perly applied, defend the establishment of Popery, of Mahomedism, or pagan idolatry, by the authority of kings and rulers, I must acknowledge the cause to be desperate" This concession is remarkable, for it gives up at once the ablest and most celebrated works of churchmen on the subject. It may be supposed that he would not so frankly and decidedly reject the defences of others, as untenable, without producing one of his own which would not be liable to the same objection; and accordingly he constructs one with which he seems to have been much pleased, and of which he spoke in a private letter, as highly as could be expected from a modest man about his own work. "It is, I think, quite original, and gives a view of the whole subject entirely different from what I ever read or conceived before I began; and is highly favourable to establishments in general." To favour establishments in general was the vulnerable part of the works of his predecessors, and it was that part which demanded his special care.

His new mode of reasoning on the subject is briefly this-where talents are given they ought to be improved, and the proper use and improvement of them is to exert them in the service of God, and for the interests of religion. We allow, that wise men and rich men should employ their abilities and their wealth in this good cause; and why should we not allow that governors and kings may exercise their authority and power, their influence and treasures, for the same object, when the good they may do is so much more considerable. In the Old Testament we find Jehosaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah uniting with the priests, to reform abuses, to enforce obedience to the laws and ordinances of God,

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and to promote religion among the people. For this beneficial operation of their power, their characters and services are commended in Scripture, and they present a pattern worthy of imitation to all Christian princes. To fortify this reasoning, he quotes the language of prophecy respecting the millennium; Kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers," Isa. xlix. 23; from which he infers, that in the predicted time, kings and princes will have a more important station in religious concerns allotted to them, and take a more active, and liberal, and decided part in them, than the opposers of all establishments are willing should be assigned to them.

Such is his reasoning; and if it be allowed, how does it attain its object? how does it prove either the duty of conforming to the Church of England, or the evil of separating from it? The Jewish establishment, in all its parts, derived its origin from heaven, and is completely delineated in the volume of inspiration; but as the best modern establishments do not pretend to have received from God any directory like the Book of Leviticus, they can claim no higher an origin than synods or councils, ecclesiastical convocations or secular parliaments. The one is divine, the other are human: to support the one was very good, but to uphold the other has often been very mischievous.

Besides, cannot a king serve the interests of religion; cannot he be a nursing father, and his queen be a nursing mother to the church, without giving it a legal establishment? Why cannot he patronize it in the same way as he patronizes learning and science? in the same way as Leo the Tenth befriended the fine arts, as Lewis the Fourteenth encouraged literature, as

Peter the Great favoured useful and ingenious mechanics, or as Colbert and Walpole promoted commerce? The most decided Dissenter may allow kings and magistrates to be eminently and extensively useful to the cause of religion in perfect consistency with his hostility to establishments; and when men attempt to justify their coercive measures in support of them, by appealing to the conduct of the best Jewish kings, they gain nothing by shifting the ground of the argument, and this new mode of defence is no better than the old one which is abandoned. The cases are not parallel, the analogy is not just, and the reasoning from it is not conclusive.

Having thus pleaded for the admission of human authority in the church of God, he proceeds to show how it should be exercised. The means employed must be scriptural, and no other; the men who are appointed to be teachers of religion must be truly pious characters; they are to receive a decent maintenance; nothing is to be required as a term of communion but what wise and good men in general allow to be scriptural; and much latitude is to be allowed in respect of expressions, forms, postures, and all such things as evidently conscientious persons may be supposed to view differently.

Such an establishment as this who would object to, or dissent from? The friends of liberty allow that an absolute monarchy may be the best form of govern ment when the monarch is a very good man; and Dissenters may say, set up such an establishment as this, and we will conform to it, that we may enjoy its blessings. But, if other advocates have pleaded for too many of these institutions, it may be safely affirmed,

that Mr. Scott pleads for none that exist in the Christian world, for it cannot be pretended that any of them resemble that which he describes. Of this he was aware himself, when he styled his own remarks "Utopian Thoughts of a possibly existing Establishment," (page 26) Edward the Sixth in England, and the Elector of Saxony, in the time of Luther, probably approached the nearest to his views, and acted the most generally on his plan.

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Churchmen have no great reason to thank Mr. Scott for his services in delineating and supporting a specious theory, which, however it may "favour establishments in general," favours none in particular, and which condemus their own by the evidence of contrast, and sometimes almost in plain terms. Whether are they or Dissenters most likely to approve of such a sentiment as this? When even indifferent things are imposed on the mass of inhabitants in any country, and enforced by penal statutes; and when considered as paramount to God's commandments, they become anti-scriptural," (page 5.) Again, "Had Jehosaphat, or Hezekiah, or Josiah, modelled the religion of Judah according to their own views; or, having added their own traditions or injunctions, or those of the elders, to the law of God, and either imposed the whole by pains and penalties, or allured the selfish and ambitious to conform, by proposing to them emoluments and honours, they would have deviated from the line of duty, and their establishment would have been an evil thing," (page 19.) If such an establishment would have been an evil thing, what is the Church of England? Again," If kings and princes go beyond the word of the Lord, and attempt to new model religion, according to their own

notions, or in subserviency to their political purposes; to enjoin what is evidently incompatible with the sacred oracles, or to alter their essential truths, ordinances, and commandments: then all who resemble Ezra and Nehemiah will stand aloof, and not accept of such unscriptural support. They will decline the proffered aid, or protest against the presumptuous intrusion," (page 84.) We can only regret, that the English clergy have not thought more like Mr. Scott, and acted more like Ezra and Nehemiah.

The title of the publication does not at all correspond to his part of it, which is by far the best part, and is nearly the half of the whole; for he says little in praise of the Church of England, and nothing about the evil of separating from it. He admits, that there are regulations and customs in it which are liable to objection, and which he would not justify, (page 7.) He gives high praise to the old Puritans, a race of men of whom the world was not worthy; who were horribly persecuted by their contemporaries, and who have been grossly calumniated in later times. For many modern Dissenters, he expresses his respect and love, and says, that he does not wish to proselyte them. He waves the common objections against extempore prayer, and allows that it sometimes gives advantages to wise and good men. He blames no man for leaving the church; he tries to draw no man to it, and all that he says is an apology for conformity, and amounts in substance to this-that a clergyman may continue in it with a good conscience-that it gives him some peculiar advantages for usefulness-and that if he leave it, he will find something to object to in any other party to which he may join himself.

The other writers in this correspondence are very different from Mr. Scott, and far inferior to him. They do not appear to have thought on the subject as closely as he did, and they certainly do not write with the same fairness and candour. If he be lukewarm, they are zealous; and if he be almost neutral, they are decided partisans. He describes an establishment in theory which might be a blessing, but they expatiate largely in praise of that to which they belong, and which he seems rather to have endured than admired. He never notices the general and common objections of Dissenters; but they call them "trifling"-"flimsy"-" little piques,"

uncertain scruples"-" blind prejudices," &c. He endeavours to show, that conformity to the church may be right; their object is to make it out that separation from it must be wrong.

In some important particulars the difference between this excellent divine and his co-adjutors is obvious. He distinctly declares, (page 45,) that he pleads not for the divine right of this or the other establishment, nor for the necessity of an establishment; but they make it so necessary, that without it Christianity could not stand. "We confidently avow our opinion, that the Church of England is the great, and, under present circumstances, the indispensable bulwark of Christianity in this land; and that, without its salutary aid, all the religious knowledge, and the piety which are at present found among the Dissenting communities, would soon be lost in the surrounding darkness of infidelity and superstition," (page 116.) In its youth Christianity rose, and spread, and triumphed over every species of opposition, without the slightest assistance from any worldly government; but

in its old age, it seems, it is grown weaker, and, like the systems of imposture, would sink, if these churchmen did not uphold it with their establishment! When Uzzah put forth his hand to hold the ark of God lest it should fall, the anger of the Lord was kindled against him, and he smote him that he died.

Mr. Scott admits the discipline of the church to be very lax, and thinks that" its best friends grieve exceedingly because such members are allowed, in some sense, to form a part of it, who ought not to belong to any Christian church, but to the visible kingdom of Satan," (page 31;) but the Rev. George Hamilton, Rector of Killermogh, gravely and seriously affirms, in the face of notorious evidence to the contrary, that "the discipline of the Church of England is conformed to that of the primitive church, as far as is expedient, or practicable," (page 102.) A little virtue would restrain a man from hazarding such an assertion, and a little observation will prevent him from believing it.

Mr. Scott allows that many things are wrong; and says, that "if the zealous friends of esta blishments would not attempt to vindicate what cannot admit of scriptural vindication, and only plead with firmness and temper for what can be thus supported, the cause would be more hopeful," (page 96;) but the Rev. Wm. Athill, rector of Fintona, informs us, that "many and real believers

are attached to the national church from principle; because they believe its constitution in most things scriptural, in all things lawful," (page 137.)

The Irish divines think it incontrovertible, that there is no Scripture precedent of a church appointing its own officers, (page 120 ;) but the rector of Aston Sandford condemns the practice of appointing a pastor in defiance of the will of the people, (page 41,) and says, that they ought, at least, to have a negative in the business, provided that they can show any thing in his doctrine, or in his moral and religious character, unsuited to the pastoral relation, (page 11.) He says, that the cause of establishments is desperate, if no way of defending them can be devised, which would not, if fairly applied, defend the establishment of popery, or paganism; but the Rev. Peter Roe, of Kilkenny, recommends Hooker, Warburton, and Milner, who are involved in this just sentence of condemnation.

Mr. Scott's part is ably and candidly written, and contains some things indeed to which a Dissenter would object, but many more that every reader will admire.. The other correspondents come short of him in the fairness and cogency of their arguments, and they far exceed him in their praises of the church, and censures of Dissenters-praises which are not always deserved, and censures which are sometimes not just.

To the Editors.-In your number for February, I read, with much satisfaction, a paper by Amicus B., "On inexorable Destiny," though some of his expressions are probably a little too strong; and,

in his powerful attack on fatalism, he seems to speak of "necessity," as if it had no existence, or as if it were synonymous with fate; whereas, when properly used, it can mean nothing more, as Pre

sident Edwards shows, than "the certain connexion between the subject and predicate of any true proposition.'

In this sense Amicus

B. must be a necessarian, allowing with me, for instance, that if a man live and die in sin, he must necessarily perish; and vice versa. This well written essay is very seasonable in this profligate age, when wicked, desperate, and speculative minds lay hold of any thing likely to shield their vices from the general scorn of mankind. I was the more interested in his remarks from having lately read, with unmingled feelings of detestation and horror, a modern pamphlet, entitled, "The Predestinated Thief," in which all the absurd principles of fatalism are, with most wicked intention, pushed to their utmost extreme.

You shall not be troubled with a long dissertation on Liberty and Necessity; but I have a sentiment on these subjects, which, to me, appears tenable; if it be wrong, I am willing to be corrected by Amicus B., or any other of your thinking correspondents. It appears to me, then, that any attempt to reconcile God's decrees with man's free agency is totally unnecessary, because they are not contradictory; for, as the famous Archbishop Leighton says, "the decree is, that such an one shall make choice of, or do, some particular thing freely." Metaphysics apart from this important question the Scriptures plainly assert, or

* Translated in 1814, from the original Latin of Archbishop Sancroft, in 1651. The awful blasphemy of this most bitter libel on Calvinism, in the way of dialogue between a Calvinistic Minister and a Condemned Felon, surpasses my description. All the most obnoxious parts of Lord Byron's works, joined with the most virulent ribaldry of infidels, are nothing to it. Both the Latin and English were published anonymously; but

the authors are known.

lead us to infer, the freedom of man in all his actions; if by freedom be meant (what else can it mean?) acting of his own accord, without compulsion from another. They also teach us that all events, without exception, are determined, (as events only) purposed, decreed, or permitted, by the sovereign will of God. The notion of permitting without any will, design, or intention so to permit, involves endless contradiction, and leads to that very fatalism against which Amicus B. successfully contends. Who that reads Acts ii. 23. and iv. 27, 28, can have any doubt whether the crucifixion of Christ, as an event, was, or was not, determined, proposed, or decreed that it was the noblest of the divine decrees? Or whether or not the murderous Jews and Romans acted freely, that is, of their own accord, in killing "the Prince of Life?" Here we have, in the same event, the counsels of heaven harmonizing with man's freedom; for free agency, disencumbered of all its technical, metaphysical, disfiguring garb, with which many have loaded it, means nothing more than that every intelligent being, on all occasions, acts from his own will, without compulsion. If compelled by another's he is not free. He may unknowingly perform the designs of another while acting fully and freely of his own accord, and his actions be still wholly his own. Thus Cyrus accomplished the divine will by leading the Jews from captivity; and Judas, impelled only by his own depravity, fulfilled the will of God by betraying our Lord. He was not forced against his own inclination, even by all the influence of Satan.

As the supposed difficulties of reconciling liberty with necessity chiefly refer to wicked men and actions, and as they are most likely, from selfish purposes, to magnify