O

rule as mere antiquarian pedantry. It is virtually laid down as a first principle, that the use of space is its capacity for pewing, and room allotted, whether for the due order of the service or the freedom of the worshipper, is regarded with a grudging eye, as waste land needing enclosure. Thus the accommodation, or rather the imprisonment of as many bodies as possible in one place, becomes, as it were, the one object of church building. Amplitude is thought emptiness, and tranquillity desolation; and the Christian Temple is converted into a hall of concourse for men, instead of being viewed, as heretofore, as the Gate and Vestibule of Heaven.

These are some of the views and notions of the

present day a future age looking back upon them will be slow to believe that they belonged to a wise and understanding people.

Oxford,

The Feast of the Nativity,

1839.

J. H. N.

IT having pleased God to put it into my heart to do

what in me lay toward the promoting of His honour and glory, by setting before the nobility, gentry, and all other rich persons, their great and indispensable duty to contribute liberally to the building, repairing, and adorning of churches; in order thereunto I drew up the following treatise.

And out of the great and but due respect I had for the judgment of the late most pious, and so (in the truest sense) most honourable ROBERT NELSON, ESQ., having drawn up this treatise, I communicated it to him for his perusal and opinion, whether it might be of use to the public in promoting the good and great end aimed at thereby.

In relation whereunto, some time after, Mr. Nelson writes me a letter, which begins thus :

"Reverend Sir,

I have read over, with a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction, your treatise about building and repairing churches, &c.; and am of the opinion that it may be of great use to the public, by encouraging those to go on who have already laid their hands to so good a work,

and by stirring up others who hitherto have not been sensible of the force of those arguments which you urge."

Having the opinion of so good a judge for the publishing of this treatise, I designed in no long time to send it to the press. But afore this was actually done, I was surprised with the melancholy news of Mr. Nelson's death; which, as it was a just matter of common grief to all religious persons, so it carried in it this particular circumstance to embitter my grief the more, that thereby I was deprived of one of the greatest satisfactions I had proposed to myself in this world, namely, of seeing face to face so good, and therefore great a person, with whom I had as yet the happiness of being acquainted only by writing. And I have been the more sensible of the loss of this satisfaction, because, although travelling be very uneasy to me, yet I had entertained thoughts of undergoing even the uneasiness of a journey this season on purpose to enjoy so great a satisfaction; and that the rather, because both Mr. Nelson and another great man, for whom Mr. Nelson, as well as myself, had a great respect, had some time since signified their desire to see me.

Presently after Mr. Nelson's death, public notice being given of his having left an Address to Persons of Quality, with leave to publish it; I judged it proper to delay printing this treatise till I had seen Mr. Nelson's Address. As soon as it was printed, one of them being unexpectedly presented to me by a kind hand, for which I here return my thanks, I was mightily pleased that I

had delayed the printing of this treatise; because by that means way had been made for each book to come out in its proper order according to the nature of its subject.

Mr. Nelson's Address to Persons of Quality is designed to shew them the great and indispensable obligations they lie under to do good in general, or all the ways they are enabled. The design of this treatise is more fully to shew persons of quality, and all other rich persons, the great and indispensable obligations they lie under to contribute liberally to the building, &c. of churches, which is the very first of those particular ways and methods of doing good specified by Mr. Nelson after his address. So that had we communicated to each other our designs before we undertook the writing of these two books, they could not more fitly have answered or been subservient one to the other than they do and are now, although they were drawn up by us without either of us knowing in the least that the other was engaged in such an undertaking.

I shall take hold of this opportunity to observe, that another part of the forementioned letter of Mr. Nelson to me, which was the last I had the happiness to have from him, related to the second of the ways and methods of doing good mentioned by him after his address, viz. the dispersing of Bibles and Common Prayer Books, &c., particularly in reference to the Episcopal Church in Scotland; a piece of charity, which requires so much the more the contributions of us in England, by how much the less able those of the Episcopal Church in Scotland are to contribute to it themselves. It deserves

seriously to be considered, whether one great end of Providence, in suffering that Episcopal Church to be reduced to so low a state, might not be, to try the sincerity of our concern and affection for the truly Christian and Apostolical form of Church government, by the manner or measure of our contributing to the relief and support of the members of that Church, especially in spiritual matters. And I most heartily wish, that in the sight of God there may never appear, among us of the Episcopal Church of England, so great an unconcernedness for the distressed Episcopal Church in Scotland, as to evidence our indifferency for the Apostolical, that is, Episcopal form of Church government, and thereby to provoke God at length to take from us a blessing, which by such our indifferency we have rendered ourselves altogether unworthy of.

Mr. Nelson took notice to me, what measures had been taken, that so good a work toward the Episcopal Church in Scotland should not sink by the death of the queen. Had it pleased God to have spared his life, there would not have been wanting one both of will and ability, to do the most that could be done toward the still keeping up and promoting so good a work. I am concerned to think, how much it will in too great likelihood suffer by his death. a

a Because is is hoped that this book may light into the hands of some rich persons so well disposed, as to be willing to contribute to so good a work, as the giving of Common Prayer Books to the poorer sort of the Episcopal Church in Scotland; therefore, I think it may be of use to inform them hereby, that Mr. Henry Hoar, Goldsmith, in Fleet-street, London, is ap