Recapitulation of the whole subject. Points already proved. The pure faith triumphs. The Reformers adhere to the Scriptures. The rule adopted by them in reforming the Church, what. Preface to the Book of Common Prayer di- rects to the ancient Fathers as the standard of Protestant faith and worship. Charge of novelty no longer of any CHAPTER I. "Regarded as a building, what is there to engage our attention? You would not find a house perhaps in the neighbourhood, which would not, as a mere building, be more attractive. What then is it, which in this building inspires the veneration and affection it commands? We have mused upon it, when its grey walls dully reflected the glory of the noontide sun. We have looked upon it from a neighbouring hill, when bathed in the pure light of a summer's moon-its lowly walls and tiuy tower seemed to stand only as the shell of a larger and ruder monument, amidst the memorials of the dead. Look upon it when and where we will, we find our affections yearn towards it; and we contemplate the little parish church with a delight and revererence that palaces cannot command. Whence then arises this? It arises not from the beauties and ornaments of the building, but from the thoughts and recollections associated with it."—MOLESWORTH'S SUNDAY READER, No. 1. The stranger, who, in that joyous season, when all nature is bursting into life, traverses the lovely scenes of southern Devon, and with thoughts still glowing with the recollection of her soft and verdant valleys, her deeply-em bowered lanes, her meadows enamelled with a thousand flowers, crosses the dark waters of the Tamar, and from its wooded and high-towering banks, bears with him the further remembrance of her more romantic and sterner beauties-Oh! let him say, in the warmth of his recollections, as he approaches the north-western coast of Cornwall, how wild and cheerless is that long, bleak, barren belt of sand that girds the shore of Perran's Bay! The intervening moors, through which he has reached that desolate district, are, of themselves, sufficiently uninviting to any admirer of nature's more attractive scenery-and yet are they not altogether destitute of interest-the purple heather, and the gorse's saffron blossoms, and the busy hum of bees, as they collect their golden treasure from the fragrant thyme, give life and animation to the scene and many a relic of olden times, which still tells of Cornish prowess, or Cornish superstition, employs the thoughts, and serves to invest with a peculiar interest those uncultivated moorlands which on every side terminate the prospect, and almost without the aid of poetic fiction Yet these moors, wild and interminable as they appear, stand out in striking relief to the sea-girt tract that now bounds the way. What is there here to gladden the heart of the passing stranger? Not a tuft of verdure refreshes his wearied sight—not a tree lifts up its branches to offer him its friendly shade-even the gorse and the heather, those children of the desert, refuse any longer to bear him company; he pursues his solitary way-waste after waste of undulating sand meets him at every step-and the hollow moan of the Atlantic waves, as they lash the distant Cligga,* or sullenly retire from the adjacent shore, falls upon his ear in sounds responsive to the wildness of the place. All nature is here in a garment of sadness. The very birds of heaven avoid the spot, and the seamews, soaring on high, scream piteously over this region of desolation, and with hasty wing betake themselves to the rocks and the waves, as less wild, and less unfriendly. The stranger passes on-he quickens his step-and with anxious gaze looks forward to the termination of this tedious way. But a tract, if possible still more forbidding, rises before him with increasing barrenness. A succession of sand hills, varying in their elevation, inclose him in on every side, and by intercepting his view of the sea in some parts, casting their dark shadows on it in others, stamp on every quarter the character of more than ordinary loneliness and melancholy. * A rocky point in Perran's Bay. Yet it is a spot full of the deepest interest-a solitude of the most heart-stirring recollections! Oh stranger, whoever thou art, "put off thy shoes from thy feet-thou treadest on holy ground!"-thou standest over a sacred memorial of by-gone days! Dear to every faithful son of England's Church, are the very stones that moulder here-surely they would lift up their voices, though history's page were silent— they would cry out of the dust, though their story had not been embalmed in the memories of Cornishmen, who have handed down from generation to generation the imperishable record of their ancient glory. But history is not silent, and popular tradition, confirmed by antiquarian research, has long pointed to Perranzabuloe, as the site and sepulchre of an ancient British Church, founded at a very remote period, flourishing for a succession of ages in the midst of a very fertile district, and dispensing to a rude but religious people the blessings of Christianity, in its simplest form of primitive purity. At that distant day, the northern boundary of the extensive Hundred of Pydar yielded to none other in Cornwall, either in the fertility of its soil, or the abundance of its produce. Alas! how has "the fruitful place become a wilderness," and "the pleasant portion a desolation!" At the time when Christianity was first in |