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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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If Biography is a singul arly engaging and valuable branch of Literature , we may be allowed to consider Ecclesiastical Biography as possessingr attractions and communicating benefits all its own . To the philosopher and general scholar the lives of men of merited celebrity in the annuls of Religion—men of intellectual , devotional , and moral eminence , who bore a
conspicuous part in the diffusion or the defence of what they regarded 3 & Truth , Liberty , and Goodness ^—present a richly interesting spectacle . In the characters and the history of such persons we see the mind under tbft sway of the strongest principle of human conduct : we behold these iadivi ^ duals undauntedly acting or nobly suffering ; and can trace the influence of their labours , sacrifices , and writings , on the situation of their contemporaries and of posterity . We read in their memoirs a portion of the records
of their age ; while the intermixture of anecdotes of their private and domestic life with the narrative of their behaviour in public , not only heightens ; our sense of the reality of the whole , but affords us a seasonable relief , as we peruse many a melancholy page , which relates the cruelties , and immortalizes the victims , of Persecution . To a numerous class of readers ecclesiastical biography has yet superior recommendations . They who study it with any degree of the spirit , ^ in which it is usually composed , and with
feelings in some measure allied to those of the respective subjects of it , will find it particularly conducive to their religious improvement . It will instruct , warn , reprove , animate , support , console and guide them , and considerably advance their cultivation of personal faith and piety . With this view , it isnot requisite that our own creeds and discipline exactly accord with those of the men whose biography we are reading . Our affections are here exercised
still more than our judgment . What we survey—what call forth our admiration and sympathy—are religious principle and a sense of religious obligation . Now , happily , this principle is found to subsist among the members of various and even conflicting denominations . In every age and church , there have been persons who truly served God and wrought righteousness , and who , seeing him that is invisible , and governed by the influences of the world to come , were signally pure and widely useful : and surely we may
receive important lessons from their examples , although our opinions and our circumstances are not precisely the same with theirs ! Nor , again , is it necessary that the ecclesiastical biographer always present us with memorials of those who are already known to fame . He is well employed in sometimes bringing to light the records of individuals of surpassing excellence , concerning whom nothing had previously been laid before the world .
It is most of all gratifying and instructive to meet with notices of such characters in the style and form in which the biographical document was originally framed . Many a pleasing association of thought then mingles with the perusal . The edifice of « ' the olden time , " the mansion of our sires , is more reverend and beautiful for its being accompanied with furniture of the same date , and perfectly in character with the building . Carried back to years long gone by , we are thus made contemporaries with our honoured
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THE LIFE OF PROFESSOR WODROW . *
? Life of Jarues Wodrow , A . M ., Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow , from 1692 to 1707 . Written by his Son , Robert Wodrow , A . M ,, Minister of the Gospel at Eastwood . Blackwood , Edinburgh ; and Cadell , London . 1 B 20 . Pp . 24 f > . 12 nio .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1829, page 399, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2573/page/31/
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