be tortured, but the stronger prisoner breaks them through. They are mischievous, because they delay the progress of truth, and force it into a circuitous path which it would gladly avoid. And they are futile, because it will find a way, to whatever inconvenience it may put its followers. It were as promising an attempt to dam the ocean, or hold a comet with a kitestring, as to confine truth with such shreds as these. Such as has been their uniform effect, such, so long as they remain blended with human error, will it always be; one generation will believe, another will qualify and explain, and a third renounce them; and we would venture to predict on the general ground, even though we were far less authorized by recent appearances, that they who live some hundred years hence may read two volumes of elements, written in the sacred theology chair of the Andover institution, to show that the creed of that seminary frowns on the Assembly's Catechism, and that Bartlett and Spring were excellent Arminians.

The last two letters of Mr. Sparks are on the doctrine of the trinity. They contain an able statement of the argument, and happy illustrations of some difficult texts; and are particularly full on the subject of the two natures united in our Saviour. They are in effect a separate work on the subject, and as such we shall be happy at some future time to find an opportunity to recur them.

From the glance we have given at its history, we may remark how unreasonable is the attempt made to excite a feeling of veneration for the English church, as the representative of Protestantism. We have more than once heard it called "the oldest daughter of the protestant reformation." It was no child of the reformation; but the birth of an unblessed union be tween decrepid superstition and immature reason. Or if a daughter, it was like the thankless daughters of Lear. It had the spirit of a parricide. It drove the reformation out from its shelter to abide the "pelting of the pitiless storm," and we may thank a younger

branch of the family, that it did not perish there.-The English church delayed the progress of the reformation. The mind rose, when the light of a better day shone upon it, but one step from its deathlike posture. Prelacy watched it, and weighed it down with a load of fetters, which to this day its convulsive struggles have not wholly shaken off.-It broke the spirit of the reformation. It was as noble, pure, self devoting a spirit as ever religion kindled. But prelacy brought store of mitres, and corrupted it.-It oppressed the friends of the reformation. The best scholars, preachers, and men in the nation, deprived of their cures, forbidden to say a word for the great cause of protestantism, to which they had devoted their lives and were ready to resign them, shut up in English prisons, exiled to a precarious toleration on the continent, or living in contented destitution of almost all things in America, are vouchers of the dear filial love, which the church of England bore the reformation.

We say this not invidiously. (God forbid we should wish to wound,) but to meet an unmeaning appeal often made. Let the episcopal church in America make its election. If it considers itself a distinct body from that in England, let it answer to no charges except what affect itself; but then let it take such rank as its own deserts may warrant, and not claim a stock of merit bequeathed to it by English worthies. If on the other hand, it will stay itself on the reputation of the English establishment, let it be bold and consistent, and assume that reputation in a mass. This it may find perhaps to be rather a burden, than a prop. The history of that establishment, is, to too great an extent to be subject of boasting, a history of selfishness, chicanery, and violence. From the time when Henry VIII. from a bad lust of power, organized a religious authority dependent on the royal will, or from a meaner passion threw off subjection to the papal see, till the passing of the needlessly cruel act of uniformity, under Charles II. the infamous law which deprived protestant England

in one day, of the services of two thousand men, the best boast of the protestant name, and with a more wanton severity exiled them Leyond the reach of those, who would have stood between them and starvation, it is a history of unrelenting strictness when in power, and of abject arifice, and false professions in disgrace. Since then, through some changes of fortune, and with the loss of the power of persecuting, wrested from it by the growth of better principles in politics, it has continued, doubtless with the exceptions which excellent individuals make in every such community,-to breathe the baughty, obstinate, exclusive and indolent spirit of an establishment; and the last act of public importance, by which it is known, was the refusing to the worthiest members

* "Have you never read, what desolations Laud brought upon our fathers, whilst yet in your church? How many hundreds of them were sequestered, driven from their livings, excommunicated, persecuted in the high-commission court, and forced to leave the kingdom for not punctually conforming to all the ceremonies and rites; and not daring to tell their people, that they might lawfully profane the sabbath by gambols and sports; and to publish from their pulpits the permission of the King to break the command of GOD-And yet you ask-Were your fathers ever persecuted while they continued in the church?

"Pray! what was it peopled the savage deserts of North America? Was it not the thousands of persecuted and oppressed families, who fled from tyrannising BISHOPS? Who not being suffered to worship quietly in their native country, as their consciences directed; sought a peaceful retreat from the rage of their Fellow-Christians, amongst more hospitable Indians.-To omit a thousand acts of cruelty, which through several successive reigns our fathers suffered not only from, but when actually in. the Church. Did she not at last, in a most arbitrary and unrighteous manner cast out at once above two thousand of them, excellent and pious ministers, and abandon them, and their starving families, to great poverty and distress? To heighten that distress, did not your Church, banish them five miles from any city. burrough, or church in which they had before served: and thereby put them at a proper distance from their acquaintance and friends, who might minister to their relief? Did she not by another ACT forbid their meeting to worship GoD, any where but in your own churches, under the penalties of heavy fines, imprisonments, and banishment to foreign lands?

"In consequence of these cruel AcTs, were not vast numbers of

of its communion release from a useless obligation, which it went against their consciences to take. This let the American church, if it ever be disposed to think with complacency of its parentage, remember; and let it remember, that, if the church, with the Puritans beside it, made a noble stand against the pope, it turned, as soon as it was safe, to grind its ally to powder with the civil arm. If it claims any inherited praise for a doctrine less extravagant, and an intelligible worship, let its forehead crimson for three hundred excellent ministers, (and Robinson of Leyden among them, deprived for scruples about a hood and surplice. And if it will take pride in the piety and learning of Tillotson and Burnet, let it allow some

pious clergymen, our forefathers, (once the glory of your Church) with multitudes of their people, laid in prisons among thieves and common malefactors, where they suffered the greatest hardships, indignities, oppressions; their houses were rifled, their goods made a prey to hungry informers, and their families given up to beggary and want. 'An estimate was published of near eight thousand Protestant Dissenters, who had perished in prison in the reign only of Charles II. By severe penalties inflicted on them, for assembling to worship GoD, they suffered in their trade, and estates in the compass of a few years, at least two millions; and list of sixty thousand persons was taken, who had suffered on a religious account, betwixt the Restoration and the Revolution."*. Behold, the groans and the blood of myriads of oppressed Puritans, which cry beneath the altar, How long, O LORD! But you are deaf to all their groans-And with insensibility enough ask— Were your fathers ever persecuted?—

"But the Presbyterian and Independent Churches have each in their day of power, discovered as much, and indeed more of that Spirit. Too much of that evil Spirit, it is acknowledged, they have each shewn. But surely there is no comparison betwixt the cruelties and oppressions of your Church, and of theirs. Your little finger has been thicker than their loins.”—Dissenting Gentlemen's Letters, p. 82-84.

Acts of Parliament were the artillery of the establishment. Its small arms discharged such missiles as these, in a tract ascribed to archbishop Parker, and quoted by Neal, i. 572. He calls the * Vid. Neal's Hist. Purit. vol. iv. p. 554.

The English presbyterians and independents are not to be acquitted of a persecuting spirit, but their acts of oppression were of a much milder character. Cromwell's ordinance for ejecting scandalous, ignorant und insufficient ministers and schoolmasters (passed in 1654) allowed to the party ejected a convenient time for his removal, and reserved three fifths tor the support of his family. There is no religious tyranny of his on record like that of the Act of Uniformity.

abatement to be made from such pretensions, for the attrocities that "damn to everlasting fame" the memory of Laud.

In this country, a country reserved as it seems by providence, for the last experiment, whether man can bear and consent to be free, good, intelligent, and happy, whether those principles may yet prevail which have hitherto been kept down by his ignorance, his vices and his pride, it is not perhaps much to be feared that institutions, the poor relic of a catholic and feudal age, the naked marrowless skeleton of the gaudy thing they were, should ever gain a permanent establishment. They seem to have no congeniality with the spirit of the times. They grow in an unpropitious soil, and when the sun is up, will be scorched, and because they have no root will wither away. But if we should prove to be deceived in this, if here too the best hopes of philanthropy were doomed to be again struck down, if hither too religion, pure and undefiled, should be pursued,―pursued to her last retreat, where, for the sake of rendering a spontaneous obedience, and breathing an unfettered prayer, she was willing to sit at her board with famine, and lay herself to rest on rocks, we trust that the spirit will not be dead which spoke in the words of one of our own divines,-"if the land will not help the woman, let her go into another wilderness."

non-conformists "schismatics, bellie-gods, decevers, flatterers, fools, such as have been unlearnedlie brought up in profan occupations; puffed up in arrogancie of themselves, chargeable to vanities of assertions: of whom it is feared that they make posthast to be anabaptists and libertines, gone out from us; but belike never of us; differing not much from donatists, shrinking and refusing ministers of London; disturbers, factious, wilful entanglers, and encumberers of the consciences of their herers, girders, nippers, scoffers, biters, snappers at superiors, having the spirit of irony, like to audiani, smelling of donatistrie, or of papistrie, rogatianes, circumcellians, and pelegians."

THE END.