deprived? Or would the Roman Catholics do well to consider the continued holding of these revenues by their Protestant rivals, as continued personal wrong to them, and to their clergy? Is it fit, then, that the call of the dissenters at this day-not for the transfer of the countenance and revenues of the state from the Episcopalian and Presbyterian Establishments to themselves—but solely for undoing all distinctions of party, and placing the long-favoured sects on the same level with the rest of the subjects, should be regarded as involving personal wrong to the office-bearers, or other members of these sects, or be traced to any malignant feelings against them? When the government of this country chooses to economize, and to reduce a number of unnecessary places, would the holders of these proscribed places judge correctly in ascribing the wholesome purpose, not to the just desire of the government of the country to save the money, or at least gratify the wishes of the nation, but to an intention of personal wrong to those reduced? But, after all, this is not our answer; for I do not know the individual who would argue for the reduction of the existing holders of ecclesiastical benefices, at least among the working clergy-who would plead for the immediate and entire withdrawment of the existing endowments-who would take one farthing from the present incumbents in the Scottish Establishment-or who, even in the wealthier Churches of England and Ireland, would propose to do more than reduce them within moderate limits, and, perhaps, equalize them more wisely and equitably among present labourers. Present holders must be provided for, and by the existing endowments; let new arrangements take effect on their successors. Let the English bench be kept up at its full amount, if the Church of England shall so desire it-let Ireland, if that be her mind, preserve all her bishops, and other clergy, and add to their number and let Scottish Presbyterians multiply their churches and their ministers as they will; but let all be done, no longer by the compulsory exactions of a partial legislation, but by the free-will offerings of the faithful, as under the law, and under the gospel.

V. The opponents of Church Establishments are the

friends and allies of infidels and anarchists; their cause, therefore, must be bad; and it should be shunned and reprobated by all who wish well either to religion, or social order.

This fallacy is probably in more general circulation than any I have noticed. In the writing and speeches of the defenders of Establishments it seems a favourite topic of declamation. And it must be owned that it is specious. It is well fitted to affect the timid of both sexes, and to rouse the loyal, the polite, the pious. "What! associate yourselves with low radicals! Support a cause which finds favour with the very refuse of British society! Give the hand of fellowship to the blasphemer, the scorner, the infidel! This is the motley array with which you are now marshalled against the Church of Christ; and by which you threaten to profane our Zion, to raze the walls of our Jerusalem."

It is easy to conceive the horror which such representations are fitted to inspire. It is true there are counter statements, that set forth facts of rather a staggering description. It is not denied, that not only men of the first order of talent, but many of the holiest among us, patterns of every Christian grace, and living models of the religion of the Bible, after the fullest and most patient and dispassionate examination of the subject they have been enabled to conduct, have long come to the conclusion, that the establishment of Christianity by civil force is antichristian. It must appear somewhat startling, too, that Christian people, who are examples to the community in the industry and sobriety of their habits, and their practice of the domestic virtues-who seem to be devout worshippers every first day of the week -who were never suspected of a civil or political outrage in the course of their lives-who, in Christian sentiment, conduct, and hope, resemble the very elite of the members of the Established Churches-nay, that the pastors under whom these Christians have been reared, and whose ministry they prefer, should, in large masses, ally themselves, for the very worst purposes, with the enemies of revealed religion, of sonnd morals and of social order. Nor can I doubt that many who have allowed themselves to be carried away by the fallacious pleadings to which

I allude, will pause when they reflect that men as unprincipled in creed, and as licentious in conduct, are found in the ranks of the defenders of the Church, as can, even by possibility, be found in those of her opponents; and that if the juxta-position and co-operation of men so diverse in character prove nothing unfavourable to the one side, neither can they to the other.

But the whole pleading is erroneous in principle. For, in the first place, it confounds the quality of a system with the character of those who befriend or oppose it. Truth and error depend for their essential qualities on the character neither of their friends, nor of their opponents. A good cause does not become bad when the bad befriend it; nor will a bad cause have its quality improv ed by its unhappily securing the favour of some wise or good men. The English Reformation, as far as it went, was nothing the worse because it originated in the bad passions of a heartless tyrant. Shall we despise chemistry because so many French infidels led the way in the brilliant course of chemical discovery? Or were the principles of mathematics, or the laws of motion, damaged, because Sir John Leslie taught them in the Scottish metropolis?-It violates principle in another view. It confounds cooperation for common objects, with fellowship in the Christian Church; or with the selections of Christian friendship, in private intercourse, or domestic life. To admit into the communion of the Christian Church the immoral, or the profane, is indeed a grievous departure from Christian principle, and is hardly less injurious to the Church itself, than to the unhappy persons so sinfully received into her communion. It debases the former; it deceives the latter; it removes the line by which the one should be visibly separated from the other. I have often been struck with the inconsistency of the defenders of Established Churches in this particular. They declaim against association with persons of loose opinions in religion and politics, while these very persons are in religious fellowship, in ecclesiastical communion, with those from whom they call upon us to keep aloof.*

• I am not to be understood as granting that the charge of infidelity brought against certain public men who favour the views of dissenters

C

We do not select immoral men or infidels for the private intimacies of Christian friendship, we do not receive them into the communion of our churches; but they censure us because on certain common points the infidel and we agree, and co-operate. Would you refuse to employ an able surgeon, or lawyer, because he differed from you in his religious opinions? Would you refuse to fight in the same ranks with the infidel soldier, for the liberties of your country, menaced by foreign oppression, or domestic tyranny? Would you decline to co-operate with an infidel, for your commom protection from plunder, or for extending the blessings of liberty to the enslaved, or scattering the necessaries of life among the starving? Would you desert the senate, because the infidel or the profligate may be there? Above all, would you shun him in these common duties, and unite with him in sacred services? Would you refuse him what truth dictates, that you agree with him as far as you do agree; and concede to him what truth forbids, by seeming to agree with him in those things, those sacred and all-important matters, in which you really differ.

No. We must not be frightened from our propriety by bugbears. We are bound to do whatever wise benevolence may dictate, and humility will allow, for the conversion of the unbelieving and the immoral; but we must desert no good cause for the erroneous belief, or the irregular life, of some who may defend it. The infidel may love liberty; and we shall not on that account love it less. And should all the infidels in the country lift their voices against the compulsory support of a religious sect, we shall not be silent because they speak out. thing is more deplorable, than to observe men with high religious profession shutting their eyes to evils which those whom they brand as infidels easily detect; defending by alleged religious sanction the most gross and immoral abuses, political or ecclesiastical, against which men of all parties raise their indignant voice; and labouring to stigmatize, as enemies of religion and of civil or

No

is well-founded. On the contrary, I am persuaded that there are cases in which it has been wantonly and unjustly brought forward.

der, those who exert themselves to have those abuses removed.

VI. The present movements against the Established Churches are described as causeless and wanton acts of aggression; they are even represented as deeply ungrateful on the part of those by whom they are made; and as indicating a restless dissatisfaction with the constitution of the country, which ought to be repressed.

Who was interfering with the dissenters, it has been asked, that they have all at once turned their forces against the Churches? Were they subjected to persecution, as their forefathers were-were any new measures, unfriendly to their religious interests adopted, or even meditated, by the legislature-were the slightest obstruction presented to the freedom of their religious worship, to the circulation of their writings, or even to the extension of their churches, they might have cause for complaint, or some excuse for their present excitement. But when the reverse of all this is the case-when they enjoy all the liberty that reasonable beings can desire— when so very lately, the disabilities under which they laboured, and which the legislation of our ancestors had handed down, have been generously revoked by the mildness and liberality of modern times, ingratitude stamps their present hostility; and there must be in those men a restless dissatisfaction with the usages of their country which it would be dangerous to favour, and which it is the duty of the legislature, and of all good men, to discountenance and put down. In short, modern dissenters are the fabled serpent, that stung the kind breast in which it was warmed to new life.

Now, if the following reasoning be correct, I think it will appear that the aggression is entirely on the other side, that is, on the side of the Established Churches, and of that unjust legislation, as I shall endeavour to show it is, by which those Establishments have been so long supported. They, we hold, have been aggressors of long standing, and they complain of us, because they think we endanger their power to make their aggression permanent. Assuming in this stage of our observations, what I shall presently attempt to prove, that the Estab