fraction of the liberties and rights of the congregation, how every interference, and every act of controul by the majority of members in the congregation itself, should not be a sinful abridgment of the rights and liberties of the minority. On the other hand, if corporate rights and a corporate conscience be admitted in regard to the congregation, it is hard to understand why they should not be admitted to a more extended society-a bishopric or a presbytery, or to any greater extent.

Mr. Noel will not hear of any such thing, because the word "Church” in the New Testament, signifies only a single congregation, or the collective body of believers. Thus we read of the Church at Rome-at Ephesus -at Colosse: but of the Churches of Galatia, of Judea, etc. It has often been replied, that the Christians at Jerusalem were in number at least seven thousand, and yet they are called "the Church at Jerusalem." As no temples-we dare not call them churches, lest we offend Mr. Noel and the Quakers-had at that time been erected for Christian worship-and as the saints assembled in private houses, there must have been a great number of distinct congregations; and yet these are styled not the churches, but the church at Jerusalem. This argument from the use of the word church is therefore very fallacious.

According to Mr. Noel, all the evils and sins which have appeared in the Church in union with the State, are to be imputed to the union. So great an extravagance could hardly be committed by any one who did not suffer an excessive zeal to blind his understanding. The wealth of the clergy and their corruption are ascribed to the union: though nothing can be more certain than that both had made very great progress before there was any such union at all. If it is not using too great a liberty with Mr. Noel, who evidently prefers taking every thing at second hand, and from the most common-place sources-from Gibbon" down to the " Pictorial History of England," we would respectfully recommend that he should read three pages of Mosheim's larger work, De Rebus Christianorum ante Constantinum Commentarii. Saect. Tert. Sect. xxv. p. 598-600.' If he peruses this passage and the references, he will find that the corruption of the clergy cannot be imputed to the union of Church and State, for it reached an incredible height long before there was any such union.

Of a piece with such absurdity is the ridiculous assertion that all persecution results from the union of Church and State! and even that Pepin's invasion of Italy grew out of the same root. We very much wonder that the Gothic Invasion is not imputed to the same cause-that the feudal system is not traced to the same source and that monkery, celebacy of the clergy, transubstantiation, denial of the cup to the laity, and extreme unction, are not also shown to be chargeable on the same arrangement. It is evident, to any one who thinks for a moment, that persecution springs not from the union of Church and State, but from the nation, well or ill founded, that heresy is a crime against the interests of society. The State, holding this belief, would punish heresy, whether it had any union with the Church or not. That persecution has no necessary connection with the union in question is proved by the fact, that the union exists where persecution is unknown, as is now the case in our own country and elsewhere.

But it would have been happy had the Union between the secular and the ecclesiastical powers been productive only of such occasional specimens of villany on either side; but alas! for many centuries before the Reformation, it universally and constantly checked the promulgation of the Gospel. Had there been no such Union in the nations of Europe, then in each kingdom peaceable subjects would have been protected in life and property, whatever their creed might have been; disturbers of the peace would have

been repressed; pious and enlightened men might have preached Christ to their contemporaries without molestation; and evangelical churches, formed through their ministry, might have prevented the spiritual slavery, superstition, and demoralisation, into which the churches so generally sank. But through the Union, each student of the bible, with any energy of character, was speedily arrested by the anathemas of the priesthood; and the State was ever ready to give those anathemas effect. It was the church which condemned Lord Cobham in England, John Huss in Bohemia, and Savonarolo at Florence; but it was the State which consumed each of them in the flames. Had there been no Union, Cobham would still have led on the Lollards to new successes; Huss would have still lived to confirm his disciples in the faith; and Savonarola might have reformed Italy. Devout and resolute men might have defied the malice of the priests, if the State had not placed the dungeon and the thumb-screw, the rack and the stake, at their disposal. The Union, therefore, is responsible for the religious ignorance and the general degradation of manners which disgraced the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries."

The fallacy of all this is transparent. The writer assumes that the absence of the union of Church and State implies the presence of universal justice, toleration, and protection to the preachers of the Gospel. Had the first Christian teachers no obstacles to contend with? Have modern missionaries none?

"The union condemned by the law of Moses" is a startling title. The reasoning by which the thesis is proved is not less so. To deny there was any union of Church and State under the law, is to carry paradox to its furthest limits. The arguments in support of it are such as these-" In Israel, the incomes of the priests were settled without the authority of the State; in England their incomes are furnished by the authority of the State alone." p. 93, 94. Mr. Noel appears to have not even the dimmest conception of the peculiar character of the Jewish constitution; he does not know evidently that God was the Supreme civil Ruler who enacted all the laws, and that the priests and kings were merely his inferior officers and servants: that the whole legislative authority was in the hands of Jehovah. The main point here is, that the incomes of the priests were fixed by law. This fact is a precedent, and an example, the force of which is not destroyed by another fact that, under the theocracy, all legislature was not in the hands of men, but was reserved in the hands of Jehovah himself. If the argument be worth anything, it will prove that all law-making by men is unwarrantable, because God ordained all laws, both civil and ecclesiastical, for his ancient people.

Dependent on this fallacy is the conceit, that because no express penalty is attached to the neglect, therefore, under the law, the payment of tithes was not compulsory but voluntary. But this would prove that obedience to all those parts of the law was optional, to which there was no express penalty attached, which the human magistrate was to execute. Both in the Civil law and in the Statute laws there are many enactments to which penalties are not attached; and yet, disobedience is not therefore unpunished. Under the Mosaic system, God reserved the execution of much of the law in his own hands; he punished with famine, with pestilence, with death. Surely such penalties have the nature of compulsion as much as any which human magistrates inflict. The king or priest was not required to enforce payment of tithes, but it was notwithstanding as obligatory or compulsory on the people to pay them, as to perform any other act of their religion. They had robbed God, as Malachi tells them, and the punishment was real and tremendous, though no human power in

tervened to inflict it-" Ye are cursed with a curse, even this whole nation." And the prophet informs them that, "if they paid their tithes, the Lord would open the windows of heaven and pour such a blessing upon them, that there would not be room to receive it." Mal. ii. 9, 10. And yet people will pretend that an act was voluntary which God expressly enjoined, the performance of which he rewarded with temporal blessings, and the neglect of which he visited with tremendous temporal chastisements. On the same grounds it might be pretended that the duties prescribed in the 38th chapter of Deuteronomy are voluntary acts, because no human power should reward them, no human authority should punish their violation. The curse of God came upon the Jews in the form of temporal judgments--more tremendous than most of those which men inflict. And the acts in question are in no sense voluntary, except as those acts are, the opposite of which human laws visit with imprisonment, exile, or death. The payment of tithes was strictly obligatory under the law of Moses; for God who enjoined the payment threatened his curse in the form of temporal judgments, if the people refused to pay them. What more can human laws do to render any action obligatory?

To prove that the Union is condemned by the New Testament, the famous passage," My kingdom is not of this world," is for the hundredth time abused. So much has been written regarding the sense of these words, that we shall not say more of it than this-that if it means what Voluntaries say it does-then it condemns that very Jewish constitution under which our Lord lived. For this was in that sense a kingdom of this world. Christ's words contained a reply to the charge made against him -that he was seditious. Any exegesis which makes them mean something different, perverts them.

The Union is condemned also by history, as the Author maintains. And his argument would be conclusive if all that has happened during the continuance of the Union, had resulted from the Union. Laying out of view all the good it may have done, and all the ill it may have prevented, and confining our regards to the mischief and crimes that have taken place under it, a startling catalogue may easily be produced. But, judging in the same way, we could, with equal ease, condemn the ordinances of marriage, of civil government, and even of the Church itself; for many evils and mischiefs have, without question, been connected with these institutions. Candid men do not think they have justly estimated a character, when they have looked only at his errors and sins.

The grand objection which Mr. Noel urges against the union of Church and State is, that it necessarily subjects the former to the latter. The connection he holds makes the State master, and the Church slave. This is not only so in England, but must be so everywhere and always. Yet notwithstanding all this confidence, the proposition, as a general doctrine, appears to us to want proof, nay, to be disproved by the clearest testimony of history. During nearly a thousand years, instead of the Union subjecting the Church to the State, the State was, in a great degree, subject to the Church. The Union complained of, has subsisted in Christendom some fifteen hundred years; and during two thirds of that period, the Church has been rather master than slave. From this historical fact, we may conclude, that the subjection of the Church is not so unavoidable a result of the Union as the Author has persuaded himself it is.

"All things else are in progress, but the laws and the constitutions of the Establishment remain century after century unrevised and unchangeable. Each church, according to the will of Christ, should continually, by its self-government, adapt itself to the highest degree of civilization; but

the State forbids, and the churches prefer the mandate of the State to the command of Christ."

And again :

"It is by the authority of Parliament that these canons, which have received the sanction of the Crown, now bind the clergy. Parliament maintains them in force, and hinders their revision; and, therefore, it is the Union which represses in the ministers of the Establishment all free inquiry, and holds them down to maintain age after age, with hopeless incapacity of progress, the errors of those men who broke through the shackles of Romanism only to rivet on the churches the shackles of the State."

"The State pronounces on the doctrine to be taught in the Establish

ment,

"Individual Christians, and therefore churches, are called to maintain all the truth, to stand fast in the faith, to contend for the faith, and to grow in knowledge. Each church ought to be the pillar and ground of the truth.' Pastors and people together are to hold forth the word of life; and together to strive for the faith of the Gospel.' But the Establishment is forbidden by the State to correct any error, or to make any advance in spiritual knowledge: and so it becomes the pillar and ground of error as well as truth, and holds forth not only the word of life, but doctrines contrary to that word."

Now that this degree of subjection is not a necessary consequence of the union, Mr. Noel knows very well: for he is acquainted with a Churchthe Church of Scotland-in which it does not exist to any thing like the same extent. But further, we cannot perceive any proof that Established Churches must have less liberty than Voluntary Churches-that they have commonly had so, does not prove that they may not be constituted on principles which would leave them as much liberty as any sect enjoys. This is easily conceivable; and might be shewn to be practicable.

We cannot conclude without remarking on the uncharitable terms in which this author uniformly speaks of Christian states and governments. They are all, in his judgment, mere gentiles or heathens. The Queen, and the Parliament of Great Britain, must have nothing to do with the Church, because Nero, Tiberius, Pontius Pilate and Herod were permitted no authority in the primitive churches. We did not understand that Herod, or Pontius Pilate, Tiberius, or Nero professed to be Christians; that they were heads of nations professing christianity. We thought they had been open enemies to the name of Christ, and persecutors of those who called upon that name. It would be a curious argument to shew that David and Hezekiah had no right to regulate or reform the worship of Jehovah, because Pharoah, in whose land the people of Israel had sojourned, and Nebuchadnezzar, to whose land they were banished, had not been acknowledged to have any authority to intermiddle with that worship. It may be true that in our Legislatures there are ungodly men,-but that the bodies are so generally of this character, as to be worthy of being accounted mere heathens, appears to us a charge which is quite outrageous-a judgment which fact condemns, as against it charity revolts.

Many things are said of the Church of England which we fear are too true. The distribution of her revenues is indecent, is shameful. Nonresidence is a scandal which no alleged convenience should screen. The inferior clergy should be better paid, and less should be lavished on episcopal palaces and other extravagance? The worst abuses are those

connected with money matters-which the Church is not chargeable with. Parliament has mismanaged the church revenues, and the church is condemned for an abuse of which it is not so much the author as the victim. The sooner such grounds of objection are removed the better. They furnish a text on which plausible dissertations may be founded. If this book shall contribute towards a reform, the friends of the Establishment may thank Mr. Noel, that the effects of his Essay proved so different from his intention. Neither modesty nor gratitude has restrained him from exposing mercilessly the infirmities and sins of his Mother; all whose virtues and good deeds he has passed over in silence.

ON DIFFERENT FLAR PRICES.

It has been proved by the experience of all ages and nations, and admitted by all philosophers and statesmen of any sagacity, that religion, or a sense of the Supreme Being, fixed deeply, and working constantly in the heart, as a check to evil, and an excitement to good, is the light and salt of society. All, indeed, who have studied, most attentively, the best ways of benefiting mankind, and who have laboured most assiduously to mitigate the miseries, and multiply the blessings of our race, have seen, most clearly, the advantages of religion, and have exerted themselves most vigorously, to cherish its spirit, in every department of life. So deeply impressed with these truths, have even many political infidels been, that they have felt the necessity of having some form of, at least, outward religion, recognised and countenanced in every State. In France, itself, a nation that has stood forth to the gaze of the world, as the most godless on the face of the earth-a nation which, by a public act of its rulers, had the madness to declare that there is no God," and that leath is an "eternal sleep," and enthroned and proclaimed an unprincipled woman as "the goddess of reason"-the dilirium of infidelity was not long able to blind the minds of those at the helm of affairs on this subject. During the very “reign of terror,” Robespierre himself felt that such proceedings were impolitic-that to encourage them was " a blunder" in government-and therefore, he took

steps to counteract them-to correct the error that had been committed. Napoleon, too, when he attained to the supreme power of that giddy country, though himself a stranger to the best influences of practical godliness, was conscious that all the despotic power which he wielded, was not sufficient for every purpose of government, without the aid of religion, and, therefore, reversed the impious decree of his predecessors, and restored something like the form of religion to those over whom he ruled-feeling, no doubt, from what he had witnessed, the force of Dr. Franklin's question; "If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it?"

But for supporting any religion, and giving it life and effect, an order of men, devoted to the teaching of its doctrines and duties, has also been found and admitted, by all enlightened Statesmen, to be essential to the welfare of a nation. The Christian institution of "pastors and teachers, for the edifying of the body of Christ," is felt to come home to the necessities of society-to be a provision of wisdom, suited to our condition, as that of beings bound to each other, by a mysterious compact, dependent on each other's helping hand, with wills and views in life, liable to be affected by the power which our position gives us of influencing one another. Hence, an educated, experienced, and judicious body of men, well qualified to set the faith of heavenly things, and the law of righteousness, before