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out of season, exaws axapos in preaching; more ferconstant in prayer, and more holy and vent and

heavenly in their lives and example, in all respects, than the dissenting teachers are, if they would effectually stop their progress. All other methods will be found by experience to be mere palliatives.

"I should not have previously supposed that a

protestant bishop would have deigned to quote the infidel Hume in such an argument; who, as might easily be proved, showed as much ignorance when he presumed to write about religion, as he did sound and accurate information on other subjects; and who never, throughout his whole history, meets with any thing like Christianity among papists or protestants, Calvinists or Arminians, churchmen or dissenters, but he shows most clearly his bitter enmity and sovereign contempt of it; and that always in proportion as the enemy to be assailed approximates to the religion of the New Testament. I disdain to answer Hume's accusation of enthusiasm. I only deny its truth; and I rejoice that his testimony is against us; it is the highest applause which such a man was capable of bestowing on religious characters."

Notwithstanding these conclusive remarks of Mr. Scott, our American Tomlines persist in declaring "that the evangelical clergy of the church of England will destroy that church, unless they are speedily put down; but they will take care the evangelicals shall never have any footing in their church." But after all that may be said or done, finis coronat opus; and we may, peradventure, yet live to see the grace of God shed abroad upon our American-AngloChurches; and if it be, it will, undoubtedly, prove too hard for its opponents, and their own legitimate master too.

How ignorant of the genius of Christianity, and of the very elements of human nature itself, have religious persecutors always shown themselves. Their object seems to be, the extermination of all those who presume to differ in opinion from them:

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whereas, the experience of all time shows, that mere persecution has never yet been able to subdue truth, or to repress error.

Francis the first, of France, did not stifle the flame of protestantism, even in his own dominions, when instigated by the established clergy, in order to expiate the crime of some anonymous writings against the mummery of the mass, he, together with his three sons, bareheaded, carried a torch in his hand, at a procession and public prayers; and commanded, that in the middle of the four most frequented parts of Paris, eight of the reformed should be burned alive. And thirty-two protestants were, accordingly, committed to the flames, as an edifying spectacle for the good Parisians.

This was the natural consequence of so identifying a national or established church with Christianity, as to make a separation from its pale the test of heresy. How much more execrable is papal than pagan persecution! Upon the very substance and essence of heathen worship did the first Christians innovate; denouncing it as absurd, corrupt, ruinous. But the innovation of the protestants did not touch one single, fundamental, essential point of Christianity. They separated from the polluted and polluting circumstantials of Rome, which her secular, formal, established hierarchy, by the very fact of persecution, exalt above all the distinguishing doctrines of the gospel.

As persecution and falsehood are inseparably allied, Francis, who was courting the aid of the protestant princes in Germany, to support him against the power of his formidable rival, Charles the fifth, declared publicly, that he had only burned thirtytwo anabaptists for seditious and turbulent practices. In order to refute this infamous calumny, John Calvin addressed to the French king the admirable dedication to his Christian Institutes; a composition, which Alexander Morus ranks with the preface of president de Thou, Thuanus, to his history, and the

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preface of Casaubon to his Polybius, as one of the three masterpieces of the age. Of course Calvin's lucubrations did not edify Francis, who never read them; religious formalists and persecutors having no desire to be convinced of truth, or induced to humanity.

On his accession to the English throne, George the first, in answer to an address from the protestant dissenting ministers in and about London, said, “I take this occasion, also, to express to you my firm purpose, to do all in my power for supporting and maintaining the churches of England and Scotland, as they are severally by law established; which I am of opinion may be effectually done without the least impairing the toleration, allowed by law to protestant dissenters; so agreeable to Christian charity, and so necessary to the trade and riches of this kingdom."

What a noble contrast this declaration of the English monarch forms to the answer of Charles the fifth of Germany, when it was represented to him, that he would ruin his Hungarian dominions, if he continued thus rigorously to persecute the protestants there:-"I would rather," replied the emperor, "see Hungary one vast wilderness, than permit a single heretic to live therein."

A speech quite worthy of one of the eldest sons of the pope; the Roman pontiff's functions being, says cardinal Bellarmin, twofold; the one to feed the church, commanded in John, chap. 21, v..16, where our Saviour says, "feed my sheep;" the other, to put heretics to death, enjoined in Acts, chap. 10, v. 13, in these words, "Rise, Peter, kill and eat." But the benevolent cardinal has not carried throughout his own mode of Scripture interpretation; for, according to this scheme of exposition, it is not only the pope's function to kill heretics, but likewise to cat all that he kills.

George the first, also, sensible of the attachment of the dissenters to his family and government, gave them an annual donation. Five hundred pounds

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sterling were given in 1720, for the use of the indigent widows of dissenting ministers. Soon after, the same sum was paid half-yearly, for assisting ministers who wanted relief; or for such purposes as the distributors might think most beneficial to the dissenting body. Finally, the yearly donation was increased to two thousand pounds; which is continued to be paid by the British sovereign at this day.

Nor did George the second degenerate from his father, in this respect. For when Mr. Whitfield was ordered to attend at the house of commons, to give information, as to the state of the new colony of Georgia, he was received kindly by the speaker, and assured that there would be no persecution in George the second's reign. And when some dignitaries of the established church commenced a prosecution in the spiritual court, the English Inquisition, against Dr. Doddridge, for the crime of teaching an academy at Northampton, the king, on being informed of this exhibition of clerical intolerance, expressly commanded the prosecution to be stopped.

Thus did the king of England again confirm the declaration made by him, on ascending the throne, "that, during his reign, there should be no persecu tion for conscience's sake." A declaration which he repeated, when it was represented to him, that those profound theologians, the English rabble, instigated by the established clergy, and country justices, inflicted their usual arguments of mud missiles, stones, and manual violence, upon Mr. Wesley, and his followers. Accordingly, when no redress from these grievances could be obtained from the rural magistrates, the court of king's bench did prompt and ample justice on the rioters; and the Arminian Methodists were permitted to labour unmolested in their vocation.

George the third, also, in answer to an address presented to him by the London dissenting ministers, on his accession to the throne in 1760, said,—“you may

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be assured of my protection; and of my care and atto support the protestant interest, and to maintain the toleration inviolable."

tention

To the honour of the British sovereign, this declaration was faithfully kept; and the religious liberties of England continued unimpaired; notwithstanding the rapid growth of dissenters, owing to the superior zeal and activity of their ministers; as compared with the listlessness and drowsy formalism of the great body of the established clergy. The venerable monarch treated with catholic liberality the dissenters attached to his royal household. They never experienced the least diminution of favour, on account of their religious tenets; but the king took pains to accommodate them, that they might attend their own places of worship.

The same liberal spirit towards their domestics and dependents was exhibited by his children. In 1802, the duke of York, as commander in chief of the English army, issued a general order, that no soldier in the British service should be compelled to attend any mode of worship, which he did not, or be prevented from following any which he did, approve. It were well, if some of the English nobility and gentry, attached to the state church, and who persecute their tenants and dependents on account of their religious opinions, instances of which I myself saw in the winter of 1821-2, would follow this laudable example of their superiors.

Nor has the present reign been disgraced by any government persecution, on the score of religion. So far from it, that an attempt at intolerance, in a very tender point, and under peculiar circumstances, met with the most decided disapprobation.

In the year 1820, when party feelings were exceedingly exasperated on all sides, pending the trial of the late English queen, an unlucky chaplain to a Scottish regiment, quartered in Edinburgh, ventured in his prayer, after the close of his sermon, to beseech God that he would have mercy upon and bless her