The editors of "The Church" attach no small importance to the subject mentioned in the heading of this article. They look upon it as intimately connected with the freedom, the purity, and the final triumph of christianity in the world. It is matter of thankfulness and rejoicing to them that the members of the Baptist denomination have maintained it firmly in every age, through honour and dishonour, amid evil report and good report. It is one of the points on which they differ from many other sections of the christian family. In the constitution of their churches it is fundamental. They acknowledge no head but Christ. They have no rule of faith but the Bible. They deny the right of any man unconnected with them to vote in the management of their spiritual affairs. They are independent churches: consequently, neither civil nor ecclesiastical authorities can have dominion over their faith.

According to their principles, magistrates have no authority in the church of Christ. Affairs of State, not the claims of conscience, come within the province of magistrates. They have not anything to do with religious convictions, articles of belief, or modes of worship,-much less have they any right to fine, imprison, or in any other way, punish those who maintain the sacredness of conscience, and obey God rather than man. Brute force can have no authority over the will, over conviction, and over truth. Between the outer world and the inward man there is a broad distinction. Civil authority belongs to magistrates, but spiritual authority resides in Christ, who is the Lawgiver and Head of the Church. Great advantages would result both to the Church and to the State from a clear understanding of this distinction. The claims of Cæsar and the claims of God would no longer clash.

Nor have kings any right to interfere with the constitution and government of christian churches. This would be at variance with the doctrine of independency. Liberty is the price paid for royal smiles and patronage. Monarchs in the house of God are private persons, and, making allowance for rank, wealth, education, and other worldly advantages, are on a level with the poorest worshippers. They are governors of states, not of churches. Where, indeed, the union of Church and State exists, the monarch, for the time being, is called head of the church, and defender of the faith; but churches formed upon the congregational order, are happily free from this dangerous and corrupting alliance. Whatever kings and queens may

have done for establishments of christianity, as they are termed, they have been sad nursing fathers and nursing mothers of the churches of Christ. From principle and from conviction, therefore, the Baptists have, in every age, resisted any interference from the throne with their religious rites and usages. In loyalty they have not been wanting; but they have remembered that "there is another king, one Jesus." They have not denied the rights of Cæsar, nor have they allowed Cæsar to meddle with the things of God.

"King though he be,

And king in England too, he may be weak,
Or covet more than freemen choose to grant;
Beyond that mark is treason."

Moreover, the churches of Christ are independent of Parliaments. Commonwealths, not churches, come within the province of statesmen. Politics, not reli gion, are subjects for their midnight debates. Legislation for a religious establishment is, indeed, unavoidable. When money is taken from the national funds to support any sect of religionists, it rests with the guardians of those funds to determine the amount, or to withhold it altogether. Churchmen cannot be free from political control. They are hampered by the State. For the sake of government patronage, they sell their spiritual independence. Clergymen cannot meet in convocation without permission from the monarch. In Scotland, the General Assembly cannot be legally constituted without the presence of the queen, or of her representative. In England, the people have no voice in the election of bishops. Ministers are placed over them without their consent. Livings are bought and sold like any other kind of property. Senators though infidels, as Bolinbroke and Shaftesbury-may vote on questions affecting religion; nor can these anomalies be avoided upon Church-establishment principles.

In opposition to these things, Baptist churches have always demanded, as one of their dearest privileges, freedom from parliamentary control. In the choice of pastors, in the administration of ordinances,-in points of discipline,-in the times, modes, and places of worship, they have been guided by the fitness of things, or by New Testament usage. On all religious questions they have been jealous of their independence. They knew there could be no compensation for its loss. Religious freedom was dearer to them than life itself. As Christ had made them free, they would not be entangled with the yoke of bondage. From their tears and blood

our liberties have sprung up. They fought the battle. They won the victory. They established their independence; and they handed down to us the ark of religious liberty as a rich inheritance. Under no circumstances can we abandon that ark. Principle, conscience, love to the truth, loyalty to Jesus, church history, and passing events, urge us to stand fast in the liberty of the sons of God. Freedom with the reproach of statesmen, is better than slavery with their smiles. Grants of public money, or a bribe in any other form,

would be a poor recompense for the loss of our independence and honour. It would stamp us with infamy. Posterity would brand us as traitors to the Saviour. Chains would be our portion and our desert. No! while we have hearts to beat, or tongues to speak,-while we claim the rights of Britons, or cherish the hopes of christians, spiritual independence must be our lot; and when we can defend it no longer, we will leave it as a solemn bequest to the next generation.

T. P.

These two sentences, connected with Israel's deliverance, involuntarily occur to us in looking at the present position and duties of Dissenters. During 1500 years, from the time of Constantine to this century, has the church of Christ been almost universally in corrupt alliance with the civil power. Even when Rome domineered over princes, she debased herself spiritually as much as them temporally; but throughout the greater part of this 1500 years worldly potentates, prompted by the vulgarest worldly motives, have controlled the church for their own worldly ends. At the Reformation mind burst free for a moment, to sell its liberty immediately to the princes of the day. The Puritans and some other dissenters from the English State-Church, were the only body of note throughout Europe, who stood aloof from the national church; they did so too, chiefly on questions of rites and ceremonies, not dreaming of emancipating the church from the golden chains of the State.

Well, three or four centuries roll on, and what a change! The North American Colonies, founded with sadly imperfect liberty of conscience by the "puritan fathers," have expanded into a Republic of thirteen millions without a State-Church. Scotland, having in many respects the least objectionable establishment, though by no means the smallest share of religious bigotry, has seen her advocates of State-Churches driven to fight for establishments under the banners of the Voluntary Principle. Ireland, whose State - Church combines all the worst vices of establishments, is likely, by

the claims of its millions of Papists, to unite all the earnest piety in the British empire against the principle, in virtue of which alone the hateful system of Popery can be endowed. In Germany thousands, almost millions are severing themselves from the National Church, and though looking for State recognition as a new sect, have adopted principles which the State fears to recognise, and which must carry them further. In Switzerland, in one canton, 150 ministers out of 170 have set up a free church, encouraged by D'Aubigné and Cæsar Malan. Baptists, every where the uncompromising refusers of State patronage, have formed churches in Denmark, Hamburg, Prussia, and other parts of Germany. In England itself, thousands are now open admirers of the Voluntary Principle, who are not numbered in the ranks of Dissenters. Although, therefore, semi-barbarous Russia persecutes horribly Catholic Dissenters,although France endows all sects equally, although Italy, and Spain, and Germany watch to shut out the light, and hold mind in slavery, although English bishops extend themselves to our colonies, and Puseyism is rampant at home, yet looking at the whole case, never did so many millions of men understand this question of questions!

Has not God, then, set before his church an open door to emancipation from the State? Does he not "speak unto us that we go forward ?" The great Commercial question which has lately absorbed the public mind in England is hasting to its decision; the Ecclesiastical question must soon be settled too. It is for Dissenters to say

whether they will prepare the public to decide it aright. The teachings of the Anti-Corn-Law League have prepared and fixed the public mind before the hour of actual settlement came. If Dissenters take the same course,-if they satisfy the public that religious equality must be effected by the abolition of all State patronage of religion, how holy, how happy may be the result! but if they are indolent, or timid, or silent, and if, in consequence, the untaught electors return a Parliament ready to endow Popery, or if they prevent not

the present one from endowing it, at once will seven millions be added to the numbers of State-churchmen, and an artificial life be given to all the superstitions and impositions of Popery. Surely Dissenters ought to prepare for a holy, a christian, a peaceful, yet a decided and united effort to enlighten all the electors of England on their duty to emancipate the church from the pay and the control of King, Lords, and Commons. Unless this be done, and done now, POPERY MUST BE ENDOWC.

ED.

So far as the Baptist denomination is concerned, Andrew Gifford was the "Star of the West," during the latter part of the seventeenth century. He was born in the city of Bristol, A.D. 1641, and was brought up to the trade of a cooper. When a young man he was made a partaker of the grace of God, and, after baptism, joined the church in the Pithay. In his twentyfirst year he began the work of the ministry, first as a local preacher, and afterwards as a pastor. For the long period of sixty years, he devoted his energies to the salvation of men, and to the glory of God.

He lived in dark and perilous times. He was born in the reign of Charles I. and died in the reign of George I.; his life, therefore, included the times of the Charleses, the Commonwealth, the Protectorate, James II. the Revolution, William and Mary, Ann, and the commencement of the Brunswick dynasty. At the time of his birth, our native land was convulsed by a political earthquake, and men's hearts were failing them for fear of those things that were coming to pass. When grown up to manhood, however, Gifford had courage equal to the perils that awaited him, and an amount of energy that no persecution or sufferings could subdue. In the service of Christ he was bold as a lion, and a stranger to the fear of man. His ministry began A.D. 1661, the year after the Restoration, and just before Charles and the bishops let loose the demon of persecution upon the noble but injured band of Nonconformists.

Owing to these circumstances his life was full of incidents, some of which were deeply interesting, and all of them rich in instruction. "He was once invited to preach a funeral sermon at a market town in Somersetshire, for the wife of one of the most respected and wealthy inhabitants. Permission was granted him to preach in

the parish church; but his enemies took possession of the organ, and kept it playing so long after he was in the pulpit, for the purpose of interrupting him, that he went into the churchyard, and, substituting a tombstone for the pulpit, preached to a large congregation, without any further disturbance." Indignant at such petty annoyance, the gentleman opened his own house for regular preaching, and there many tokens of the divine approbation rested upon the labours of Gifford. Interruption in the service of God was common enough then, in the experience of Baptist ministers; nor was it an unusual thing for our Worthy to leave a church, a house, or a barn, for the open fields, where multitudes had assembled to hear the tidings of salvation.

Kingswood was one of his preaching stations, and the colliers formed his auditory; he thus set his illustrious successors -Whitfield and Wesley-an example of open air preaching, which they followed with extraordinary success, in the conversion of those neglected men. Sometimes the colliers would assemble in large numbers, in a field near Bristol, and surround him while in the act of teaching them the way to heaven; and when the sentinels gave the watchword, "officers are coming," one of their plans to secure his safe retreat was to disguise him in a great coat, and to place a pitchfork on his shoulder, with hay on the top of it, that he might pass for a peasant. One cold November day, when preaching in a wood to his warmly attached colliers, he was taken prisoner, and carried before the magistrates, who were no strangers to his popularity in the city and in the neighbourhood. Gifford had a son, named Emanuel, who was placed as a watch to give notice when informers approached; but having sat down to rest himself for a short time, his new frieze coat became frozen to the ground, and this