the cold-blooded, false-hearted insult.  And yet he is
guiltless in comparison with a man, who could deliberately see his fellow
man destroying his hopes for eternity, and sacrifice his soul for a
trifling stipend; could make use of the poor wretch’s suicidal labor for
his own little convenience, and satisfy his conscience with the thought
that _the man was willing_.

No, Sir, no man who has ever heard your name will suspect for a moment
that you ever weighed the expression you were borrowing; and what I have
written, I have written not for yourself, but for many who need to be
warned of the guilt of their ordinary habits; who need to be taught that
man can indeed form no calculation of the innumerable minute causes which
combine to produce the destruction of a soul; but that the INFINITELY
WISE GOD sees every part of the load which presses downward the poor
sinner, and attributes with unerring accuracy every particle, however
imperceptible to us, to the hand which cast it upon the perishing wretch.
But I must submit to you that the inadvertent advocacy of this measure
lays you under an obligation to make an honest effort to remove moral
evils, which you now see that you have unintentionally encouraged.

If any one thing is essentially our business above all others, it is to
resist, by the Word of the Lord, the _will_ of the man who chooses his
own destruction.  And surely we may be content, if any men, to submit to
the vulgar retort, and mind _our own business_; for what can be a more
glorious office, than that of a messenger who comes from God, to entreat
the rebels, over whose head the sword of vengeance hangs, “be ye
reconciled to God.”  Are we not called upon to use every means to turn
the sinner from the error of his ways?  In season out of season; by
argument and example; by reproof and entreaty; by patience and by love,
to endeavour to deliver our fellow sinners “from darkness into light,
from the power of Satan unto God?”  And if God has indeed put us in trust
with the Gospel, we can testify that we also once were such, _willing_ to
serve divers lusts and pleasures, walking according to the flesh, never
turned _willingly_ to God, but converted by the sovereign efficacy of His
grace.

I must not, however, close this letter without a few words on “the
minute,” in which you appear to place such entire confidence.

You ask, “May we not be permitted to learn the object of a measure from
its author?  Are we justified in imputing to any man, I do not say
motives which he disavows, but motives of which he professes the very
opposite, and against which his own previous and subsequent acts
obviously militate?” and I conclude, that you would imply your own belief
that the purpose of Mr. ROWLAND HILL was to relieve as many persons as he
could from labor on the Lord’s-day.

I wish from my heart that I could believe that the object of that
gentleman was the glory of our God and Saviour in the promotion of His
worship, and the saving work of the Gospel.

But it requires a mind above or below humanity to believe, that a man
truly desires and seeks the glory of God, who consents to occupy such a
post in the one department of our Government, which is most conspicuous
for its desecration of the Lord’s-day, and its contempt of the claims of
the Gospel.

You seem, however, to limit your attention to the one document before
you.  But, for my part, if I could detach my mind from previous events,
and take up this single paper for judgment, I confess that I should be
totally unable to comprehend the connexion between the measures
contemplated and the care for the observance of the Lord’s-day, which is
put so prominently forward; and I should necessarily suspect, either that
the writer had in his mind a very strange jumble of heterogeneous
subjects, or that there was some underhand motive for his curious preface
to the document.

I cannot, however, forget that this minute comes out at the close of a
long series of earnest appeals to the Government for the removal or
diminution of Sunday labor in the Post Office; that the duty of such
reform has been urged by numbers, which could not be neglected, and by
individuals, whose rank and station made some satisfactory effort, if not
some concession, imperative upon the authorities.  Promises have long
been held out of such changes as, it was hoped (so they told us) would
meet the wishes of the Christian remonstrants.  And this minute is not
the spontaneous act of piety which you suppose, but the evasive reply to
the urgent and often repeated remonstrances of tens of thousands of
thoughtful Christian men, and men deeply interested in the prosperity of
the country.  Instead of boasting of the “total suspension of all money
orders on the Sabbath,” it would be wiser and more becoming to endeavour
to forget that disgraceful matter for ever.

It was not only an outrage of the Divine law, it was an insult on a
Christian community, that when every bank and office was closed, and a
respectable tradesman would have been ashamed to look for gain on the
Lord’s-day, the one place open in every town for petty traffic should be
the Government office of the British Empire.

The offence was totally unnecessary, and every respectable man was
ashamed of it.  And one cannot but smile at the pretty simplicity with
which Mr. ROWLAND HILL informs us that “it is very satisfactory to remark
that neither the announcement of the change, nor the experience of it
thus far, has brought on the department a single complaint from the
public.” {18}

It is not necessary to go through the details of “the minute,” nor to
notice the fallacies, which have exposed themselves already in the
experiment.  The writer of that paper could not have been so ignorant of
Post Office work as to suppose that twenty-five persons would accomplish
all that was contemplated in London; nor had he any ground for promising
any relief in the provinces worthy of the name.  It rather seems that in
his haste to attain to his ultimate object, he was peculiarly incautious
as to the statement of minor details.

What that object really is may easily be conjectured from a review of the
past.  “This is,” as you remark, “a part of a more general scheme.”

For years past a strong body of serious men have combated the Post Office
desecration of the Lord’s-day, and their efforts have been firmly
resisted by those in authority, with a few honourable exceptions.

In that contest the strong argument of the advocates for a cessation of
Post Office work has been the closed office in London; and those who have
defended the profanation of that day have never been able to get over
that great and unanswerable argument.  The office in London has been
considered as _uniformly at rest_, and always spoken of as such by both
parties, the slight exceptions being not of a nature to be cited honestly
against that position.

So that “the conscience of the Christian community has _not_ left these
practices unchallenged and unnoticed until now,” {19a} as you think; but
as far as the cognizance of the Christian community goes, this is the
first attempt at the sin in London, and is resisted as such.  And we
think that this is _the proper time for meeting the evils_, and act
therefore on your own advice. {19b}

    “Principiis obsta; sero medicina paratur,
    Cùm mala per longas convaluere moras,”

is not the less valuable advice because often repeated; and no man should
know the truth of it better than yourself.

I need scarcely mention the _voluntary labors_ (which was a mere
palliative afterthought): for he must be a very prejudiced man who calls
the poor clerk a voluntary agent in the matter, when he is enticed by a
bribe, which his small salary makes an irresistible temptation, or
compelled by the fear of the loss of his only means of subsistence.

And here I may leave the minute; for you now know how honest men value
it, and why they resist it.  It is one move in the contest for the
mastery, wherein the question is, whether the will of the Lord or the
petty gains of the Government shall rule in the Post Office on the
Lord’s-day.

It is scarcely possible that the writer of that minute could have
abstained from laughing when he read the first two paragraphs of his own
paper, and saw with what ingenious affectation he was entrapping his
religious adversaries.  But the craft is too transparent; and he has
neither evaded their vigilance by the mystery of his statements, nor
disarmed their opposition by his specious profession.

Neither the minute, nor your own letter, enters upon the question of
_works of necessity_, and _of mercy_; and I am, therefore, not called
upon to meet those hackneyed and misapplied expressions.  I must,
however, be permitted to lay down one or two points, as necessary
elements in the discussion whenever these terms are used.

Nothing can be necessary which is not in accordance with the will of the
Omnipotent Ruler of all things.

Nothing can be an act of mercy which does not emanate from the God of all
grace.

When men find necessity, or mercy, militate against duty, it must be from
their own ignorance.

Men persist in deceiving themselves by mixing together things essentially
distinct.

You may show me ten thousand acts of mercy which seem to you connected
with the maintenance of Sunday labor in the Post Office; but you can
never show that it is an act of necessity, or mercy, to shut up one clerk
where he shall be kept away from the sound of the Gospel,—the one sound
which can call him from eternal misery to eternal peace.

                                * * * * *

And here, Sir, I must close this hastily-written letter; hastily written
from the pressure of necessary duties: but containing opinions most
maturely weighed, and principles on which I have long endeavoured to act.

If I appear to treat your letter with severity, I beg to assure you that
I do it with extreme regret.  But, however anxious I may be to show all
possible respect for the writer, I cannot forget that errors, in
themselves trivial, receive importance from the character of him who
propagates them.

The greater his merited reputation may be, the more needful it is that
his errors be unsparingly dealt with.

Where I cannot comprehend a good motive, and cannot suspect a bad one, I
do not venture to assign any; and, in fact, I should rather conjecture
that some works are so hastily undertaken, that their author himself
could scarcely assign his own motives.

It is, indeed, an unhappy coincidence when the favor of this world is, by
any accident, associated with the maintenance of Divine truth.  The most
single-hearted men are unable to engage in that holy duty without
incurring a suspicion of sordid motives.  But when men of unblemished
reputation, by an unhappy eccentricity of mind, are led to uphold the
questionable theories of those who dispense worldly wealth and
honor;—when they exhibit in their support an unusual dulness of
perception of Divine truth;—we can only (as the kindest alternative)
attribute their conduct to some unaccountable infatuation, or intemperate
haste.

The judgment of charity is best expressed by speaking the TRUTH in LOVE.

Many Christian men have looked, with sanguine expectation, for a blessing
upon the country from your labors at your important post.  Those hopes
have been for a moment disappointed, but will not easily be abandoned.

There is no hope for the country but from men of master minds, and
powerful talents, submitting their powers to the guidance of the Holy
Spirit, and devoting their energies to the services of their God and
Saviour.  That this may be your high and happy calling, is the prayer of
many, as it is my own.  I hope, and believe, that you will yet know the
power and enjoyment of that _Sabbath_ which the children of the kingdom
enjoy in the finished work of Jesus, even here on earth.  And will be
enabled to look with confidence to an abundant entrance into that rest
which remaineth for the people of God.

                      Yours, in Christian fidelity,

                                                       JAMES ROBERT PEARS.

                                * * * * *

                                * * * * *

                   BATH: PRINTED BY BINNS AND GOODWIN.




FOOTNOTES.


{7a}  Nine Sermons, &c., p. 60.

{7b}  Page 9.

{8}  Page 9.

{10}  Page 10.

{11}  Nine Sermons, p. 203.

{13}  Nine Sermons, p. 202.

{14}  Page 7.

{18}  Minute, 2.

{19a}  Page 8.

{19b}  Page 14.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 63746 ***