the voice, not of proud man in power and interested to retain it, nor of envious, ambitious, or covetous man, out of power, and anxious to acquire it, even by means of which his conscience disapproves; but, of men, assembled, deliberating, judging, discriminating, and, in the end, enacting. It is therefore the result of collective wisdom; the extremes of individual opinion and feeling and prejudice and passion, being cut off, on either side: and the aggregate of what is sound, and sober, and wise in the assembly, being condensed in the enactment. It is not infallible, for after all it is human: but nothing else that is human approaches so near to what is infallible. It is true, that assemblies, nominally deliberative, have been known to clamour, in overwhelming majorities, for the enactment of what is palpably unjust. But these are rare exceptions of extra political excitement, scarcely deserving the name of legislation, and do not interfere with the general principle. Dissent (I mean dissent as a system, wherein, however, it is highly gratifying to be assured, that it differs widely from the sentiments of very many dissenters) refuses to delegate authority, and confide in the wisdom of ecclesiastical rulers. Consequently congregations are their own teachers, or (what amounts to the same thing) the dismissers of any minister who teaches them more than they choose to learn. This is democracy in religion. Popery refuses to hold her rulers responsible, even to the infallible word of God himself. This is despotism in religion. The church of England is a witness against both. She delegates substantial authority, thereby repressing congregational insurrection and she invites, nay insists upon a perpetual appeal to the holy Scriptures, thereby effectually guarding against ecclesiastical tyranny. This is true religious liberty. Thus, the church of England stands between two foes, not only to her, but to the nation: and there can be little reasonable doubt, but that the fall, from whatever ს causes, of the church, as a national establishment- -a conservative embankment-would be the signal for collision between the rising waters, and for the infliction, upon the nation, of a series of overwhelming mischiefs. And not upon the nation only, as such; but also upon the true members of the spiritual church of Christ, within the nation; who would as surely be involved in the common calamities of the community, as Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel were in the Babylonish captivity of Israel; or the believing fugitives to Pella, in the horrors of the siege of Jerusalem. Albury Rectory, February, 1834. |