nts, the Dissenters are infinitely more distant from the Church
of England than the Catholics are."

In 1813 he had intervened in the controversy which raged round the cradle
of that most pacific institution, the British and Foreign Bible Society,
and had taken the unexpectedly clerical view that Churchmen were bound to
"circulate the Scriptures with the Prayer Book, in preference to any other
method." But he grounded a claim to promotion on the fact that he had
"always avoided speculative, and preached practical, religion." He spoke of
a "theological" bishop in the sense of dispraise, and linked the epithet
with "bitter" and "bustling." Beyond question he had read the Bible, but he
was not alarmingly familiar with the sacred text. It is reported[178] that
he once referred to the case of the man who puts his hand to the plough and
looks back[179] as being "somewhere in the Epistles." He forgot the names
of Job's daughters, until reminded by a neighbouring Squire who had called
his greyhounds Jemima, Kezia, and Keren-Happuch. He attributed the _Nunc
Dimittis_ to an author vaguely but conveniently known as "The Psalmist,"
and by so doing drew down on himself the ridicule of Wilson Croker.[180] It
may be questioned whether he ever read the Prayer Book except in Church.
With the literature of Christian antiquity he had not, so far as his
writings show, the slightest acquaintance; and his knowledge of Anglican
divines--Wake, and Cleaver, and Sherlock, and Horsley--has a suspicious air
of having been hastily acquired for the express purpose of confuting Bishop
Marsh. So we will not cite him as a witness in a case where the highest and
deepest mysteries of Revelation are involved, and where a minute
acquaintance with documents is an indispensable equipment. We prefer to
take leave of him as a Christian preacher, seeking only the edification of
his hearers. In a sermon on the Holy Communion, preached from the pulpit of
St. Paul's, he delivers this striking testimony to a religious truth,
which, if stated in a formal proposition, he would probably have
disavowed:--

"If you, who only _partake_ of this Sacrament, cannot fail to be
struck with its solemnity, we who not only receive it, but minister it
to every description of human beings, in every season of peril and
distress, must be intimately and deeply pervaded by that feeling....
To know the power of this Sacrament, give it to him whose doom is
sea