the means of eternal life," but about which, experience has also forced Protestants, at least, to agree, that, like the simples employed in healing the body, it is exposed to great mismanagement: the Bible, concerning which such furious contentions have taken place-the Bible alone, among all the objects of highest importance to man, must be applied according to privileged systems. Though the difficulty of establishing the sense of the Bible on subjects about which Christians have destroyed Christians without mercy, is attested by the blood of the victims, and the chances of error in the decisions which constitute the established orthodoxies may be calculated by the frenzy of the passions which attended those decisions; nevertheless, those systems must be perpetuated by the engagement of passions still more dangerous to truth and veracity than the pride and resentment which carried heretics to the stake. That the Roman Catholics, who have persuaded themselves that by a perpetual miracle, no error was, at any time, permitted to form part of their church's creed, should fence that creed with every thing that can secure to it the awe and the attachment of both the clergy and the laity, is perfectly natural and intelligible. But that Protestants should continue to imitate the same conduct and practice, in respect to creeds, to interpretations of Scripture, in which all acknowledge that there may be errors, is one of the strangest inconsistencies which the history of civilized nations attests. In the mean time, and by the direct influence of this system, divisions which time and reflection might heal, are rendered perpetual and incurable. Under these artificial securities, under these regular combinations of men, thus solemnly bound not to depart from a certain view of Scripture, no gradual approach to a brotherly conformity can be made. The general sense of Christians cannot be progressively ascertained by the transition of one body of men into another. If any one ventures to examine the points in question, he is obliged to weigh his doubts in secret, as if he were meditating a crime. To doubt any of the principal doctrines which are used as the colours of these compactly organized and disciplined bodies, is to meditate desertion; to deny their truth, is not a change of opinion-as in other disputed matters-it is joining

the ranks of the most detested rebels. Under such circumstances, can there be a possibility of finally rendering the Scriptures what they should be,-the bond of union, both of intellect and heart, among those who bear the name of Christians?

Alas! were it not for the baneful power of ORTHODOXY-of that pretended duty of agreeing with the doctrines which, at some earlier or later period, became the nucleus, the bond of a church-party, we might long since have learnt, by the united and freely compared experience of the Christian world, either what is the most natural sense of Scripture on the disputed doctrines, or (what is more probable) a general conviction might have been established, that the field of metaphysical speculation has been left free, in order that individuals may indulge their peculiar intellectual tendencies, provided they do not interfere with the opposite tendencies of others. But what we now possess is not the intellectual experience of the millions of Christians who, in the course of many centuries, have joined the various standards of belief: their assent has never been free and unbiassed-at least, we have strong reasons to suspect its freedom. The Christian world has been divided into proseliting parties, who, assisted by secular power, and frequently using or threatening violence, have recruited their ranks, and prevented desertion by means totally unconnected with free and deliberate conviction. If, perchance, a certain number of individuals have really and fully coincided with the standard of faith adopted by their church, the early prepossessions in which they have been brought up, the spiritual terrors of heresy which have been deeply impressed on their minds (not to mention attractions and trammels of another kind), take away more than half the value of their testimony. We have, indeed, no reason to doubt the sincerity of individuals from general surmises. But though we highly respect the attainments, and venerate the virtues of many who have been and are still solemnly bound to support the peculiar interpretations and doctrines of some particular church which definitely limits the sense of Scripture by articles, instead of qualifying the sense of those articles by the sense which the subscriber finds, or may find in Scripture; we cannot consider the impression which the Scripture has left on their minds as an

experimental instance of the natural sense or mental result of those books. The experiment, like many of those attested in the history of alchemy, has been made in a vessel not at all free from substances which ought not to have been there.

The free and unprejudiced mind dwells with delight on the image of the universal church or convocation of Christ, as it would naturally have grown "into the fulness of the body" of its glorious founder, had not its growth been disturbed and distorted by the intolerant pride of ORTHODOXY. United by the acknowledgment of Jesus of Nazareth, as our King, appointed by his Father to reign over his moral kingdom, till every tribe and nation shall confess that he is Lord," to the glory of the Father;" agreed in the confession that for every purpose of well-grounded hope connected with the future, and of all spiritual instruction required for the present life, he is "one with the Father;" professing to take his will and example as the rule and the pattern of their individual conduct; and confident in the promise he gave them of an internal divine assistance to enlighten each upright conscience, and strengthen each honest heart in the progressive attainment of moral conformity with his Master, so that he may be one with him, as Jesus and his Father are one*; adopting charity, i. e. mutual love and kindness, as the distinguishing sign and common bond of the Christian society; keeping Christ's declaration, that " his kingdom is not of this world,” as a strong barrier against the mixture of temporal interests with the spiritual concerns of the Christian community;-under such circumstances, Christianity might have spread (as indeed it was intended to do, and as we have reason to hope that it will, in spite of obstacles) as a bond of fraternal love between the nations of the earth; as a preservative against the fears of superstition, which still embitter the soul of man in every region under heaven, and poison his best natural tendencies; as the support of one common hope of happiness in a future world; banishing from among the rational inhabitants of the earth the notion that ceremonies, sacrifices, and priestly interference, are necessary to please that great and good God, of whom the highest and truest thing that can be said, in human language, is, that he is a

* John xvii, 11, 21, 22.

SPIRIT, and that he delights in those who worship him in spirit and in truth; cherishing the growth and full development of the faculties which distinguish us from the brutes;-in a word, spreading and perfecting CIVILIZATION to the utmost limits of the inhabitable earth.

And what (let me earnestly and solemnly ask) has hitherto turned this view into a mocking dream-a dream which deludes by images which are the very reverse of the sad realities which surround us?-ORTHODOXY; the notion that the eternal happiness or misery of individuals is intimately connected with the acceptance or rejection of a most obscure system of metaphysics; a system, perplexing in the extreme to those who are best acquainted with its formerly technical, now obsolete language, and perfectly unintelligible to the rest of the Christian world; a system which, to say the least, seems to contradict the simplest and most primitive notions of the human mind concerning the unity, the justice, and the goodness of the Supreme Being; a system which, if it be contained in the Scripture, has been laid under so thick and impenetrable a veil, that thousands who have sought to discover it, with the most eager desire of finding it, whose happiness in this world would have been greatly increased by that discovery, and who, at all events, would have escaped much misery had they been able to attest it, even on grounds of probability sufficient to acquit themselves before their own conscience, have been compelled by truth to confess their want of success. Yet Orthodoxy declares this very system identical with Christianity with that gospel which was " preached to the poor" and "revealed unto babes:" such a system, we are told, is that Faith which" except every one keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly."

By the influence of this Orthodoxy the world has been placed in a worse condition, for peace and mutual love, than it was before the Gospel. Neighbouring tribes might, in ancient times, make their Gods the pretext for indulging mutual jealousy. But the comprehensive religion of the Romans, though inexorable when a foreign system threatened to loosen the bonds of their political body (which, as experience proved, was the decided tendency of Christianity organized by Bishops into a political

body, foreign to that under whose laws they lived) constantly bestowed protection on the religions of the conquered countries, and prevented, by this means, all attacks on each other. But observe the effects of Christianity identified with Orthodoxy. The earth reeks still from the torrents of blood which have been shed in the name of the Gospel. And the error is plausible. It is true that the SPIRIT of the Gospel itself opposes it; but it is of the very nature of Orthodoxy to direct the attention, not to the SPIRIT but to the letter; and the LETTER of the New Testament contains no express declaration against preventing heterodoxy by the infliction of punishment. That Jesus did not allow the two disciples to command fire from heaven against the Samaritans who would not receive him, is an example that might protect the unconverted heathen from Christian zealots; that he would not pray for twelve legions of angels to save him out of the hands of his enemies, only proves that "the cup he had to drink could not pass away from him." Yet, if the bond of his kingdom is Orthodoxy; if the eternal life of the subjects of that kingdom depends on the purity of their creed, and heresy murders their souls, there is nothing in the New Testament that opposes the use of effectual measures to counteract evils of that magnitude. The argument, that, if death is the fit punishment for the murderer of the body, much more must it be deserved by him who murders the soul, has the force of demonstration for every orthodox people on the face of the earth. So it has acted among the orthodox of the most opposite parties; and so it would act at this moment, even among Protestants, if a stanch orthodox clergy were supported by a stanch orthodox people. The horrors of the Inquisition do not belong to Rome by any necessary connexion between their Catholic tenets and their cruelty. If Roman Catholics have been prominent in the vast field of religious persecution, it is because they are in the same degree prominent in the belief of their exclusive Orthodoxy.

Nor could it be otherwise; for that mistaken Christianity which proclaims abstract creeds as the only sure pledges of eternal happiness in heaven, has, above all other agencies upon the mind, the power of combining sincerity and tranquillity of conscience with the two most powerful passions-fear and angry pride.

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