country's veins. The rapidity of their sale shows how well these purveyors understand the appetite of the ignorant, and how successfully they can pander to its unsuspecting avidity. And were it necessary to adduce further evidence that the ministry of the church is regarded by dissenters with contemptuous and malignant passions, the spirit evoked by a champion of the establishment, in my own neighbourhood, immediately suggests itself. There is no reason for supposing it is not a fair sample of the literary portion of the dissenting public. Dissent and its sentiments must be supposed to be not very unequally diffused through the country, when every town, and almost every village, contains one or other of its institutions. On the occasion referred to, language such as would become the lips of insolent depravity and envious discontent, was produced in the publications of ministers to congregations.

And when these and such like sentiments are thus expressed in the deliberate writings of men of some education, what is there to excite our wonder, if, in the heat of debate, in the flow of oratory, the spirit of the educated should burst forth in much of its genuine severity? Various are the records of public intemperance of this nature. (See note F.) Nor can it reasonably be disputed, that these are not in perfect accordance with the cooler and more moderate manifestations of those who write. They are ebullitions to which the polemical writings of dissenters conduce on men of strong passions.

To complete this miserable detail, we have only to consider the consequences of these opinions in humbler stations. If such as have enjoyed the

advantages of a decent education, shall in their books and speeches vent much of the gall of bitterness, and proclaim their bondage to iniquity, what may we suppose will be the feelings and expressions of those who look to them for authority, and have not been nursed and educated in the lap of refinement? When it is known how the sentiments of the chiefs are propagated; when even thousands of handbills, to be purchased in small numbers for almost the lowest coin of the realm, assert that the bishops are impostors, the church an abomination, and tithes iniquity; when these and other such cheap publications are read with credulity through the land, can the eruptions of fury which come to our knowledge be supposed only occasional and rare? Can it with any plausibility be maintained, that the exclamations of one or two reported declaimers are only isolated facts? (See note G.) My own experience could furnish a tract of contradiction to such a supposition, in the relation of extremely wicked sentiments, which are the direct consequences of dissenting principles and doctrines on uneducated

natures.

Another evidence of the animosity of dissent, is the necessity in which any of the more moderate and christianlike of its partisans finds himself of vindicating his mildness against the indignant censures of his confederates. (See note H.)

If all these evidences of an illiberal and uncharitable spirit among dissenters towards churchmen be considered, together with the proofs to which we have alluded of dissensions in doctrine, and divisions into sects, the disunion of protestant society in

England is almost as unchristian as it can possibly be, consistently with the existence of a political system.

But independency among professing Christians, in this country, has to be considered in other points of view. It may be examined in its internal relations, and as an element of the commonwealth.

It might be supposed, that the independent system is beautiful in its operation. But this is remote from the reality. One of its most eminent adherents has declared, that "the election of a minister always brings on a crisis in the history of the church." "No event that could happen can place the interests of the society in greater peril. The most disgusting exercise of the most disgusting tyranny takes place. The churches, victims to self-will, divisions producing incalculable mischief, the growth of religion destroyed, men can neither unite nor separate in peace." "In many of their societies," he says, "the pastor (so dependent for his bread on the people) has no official distinction or authority. He may flatter like a sycophant, beg like a servant, and woo like a lover: but he is not permitted to enjoin like a ruler. His opinion is received with no deference; his person is treated with no respect; and in the presence of some of his lay tyrants, he is only permitted to peep and mutter from the dust." They send him anonymous and insulting letters; young, impertinent, and dictatorial persons wait upon him, and those who have nothing to recommend them but their impudence and offi

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ciousness, school him in an objurgatory strain. The congregation complain, sermons are very meagre or poor, and have a great sameness. They treat their minister as they would wild beasts, which are tamed into submission by hunger, and keep him humble by keeping him poor." These are a portion of the honest confessions of an independent. (See James's Christian Fellowship, or Church Member's Guide, pp. 60, &c., 249, &c.) "The sermons of some ministers," the same author himself acknowledges, are poverty itself, a mere repetition of the same sentiments in the same words."

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Other authorities of equal weight may be produced, in great abundance, to a similar effect: " The power of choosing a minister produces a feeling unfavourable to religious result, as it leads all, in some de gree, to listen rather as judges than disciples. At certain periods this is essential, but in the minds of many, the feeling frequently continues; it is too congenial to the dominant propensity of human nature to be readily relinquished: hence often a variety of evils; hence the rude remarks, the vulgar impertinence of some, all ranks, and both sexes; hence the general custom of regarding how a thing is said, rather than the thing itself, though the most important perhaps within the compass of thought. With the consciousness of a minister as their servant for Christ's sake, many are disposed to think him such for their own, and to occasion disorder by unreasonable demands on his time, attention, and docility. The freedom from priestly domination, laid as the basis of the system, will excite at times such a feeling of independence, as will expand into something like

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popular tyranny. Sensitive to encroachment, some will discover it where none was designed, and oppose themselves to the moral authority of virtue and wisdom; and others, or the same from the like principle, will seem to think it inconsistent with liberty to bow even to truth itself.” (Binney's Life of Morell, p. 295, extracted from Brit. Mag. No. IV.) Again: The supreme object of the ministry, in relation to the church, is to augment, in the character of its members, the glory that excelleth. But the tendency of many modern mistakes is to destroy the very being and action of the office altogether. In the same persons there is often to be found such a disastrous combination of absurdities as lead, in their legitimate operation, to the positive silence of an evangelical preacher. If you preach to saints, as you ought to preach, they are dissatisfied: if you preach to sinners, they are dissatisfied; angels do not require your instructions; and to preach to devils, if it were pos+ sible, would only excite still stronger animosity. So that as a benevolent intelligence, anxious to exert your faculties in promoting the knowledge and improvement of others, you are deprived by this sect of determined dissatisfactionists-the pest and scourge of many a church-of every sphere of active agency, and, in fact, virtually driven out of all the known worlds of the intelligent universe." (Ibid. p. 253.)

And no man who knows that the independent churches, as they are called, are voluntary associa→ tions, where each member has his vote, and where the majority rule in all church matters, can doubt the tendency of their system to produce all the division and the inefficiency which are observable in