do them justice; the world would find it much harder to stand against him than they are aware of, even with all the new biographers of the age to encourage and assist them. I may be called a visionary when I say this; that I cannot help: but how many stranger visions have been realized of late, which, twenty years ago, would have been pronounced utterly incredible! When strange things are to be done, strange men arise to do them. One man, as powerful in truth as Voltaire was in error, might produce very unexpected alterations, and in less time than he did. Then might a new era of learning succeed; as friendly to the Christian cause, as the learning which has been growing up amongst us for the last hundred years has been hostile and destructive. As to confirmed infidelity, it is a deaf adder, never to be charmed. Yet even here the case is not always to be given up in despair. Many forsake truth because they hate it; of such there is no hope: but some believe wrong only because they never were taught right. Nayland, July 30, 1799. A PREFATORY EPISTLE TO WILLIAM STEVENS, Esq. My dear Friend, THE works of the late bishop Horne are in many hands, and will be in many more. No reader of any judgement can proceed far into them, without discovering that the author was a person of eminence for his learning, eloquence, and piety; with as much wit, and force of expression, as were consistent with a temper so much corrected and sweetened by devo tion. To all those who are pleased and edified by his writings, some account of his life and conversation will be interesting. They will naturally wish to hear a Treasurer of queen Anne's Bounty, a man of singular excellence of character, and of sound learning, particularly in divinity, to the study of which he had very early addicted himself. He wrote some tracts on his favourite subject, one of which, "A Treatise on the Nature and Constitution of the Christian "Church," has been re-published by the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge. He was cousin to Dr. Horne; and the closest friendship subsisted between them from their earliest years. He was no less intimate with Mr. Jones, the writer of this prefatory epistle; and wrote the Life prefixed to Mr. Jones's works. Mr. Stevens died Feb. 7, 1807. what passed between such a man and the world in which he lived. You and I, who knew him so well and loved him so much, may be suspected of partiality to his memory: but we have unexceptionable testimony to the greatness and importance of his character. While we were under the first impressions. of our grief for the loss of him, a person of high distinction, who was intimate with him for many years, declared to you and to me, that he verily believed him to have been the best man he ever knew. Soon after the late earl of Guildford was made chancellor of the university of Oxford, another great man, who was allowed to be an excellent judge of the weight and wit of conversation, recommended Dr. Horne, who was then vice-chancellor, to him in the following terms: My lord, I question whether you "know your vice-chancellor so well as you ought. "When you are next at Oxford, go and dine with him; and, when you have done this once, I need "not ask you to do it again; you will find him the "pleasantest man you ever met with." And so his lordship seemed to think (who was himself as pleasant a man as most in the kingdom) from the attention he paid to him ever after. I have heard it observed of him by another gentleman, who never was suspected of a want of judgement, that, if some friend had followed him about with a pen and ink, to note down his sayings and observations, they might have furnished out a collection like that which Mr. Boswell has given to the public; but frequently of a superior quality; because the subjects which fell in his way were occasionally of a higher nature, out of |