Griffith, and Dunn, on suspicion merely, and because being Britons, not Austrians, they would not acknowledge that a man might be required to convict himself; while Paul directs that against an elder (i.e. a minister) an accusation was not to be received except "before two or three witnesses!!"

Our space does not allow us to particularize farther. We repeat that with all our sincere respect for individuals, this is the time to speak out. We wish not to seduce a single member from the connexion; but we do call upon all its members to take immediate steps, enforcing them, if needful, by stopping the supplies, to put an end to the priestly despotism of Conference. The priests must be made the servants, and not the lords, of the church. The people must have their full rights-the rights which Jesus Christ gave them, and which, as this year's Conference has shewn, cannot be surrendered but at their peril. The motto of every Methodist must now be,We pay no more contributions to enslave ourselves. We give no more till our voice is omnipotent by our full representation in Conference. A House of Lords to spend our supplies, without a House of Commons to vote them, we will endure no longer.

We have no time to notice the obvious bearing of such a system in biasing the minds of the clerics, and all influenced by them, against civil and religious liberty. Hence in every struggle for these principles, the magnates and leaders of Methodism have always taken the wrong side. Opposition to State- Churches, Church rates, &c., the enfranchisement of the people,repeal of corn laws, and the like,-oh, these have been profane things! But to get in a Tory candidate,-to help the Conservative side, to hold the people back through all their officials downwards,-to get Government grants for Methodist schools and missions, these things have been holy, just, and good. We speak what we have seen and known, and though there are hundreds and thousands of laymen better than their system (the well-merited popularity of the Wesleyan Times is proof of this); yet such men will be among the first to confess that our last remarks are but "too true."

GREAT PEACE CONGRESS AT PARIS.

Most of our readers have already heard of the Great Peace Congress which was held in Paris, on the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th of August. The object of these important conventions-the first of which was held last year in Brussels-is to promote the principles of peace and universal brotherhood; and amongst the practical objects suggested, is the very important one of forming a Congress of Nations, to decide finally upon national differences without a recourse to arms. The Congress was attended by a large number of Delegates, the list of whom includes individuals of the highest respectability and influence from England, America, and various parts of the Continent of Europe, amongst whom may

be mentioned, Messrs. Cobden, M.P., Ewart, M.P., Hindley, M.P., Joseph Sturge, Henry Vincent, John Burnet, E. Burritt, C. Gilpin, and M. Victor Hugo, Horace Say, E. De Girardin, Coquerel, &c. Our space will not permit us to present our readers with an account of the proceedings; but we are glad to say, that they were characterised by the greatest unanimity, and induce us to cherish the highest hopes for the ultimate success of the movement.

Perhaps our readers will expect our opinion on the abstract question of the lawfulness of defensive war,-not even heathen moralists pleaded for purely offensive war. We must frankly own, then, that we have never been able to adopt the extreme opinion. 1st. All the modern wars of England we think a great disgrace to her. Their objects and origin tarnish the laurels of Nelson and Wellington. Their origin was the wilfulness of a stupid tyrant, George III., and their object to crush European and American liberties too, to uphold Popery and the Inquisition, and to force unwilling nations to retain on their thrones a set of despots effete for all good, but adequate for all the meannesses and cruelties of ambition and superstition. France, Spain, Austria, Naples, and almost every other European state, exhibit Waterloo as a black spot on England's fair fame. If Frenchmen have often wished to blot out the recollection of their defeat by great odds against them, we think every Englishman must now blush with a still deeper shame for our base attack upon a sister nation's unques tionable rights. To Wellington, his Peninsular campaigns, and his Waterloo, belong the glory of Europe thirty years enslaved to incapable and barbarous despots,-of Popery and all its barbarities and degradations invigorated for the same time,-of a system of costly standing armies, maintained like ours in England, chiefly to keep down the people, and ending in bankrupt exchequers and barricade revolutions; yes, we have no sympathy with the honours, and still less with the two millions and three quarters of money wasted on the "Greatest Captain of the age," all whose battles were fought against the people and for despots.

Nor, 2ndly, have we any hope that England ever will, while war is justified, engage in any purely just war (admitting for argument's sake that such may be). While we have a standing army it will always be a tyrant's tool simply. Its use will always be worthy of its chief originator (James II). It will be the means for lazy aristocrats to batten on the earnings of the industrious; it will be the substitute for just government. for the emancipation of all below ten pound householders, and the application of National Church revenues to national purposes.

Nor, 3rdly, do we think modern military service lawful for a christian. When God permitted military service among the Jews, no one could be compelled to serve, and he might at any time quit the service. Now we hold that mode of warfare to be utterly

unlawful, which requires any one to fight, to shoot, to murder his fellow-creatures, while he thinks them in the right and his own nation in the wrong. Supposing it right in certain cases to shoot amongst a mass of our fellow-men with intent to kill, we hold it to be the purest sophistry which attempts to prove, that we are right in doing so, if we think the men worthy to live. We know the evasions attempted, we hold them to be mere evasions at the awful bar of conscience.

But, finally, if we utterly renounce and detest all modern wars and modern military systems, we yet cannot see that force, force carried out even to fatal results, can be superseded in a depraved world by any direct means. We hold force to be the distinctive attribute of civil government,force sufficient to effect its confessedly lawful objects-the protection of person and property. The civil ruler would "bear the sword in vain" if his hands were prohibited from wielding it when nothing else would secure the innocent and obedient. For instance, we think that while Stephen ought not to have attacked his persecutors, the civil governor would have had the fullest approbation of Stephen's Lord, had he placed himself by the martyr's side and beheaded the man who, in defiance of his intervention, took up the first stone. For this we think both reason and revelation have placed the sword in the civil ruler's hand. The case cited by Mr. Foster of the Pindarees is equally in point (See Letters). We believe that the esteemed friends from whom it pains us to differ (in theory only) overlook the compatibility of the gospel with civil government, and its peculiar attribute in a depraved world. The gospel delivers all who truly imbibe its spirit from needing force to keep them from injuring others; but it was not intended to supersede the use of force deposited (in theory at least) in righteous hands to preserve from mutual injury and destruction those who do not believe. God wills society to exist although depraved; experience and his own word equally attest the necessity of force, of destructive force, of "the sword," for the existence of society in a corrupt world; in willing therefore the end, he has willed the means as well as sanctioned it in his word. Hence christian churches are the mainspring of the peace movement, and the preacher of the genuine gospel its best heralds.

We need scarcely reiterate our cordial approbation of the Peace Congress, and our most hearty wish for the success of its noble, righteous, and blessed schemes.

BAPTISTS AND MR. STUART WORTLEY'S
MARRIAGE BILL.

It has been suggested to us, and quite in accordance with our judgment, to call the attention of our churches to Mr. Wortley's Bill for legalizing the marriage of a widower with the sister of his late wife. That such marriages are legal in the sight of God, that their prohibition by a very recent act,

passed without observation nearly, was purely in deference to the Popish canons of the State-Church, we suppose few of our readers will doubt. Those of them who have not read or thought on the subject, will find, probably, all the information they wish in the last numbers of the Baptist Magazine. We quite agree with the respected Editor in rejecting entirely the Levitical code as one universally binding; hence the prohibitions contained in the 18th chapter of Leviticus ought not, in our judgment, to be made, because contained there, the law of the land, or even the unqualified guide of a christian's conscience. But we hold that neither do these injunctions prohibit the marriage in question, nor that they relate to marriage at all. The reasons are well known to critics, but the subject need not be entered into here. The opinion of the greater part of christians untainted with canonical popery is, that such marriages are both natural and right, and where children have been left still needing female superintendance, that they are even commendable. Is it, then, to be tolerated, that semi-popish bishops, in the name of Canons and Church authority, shall, in this case, repress christian liberty by law? Dissenters have been too supine on this question. One important petition signed by 108 ministers was, indeed, presented; but we have reason to know that Mr. Wortley expected a larger measure of support on a question really involving that of religious liberty, or Episcopal and canonical domination, and was disappointed that it was not furnished. In the House of Lord's (over God's heritage) there will be bitter Episcopal opposition. The "Henrys and Samuels, by the grace of God Lord Bishop of will, as usual, do their utmost to frustrate the grace of God,-to limit christian and civil liberty by the hateful canons of their church. We appeal to our churches not to fail Mr. Wortley in this case in a single instance. Let every church, however small, send its petition. Let Baptists maintain their old and hard-earned position of foremost in every encounter, greater or smaller, in the cause of civil and religious liberty. We shall next month present our readers with a brief form of petition, which, of course, they can use or modify at their pleasure.

"

There is one aspect of the subject we would place in the strongest light before our brethren, that is, that THE POOR especially demand our activity on this question. Richer brethren, in many cases which we have known, justly scorning the authority of human law when they think it steps quite out of its province, have contracted such marriages, and yet secured their legality by resorting to a country where such marriages are legal. As our law recognizes the legality of marriages accordant with the laws of the country where they are celebrated, this course has been generally deemed satisfactory. But to the poorer brethren no such resource is open; he must either renounce a marriage which his judgment and conscience tell him is the best for him, or, if

he knows the step to be illegal, make false declarations to get married. Very many cases, however, have been found in which the parties married in ignorance that the "law of the land" was against them, and are, consequently, legally, not living in matrimony, and their offspring illegitimate! We trust our churches will be prompt, now they are called upon, to do their part in rectifying these unhappy fruits of superstition and priestcraft.

We have already in "The Church" expressed our judgment on the question, "Our judgment is, that as the dignitaries of the Church of England are the leaders in "forbidding to marry" those whom God does not forbid, it should be declared lawful for men to marry the sisters of their deceased wives by any other service than that of the Church of England. Thus leaving the Right Reverend Fathers in God and their illustrious children to settle their popish canons as they please, but not allowing them to fetter sound Protestants" ("The Church" for Dec. 1848, p. 335). Should not our petitions assume this shape? Have we anything to do with amending the internal laws of "Mother Church?" If her bondchildren wish for emancipation, let them come forward, as such, and ask it of the great Ecclesiastical slaveholders of these realms.

WORK FOR DISSENTERS.

We have just learned on the best authority, that a bill is to be brought into Parliament early next session for the abolition of the Irish Church, and the appropriation of its revenues, as incumbents die off, to purposes of revenue. We shall probably be in a position to particularize more fully next month; but we cannot allow this number to go forth without apprizing our friends, and calling upon them to be up and doing. The acknowledged abomination of the Irish Church, acknowledged by all men possessing a remnant of shame, even by great numbers of Churchmen themselves, renders it a peculiarly suitable object of attack. A church existing purely to put enormous revenues into the pockets of the aristocracy for doing literally nothing;-a church without even the shadow of a claim to Establishment, as the church of the majority, such a church cannot stand a determined and concentrated attack. It will be strenuously defended by wealthy Dukes, Bishops, &c. who revel in its riches; defended too as an out-work of the compulsory church in England; but we feel confident that it could not stand even for one session, an earnest, enthusiastic, and combined assault from all the parties who are or would become hostile to it. Baptists, Independents, and the thousands of Methodists whom this year's Conference has enlightened, and of course all Catholics,then the numbers of respectable Churchmen who blush for the enormity of the sinecure church,-in addition to the thou

sands who only need to have it brought before their common-sense, and plain English justice, and last not least in practical efficiency, the financial reformers, must heartily support such a powerful auxiliary movement. To arouse all these will require effort, public meetings, petitions, deputations, &c.; but is it not, indeed, worth while? Let us, then, prepare for a movement worthy of Dissenters. We understand the eloquence of Mr. Roebuck, irresistible when dealing with abuses, is to lead in the cause. We should never respect our own body again, the first body of christians which rejected State intermeddling with religion, if for an object in behalf of which Baptist blood once flowed in torrents,* Baptist petitions did not now make the table of the House of Commons groan beneath their weight.

If Baptists do their part, other denominations, and all the secular opponents of State churches, will be aroused to take their share. The result would be, that Lord John (one of the most dogged Statechurchmen of the day) must give up, Sir Robert come in, and add another to his trophies of things done, which Whigs only talk about or evade.

YOUNG MEN'S MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.

From a circular with which we have just been favoured by the Secretary of this Association, we find that on Tuesday evening, October 9th, the Annual Meeting of the Association will be held in the Library of the Mission House, 33, Moorgate - Street. The chair will be taken at half-past seven o'clock by G. T. Kemp, Esq., and the Revs. J. Bigwood, J. Clarke (late missionary from Africa), John Curwen, Wm. Frazer, and John Howard Hinton, A.M. will address the meeting. We are glad also to hear that the Committee have made arrangements for the delivery of a Second Course of Lectures in the Library of the Mission-House. On October 17th, 1849, by the Rev. William Brock (of Bloomsbury Chapel), on "The Temporal Benefits connected with the Diffusion of Christianity." On November 21st, 1849, by the Rev. Frederick Trestrail, on "Ireland and her People." On December 19th, 1849, by the Rev. James Baldwin Brown, B.A., on "The Philosophy of Missionary Enterprize as Developed in the Life of the Apostle Paul." On January 16th, 1850, by the Rev. Daniel Katterns (of Hackney), on "A Glance at China." On February 20th, 1850, by the Rev. D. J. East (of Waltham Abbey), on "Heathen Mythology and Divine Revelation." On March 20th, 1850, by the Rev. Samuel Martin (of Westminster).

UPTON-ON-SEVERN.

Mr. Alexander Pitt, late of Ashton-underLine, has accepted a cordial invitation to the pastorate of the Baptist church in this place. He entered on his stated labours August 26th.