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352

AND AFTER ESTABLISHMENTS.

the Holy Ghost;-the Godhead of the three Divine persons in one mysterious Trinity;-have individual purity of morals and national prosperity and happiness uniformly flourished.

Wherever Christianity spread its mild and benignant light, the waste and wilderness of life began to bloom as the paradise of God; the nations of the earth became purified and exalted in all their moral and intellectual faculties; they were freed from the fetters of political, social, and domestic slavery; they were more advanced in skill and knowledge, more deeply versed in science, more accomplished in literature, more alive to industry and enterprise, more refined in all social intercourse, more adorned with every nobler virtue and every polished grace, more benevolent to man, more devoted to God.

But the dawning of this brightest day was soon overcast with clouds and thick darkness;—superstition soon poisoned the waters of life in their springs and in their sources;-a superstition which lulled to rest all fears of future punishment, while it sanctioned and encouraged the commission of every crime :—which held out incitements to the most profligate ambition, and provided for the indulgence of the most sensual sloth; a superstition, whose imposing ceremonies were interwoven with all the institutions of secular society; and whose spirit of delusion was diffused throughout all the principles of civil government.

The corruptions of Christianity soon began to darken, and gradually to extinguish the lights of the understanding and the sensibilities of the heart; so that a greater and a more stupendous mass of ignorance and iniquity, than had ever yet oppressed the earth, was exhibited in the moral and intellectual death of ten successive centuries. The whole circumference of Christendom was veiled in the darkest pall of civil and religious bondage; the human conscience was benighted amidst the terrors of the dungeon, the rack, the gibbet, and the flame; the

CHURCH GOVERNMENT IN UNITED STATES.

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persons of men were delivered over a prey to the perpetuity of feudal anarchy and boisterous brigandage; of castellated feuds; of partisan warfare; of hereditary hostility; of arbitrary incarceration; of inquisitorial torment; of military execution; of private assassination; of public pillage; of universal oppression; of rapes, robberies, murders, massacres, conflagrations, and all the unutterably numerous and diversified calamities, incident to suffering and afflicted humanity, when force and fraud are the arbiters of right and wrong.

Mr. Addison, writing in the reign of Queen Ann, under the full beatitude of a protestant national church establishment, bears, undesignedly indeed, testimony to the important position, that religion flourishes better, and is purer without, than with the political conjunction of the secular government.

In his Evidences of the Christian Religion, he says: I should be thought to advance a paradox, should I affirm, that there were more Christians in the world, during those times of persecution, the three centuries before Constantine made the first state church, than there are at present in these, which we call the flourishing times of Christianity. But this will be found an indisputable truth, if we form our calculation upon the opinions, which prevailed in those days, that every one, who lives in the habitual practice of any voluntary sin, actually cuts himself off from the benefit and profession of Christianity, and whatever he may call himself, is in reality, no Christian, nor ought to be esteemed as such.

If this rule of the primitive, unestablished religion were applied as the test of the Christianity of all the clerical and lay members of the Anglican and Hibernian state churches; it is to be feared, that the real Christians in those national ecclesiastical establishments, would turn out to be, comparatively, a very little flock.

In these United States, the different church governments are similar to those in England. Perhaps

354

AMERICAN-ANGLO-CHURCH.

the greatest variance exists between the outward organization of the American-Anglo and the Anglican churches. In the United States, the annual or biennial convention of each diocese, and the triennial convention of all the several dioceses, consist of lay, as well as of clerical delegates; and therefore exhibit more of a representative form of government, than the established church displays in England, where, since the extinction or disuse of the houses of convocation, the state clergy are collected in mass, only at the visitations, whether episcopal or archidiaconal. Nay, in convocation, no laics sate as members. In the United States, at the diocesan convention, the bishop presides ex officio; at the triennial, or general convention, the bishops collectively form an upper house; while the clerical and lay deputies constitute a lower house. Each separate church is governed by its rector, church wardens, and vestrymen.

In the American-Anglo-Church there is no ostensible patronage; no bishoprics, nor benefices, in the gift of the government, or nobles, or gentry, or bishops, or colleges, or chapters, or canons, or lay incorporations, as in England; where there is neither voice nor election, on the part of the people to whose immortal souls spiritual services are to be administered. But even in these United States, a spurious species of patronage exists: for example, if a bishop happens to be an active, dexterous, managing man, he contrives to fill most of the vacancies in his diocese, with clerks after his own heart.

Now, if such a bustling, busy prelate be fully indoctrinated in exclusive churchmanship, baptismal regeneration, term and condition salvation, and the other dogmas of the modern fashionable protestant papist theology, he naturally labours to fasten similar theologues upon all vacant parishes, as the only clergy that are orthodox; while he denounces as "unsound, irregular, weak, fanatical, methodistic, and Calvinistic," those ministers, who maintain the truly

PRESBYTERIANS-METHODISTS.

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evangelical doctrines of the Reformation, embodied in the articles, homilies, and liturgy of the Anglican church. The bishop, in the United States, as in England, is the executive chief of the clergy in his diocese; but his hand is not strengthened to do mischief by any flagitious act of parliament.

The presbyterian form of church government, in the United States, resembles a representative republic; consisting of a parity of ministers, lay delegates or elders, the clerical moderator, chosen as president, or speaker of the house, met together for the despatch of ecclesiastical business, in their general assemblies, which superintend and guide all the particular synods and presbyteries throughout the union; while each separate congregation is governed by a church session, comprised of lay elders and deacons, over whom the minister presides, ex officio. Each session is amenable to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of its own presbytery, as each presbytery is subject to the superior dominion of its particular synod; and all the churches are under the authority of the general assembly.

The methodists, in the United States, are governed altogether by their clergy; no lay delegates being admitted to their conference or general convention. The laity are held under a very strict surveillance by the classes, and monthly and quarterly meetings; all establishing a very minute and vigilant police over the conduct of every member of the society, both male and female.

The congregationalists, or independents, whether pedo or adult baptists, profess to make each separate congregation a separate church, sui juris; admitting no appeal to any ulterior or higher ecclesiastical tribunal. This form of church government is an unmixed democracy, each member of the congregation, male and female, young and old, high and low, rich and poor, one with another having a vote in all church matters; and every controversy being settled by the whole congregation meeting together, and

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CONGREGATIONALISTS.

talking and voting. Whence are apt, sometimes, to arise distraction and tumult.

No means are provided for preserving an orthodox standard of faith among the several churches, as one body; in consequence of which, too many of the independents, both in England and in America, have declined in discipline, and deteriorated in doctrine; have glided down from Calvinism into Arminianism; thence to Arianism, thence to Socinianism, thence to deism, or atheism, or nothing, till the day of reckoning comes. A superior ecclesiastical tribunal, unconnected with any particular congregation, and guided by an evangelical creed, as a standard of faith, appears to be the best mode that can be devised, of watching over, and preventing or punishing any laxity of discipline, or deviation in doctrine, that might taint with its. leperous instilment, any portion of the visible church, over which it presides.

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