themselves in taking my silence and their zeals to have been consent and participation; which, how great a mistake it is, few know better or so well as yourself. And the truth is, I did see approaching an inevitable necessity to strain with them in divers practices, in what station soever remaining in Britain; and to have escaped further off (which hath been in my thoughts) would have been the greatest scandal of all. And what will you say, if there be in this thing somewhat of that you mention, and would allow of reconciling the devout on different sides, and of enlarging those good souls you meet with from their little fetters, though possibly with little success? Yet the design is commendable, pardonable at least. However, one comfort I have, that in what is pressed on me there is the least of my own choice, yea on the contrary the strongest aversion that ever I had to any thing in all my life: the difficulty in short lies in a necessity of either owning a scruple which I have not, or the rudest disobedience to authority that may be. The truth is, I am yet importuning and struggling for a liberation, and look upward for it: but whatsoever be the issue, I look beyond it, and this weary, weary wretched life, through which the hand I have resigned to I trust will lead me in the path of his own choosing; and so I may please him I am satisfied. I hope if ever we meet you shall find me in the love of solitude and a devout life.

Your unalter'd Brother and Friend,

R. L.

When I set pen to paper, I intended not to exceed half a dozen lines, but slid on insensibly thus far; but though I should fill the paper on all sides, still the right view of this business would be necessarily suspended till meeting. Meanwhile hope well of me, and pray for me. This word I will add, that as there has been nothing of my choice in the thing, so I undergo it, if it must be, as a mortification, and that greater than a cell and haircloth: and whether any will believe this or no I am not careful.

It is surely no discredit to his sagacity, that he once conceived a hope, to which he alludes in his letter, of bringing the episcopalians and presbyterians to coalesce on the basis of reciprocal concession. That hope will not be accounted the less rational for being feeble: but in proportion to its feebleness, if it were not altogether visionary, does the value rise of the sacrifices he made to realize it; for the dignity of its object none will dispute. Had it been possible for human virtue to have prevented the bloody discord, which shortly overcast the spiritual firmament, and rent the Scottish church like an earthquake, Leighton could not have failed. To a temper, in which Burnet never but once saw a ruffle, during a close familiarity of twenty-two years' standing, and under every variety of provocation, and to an address in dealing with perverse and factious spirits, which his adversaries admit while disparaging it with unhandsome epithets, he joined such extreme moderation of sentiment on the points at issue between the two churches, as peculiarly fitted him to stand in the gap, the angel of reconciliation and concord. It is true, indeed, that success has rarely followed attempts to restore compactness to a religious body, after once it has been violently divided. For the most part the cure of religious dissensions is unhopeful, in proportion as the ground of them is trivial: because the difficulty of allaying the passions of men corresponds with the degree in which they are wedded to creatures of the imagination. As the contest goes on, the objects of

contention gain importance in the eyes of the combatants; and minute differences expand into gulfs which separate salvation from perdition, the rather perhaps for the conscience being honest where the mind is not adequately enlightened. No violent measures, no compendious process, can bring about a cordial union of bodies of men, disunited in matters of conscience. Yet, let time be allowed for factions to disband and irritations to abate; let proper measures be pursued for preventing untoward collisions, and for bringing those who are jealous of each other into contact at points, in which a mutual attraction will be developed; and it may happen that, uniting in affection one to another, they will at length agree together in mind and opinion; or, at least, their speculative differences will cease to create baneful and scandalous schisms.

Leighton doubtless hoped that, by a mild and temperate exercise of his episcopal jurisdiction, he should propitiate most of the covenanters, whose hostility to moderate episcopacy he might suppose to be relenting from the avowed desire for it of the synod of Aberdeen, and from the apparent conformity of two thirds of the ministers. The reestablishment of the ancient monarchy, an event so grateful to patriots of both persuasions, he considered a favourable crisis for "causing contentions to cease," and for drowning private grudges and public feuds in an ocean of christian love and universal prosperity. He might hope, moreover, that by his personal influence with the king, to whom

his brother's situation at court would facilitate his access, he should be able to keep in check the violent partisans of prelacy, and to curb that headlong precipitance of innovation, of which some portentous symptoms had already appeared in the royal councils. In the latter objects he did not entirely fail: for he effectually shielded the nonconformists in his own diocese from molestation; and more than once, as we shall see hereafter, he converted the king to moderate measures, by his faithful and fearless representations. His attempts to soften the prejudices of his own countrymen, and to effect a conjunction of the two churches did, it is true, miscarry. But it will appear in the sequel of this history, that the failure does not lie with the Bishop, who exhibited throughout that arduous transaction an illustrious specimen of christian diplomacy, and whose character came forth from it, as pure gold seven times tried in the furnace.

There is one particular of Leighton's conduct in this perplexing business, which is open to just exception. I allude to his receiving the orders, first of deacon and then of priest, from the English bishops, previously to his consecration. Sheldon, bishop of London, insisted on Sharp and Leighton being re-ordained, on the plea that their presbyterian ordination was void from the beginning, it having been conferred by a church actually in a state of schism, which vitiated all its acts of administration. Leighton denied the soundness of

this objection to the validity of his ministry. Yet being little scrupulous, too little indeed, about the circumstantials of ecclesiastical polity, he yielded to Sheldon's demand with a readiness, which the repugnance evinced to it by Sharp made the more observable. The view he took of the ceremony imposed upon them was, that "the re-ordaining a priest ordained in another church imported no more, but that they received him into orders according to their own rules; and did not infer the annulling the orders, he had formerly received.” Had the English bishops concurred in this explanation, Leighton would have stood on solid ground in submitting to a new ordination. But instead of concurring in it, their avowed meaning was to bestow that upon him, of which in their judgment he was hitherto destitute,-a regular consecration to the ministry of the gospel; and in this meaning Leighton did to outward appearance acquiesce. His private construction of the act, to which he submitted, could not change its public aspect and character. It seemed levelled at the foundations of presbytery, by impeaching the legitimacy of all presbyterian ministers, who had received holy orders after episcopacy was legally resettled in Scotland by king James; and of course it exasperated the clergy, who were in that predicament, and also the laity, who thought the honour and interest of their church were compromised by Leighton's

concession.

It was the duty of a faithful historian to avow, that Leighton did not, in this instance, sufficiently