he has been constantly at war with, and has used his best endeavours to strike them from the face of the earth.

"But let me ask the candid reader, if Mr. Jefferson's regection of the great doctrines of the trinity, of the atonement of Christ, of the original corruption and entire depravity of the unrenewed heart, of justification by the Redeemer's righteousness, of regeneration by the special agency of the Holy Spirit, and of a state of interminable bliss, or endless woe, upon the close of life; does not constitute him indeed and in truth an atheist? For certainly if there are any essential principles of the gospel, these are of the number. Discard these principles, and you change the face of the religion of Christ. You undermine the basis, you tear away the pillars of the christian's hope. You annul the charter of his privileges. You blot out the light that guides and cheers him, and you cast darkness and gloom over all his prospects. If there are no essential truths belonging to the gospel, the whole system is trivial and unimportant, as Mr. Jefferson has observed; but if there are, he is a high-handed offender against heaven, indeed, who dares to assail them thus!! This is the character of the man, who has introduced, into our assembly, a bill for establishing Religious Freedom in opinion and sentiment; yea, he is the very man who, in his notes on Virginia, has observed, "It matters not to me whether my neighbour believes in one God, twenty Gods, or no God; it neither picks my pockets nor breaks my legs."

"That it is the design of the author of this bill, to brand if possible, all those precious truths of God's word, which the pious in every age, have received as venerable and sacred, have embraced and loved, and have found the support and rejoicing of their hearts, is a fact that no one who reads it will deny. The assertion that the cry of heresy is always raised against those who do not openly avow these great truths of religion, which we have named, we boldly aver, is a bare faced and notorious falshood. The cry is simply raised against those who have adopted principles grossly corrupt and deleterious, like our author, principles laying the axe at the root of religion and virtue. The insinuation which is made, that a spirit of usurpation and intolerance, now actuates the friends of orthodoxy is base and groundless. The attempt of Mr. Jefferson, to fix upon them this odious epithet, and by that means to subject them to reproach and hatred, is one of the foul and unprincipled artifices, to which malignity has often resorted, to hunt down a class of men, of whom the world is not worthy."

The utmost extent of the wishes of our clergymen is the liberty of excluding from our religious societies, these who embrace tenets, in their view, at war with pure christianity and subversive of vital godliness; tenets, dangerous to the souls of men, and destructive of human virtue and felicity. This liberty, certainly, cannot be denied them, without infringing the unalienable rights of conscience, and

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compelling them to acknowledge that individual, as a brother, and to extend to him the hand of fellowship, of whom they are persuaded, that he is an enemy of the cross of Christ, that he is undermining the best interests of man for this life, and blighting his best hops for the eternal world."

Without making any remarks upon the spirit and temper in which these essays appear to have been written; I rejoice in God, that our national and state constitutions secure, as far as human writing's go, our religious liberties with magnanimous and christian liberality. But though guarded by even this Palladium, yet were the church allied to the state and armed with its power, those who should dare think for themselves, and not of the denomination protected by law, would soon find out whether they had the couarge of martyrs.

Mr. Jefferson has observed in one of his private letters, "that the writer of these essays was the first man who ever called in question his religious sentiments, and much more, that ever branded him with the appellation of Atheist." He further observes, "from my earliest youth I have ever had a great and reverential regard, for religion and for the ordinances of God: but at the same time, I do believe that there are those who are set for a defence of the gospel, who abuse its privileges, and trample upon the sacred rights of conscience. For it will be acknowledged by all, that conscience is the throne of God in the heart of man; and whoever requires a violation of conscience, requires

more than ever God did: But it was to guard against these tramplers upon the rights of conscience, that the bill for establishing religious Freedom in this state, was introduced into the house: and whether it will prove beneficial or injurious to society generally, must be left to God and posterity." As the previous remarks quoted from the pamphlet, were principally founded on the bill for establishing religious freedom in the state of Virginia, we will subjoin the act for the benefit of our readers, many of whom, perhaps, have never seen it: An ACT for establishing RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, passed in the assembly of Virginia, in the beginning of the year 1786.

Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as acclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time;

that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher not of his own persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporal rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labors for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, more than our opinions, in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renouence this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow citizens he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles that very religion it is ment to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opi