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    or two sermons to appear which he himself , had he conducted the work , would have suppressed . " The 36 th discourse , which treats of the resurrection of Lazarus , from John xi . 25 , 26 , answers , we think , 10 this description . A few sentences in it however are not

    unworthy of seeing the light : and with these we are so much pleased , that we transcribe them : — " Nothing is so much a genuine mark of barbarism , as an obstinate incredulity . The evil minded and the illiterate , from Very different causes , agree however in

    this , that they are always the last to believe upon any evidence less than the testimony of their own senses . Ingenuous minds are unwilling to suspect those frauds in other men to which they feel an aversion themselves : they always therefore give testimony its fair weight . The

    man of science and speculation , as his knowledge enlarges , loses his attachment to a principle to which the barbarian steadily adheres—that of measuring the probability of strange facts by his own experience . He will be at least as slow to reject as to receive testimony ; and he

    will avoid that obstinacy of unbelief which is satisfied with nothing but ocular demonstration , as of all erroneous principles the most dangerous and the greatest obstacle to the mind ' s improvement . The illiterate man , unimproved by study and by conversation , thinks

    that nothing can be of which he hath not seen the like : from a diffidence perhaps of his own ability to examine evidence , he is always jealous that you have an intention to impose upon him , and mean to sport with his credulity : hence his own senses are the only witnesses to which he will give credit / ' 120 , izi ,

    122 . There is an air of originality in the two succeeding sermons ( the 37 th and the 38 ih , ) of both which the text is Mark vii , 26 , and the

    topic , Our Lord ' s conduct and language to a woman of Syroph < xnicia . The preacher observes , that « ' the mercy shewn to this deserving woman , by the edification which is conveyed in the manner in which

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    the favour was conferred , was ren * dered a blessing to the whole church ; inasmuch as it was the seal of the merit of the righteousness of faith , —not of faith separable from good works , consisting in a mere assent to facts ; but of that

    faith which is the root of every good work—of that faith which consists in a trust in God , and a reliance on his mercy , founded on a just sense of his perfections . "

    173 . In the 39 th discourse , preached before the Humane Society in 1789 , and soon afterwards printed singly , there is much to be admired . The prelate takes Ecclesiastes xii . 7 . as his text , and

    considers " human life as undeniably a compound of the three principles of intelligence , perception and vegetation , —death as consisting in nothing less than the dissolution of

    that union of soul and body , which Moses makes the principle of vitality , and this disunion as a thing subsequent , in the natural and common course of things , to the cessation of the mechanical

    life of the body / ' How far these views are theologically or physiologically correct , we do not now enquire . We are much gratified however by the eloquence with which the Bishop recommends the institution whose cause he was

    requested to plead , and especially by his address to some of the persons who had experienced its salutary aid . Having observed that it bad been instrumental to the religious welfare of no small number ^ he proceeds thus :

    " They stand here before you , whose recovered and reformed live * are the proof of my assertions . Let them plead , if my persuasion fail , let them plead the cause of their benefactors . Stand forth and tell , my brethren , to whom you owe

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    854 Review . —Bi&hop Horsley ' s Sermons *

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1813, page 334, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2428/page/50/