With this she returned to the city at which the assizes had been held, just as they were concluded. The two judges were in the act of descending through the cathedral nave, after partaking of the holy sacrament, when the petitioner cast herself at their feet, and held forth her document. Baron G. was notorious for his unflinching obduracy; but her devotion and energy were irresistible. He received her petition; and her brother's sentence was eventually commuted to transportation for life. But his story is not yet finished. The forger was placed in the hulks prior to transportation; and, before this took place, he had forged a pass or order from the Home Secretary's office for his own liberation, which procured his release, and he was never afterwards heard of.
This "Jeanie Deans," who was the means of saving the life of her unworthy relative, was described to me as a person of extraordinary force of character. Indeed it could not have been otherwise. She prevailed with the solicitor, who before had been a stranger both to her and her brother; with the main body of the prosecutors; with the petitioners in Scotland; and ultimately with the judge himself. My friend, who lived in his father's house during the several weeks she stayed there, told me, that, night and morning when he passed her door, she was always in audible prayer; and he was convinced that her success was attributable to her prayers having been extraordinarily answered. Her subsequent fate, even in this world, was a happy one. She became a wife and a mother, and possibly is so still.
ALFRED GATTY.
PASSAGE IN JEREMY TAYLOR.
It may not be useless or uninteresting to the readers of Bishop Jeremy Taylor to bring under their notice a point in which the editor of the last edition seems to have fallen into an error. In Part II. of the Sermon "On the Invalidity of a Death-bed Repentance" (p. 395.), the Bishop says:
"Only be pleased to observe this one thing: that this place of Ezekiel [i.e. xviii. 21.] is it which is so often mistaken for that common saying, 'At what time soever a sinner repents him of his sins from the bottom of his heart, I will put all his wickedness out of my remembrance, saith the Lord:' yet there are no such words in the whole Bible, nor any nearer to the sense of them, than the words I have now read to you out of the prophet Ezekiel."
Now the editor, as a reference for this "common saying," says in a note—
"* See Jer. xviii. 7, 8.:"
whence I suppose that he thinks that text to be the nearest quotation to it that can be found. But he has altogether overlooked the fact that this "common saying" is, as the Bishop has here quoted it, the exact form in which the first of the sentences at the beginning of Morning Prayer occurs in the Second Book of Edward, and down to the time of the last review, with the exception of the Scotch book. As it did not agree with the translation of the Bible then in use, Bishop Taylor seems to have considered it as a paraphrase. This also is the view which Chillingworth took of it, who makes this reflection on it, in a sermon preached before Charles I.:
"I would to God (says he) the composers of our Liturgy, out of a care of avoiding mistakes, and to take away occasion of cavilling our Liturgy, and out of fear of encouraging carnal men to security in sinning, had been so provident as to set down in terms the first sentence, taken out of the 18th of Ezekiel, and not have put in the place of it an ambiguous, and (though not in itself, but accidentally, by reason of the mistake to which it is subject) I fear very often a pernicious paraphrase: for whereas they make it, 'At what time soever ... saith the Lord;' the plain truth, if you will hear it, is, the Lord doth not say so; these are not the very words of God, but the paraphrase of men."