conveniences and removing evils, which are frequently more easy to be seen and felt, than to be remedied." P. 3.

These are observations which will naturally present themselves to the mind of every thinking man, when he contemplates the extraordinary union of various hostile spirits, to promote the cause of concession to the Romish Church. All and each of those, who now support the claims of that domineering Church, have felt her supremacy to be injurious to their interests. Experience has proved, that she has never yet possessed power, without exerting it for purposes as incompatible with the views of the political theorists whom she now reckons among her advocates, as they have been detrimental to the religious liberty for which her sectarian defenders have so fiercely contended. The generations which have passed away were wise enough to see this. The politicians from whom our modern whigs have borrowed their name without inheriting their principles, have gained an honourable place in history by their spirited and successful resistance of papal domination: and the dissenters of the same period, were clear-sighted enough to perceive, that the little finger of Rome, would be heavier than the loins of the Church of England; and that, if they united with the papists in overturning the mild authority of the Established Religion, they must expect to change a toleration, which left to the conscientious man, nothing more to wish for on the score of religion, for outward conformity to popish superstition, or a persecution which would destroy where it could not convert. Some modern statesmen, and modern sectarists have taken what they doubtless think a more enlarged and liberal view of the question: they seem to think, that the apprehensions which disturbed the rest of their forefathers were the mere dreams of a disordered fancy; and that the bulwarks, which they erected against Romish aggression, were an unnecessary demonstration of jealousy and fear.

We may then adopt the Archdeacon's language, and presume that even they will allow," that those restrictions against which such urgent pleas have been put forward, were once at least deemed necessary."

"They are not the fetters, then, which have been forged by bigotry, or devised by headlong zealots; unless you will rank in that tainted class, the calmest and the wisest men, in all departments, which this land hath ever bred. It is a generous sentiment, no doubt, which ever way our judgment may incline at present, which disposes candid men to think and believe, that the T

VOL. XVII. MARCH, 1822.

season for new measures, where improvement is the object, is ar., rived. It is a virtuous feeling which inclines men to think that restraints which are sufficiently deplorable, and never warranted but by strict necessity, for preservation or defence, may at length be laid aside. It is too, let me be allowed to say, a sentiment as pure, as free from bigotry and headlong zeal, as full of all care for the public good; and above all, for the best interests of religion, on which the public good must be established, which disposes others to use much caution and consideration; to look well to those direful and unchanging principles which first produced the sad necessity for civil and religious separations; principles which admit no variation and can suffer no abatement, since they bear the fancied seal, and plead the bold but unsupported challenge, of infallible authority." P. 5.

Of these principles, the first is that "which limits the whole hope of salvation, and confines the christian name itself to one portion of the Christian Church." While this is maintained, no ground can be found, on which the Romanists and the Protestant can meet with mutual confidence. The Roman Catholic, believing that no salvation can be found out of his own Church, will be urged by the strongest and best feelings of his nature, to snatch the Protestant from perdition by any available means; by entreaty, argument or force and a Protestant Church must ever be upon her guard, against the invasions of those, who hold her very existence in horror, as a snare and a trap for the souls of men.

"Who," says the Archdeacon, "would not strive for proselytes, if such a notion could be true? You may frame laws, and grant indulgences, in the generous hope of promoting union in the land; but where can be the points of mutual forbearance, where the warmest feelings of the heart are thus engaged on settled grounds of mispersuasion: not roused to contend for victory or power, but to snatch men from perdition." P. 6.

He anticipates the answer, that, admitting all this danger to be real, it cannot be prevented, and therefore ought not to be assailed by restraints on temporal rights. But, is it true that temporal rights as they are called, (and be it remembered that by temporal rights we are here to understand political power, which upon the principles of those who oppose us is the right of no individual, but is given by society to those only who appear to the united body to be best fitted to promote its common welfare,) is it true, that restraints on such rights may not lessen the danger? Experience would seem to teach a contrary lesson; and it scarcely becomes us, who enjoy the blessings of a Protestant Establishment, blessings which we believe to have been hitherto secured to us

1

by those very restraints, to admit that the safe-guards provided by our ancestors are nugatory, while they appear to us to have produced their intended effects.

We confess ourselves inclined to argue, that restraints on the possession of political power by individuals, may be lawfully imposed by all societies: and that, in such a society as that in which we live, consisting of Church and State, united by a constitution guaranteeing to each its own privileges and security, in a mode compatible with the common interests of both; it is not only lawful or expedient, but absolutely necessary, to withhold political power, from all whose principles are essentially hostile to the security of either.

"Who can deny," says the Archdeacon," that the same zeal which we know cannot be restrained by human laws, and is not the proper object of them, will not be abundantly assisted, and find its strength renewed by the influence of public credit, by the share to be acquired in legislative powers, and by wide and intimate participations in the public councils and mixed government of the country. It is not, I suppose, the wish to lend such strength to be employed against the Protestant Establishments with which the best interests and acknowledged basis of the government in this land are essentially connected." P. 7.

This is undoubtedly a sound practical view of the question. We are called upon to determine, not whether we will restrain the Roman Catholics, but whether we will grant them that power of which our ancestors, by sad experience of the use they made of it, were induced to deprive them. We have unhappily no reason to believe that their principles are changed, we have therefore no inducements to alter our policy.

There are but two ways in the Archdeacon's opinion, in which peace can be found, or security preserved. The one is by a change of principle on the part of the Roman Catholics but this he considers to be hopeless, as their boast is that all change is impossible. The other is a change of feeling, and of this he thinks that the prospect is abundantly more favourable. It may be so; but to those who look for any permanent security from such a change, we recommend a serious consideration of the following passage.

"The misfortune is, with respect even to those sects which are less tied to fix determinations than the Church of Rome is, that after better feelings have prevailed over fierce and narrow declarations; after what is frantic or fanatical, the growth of superstitious fancies or of wild delusion, has worked off, and is either covered or forgotten, the sect itself remains in all its separate dis

tinctions, and with all the plausible improvement which arises from retaining what is good in life and manners, and which, though combined still with whimsical particulars, forms a real ground of solid worth. Thus the bond of union is irreparably broken, even where the worst features have been softened, and where a better garb has been assumed." P.8.

If an illustration of the truth of this remark is required, it may be furnished by the history of our own protestant diviWhen we trace them back to the original objections taken against our Church by the puritans, the nursing fathers of sectarianism, we shall find that scarcely any plea then urged by them as an apology for separation is now persisted in. The original grounds of disunion have been in great measure surrendered, at least in practice; and on all these points a great change of feeling has taken place; but the spirit of division still survives, and its influence is undiminished.

Deprecating all querulous remarks, and every hasty or violent measure as unworthy of our cause and character; and protesting with equal earnestness against all negligence or indifference in so critical a juncture; the Archdeacon conceives our best mode of defence to consist in a vindication of the main principles of union, against which at any time accidental combinations or direct attacks are made.

" The ground of union in this land, under the good care of Providence, derives its chief stability from that well defined and fundamental rule of government, by which in every state and every country, things sacred and things civil should be subject to one Sovereign Supremacy. This was the first point which at the dawn of reformation in this land, was rescued from the gradual encroachments which had been made by those, who traversed rocks and seas, the natural limits of the states of this world, in order to fix a visionary throne, of more than magic power and mystic influence, in the bosoms of far severed empires.

"Our aim must be, if it be yet possible, to convince the great body of our countrymen of the real excellence of that which they possess, in order that they may look well to what they are required to give away. This is a task which in all reason we should think to be no hard one, and yet it is always found to be most difficult in practice: as if nothing could be seen to any just advantage which a man holds already in his hand, and which he may continue to retain, if he has the wisdom to understand his own good, and not to yield it as the child does the best thing which he possesses, for any worthless counterfeit." P. 10.

The law of England knows but of one sovereign Power. The King is the supreme head of the realm, in all causes,

and over all persons, whether civil or ecclesiastical. The Roman Catholic does not admit the obligation of the law in this respect: he acknowledges the King as his sovereign in temporal causes only: in all spiritual concerns he conceives that his allegiance is due to another power, to the Pope as the supreme head of the Church on earth.

The advocates of concession require us therefore to grant a complete participation of political power and influence in our free state to those who yield only a divided allegiance to the King who is its head; and profess that they owe obedience in some particulars to another sovereign, who is essentially hostile to one branch of our Constitution as by law established. When they are called upon to shew us how such a point can be safely conceded, the question is never fairly met; but an attempt is made to evade it, by a sophistical representation of the supremacy claimed by the Pope, that it may appear compatible with the legitimate rights of the Sovereign, and the safety of the State: as if, in this case at least, a kingdom might be divided against itself without being brought to desolation; and a man might serve two masters, without prejudice to the interests of either. Where then such opinions prevail, and are perseveringly defended, the rule must be plainly laid down, and the grounds on which it is framed as plainly stated: and for this purpose we cannot do better than use the words of the volume before us.

"It is of the nature then and essence of all governments, of what kind soever they may be, and whatever societies they may include, to have all things subject in some measure to the sovereign authority. From this subjection nothing is exempted but what belongs indeed to some rule, over which no control of man can be rightfully exerted; such as the privilege of conscience : the duty of self-preservation; the regard to public welfare, as that forms the main end of laws and government; and more especially the things which are prescribed by express and indubitable pre cepts of divine authority clearly and sufficiently made known. With these restrictions, the principles of sovereignty in our own land, are applicable to all things and persons. They have been traced accordingly by our best writers to this fourfold ground; to the common right, which I have just named, of sovereignty in all states and under every dispensation-to the pattern of the Jewish state particularly, sanctioned as that was by the divine appointment, and displayed in a matter which was neither local nor peculiar to the plain intimation of the will of God declared on this head in the page of Scripture, first in the word of prophecy con, cerning Christian states and rulers, and then in the subsequent directions which were given, with immediate reference to the civil power, by Christ himself and his first witnesses-and to the!