kingdoms of Europe are co-ordinate kingdoms, and, as such, cannot act for the whole, unless they act in confederacy. If it should follow, as in the logic of the Confessional, that they cannot, upon this principle, act for their own security at home, then it would appear, as perhaps the Author intended it should, that co-ordinate power is no power, and that there ought to be no such thing as authority upon earth, either civil or ecclesiastical.

Το prepare his readers for this loose way of thinking, he observes, that "no Church can have a right to establish any doctrines, but upon a supposition that they are true. If the doctrines established in one Church are true, the contrary doctrines established in another Church must be false; and no Church will contend for a right to establish false doctrines *.' He hath a strange art of throwing a cause up into the air, and contriving the matter so that it always falls upon its back; whereas a fairer writer would sometimes suffer it to light upon its legs. He might have said, with as much truth, and much more ingenuity, that if the doctrines established in one Church are false, the contrary doctrines established in another Church will be true; and every Church has a right to establish true doctrines. It is judiciously observed, by the learned and respectable writer of the Three Letters, that this objection strikes as deeply at the rights of private judgment in individuals, as at the authority of separate Churches: for if the doctrines believed by one person are true, the contrary doctrines believed by another will be false; and no person will contend for a right to believe false doctrines; consequently, no person can have a right to believe any doctrines,

but with the unanimous consent of every other person: besides, to use another of his arguments, how can any one person, more than any one Church, use his own private judgment, without encroaching on the right of another's private judgment? If these reasonings are thus carried to their natural issue, private rights as well as public will fall before them, and religious persuasion can no more be supported in individuals than in societies. Men may be mistaken, and societies may be mistaken; but the rights of one society are no more affected by the mistakes of a foreign society, than the rights of private judgment in any one man at London is affected by the groundless determinations of another at York. If any one foreign society may be admitted as a check upon establishments here in England, why not another? Papists are of the human species; not only invested with the common rights of reason and private judgment, and as such upon a level with those at Geneva, but they also produce texts of Scripture, in their own sense, for all their innovations. As they admit doctrines contrary to our doctrines, and both cannot be true, we ought to establish nothing, lest, in contradiction to the Pope, we should establish false doctrine.

It was asserted above, that all particular Churches are co-ordinate; they have all the same right in the same degree. If these particular Churches are national Churches, subsisting under the laws of independent countries, the assertion is true; but it is extended to an extravagant latitude in the Confessional, and comprehends under the name of Churches all the different parties or denominations of sectaries in the same Protestant state*. I beg leave to spend some time upon

* P. 34.

this position, because it is of great consequence, and will shew the depth of this writer's ecclesiastical polity.

Let us ask then, in the first place, whence this coordination of Churches in the same Protestant state is derived? Not from the form and doctrine of the apostolical Church in the primitive ages, nor yet from the principles or practices of this Church at the Reformation. To derive it from the former of these, is to suggest that Christianity made its public entry into the kingdoms of the world under the different forms of the Anabaptists, the Calvinists, the Quakers, the Independents, the Racovians, &c. &c. That all these forms were thrown down before the magistrate, for him to pick up which he liked best, and that there was nothing but fancy to direct him in his choice. Had this been a fact, the co-ordination here spoken of had been of some authority, and Christianity itself would have done what its persecutors could never accomplish: for nothing but everlasting opposition and confusion could have arisen from the co-equality of such an heterogeneous institution. But in reality the faith and polity of the Christian church, for the two or three first centuries, had but one face all over the world; therefore, a supposed co-ordination in favour of all sects, can find no precedent in this state of the Church.

Neither can it be deduced from our Reformation of Popery: for the episcopal Church of England was a Church of Christ before the Reformation, though a corrupt one; as a man is still a man, though he is blind and scorbutic. The co-ordinate principle, therefore, must suppose, with the Papists, that the Church of England was then annihilated, and that some new thing started up in the place of it, of the same date

and George For the Quaker were true Apostles, ignorance and indolence would be content with the error; and supposing them to have a little dash of vanity, they would scoff, perhaps, at the Christians of better times for being led by the nose, and not having wisdom or spirit enough to believe as they do. But is truth to be disregarded and banished from society, because ignorant people do not know the grounds of it, or may be influenced by their betters to accept of error instead of it? Does it follow that a man's profession is false, because his conduct is unworthy of it? The Apostle tells us of some who hold the truth in unrighteousness*. Does he mean to reflect upon the truth, or upon those ungodly persons who hold it in an improper manner? Let ignorance, and indolence, and secularity then, each of them in their turns, or all of them together, approve the Orthodox Confession; this will be no reproach to the Confession itself, unless the same ignorance, and indolence, and secularity was at the bottom of its first establishment, to blind and corrupt the fathers of the reformation: and let me add, that if ignorance and secularity must have a Confession, God forbid it should be of their own making; especially if they should happen to be possessed with the rage of proselyting: for ignorance will fabricate false doctrine, for want of proper materials; and secularity (using its own private judgment) will invent such a religion as shall flatter its own vices.

This leads us to the consideration of another plea of right, which, according to our Author, who is seldom so gracious as to make any allowances, is perhaps the best the Church has to allege. "A necessity

* Rom. i. 18.

for Confessions hath been inferred, from the indispositions and incapacities of the people to examine and judge for themselves." And this is a plea, to which every compassionate Christian will be inclined to give as much weight as he can. The common people being, for the most part, unlearned, and incapable of searching the Scriptures for themselves, are liable to be deceived by those who pervert the Scriptures to the ruin of themselves and others: and therefore it is thought necessary that they should be instructed according to some known rule of sound doctrine; and their safety was a principal consideration with those who were entrusted with the compiling of the rules now established. But here again he is troubled with consequences, and is terribly afraid of doing good, lest some evil should come of it. The people must be left to take their chance, and the Church must not insist upon her right, or, more properly, her duty, of providing for their spiritual necessities; because this argument would equally vindicate the Church of Rome, with respect to many of her impositions t." By the impositions of the Church of Rome, we understand those novel and false opinions which distinguish Papists from Protestants, and gave occasion to the Reformation; therefore, his consequence, in other words, will stand thus: "If we allow it to be the duty of the Church of England to instruct her people with sound doctrine, then it will be equally the duty of the Church of Rome to corrupt the people with false doctrine. If this Church establishes any Creed, the Romish Church may establish the Creed of Pope Pius V. both being equally necessary, from the indispositions and incapacities of the people." When he