CHAPTER IV.

Application of the General Subject, to the actual State of Religious Affairs in this Country.

THAT man cannot be well acquainted with the ecclesiastical history of this country, who wants to be informed, that there was a time, now long since past, when sound Church principles did not constitute the high road to ecclesiastical preferment. It is not to be wondered at therefore that those Divines, who were then looking upward, should not be solicitous to cultivate an acquaintance with that species of knowledge, which might tend only to throw stumbling blocks in their own way.

In consequence however of their desertion of those fundamental principles, which the great Divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries so ably maintained, the knowledge of every thing which related to the Church, as a divine institution, was by degrees so lost, that the science of divinity

became a very different study from what it once was, and what it ever ought to be.

And though the Clergy, the sound part of them I mean, have for some time been recovering the lost ground; and oldfashioned divinity has been gradually rising in estimation; we are still doomed to reap the fruits of former negligence, in that lamentable ignorance on Church subjects, now so generally prevailing in every rank of the community; from that of the lord, down to that of the peasant. Whilst these fruits we must continue to reap, till the mass of the community, should it be the will of Providence that such be the case, be made properly acquainted with the nature of the Church, of which they profess to be members; the duty which in that character they owe to it; and the advantages which, in case they shall not be wanting to themselves, they may confidently expect to derive from it.

A principal argument which the Roman Catholics never fail to make use of against the Protestants of this country is, that their separation from the Church of Rome has proved the prolific parent of endless di

visions among themselves; and that their only way to unity must be, by a return to the communion of that Church from which they have departed.

That there are numberless divisions among us, we are constrained to acknowledge; and deeply lament. At the same time we maintain, that the remedy for these unhappy divisions remains with ourselves; provided we have the grace to apply it. What the Clergy have to do in this case, is to maintain the Church of England on that high ground, on which she undoubtedly stands. Whilst as a Church possessing a perfect constitution in herself, she is in no need of external communion with any other Church, to render the unity among her members compleat. For the Church of England, be 'it well remembered, is now, what, in herself, she ever was; a Church of Apostolic origin and though for some time under partial thraldom to the usurping tyranny of Rome, restored by the Reformation to her own inherent rights and independance. Let the Church of England therefore be but at unity in herself, and the prayer of the di

vine Head of the universal Church, so far as she is concerned in it, will be fulfilled.

Whilst, by neglecting to bring the people of this country to a proper acquaintance with this important subject, the Clergy are instrumental in giving an advantage to the Church of Rome on this head; to which that Church, in this country at least, has no pretensions; an advantage of which an artful proselyting priest would not fail to avail himself, as often as an uninformed, unsuspecting Protestant fell in his way.

It would be foreign to my present design in writing to members of the Church of England, for the purpose of guarding them against Schism in their own Church, to introduce the subject of the Church of Rome; to the notorious corruptions of whose spiritual Head, as to a prolific source, may be traced up all the Schism, which now disturbs and disgraces Christendom. But when I consider what effect frontless assurance and unqualified pretensions, repeatedly and loudly urged on one side; and what apparent admissions and liberal concessions taking their more silent course on the other; may produce on the

minds of unsuspecting Protestants, strangers to the insidious arts and imposing fallacies of the Romish Priesthood; the reader may excuse me, at a time when the hereditary horror for Popery seems to be losing what ought to be its constitutional impression on our minds; for saying a short word, to guard him against that greatest enemy of our Protestant Church, who professedly boasts no change of principles; principles originally raised on the unsound ground of usurpation and tyranny, which no possession or submission could warrant, no length of time or prescription sufficiently confirm.

Admitting however our danger from the Church of Rome to be, though a possible, still an extreme case, I confine myself to what falls under immediate notice; that very common case of Christians, professing themselves members of the Church of England, being drawn away, alas! into conventicles; and, generally speaking, it is to be feared, for want of seasonable information. "The lips of the priest, we "are told, should keep knowledge; and "the people should seek the law at his