unto the dust, if so be there may be hope; to set him this only task of working out his salvation with fear and trembling, laying hold on God's mercy in Christ, his general but conditional mercy for all penitent purifying sinners, for confessors and forsakers, and none else, and so labouring for that sorrow, that purity, that confession, contrition, and forsaking."

Feelingly alive to the danger and uncertainty of what is called a death-bed repentance, Dr. Hammond made his visits in such cases with a heavy heart. His conduct on one occasion may serve to illustrate the preceding remarks. A gentleman who had spent an evil life, apprehending that death was near at hand, desired to have an interview with Dr. Hammond. The friends of the sick man neglected his wishes, and did not send for the minister until the patient was in the last agonies of death. When Dr. Hammond arrived, he saw that nothing could then be done except to pray for the departing spirit, and to warn the living by the example of the dying; he therefore fervently besought God to pardon the poor object before him; lamented that so little account should be taken of an immortal soul; and entreated that others, and in particular the companions of that unhappy person's vice, might learn by this example "how improper a season the time of sickness, and how unfit a place the death-bed is, for that one great important work of penitence, which was intended by Almighty God to be the one commensurate work of the whole life.”

Although Dr. Hammond's income was now very small, he still reserved a portion of it for the poor; he always

came down with exceeding alacrity when it was told him that a poor body would speak with him ;" and listened with kind attention to the tale of woe. Others he found out in the course of his walks; and some were

made known to him by persons whom he requested to recommend proper objects. One anecdote will illustrate this part of his character better than the longest description of it.

The piety of a poor and sickly weaver, named Houseman, who lived near Westwood, had attracted the attention of Dr. Hammond, who afterwards took great pleasure in visiting him, lending him books, and conversing with him about their contents. Knowing that the poor man's weakness prevented him from earning a livelihood by his trade, he "invited him, nay, importuned him, still to come to him for whatever he needed; and at his death left him ten pounds as a legacy. A little before which fatal time, he and the lady Pakington being walking, Houseman happened to come by, to whom, after the Doctor had talked awhile in his usual friendly manner, he let him pass; yet soon after called him, with these words;-Houseman, if it should please God that I should be taken from this place, let me make a bargain between my lady and you, that you be sure to come to her with the same freedom you would to me for anything you want; and so, with a most tender kindness gave his benediction. Then turning to the lady, he said, Will you not think it strange that I should be more affected at parting from Houseman than from you?

Dr. Hammond considered that life loses half its charms if we have no friend to partake of our joys and to sympathise with our sorrows; and declared, that for his part he had no such way of enjoying anything as by reflection from the person whom he loved, so that his friend's being happy was the surest way to make him so." Influenced by these feelings, he endeavoured to promote the formation of friendships, recommending them both by his writings for the public, and by his con

versation and example in private life; and when he heard that any of his acquaintance, who were mutually attached and congenial in tastes and studies, had it in their power to live near together, he pointed to those as the happiest persons that he knew.

In his own lot, he found abundant cause to be grateful that a merciful Providence had blesssed him with so many constant friends, and afforded him so many opportunities of seeing them. Besides his kind benefactors, sir John and "the good lady Pakington," many others of the eminent clergy, besides himself, were inmates of the mansion at Westwood. Fell, his biographer, Dr. Morley, and Gunning, found an asylum there. He occasionally visited his " dear and most intimate friend" Dr. Sanderson. He calls Jeremy Taylor "my very worthy friend;" and, being associated with him in collecting the contributions for the loyalists abroad, must have had much communication with him. Isaac Walton was another of his friends; and, as he sometimes went to London, he had opportunities of conversing with archbishop Usher and many others.

He accounted love, rather than reverence, to be the tie of a permanent and valuable friendship; and amongst its proper fruits he reckoned a concern for the spiritual welfare of each other. "It is every christian's part," he would say, "at least to choose out somebody as a monitor, that may keep a daily watch over him, be it the friend, the son of his love, the wife of his bosom, or any that is not too ignorant, too blindly fond, or too pusillanimous to discharge it." He wished this care to extend to the most minute particulars :-" Should we only endeavour to keep our friends from scandalous offences, we should be like a physician who only guards his patients against the plague." If a long interval elapsed without

his receiving any seasonable reproof, he began to fear that he had lost his friend; and, when told what part of his character was open to improvement, or what failing he ought to shun, he was grateful for the admonition, and immediately made a practical use of it. And in turn he candidly, but tenderly, noticed to his friends in private the faults which he observed in their tempers or conduct. He would remark, that "he that is overtaken in a fault, if there be not some good Samaritan near to have pity on him, to pour soft but healing oil into his wounds, and so to bind up and restore him again, may unhappily lie so long in his sin that there be no more life left in him; the repulsed grace of Christ in this case constantly withdrawing itself, and not ordinarily returning again to those noisome dwellings which have once so grieved and banished Him out of their coasts. By which you will discern the advantage of a seasonable friend, the benefit of a timely cure."

Thus choosing his friends on the highest grounds, there was one consequence which, besides their usefulness in spiritual things, deserves a perpetual memorial. "Whom I trusted to be my friend," he said, “all I had was in his power; and by God's blessing I was never deceived in my trust."

In the sorrows of the land Dr. Hammond recognised the judgments of God; and he believed, that if a "sincere change and thorough reformation" were manifest in the "poor calamitous kingdom," peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety, would again flourish and abound. He lamented the prevailing bitterness and animosities, the contentions about trifles, the calumnies and misrepresentations; he wished that men professing themselves christians, would be more studious of entering the way of peace, and more industrious in persuading

others to pursue the same path. He reminded them that "it was anciently resolved, that Christianity, wherever it entered in its purity, did plant all manner of exact and strict conscientious walking; all humility, meekness, purity, peaceableness, justice, charity, sobriety, imaginable; that wickedness and dissolution of manners was to be looked on as the only heresy, and good life revered as the only orthodox profession." He desired them to pray Almighty God to restore "that heavenly grace and incomparable blessing of christian peace and holy communion among all that have received the honour of being called by his name, that we may all mind the same things, fix the same common designs, love, and aid, and promote one another's good, unanimously glorify Him here with one tongue and heart, that we may all be glorified with him, and sing joint hosannahs and hallelujahs to him to all eternity."

Such were the petitions of his own prayers, and such the tendency of his example. He prayed for the wider diffusion of pure religion, with all its excellent and beneficent fruits; and openly declared his desire" to be an example of peaceableness and of a resolution to make no more quarrels than are necessary," and therefore to contribute his best endeavours to heal the wounds under which religion was then suffering. And as he knew that heartfelt prayers are precious in the sight of God, so he did not doubt that some acceptable offering would be cast into the sacred treasury "by the poor widow church of England, with her few mites."

The principles of that church, and the form of her government, he had examined conscientiously, and believed that her doctrine was truly scriptural, and her episcopacy conformable to apostolical usage; he "loved and admired the beauty of her fabric, even when she lay