State, what are the consequences? 1. Many will suspect the whole to be a political trick. Priests hired by the State are a standing army to keep down obnoxious opinions. Hence in most countries, where religion is established, there has been a large proportion of secret infidels among the higher and literary classes. 2. The preferred sect will not be selected on account of the purity or liberality of its creed, but of its fitness for the purpose of the Civil Governor. 3. The great ends of public instruction will be too often neglected for sycophantic attendance on the great who dispose of Church honours. 4. The remuneration of the clergy will be oppressive and unequal; proportioned neither to labour nor merit. These and a thousand evils may and have resulted; and many of a political nature into 'which we cannot enter here. A privileged class is formed, among clergy and laity, enjoying peculiar rights and emoluments, and looking contemptuously on others, to the destruction of political equality, social harmony, and Christian liberality.

I shall only advert to three Church mysteries, by way of specimen. 1. Its Trinitarian Creed, falsely ascribed to Athanasius, which rivals any thing, and every thing in Popery, from which this forgery came, which is indeed a distilled essence of incomprehensibility. 2. The Lord's Supper. The 28th Art. declares this to be "not

only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another; but rather it is a sacrament of our redemption by Christ's death: insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the bread which we break is a partaking of the body of Christ, and likewise the cup of blessing is a partaking of the blood of Christ." To which the Catechism adds, that "the body and blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's supper." What this means it is hard to say. It may not be quite transubstantiation : it is not further from that than from Christian simplicity. Baptism is the third mystery; by which the child is taught to declare (Catechism) that he was "made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven;" and of whom the priest declares (Baptismal Service), after he has sprinkled him in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that he is regenerate. This is either miracle, magic, or superstition. Is it not deplorable that professed ministers of Christ, parents, sponsors, babes, should be brought together in the house of God, to perform such scenes, in which they affix no meaning to what they do, and believe in no reality, or else are under as gross superstitions as those of the wildest of our enthusiastic sects?

The Romish practice of invoking saints is

disclaimed by the Church of England; but the worship of the Trinity is retained, and with it, of necessity, those representations of the Deity which are in our view so degrading.

The 1st article commences with a fine description of the Deity: "There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, the maker and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible." Compare this with such adorations as the following: (Litany :)" O holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, three persons and one God: have mercy upon us, miserable sinners. Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers; neither take thou vengeance of our sins: spare us, Good Lord, spare thy people, whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood-by the mystery of thy holy incarnation; by thy holy nativity and circumcision; by thy baptism, fasting, and temptation; by thine agony and bloody sweat; by thy cross and passion; by thy precious death and burial; by thy glorious resurrection and ascen sion." And all this is addressed to GOD!

In Ordination, the Candidate must profess to be moved by the Holy Ghost; and the bishop, a frail, unauthorized mortal, pronounces-" Receive the Holy Ghost, for the office of a priest ;-whose sins thou forgivest, they shall be forgiven; whose sins thou retainest, they are retained; in the name

of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." Do these parties believe that the one bestows, and the other receives, the Holy Ghost? If so, they should speak more respectfully of Methodists, Southcottians, Swedenborgians; and if not, what is the ceremony? When Christ forgave sins, he was charged with blasphemy. There was but one way of disproving the charge; i. e. by a miracle, which he immediately wrought. So let them, or allow the accusation. The priest, thus commissioned, visits the sick: he tells the ignorant trembler, "I shall rehearse to you the Articles of our faith, that you may know whether you do believe as a Christian man should or no.” If satisfied, he proceeds, "by the authority committed unto me, I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

The constitution of the Church demands some attention. It is a massy and imposing edifice, not modelled, indeed, with Grecian simplicity, but shooting up, like its own Gothic buildings, into towers and pinnacles of various dignity, all of aspiring form-though while their heads are in the clouds, their foundations press heavily upon the earth, and their shade throws gloom and chilliness around on monuments of death; and all is overtopped by the lofty spire of archiepiscopal eminence; where, sometimes, to finish the resemblance, has been seen only a vane, veering

Truly

to every breeze of political direction. this complicated apparatus of Archbishops, Bishops, Deans, Chapters, Canons, Archdeacons, Prebendaries, Rectors, Vicars, Curates, &c., with their offices, oaths, emoluments, titles, and subordination, from the poor stipendiary to those who rear their "mitred front in courts and senates," is as unlike as possible to any thing in the New. Testament. And though some of the means adopted in Popery to cut off the clergy from the common ties of family, friendship, and society, that they may act more decidedly for the interests of the body, are not retained by the Church of England, nor, indeed, by any Protestants, there is still too much of a separate interest. They are not one with the people, in their opinions, feelings, hopes, and fears; not even with the laity of their own church. Who knows not that the clergy have a political character; that on certain measures they act together and powerfully? These are invidious topics; I wish to touch them lightly. Some other charges against the Romish, cannot be preferred against the English hierarchy. The latter is not guilty of the affected austerity of monkery; and the disuse of pretended miracles, if not of forged Scripture, has left to sophistry and dogmatism the defence of the faith. (5)

As the charge of persecution was applied alike to Catholic and Nonconformist Churches, an