such as becomes a day set apart by Divine authority for holy purposes? In general, we may suppose that amongst Sunday travellers will be found those who entertain no concern, perhaps the greatest contempt, for religion. And it is but natural to expect, that such persons should glory in shewing, by their worldly or impious conversation, their superiority over the shackles of education, and the restrictions of God's word. Or if there are present persons who pay some regard to religion, it is but natural that they should try to stifle the secret upbraidings of their consciences by such conversation as may drive away the recollection of its being the Sabbath. Surely at such a season satan is peculiarly busy. It is a harvest time to the great enemy of souls. Again, let us accompany the stage through the villages in its route. We must count the number of turnpikemen detained, by these and other travel. lers, at their post; calculate the effect of the breach" of solemn and of sober thought," by the excitment of a rattling stage, bugle blowing, whip cracking, horses panting, and wheels almost smoking, as it passes through a quiet village we must take into the account the frequent calls at the public-houses; and must listen to the idle conversation, unseemly jests, and profane exclamations which are uttered, till we arrive with the loaded vehicle at the next inn. And what a scene is presented to us now! The innkeeper himself, with his waiters, and cooks, and cham bermaids, book-keepers, horsekeepers, stable-boys, porters, fresh coachmen, and guards, all brought into secular employ! and that too of so active, and exciting so noisy and bustling a kind, as in the most effectual manner to quench a devotional spirit, too often to move to oaths and curses, and generally to gather a crowd of misemployed gazers around the scene!.

On one more evil connected with

this practice, the writer cannot speak but with the feelings of a man who has been grieved almost to tears whilst officiating in two churches where Divine service is interrupted, Sabbath after Sabbath, by the rattling of the wheels, and the sounding of the horns of stage following stage, in quick succession, past these houses of prayer, during the hours of Divine service*.

I would next beg the attention of my brethren to the profanation of the Sabbath, by the publication and circulation of SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS. And I find the subject so ably and so fully treated by a writer in the Christian Observer for May 1816, that I shall content myself with transcribing a few of his sentiments. "The number of persons, of all ages," observes this writer," who are necessarily led to profane the Sabbath, from being engaged in the trade of Sunday newspapers, is extremely large. Amongst these may be reckoned writers, compositors, pressmen, publishers, newsmen, children of both

*How far the suggestion of the late Bishop Watson, to restrict the travelling of stage-coaches, &c. during the

Sabbath, by the imposition of a heavy toll, might be effectual, I know not; but it may at least seem worthy of regard and consideration.

In a letter to Mr. Wilberforce, April 1800, he expresses his opinion on two points respecting the improvement of the morals of the people. One of these is the building of new churches. "The other," he observes," is an evil which has increased very much, if not entirely last thirty years-the travelling of wagsprung up in many places within the gons and stage-coaches on Sundays. There are," adds the Bishop," laws, I believe, to prevent this being done during the hours of Divine service; but the diffi

culty of putting them in execution renders them, in a manner, useless. The evil might be remedied by an act of parliament of ten lines, enacting the payment of a great additional toll at each turnpike-gate, which should be passed by such carriages between the hours of six and six on every Sabbath day."

] sexes, hawkers in the streets, and at all the toll-gates and watering places in the vicinity of London. Under this head may be noticed, the further profanation of the Sabbath, which is consequent upon the system, from the number of shops kept open on the Sabbath for the purpose of the sale of papers. Some of these are kept by pastry cooks, who thus abuse the indulgence afforded them of serving on the Sabbath-day: the others are those of hair-dressers, the ordinary news - shops, greengrocers, and other small traders. As an attraction to passengers, large printed placards, supplied from the offices, are exhibited at the different shops which vend the papers, noticing those articles of intelligence which are most likely to attract attention, and which thus invite the purchase of many, who would otherwise never desire or think of a Sunday newspaper. The appearance which the principal streets in London exhibit through the Sunday, (not to mention the various shops in all the outskirts of the metropolis,) affords the best proof of the violation of the day in this last particular. To this it may be added, that every lad who can blow a horn has only to furnish himself with a quantity of these papers, and, by carrying them through the streets, has it in his power to add considerably to the profanation of the day: nor is it easy to punish these offenders. The employment of carriages and stage coaches (now grown to a very large extent) should also be noticed, by which means the papers are conveyed in bundles to the first post town upon all the great roads in the environs of London, where the post-masters, for a consideration from the newspaper-dealers, sort them out for the different country bags, and have them in readiness to forward by the time the Sunday evening mails pass through, so as to arrive throughout the country on Monday morning, when there is no regular post: by which facility CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 247.

of circulation, the metropolis is be come in fact a feeder of the country at large, as well as of itself: and as the general demand for information has increased, in proportion as education has been diffused, London is thus subject to a far greater breach of the Sabbath than its own demand for news, however great, would require; a fact of no small importance in any endeavour to estimate the portion of evil arising from Sunday newspapers, and an additional argument against stage coaches travelling on Sundays."

"A further evil of Sunday news papers may appear from considering the multitudes who find in them (appearing as they do in the first period of the day) a temptation to absent themselves from public worship, and also the inducement afforded to numbers to frequent and continue in coffee-houses, taverns, and public-houses, at all periods of the Sabbath-day, from the circumstance of some one or more of the Sunday papers being taken in by all of them, not to advert to the necessary tendency of such reading, wherever it is introduced, to secularize the mind, and indispose it more or less for both the public and private duties of the day."

"To these considerations which call thus loudly for the suppression of Sunday newspapers, must be added that of the political evil circulated through their medium. By far the greater part of these prints are openly opposed to whatever may be the existing order of things, and are vehicles of the most libellous and offensive matter; whilst all of them must, from their very nature and constitution, rank on the popular side, and find occasion for censure and criticism in every act of Government, thus fostering in the minds of their readers a contempt for constituted authorities, and a morbid habit of referring every instance of public distress to the incapacity or corruption of our governors. The systematic tone

3 G

proceedings, which, if clearly made out, will go far towards determining the question of expediency, independently of other considerations. The first is founded on the danger of the precedent; the second, on the view which some of our most eminent Divines have taken of our Church Articles.

Let us briefly consider the danger of the precedent.-The bishop of Peterborough proposes for the examination of his clergy, Eightyseven Questions,-(I have not yet seen his lordship's "Shorter Catechism")-questions involving his own interpretation of the Articles of the Church of England,-and makes a satisfactory reply to these questions an indispensable condition of the candidate's success. Now, if this conduct be justifiable on the ground of expediency, what is to hinder any other bishop, in any other diocese, from bringing forward a series of questions that shall involve a different interpretation of the Articles? The bishop of Peterborough is a most decided anti-Calvinist. But there have been Calvinistic Bishops of the Church of England; and there may be such bishops still. What, I ask, is to prevent them from proposing questions, in conformity to their peculiar opinions? Thus the tests of orthodoxy may vary, ad libitum. And as formerly, in the matter of singing, "some followed Salisbury use, some Hereford use, some the use of Bangor, some of York, some of Lincoln;" so, in the far more important matter of religious be lief, there may be different uses of orthodoxy, in different dioceses; and every candidate for holy orders may be required to adopt the use of the diocese where he is to be admitted.

There is something in this objection so very obvious, that it could not have escaped the observation of a person of such acuteness as the bishop of Peterborough. When framing his Eighty-seven Questions, his lordship surely must

have foreseen that his conduct might be imitated by some future bishop, who might enforce eightyseven other questions of an opposite tendency. And is his lordship prepared to think lightly of the evil consequences of such a result?

Let us next consider the view which some of our most eminent divines have taken of the Church Articles. I shall content myself with mentioning two distinguished names; those of Bishop Burnet and Bishop Horseley, both anti-Calvinists in their own religious opinions, and both divines of great learning and abilities. The opinion of the latter prelate is well known; that even a Calvinist of the higher order may be a consistent member of the Church of England".

Nor

With respect to Bishop Burnet, it will be sufficient to notice his remark upon the Seventeenth Article; that, though an Arminian may honestly subscribe that Article, yet aCalvinist needs feel less scruple in so doing,-as the language in which it is couched seems rather to favour his view of the Divine decrees, than the contrary. do these opinions, supposing them to be well-founded, form any just ground of objection, either to the doctrinal sufficiency of our Church Articles, or to the Christian intègrity of the framers of them. Upon all points of vital and fundamental importance, they speak a language which cannot well be misunderstood or evaded. But, upon subjects of a less essential and more difficult and doubtful nature, our Reformers appear to have studiously worded some Articles, and particularly the Seventeenth, so as to enable persons to subscribe who

Bishop Horseley, in his remarks upon Dr. Priestley's second series of letters, has the following words: "Perhaps, in point of true doctrine, the language of our Articles agrees more nearly with the Calvinistic, than with any other Protestant Confession except the Lutheran."

were distinguished by considerable shades of difference in opinion*.

If such were their design, as I humbly presume it might be, the inherent defects of language, so much complained of by philosophers, would tend to promote and favour it. Persons holding different tenets, of minor importance, might subscribe, and yet subscribe honestly, and ex animo; because some of the sentences would admit of a variety of meaning, without any departure from the strictness of literal interpretation. Every one sees this to be the case, with respect to the Article of our Lord's descent into hell. There appears to me, also, an almost necessary ambiguity in the Eighteenth Article, relating to the salvation of the heathen. Two persons,-one of whom believes that no heathen can be saved, without the knowledge of the Gospel, and the other that some heathen may possibly be saved, through the merits of the Redeemer, who yet never heard of his name, may both honestly and conscientiously subscribe that Article, because both may subscribe it without departing from a construction of which the letter of the Article will fairly admit.

In points of minor importance, therefore, (for I confine myself to these,) the expression of our Articles is not always so determinate as to exclude individuals holding a difference of opinion. I object, therefore, to the bishop of Peterborough's Questions, not because they are of an anti-Calvinistic tendency, but because they presume • The writer wishes to express himself, here, with doubt and hesitation, and only states his opinion as not an improbable conjecture. Whether, how ever, the framers of our Articles worded some of them loosely by design or not, it may be still true, that some of their sentences are, in point of fact, loose ly worded, and consequently they admit of some difference of opinion among persons who subscribe them honestly, according to what they conceive to be their litoral Interpretation.

to settle matters which our Reformers thought proper to leave in some degree of doubt and uncertainty; because they peremptorily shut the doors of the sanctuary against a number of candidates whom those Reformers would certainly have admitted; because they erect a barrier where no barrier was designed to be raised; and lastly, because they set at nought the deliberate opinions of some of the most learned, candid, and able divines of the Church of England,-divines whose authority (as far as mere authority ought to go) the bishop of Peterborough must himself respect, in common with every good judge of what is sound in reasoning, and valuable in sentiment.

The bishop's defence of his Eighty-seven Questions rests chiefly upon the two following grounds: first, the possibility of mistaking or evading the sense of the Thirtynine Articles; and, secondly, his right of examining candidates for orders with respect to doctrine, as well as with respect to morals and literary attainments.

It is certain that the sense of the Thirty-nine Articles may be mistaken or evaded; that is to say, it may, perhaps, in some cases, be undesignedly mistaken, through obliquity of intellect, or through the force of prejudice; or it may be intentionally evaded, through a want of honesty and integrity in the subscriber. Both these things are possible. But will the Eightyseven Questions afford any absolute security against the occurrence of these evils? Is it not possible that the bishop of Peterborough himself, since he will not, I am sure, profess to infallibility, may have misconceived the sense of some Articles of our Church? Or, supposing him to have been so happy as to be free from all mistakes, will he affirm that his own Questions are quite incapable of being evaded? 1 give him full credit for having woven a net of ingenious intricacy and minuteness; a net, whose