the highest, the latter the hottest in defence of Conformity. "THE FOUNDERS OF NONCONFORMITY were-1. Such as fled hence beyond seas, chiefly into Germany, living in states and cities of popular reformation. 2. These returning late into England were at a loss for a maintenance. 3. And renounced all ceremonies practised by the papists, conceiving that such ought not only to be clipt with shears, but to be shaved with a razor. 4. The ringleaders of this party were John Rogers, lecturer in St. Paul's, and vicar of St. Sepulchre's, and John Hooper, afterwards bishop of Gloucester." CONSISTENCY OF DISSENT. To this assembly, collected from numerous congregations of Protestant Dissenters, I cannot but think it right and seasonable to remark, that the fundamental PRINCIPLES of our DISSENT from the Church of England are the very same as those of our PROTEST against the Church of Rome. Those principles are, the sole supremacy and legislative authority of Christ over the faith and the consciences of men; the unrestricted use of the Bible, and its sufficiency as the rule of religious belief and obedience; and the unlawfulness and impiety of human dictation in matters purely belonging to religion. These are the principles on which Mr. Chillingworth, and all the best defenders of the Reformation, have, with greater or less explicitness, rested their arguments; and the sober and consistent application of these principles appears, to our most serious judgment, to require a conscientious separation from the religious establishment of our country. To the civil government of our country we pay a cheerful obedience, not of mere duty, but of choice and affection, in all civil matters; but "TO GOD we must render the things that are GOD'S." We pay respect and honour to the pious and upright mem bers of the Church of England, and are their ready coadjutors, so far as we are able, in the numerous works of patriotic and Christian philanthropy. But it is even a part of the respect and honour due to them to tell our brethren why we are constrained to differ from them. from the grosser errors of the Roman We rejoice that their church is purified community; but we lament that she still retains an unscriptural conformity in many points of doctrine, constitution, and worship. We especially lament that her constitution involves a denial, virtually at least, of the three GREAT principles of Protestantism; and that she is so tied and bound with the iron fetters of a merciless uniformity, imposed by the most profligate prince of the arbitrary house of Stuart,-so tied and bound with those heavy chains, that improvement and melioration are doleful and forbidden sounds to her! We cannot, moreover, be insensible to the strong fact, that the Church of England rejects communion with every Protestant church upon earth, but owns and exercises it with the Church of Rome. Does she not, by this her own act and deed, incontestably stamp and proclaim herself the daughter of the spiritual Babylon? Our being Dissenters, then, is nothing but the result of our consistency as Protestants.-DR. PYE SMITH'S Reasons of the Protestant Religion. MENT, AND A LEGISLATURE. A CHURCH is composed of persons who, considered simply as men and as Christians, agree in the belief, of certain articles of faith, and are united under a form of ecclesiastical order. An establishment is this same body considered, not simply as men and Christians, but as Christians of a certain nation, put in possession of the property devoted to religious purposes of which the nation has the control, and regarded as presenting that form of religion which is to be taught and recognised as that of the country. A legislature are the constituted authorities of a nation, who have the power of determining what form of religion shall be thus honoured and invested,-in other words, what church shall, by law, be constituted the establishment. In illustration of these general principles, we may observe that the British legislature has determined that the establishment shall be in England an episcopal, and in Scotland a presbyterian body; and that it is obvious that there is in the one country an episcopal and in the other a presbyterian church, which can be conceived to exist, and would exist, if all the Acts of Parliament respecting them were abrogated, and all state favours recalled, and even all ecclesiastical endowments and edifices swept away. A legislature has not the power, properly speaking, of modifying the belief and institutions of a church; for it is always in the power of the church to prevent it by just declining the price offered for its submission; but a legislature has the power of determining who shall enjoy what it has to give: it can select any church whatever, and make it the establishment, or it can determine to have no establishment at all. BINNEY'S Dissent not Schism. The Letter Box. THE BLIND GUIDE. To Church of England Parents. FRIENDS, The Bishop of Lan-"teach and testify" against us daff recently issued a Circular in his next proposition: Letter to his Clergy, on the sub- That this rite should now be set at ject of Confirmation, which no nought, and even derided, (as I have spiritually-minded and well-in-known it to be by some Dissenters,) is structed man among you can read without the deepest sorrow. After certain statements on the subject of baptism, for which there is not the slightest foundation in the word of God, he thus pounds the doctrine or rite of Confirmation: pro unaccountable in any professed Christians. I have heard them charge the salvation should depend upon such a doctrine with absurdity, that any man's ceremony. The same objection might be urged against every external ordi nance. We do not teach that without this ordinance there can be no salvation; but we do teach and testify against all such gainsayers, that they offend any one of these little ones who believe in Christ; when, without any authority but that of each man's private conceit or fancy, they wilfully contravene the authority of all Christian churches, and undermine the faith and disturb the conscience of a single brother for whom Christ died. That the baptised infant was gradu-put their own salvation in peril when they ally instructed in the doctrine of the gospel, and when duly qualified was brought to the bishop for the completion of his baptismal rite, is also an unquestionable truth. This public recognition of his spiritual incorporation with the church was accompanied by solemn imposition of hands, and a prayer for the Divine blessing upon each individual. Although the bishop feels constrained to grant that Confirma"Unquestionable truth!”– an tion is not necessary to "any unquestionable error! This pro- man's salvation," yet it seems the position is entirely unsupported Dissenter "puts his own salvaby the Scriptures of truth, and as tion in peril" by uttering a sylsuch we reject it, notwithstand-lable against it! And this is ing the bishop feels bound to Episcopal logic, is it? The ab surdity of this jumble of false assertions is too glaring to merit a moment's further notice. The bishop gives his clergy the following counsel, which has long distinguished the Romish school: Dogmatise, but do not argue! Tell your parishioners to believe what you say, and because you say it; and to ask no questions. Hear his lordship: It was with feelings of inexpressible pain we read, in the same organ which contained the bishop's letter, the following, with respect to the colonies: We have now twenty-two colonial sees and dioceses; viz., Antigua, Bar badoes, Bombay, Calcutta, Gibraltar, Guiana, Jamaica, Madras, Montreal, Newfoundland, New Zealand, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Tasmania, Toronto, Sydney, Newcastle, Adelaide, Melbourne, Cape Town, Colombo, and Fredericton. This is a goodly and a godly array; but it is the forerunner only, we trust and believe, of a far larger distribution of spiritual aid to our vast colonial empire. The field for labour is boundless; our duty, as a Christian State, to cultivate it, imperative. Until recently, this duty was but feebly and partially understand it better; and we look forward to its future performance with confidence. The impulse which has been given will have a natural tendency to develop its own energies. In maintaining the necessity of baptism as a means of regeneration, I would by all means advise you to avoid those subtle controversies respecting the precise meaning of regeneration, with which some have perplexed themselves, have erred concerning the faith, and have distracted the peace of the church, without any tendency to edification. The Liturgy calls all the baptised re-recognised; but we are beginning to generate, i.e. in a state of grace: so St. Paul calls the Christian converts sanctified-purified-temples of the Holy Ghost: epithets applied even to those who incur his reproof. Baptism is the commencement of spiritual life-a life which grows with our growth. We cannot presume to say at what moment the saving influence of the Spirit fully operates, nor how far it may be resisted, or quenched, or recovered within us. It is enough to know that without baptism we have no right to reckon upon it; nor even then, without the concurrence, as for as we are able, of our own prayers and endeavours to be in communion with the Spirit. Peremptory definitions of such points are presumptuous and dangerous, and have no tendency to improve the mind or to increase spiritual knowledge. Such is this chief pastor's gross perversion of the word of God! Such is the miserable popish garbage with which this Spiritual Lord feeds his clergy, and teaches them to feed you and poison your offspring! If they teach as they are taught, woe to the children of the diocese of Landaff! Hapless land where such Bishops abound! No enlightened Christian can read such a statement as this without emotion when he reflects that this corps of colonial bishops are, nearly to a man, members of the same school as the bishop of Landaff. Truly the religious aspect of our Colonies is becoming every hour more and more alarming. Puseyism, Methodism, and Popery are in company and in harmony, everywhere taking possession of the field; and while they unitedly eat the bread of the State, they bind themselves to do its work. Thus false systems flourish and pre-occupy the ground, thereby increasing incalculably the difficulties of planting, propagating, and sustaining the simple and pure religion of the Son of God. The time is come for all denominations of enjoined, our faculties would be preserved from this constant strain." Being reminded again, by the death of Castlereagh, of the case of Sir Samuel Romilly, he said: "If he had suffered his mind to enjoy such occasional remission, it is highly probable that the strings of life would never have snapped from over-tension. Alas! alas! poor fellow!" A distinguished merchant, long accustomed to extensive observation and experience, and who had gained an uncommon knowledge of men, said: "When I see one of my apprentices or clerks riding out on the sabbath, on Monday I dismiss him. Such an one cannot be trusted." Facts echo the declaration, "Such an one cannot be trusted." He is naturally no worse than others; but he casts off fear, lays himself open to the assaults of the adversary, and rejects the means of Divine protection. He ventures unarmed into the camp of the enemy, and is made a demonstration to the world of the great truth, that he that trusteth to his own heart is a fool." Not a man in Christendom, whatever his character or standing, can knowingly and presumptuously trample on the sabbath, devoting it to worldly business, travelling, pleasure, or amusement, and not debase his character, increase his wickedness, and augment the danger that he will be abandoned of God, and given up to final impenitency and ruin. A father, whose son was addicted to riding out for pleasure on the sabbath, was told that, if he did not stop it, his son would be ruined. He did not stop it, but sometimes set the example of riding out on pleasure himself. His son became a man, was placed in a responsible situation, and intrusted with a large amount of property. Soon he was a defaulter, and absconded. In a different part of the country he obtained another responsible situation, and was again intrusted with a large amount of property. Of that he defrauded the owner, and fled again. He was apprehended, tried, convicted, and sent to prison. After years spent in solitude and labour, he wrote a letter to his father, and, after recounting his course of crime, he added, "That was the effect of breaking the sabbath when I was a boy." A man who ridiculed the idea that God makes a difference in his providence between those who yield visible obedience to his laws and those who do not, had been engaged, on a certain sabbath, in gathering his crops into his barn. The next week he had occasion to take fire out into his field in order to burn some brush. He left it, as he supposed, safely, and went into dinner. The wind took the fire and carried it into his barn-yard, which was filled with combus tibles, and before he was aware of it the flames were bursting out of his barn. He arose in amazement, saw that all was lost, and fixing his eye on the curling flames, stood speechless. Then raising his finger, and pointing to the rising column of fire, he said, with solemn emphasis, "That is the finger of God." The assumption is utterly erroneous. For in addition to the well-known fact that not one in a thousand of these sponsors ever makes any attempt to fulfil his promises, there is the grand fact, that those baptismal engagements cannot be performed. The thing is impossible. Those vows for others never were paid, and never will be paid by any human being. The constitution of the human mind declares it to be an impossibility. The idea of one human being becoming responsible for the religious convictions, faith, and moral conduct of another, strikes me as appalling. I cannot think of it without a mental recoil. To become responsible for the national debt of England were a trifle compared to it. I cannot be accountable for the spiritual state of my own child for an hour, albeit he is constantly under my eye and the object of my prayerful solicitude; shall I, however, venture to vow that the child of another man shall "renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of this world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the carnal desires of the flesh, so that he will not follow, nor be led by them ?" Shall I further have the hardihood to promise that the child of my friend or neighbour shall believe in all the sentiments of the creed, " and obediently keep God's holy commandments, and walk in the same all the days of his life ?" Is it replied, that the children are irresponsible? Then it is absurd to become accountable for them. But the reply is invalid; for responsibility runs parallel with the increase of information and with the power to discern between good and evil; and as the duties of the sponsor cease not until confirmation, which takes place generally when the child is about fifteen years of age, it follows that the reply touching irresponsibility is vain. Is it palliated as a mere form? We answer, it is one of the most pernicious forms that ever "the church thought good" to institute. The popular belief is that the godfathers and godmothers are accountable for the sins of their godchildren. This is the plain fact. It is lamentable that such gross ignorance should be found in our midst at this day; but such is the notion of those myriads who look upon the established church of this land as a great institution provided by the conjoint influence of the crown and mitre for the purpose of making men Christians. The scriptural idea of Christianity is utterly unknown to the parties to whom I allude-attachment and obedience to "the church" being in their opinion the sum and substance of true religion. Nor do we blame, but pity. So they are taught in, it is to be feared, the great majority of instances. In proportion as men multiply orders and ceremonies, they depart from the sublime simplicity of the New Testament model, and hide the saving truth by envelopes on which royalty places its broad seal, perpetuating fallacy and misleading the multitude. I have no hope of reformation, until the ecclesiastical corporation shall be driven from its secular strongholds and taught to seek refuge on the foundation of the apostles and prophets; nevertheless for the sake of millions I wish it would add the ceremony of confirmation to those which it says, in the preface to the Book of Common Prayer, were "not only for their unprofitableness, but also because they have much blinded the people, and obscured the glory of God," deemed "worthy to be cut away and clean rejected." It is superstitious. It conveys the idea that certain mechanical rites can confer grace, and that there is religious virtue in a manual touch. I cannot suppose, my hearers, that any of you are so ill-instructed in the nature of that change which the human spirit must undergo before it can become a subject of Christ's kingdom, as to render it necessary to remind you that grace cannot be imparted thus. The book of the kingdom is in your hands. Read it, study it, pray over it, believe it, prize it, walk by it. But it is required of me to justify the allegation, that the ceremony under review is superstitious. Everything called religious which tends to fix the mind on the external rather than on the internal, partakes of the nature of superstition. Everything which leaves the impression, that what a man does is more im |