gredient in the composition of evangelical benevolence; nor can a single syllable in support of such uncompassionate persuasions be produced from the Christian Scriptures.

Were even a murderer committed to my custody, I should endeavour to impress upon his mind a deep sensation of the injustice and atrocity of his offence: I should labour to convince him that exclusion from society was indispensable, not only for the good of the community, but for the prevention also of accumulated guilt upon his own head: yet I would address him in the kind language of expostulation and rebuke: I would regard him with generosity and tenderness: I would prove myself his friend by every exertion of sympathetic attention in my power to his most calamitous condition: I would shew, that I loved the man, though I abhorred his offence: if he were hungry, I would feed him; if he were thirsty, I would give him drink: nor should I despair of overcoming evil with good; of producing remorse unfeigned, and substantial reformation, by this lenient and peaceful process, Thus would my own benevolent affections be essentially improved, the great law of brotherly love, enacted in the Gospel, fulfilled by a just obedience; and a brand plucked from the fire to repentance and salvation.

But present this subject to your attention in another and a very interesting attitude. All of us, I presume, are ready to confess, that we have repeatedly violated our rule of life,the precepts of Christ-in opposition to the convictions of knowledge and the voice of conscience. Now, can we discover a plan in the dispensations of divine government to subdue our minds by punishment and restraint into a sense of religious duty? Or rather must we not perceive an unceasing endeavour on the part of our heavenly Father to recover the affections of his children by indulgences and mercies; conformably to our best conceptions of a placable and gracious being; by making his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, by sending rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, to gladden the hearts both of the just and unjust?

Did not the Saviour of the world assiduously cherish deluded sinners with peculiar commiseration and most affectionate regard, as needing beyond all others the medicinal application of his restoring love to the maladies of their hearts and understandings? Now these severities and oppressions which the high and lofty one, who inhabiteth eternity, does not practise on the reptile man, shall that.

reptile presume to practise, under I know not what pretence of subduing, forsooth, to reformation, on a creature of the same feelings and infirmities with himself?

But an adversary, perhaps, will be forward with this objection: "The opinions, maintained and propagated by you, are calculated to create dissatisfaction with the measures of government, and eventually to overthrow our establishments in Church and State." My reply is this: If our constitution be radically defective, nor intrinsically adapted to promote the moral and intellectual happiness of the subject, the true end of civil institutions; it is the duty, ye will all allow, of every man, a duty paramount and antecedent to any political connexion, to point out those deficiencies, and to labour their correction by every pacific operation in his power; I mean by the rational procedure of argumentative persuasion unaccompanied by any species of violence and coercion; which are modes of reformation fit only for barbarians to employ on brutes.

Again; if governors be conscious to themselves of their own rectitude and virtue; if their primary motive be a purely patriotic wish to advance the welfare of the governed without too partial a respect to their own interests and aggrandisement; such governors have no

reason for solicitude from the calumnies of any factious writer, who has undertaken the hopeless task of arguing men out of their feelings and experiences, and of urging them to destroy those salutary institutions, which render them virtuous and prosperous and happy. No: pure and upright ministers may safely deride the impotent malignity of their opponents. Abuse and calumny, so far from endangering the condition of such ministers, will contribute to their reputation and security: as the mist, which obscures the horizontal sun, forms gradually under his potent influence those silver fleeces, that add new glories to his meridian resplendency. The importunate croakings of rooks and ravens cause no disturbance or interruption to the king of birds, as "he sails with supreme dominion through the fields" of æther.

Or I might say, that all human institutions must ever remain imperfect, and susceptible of improvement, from the very nature of their authors: that my efforts are exerted for the rectification of our political dispositions by means altogether alien from persecution, animosity, and bloodshed: and that a forceful molestation of such attempts to reform what was originally defective, and what Time, the

great destroyer, without occasional interference, must daily and hourly vitiate with clandestine ravages, is a crime much more heinous than the crime of sedition in a state; in proportion as a violation of institutes merely human falls short in guilt of an opposition to the divine purpose in the regulation of the universe. And in this case, where the competency of judgment in the contending parties may be reasonably taken into the general account, the opinions of men, become unstable by whirling in the giddy sphere of interest and ambition, may peradventure be justly deemed less respectable, than the sober decisions of those, who stand aloof from such perverting influences, and have discarded the gorgeous and fascinating idolatries of a lucrative Ambition for the simple and sober worship of unendowed Philosophy.

But I will propose a case striking and decisive, with reference to my own: wherein, though the dignity of the respective characters will admit no comparison, the transactions themselves come attended with every correspondency of circumstance; and are indeed intrinsically the same. My example shall be taken from the conduct of the primitive Evangelists and in the mean time, I cannot but premise a declaration of most problematical