willing to share in the prerogatives connected with the profession of them. The religion that needs the aid of the secular power they learn to regard as false and detestable, or, at best, as suspicious; whilst indifferent spectators will ever judge most favourably of the creed of those that reject it, and who, they feel persuaded, would never expose themselves to the evils and ignominy of dissent if they were not thoroughly convinced of the justice of their cause. It has thus ever been the misfortune of the establishment to reckon among its advocates the interested and the heartless, and to awaken on the side of its opponents the suspicions and sympathies of the generous and the thoughtful. It may have clothed men in the livery of truth, but it has taught others, by its very bounty, to suspect whether it has ever made them its true friends. Whatever is injurious to our persuasion of the sincerity of another, is so far injurious to the interests of Christian love.

Either

Further, so long as the present system is allowed, the church of Christ must continue divided. the voluntary principle must be abandoned, or ecclesiastical establishments must cease. The creed of the churchman is that the magistrate ought to compel all the subjects of the empire to diffuse what he himself believes to be true; the voluntary holds, that the truth should be diffused only by the free-will offerings

of its disciples. The one denies not the lawfulness of the practice of voluntaryism, and therefore may be a member of a voluntary community; the other altogether denies the lawfulness or justice of compulsion in matters of faith, and therefore can never consistently support a system which is professedly founded upon it. If, therefore, it be a wished-for blessing that the church of Christ should be visibly one, that all coldness, and divisions, and heartless union, should cease, the only scheme that can realize our prayer is that which proposes the abolition of the present system, to which a large proportion of the Christians of this country are conscientiously opposed, and the universal establishment of that system which, however some may fancy inefficient in practice, all acknowledge to be in principle eminently consistent with the example and precepts of primitive times. A churchman may become a member of a congregation that pays its own minister, and defrays its own expenses; a voluntary can never consistently become a member of the state church, else he must sanction by his presence what his principles condemn. Whether a voluntary can be a Christian, and whether with voluntaries churchmen ought to hold any Christian communion, are doubtless questions that admit of dispute; but there can be no question, if these be answered affirmatively, that no union can be perma

nent which implies an admission of the right of one Christian to impose his creed upon another. Were our own sect established, we should immediately leave its fellowship, in the persuasion that it is most impious to deny to all, save to them that think and act with us, the same liberty of thinking and acting which we claim in justice for ourselves. Dissenters wage a war of extermination against everything in the form of compulsory support. Till the alleged right of imposition of faith be withdrawn, our union can never be complete.

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It is this practice of compulsion in state churches which makes it hopeless that Christian love, or "unity of faith" itself, can ever make Christians visibly one, so long as they are continued. Charity and intelligence" may doubtless do much towards changing the system, but till it be changed they can do little towards promoting our union, and scarcely more towards promoting our peace. They may give meekness to our faith, and candour to our judgment, but they can never alter or annihilate them. They teach us-to wish men well, not necessarily to think men right, to give up for the interests of the truth our privilege, but to maintain inviolate our principles. To uphold a system which is daily inflaming the passions of men against the gospel,-awakening their sympathies on the side of error,—interfering with the

liberty of the subject, and thus aiding rebellion,— throwing scandals into the path of the infidel,making the church a "lodging-place" for the "fowls of heaven,”—changing "the house of prayer" for all nations" into a den of thieves,"-literally, destroying more souls in eight thousand of its parishes than it saves in the other two,—were no charity, unless it be charity to extend and perpetuate the "kingdom of darkness," and to hinder the progress of the "kingdom of God." They that speak so often of the power of this principle, which is, doubtless, in its place omnipotent, forget that in the question of communion its only office is to induce the church to admit into its fellowship such Christians as the ignorance or prejudice of a by-gone age had excluded, not to persuade the excluded to sign or allow the tests of the church. Its office is to abolish the tests, not to confirm them; to do away with all admission of the propriety of compulsion in matters of faith, not to bribe dissenters into sinful acquiescence.

And while the system divides the church by its unscriptural tests,-amongst which is an admission of the rightness of persecution, and by its gross bribery on behalf of error or truth, it is equally injurious to that unity of heart which, even more, perhaps, than unity of faith, is so essential to the prosperity of our common cause. They that will sit in

the place of power and dignity in Christ's kingdom are sure to "move the indignation" of their brethren; and therefore it is decided, that no one shall “ exercise dominion" in the church but its Ruler and Head.*

21. The next grave charge which we urge against this system is, that as the creed and patronage of the established sect are both of them under the control of the civil ruler, itis eminently injurious to the spirituality of the church.

The creed of the establishment is the creature of the governing powers, and they may change or modify it as they please. Whatever articles they condemn they have a right to remove; whatever others they believe they have a right to introduce ;† and not only have they a right to make such changes, but they ought to make them if they believe them well founded. A Socinian government is as much bound, if the principle of an establishment be admitted, to establish Socinianism; a Romish govern

* Matt. xx. 24. Dr. Chalmers suggests, that more charity is all that is wanted to secure the unity of Christians-a remedy quite applicable to dissenters, but useless if intended to promote their union with the advocates of compulsion. Christ removed the "indignation of his disciples" by forbidding all ecclesiastical assumption, not by inculcating love. Besides, principle is involved in this question. To sanction by our practice state churches, or passively to allow them, is not charity, but sin.

+ Note G.