partizans as most people, but we believe there is something that we love even better than nonconformity; and we wish we could provoke the church of England to strengthen herself, by bringing her great means to bear more definitively than she has yet done upon the common cause. This will constitute her only real security; every thing else will utterly fail her at the hour of need, We submit these remarks with frankness and candour to the parties most interested; and we may, perhaps, in future, revert to the general subject of church property, and its distribution, as occasions may seem to require. In the mean time, we cannot but observe, that the church will find no enemies so dangerous as those inconsiderate friends who, by setting up in her behalf claims that cannot be sustained, conceal from view her real responsibilities, by acting up to which alone she can secure either usefulness or stability. And we are sorry to be obliged to number among these injudicious advocates some of the writers in the Quarterly Review. THE IMPORTANCE OF RELIGIOUS EMANCIPATION. 3. THE necessity of religious Emancipation appears from the character of human legislation. If it had been within the province of governors to appoint new laws and new penalties in religion; and if it had been unlawful for private persons to profess and propagate religion, except by permission from those in power, how was it that our Lord and his apostles never received such permission from the supreme rulers? They certainly had no idea of any peculiar prerogative in rulers to prescribe unto their subjects in matters of religion, since they never made application to them, nor received any instructions from them for any such purpose. It was their constant practice to preach the gospel to all companies, and to invite all persons promiscuously to worship God: but they never sought to have Christianity incorporated with the political constitution, or enforced by human legislation, On the contrary, the whole of their conduct shows, that they considered religion as personal property, and as equally the concern N. S. No. 68. of every living soul, excluding all human controul, both as to what men should believe, and how they should worship God. One circumstance in favour of this representation is very evident, If the government of Christianity had not been undertaken by Constantine, or any of the Roman governors, the popish hierarchy, that great mystery of iniquity and abomination, could never have existed. By the ostentatious assumption of the powers of legislating in religion, Christianity was made the tool of secular aggrandizement and a worldly empire; the liberal constitution of the apostolic churches, and the rights of conscience, were subverted; and, for upwards of a thousand years, the souls of the people of Christendom were deluded and destroyed by this monstrous domination! Religious emancipation opens a wide door for the unmolested discussion, and unlimited promulgation, of the Gospel: but the legislative imposition of creeds and forms of worship, necessarily precludes the free investigation of 3 G theological subjects, and entails or with the prayers they present to errors and abuses from generation to generation. The temporal penalties inseparable from human legislation, on subjects of religion, are open innovations and derangements of Christianity. All that Christianity authorizes Christian churches to do with offenders, is admonition and exclusion from their society, those persons whom they, according to Scripture, deem unworthy to continue members: there is not the least intimation that such persons ought to be placed under any civil privation or disqualification whatever. If they cannot be considered as Christians, and proper subjects for holy communion, they still are men, and members of civil society: nor can they be liable to any temporal penalties, unless they have violated the laws of the state. If I demean myself as a peaceful and worthy subject, what have earthly governors to do with my religious belief, or my prayers to God? Why should they prescribe, and license, and authorize them? Wise rulers, like affectionate parents towards their children, make no cruel distinctions, but allow the utmost freedom to all, only taking from them the power of abusing it by keeping the temporal sword in their own hands. They may patronize one religious denomination; but they will never obey the dictates of any party, nor make themselves slaves to the pride or resentment of any sect; knowing that this would be equally prejudicial to the church of Christ, and to the interests of civil society. They will recommend morality and religion to all; and will enforce justice, order, and good government; on which subjection and harmony, peace and happiness, will invariably follow: but they will refuse to interfere with the religious opinions of their subjects, the Almighty. They cannot anticipate the least evil arising from the guarantee of unrestricted religious freedom, but are persuaded that it will be incalculably beneficial to the advancement of religion and the welfare of civil government. By abstaining from restriction and coercion in religion, discord about opinions will presently sicken and die. Frequenting the same communion, and subscribing the same creed, cannot unite his majesty's subjects; nor can any difference in Christian doctrine or worship alienate them; and when all other motives to contention are taken away, except those of truth and usefulness, controversy will neither be virulent, nor of long duration. If rulers do not throw out any bone of contention, but take care that all parties be equally safe, and no injustice befall any on account of their faith, there will be little left to inflame passion or excite revenge: but, for any class of Christians to talk of making laws for religion, when they have no authority, and can suffer no injury, and in matters about which God alone can judge, cannot fail to betray the worst kind of arrogance and presumption. On abolishing all restraints and coercions in religion, princes will enjoy not only equal, but much greater security in the affections of their people; and, having tried the honourable experiment, they will never repent adopting principles so just, so generous, and so congenial to Christianity. They cannot act otherwise, if they follow the authority and maxims of the Gospel, and wish to preserve a correct semblance to the spirit and character of its Author. We do not tax our governors of unkindness, but applaud their candour and liberality; yet the cause we plead, being unconnected with any political views, is the result of deep conviction of its rights and deserts, as founded on reason, humanity, conscience, policy, and Christianity and since it is only a proposal for the spread of the Gospel, unconnected with the coercive prescriptions of men, or a proposal to allow all persons to drink of the waters of life, and to go to heaven without human molestation, it may be fairly presumed that no man will disapprove of it, who is a consistent friend of Divine revelation. The discovery of truth, and the diffusion of religion, are objects of the first importance to all orders of Christians; and what ever clashes with them, ought to be considered as an abuse of no ordinary kind, subverting the dearest interests of man. Human legislation is bounded and confined to the care of the commonwealth, and no part of it can be legitimately extended to the worship of God and the salvation of souls, except only by affording equal liberty and protection to all worthy subjects, with friendly advice and encouragement in their religious professions. To authorize rulers to punish, without any state crime, those who differ from them on points of theology, but are good and peaceable subjects, is, in effect, entrusting them with power to oppose the Almighty, to usurp the prerogative of God, to root out and destroy Christianity, whenever they may be so disposed. God has not given this power to them; nor can the people invest them with it. They cannot invest them with the power of choosing their religion for them, of worshipping God for them, of taking care of their souls for them; and is it not equally marvellous, as it is contrary to Divine truth, that any persons should ever attempt to in vest mortals with power in those things which necessarily belong to God alone. No individual can possibly owe religious obedience to the king, or convocation, or synod, or conference, or any other authority assumed by man; is it not, therefore, equally unjust and absurd to require it? No human beings on earth, however dignified their circumstances, or honourable their character, have the least right to legislate on the subject of religion, no, not for themselves, but are under indispensable obligation to believe and practise, without abatement or alteration, the religion which God has provided for them. Why should persons who make laws for Englishmen at all interfere with those affairs which relate exclusively to a foreign state, and to which their power to legislate does not-cannot belong? The restraint of religious emancipation, so far from advancing Christianity, invariably creates prejudice and enmity against it, and against those who promote it by such unhallowed methods. Neither the influence of truth on the mind, nor the operations of conscience, can be regulated by outward enactments; yet penal edicts may make men hypocrites, but they cannot make them sincere believers of another's creed, nor force them to relinquish their own. This restraint imperiously requires men of grace and learning to bow under its oppressive weight, binding them as in chains of iron, contrary to grace, conscience, and common sense: it robs God of the honour which is justly due to him, and attempts to deprive immortal souls of their peace here, and of their reward hereafter. This spiritual sacrilege is the greatest of all crimes: it is a sin against God and nature; against reason and revelation; against humanity and common sense; against the consciences of Christians, and the prerogative of God. When we turn our eyes to the methods by which religion is sometimes promoted, we find the weapous of this warfare are not spiritual, but carnal. Under the plausible professions of promoting Christianity, men have employed creeds and rubrics, tests and subscriptions, canons and constitutions, oaths and temporal penalties, habits and ceremonies, excommunications and purgations, suspensions and deprivations, tithes and spiritual courts: but these methods are absolutely inapplicable and unavailable to promote faith in Jesus Christ, and obedience to the Christian code. Such compulsory measures may force men into professed subjection to their authority; but they are alike useless and inefficacious to promote the religion of the Bible: they only promote the religion of the state. All those churches, therefore, whether popish or protestant, episcopal or presbyterian, methodistical or congregational, which have superadded new laws and new penalties to those of Jesus Christ, have metamorphosed Christianity, violated the essential principle of protestantism, and erected a worldly system in subversion of the gospel of Christ. The coercive enforcement of articles of faith implies the existence of two dispositions equally opposed to true religion, and both expressly forbidden by its divine Author. The claim of dominion over conscience in the imposer, and an abject preference of slavery in the subscriber. The first usurps the prerogative of Deity: the last swears obedience to a pretender. The first domineers, and gives laws like a tyrant; the last truckles like a vassal. The first assumes a dominion incompatible with human frailty, and even denied to angels: the last yields a low submission, inconsistent with the dignity of rational man, and ruinous to that religion which he pretends to support. Jesus Christ does not require, but expressly forbid, both these dispositions; well knowing, that the allowance of these would be the suppression of the noblest dispositions of man, and a degradation of revelation beneath the religion of nature. If human inventions have formerly secularized Christianity, and rendered such base dispositions unavoidable in times of ignorance, they ought now to be exploded; and, since all protestants explode them in theory, they ought to explode them in practice. The Son of God did not come to redeem one part of mankind to serve the secular views and unworthy passions of the other but he obtained freedom for all," That they may serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness, all the days of their lives." The religion of Jesus Christ is promoted by clear evidence and affectionate persuasion, not derived from human traditions or penal statutes, but from the operation of divine truth in the heart. It needs not the arm of secular power to its support and prosperity, which can be of no avail or use whatever. Its interference by the addition of new laws and new penalties to advance the welfare of Christian churches, is not only an open impeachment of the wisdom and goodness of God, as if their government needed the aid of mortals; but such laws and penalties invariably hinder the progress of Christianity. By fallible men prescribing our duty to God, they erect a new and erroneous standard of obligation: therefore such unrighteous proceedings are not only manifest stumbling-blocks to religion, but, so far as they exist, they transfer our religious obligations from the authority of God, to the wisdom and policy of man, and prove the most dangerous interruptions to the progress of the gospel of Christ. The Jewish economy was purely a theocracy, intended as a barrier of separation between Jews and Gentiles: but this barrier was broken down by the coming of the Messiah; and now both parties, on the profession of the gospel, are united in one common faith. The new economy proposes more sublime and exalted motives than those of the Mosaic law, presenting neither secular rewards nor temporal punishments, but those which are invisible and eternal. It treats no part of the human family as strangers, but opens a door of mercy to all, and offers its blessings to the acceptance of all, to the exclusion of human coercions and temporal punishment. It presents its delicious fruits equally and indiscriminately to all ranks and orders of men; but never sanctions their forcing one another to pluck and eat. Jesus Christ never said, "Whoever does not follow me, shall be considered as a rebel against the state-shall be unprotected by the laws of his country-shall be doomed to a dungeon, bear a faggot, or be stripped of any part of his civil immunities." The religion which he taught was personal property and matter of individual choice. "Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely." When some of his professed disciples forsook him, he did not employ any outward force to prevent them; but, with his wonted gentleness, said to the rest," Will ye also go away?" It is in vain, therefore, to boast of our religion, or of our freedom, so long as admission to ecclesiastical offices, the discharge of ministerial duties, the doctrines to be received, the prayers to be offered to God, the qualifications for communion, and multiplied other particulars, are under the regulation of penal statutes, or any other devices of man. When coercive enactments are employed to promote religion, it is indispensably requisite to prefer some particular sect or system; and, since rulers are no better judges of religion than private persons, but in equal danger of having their minds warped by error, they may sanction that religion which is false. Outward splendour and secular advantage always constitute prominent features in the system of their choice, when strong inducements are not wanting to defend them at the expense of truth; by which error and corruption become permanent, and the public creed which has happened to prevail, continued to oppose superior light and improvement, and to be handed down from age to age without alteration, to the open disgrace of religion: but true true piety invariably flourishes most in those countries, and in those communions, which are least encumbered with the traditions and commandments of men. This is the natural consequence of the people having their minds, and devotions, and exertions unfettered; and being exempt from burdensome forms, ceremonies, canons, oaths, creeds, and subscriptions, their views of divine doctrine and religious worship have free course in all directions. In this happy state of things Christianity has fair play, and, on the grounds of its native attractions, recommends itself to every man's conscience : but, even the profession of religion |