glorious confessors of the truth were driven to take refuge in foreign lands, that the democratic religious spirits, which had already taken possession of the Swiss Churches, began to spread itself among our own countrymen. The dissentions which shortly after that time began to manifest themselves between the English refugees of Frankfort and Geneva on the questions of Church authority and discipline, were a disheartening prelude to that deep bitterness of party feeling on the same subject, which in the following century convulsed the whole of this nation. It was not, indeed, immediately upon their return to their native land, that what was afterwards called the Puritan party renounced their obedience to the higher authorities of the Church. But what at first was mere discontent and alienation, soon, from concurring circumstances, ripened into resistance. And indeed it must be owned, that the arbitrary and tyrannical display of power exercised by the Hierarchy in that unhappy moment of irritation, though it did not put their adversaries in the right, certainly put the governing and legitimate party in the wrong. But it is painful to look back upon the dissentions of a period, to which, whether as Christians or Englishmen, we can revert only with feelings of sorrow for that blindness of party, which proceeded step by step from the discussion of matters of almost absolute indifference, to civil war, and the eventual overthrow both of Church and State.

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The restoration of Charles the Second brought back indeed with it the reestablishment of the ancient Church government, but the spirit of religious anarchy which had fostered the late confusions, though checked for a time, was not therefore extinguished. The number of those who, whether from sincere conscientious scruples, or from political animosity, were opposed to any external authoritative dictation on points of faith, now formed a large and acknowledged portion of the social community of this country. The consequence accordingly was, that after the Revolution of 1688, whilst the ancient Apostolical discipline was retained as the acknowledged and established religion of the state, the seceders from episcopal jurisdiction, together with the other dissentients in points of doctrine, received that open and avowed protection from the laws, to which, so long as they conduct themselves as peaceful members of society, they are manifestly entitled.

Such then, in a few words, have been the eventful circumstances under which the Established Church of England has maintained itself down to our own time. Detached from the Church of Rome, from a just abhorrence of its impurities and unscriptural innovations; and, on the other hand, detached from the seceding Protestant communities, in consequence of its clinging, alike through evil report and good report, to the usages of the Apostolical age; it occupies exactly that middle station, which, whilst

it affords the strongest presumption that it is in the right, at the same time, from the opposite classes of assailants to which it is exposed, is peculiarly open to external hatred and misrepresentation. In the eyes of one party, it has done too much in those of the other party, it has done too little. It has cut away the superstitions and abuses of the earlier Church, whilst it has retained all that was scriptural in its doctrine. On this ground it is therefore denounced by the Romish community as a rebel. It uncompromisingly retains the whole ungarbled text of Scripture, adding nothing, and relinquishing nothing; and on this ground it is charged by the advocates of uncontrolled liberty of opinion as superstitious, narrow-minded, and tyrannical. To the latter class of assailants its answer is, however, an easy one. It does not, and never did, profess to be a teacher of smooth and soft things; to garble Scripture, culling this passage, and rejecting that, according as the fastidious taste, the favourite theories, or the besetting sins, of its disciples may claim their respective shares of flattery or indulgence. On the contrary, its aim is to divide rightly and honestly the whole word and counsel of God. It makes no allowance to the cravings of " itching ears." It dares not sacrifice truth to novelty, or encourage those hot and intemperate passions, which, either by over or by under statements, invariably distort, where they do not totally extinguish, the sound and wholesome doctrine.

If we are asked, how and by what means it is enabled to take this safe and temperate course; I reply, that it is because it has, by the blessing of Providence, retained, in spite of the clamour of the falsely wise, that sagacious form of discipline, which received the sanction of Christ's own inspired. Apostles. It is because a minister of the Established Church of England dares not, even if he would, yield to the suggestions of his own vanity, or of his love for popular applause, and adapt his preaching to the shifting opinions and tastes of the age in which he lives. He is responsible to an authorized superior for the soundness of his doctrine. He has before him the recorded and condensed summaries of scriptural truth, which have received the deliberate sanction of the best and wisest men who have adorned the reformed Church of this country, which, under every tendency to momentary indiscretion or exaggerated views, oblige him to reconsider and to recall his steps. To sum up the whole in a few words, he considers himself, as I have before observed, not invited, but sent: the commissioned instructor, not the servile creature, of the congregation he addresses: the messenger of God, acting under the sanction of the laws of the land, having a communication to make, from which he dares abstract nothing, and to which he dares add nothing.

And in a Church thus arranged, what is there, let me ask, to which, as Christians or as reasonable

beings, we would object, or which we would desire to alter? I know well what is the restless feeling suggested by a love of novelty. I am perfectly aware how strongly the natural heart of man recoils from external dictation, however highly sanctioned; how fastidiously it rejects the incessant recurrence of the same intellectual food; and how plausible, how seductive, is the cry, which would identify the utmost latitude of licentious opinion with the rights of the human understanding, and the establishment of the cause of truth. But I reply, that if there is one truth more clearly pointed out in Scripture than another, it is this; that the natural man, when left to his own original bias, is not capable, has not the most remote wish, the slightest inclination, to arrive at unmixed truth. Our real longing is after truth stripped of all its offensive but salutary harshness; after soft and flattering things; after doctrines which will not place us in enmity but in peace with our own carnal appetites and passions; which will suggest palliations for our vices, and dignify even our unchristian propensities with the name of virtues. Who ever heard the habitual drunkard inviting lectures upon temperance; the sensualist encouraging exhortations to self-restraint; the lunatic lamenting over his blinded intellect, and imploring the aid of the physician? And may I not add, (for the marvel would be no less,) who ever heard of the natural man clamouring for whole