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of the benefits of this most laudable Institution; but shall I, on this account, have no feeling of compassion towards those for whom such advantages are so desirable? God forbid! Ever since I first heard of your plan, I have watched its progress with considerable interest, and have felt much painful apprehension, lest, in an age when such frequent appeals are made to the benevolence of the public, it should not receive adequate support. I will, therefore, at some period not very distant, call the attention of my congregation to this subject. Wishing you increasing success, 'I remain, Dear Sir,

Yours, respectfully."

In 1815, the number of children under private tuition amounting to twenty, the committee thought it advisable to procure a house, and provide a master, who would be under their own immediate superintendence and control. A house was therefore purchased at Lewisham, capable of containing fifty or sixty boys, and many exertions were made by the committee to meet the increased expenditure. To aid the funds, Mr. Townsend took a journey into Yorkshire, and appears to have been tolerably successful; but several remarks in his diary prove that the slow progress of this Institution, and the trifling support it received, much grieved and distressed him. In January, 1818, he thus writes"To day walked from Tottenham Court to the Poultry, to meet the committee of the Congregational School. How discouraging is the state of things in this Institution; There is not money enough to pay the quarter's bills, and there are no collections or donations in prospect. This second child of mine will never reach the healthy state of the first; yet, that was nursed by the world, this by the Church.”

Amidst increasing infirmities, Mr. Townsend did not relax his exertions. This Institution lay very near his heart, and to the termination of life it was a principal object of interest. He writes in April 3, 1822-" Went to meet the committee of the Congregational School: I tremble for the fate of this Institution; not any money in handsixty pounds due to the master. I am almost ready to say, the strength of the bearer of burdens faileth. But is not the earth the Lord's, and the fulness thereof?-does He not say that the gold and the silver are His, and that all hearts are in His hand? Enough, then I will, in the strength of the Lord, go forward; try to procure collections and subscriptions; and influence richer Christians, if possible, to similar exertions."

With delight he hailed a brighter day, in the reports of 1824 and 1825. From the former, we give the following quotation: "Some of the boys have exhibited pleasing appearances of piety, by associating daily for the purposes of reading the Scriptures and other religious books. In reference to some of them, I have reason to hope that those holy principles are taking firm hold of their minds, which will, ere long, result in holy conduct,-that those seeds of a holy and devoted life are taking deep root in their hearts, which, watered by the genial dews of heaven, will ultimately yield plentiful and refreshing fruits. When I reflect, that it has been the subject of our daily prayers, in the domestic and family circle, that God would pour out upon these youths the spirit of grace and supplication,-of wisdom and the fear of God, I

am encouraged to regard these indieations of piety as a token for good." And such they have proved. Five of the youths educated in the school have entered the ministry, and one, who had commenced his studies for the same honourable work, has met, in a better world, his benefactor in this. Some of the youths are settled as medical practitioners; and most of them are entering life with mental acquirements, that will fit them for a rank in society which their descent will not degrade.

CHAPTER VII.

Publication of Claude's Defence, &c.

In the year 1813, Mr. Townsend made a tour for the Hibernian Society, to which he had belonged from its commencement in 1806. Lutterworth being in his route, he visited, with true Protestant feelings, the church where the good old Reformer, Wickliffe, had preached, and the little brook, into which his ashes had been thrown after his exhumation and subsequent burning by his enemies. How much was England indebted to this translator of the Holy Scriptures, which, as Mr. Townsend writes, "are to the moral world what the sun is to the natural world-he who would extinguish or obstruct the light of either, must be considered as the enemy of man." occasioned inexpressible mortification to a bigoted priesthood, that Wickliffe and other learned and holy men, who loved light rather than darkness, should give the inspired volume to the people in the vernacular tongue. The great body of Reformers on the Continent imitated their pious example. Alas! how soon did the zeal of Protestant churches cool: occupied in local con

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troversies and divisions, the general interests of religion declined; the reading of the Bible was dreadfully neglected, and ministers and churches sunk into a cold and lifeless state. But indolence and apathy have passed away-times of refreshing and revival have come from the presence of the Lord-the Bible is making a rapid progress through the world, whilst the feeble opposition of its foes seems to increase the steadiness and the velocity of its movements.

In 1815, Mr. Townsend published a new edition of Claude's celebrated defence of the Reformation. He had long viewed with a suspicious eye the increase Romanism had made, not only in the mother country, but in her colonies. He deprecated the rising order of the Jesuits, and, with prophetic vision, deplored the indifference manifested by Protestant statesmen and Protestant ministers. He knew, and knew with regret, that English Protestants had much admired a recent popular Roman Catholie writer, who had speciously attacked Claude, and defended Bossuet; that Monsieur Gregoire had just published a work, in which he had charged the Reformation with having produced socinianism and deism. The Ex-Bishop of Blois there denied that the Roman Catholic clergy had sanctioned the massacres of St. Bartholomew. A spirit of proselytism was rapidly

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Singular affirmation! when history has recorded that the Pope, with his Cardinals, on receiving the news of the massacre, went to church, where they offered thanks that so great a blessing had been conferred on the see of Rome and the Christian world.

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