ent treatment from others who were in power. I might have been treated more rigorously than I should have treated them, had I been in their place and they in mine; but the principle of intolerance is the same. That for which I should have suffered might also have been truth, while that for which I would have caused others to suffer might be pernicious error: but in a question of this nature, I should have had no right to take this for granted, seeing it would have been judging in my own cause. My rule ought rather to have been, to do unto others as I would that they should do unto me.

I am not able to vindicate Messrs. Bogue and Bennett, whose praises and censure, are both, it appears to me, much too indiscriminate; but I can perceive that their reviewer, while chastising them, is continually exposing himself to censure for the same things.

He seldom detects a fault in his authors without endeavouring to fix it upon the whole body, by ascribing it to their dissent. Speaking of divisions and separations among Dissenters, he says, "This evil grows out of the principle of dissent. The minister of an establishment has no temptation from vanity, or the love of singularity, or any mere worldly motives, to labour in insignificant distinctions but amongst Dissenters the right of private judgment is so injudiciously inculcated, that the men who are trained amongst them learn not unfrequently to despise all judgment except their own." To say nothing of the temptations which the minister of an establishment has, though he may not have these, it is sufficient to reply, If unlovely separations arise from an injudicious inculcation of the right of private judgment, let them be traced to that cause, and not to dissent; let them be ascribed to the abuse of the right of private judgment, but not to the principle itself, or to any necessary step in order to obtain it. An advocate for despotic government might object to the disorders of our popular elections, and to the violence of our parliamentary debates, and might tell us that in certain countries there is no temptation to such disorder and such violence: but we should readily answer, They have temptations as bad, or worse, of another kind and; the right of choosing our representatives, and that of free parliamentary debate, are of

such importance to the well-being of the nation, that the evils which they occasion are as nothing when compared with it. The right of private judgment in matters of religion is of that account, that we cannot part with it without making shipwreck of faith and of a good conscience. As to the abuses of it, whoever is guilty of them, let him bear his own burden. The "schism which took place in the Evangelical Magazine," should not have been lugged in by this writer for an example, without having first made himself acquainted with the true cause of it.

If I dissent, from antipathy to a particular clergyman, or for the sake of gratifying my own will, or to feed my own vanity, I am what this reviewer considers me-a sectarian; but if I dissent for the sake of obtaining liberty to follow what I verily believe to be the mind of Christ, I am not a sectarian in the ill sense of the term, nor in any sense except that in which Paul avowed himself to be one. By this writer's own account, if I continue in the established church, I must make no "profession." That is, I must not profess to repent of my sins, and to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation: if I do, he will construe it into "a profession of being better than my neighbours," which he tells me is inconsistent with "Christian humility," and insinuates that the whole is "pharisaical hypocrisy." This is certainly speaking out; and standing as it does, in direct opposition to the divine command of coming out from among unbelievers, and being separate from them, renders it easy to determine the path of duty.

The writer censures Messrs. Bogue and Bennett for ascribing almost every thing vicious and persecuting to Churchmen; yet he himself ascribes almost every thing sour, litigious, and splenetic to Dissenters. He represents the intolerance of the Puritans as if it were universal, and as if all that settled in America were of the same spirit. But (to say nothing of Roger Williams, whom he himself not only acquits, but applauds, as "the man whose name, if all men had their due, would stand as high as that of William Penn, as having begun the first civil government upon earth that gave equal liberty of conscience,"), there was a broad line of distinction between those Puritans who founded the colony of New Plymouth in 1620, and those who a few years after founded that

of Massachusetts Bay. The former were the members of Mr. John Robinson, who had peaceably separated from the church of England, and with bis friends retired to Holland, for the sake of liberty of conscience but the Massachusetts people had never relinquished the principle of national churches, and the authority of the magistrate in matters of faith and worship. And it was among these people, and owing to this principle, that the persecutions in America were carried on. Of this there is a full account given in Backus's History of the American Baptists, Vol. I.; and as the Baptists bore a large part of those persecutions, they may well be supposed to know who were their persecutors, and what were their avowed principles.

The work of Messrs. Bogue and Bennett is considered by this writer as a fair specimen of Dissenting principles in the present day, or as "representing the general temper of those to whom it is addressed." But so far as I have had the means of judging, it is considered among Dissenters in a very different light. Some few may admire it; but all that I have heard speak of it, consider it as deeply tinged with party-zeal and revolutionary politics, and being rather an eulogy on their own denomination than a History of Dissenters. I am not aware that the French revolution has promoted the cause of dissent; and if it were so, an increase on such principles is of no value. Men may leave the national church, not on account of what is wrong in it, but of what is right, in which case dissent itself must be wicked. Dissent is not a cause for a Christian to rejoice in, any further than as it includes the cause of Christ. It is ground on which may be erected a temple of God, or a synagogue of Satan.

That there are many among Dissenters who feel that "moral expatriation" which the reviewer laments, is admitted; but the same is true of Churchmen. The numbers, however, of both, have of late years considerably diminished.-Dissenters must ever be friends to civil and religious liberty, as it is their only security but they may be this without turbulence, or envy, or spleen, or any of those unamiable qualities which this writer attaches to dissent. I believe it will be found, that from the beginning, those Dissenters who have separated from the Church of England for

the purpose of forming churches according to what they consider as the mind of Christ, have been of a much more pacific spirit than those, who, retaining the principles of national churches and the authority of the magistrates in matters of faith and worship, were always lingering after a comprehension in the establishment, and finding fault with particular ceremonies and forms that kept them out of it: that this was the case among the first settlers of America has been already noticed and so far as my observation ex. tends, it is the case to this day. Those who dissent for the sake of being at liberty to follow up their convictions in promoting the kingdom of Christ, will not be averse to the civil institutions of their country; and as to the ecclesiastical, unless called to defend themselves against the charge of schism, and such others as are heaped upon them, they would cherish no hostility. Being allowed to follow the dictates of their own consciences, they are willing that others should do the same. They dissent, not so much from antipathy to what they desert, as from love to what they embrace; and they love and pray for the government that protects them in the enjoyment of it.

They cannot approve of making the political prosperity of their country the supreme object of their pursuit, nor consent that the religion of Christ should be rendered subservient to it; and this, in the esteem of those who are otherwise minded, will often be ascribed to the want of patriotism: but a wise and good government will know how to distinguish a contumelious behaviour towards them, from a conscientious obedience to God; and while they properly resent the former, will not fail to respect the latter,