The mode of proceeding was singular. At the general meeting a committee were appointed, with full powers to nominate fourteen members to the vacant places, out of the whole number of candidates, which was near two hundred. The fourteen chosen were

W. Freemantle, Esq. M.P.
Viscount Sydney.

Dr. Copleston.

Hon. Robt. Smith, M.P.

Dr. Goodenough.

Duke of Montrose.

Haviland Addington.

Lord Dacre.
Wm. Scott, Esq.
Marquis Camden.

Rev. H. H. Milman.
Rev. Thos. Rennell.

John Cotton, Esq.

John Nicholl, Esq.'

'November 17. Visit from Sir James Mackintosh and family to the 20th.'

The next and concluding entry for this year, 1820, is almost of a sacred character, and will, I trust, be read with those feelings of respect and tenderness which it is calculated to raise. Similar passages occur in the course of the diary, to remind me that it is a privilege and a responsibility to be entrusted with these records relating to the inner life of departed greatness.

'December. N.B. The whole of this year has been one of the happiest of my life-not, I believe, in consequence of any fortunate events, or unusual pleasures, but from improved health. Gracious God! when I compare this year of my life with the year 1815, how thankful ought I to be for the blessed change! Grant that the religious thoughts and resolutions which were my chief support and solace during that period of suffering, may not pass away and be forgotten in the time of my rejoicing. Grant that I may grow in grace as I advance in years, and that I may have

reason to say, with every returning year which it may please Thee to add to my life, 'It is good for me that I have been in trouble.'

In 1821, Dr. Copleston published the Inquiry into the Doctrines of Necessity and Predestination, being the Substance of Four Discourses preached before the University of Oxford, with an Appendix on the Seventeenth Article of the Church of England. It had long been a favourite theory with the author, that mistaken and exaggerated forms of thought, in every department of knowledge, are often traceable to the equivocal use of words. And in the application of this theory to the difficulties and contradictions of the Calvinistic scheme may be said to lie the key to this work. My business being simply to record, I do not feel called upon to venture any remarks of my own upon so profound a disquisition-while, as matter of history, I present the reader with a specimen of the notices which it called forth.

In the beginning of the following extract from No. 36 of the British Review, allusion is made to a sermon preached by Dr. Copleston in aid of the Devon and Exeter Hospital, and afterwards attacked in the Evangelical Magazine, as being a mere moral discourse, without any Christianity in it.

'If any doubt has been made of the strength and quality of the Christianity of Dr. Copleston, we do not think that such doubt ought, in common candour, to survive the perusal of this discourse (the last of the series), in which we find the true spirit of the gospel breathing in every line. The scholar, tempered into the disciple of the Cross-the man adorned above most, in our days, with those gifts which

minister occasion to self-esteem, and encourage ideas of human dignity, avowing his own inherent guiltiness before God, his reliance on Christ alone for pardon and acceptance, as attainable only by His grace and the sanctification of the Holy Spirit.'

'The great excellence of Dr. Copleston's work consists in the development of the principal sources of error and confusion, which have hitherto, in most instances, attended the prosecution of this particular inquiry, and in the accurate ascertainment of the permissible extent to which such researches may be carried. Nothing on this subject has issued from the press of late years so calculated to lighten the difficulties by which it is oppressed. And since the great work of Bishop Butler, the correspondence of natural and revealed religion with the more ordinary parts of the divine economy and government of the world, physical and intellectual, has never been so advantageously displayed. It is as rare as it is interesting to see Christian humility and secular learning co-operating, as they do in this valuable work, and to find such superiority of intellect employed in illustrating its own natural incompetence to explain the secrets of Infinite Wisdom.'

All, however, did not speak in this strain, nor was it to be expected that a work of this description should escape the buffets of controversy. These it does not seem necessary to notice with any particularity, and I would rather present my readers with a passage from the bishop's defence of his own work, published 1822. The general reasons there given by him, why his Inquiry, &c. was likely to provoke objections, are accompanied by much valuable remark and pleasing sentiment.

'It was not to be expected that a writer who endeavoured

to show how improperly the doctrine of necessity and predestination had often been handled by reasoners on both sides of the question, should escape the animadversions of those who had overlooked the points which he considered to be of the greatest moment. Neither is it ever acceptable to men who have long exercised their minds upon a difficult subject, to be told that much of the difficulty arises from their own mode of treating it, and that the thing may be placed in a light more simple, more intelligible, and more satisfactory. There are, moreover, few things which people are less willing to allow, than that they can have made an ambiguous use of words; or that they have failed to perceive distinctions, which when pointed out are obvious and unquestionable. And yet, when the dispute turns upon abstract questions, all the facts which experience can supply being equally known to both parties, one side or the other must be guilty of an error of this nature; for it is an error of much rarer occurrence, and much more disreputable, to draw a vicious inference from premises in which the meaning of the terms is not equivocal. The ordinary cause of dispute is, that either both parties think they are using the same words in the same sense, when, in fact, they are using them in different senses, or one party inadvertently employs the same word himself with some variation of meaning, not generally important, but important, and perhaps essential, to the point under consideration. The difficulty consists in discerning where the error lies, and in disentangling it from the argument to which it adheres. When separately exhibited, it can deceive no one; and hence the reasoner who is charged with having used the fallacy feels his pride hurt, as if he had been blind to that which, in its own nature, is so manifest; whereas it is a defect to which the most powerful minds are always liable, more especially those who, from a consciousness of their strength, are apt to be confident and hasty in the

conduct of their argument.

.

In making these preliminary remarks, I am far from implying that all the objectors to my reasoning have been actuated by the motives above mentioned, or that they have yielded to this common infirmity. On the contrary, it has been gratifying to me to observe, in most cases, a temperate candour and love of truth, and a freedom from that controversial captiousness, which is disgraceful to the best cause, and which is peculiarly unsuitable to discussions of a religious nature.

'An adversary of this kind is to be regarded as a coadjutor in the search after truth; and he does, in reality, often materially contribute towards the discovery. I am only anxious to have it understood, that where I point out equivocations or misapprehension, and endeavour to exhibit them in the simplest form, I am far from feeling contempt for the authors of those mistakes; nor do I think they are any evidence, either of inferior understanding, or of a disingenuous character, except when pertinaciously vindicated and maintained as a point of honour. We are all liable to fall into these errors; and it is, perhaps, the surest criterion of a quick intellect, as well as of a candid mind, to feel an emotion of pleasure at the unexpected discovery of some simple solution of a difficulty which had escaped our own notice, without caring on which side the concession consequent upon that discovery is required to be made.'

Before leaving this subject, I must add another and a private testimony of more than ordinary interest, in the shape of a letter from Professor Sandford, of Glasgow; and I have the pleasure of feeling that, when I insert it, I am doing no less honour to the memory of the writer, than to that of the Bishop of Llandaff. It will be very generally remembered that Mr. (afterwards Sir D. K.) Sandford was