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    but he should remember that we Norwich people live in rather an out-ofthe-way corner of the kingdom , and are quite a century behind him both in acuteness and refinement . We have

    not yet acquired the power of judging of a sermon before we hear it , or learned the fashionable slang of saying that we attend public worship , " pour passer le temps . " But we have committed another

    unpardonable sin , in the choice of a young" man for our minister . Alas ! Sir , there are some men who , though they grow old , never grow wise ; but to whom increase of years brings only increase of folly and conceit . Of a young * man there is hope , even if before his entrance into active life he

    may have formed an erroneous estimate of his duties and his powers . An acquaintance with the world may correct and enlarge his views , and instruct him both what he should do and what he should avoid . But of a

    grey-headed coxcomb there is no hope . He will never be able to teach , for he has never been able to learn .

    I shall not attempt to follow C . through the whole of his letter . In truth I don ' t understand what he means , nor do I believe that he himself does . Let him read the paragraph beginning " Backed as he is , " &c , and then let him tell me whether he

    means in it to justify or condemn the appointment of young ministers . If his words have any meaning he does both . He says , " How can there be any thing in the range of Christian duty that it can be unbecoming and

    presumptuous in a young minister to advert to ? If juvenility be an evil , our churches would be lacking advice till their ministers were 30 or 35 years old . " Then , in the very next sentence , he says , " I own , I think the circumstance that our congregations are committed to the care of such

    young men , as have been lately chosen pastors , is a very great evil / ' These two sentences resemble two clauses in the Athanasian Creed , where one contradicts what the other affirms , only with this additional defect , that the writing is as bad as the sense is

    obscure . He adds , " I attribute to this source" (\ . e , the youth of our ministers ) " the deficiency of devotional spirit , which has been charged , and

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    not altogether without reason , on the Unitarian body . " If this is the source , how happens it that this ' ^ deficiency of devotional spirit" is not common to all Christians , since Unitarian ministers do not enter upon the discbarge of their duties at an earlier period than their Trinitarian brethren ? I

    used to be told , that " like causes produce like effects , " but the " eagleeye" of C . has found out , that like causes produce different effects And yet this is the person who sits in judgment upon the Norwich congregation * . To such an one we may well say , " Friend , who made thee a judge or an accuser ? " What knows he of that

    society , or how is he enabled to decide what advice it might or might not want ? He has been very free in givin his advice , and , whether he be as willing to receive as to give or not , I shall take the liberty to offer him a little counsel , which , for his own sake , he will do well to attend to . Let him

    endeavour , as his pretensions to the office of censor are singularly slender , either to endeavour to qualify himself for it , or to express himself with a little more modesty . He thinks that a charge given to a young minister on the nature and

    importance of his duties is " a piece of mummery : " he thinks " that the circumstance that our congregations are committed to the care of such young men is a very great evil : " he thinks " we have sermons enough at home ,

    without any American importations , " though he thinks " they are very well in their way . " Such language is the joint offspring of ignorance and conceit , and is perhaps hardly worth the notice that has been taken of it . One of the Norwich Congregation .

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    Sir , ALLO W me to suggest to your respectable correspondent T . F . B . ( p . 536 ) that yiyveoSati , or the Ionic yij / ecr&ai , is used by Herodotus in the sense of znai . Vide Wesseling , ad L . vii .

    c . xi . In ch . lii . of this book we read rtov crv [ Aaprv <; yivsai . Aristophanes , PI . v . 431 , uses yiyvBo-Srai in the same sense ; ovy . su viroXonrov crot to € ocpa 6 pov yiyvarai . I subjoin an observation of Valkenaer . This incomparable scholar , in commenting on Hcb . i . 4 , writes

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    Mr . Cdgan on Two Communications * 605

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1825, page 605, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2541/page/29/