tianity as those which occasioned our revolt from papal dominion. Setting out upon the principle (which indeed is the only just principle of a national church,) that they were entitled to the same authority in religion, which the state possessed in civil matters, and perceiving that the latter allows none but its own laws to be enforced, and its own monarch to be obeyed within its territory, Protestant Church Establishments attempted to exclude from their legal domain, all opinions and all rites different from their own; most inconsistently denying to others those sacred rights of freedom of opinion and of worship, upon man's title to which depended the justification of that reformation of which they themselves were the offspring; attempting to maintain their denial by fines and imprisonment, and even by the stake itself, and at last slowly and grudgingly conceding to dissenters, not liberty, but only a sufferance-a toleration. Then the strong political power which was derived from their wealth and their high station in the national councils they employed to strip those who left their communion, of political, and even partially of civil rights, weaving over them a galling chain, of which the last hold has but lately been broken. But it is needless to enlarge; for all our domestic history shows, that our churches, from the first moment of their establishment, have felt it to be an indispensible condition of their existence, to be constantly struggling for the maintenance of privileges that were ever calling up new assailants,—to be keeping down their enemies,— to be resisting every national improvement which might add to their strength, to be upholding every old and crazy institution upon which they had been trained to lean for support, -to be ever intermeddling with political movements, lest they should shape a course hostile to their interests. And for all these worldly purposes, they have invariably struggled in the name of Religion; whose prosperity, they have taught the world to believe, was suspended upon the maintenance of principles, customs, and institutions, which civilized men had learned to hate; and whose very existence, they are even now representing to be dependent in Ireland, upon the continuance of the most flagrant abuses, and the ascendency of a most unworthy and scandalous faction.

It is indeed utterly impossible that an institution, which is rooted, so to speak, in the soil of a country, and which entwines

its branches with the fabric of the constitution, should not be keenly alive to every movement of the system which nourishes and upholds it. It is vain to think, that you can divest of a political character and vocation, any church which is endowed with territorial wealth, which has a fixed share in the produce or the rental of a country, and derives from the existing laws peculiar honours, and artificial powers. Short of an entire disjunction from the state, there is no change, no reform which can cure this evil, because none can free it from dependence upon the stability of the state's political arrangements. This will ever impel it to court the favour of the most powerful or most friendly party, and to act with it as a zealous ally, using the stations which it has all over the country as so many political watchtowers, whence to discern danger and give the alarm.

Upon the afflicting and dishonourable condition to which Establishments have thus inevitably reduced religion, dissenters have hitherto looked with grief, indeed, but with comparative inaction; they have contented themselves with putting forth protestations, with standing aloof,—with disclaiming for themselves all concurrence in, or responsibility for the measures which were thus injuring Christianity; they have imagined that their duty was done, when they seceded or dissented. An unwise and unmanly policy; for-not to mention that it was their duty as citizens to shake off oppression, that it was their duty as patriots, to remove the shade which its Ecclesiastical Institutions have thrown over their country's reputation for freedom—it ever has been, and now more especially, it is their duty as christians, not to content themselves with keeping Christianity unhurt within their own narrow and sequestered sects, but whereever they see it injured, wherever they see it abused, to step forward to its rescue. For Christianity is a common heritage, and not the property of churchmen alone. A conviction of this has given birth to our Association. We are uniting to disabuse the world of those misconceptions which past and present events have been so fitted to create; to show to all that Christianity is not a political religion; that not it, but its perversion, has been the cause of wars abroad and tumults within; that it never has needed the support of the State with its persecuting taxation, its unjust monopoly, its ruining splendour; that it does not fear the advance of the human race; that its fate is not linked to

that of failing constitutions or despairing factions; that, the same now as in its infancy, it is strong in its native resources, it is immutable, it is immortal; and having seen, in past times, the most solid human empires rise and perish by its side, it looks upon the agitations in the political world, present and future, with unconcern; confident, that let storms and tempests come whence they may, it will survive them. And to our present union we are the more incited, because we know, that while acting for the vindication of the character of Christianity in the eyes of men at large, we are bringing about a reinvigoration of her internal condition. We firmly believe, that when the state shall relax its hold of the church, and depart with all its substantial wealth and all its glittering honours, it will be felt as a relief throughout her borders, and will be celebrated as a jubilee in ages to come. Health and new life will rush through the veins of the liberated captive, as the fetters are falling from her limbs and light is bursting in upon her eyes.

But this is not all. For I would proceed to say, that in addition to these reasons for our Association, which are general, permanent, and have always been of, perhaps, the same strength as at present, there are others which are pressed upon us by the peculiar circumstances and characteristics of the times. If, indeed, we desired nothing farther than to gratify a sort of wild vengeance by the abolition of the existing church Establishments, I daresay we might sit still; for the age seems to be sufficiently alive to their evils, and political force alone will, probably, ere long occasion the downfal of some of them. But we contemplate, I trust, something more rational than a bare destruction of obnoxious institutions,—we seek to take precautions against the reconstruction of the same or similar, we aim at the introduction of a new and better policy; and, therefore, even from the dangers with which the political atmosphere is now threatening Established Churches, I would venture to draw another argument in favour of our Association. For he who has thoroughly examined the state of public opinion upon this head, will find it not to be so truly satisfactory as its first appearance may show; he who has scrutinized the grounds which have united so many men of talent and activity in hostility to the present churches, will find them to be various, to be contradictory, sometimes to be unsound. Many indeed are impelled by worthy sentiments,

somewhat vague perhaps, and not very firmly rooted, respecting what is just, and fitting, and due to liberty; but others know no better reason than political enmity to the party dominant in the churches; others, we must confess, are animated by a blind hatred to religion itself; while numbers have been driven by the prodigious hardships of our social condition,-in which industry the most unremitting, directed by art the most skilful, is no longer sure of its accustomed reward,-to look to the ruin of our wealthy churches as a source of present relief, as nearly the last stay against a raging convulsion left to a suffering and staggering people. Impelled by these, and various other motives, more or less worthy, a vast multitude of citizens, from every quarter and condition of political society, have, it is true, united in a determination that something shall be done to rectify our Ecclesiastical System: but, at present, I fear, their union extends no farther; each party has its own ulterior views; one contemplates only retrenchment and reform; another would willingly proceed in a career of indiscriminate devastation; while few indeed would act from the right motive, or be prepared to substitute for the present, a plan of justice and permanent utility. What shall be the immediate result to which matters are thus irresistibly tending, no one can predict. Human sagacity fails to foretel what will ensue, when, by an effort of nearly all parties, the concerns of our churches are thrown upon the hands of a legislature agreed upon no principle, ready with no plan, but doomed to fight its way to a peaceful settlement of this tremendous question, through the heat and dust of debate, amid the clamours of contending factions, and the breathless onlook ing of a whole people.

But though the issue is thus in darkness, our present duty is clear: In such circumstances it becomes us to step forward to the assistance of our country. Christianity is interested, that the grand Ecclesiastical Revolution which seems to be impending over our heads, shall not appear to the world, or to posterity, to have been the coarse workmanship of barbarous spoliation, or the effect of a temporary pressure,irrational, but resistless; far less the triumph of the enemies of our faith. We must give it, if we can, the character of a second Reformation, not less illustrious than the first. Above all, we are interested that the new platform of Ecclesiastical

Polity shall be broad and level, and free and permanent. For this end the aid of christian advisers is peculiarly requisite. From the beginning of time, civil legislators have gone wrong upon the matter of religion. Ever have they assumed that it was a fit subject of human legislation; a thing to be exalted or depressed, to be fashioned, and governed, and propagated by the national rulers; nor, indeed, was it easy for unaided reason to perceive how a matter which ever agitates so powerfully human society, could safely be left beyond the jurisdiction of the appointed guardians of national order. Possessed with this false opinion, in which they were encouraged by faithless churchmen, of their right and duty to interfere with it, statesmen have invented a thousand schemes,—each one of them being a blunder, and all prolific of injury to religion, of weakness to the state, to every grade of society of complaining and strife with frequent deluges of blood. Such has been the policy of preceding statesmen. What security have we that the present race is more enlightened or more disinterested? To quit the control of religion, so long enjoyed, they may regard as a dangerous experiment: it will, most assuredly, be a large sacrifice of their power. Their courage or their virtue may fail them; or, perhaps they may fly to that expedient, lately adopted in France, of pensioning, equally, all religions,—an expedient which, bearing indeed a fair show of liberality and wisdom, is yet really founded upon principles the most objectionable, and a policy the most insidious and fatal; for it places, in the meantime, error on the same footing,-not of justice, but of favour,-with truth; and, hereafter, threatens to consummate a wretched harmony of religious sects, through the union which it effects of their temporal interest, and their common slavery to the master who pays them. This, or some other device less obnoxious, perhaps, to a free and religious people, but equally adverse to justice and sound policy, will, I fear, be first tried by rulers who have been born and bred up under the complicated and Gothic system of these lands, and are, as yet, ignorant of a better. Against such a catastrophe we have at present no assurance; but of this we are assured, that we, as christians, are in possession of the true secret of a just Ecclesiastical rule. Let us come forward then, and press it upon their notice! Let us disclose to them a sure way of giving respect and encouragement to religion, and yet of