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Another publication was thus proposed in a private letter to the conductor of "The Gentleman's Magazine," dated December 18, 1818:

"Milner, the Roman Catholic, has published an elaborate work, which cannot fail of having a very extensive and powerful effect on any person of his own religion. He has put forth all his strength, and let loose all his venom. Among other matter, he three times says that Bishop Halifax died a Catholic, and this you see affords a glorious triumph to the Roman Catholics. I am determined to call him to a public account. I have all the matter and paper now lying before me. If you choose to insert it in your old Magazine; be it so. But you will observe, first, that it will occupy twenty-five or thirty pages; secondly, that it must not be divided; thirdly, that I must be permitted to revise one proof-sheet, and to give directions to the printer about italic lines, &c. &c.

"The whole bench of bishops will have their eye upon me, and a whole army of Catholic Polemics may fall upon This I regard not.

me.

"If you refuse admission to so long an article, I will offer it to one more periodical publication, and if it be thought too long there, I shall print a pamphlet, and put my name."

In a second letter, only five days after, the Doctor observed:

"Some how or other my matter has crowded upon me so fast, that I must give up all thoughts of introducing it into any periodical publication, and, therefore, I shall make a pamphlet, and print it at Warwick. There again my vexations about a scribe are almost intolerable; I must submit to the torments of delay!"

From some causes, hitherto unexplained, this tract never appeared during Dr. Parr's life. Since his decease, however, it has been published by the Rev. John Lynes, the grandson by marriage, and one of the executors of Dr. Parr. It is called "A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Milner, occasioned by some passages contained in his Book, entitled The End of Religious Controversy.' By the late Rev. S. Parr, LL.D."- The

preface by Mr Lynes, contains so much matter interesting to our purpose, that we subjoin the greater portion of it:

"The following letter to the Right Rev. Dr. Joseph Milner, was found among the papers of the late Rev. Dr. Samuel Parr, after his decease. In presenting it to the public, the editor disclaims any secret motives to serve imaginary interests, or insinuate his own private opinions on a public question. He attacks no man, or body of men, in putting it to press. He is neither a polemic nor a politician; and as he is not excited by the zeal of the one, nor by the enthusiasm of the other, so is he not to be deterred by the dread of the hostility of either. A sacred trust has been reposed in him by the will and last commands of his revered and venerable grandfather, and he enters upon his career of performing it by bringing out this letter as the first fruits of the deposit, committed to his charge.

"The letter was originally written for the Gentleman's Magazine*'; but after-thoughts enlarged its dimensions, and other reasons, unnecessary to detail, prevented its publication in that form. The design of publishing it, however, was never abandoned, and three different copies, each left more finished than the other †, demonstrate the author's zeal and his intentions.

"Inflexible in his love of truth, ardent in the pursuit of it upon all subjects, never ceasing to inculcate it upon others, and ever most scrupulously adhering to it himself, the author could not see a statement such as Dr. Milner has sanctioned, without feeling it a duty to the characters thus aspersed, to his own high sense of justice, and to every sincere well-wisher of the church of England, to call upon Dr. Milner for the proofs of his statements, or a retractation of his assertion.

"For so great a lover of truth was Dr. Parr, that in all he has written it seemed to be his chief motive, as in all his actions it was the main spring. This fact, so well known to all

"Since this was written, a letter, of which I had not heard before, has appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, explaining Dr. Parr's intentions to Mr. Nichols. J. L."

+ The latest date is " June 1819."

those who were acquainted with him, will be clearly discerned by any one, who chooses to examine his writings with attention and with candour.

"Of his devotedness to pure religion, his preaching and his writings will be everlasting monuments. Of his attachment to the church of England in particular, the following treatise is only one out of a great number of proofs; and it will be seen hereafter, that he was not only a faithful follower of his Divine Master in his life and in his doctrines, but that he did not, as frequently has been asserted, hide his light under a bushel, or conceal his talent in a napkin;' nor reserve for party purposes, for dogmatical discussion, and for mere display, the inexhaustible stores of his intellect. It has been too much the fashion to say that Dr. Parr has done little either for the cause of religion or learning, in comparison to what he might have done, had he employed his leisure in preparing materials, and occupied his mind wholly and solely on the completion of some great work on some great subject; and even some of the molles and delicatuli in the world of letters venture to exclaim, What has he ever done? such he might proudly and justly say,

σχεδόν τι μωρεις μωρίαν οφλισκάνω»

To

Amidst the drudgeries of the occupation of schoolmaster, and the sacred duties of a parish priest- amidst some of the distractions of domestic, and some of the perturbations of public life, his lofty mind did find leisure to pour out a few precious drops from the copious fountain of his accomplishments. Even amidst these embarrassments, Dr. Parr has published more than many of those who have been eulogised for their diligence, and received the public reward of their learning.

"But it is not only in what he has already printed, or what he has preached, or what he has written and left for publication, that he has been useful to learning and to morals: he has been the constant and diligent, though silent, friend of men of letters, even by contributions to many of their publications in all parts of this great empire. In Ireland, in

Scotland, from all quarters, his literary bounty has been sought and obtained; and perhaps in no age, or in any country, has there been a scholar equally serviceable to the general cause of learning, by his liberal and generous distributions of knowledge and instruction.

"So much I have thought it necessary to say, both for the purpose of dissipating a prejudice and stating a fact. The works he has already published, when collected, would probably constitute two quarto volumes; and if what he has left were to be all given to the world, I believe it would comprise a greater mass of theological, metaphysical, philological, and classical learning, than has ever yet been published by any one English scholar.

"This letter to Dr. Milner, I feel assured, will sufficiently prove, even to the incredulous, that he was not lukewarm in his zeal for Christianity, nor for the interests of that best Establishment of Christianity,' as Bishop Hurd expresses it, the church of England; that he was not indifferent to the character of her prelates and her ministers; and that he has even stepped forward manfully, when the infirmities of nature were creeping upon him, to vindicate her honour. He was, indeed, a follower of Jesus - he knew in whom he believed. He was, indeed, a minister of the church of England - he knew well that the rites and doctrines of that Protestant church were the best rational foundations of a Christian Establishment. For he was a Protestant after the manner of Chillingworth, and it was his constant declaration, — THE BIBLE, THE BIBLE only, IS THE RELIGION OF PROTESTANTS! Whatever else they believe beside it, and the plain, irrefragable, indubitable, consequences of it, well may they hold it as a matter of opinion. I, for my part, after a long and (as I verily believe and hope) impartial search of the true way to eternal happiness, do profess plainly, that I cannot find any rest for the sole of my foot, but upon this rock only.' Chil lingworth, Part I. c. 6. p. 335. JOHN LYNES.

"Elmley Lovett, near Worcester, May 29th, 1825."

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As a proof of the vigour of Dr. Parr's style, of which this able tract affords some admirable specimens, we extract the following passage:—

"In what genuine work, which bears the name of Hallifax*, or in what respectable publication, which professes to give a fair and well-founded account of his faith and practice, do you trace even the slightest vestiges of the thoughts and the words which you have ascribed to him? Reflect, I beseech you, upon the excruciating and perilous situation in which Dr. Hallifax must have been placed, if your narrative, Sir, be well-founded, at that moment when hypocrisy, as Dr. Young says, drops the mask, and real and apparent are the same.' He, from want of conviction, could not find consolation in the church of England, and, from want of fortitude, he did not seek it in the church of Rome. In a man so accustomed as Bishop Hallifax was, to the study of theology, such a change of sentiment as you have ascribed to him, could not be instantaneous. It was not effected by the interposition of any wily casuist, or any proselyte-hunting zealot, who might take advantage of those circumstances, which sometimes are found in the death-chamber of the most virtuous and the most devout; and by such instances, Sir, I mean fluttering spirits, an impaired understanding, a disturbed imagination, momentary fears succeeded by momentary hopes, one dim and incoherent conception rapidly succeeded by another, and sentences formed imperfectly, or uttered indistinctly. No, Sir, the Bishop of St. Asaph, according to your own account, was visited by a Protestant Metropolitan. Previously, therefore, to his dissolution, while afflicted by sickness and oppressed by age, he must have suffered many a pang from conscious insincerity;

Dr. Samuel Hallifax was Bishop of St. Asaph, and died in 1790. Dr. Milner, as Dr. Parr observes in his letter, three times says, that the bishop died an apostate. The principal version of this tale is contained in the following note: "The present writer has been informed on good authority that one of the bishops, whose calumnies are here quoted, when he found himself on his death-bed, refused the proffered ministry of the primate, and expressed a great wish to die a Catholic. When urged to satisfy his conscience, he exclaimed, What then will become of my lady and my children?'"

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