measure so palpably absurd should have gained, for so long a time, sodeepa footing in the church. The holy scriptures, your lordships, and all protestant divines, acknowledge to be a perfect. rule of faith. In them all needful and important. doctrines are so plainly revealed, in words dictated by the holy Spirit,* that no sincere person can possibly mistake concerning them, so as dangerously to err. Subscription, therefore, to those scriptures, is all that the interest of truth and of religion (even on your own principles) can really require. Now, should any man upon earth or any body of men take upon them to draw up articles and formulas of faith, in words different from the holy scriptures, and to propose them as a rule of faith or a test of truth to others, what, my lords, is the real nature, or the proper language of such an action! Is it not plainly this, that he thinks himself able to define the doctrines of Revelation in more apt and proper terms than those of the holy Spirit? Does he not, in effect, say that the great truths of religion, as they stand revealed in the scriptures, (in words which not man's wisdom, but which the wisdom of God. dictated,) are not so distinctly and clearly expressed as man's wisdom, yea, as his own wisdom, is able to express them? And is not this, my lords, presumptuously to set himself up as a cor rector of the holy Spirit, to declare himself ca pable of mending the revelation which God has made, and to profess himself authorised to dietate to the faith of others, and to interpret the scriptures for them?

Will it be said that crafty and corrupt men may pervert the words of the holy Spirit, and screen dangerous errors under scriptural forms?:

*. Cor. ii. 18. Which things alfo we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghoft teacheth.

Bb&

Let it be said. And will not crafty and corrupt men as easily pervert, and as lightly violate and break through all the articles and forms which human skill can'devise, or human prudence prescribe? Is it not evident from the reason and nature of things, that this will always be the case? Has not the experience of fourteen hundred years put it beyond all doubt? Will any articles, or forms of doctrine, prove a fence against a man of an insincere and corrupt heart, or keep him out of the church? No: he will ever swim with the stream; he will declare, or subscribe to any thing, as his worldly interest directs. The men of principle and conscience, your lordships well know, are they only who can be kept out of the church by these subscriptions; so that, if these supposed securities are rightly considered, they cannot possibly be the least guard against error. › And when withal it is remembered how, in all ages of the church, they have been most mischievously employed by the several parties of christians as they have alternately prevailed, what wrecks they have made of conscience, what sacrifices of integrity to human ignorance and pride, what engines they have proved in the hands of the rulers of the darkness of this world, to torture and oppress good men, and to exalt and aggrandize the bad! scarcely any thing can be more amazing than that a measure so notoriously preposterous and absurd,---a measure so directly tending to bring corruption into the church, and to keep integrity and conscience out of it---should be still patronised by men, of whom so many are unquestionably both wise and good.

What has been above suggested, with reference to subscriptions to articles of religion, is, my lords, in a great measure applicable to the declaration of unfeigned assent and consent to ALL and EVERY THING contained and prescribed in and by th book of Common Prayer, which every

elergyman is obliged, in the most solemn manner to make. That there are many things contained in that book, which a great number of the clergy, of the most exemplary virtue and distinguished abilities, consider as highly censurable, and wish earnestly to have reformed, your lordships and the world, are abundantly convinced.*

But this assent and consent, which the law requires of them obliges not only to the mere use, (though to use forms in divine worship, which any man in his conscience believes to be not agreeable to the divine will, and which are apprehended to give wrong and injurious representations of the great things of religion, seems absolutely repugnant to that reverence of the Deity which is essential to his rational and acceptable worship,) but this assent and consent, I say, obliges the clergyman not merely to the use, (as the parliament itself after a solemn debate, expressly determined,) but to an approbation as well as use, of the things contained in that book. Accordingly, the clergy are not only to declare, but to subscribe with their hands, that the Common Prayer-book contains nothing in it contrary to the word of God.‡

The order for reading in public worthip the Apocryphak. romances of Tobit, Bell and the Dragon,-sponsors introduced to the exclufion of the parents,-the questions put to the infant, and the anfwers expected from it, in the office of bap tifm-the authoritative abfolution and forgiveness of all fin directed to be pronounced in the Vifitation of the Sick,-the ex preffions of ftrong hope of the happiness after death of fome of the vileft of men, in the office for burial,the creed, called Athanafius's with the dreadful fentence of damnation moft . certain, inevitable, everlasting, damnation-upon every foul of man that doth not thoroughly believe it.-Vide-Candid Difquifitions.-Appeal to the common fenfe of all christian peo ple, &c.

+ Lords Journals, Vol. XI. page 573, 574, 577. Commons Journals, Vol. VIII. page 533. 534. Calamy's Life of Baxter, Vol. I. page 205, and fecond Defence, p. 119.

Canon XXXVI.

Now, whether the clergy being compelled to profess, in this solemn manner, unfeigned assent and consent to things which, it is notorious, many, if not most of the wisest and most serious of them greatly disapprove, does at all tend to promote the dignity of an order represented as sacred,---whether it is for the honour of christianity, or of the least service to the cause of virtue. and truth,---rather, whether it has not had, and must not necessarily have, a contrary, very pernicious, and fatal effect,---is submitted to your lordships serious consideration.

It will also, I trust, become every day more and more worthy of your calm attention, whether these pernicious and fatal effects will not be continually increasing. You see, my lords, a most respectable part of your own clergy (to their immortal honour be it spoken) entering a humble, decent, yet manly protest, against these unscriptural claims on the right of conscience. When so many of the gravest, the most learned, and pious of your own church, are either nobly withdrawing from its service, or, with a steady perseverance, requiring to be restored to that liberty wherewith Christ has made them free, it might be presumed that even worldly prudence (all religious principles apart) would lead the governors of the church to discern the signs of the times, and assume the merit of a reformation, which the enlightened spirit of the age demands, and which! sooner or later must be obtained.

Infidelity gains ground: loose and immoral principles spread dangerously among all ranks: foundations seem to shake: the generality of mankind, glad to be set free from the restraints of religion, have an ear always open to what can plausibly be said to weaken its authority, and to discredit revelation. Should the conduct of its ministers give ground for strong presumption,. that, amidst all the zeal and solemnity of external

appearances, they think lightly of these things. themselves, and subscribe and declare not according to the real sense and judgment of their own minds, but as worldly interest, or party or preferment, invite, what wonder, my lords, if men of unsettled principles, or of vicious and bad hearts, catch greedily at the occasion, and pour out all their stores of wit and ridicule, of contempt and execration on them; declaim without any reserve against priests and their craft, call religion a cheat, and plunge into the deepest horrors of scepticism and infidelity!

What wonder, "if it brings in such dissolute"ness and contempt of principle in the higher part of the world, (as the archbishop above ob"serves,) and such profligate intemperance and "fearlessness of committing crimes in the low

er, as must, if this torrent of impiety stop not, "become absolutely fatal!" Finally: what wonder to hear the people trifling with damnation and mutual curses in the streets, when thirteen times a year they hear their leaders in religion trifling (much worse than trifling) with them in their solemn offices in the church! It is certainly, my lords, matter of very serious doubt, whether all the curses and damnations, which are wantonly poured out by the army, the navy, and the lower classes of mankind, are really more offensive to Almighty God, attended with greater guilt, or more threaten to draw down divine displeasure upon the land, than those which are denounced solemnly by the standing order of the church.*

The unhappy divisions under which the christian church labours, the sects and separations. into which it is split, are generally considered as greatly prejudicial to the cause of christianity,

* Vide Article IX, and XVIII. Canon 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and the Athanafian creed.