ed,---I ask you, Sir, does not your allegiance to Christ, your only sovereign, require and oblige you to enter your protest against such usurped authority, and to refuse your obedience to it?

This,---(I repeat it, Sir, because I earnestly intreat your peculiar attention to it)---this is the essential an important point upon which the controversy between us entirely turns. If you can prove that there is another Lawgiver, another Judge, another King, in the church, besides Jesus. Christ, to whose authority we are to submit in things of religion, and that the king and parlia ment of these realms are this lawgiver and this judge, you will then at once gain your point; and, by that single blow, you will entirely overthrow the dissenting interest and churches. We will immediately become your converts, and flock into the established church.

But, if you cannot prove this point, you must yield the cause to us: you must, in effect, own us justified before the world; and we will still indulge the rational and reviving hope of being acknowledged by our great lawgiver, at his return into the world, as his loyal and obedient subjects; of being advanced to peculiar honours and dignities in his kingdom, as we have here suffered on account of our duty and allegiance to him; and of receiving from our judge, before angels and men, that sentence of applause, well done good and faithful servants, enter ye into the joy of your Lord!

I have only to add, that this principle,---that Christ is the only Lawgiver and King in his church, and that no man, no body of men upon earth, has any authority to make laws, or to prescribe things in religion, which shall oblige the consciences of his subjects---is the grand, the only principle upon which the unity, the purity, and the peace of the christian church can possibly sub

sist. Take away this, and you let in endless discords and corruptions into it: you split it into parties: you make christianity one thing in one country, and a quite different thing in another. In England, you make it wear an episcopal form: In Scotland, a Presbyterian: in France, a Popish: in Denmark, a Lutheran: in Prussia, a Calvinistic: in Russia, a Grecian, &c. But ought these things to be so? Is Christ divided? Is this the unity of his one beautiful, well-compacted body? Can these be all genuine apostolic christian churches? Rather, are any of them so? When the powers of this world take upon them authoritatively to interpret and prescribe, in things of religion, which are Christ's kingdom and province, they act beyond their sphere: they invade the throne of another prince: the rights of christians are violated, the unity of the church is broken, and a gate is opened for innumerable superstitions and inventions to enter, and mingle with the pure doctrines of Christ; and hence necessarily flow schisms, emulations, contentions, and every evil work.

I beseech you then, by the mercies of God, and for the honour of christianity, and by the allegiance you owe your only Lawgiver, Jesus Christ, to weigh these things in an impartial and unbiassed mind. May his spirit of truth judge between us upon the point, and teach us his will. To his influence I commend you, Sir, and am,

With great sincerity,

Your very humble servant,

A DISSENTER.

POSTSCRIPT.

Containing Remarks on the DEFENCE of your THREE LETTERS.

THE preceding Letter having been sent to

the press before your defence, &c. was advertised, its publication was deferred till I had seen what occasion it might have given me either to retract or support what was offered in my first letter. You seem moved at its pretending to be an answer to your three letters, when so small a part of them is considered therein. And, with airs quite suitable to the cause you are pleading, ecclesiastical authority, you give me to understand, that your taking any notice of this performance, is to be considered as a condescension to which you were not obliged, and which I had no right to expect from you. But, pray recollect, what was the avowed design and purport of your letters? Was it not to refute the great and popular objections of the dissenters, and to bring me over to your church? But, upon reading your letters, I found you had scarcely touched upon the principal objections which kept me from your church. Was it not then my part to state my objections to you, and set them in their full light? As, unasked, you had taken on you to be my instructor in this affair, had I not a right to lay my difficulties before you, and to demand your solution of them? What, must I confine

myself to the pleas which you had seen fit to dress up for the dissenters; and if I presume to offer others, will you magisterially call them ramblings, in which you are not obliged to follow me! Very pleasant indeed!

Here, therefore, I now put in my claim, Sir, and give you to understand, that I expect your plain and full answer to the several objections against your established forms, presented in the preceding letter; some of which, though you knew them to be of great weight with dissenters, you dextrously avoided bringing into the debate. To this you are most clearly and indispensably obliged by the province you have taken upon you. If there be any parts of the liturgy indefensible and absurd, this (1.) condemns your own conformity, who not only declare, but solemnly subseribe your unfeigned assent and consent to all and every thing contained in and prescribed by the book of Common Prayer, &c. And (2.) it justifies the separation, by proving it to have been a severe and cruel measure, when you cast out above two thousand of our ministers from the church, for not declaring and subscribing this unfeigned assent and consent, &c. which began the separation.

This being premised, we come to the point of church authority, upon which the controversy turns. Here, I observe with pleasure, that you are for mutilating your XXth article, ridding your hands of one part, and holding only to the other. The church's authority, in matters of

faith, (you say) you have nothing to do with."* But this authority, you know, your church claims as much as the power of decreeing rites and ceremonies; and, against this part of its claim, I as much excepted, as against the other. When therefore, you declare that you have nothing to

* Defence, page 18.

do with it, I must consider you as wisely declining to undertake its defence. But then, is it not highly reproachful to your church, that it should still inflexibly maintain its claim to this authority; should force its clergy to subscribe and acknowledge this claim, and keep dissenters from a share in those emoluments," after which" (you say)" they languish," partly for refusing their solemn subscription to an article which even one of its warmest advocates is unable to defend?

"By the church's power to decree rites and "ceremonies, is meant, a right in the pastors and governors thereof to ordain and appoint such things, so as to make it ordinarily the duty of "the people to conform themselves to them."* You have artfully declined to say, whom you understand by its pastors and governors; but, from other passages, it is evident you mean the bishops and clergy; for the civil magistrate, you declare, has no such power at all. Now,

1. That the clergy have no power nor authority at all of this kind over the laity, I proved, beyond all doubt, from the express command of our great lawgiver. Cull no man upon earth master: ONE is your master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.§ The princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion and authority over them, but it SHALL NOT BE so amongst you. What have you said in answer to these texts? Not a single word! You leave them to stand in full force against you: and, without one text of scripture to support this authority of the clergy over the laity, you, go on to treat it as a thing indisputable and allowed, and labour hard in raising a pompous structure upon the sand. What you say, as to the kiss of charity, has been considered above, page 60. Should even this be allowed to be a merely ecclesiastical and prudential institution,

* Defence, page 10. Defence, p. 18.

+ Letter II. page 14. Matt. xxiii. 8, 9. 1 Matt. XX. 25.