venture on.

a flush of ambition or vanity, that precluded all due consideration of the manner in which his elevation would affect his credit, his conscience and his happiness;-is to suppose a phenomenon, that could only be made credible by evidence, which in this case is totally wanting. Covetousness could never be laid to his charge without a contempt of historical testimony, too indecent for his keenest enemies to When, moreover, the soundness of his understanding, and the rigour with which he used to canvass his own conduct and motives, are taken into the account, some presumption that he acted rightly, under all the circumstances of the case, in taking this perilous step, must be admitted to arise from his never repenting of it; neither when he was laboriously sowing in tears, nor when, at the sad conclusion of his episcopal labours, he reaped a plentiful harvest of obloquy, disappointment and sorrow. Not long after his advancement, when some of his former friends upbraided him with his dereliction of his father's principles, contumeliously terming it apostasy, he calmly answered that no man was bound to be of his father's opinions; and whenever he was challenged to vindicate the obnoxious step he had taken, he manifested a frankness and good humour, which could not have subsisted on any terms with an offended conscience.

What then remains but to believe that this transaction was in strict accordance with his magnanimous character; that it was an act of selfimmolation at the altar of christian love; a deliberate

surrender of his constant inclinations, and of present ease and quiet, to the exigencies of the church, for whose sake he accounted no affliction too severe, no service too laborious, no sacrifice too costly? Fortunately there is a letter preserved, written at the time he was in suspense about accepting a bishopric, in which he discloses, with touching ingenuity and pathos, the workings of his holy soul. I here insert it as a document of great interest, throwing light on this part of our history, and beautifully illustrating the conflict of his mind, before it was subdued to this great effort of duty.

The letter is to the Rev. Mr. James Aird, Minister at Torry.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I have received from you the kindest letter that ever you writ me; and that you may know I take it so, I return you the free and friendly advice, never to judge any man before you hear him, nor any business by one side of it. Were you here to see the other, I am confident your thoughts and mine would be the same. You have both too much knowledge of me, and too much charity to think, that either such little contemptible scraps of honour or riches sought in that part of the world, with so much reproach, or any human complacency in the world, will be admitted to decide. so grave a question, or that I would sell (to speak no higher) the very sensual pleasure of my retirement for a rattle, far less deliberately do any thing that I judge offends God. For the offence of good people in cases indifferent in themselves, but not accounted so by them, whatsoever you do or do not, you shall offend some good people on the one side or other: and for those with you, the great fallacy in this business is, that they have misreckoned

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 suc cess? 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 re

establishment 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