found. Their story is a memorable and glorious encouragement to the simple minded and true hearted everywhere. Their success makes us ashamed of our hesitancy and weakness of faith, in the trials and oppositions to which the good cause is exposed. We blush for ourselves, that we can ever for a moment doubt or despond. despond. We blush for our brethren, that there is amongst them no more enterprise, trust, and devotion. We look at these devoted, persevering men, scattered in the humbler and darker regions of life; we see what they ventured to do, and how signally God rewarded them; and when we turn back to ourselves, we are constrained to cry out, in words that have been used elsewhere- Shame on our sloth! Shame on our unbelief!'

We should do wrong to close this part of our subject in any other language than that which Mr Ashton himself uses, in concluding his last letter. Nothing can be more to the purpose, or better said.

'Thus, Sir, I have endeavoured to give you an account of the rise and progress of our inquiry after truth; with the manner and order in which the doctrines of reputed Orthodoxy came to be questioned by us, and the arguments and trains of thought which induced us successively to reject them. In doing this, we have been repeatedly accused of throwing away the Bible, and of having gotten a new Bible. But the real fact is, it was from the Bible, but particularly from the common version of the New Testament, that we learned what we now believe. Such was our ignorance of men and books, that taught what we now believe, that at the time we were relinquishing the doctrines of reputed Orthodoxy, we supposed ourselves to be the only people in the world who believed in this way; and, like Ishmael in this respect, to have our hand against every man, and every man's hand against us. The painful sensations which we felt on this account are indescribable, and at times made us wish that we could see as our christian neighbours did. But the plain simple scriptural truths which we had embraced were powerful ; and we durst not, even to avoid persecution, ignominy, and pain, deny what appeared to us to be God's truth, and violate our consciences; and whatever men may think or say of us, we could appeal to God the searcher of hearts, that in these things we had been acting to the best of our judgment; and it was no small consolation to us that we had the testimony of a good conscience. Besides, in these days of persecution and distress, we met often one with another, and made known our requests to God by prayer

and supplication with thanksgiving; and the peace of God passing understanding kept our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

'But very soon after this, we heard of many churches where the same doctrines were taught which we had embraced; but like us, they were everywhere spoken against. With some of the members of these churches we soon became acquainted. At this time, in consequence of our ministers being invited to preach a few times at Elland, they had the happiness of becoming personally acquainted with you, by whom our condition was made known to the Unitarian public; who have given us a convincing and an affectionate proof of their regard towards us, by charitably contributing to the liquidation of more than three-fourths of the debt upon our chapel; and to them and to you do we feel unfeignedly thankful for the favors already bestowed upon us.'— pp. 68, 69.

We have already said, that no small part of the interest of this pamphlet is derived from the personal history of Mr Cooke. He led the way in reform, and during his brief ministry was indefatigable in his labors to extend a cause which he illustrated by a bright example in life and in death.

'In the autumn of 1909, Mr Cooke was seized with that affliction which in March, 1811, terminated his useful life. It is probable, that his illness was partly, if not wholly, occasioned by excessive labor and fatigue. While his health permitted, he preached two or three times every Sunday; and generally three or four times between Sunday and Sunday. Every fourth Sunday he came to our chapel, at Newchurch: the Monday and Tuesday following, he preached at Padiham and Burnley; which places are from fifteen to eighteen miles distant from Rochdale; beside occasionally visiting other places; for instance, Todmorden, where, in 1815, a party left the Methodists, having embraced the doctrines for which Mr Cooke was expelled; and Haslingden, where some have since become Unitarians. He had to encounter a host of opposition; particularly from the body with which he had formerly been united. This, together with thinking, preaching, writing, and travelling, overpowered his slender constitution; a consumption, attended with spitting of blood, obliged him to give up (except occasionally) the public duties of the ministry; and about eighteen months after, that life, which had been spent in doing good, was closed. Mr Cooke died March 14th, 1811. Mr Cooke left behind him, to deplore his loss, a wife and five young children, and more than a thousand people,

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who looked up to him as their pastor; of whom it might most truly be said," See, how they loved him!"-pp. 49, 50.

An appendix contains an account of his patience, cheerfulness, and edifying deportment during his last illness, and an extract from the discourse delivered at his funeral. We take a passage from the latter, which, considering the source from which it comes, our readers will think to be striking.

He

'But Mr Cooke was a man that did not seek for ease. thought for and preached to the same people five or six times in the week at the least, and his last sermon was always thought by his audience to be better, and to edify more, than that which preceded it. He had the care of erecting a house and a large place of worship-the labor of walking two or three miles into the country, three or four nights in a week-the fatigue of travelling to the distance of twenty miles from home once a month, and preaching at several places in the way-the care of all the societies-the pain of anything that was disorderly among them, besides the mighty opposition he met with from the body from which he had been expelled; so that he had not only to relinquish a plenteous and sure provision, and comparative ease, in order to maintain a good conscience; but in consequence thereof he had to encounter hardship, grief, and pain. When we read of St Paul counting all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord, and in opposition to all the learning, power, and malice of Jews and Gentiles, preaching the Gospel from Jerusalem round about to Illyricum, regardless of pleasure or pain, ease or hardship, praise or censure, we see a brave and great man. When we read of two thousand men choosing to be expelled from a church where they were with their families well provided for, suffering all the hardship of persecution and the most extreme and pinching poverty, rather than violate their consciences by assenting to an act of uniformity; we see two thousand great men, such as England never saw at once, either before or since that time. And when I see a man with a wife and four small children, for whom he had the most tender affection as a husband and father, expelled from a body which he dearly loved, and where he and his family were well provided for, abandoned to uncertainty, enduring hardship, encountering a flood of opposition, and preferring to relinquish and encounter all this, rather than give up truth and violate his conscience, 1 "Know ye see a great man; which fully justifies me in saying, not that a prince and a great man is fallen this day in Israel." 'Thus we have seen that the man whose loss we deplore, was great because he was good; because he used his abilities in

plucking sinners as brands from the burning, and because he preferred truth and a good conscience to every other consideration. And the exertions he made in spreading and vindicating truth, with the pain that he met with in so doing, no doubt laid the foundation of that complaint which terminated his life. Many who had very much decried what he had taught, supposed (because no doubt they wished it) that sickness and the prospect of death would shake that firmness which he had manifested while in health towards the doctrines for which he was expelled. But death, terrible as it may appear to some, was so far from moving him, that having heard the sermons read which contained those doctrines, he most heartily approved of them; and the more he examined the nature of the motives which induced him to publish them, the more he was convinced of their purity, and he possessed the greatest satisfaction of mind at the result thereof. In this happy belief he breathed his soul into the hands of that God he had thus conscientiously served.'-pp. 72, 73.

There are two things further, which we have noted in reading this pamphlet, so strikingly similar to what has been sometimes witnessed amongst ourselves, that we must be permitted briefly to state them. The first relates to the manner in which his opponents were pleased to speak of Mr Cooke's opinions.

'Two or three years before he died, it was said of him, that he had laid aside the Bible, and put common sense in its place; merely because he explained the Bible agreeably to the common sense of mankind; and to prove that he was wrong, he was called a Socinian. Since his death, we have often been told, that he was no Socinian; and that he was far from believing what we teach on the Atonement, Original Sin, and the Trinity.'-p. 51.

The other relates to an arrangement for exchanging pulpits. The two congregations at Rochdale and Newchurch, had grown up together at the same time, under similar circumstances, and a very intimate union naturally existed between them. Mr Cooke regularly exchanged with the minister at Newchurch every fourth Sunday; and on supplying the vacancy after his death, in doing which both societies had a voice, it was made an express condition of Mr Bowman's settlement, that the exchange should be continued; and Mr Bowman expressed his hearty desire that there should be an exchange.' All seemed to promise harmony and satisfaction. But by and by his strain of preaching began to alter;' dissatisfaction arose in consequence; people were astonished that the man

should act so directly contrary to his professions; and the result at length was the dissolution of the former happy connexion between the two societies, and the division of the Rochdale congregation into two parts. We could almost believe, in reading this, that we were reading the account of some reputable transactions nearer home. The sequel, also, may find its counterpart in our own land. One of the trustees, it seems, had objected to the exchange, and no doubt encouraged and urged Mr Bowman to the measures which produced alienation and schism. Such busybodies there sometimes are in a society, who will have everything their own way. But observe the result.

'But what perhaps will surprise you as much as it surprised us, was, that the same trustee who opposed the exchange, and who professed so heartily to approve of Mr Bowman and what he taught, immediately turned his artillery against poor Mr Bowman; and calling in once more the assistance of his allies, in less than three months after his first victory, drove poor Mr Bowman back again to Ipswich.'-p. 55.

ART. V.-The Life of Mohammed; Founder of the Religion of Islam, and of the Empire of the Saracens. By the Řev. GEORGE BUSH, A. M. New-York: J. & J. Harper, 1830. 18mo. pp. 261.

ENGLISH literature has been remarkably deficient, until lately, in popular and well written accounts of Islamism and its founder, Dr Prideaux is a learned and honest writer on these subjects, but heavy, and full of prejudice. Sale's Koran, with the notes and preliminary discourse, contains much valuable information, collected and expressed with candor and a truly philosophical spirit; but it is a work for scholars, and not for general reading. The same remark is also applicable to the translation of Reland, and in some degree to that of Savary. Gibbon's learned and eloquent chapters on the character, policy, and brilliant fortunes of Mohammed and the early Ca