ter, it was proposed to invite Mr. Emlyn to become his successor. As soon, however, as he was acquainted with it, he requested them to desist, thanking them for their respectful attention to him, and excusing himself from accepting an invitation on the ground of his declining years and increasing infirmities. He was naturally of a very cheerful and lively temper, and enjoyed a good state of health through the greater part of his life, the gout excepted, which by degrees impaired his constitution, and to which he finally fell a sacrifice on the thirtieth of July 1743, in the eighty-first year of his age.

The name of Thomas Emlyn well deserves to be had in affectionate remembrance and veneration by those, whatever their religious sentiments may be, who duly value simplicity and godly sincerity, and the genuine graces of the Christian character made manifest not only in sufferings for conscience' sake, but in unaffected piety and purity of life. He is chiefly known to posterity as a venerable confessor, who rejoiced that he was thought worthy to suffer shame and loss and imprisonment for the cause of Gospel truth. But he was not less remarkable for a meek devotion, and for the practical influence of Christian principles, which were equally his guides in prosperity, while all men spake well of him, and his consolation and effectual support in the period of adversity and persecution. Others have gone through more severe bodily sufferings, but none have displayed in their conduct and their sentiments more of the spirit of Him who, "when he was reviled, reviled not again."

Mr. Emlyn's tracts, the greater part of which

have been enumerated in the preceding memoir, were collected and republished in two volumes, in 1746, with a life of the author by his son, Sollom Emlyn, Esq., who was bred to the legal profession, in which he attained considerable eminence. Besides these, a posthumous volume was published of sermons, which are of a character to induce the judicious reader to wish that a more copious selection had been made.

Note.-Mr. W. Manning was one of the venerable two thousand whose names were immortalized in the recollection of all true lovers of religious liberty on Bartholomew's day, 1662, He was ejected from Middleton, in the county of Suffolk. In Palmer's Non-conformist's Memorial, he is described as a man of great abilities and learning, but he fell into the Socinian principles, to which he adhered till his death, which was in February, 1711." Descendants of this gentleman are still respected members of several of our churches.

89

JAMES PEIRCE.

THE name of James Peirce will ever occupy a conspicuous place in the annals of religious liberty. It was not his lot, like the worthies we have already commemorated, to contend against the magistrate and the judge, wielding the terrors of the law in support of an established faith. The parties with whom he had to deal were happily divested of these formidable attributes, and unable to visit their opponents with fine and imprisonment; but they gave ample proof that the spirit was not wanting; and if they did not assume the character of persecutors in the worst sense, it was from a deficiency of power rather than of inclination. Their proceedings, we fear, shewed but too plainly, that the old leaven was far from being as completely worn out as might have been supposed: there is, however, every reason to think, that the controversy excited on the occasion, notwithstanding the heat and violence with which it was conducted, was mainly instrumental in opening the eyes of great numbers to more just and liberal views, both of religious truth, and of the proper mode of conducting religious inquiries. In this way the wrath of man is made to work out the righteousness of God, and his vehement passions and contentions with his brethren are over-ruled and directed to better purposes than were intended; so that what

good men deplored at the time as a miserable and mortifying display of unholy zeal and unchristian principles and feelings, became ultimately the means not only of promoting the further diffusion of the doctrines everywhere spoken against, but of checking the growth of priestly domination and of spiritual pride, lording it over the consciences of men, which are so inconsistent with the true spirit of the gospel of peace.

Mr. Peirce was the son of respectable parents in good circumstances, and was born in London, in the year 1673. Having the misfortune to lose his parents early in life, he was placed under the care of Mr. Matthew Mead, an eminent Nonconformist minister at Stepney, and father of the celebrated Dr. Mead. After a suitable course of preparatory instruction, partly in the house of his guardian and partly at various grammar schools, he was sent, according to a practice not uncommon among the English dissenters of that period, to pursue his theological studies in Holland, first at the University of Utrecht, and afterwards at the sister seminary of Leyden. At both these celebrated seats of learning the principal chairs were at that time occupied by a constellation of eminent men, whose fame drew to them a concourse of students from all the Protestant countries of Europe. Among these the names of Witsius, Grævius, Burmann, Leusden, Gronovius, Spanheim, &c., are still remembered with respect in the republic of letters.

Having passed several years in each of these universities, Mr. Peirce returned to England, and shortly afterwards spent some time at Oxford, not however as a member of the university, but

:

in private lodgings, for the purpose of resorting to the Bodleian library. After preaching occasionally for some time to various congregations of dissenters in and near London, chiefly among the Presbyterians, but without mixing himself up with the controversies at that period agitated with so much vehemence between the Presbyterians and Independents, he settled as minister to a congregation at Cambridge. How long he continued in this situation we have no means of ascertaining; but it appears that he had the opportunity of cultivating the acquaintance of several men of talent and eminence in the university among the rest the celebrated Whiston. From hence we may safely conclude, that he had already acquired a fair reputation for ability and attainments; for a dissenting minister immediately under the shade of one of our great seats of learning, miscalled national, which are reserved for the exclusive benefit of the established church, must obviously have many prejudices to encounter and remove before he can obtain admittance on a footing of equality and intimacy among those who, having enjoyed privileges from which others are debarred, are often disposed, for that very reason, to look down on the scholarship which has not been acquired among themselves.

From Cambridge he removed to Newbury, in Berkshire, where he seems to have been very eligibly situated with an attached and encouraging congregation. During his residence here, he distinguished himself by various publications on the controversy between the church and the dissenters. His first appearance on this arena