within." Of these two sentences it is easily discovered, that the first is forced and unnatural, and the second trivial and low.

Soon afterwards Mr. Cheynel was admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Divinity, for which his grace had been denied him in 1641, and, as he then suffered for an ill-timed assertion of the Presbyterian doctrines, he obtained that his degree should be dated from the time at which he was refused it; an honour which, however, did not secure him from being soon after publickly reproach. ed as a madman.

But the vigour of Cheynel was thought by his companions to deserve profit as well as honour; and Dr. Bailey, the president of St. John's College, being not more obedient to the authority of the Parliament than the rest, was deprived of his revenues and authority, with which Mr. Cheynel was immediately invested; who, with his usual coolness and modesty, took possession of the lodgings soon after, by breaking open the doors.

This preferment being not thought adequate to the deserts or abilities of Mr. Cheynel, it was therefore desired, by the committee of Parliament, that the visitors would recommend him to the lectureship of divinity founded by the Lady Margaret. To recommend him, and to choose, was at that time the same; and he had now the pleasure of propagating his darling doctrine of predestination, without interruption, and without danger.

Being thus flushed with power and success, there is little reason for doubting that he gave way to his natural vehemence, and indulged himself in the utmost excesses of raging zeal, by which he was indeed so much distinguished, that, in a satire men

tioned by Wood, he is dignified by the title of Arch-visitor; an appellation which he seems to have been industrious to deserve by severity and inflexibility for, not contented with the commission which he and his colleagues had already received, he procured six or seven of the members of Parliament to meet privately in Mr. Rouse's lodgings, and assume the style and authority of a committee, and from them obtained a more extensive and tyrannical power, by which the visitors were enabled to force the solemn League and Covenant and the negative Oath upon all the members of the University, and to prosecute those for a contempt who did not appear to a citation, at whatever distance they might be, and whatever reasons they might assign for their absence.

By this method he easily drove great numbers from the University, whose places he supplied with men of his own opinion, whom he was very industrious to draw from other parts, with promises of making a liberal provision for them out of the spoils of hereticks and malignants.

Having, in time, almost extirpated those opinions which he found so prevalent at his arrival, or at least obliged those, who would not recant, to an appearance of conformity, he was at leisure for employments which deserve to be recorded with greater commendation. About this time, many Socinian writers began to publish their notions with great boldness, which the Presbyterians, considering as heretical and impious, thought it necessary to confute; and therefore Cheynel, who had now obtained his doctor's degree, was desired, in 1649, to write a vindication of the doctrine of the Trinity, which he performed, and published the next year.

He drew up likewise a confutation of some Socinian tenets advanced by John Fry; a man who spent great part of his life in ranging from one religion to another, and who sat as one of the judges on the king, but was expelled afterwards from the House of Commons, and disabled from sitting in parliament. Dr. Cheynel is said to have shewn himself evidently superior to him in the controversy, and was answered by him only with an opprobrious book against the Presbyterian clergy.

Of the remaining part of his life there is found only an obscure and confused account. He quitted the presidentship of St. John's, and the professorship, in 1650, as Calamy relates, because he would not take the engagement; and gave a proof that he could suffer as well as act in a cause which he believed just. We have, indeed, no reason to question his resolution, whatever occasion might be given to exert it; nor is it probable that he feared affliction more than danger, or that he would not have borne persecution himself for those opinions which inclined him to persecute others.

He did not suffer much upon this occasion; for he retained the living of Petworth, to which he thenceforward confined his labours, and where he was very assiduous, and, as Calamy affirms, very successful in the exercise of his ministry, it being his peculiar character to be warm and zealous in all his undertakings.

This heat of his disposition, increased by the uncommon turbulence of the times in which he lived, and by the opposition to which the unpopular nature of some of his employments exposed him, was at last heightened to distraction, so that

he was for some years disordered in his understanding, as both Wood and Calamy relate, but with such difference as might be expected from their opposite principles. Wood appears to think, that a tendency to madness was discoverable in a great part of his life; Calamy, that it was only transient and accidental, though, in his additions to his first narrative, he pleads it as an extenuation of that fury with which his kindest friends confess him to have acted on some occasions. Wood declares, that he died little better than distracted; Calamy, that he was perfectly recovered to a sound mind before the Restoration, at which time he retired to Preston, a small village in Sussex, being turned out of his living at Petworth.

It does not appear that he kept his living till the general ejection of the Nonconformists; and it is not unlikely that the asperity of his carriage, and the known virulence of his temper, might have raised him enemies, who were willing to make him feel the effects of persecution which he had so furiously incited against others; but of this incident of his life there is no particular account.

After his deprivation, he lived (till his death, which happened in 1665,) at a small village near Chichester, upon a paternal estate, not augmented by the large preferments wasted upon him in the triumphs of his party; having been remarkable, throughout his life, for hospitality and contempt of

money.

CAVE*.

THE curiosity of the public seems to demand the history of every man who has, by whatever means, risen to eminence; and few lives would have more readers than that of the compiler of the GENTleMAN'S MAGAZINE, if all those who received improvement or entertainment from him, should retain so much kindness for their benefactor as to enquire after his conduct and character.

EDWARD CAVE was born at Newton, in Warwickshire, Feb. 29, 1691. His father (Joseph) was the younger son of Mr. Edward Cave, of Cave'sin-the-Hole, a lone house on the Street-road in the same county, which took its name from the occupier; but having concurred with his elder brother in cutting off the intail of a small hereditary estate, by which act it was lost from the family, he was reduced to follow in Rugby the trade of a shoemaker. He was a man of good reputation in his narrow circle, and remarkable for strength and rustick intrepidity. He lived to a great age, and was in his latter years supported by his son.

It was fortunate for Edward Cave, that, having a disposition to literary attainments, he was not cut off by the poverty of his parents from opportunities of cultivating his faculties. The school of Rugby, in which he had, by the rules of its foundation, a right to be instructed, was then in high re

This life first appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1754, and is now printed from a copy revised by the author, at my request, in 1781. N.