the chapel was less numerously attended than
that of the morning, but by a more serious auditory; the lesson from the
New Testament, on those occasions, was accompanied by Burkitt's
Commentaries. These lessons he read with impassioned emphasis,
frequently drawing tears from his hearers, and leaving a lasting
impression upon their minds. His devotional feelings and the powers of
his own mind were further exercised, along with those of his family, in
perusing the Scriptures; not only on the Sunday evenings, but on every
other evening, while the rest of the household were at work, some one of
the children, and in her turn the servant, for the sake of practice in
reading, or for instruction, read the Bible aloud; and in this manner
the whole was repeatedly gone through. That no common importance was
attached to the observance of religious ordinances by his family,
appears from the following memorandum by one of his descendants, which I
am tempted to insert at length, as it is characteristic, and somewhat
curious. 'There is a small chapel in the county palatine of Lancaster,
where a certain clergyman has regularly officiated above sixty years,
and a few months ago administered the sacrament of the Lord's Supper in
the same, to a decent number of devout communicants. After the clergyman
had received himself, the first company out of the assembly who
approached the altar, and kneeled down to be partakers of the sacred
elements, consisted of the parson's wife; to whom he had been married
upwards of sixty years; one son and his wife; four daughters, each with
her husband; whose ages, all added together, amount to above 714 years.
The several and respective distances from the place of each of their
abodes, to the chapel where they all communicated, will measure more
than 1000 English miles. Though the narration will appear surprising, it
is without doubt a fact that the same persons, exactly four years
before, met at the same place, and all joined in performance of the same
venerable duty.'

He was indeed most zealously attached to the doctrine and frame of the
Established Church. We have seen him congratulating himself that he had
no dissenters in his cure of any denomination. Some allowance must be
made for the state of opinion when his first religious impressions were
received, before the reader will acquit him of bigotry, when I mention,
that at the time of the augmentation of the cure, he refused to invest
part of the money