rejection of them is inconsistent with the belief and practice of Christianity. Concerning others, true Christians may differ in their belief and practice. The inspired writers delivered certain doctrines as necessary to salvation, denouncing everlasting misery upon all who should reject them. He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned. These truths are never rejected from a mere errour in judgment, but from a wrong state of heart. Concerning these our Saviour saith, If any man will DO his will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God. John vii. 17.

On the contrary, the Apostle Paul allows, that there were some true Christians, who differed in less important matters from him, and one another. They were believers, though weak in the faith. One believeth that he may eat all things; another who is weak eateth herbs. For such differences Christians were taught not to despise one another, nor to consider those who differed from them as rejecting the Gospel.

Formularies of religion, which are designed to give the sense of Scripture in other words, may likewise contain essential and nonessential matters. And as the inspired writers did not scruple to acknowledge those to be true believers, who received the fundamental doctrines of Scripture, though they differed in some things of small moment; so a person may be said truly to believe a formulary of religion, who believes the fundamental doctrines contained in it, though he may not approve of every expression which the compilers have used.

The Scriptures have left several things, relative to Christian practice, undetermined, which yet must necessarily be fixed, in order to the very being of Christian society. The New Testament has not laid down any precise method of publick worship; yet publick worship cannot be decently conducted without method. The New Testament has not given a complete code of rules for the government of the Church; yet the Church cannot be governed in an orderly manner without rules. Whatever is left to the prudence and discretion of religious societies, may be determined without infringing the divine authority. These human institutions must be obeyed if they are not sinful, but are intended to preserve decency and order. A person, in declaring his assent to such articles of religion as relate to these things, does not properly declare that he believes them to be contained in Scripture; but rather that they are not repugnant to it, and are amongst those matters allowed to be settled by human prudence.

The articles of religion, which relate to these prudential matters, may not improperly be called articles of peace. A man may conscientiously assent to them, because the Church has appointed them. Should the Church alter her conduct with respect to these matters, a Minister may with truth alter his assent.

But articles consisting of fundamental doctrines stand upon a different footing. They cannot be assented to, consistently with truth, unless they are believed; because, (as hath been already ob

served,) they immediately affect our worship of God, and other religious conduct. A Church fundamentally wrong must be deserted by the sincere worshipper. No custom can make it right for us to offer to God the sacrifice of fools, nor to worship Him with solemn acknowledgments which we disbelieve. No example can make it innocent for a Minister to declare, that he understands the Scriptures in a sense contrary to that which he judges to be their true meaning. Churches may err fundamentally; but they must then be deserted. Truth requires that we come out from among them, and be separate. Conformity in such a case is only following a multitude to do evil.

FROM THE SAME.

THE REASONABLENESS OF SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF RELIGION CONSIDERED.

ALL rational protestants, of every established church or sect, agree in considering Scripture as the sole rule of faith; in allowing to the laity the free use of it in their native tongue; and in teaching them that it is their duty to read it with reverence and attention, and to interpret it according to their own private judgment; certainly, exercising that judgment with all the caution and deliberation which the importance of the subject demands; and with a due regard to their own measure of capacity and knowledge.

It has been very unjustly thought, that ereeds and confessions of faith, particularly the subscription which the Church of England requires to her thirty-nine articles and liturgy, are inconsistent with this great protestant principle; but this prejudice seems to have arisen entirely from mistaking the nature of subscription.

In order fully to explain the idea which I entertain of it, I shall endeavour to illustrate it, by extending it further than the Church of England or any established church, to every protestant community: for a subscription to certain articles, or something equivalent to it, appears to me essential to the ministry of the divine word in every Christian congregation.

In this subscription there are two parties. The party who requires subscription, the party who is called upon to subscribe.

The first party may be supposed in this country to be, either the national Church of England and Ireland united, the national Church of Scotland, a separate congregation in England or Ireland professing the same faith as the Church of Scotland, or an Episcopal congregation in Scotland, or an independant Christian assembly where perhaps only two or three may meet together in

support of those doctrines, which alone they esteem scripturál

and pure.

The second party is the person who offers himself to be a minister of this Christian community. The former party may be styled the Demandant; the latter the Respondent. The Demandant says, I think that certain principles are derived from Scripture, and conformable to reason. These are the principles upon which those of my sect agree, and by our firm adherence to them we are distinguished from every other community of Christians. These principles form that creed we profess in our publick worship; our prayers, whether liturgical, or extemporaneous, must be offered up in conformity to this creed; our youth must be educated in it; our poor and ignorant instructed in it; every member of our community must have these salutary truths frequently impressed upon his mind. This is, we think, the only true interpretation of the sacred Scriptures. It is therefore the Gospel you must preach. Are you a sincere believer of it? To this question, which the Demandant has certainly a right to propose, the Respondent ought to reply with openness and truth. His wellgrounded belief of this system, (as far as his judgment and learning extend,) is the primary and most essential qualification for that office to which he voluntarily aspires. The terms of conformity are too lax, when the question so proposed, does not comprise all that is necessary to be answered; and they are too rigid, when it comprises more. The best criterion of latitude appears to me drawn by those principles which justify separation from an established church.

If it be a lawful ground of dissent, that I cannot believe the creeds of the Church; that I must, by my attendance there, abjure what appears to me the doctrine of Scripture, and profess what I think has no foundation in it; that I must offer up prayers, which, I am convinced, cannot be acceptable to God;-and these must be acknowledged to be justifiable causes of separation; the church herself cannot be deemed too rigid, if she requires, that those per» sons shall not be her ministers, who cannot conscientiously be even her lay-communicants.

If the disciples of Dr. Priestley were to form a religious com munity adopting his peculiar principles, could they permit their minister to be continually preaching to them the liberty of human actions, the immateriality of the soul, the divine inspiration of Scripture, the equal authority of the whole sacred canon, the doctrines of justification and sanctification, the redemption, and the Holy Trinity? They must require their minister to abjure all these tenets: and is it less necessary, or more unreasonable, that the Church shall require from her ministers an explicit declaration of their firm belief in them?

In all speculations upon government, civil or ecclesiastical, we. should place before our view the highest model of perfection, and consider how far we may hope by any practicable measure to approach towards it.

We must all wish, that the whole world were Christians, and that every disciple of our blessed Saviour received the Gospel in its utmost purity; never misinterpreting the true meaning of Scripture; never adding to it, nor diminishing from it.

Whatever distinctions might still prevail of local jurisdiction, of nation, or human legislature; whatever shades of difference, climate or other circumstances might occasion in external forms of worship or discipline; the religion of mankind would be the

same.

This, with respect to our present state, is that kingdom of Christ which, we pray, may come. This is the highest model of perfection: but we approach towards it, if a whole nation can be of one mind, and profess the true faith, not hypocritically, but sincercly, without mental equivocation or reserve.

If this degree of perfection be unattainable, the next object we should have in view is, that the majority of the nation, or the most enlightened part of it, should uphold the right religion, and that the magistrate should maintain truth by law.

This is the system of an establishment, which it is the duty of every supreme governour to support, as far as is consistent with the justice due to individuals, or to any religious associations by which a number of those individuals may choose to be united. If there are sects in a country, or if they should arise from that free inquiry which breathes the true spirit of protestantism as well as of philosophy, and they can be permitted with safety to the state, they have a right to toleration; for the forming a private religious community is the last resource, the most distant approach to perfection.

If all mankind be not true Christians, if our nation be not, if the majority of our fellow-citizens, or the ruling part of them, refuse to listen to the voice of truth; the church may still remain, may be still illumined by the glorious splendour of evangelical light, and flourish in truth and love, whether under the protection of wise laws respecting the religious rights of individuals, or in the deserts and caverns to which the heathen persecutors drove the primitive Christians, or in the valleys of Piedmont, or in regions the most desolate and obscure: for the smallest congregation, when every errour is carefully excluded, is a fairer representative of the Church of Christ, than the Roman empire was when Christianity was assimilated to Paganism, and the religion of Constantine was only nominally adopted by a great part of his subjects. This was one melancholy source of the corruptions which have overwhelmed our Holy Faith; nor can it ever be preserved in its purity, until every consideration be sacrificed at the throne of truth.

It will be said, "that upon this system there must be innumerable and ever-changing sects, for the opinions of men are infinite and variable. Christianity can never be professed in its highest purity, until full freedom shall be allowed to impartial inquiry, and universal charity be established upon the firm basis of that un

bounded tolerance, which will annihilate all subscriptions, all tests, all creeds and confessions of faith."

The objection, when carried to the extent to which it naturally leads, must subvert every established church, every principle of ecclesiastical community or discipline, publick worship, and all that acquiescence in the judgment of others, which connects society, and is equally essential to the government of families as of states. Free inquiry cannot produce its proper fruits, unless the mind of the inquirer be duly prepared by previous knowledge, well tutored in habits of reasoning, and devoid of all prejudice and passion. How few among the sons of men have these qualifications! And are the common duties of all, prayer, praise, religious and moral instruction, to be neglected and abandoned from the dread that they may interfere with those profound speculations for which perhaps few men in an age have been designed? Charity can never be preserved by external declarations, it must proceed from the heart, and when once seated there, will not be interrupted by diversity of faith. When persons, who hold great variety of opinions, are permitted to be priests and teachers in the same communion, truth is sacrificed to the vain hope of charity; and that it is a vain hope appears from sad experience; for dissentions in the same church have often produced greater animosities than have arisen from contending sects, and have a natural tendency to excite envy, emulation, and jealousy; as well as to create confusion. To promote charity, religion, virtue, or the good of mankind by the dereliction of truth, is an attempt most preposterous; and when religious truths of the highest importance are at stake, is no less impious than absurd. Errours in theory, when they once take possession of the mind, will always have an effect upon prac tice in proportion to their magnitude.

The Gospel in its purity is not more valuable for its intrinsick excellence, than for its beneficial influence upon the lives and manners of those who understand and believe the divine doctrines it contains. It tends more to our edification, both in faith and practice, that those who maintain the purity of our holy religion, should form a distinct community from those who hold any depraved or corrupt tenets, though it should occasion a multitude of sects, especially if the civil government of the country afford every aid, countenance, and support to genuine Christianity, and allow to all those who are in errour the rights of toleration. I admit it is a great evil, in a civil as well as religious light, that there should be a diversity of sects; but this evil, like many others in our imperfect state, must be endured, because no legal remedy can be applied to it. This evil, however, will be considerably mitigated, when three great Christian principles are properly applied: and when those principles have their full power and effect, will be wholly eradicated. These three principles are, faith, humility, and charity. Faith leads us to believe the Scripture, and to interpret it without any bias to worldly interest, without prejudice or passion. Humility leads us not only to pay a proper