Wherefore I say unto you: All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be for- given him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.. 126 say unto you, that every idle word, that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment...... 144 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are truc, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, + Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all Brethren, I write no new Commandment unto you, but an old Commandment, which ye had from the beginning: the old Commandment is the Word, which ye have heard from the beginning.—Again, a new Commandment I write unto you: And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. ..387, 402 A REVIEW OF THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ARCHBISHOP SECKER. DR. THOMAS SECKER, late Archbishop of Canterbury, was born in the year 1693, at a small village called Sibthorp, in the vale of Belvoir, Nottinghamshire. His father was a Protestant Dissenter, a pious, virtuous, and sensible man, who, having a small paternal fortune, followed no profession. His mother was the daughter of Mr. George Brough, of Shelton, in the county of Nottingham, a substantial gentlemanfarmer. He received his education at several private schools and academies in the country, being obliged by various accidents to change his masters frequently. Nothwithstanding this evident disadvantage, at the age of nineteen he had not only made a considerable progress in Greek and Latin, and read the best and most difficult writers in both languages, but had acquired a knowledge of French, Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac, had learned geography, logic, algebra, geometry, conic sections, and gone through a course of lectures on Jewish antiquities, and other points, preparatory to the critical study of the Bible. At the same time, in one or other of those seminaries, he had the good fortune to meet, and to form an acquaintance, with several persons of great abilities. Amongst the rest, in the academy of one Mr. Jones, b VOL. I. kept first at Gloucester, then at Tewkesbury, he laid the foundation of a strict friendship with Mr. Joseph Butler, afterwards bishop of Durham. At the last of those two places it was that Mr. Butler gave the first proof of his great sagacity and depth of thought in the letters which he then wrote to Dr. Samuel Clarke; laying before him the doubts that had arisen in his mind, concerning the conclusiveness of some arguments in the Doctor's Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God. These were written with so much candour, modesty, and good sense, that, on the discovery of his name, they immediately procured him the friendship of that eminent man, and were afterwards printed at the end of his Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion. This correspondence was entrusted in confidence to Mr. Secker, who, in order to keep it private, undertook to convey Mr. Butler's letters to the Post-office at Gloucester, and to bring back Dr. Clark's answers. Mr. Secker had been destined by his father for orders amongst the Dissenters. With this view, during the last years of his education, his studies were chiefly turned towards divinity; in which he made such quick advances, that, by the time he was threeand-twenty, he had read over carefully a great part of the Scriptures, particularly the New Testament in the original, and the best comments upon it; Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, the Apostolical Fathers, Whiston's Primitive Christianity, and the principal writers for and against ministerial and lay conformity; with many others of the most esteemed treatises in theology. But though the result of these enquiries was (what might naturally be expected) a well-grounded belief of the Christian revelation, yet not being at that time able to decide on some ab |