put in our claim?—But licentious precepts from the pulpit, will disseminate a contempt for religion, propagate a profligacy of manners amongst the people.-And are you serious in the charge? Do you really apprehend, that the Clergy of England will stain their lives with the filth of Methodism, contaminate their functions with the pollutions of Moravianism? Are you honestly afraid lest they should preach up the Seven Paradises of Mahomet, or recommend the lawless carnality of the Antinomians?-In taking from them their Articles of Religion, do you take from them their character, as gentlemen; their integrity, as members of society; their hopes, as Christians; and their sense, as scholars?-But we shall be overrun with Arianism, Socinianism, Arminianism.And who told you, that an Arian, a Socinian, or an Arminian, from principle, shall not be saved as well as you? Are the gates of heaven open only to us, the Athanasians and the Calvinists of the age? Is yours the only intelligible interpretation

pretation of Scripture; yours the only saving faith?-Away with such learned arrogance, such uncharitable judgment! They are a disgrace to humanity, and a - dishonour to any religion.-The question will not be at the last day, Are you of the Church of Jerusalem or of Antioch, of Rome or England? Are you a doctor of the Sorbonne or of Oxford, a friend to the Remonstrants or the Synod of Dort?-Not, what articles, confessions, formularies, have you subscribed ?—But, What hungry have you fed? What naked have you clothed? What sick have you visited? What souls have you saved ?— Not, what barren metaphysical creeds have you repeated?-But, What fruits of your faith have you brought forth?

It is much easier, in truth, to stickle for a definite interpretation of an indefinite text; to shore up, by orthodox labour, some tottering buttress of a crazy churchedifice; to harangue in councils, diets, synods, consistories and convocations, in defence of particular establishments; to anathematize

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anathematize those who dislike our spiritual cookery; and to burn heretics: All this is much easier to be done, than to become a Christian. It is much easier too to be querulous, discontented, turbulent, because our bold exactions are not granted in our own time and manner; to calumniate the highest characters in the church, because they do not lend a greedy ear to petulant demands, and undigested schemes of reformation; to stigmatize the Bench in particular, and the Clergy in general, as slothful, selfish, ignorant, hypocritical, political, knavish, because they do not fathom the depths of divine wisdom, with our line and plummet ;—to represent the Established Church as earthly, popish, idolatrous, pagan, because the piety of it's Founders has decided, in a doubtful point or two, contrary to our mode of apprehension: All this is much easier to be done than to become a Christian. Well may it be said of both of us, Nemo vobis credat, nemo nobis; omnes contentiosi sumus.

Like the pharisaical sect of old, every Christian church has tithed it's mint, it's anise, and it's cummin, by introducing the observance of some wretched ordinances, the belief of some dark, speculative, unfruitful doctrines, as succedaneums for mercy, for piety, and for justice. Every sect, however low and contemptible in it's beginning, has by degrees been inspired more or less with a spirit of procrustizing, of lopping and stretching, of screwing and wrenching the intellects of individuals, till they nicely tallied with their particular standard of faith and discipline. No doctrines so obscure, but what in some diet or council have been subtilized and sublimed, by scholastic sophistry, into hallowed mysteries; none so unedifying and indifferent, but what the over-weening wisdom of some intolerant enthusiast has imposed as credenda, necessary to eternal salvation; none so absurd, (I had almost said, so impious) but what, as Cicero affirmed of philosophical tenets, have had their patrons.

But I detain you too long upon the first point: the issue, in short, is this-The doctrines of the Christian religion, cannot be made clearer by human confessions, or articles of faith. If they are obscurely declared, they are not necessary to be believed, and must remain obscure for ever. There is no authority under Heaven, which can add to, or diminish aught from them, so as to render them more intelligible-To demand a full undoubted assent to propositions doubtful and obscure, is to tyrannize over the understandings of men. An uniformity of opinion in the fundamentals of faith, has prevailed in all ages and in all countries. In other points, it is, from the nature of our intellectual faculties (which, like the bodies of men, are of different complexions, shapes and sizes) impossible to be attained: The requisition of it, is absurd; and wherever it has been required, it has produced nothing but casuistical quibblings, miserable qualifyings of grammatical senses, jesuitical prevarication, and hypocritical subscription. A conformity