about the application of charitable funds, are the chief grounds on which Stillingfleet’s episcopal career is eulogized by his admiring biographer. It strikes me as unsafe to judge of him simply by what that writer has advanced. Another and more spiritual aspect of his character, suggested by his sermons and other productions, is left untouched in those unsatisfactory memoirs.[367] [Sidenote: BISHOPS.] Patrick, made Bishop of Chichester in 1689, and of Ely in 1691, was a man of inferior ability to Stillingfleet, but of greater learning, perhaps of higher spiritual mark. Ranked amongst Latitudinarians through his early connection with John Smith and Henry More, he caught and infused into some of his writings a Platonic tincture; but as to the philosophical spirit of inquiry, cultivated in the Cambridge school, he was a perfect alien. He agreed, with the least moderate of the class, in a dislike to Puritanism, and went beyond them all in dogmatic emphasis and Anglican leanings. He distinguished between traditions to be rejected and traditions to be received--including amongst the latter, not only primitive testimony as to the transmission of Scripture, and the settlement of the Canon, but as to the doctrines of the Faith, and the polity of the Church. He insisted upon the efficacy of baptism as producing regeneration, and held that ordinance to be necessary for the salvation of infants.[368] As to the Lord’s Supper, he dwelt little upon its nature, but much upon its benefits, and the duty of frequent communion. His published sermons are not specimens of his general preaching, for they were mostly delivered on political and other public occasions. Some posthumous discourses on contentment, and resignation to the will of God, have been preserved, through accidental circumstances, not on account of any superior excellence.[369] [Sidenote: 1688–1702.]