and numbers, could not do the same without endangering its existence? Such fears he would repeat were idle and chimerical, asserted only, in his opinion, for the purposes of oppression. With regard to the church itself, he highly approved of its discipline and abstract duties; it had wisely avoided all that was superstitious, and retained what to him appeared to be essential. He therefore admired and revered it, and declared himself firmly attached to it; but of the individuals that composed it, he must say of them, as of all other public bodies, that while he highly respected some, there might be others who could have no claim to his regard. They, no doubt, were a mixture of good and bad; he must however strongly object to the church, whenever it presumed to act as a party; its interference in politics had been always mischievous, and often dangerous to the constitution. The church as a party was a formidable body; it had, formerly, as now, used the powerful engine of their real, or pretended fear, which in the hands of tyrants had ever proved the signal of oppression. The church had long taken the lead in the cause of Jacobitism, and, in the reign of Queen ANNE, had been active in the instigation of tumults and confusion, in support of the doctrines of arbitrary power. He ever should be a decided friend to an established religion; but it should be an establishment founded on the opinions of the majority of the people. The truth of religion was not a subject for the discussion of parliament; their duty was only to sanction that which was so universally approved, and to allow it the emoluments of the state. A conviction of the reasonableness of such a procedure dictated so much liberality in the religious establishments at the Union, as well as the more recent establishment of the Roman Catho lic religion in Canada. Innovations were said to be dan

gerous at all times, but particularly so now by the alteration of affairs in France. But the hopes of the Dissenters were not founded upon the most distant reference to the transanctions which had taken place in that kingdoom. Their application to the House, on the present subject, had been made three years ago, when the most sagacious among them could not form any thing like a conjecture of what has since happened in that country. Yet he saw no reason but the example of France ought to have its influence; the church there was now suffering for its former intolerance. However he might rejoice in the emancipation of near thirty millions of his fellow-creatures, and in the spirit which gave rise to the Revolution, yet he was free to own there were some acts of the new government which he could not applaud. The summary and indiscriminate forfeiture of the property of the church came under this description. But the violence of this proceeding might in some measure, be attributed to former ecclesiastical oppressions; and, in particular, to the impolitic revocation of the edict of Nantes. The constitution civil and ecclesiastical, previously to this period, had remained unmolested and unimpaired; there existed no test; Protestants and Catholics were indiscriminately admitted into civil and military offices; but, by that rash measure, liberality and toleration were thrown away; the arts and manufactures were driven into other countries, to flourish in a more genial soil, and under a milder form of government. This should serve as a caution to the church of England; persecution may prevail for a time, but it generally terminates in the punishment of its abettors. He observed, that the church had owed its existence to a rational innovation, and the constitution had derived much of its excellence and beauty from the same source; the Reformation,

formation, had established the one, and the Revolution the other. The nature of monarchy was such as to require the occasional renovation of the people's rights, to prevent encroachments. It was the opinion of Mr. Hume, to whose talents, as a philosopher, he paid just deference, that monarchy would soon become absolute, if not subject to frequent innovations. But what was the innovation which was now so much dreaded? Was it an attack on Magna Charta, or the Bill of Rights? No; it was only the simple repeal of an act of CHARLES the Second, which the parliament passed out of compliment to the king, in the overflowing effusion of their loyalty, at the conclusion of the civil war. The Corporation act went to exclude Dissenters whose political sentiments were considered as anti-monarchical; and the Test act was intended to operate against the Roman Catholics. He should ever reprobate such acts as the pillars of the constitution. What! was any specific mode of administering the Lord's Supper to be considered as the corner-stone of the constitution? A constitution, with such a rotten foundation, was, in his opinion, not worth preserving. The leading feature of true religion he had always understood to be Charity. When he viewed the church, and saw churchmen, discovering a spirit directly opposite to that religion they professed, he must consider them as men who were ambitious of a monopoly of power, under the mask of an affected apprehension of danger. The Christian religion breathed nothing but charity and forbearance; it was neither taught originally to Kings and senators, nor had it any necessary connection with government. It had existed for centuries, without any assistance from the secular arm. Though a learned prelate [WARBURTON] had proposed a decent and honorable alliance between the church and state;

yet it was not an alliance founded on the purity of the Christian doctrines, but merely on promises of mutual support. According to this new-fangled doctrine, the church was not to depend upon its own merits, nor was religion to be established by the truth of its own evidence; but it was to be supported by the assistance of civil authority. Was this the manner in which Christianity was first propagated? In its infancy when it had to combat the prejudices of mankind, and to make its way through an infinite number of other obstacles, was its progress indebted for any support from the indulgence of the Roman Emperors' senate? For a Christian prelate, then, to appeal from the truth of the Scriptures to the authority of secular power, in support of the Christian religion, was an idea he should ever reprobate as contemptible and shameful. Religion, in his opinion, had no reference whatever to the political constitution of a state; from such an alliance it would contaminate, and be contaminated; the one would be corrupted, and the other enslaved. The clergy, he was sorry to observe, had uniformly acted with great artifice and duplicity, down from the time of the Reformation, when they made their own chimerical fears, which existed no where but in their own heated and disordered imaginations, the ground of unprovoked and unmerited persecution. Report said (but he sincerely hoped without foundation) that a certain prelate of the church [St. DAVID'3] had recently written a circular letter to the clergy of his diocese, requiring them to withhold their votes and interests at the next general election from a particular member of that House, for his having voted for the present motion, when under discussion during the last session. If innovation was a subject of so much dread, what innovation could be more alarming to the constitution than this precedent

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of an English bishop, interfering not only in an election for a member of parliament, in direct violation of that House, but also presuming to marshal his ecclesiastical tribe in a civil array, and denouncing his anathemas against every one who should be of opinion that the civil power could exist independently of the authority of the church? Such antichristian conduct was ill calculated to remove the spirit of party and of faction, with which the Dissenters must be actuated, under the pressure of grievance, oppression, and persecution. Many of the Dissenters, he was persuaded, were friendly to the church establishment; but by such intolerance they might be driven to entertain the most inveterate enmity. If their influence and opposition are now dreaded, how much more so ought they to be, when roused into resentment, irritated into hatred, and persecuted into hostility? It had often proved a matter of lamentation to High Churchmen, and it had been complained of as a grievance, that Dissenters had on some occasions conformed to the Test laws. It was rather a delicate point for any clergyman to scruple complying with an application for the administration of the sacrament; though, in some instances, a refusal had been made on the ground of immorality. But he must condemn such a political establishment, which required a man to go to our church, while he belonged to a sect which, perhaps, held tenets diametrically opposite; it was a direct method to promote vice, immorality, and profaneness. The abuse of so much power, too, in the hands of the clergy, might be attended with infinite mischief. The repeal of the Test laws, it was said, would inevitably prove an infringement of the Union. But this was a palpable and egregi. ous error. So far were the Test laws from being among the

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