SIR ROBERT SIBBALD. 49 



Leighton, whose " high toned spirituality made 

 him overlook the importance attached by vulgar 

 opinion to the outside forms and fashions of re- 

 ligion,"* should diligently inculcate such advice 

 at a period when bitter hatred and rancorous 

 hostility against each other had completely ex- 

 cluded pure Christian charity from the bosom 

 of all sects, is scarcely to be wondered at, but 

 such opinions may be overstrained ; and in his 

 own person, they led even him into compliances 

 that were scarcely consistent, and which have to 

 this day left a blot upon a name otherwise res- 

 plendent for piety and virtue. It is worthy of 

 observation also, that there are many points ot 

 Loighton's character, and tone of thinking and 

 writing, that may be considered favourable to the 

 Romish ritual, though not to its faith.f His own 



to truth and error, which depraved both their sentiments 

 and dispositions, which relaxed the springs of Christian 

 integrity and conduct, and gradually brought them to call 

 good evil and evil good, to put light for darkness, and 

 darkness for light." Boyue and Bennet's History of the 

 Dissenters, vol. ii. pages 305-6, second edition. 



* Pearson's Life of Leighton. 



t The following quotation from Pearson's Life will justify 

 the remark in the text, " Leighton was not by nature 

 morose and ascetic ; yet something of a cloisteral com- 

 plexion appears to have been wrought in him by the 

 character of the times, and by the society of men like- 

 minded with himself. Heplungedirto thesolitudes of devo- 

 tion, with a view to escape the polluting commerce of the 

 world, to gain the highest place of sacred contemplation, 

 and to maintain perpetual intercourse with Heaven. That 

 he was no friend to monastic seclusion is certain. He 



koned the greater number of the regular clergy in 



