God, are alike incompatible with the restrictive or compulsive interference of man.

. If men assume authority to govern in religion, it may be worthy of inquiry whether they do not act in opposition to the authority of God, by impeding the exercise of our faculties and energies in religious matters; and, if they claim authority to make new laws, and inflict temporal penalties, in the church of God, do they not subvert all ideas of a divine religion? Such a state of things as this cannot possibly exist, without a manifest change of the principles and essentials of Christianity, by new-modelling the religion of Jesus Christ; and when the ruling powers take upon them, by penal enactments, to enforce upon men articles of faith, and forms of worship, do they not usurp that spiritual dominion which the apostles expressly disclaimed and prohibited? If our views of divine truth differ from those of persons invested with power, we cannot consider our selves under the least obligation to believe their opinions; nor can we hesitate about obeying "God rather than men ;" since they assume authority in divine things, without divine warrant.

The admission of any other maxims than these might be attended with the entire subversion of Christianity, by alterations and additions, according to the pleasure of men, till the religion of Jesus became essentially different from the Divine original. In every case when men make laws to enforce the doctrines and duties of religion, they directly or indirectly subvert Christianity, and set up something in its place, more or less like it, as it may happen; but whatever that may be which is substituted, since it rests on the authority of man, it cannot, in

truth, be called Christianity : therefore, the belief of such doctrines, and the observance of such duties, being made to depend on the authority of man, instead of the authority of God, transforms religion into a human institution.

The nature of faith and religious worship disallows all external coercion, and all worldly government. God has not appointed any of his creatures, in heaven or on earth, to enforce religious truth by penal enactments; he has not nominated any vicegerent to do this for him ; he has declared the attempt to be altogether vain" In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." The means which men employ to impose religion are all nefarious: they destroy a sinner to make a saint. Dominion over conscience is that part of God's empire of which he is most jealous, and in which he will have no partner-no delegate-no rival; and any creature assuming this dominion must perform two exploits

usurp the throne, and claim the slave: but the attempt is equally unscriptural, as it is irrational and impracticable. The project never entered the mind of the professor of any science, except that of theology; and, surely, it is high time for theologians to explode so monstrous a delusion.

On questions pertaining to religion, God is the only legislator— the only Judge; and, on such subjects, we cannot owe obedience to any other to legislate in religion is beyond the cognizance and power of man, and is the exclusive prerogative of Deity. Religion is necessarily and absolutely independent of human power, and a concern between God and souls alone. The efforts of mortals are totally inadequate to rule the hearts of men, to preserve in

them purity of doctrine, to con. strain them to "worship God in spirit and in truth." These, and all other points in religion, are beyond the scrutiny and government of mortals. The exercises of faith and worship are the exercises of the soul, over which human authority can have no cognizance whatever; and, since the government of souls belongs absolutely to God only, every attempt to govern them by human enactments, is virtually an attempt to subvert his prerogative, or wrest his authority from him. That authority, which is always fallible, and often sick of its own exertions, is absolutely unable to implant the religion of Jesus Christ in the hearts of the people; there fore, that which is called the established religion, which is prescribed by human authority, and which is enforced by penal statutes, is not the religion of the Bible, but the religion of the State.

The great truths inculcated in the Gospel, have an immediate respect to our affections, and dispositions, and consciences; but penal enactments are absolutely unable to bring those truths into operation for the government of these intellectual faculties. As no power on earth can inspect and rule the human heart; so it is equally unable to enforce those heavenly truths which preeminently concern the heart; and may as soon force men to become rich, or wise, or healthy, as to become religious. If religion exist at all, it must be the subject of personal conviction and individual choice-not of coercion or penal-enactment. No human force whatever can heal the disorders of the mind-can rectify the tendencies of the willcan impart conviction to the conscience-can conquer the heart to the love of God and the faith of

Jesus Christ. It is equally impossible for human power to rescue a soul from sin, as it is to save a man from death. Penal sanctions cannot be brought to act upon the conscience; they have no controlling force upon the reason; they attest nothingthey prove nothing; therefore they avail nothing towards making men religious. Human power may as well attempt to veil the sun in the sky, as to control religious sentiment; or attempt to create a world, as to force religion upon man; and it would be equally proper to talk of licensing the light from the sun, or the rain from the clouds, as to talk of licensing the profession of religion, and the worship of Almighty God!

This view of religion fixes its support and promulgation on the primitive foundation. In the first and purest ages, the churches of Christ were total strangers to an alliance with worldly power; and so far were they from needing the least portion of its aid, that Christianity, it is well known, never flourished so much as during the first three centuries, when that power was combined in its destruction. If religion have any influence, it operates on the conscience; and when it is cordially received, it produces unshaken obedience to the civil constitution, and good-will to man. Resting solely on the belief of invisible realities, and having an eternity of bliss in prospect, it can derive no additional weight or solemnity from human sanctions; but will always appear to the greatest advantage, and of the greatest force, when placed on the hallowed ground of Divine authority, remote from the parade of human wisdom and worldly policy. Can it be imagined that those who reject all the ecclesiastical enact

but also shows the importance of religious emancipation. The religion of Jesus Christ cannot be advanced by human force; it addresses every man's conscience; and force cannot reach the conscience; therefore the possibility of promoting it by such methods, is manifestly precluded; and this secures religious emancipation as the indubitable birth-right of every subject of the empire.

To attempt to impose our religion upon other persons, would betray one of the worst characters of man, yet we maintain not only that we possess the indubitable right of choosing, and deciding, and acting for ourselves, on every question where faith and conscience are concerned; but also that our Creator unalterably requires

us to claim and exercise this right; we are, therefore, bound by indissoluble obligation to claim an unlicensed use and improvement of those religious advantages with which God has favoured us, and of which we must give a strict account in the day of judgment. To refuse us this claim, would diminish, if not destroy, our accountability to God, or constrain us to stand guilty at his tribunal; and, to deny us complete religious emancipation, would be incompatible with the nature of religion, and subversive of the dearest rights and strongest obligations of rational man; the degradation and enormity of which can be estimated only by the fearful retribution at the bar of God. (To be continued.)

in

To the Editors.-I sincerely rejoice in common, I doubt not, with many of your readers, that you have at length devoted a few of your pages to an exposure of Dr. Southey, and his too-partial friend in the Quarterly Review. Our best thanks are certainly due to the intelligent author of the pamphlet, so deservedly commended your last number (p. 209), who has proved himself as superior to his opponents in intellectual power and liberality of feeling, as in the truth and justice of his cause. A better representative of our interests, no one can desire; a more triumphant exposure of the false reasoning and uncandid spirit of our enemies, could not have been given. But when I consider that the Congregational Magazine is the avowed organ of dissent; and that it has never been backward either in the defence of religious liberty in general; or in the main

N. S. No. 65.

tenance of those principles which are involved in nonconformity, in particular; I cannot but feel that a more prominent place should be given in its pages to this subject, than has yet been conceded to it. The publication of such a work as "Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society," should, in my opinion, have employed the pens of your most talented correspondents; and, till the present month, I have had a feeling of disappointment, not to say vexation, that they have not so bestirred themselves.

When I saw it gravely stated, that "the principle of nonconformity in religion is very generally connected with political discontent"

that the great body of Dissenters "are but half Englishmen at heart; because they acknowledge only one part of the two-fold constitution under which they live, and, consequently, sit loose in their attach2 K

ment to the other"-that the dissenting interest is about as useful and ornamental to the nation as a wen or tumour is to the body which it diseases and deforms that even as far as Dissenters have provided religious instruction for a population which had outgrown the regular supply, they "have done evil by the very prevention of good; because they thereby delayed the only regular and convenient remedy" that "they have been long ashamed of those fanatical objections to the Established Church, which were the original grounds of their separation"-and that an explanation of their increase is to be found in temporal considerations, and not in the perversities, freaks, and infirmities of crooked, crazy, and queasy consciences"-when I met with such statements as these, and remembered that they were made by an author whose productions are usually read, and had been echoed and lauded by one of our most popular literary journals I was compelled to ask, Where are our censors of the press-the editors and correspondents of our liberal periodicals that they should suffer such gross misrepresentations, such wilful libels as these, to pass unrebuked? For myself, I never so earnestly coveted the pen of the scribe, as on the present occasion, that I might at least call on others, whose abilities are adequate to the task, to defend a cause so worthy of their best energies, and, in this instance, so ungenerously and ferociously assailed.

At the same time, however, it must be acknowledged, no extraordinary sagacity is requisite to detect the fallacies of such a writer. The chief difficulty arises from their number, which is such as to impose a task of superabundant labour on those who undertake their exposure. If I might be al

lowed to trespass a few moments on the attention of your readers on this subject, I should feel inclined to reply to the above charges, not in detail, but in the mass; and this I would do by assuring Dr. Southey, that whatever may be the fact within the pale of his church, without it, there is such a thing as CONSCIENCE; and that with us, the authority of this mysterious power is paramount and supreme. We know nothing of "crooked, crazy, or queasy consciences.' Our philosophy supplies us with no such distinctions; our vocabulary with no such terms. We have been simple enough to receive our views on this subject from the statements of Scripture; and we have there met with no encouragement either to ridicule the consciences of others, or to rebel against our own. It is truly an ominous circumstance that this champion of Church Establishments should have allowed himself to speak in such scornful terms of that moral light within us, which almost all men have agreed to reverence: and that his impiety in this respect was not checked, even by the august presence of a disembodied spirit, which he had summoned from its invisible resting place to share the responsibility of his opinions. An uncharitable individual might be tempted to regard this fact in an unfavourable light, and to suppose that the laureate's ill-fortune had thrown him more into the society of evil consciences than of good ones. But be this as it may: I return to my position, that Dissenters have a conscience; and that this fact is sufficient to explain every peculiarity in their history. If this slight circumstance had occurred to Dr. Southey, he would, doubtless, have paused ere he had given utterance to such foul calumnies as are published in his "Colloquies."