"excel in this art of varying his address, that

you might suppose yourself conversing at diffe"rent times with Chesterfield, La Bruyere, Theo"phrastus, and Rabelais. This he would say, "is the proper way of teaching a young fellow the knowledge of himself."* No man at the same time could more readily listen to the advice of men of sense and piety. Although well entitled to academical honours, he declined accepting the diploma of doctor of divinity offered him on his visit to Edinburgh, where he was received with the utmost civility by the celebrated Dr. Robertson and others of the Scots literati. The reason he afterwards assigned for his refusal was—“ So "many egregious dunces had been made D. D's.

at English, as well as at Scotch, and American "universities, that he declined the compliment."+

Very few persons have so thoroughly studied the PRINCIPLES OF NONCONFORMITY as Mr. Robinson. They appeared to him of such importance as to constitute the foundation of whatever is excellent in the christian character. Civil establishments of religion, whether popish or protestant, episcopalian or presbyterian, he considered as partaking in a greater or lesser degree, of the essence and spirit of antichrist. He was frequently reviled for the severity of his censures on the constitution of the church of England; but let any serious, thinking, christian, contemplate the man

* Dyer's Memoirs. p. 197-8. † Ibid. 199.

ner in which every one of her ministers enters the church, or takes his degrees, and without considering her numerous other corruptions, he will scarcely think any censure too severe. It is, I am persuaded, impossible for any clergyman who closely examines the subject, to give as he is required, before God, ex animo, his unfeigned assent and consent to all and every thing contained in the articles, and the book of common prayer. All the pleas made use of, for subscribing in different and opposite senses, and as is frequently the. case, in no sense at all, are so many outrages, not only on common christianity, but on common sense and common honesty; and were a person to take an oath in a court of justice, with these reservations, and equivocations, he would be indicted for perjury!* A sincere christian in contemplating this awful subject; in beholding a church in

These remarks will apply equally to college oaths, as to church subscriptions. During my residence at Cambridge, a gentleman, (son of a late excellent statesman in the sister kingdom,) a member of the university, who honoured me with his friendship, was about to take his degree of B. A. Examining the oath administered, he found he could not conscientiously comply with its requisitions; on which he presented a petition to the Caput, stating his difficulty, and offering to prove that the oath could not be taken without perjury; praying therefore that this snare for conscience might be removed. The vice-chancellor laid the petition before the Caput, but it was shortly after returned with the answer-Nothing could be done. Although the abilities and acquirements of the petitioner fully entitled him to his degree, and he possessed the best of

one of her most solemn services, wholly given to prevarication, ought not to be blamed if his feelings are somewhat similar to those of the great apostle, when at that seat of learning and science, Athens. His spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.* Whilst Mr. Robinson thus reprobated the ecclesiastical establishment, he was by no means insensible to the general worth of many of her members. For several of the clergy, and of the dignitaries of the national church, he entertained a great respcct, who in return, being well persuaded of the excellence of his character, and the purity of his motives, maintained with him an uninterrupted intercourse, and ranked him amongst their friends. The learned Dr. Ogden once addressed him-"Do "the dissenters know the worth of the man?" Mr. Robinson replied-" The man knows the worth "of the dissenters." His attachment to the dissenting interest in general, and to that of his own church and congregation in particular, continued firm and unvaried to the close of his life.

INTOLERANCE in all its forms was the peculiar object of his detestation. "Always when I met it,

moral characters, he was obliged to leave the university with out receiving academical honours: but he preserved what will afford him infinitely greater satisfaction through life, and at the hour of death-A good conscience.

Acts. xvii.

"in a course of reading," he observes, “I thought "I met the GREAT DEVIL; and my resentment was never abated by his appearing in the habit "of a holy man of God."* RELIGIOUS LIBERTY was to him almost an object of adoration: he refused to accept the pastoral office at Cambridge, till the congregation had agreed to throw down the wall of partition, which till then had divided them from their independent brethren. Good men of all denominations were welcome to his house, his heart, and his pulpit.†

* Vol. I. p. 292.

+ It is remarkable that the sphere of Mr. Robinson's ministry was the same in which his great grandfather, Mr. Shelly of Jesus College, and Vicar of All Saints, had with others diffused the principles of the puritans early in the 17th. century. Mr. Robinson in a letter terms Mr. Shelly an old fa"shioned good man," and inserts the following curious rhymes, which the old gentleman made on a "sudden as he was going to "preach in his parish church, in answer to one of his parishioners, "who asked,-How long sir, have you and Mrs. Shelly been "married?" The excellent lesson inculcated, must be my apology for laying them before the reader.

"Fifty years and three,

Together in love, liv'd we:

"Angry both at once none ever did us see.

"This was the fashion

"God taught us, and not fear,

"When one was in a passion

"The other could forbear."

In a former part of these Memoirs, I have stated that Mr. Robinson "gave lectures on the principles of Nonconformity "in the vestry of his meeting house;" but I have since been informed by a friend who attended them, that they were delivered at his own house at Chesterton.

As a PREACHER, Mr. Robinson ranks in the highest class, and we may safely claim for him the very summit of his own denomination. His merits in this respect are well described by Dr, Toulmin." His preaching was altogether without notes; a method in which he was peculiarly happy; not by trusting to his memory entirely,

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nor by working himself to a degree of warmth "and passion, to which the preachers among "whom he first appeared commonly owe their rea"dy utterance, but by thoroughly studying, and 'making himself perfectly master of his subject, "and a certain faculty of expression which is ne"ver at a loss for suitable and proper words. His manner was admirably adapted to enlighten the understanding, and to affect and reform the "heart. He had such a plainness of speech, such an easy and apparent method in dividing a discourse, and such a familiar way of reasoning, "as discovered an heart filled with the tenderest concern for the meannest of his hearers, and yet there was a decency, propriety, and justness that the most judicious could not but apapprove."*

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* Sermon on the death of Mr. Robinson. I was on the point of ascribing the above remarks to the editors of the Encyclopædia Britannica; when I discovered that the passage was copied by them, without being marked as a quotation, or in any way acknowledged. Whether the censures of these critics are like their praises, plagiarisms, I must leave others to dis

cover.