"The writer is a lover of peace; and of liberty, too, he is a most ardent lover, because liberty is the best means by which real peace can be obtained and secured. He therefore looks down with scorn upon every species of bigotry, and from every species of persecution he shrinks with horror. He believes that wheresoever imperious and turbulent teachers have usurped an excessive ascendancy over the minds of an ignorant and headstrong multitude, religion will always be disgraced, morals always vitiated, and society always endangered. But the real honor, the real interests, the real and most important cause of the established church he has ever supported, and will support, as he also ever has contended, and will contend, in favor of a liberal, efficient, and progressive toleration."' pp. 329.

While he lived at Norwich he was the friend of Dr John Taylor, and greatly approved and admired his 'Key to the Apostolic Writings.' He considered it

'As the best introduction to the epistolary writings, and the best account of the whole Christian scheme, that has ever yet been published. As such, he constantly read and consulted it himself; as such, he earnestly recommended it to all who wished to form just and reasonable ideas of Christianity, and to understand properly those views of it, which are held forth in the writings of the apostles. p. 135.

This work was held in similar estimation, Mr Field remarks, by Archbishop Newcome, Bishop Watson, Paley, and Dr Hey. Dr Parr's respect for Dr Priestley is well known. The man lives not,' he said, 'who has a more sincere veneration for his talents and his virtues than I have.' His celebrated character of that distinguished divine has been often quoted. In the present work we find other evidences of the estimation in which he held him, from which we cite the following.

"When "he [Parr] preached for the charity-schools at Birmingham, he earnestly recommended to the attention of his audience two admirable sermons, written by Dr Priestley, one of which is on Habitual Devotion, and the other on The Duty of not living to ourselves." *** "Of the two sermons, now mentioned," said the eloquent preacher, "I confidently affirm, that the wisest man cannot read them without being wiser, nor the best man without being better."" p. 292.

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"I have visited him, as I hope to visit him again, because he is an unaffected, unassuming, and very interesting companion. I will not, in consequence of our different opinions, either impute to him the evil which he does not, or depreciate in him the good which he is allowed to do. I will not debase my understanding, or prostitute my honor, by encouraging the clamors which have been raised against him, in vulgar minds, by certain persons, who would have done well to read before they wrote-to understand, before they dogmatised-to examine before they condemned. I cannot think his religion insincere, because he worships one Deity, in the name of one Saviour; and I know that his virtues, in private life, are acknowledged by his neighbours, admired by his congregation, and regarded almost by the unanimous suffrage of his most powerful and most distinguished antagonists." pp. 295, 296.

In the catologue of Dr Parr's library, is the following note;-"This beautiful edition of Beza's Text was given to me spontaneously and po

litely, by order of the vestry of the Unitarians of Birmingham, soon after I had written an English inscription for Dr Priestley, whose monument is erected in the Unitarian Chapel. He was an eminently great and truly good man; and Dr Parr's most respected, most injured and calumniated friend. S. P."' p. 297.

Mr Field has the following paragraph respecting Bishop Horsley, which we quote, however, principally for the sake of the remark of Dr Parr with which it closes.

A bold polemic, like Dr Priestley, fearlessly attacking the main articles of the popular creed, and publicly challenging its advocates to stand forth in its defence, soon found himself assailed, as might have been expected, by a whole host of adversaries. Amongst these came forward, with proud look and menacing air, that celebrated champion of high orthodoxy and high episcopacy, Dr Horsley, who was richly rewarded for his exertions, by being promoted successively to the see of St David's, Rochester, and St Asaph. He was a man endued with great powers of mind, and possessed of vast stores of erudition; of that kind, especially, which is usually denominated recondite. His writings are numerous; some valuable, and all bearing the stamp of his superior genius and learning. But, as a controversialist, he was extremely unfair and illiberal; never hesitating to resort, when argument failed, to disingenuous artifice, or contemptuous reproach. His avowed purpose of vilifying or destroying the honorable fame of his illustrious opponent, in order to diminish the authority of his name, and the influence of his writings, was a project worthy the darkest times of popish ignorance and superstition, when to falsify and deceive, for the honor and the interest of the church, was regarded as virtuous. Never was censure more just, or more deserved, than that which was cast upon him by Dr Parr, in the following passage: "In too many instances such modes of defence have been used by him against this formidable heresiarch, as would hardly be justifiable against the arrogance of a Bolingbroke, the buffoonery of a Mandeville, and the levity of a Voltaire."' pp. 297, 298.

Dr Parr was the friend also of Wakefield, and wrote a letter on receiving the tidings of his death, from which his biographer gives us the following extracts.

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"Sir,-I was yesterday evening honoured with your letter; I read the contents of it with inexpressible anguish; I passed a comfortless night, and this morning I am scarcely able to thank you as I ought to do, for your delicacy in averting the shock, which I must have suffered, if intelligence so unexpected and so distressing had rushed upon me from the newspapers.” *** "To the learning of that excellent person, my understanding is indebted for much valuable information; but my heart acknowledges yet higher obligations to his virtuous example. I loved him unfeignedly; and though our opinions on various subjects, both in criticism and theology, were different, that difference never disturbed our quiet, nor relaxed our mutual good-will."-"In diligence, doubtless, he far surpassed any scholar, with whom it is my lot to have been personally acquainted; and though his writings now and then carry with them some marks of extreme irritability, he was adorned, or, I should rather say, he was distinguished by one excellence, which every wise man will admire, and every good man will wish at least to emulate. THAT excellence was, in truth, a very rare one; for it existed in the complete exemption of his soul from all the secret throbs, all the perfidious machinations, and

all the mischievous meanness of envy."-" For my part, sir, I shall ever think and ever speak of Mr Wakefield, as a very profound scholar, as a most honest man, and as a Christian, who united knowledge with zeal, piety with benevolence, and the simplicity of a child with the fortitude of a martyr."-"Under the deep and solemn impressions which his recent death has made upon my mind, I cannot but derive consolation from that lesson, which has been taught me by one of the wisest among the sons of men. The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise, they seem to die, and their departure is taken for misery-but they are in peace.' pp. 447-449.

Among the notices of other men contained in this volume, there are some things said of Sir William Jones, which deserve our attention. He was the schoolfellow and constant friend of Dr Parr, who at one time intended to write his life, which it is much to be regretted he did not do, as it is made very evident, that Lord Teignmouth has in some respects misrepresented that eminent man. Dr Paley is said by Meadley to have often animadverted with some severity on the very "unsatisfactory accounts" which Lord Teignmouth has given of Sir William Jones's political principles and conduct. "He was a great republican," said Dr Paley, "when I knew him ;" alluding to a period when the accomplished barrister was distinguishing himself by his writings, and by his exertions to obtain some important reforms in the British Constitution. "The sentiments which he then avowed so decidedly," continued Dr Paley," he certainly never afterwards disclaimed, and his sentiments on questions of great public importance, ought to have been neither extenuated nor withheld." Dr Parr concurred in this censure of Teignmouth's work, and extended it to his account of Sir William Jones's religious principles.

'When Lord Teignmouth, whose creed is highly orthodox, laboured to make it appear that Sir William Jones adopted the same creed, he must have strangely misconceived, or wilfully misrepresented, the truth.

'Dr Parr often asserted in the hearing of the present writer, as from his own knowledge, that so far from admitting the popular views of Christianity, Sir William Jones held those which are commonly distinguished by the name of Unitarianism. That assertion is, indeed, proved, as far as negative proof can go, by the passages from his writings, produced by Lord Teignmouth in the "Memoirs." In all these, it is impossible not to remark the total absence of every expression, which might imply the admission of such a theological system, as that attributed to him, by his biographer. Every one of his devotional pieces, and all his observations of a religious kind, proceed upon the principles of what the learned Dr Lardner calls the ancient Nazarean doctrine, or that of the early Jewish Christians. In some degree on the authority of these very passages, and still more, on the decisive authority of Dr Parr, the writer thinks himself warranted in placing Sir William Jones amongst the members of the antitrinitarian and anti-calvinistic schools of Christian philosophers; and of adding his illustrious name to those of Newton, Locke, and Milton, of Clarke, Tucker, Hartley, and Law.' pp. 356-358.

Some of Dr Parr's friends have taken a similar step for the purpose of concealing from the world an intimation of his private. opinions. In the catalogue of his library, he had written against Bishop Burgess's Divinity of Christ Proved &c,' the following sentences; From the eminently learned and truly pious author. But he does not convince me.' In publishing the catalogue and remarks, the sentence in Italics is omitted. It did not answer the purpose of the editors to lead to any suspicion of Dr Parr's Orthodoxy. He never was a zealot for Orthodoxy, most certainly. Many accused him of timidity in explaining his opinions, and his cordial friendship for several distinguished Unitarians led them to doubt their soundness. His approbation of Mr Belsham's recent work on the Epistles might tend to confirm that doubt.

"This work Dr Parr considered as one of the most important theological works, that have appeared for a century past. Of the preliminary dissertation in particular, as a elear, reasonable and judicious exposition of the principles, which ought to guide every translator of the apostolic writings, Dr Parr declared the most unqualified approbation. "With the author of that dissertation," said he on one occasion to the present writer, "I go along smoothly and delightfully from the beginning to the end, with perfect accordance of sentiment, and the most complete satisfaction of mind."" pp. 299, 300.

Belsham's work, as we learn from Mr Field, is thus noticed in the Bibliotheca Parriana.

"This excellent work of Belsham was given to me by the writer. I do not entirely agree with him upon some doctrinal points; but I ought to commend the matter, style, and spirit of the preface; and, in my opinion, the translation does great credit to the diligence, judgment, erudition, and piety of my much respected friend." p. 300.

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Porson's Letters to Travis, in which he established the spuriousness of the text of the Three Witnesses, Parr pronounced to be inimitable and invincible.' Travis,' said he, was a superficial and arrogant declaimer; and his letters to Gibbon brought down upon him the just and heavy displeasure of an assailant equally irresistible for his wit, his reasoning, and his erudition-I mean the immortal Richard Porson.'

Of Dr Parr's Spital Sermon, the preaching of which, or rather its publication and notes, formed an era in his life, the following account is given.

'On this occasion a large concourse of people, amongst whom were many distinguished literary characters, assembled. "Before the service began," says one of his friends, "I went into the vestry, and found Dr Parr seated, with pipes and tobacco placed before him on the table. He evidently felt the importance of the occasion; but felt, at the same time, a confidence in his own powers. When he ascended the pulpit, a profound silence prevailed. Unfortunately, from the great extent of the church, his voice was very imperfectly heard, especially towards the close

of his sentences. The sermon occupied nearly an hour and a quarter in the delivery; and in allusion to its extreme length, it was remarked by a lady, who had been asked her opinion of it, "Enough there is, and more than enough"-the first words of its first sentence. This bon mot, when reported to the preacher himself, was received by him with much goodhumour.' pp. 380-381.

As specimens of Dr Parr's style, we give the following brief passages. The first is his severe, but merited, rebuke of Hurd, by contrast with Warburton, of whom he is speaking.

""He, my Lord, threw a cloud over no man's brighter prospects of prosperity or honour, by dark and portentous whispers, in the ears of the powerful. He, in private company, blasted no man's good name, by shedding over it the cold and deadly mildews of insinuation. He was too magnanimous to undermine, when his duty and his honour prompted him to overthrow. He was too sincere, to disguise the natural haughtiness and irritability of his temper, under a specious veil of humility and meekness. He never thought it expedient to save appearances, by shaking off the shackles of consistency-to soften the hideous aspect of certain uncourtly opinions, by a calm and progressive apostacy-to expiate the artless and animated effusions of his youth, by the example of an obsequious and temporising old age. He began not, as others have done, with speculative republicanism; nor did he end it, as the same persons are now doing, with practical toryism. He was a churchman without bigotry. He was a politician without duplicity. He was a loyalist without servility." p. 278.

In the following passage,' says Mr Field, the literary portraitures of the two prelates are placed together, in strong contrast; and it will be owned, that the likeness is sufficiently exact in the case of Warburton, whilst in the case of Hurd it approaches far too much towards caricature.'

""He blundered against grammar; and you refined against idiom. He, from a defect of taste, contaminated English by Gallicism; and you from excess of affectation, sometimes disgraced what would have risen to ornamental and dignified writing, by a profuse mixture of vulgar or antiquated phraseology. He soared into sublimity, without effort; and you, by effort, sunk into a kind of familiarity, which, without leading to perspicuity, borders upon meanness. He was great, by the energies of nature; and you were little, by the misapplication of art. He, to show his strength, piled up huge and rugged masses of learning; and you to show your skill, split and shivered them into what your brother critic calls guara nai agaμara. He sometimes reached the force of Longinus, but with

In a note to this passage, Mr Field gives the following quotation;- Apropos of the Spital Sermon. It gave birth to a tolerably facetious remark of Harvey Combe, albeit unused to the facetious mood. As they were coming out of church, after the delivery of that long discourse, "Well," says Parr to Combe, "how did you like it?" always anxious for well-merited praise, from whatever quarter it proceeded. "Let me have the suffrage of your strong and honest understanding." "Why, Doctor," returned the alderman, "there were four things in your sermon that I did not like to hear.” "State them," replied Parr, cagerly. Why, to speak frankly then," said Combe," they were the quarters of the church clock, which struck four times before you had finished it." The joke was good-humoredly received.-New Month. Mag. Nov. 1826.' p. 381.

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