to place them under the direction of a Minister of Instruction, in order that the purposes for which they were bequeathed, and the rules and conditions by which they were accompanied, may be altered so as to appropriate all charitable endowments for education to that state in its social progress, which they declare the nation has attained.

We have, therefore, great reason to fear that there exists in the minds of these parties, not so much a desire to give liberty of conscience to those who are anxious to have their children educated in the doctrines and discipline of their own sect, as a disposition forcibly to take possession of the endowments for education, in connection with the Church of England, and apply them to a system of instruction in which the comparative insignificance of contending sects will not be discovered, either by themselves or by others, but be all merged in the popish and liberal design of banishing pure Scriptural Education from the schools of our country.*

But another evil sign of the days in which we live is the spirit manifested towards us, by those who, as to doctrines, profess to hold the " one Lord, the one faith, the one baptism."† Professing to retain the same essential truths of Christianity, to love the doctrines we love, to worship the Saviour

*Note. Appendix. B.

† Ephes. iv. 5.

we worship, many have, nevertheless, allied themselves with the Church of Rome, on the one hand, and with the deniers of the essential Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ, on the other; and, in fact, with every other class of meu, whatever their religious principles, or even their moral character, may be, for the avowed purpose of rooting out the very name and remembrance of our Church from the land.

If we have been disposed, in times past, to regard the opposition of such persons as directed more especially against us as the Established Church of the United Kingdom,-protected, as a Church connected with the State, in the enjoyment of peculiar rights and privileges, by legislative enactments from which they seek exemption,-we are now compelled to change our opinions, and to consider that their designs are no less aimed at our destruction as a Church, than at our annihilation as an Establishment.

Few things can be more painful to a christian mind than to contemplate men professing to make the holy Scriptures the rule of their conduct, and claiming a foundation for their own religious systems on the Scriptures alone, who are, nevertheless, so blinded, either by ignorance or wilfulness, as that, with the Bible in their hand, and our Scriptural formularies before them, they do not scruple to denounce our Church" as a hindrance to the gospel."

It is a melancholy fact, our adversaries do not scruple to maintain, that " from the treatment which the Church of England prescribes, in the cure of souls, in her legally authorised forms, we pronounce her to be a blind guide, a physician of no value": that our Church is "calculated to make an impression on the mind very unfavorable to the interests of Christianity" that "contrivance and inental manœuvering are necessary, in Ministers, in order to reconcile themselves to her requirements:" that "fanaticism is one of its peculiar characteristics:" and that "it is doubtful whether it is a true Church."*

These grievous accusations against our Church are put forth, not as the productions of some solitary spirits, in the bitterness of their animosity; but as the deliberate judgment of Dissenting Ministers, and others, who would feel themselves aggrieved by the suggestion of any doubts respecting the purity of their motives, or the piety of their characters: persons who profess to be the successors of the Henries and Wattses, and Doddridges of bye-gone days. But strange to say, these self-same accusers have abolished their own Church Covenants; declared statements of doctrines, as creeds and standards, to be obsolete and unscriptural; and, in a recent publication of their principles of religion, and their rules of Church order and discipline, have given proof of aberration from the statements of their predecessors, as it

*Library of Ecclesiastical Knowledge, Vol. iv. p. 305, 307. 310. 317.

regards the doctrine of the holy and ever blessed Trinity. Whilst professing to belong to true Churches of Christ, they have reduced their bond of union to the mere acknowledgment of the Divine authority of the Holy Scriptures; and though they maintain the principle that no human authority can be admitted in matters of religion, yet they have so entirely constituted their societies on human authority, as to be dependant for all that concerns them on the will of the majority.

Hence they have only the choice of interminable discussions or incessant separations; and though Christ commanded his disciples to "love one another," and prayed "that they all might be one," and St. Paul exhorted all Christians to be " perfectly joined together and that there should be no divisions amongst them," yet they declare any member or number of members to be at liberty to renounce the communion of any Christian Church, and set up another system, whenever the separating parties feel inclined to do so." Schism they define to be a mere "ecclesiastical scare-crow," and division amongst Christians they regard as a sacred duty. In a word, we find that the will of man makes

* On comparing the Savoy Declaration of the faith and order owned and practised, in the Congregational Churches of England, with the principles of Religion, &c. unanimously adopted at the Congregational Library, London, 7. 8. 10. May, 1883, it appears that, in defining the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation, the latter document seems studiously to omit the word Person.

† John xvii.

Cor. i. 10.

their societies: the will of man regulates them : the will of man unmakes them: and it is to such deplorable subjection to the will of a majority, such absolute prostration of Christian unity before human prejudice and feeling, this sorrowful contravention of the Saviour's last prayer, that the parties, of which we are speaking, are labouring to bring the Church to which we belong; declaring it to be their intention never to recede from their design till they shall have witnessed its accomplishment.*

Another subject to which I would request your attention, as marking" the days" to be " evil," is the great increase of Popery.-Now, when it is remembered that the Romish Sect, in England, arose in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and that for sixty years afterwards it had no superintending Bishop, that, so far as this country is concerned, it dates its origin in the year 1623;-for neither by descent nor ordination is it connected with the Ancient Church of these realms, nor do the Popish Bishops, in England, to this day, bear any but foreign titles of diocese ;-yea, that so recently as the year 1792, there were not thirty Roman Catholic chapels, in Great Britain, and not one Roman Catholic College, whilst, at the present day, there are no less than five hundred and thirty two Chapels, and forty three in the course of erection, ten Roman Catholic Colleges, and sixty Roman Catholic Seminaries of Education, besides Chapel Schools, we must, I think, confess, however unwil

*Note C. Appendix.