prayers, either standing or kneeling, you will excuse us if we are not so struck with your additional beauty, as to give ourselves up blindfold to its charms. 66 But, it seems, we are inconsistent in condemning some of your ceremonies, while, at the same time, we readily conform ourselves to others: yea, while many ceremonies are allowed and practised among ourselves. "Such, you aver, we have, though we seem not to know it; such as uncovering our heads when we enter either your churches or our meetings."* But you are still "walking in the dark," Sir, as you justly represent yourself, and encountering with ghosts.' The Dissenters have no such custom of uncovering their heads, when they enter into their meeting places, unless in time of worship; no notion of paying reverence to timber and walls; no ministers amongst them who have sense or grace enough to consecrate a piece of ground; and, when they use this ceremony at entering your churches, it is, I assure you, purely as a civil, not at all as a religious ceremony; a compliment paid not in the least to the building, but entirely to our good brethren, whom we would not needlessly offend. "Kneeling at Ordination," the next ceremony you mention, though generally used amongst us, was never, I believe, imposed. If the person to be ordained, scrupled that posture, he would, without all doubt, be permitted to stand. you sus As for the secret ceremonies which pect, but will not positively affirm, to pass at striking the covenant betwixt us and our pas tors," which you once and again mention, let your suspicions on that head, Sir, give you no further pain. I assure you I neither know, nor have ever heard of any such covenanting now * Letter III. page 7. practised amongst us; and I am persuaded, that of all our churches, not one in five hundred observes any such thing. "In balance against your surplice, you put "what you call the ceremony of our long sweeping cloak." But the least attention would have shewn the two cases to be far from parallel. Our ministers are at full liberty either to use or disuse the one: are yours so as to the other? Did you ever hear of any learned, pious pastors amongst us silenced, rejected, and cruelly imprisoned, for refusing the sweeping cloak? But, have you never heard of your Hoopers, Sampsons, Humphreys, and a hundred other ministers, men of distinguished learning and usefulness. in your church, who have been swept from their stations in it; silenced, confined, and grievously harrassed, only for scrupling your surplice and cap? Have you never heard of many churches forsaken and shut up, in London, and of numerous congregations, both in city and country, deprived for a long while of sacraments and public worship, by the rigorous imposition of your habits on their ministers? And, if the most celebrated divine were now to offer to officiate in any of your churches, but refused to wear a surplice, must he not, by your canons, be set aside and refused? Had the cloak, which our forefathers frequently wore, but which is now I believe very generally disused, been the occasion of a thousandth part of the distractions and confusions in our church as your surplice has been in yours, and driven so many worthy persons from their ministry and livings in it, they would have had the grace, I hope, immediately to have doomed it to the flames. But, "the giving the christian name in bap"tism, to the person baptised, you very seriously * Letter III. page 12. 66 urge as another solid argument of ceremonies " amongst us ;" and ask, "Is it not an addition "to the sacrament? Is it not an imposition?" You add, 66 now I see you smile."* Excuse me Sir, I could not help it. Your argument is quite new, and really surprised me with its solidity and weight! Yes Sir, I own it an addition, an imposition, and a very ridiculous one too. And should any minister of ours pretend to add, or to impose this ceremony upon his people, and forbid them to call the child by its name till it was baptised, you may be assured he would soon meet with the disregard and contempt his impertinence deserved. When you baptise adult persons, do you give their names in that ceremony; or do you not, ONLY call them by names before given? The same, I apprehend, is the case as to children amongst us. As for the ceremonies in marriage, these, you justly observe, we consider only as civil ceremonies, and the priest as a civil officer, appointed by the magistrate to officiate in this affair. And, whatever decent rites the magistrate prescribes in matters of a civil nature, we think it our duty reverently to observe. But, "the magistrate "prescribe!" you with astonishment reply. "For "God's sake, how does the magistrate here pre"scribe the rites and ceremonies of marriage, 66 more than the other rites and ceremonies of "the church!"+ But could not a gentleman of your discernment perceive a difference here? Is the form of marriage any where instituted by our Saviour; or a part of christian worship, as baptism and the Lord's supper are? May we not, therefore, own the power of the civil magistrate to appoint rites and forms for the celebration-of the one, but not so as to the other! By prescribing the forms of marriage, the magistrate + Letter III. page 6. * Letter III. page 10. acts in character, and rules in his own kingdom;. but by authoritatively prescribing rites in baptism and the Lord's supper, we humbly apprehend he extends his power beyond the sphere assigned him, and attempts to rule in Christ's kingdom; and that, therefore, here we are to obey God rather than man. You farther ask with surprise," what! civil ce"remonies in the church of God, in the midst "of the administration of a divine institution, "intermixed with pastoral Exhortations, Holy "Prayers, solemn Benedictions!"*---But why Sir, so astonished? Did you never take an oath in a civil court of judicature? And did not the person who administered this sacred rite give you a pastoral exhortation, accompanied with a holy prayer and a solemn benediction, piously invoking on you God's blessing and help? And, as to the place which you call the church of God, where marriage is solemnized, you must have known, that the consecration of timber, and the sanctity of walls, are points too sublime for the understandings of dissenters; and that, in their opinion, all places are alike holy, and that no building on earth merits the high honour of being called the church of God. The same reply we make as to the ceremonies of burial, our compliance with which you also briskly retort upon us. Is the burial of the dead, Sir, a christian institution? any part of the religion or worship of Christ? Is it not purely a political or civil thing? Yes: and as such only we view it: and consider the person who officiates as one appointed to this office, directed, instructed, and maintained by the state. But, as you are here professedly "answering "our great and popular objections," how came you, Sir, to pass over in profound silence, one of * Letter III. page 6. the greatest and most popular to this office of burial? which objection, indeed, has not been made by us only, but also by some of the most illustrious members of your own church. I presume you were conscious that the passages objected to were incapable of defence, and therefore you wisely overlooked them. There are but three cases, you know Sir, in which your church refuses this solemn office of burial, viz. to those who die unbaptised, to selfmurderers, and to those who are under sentence of the greater excommunication. As for all other persons who are brought to the church-yard, it very strictly commands you, even under pain of suspension, by canon LXVIII. that you use over them the form prescribed by the Common Prayer. Now, hence it comes to pass, that, over some of the most abandoned and profligate of mankind; over men who have been cut down in a course of open impiety by a sudden and untimely death; or who even fell by the hand of justice for some black and atrocious crime; over these, I say, your church, and I say it WITH ASTONISHMENT, directs and commands you most solemnly to declare,---That Almighty God, of his great mercy, has taken to himself the soul of this your dear brother. You give God hearty thanks that it hath pleased him to deliver him out of the miseries of this sinful world: and you pray God, that, when you yourselves shall depart out of this life, you may rest in Christ, as your hope is this your brother doth. This is what your church commands you solemnly to say over every person brought to be buried, the three above-mentioned cases excepted. So that, if a man had been guilty of murder, and, when brought to the gallows for this heinous crime, dies an impenitent, hardened wretch, yet, concerning him, you are to declare that Almighty God hath, in his great mercy, taken him to himself, though he died a victim to public justice, |