able, and, in a moral view, advantageous to the ministers themselves, by exciting emulation and giving room for example, so is it, from the diversity of talents wherewith God may have blessed them, peculiarly useful and edifying to their hearers. The honest plainness and authority of one preacher rouses the torpid; the energetic pathos of another bears along with it the soul of sensibility; and the mild persuasive eloquence of a third, profitable to all, has its best effect and influence upon the virtuous and the good. This latter was universally the manner of Dr. Townson. In his looks there was meekness joined with intelligence; in his conversation, gentleness, and yet authority; in his whole deportment, condescension with dignity. When he read prayers in the congregation, there was a warmth and fervour in his manner, that was at once awful and edifying: his utterance was never rapturous, it was never languid; and a service, highly reasonable in itself, wherein human wisdom and evangelical devotion are so happily combined, appeared, and was felt, from his lips, as more strikingly reasonable. When he ascended the pulpit, the same meekness of majesty attended him; every eye was fixed upon him, every ear listened with eagerness. His sermons were various in method and manner, as the subject required or suggested; but what was most

peculiar and characteristic in him, were reflections easy and natural, but without the strict form of a studied discourse, on some portion of Scripture, on some memorable event, or some distinguished personage, on a psalm, or a parable. A discourse thus constructed, was not an abstract dissertation, remote from life and common apprehension; but delineating real events and real characters, which, by the observations and arguments of the preacher, were brought home to present times, and rendered applicable to all. Instruction was thus united with, and enforced by, example: you saw misery as the sure consequence of sin, in all ages; you saw present tranquillity and everlasting peace, by the constitution of things, and by Divine promise, the attendants and rewards of obedience. When he spoke professedly on points of Christian doctrine, on the blessed sacraments, or the prime festivals, though the form and manner were less removed from the common track, his words, elevated and warmed with the superior grandeur of the subject, were, if possible, still more highly awful and impressive. All his sermons were distinguished by ingenuity; in all, there was strong sense, conveyed in easy and familiar words; in all of them, piety and humility were prominent and conspicuous features. At the same time, his elocution, which was clear and well modulated, and his

gesture, which was graceful and easy, grave and correct, set off and adorned the matter: there was, indeed, especially when time had shed a more venerable lustre on his countenance, the air and dignity of an apostle about him, tempered, only, and softened, by the recollection that he was a man of our own days; easy, unaffected, and affable in private; as he was powerful and commanding, when he spoke as a minister of the Gospel, and ambassador of heaven. You would pledge your soul on his sincerity; you were sure he longed for nothing so fervently as your salvation. Your heart glowed within you; and you went home resolved to love God above all, and your neighbour as yourself.

He greatly admired, from full conviction of its excellence, the Common Prayer of the Church of England. The spirit of devotion, which pervades and animates it, the energy and simplicity of it, are incontestable; but it was his opinion that the prayers, compressed as they are in short collects, or couched in single petitions, were, at once, well adapted for the family or the closet, and incomparably the best for social and public worship. For, though, possibly, an individual may, with equal improvement, use a longer form, the words of which he himself utters; yet, when numbers join mentally in prayers spoken by one,

their attention is less likely to grow weary, or to wander, when assisted by frequent pauses; by alternate petitions, responses, and ejaculations, as in the established liturgy.

His attention extended to small matters as well as more important; and there being a difference in the mode of reading the introductory invocations of the Litany, where some persons lay stress on the pronoun (ùs), others on the preposition preceding (upòn), the latter he esteemed the proper way of pronouncing the clause; since the Litany is not a prayer for the congregation exclusively, but, as the rubric explains it," a general supplication" for all mankind.

He thought a certain decency and solemnity of form were of great use, in giving life and effect to religious offices intrinsically excellent. "Order" indeed, in the judgment of the divine Hooker, is that," without which peace could not be in heaven;" but it is fit, that a religion intended for an inferior and compound being should be adapted to his whole nature, and engage whatever is innocent in him, on the side of virtue; so that, while the sentiments have the concurrence of the understanding, and the spirit

* Walton's Life of him, ad finem.

and energy warm the heart, the exterior circumstances may catch the imagination, and influence the passions. Thus, the whole man is employed in his best service; and every faculty conspires, in paying homage to Him who gave it. Such were his sentiments, of whom we are speaking; and, in addition to the regular order which he found at Malpas, he himself introduced one custom now observed there, that two of the clergy should officiate on Sundays at the altar. It appeared, he thought, decent and respectful, that the Almighty should be well attended at his holy table.

When he had been Rector of Malpas some time, a handsome pair of silver chalices were found in the church; and it was afterwards discovered, that he was the donor of them. They were inscribed with this verse: "All things come of thee, O Lord; and of thine own have we given thee." 1 Chron. xxix. 14. He afterwards gave a chalice to the neighbouring church of Harthill, with the same inscription.

But it is time that we attend him in the conduct of his household, and the care of his flock. On the former head, it may suffice to observe, that it was the house of a truly devout and Christian pastor, who summoned all under his roof to morning and evening prayer; and the same