Christian Church; nor even a Liturgy as essential to public prayer; though they contend for them both, as of superior excellence to any other mode of govern ment or devotional service. They allow foreign Churches which are regulated by a discipline different from their own, the Established Church of Scotland, and Dissenters who have preserved the great doctrines of the Gospel, and the practical religion it teaches, to be composed of fellow Christians, and they wish to live with them in the habits of friendly intercourse, knowing that acrimonious disputes can never promote the interests of genuine Christianity. As the doctrines they embrace are favourable to civil, they are equally friendly to religious Liberty. They recognize the Rights of conscience as sacred, and inalienable, and believe that to God alone men are amenable for the exercise of them, so long as they are not destructive to good morals, to the peace of society, or to the reciprocal duties that man owes to man. In the two reigns subsequent to the Revolution, they had to struggle with the party opposed to them in the Church, for those maxims of toleration, which the tranquillity of the State, the security of the Church, and the most sacred rights of men, imperiously require. Their zeal in the same glorious cause has suffered no abatement, and, in our times has succeeded in rendering toleration complete to men of all religious sentiments. The comprehension of such Dissenters as could, by mutual conciliation, be brought into the Church, was long the favourite object of many of its most illustrious leaders, and though in this they failed of success, the attempt reflected honour upon their tempers, upon their principles, and upon their memory.

The doctrines of Arianism were transplanted from a more congenial soil into the Church, by Mr. Whiston, the

celebrated mathematician, in the reign of Queen Anne, and carefully watered by Dr. Samuel Clarke, who was certainly one of the finest classical scholars that this country has produced. Mr. Whiston had the honesty to leave the Church, the doctrines of which he had abandoned, and the religious sentiments of which were in perpetual collision with his own. Dr. Clarke persevered in hostility to the religious system of the Church, but had not the fortitude to be an honest dissenter. In the most solemn services of religion, he continued to address his Maker in language from which his heart revolted, and while he drew up a liturgy which exploded the proper Divinity of the Saviour, he continued in the use of one that ascribes to Him equal glory with the Father. This party claim Sir Isaac Newton, the philosopher of the universe, as an associate, in opposing the Divinity of the Saviour. Upon what evidence this claim rests, we know not; but the presumption, if sufficient evidence of the fact cannot be produced, must certainly be on the other side. He who unfolded all Nature's Laws must have seen lessons of infinite power and wisdom in the book of Creation, which are sealed from the eyes of common men. As, in the latter part of his life, he is said to have studied the Scriptures more than any other book, he could not but know that the creation, as well as the government of all the worlds in the universe, is often ascribed, in the word of God, to the Saviour. To suppose Newton to have seen nothing in the boundless tracts of space, in which ten thousand worlds roll, (and all in harmony,) but what created intelligence, and created power were adequate to produce, would be to degrade him indeed. He always professed the most cordial attachment to the doctrines and Liturgy of the Church of England, which no honest Arian

can possibly do. The glory which the Arian party wish to secure to themselves is at this expense, and a glory too which would attach real disgrace to their cause. For, if it would be an honour to have the co-operation of a man of Sir Isaac Newton's unequalled abilities, the consideration of his dishonesty and hypocrisy would more than counterbalance it. The want of integrity is the greatest dishonour that can affect either an individual or a party. If any ministers of religion in the Church of England be of Arian sentiments, they generally conceal them, and their number it is to be hoped, is small. Arianism is not generally a resting place, and they who adopt sentiments so dishonourable to the Saviour of the world, generally go further.

The Socinians, who now take the name of Unitarians, have had a just claim to several Clergymen of the Church of England. But how those who believe Jesus Christ to have been nothing more than a good man, and consequently no more the object of religious adoration than any of his Apostles and followers, can, with clean hands and a pure heart, enter that temple which is dedicated to His worship, or join in that doxology which ascribes to Him and to the Holy Spirit, equal glory with the Father, and which addresses him as the King of Glory, and the Eternal Son of the Father, appears utterly unaccountable. The doctrine of the Trinity which pervades the whole Liturgy, Mr. Lindsey calls polyt heism. And if the doctrine of the Trinity be inconsistent with the Divine Unity, the charge is well founded. Is it possible, that one who believes, that except for the purpose of working miracles, no Divine Influences have been shed, or can be expected to be shed, on the minds of men, can pray for the continual dew of God's Spirit with that persuasion and ex

pectation which is necessary to their receiving the Heavenly rain? Can those who believe that the children of men have no other refuge than their own repentance and good works, feel that contrition and self denial, which dictated the Evangelical piety of the Communion Service? -Several respectable writers-Jebb, Matty, Disney, Lindsey, Tyrwhitt, Wakefield, &c. feeling their sentiments decidedly hostile to the doctrines of the Church, acted in such a manner as every honest man will act. They bade her adieu, and separated themselves from her communion. Mr. Stone was lately driven from her altars, to the horns of which he would willingly have clung, that he might partake of her good things, at the time he was polluting them by perverting the faith of her sons. Two or three writers, who seem to have made some approaches to the doctrinal system of that gentleman, will, probably, learn a little more caution from the catastrophe of his adventures, and prefer the wages of unrighteousness, to the disinterested conduct of a Lindsey. A Socinian clergyman is equally condemned by the system that he openly professes, and by that which he secretly holds. If the first be well founded, he refuses in his heart that honour to the Son, which the Father commands to be given him, in common with himseif; and if the last be the doctrine of the Gospel, he gives to a mere creature the worship which is due only to God, and in the solemn services of religion, uses the language of idolatry, from which his own conscience cannot but revolt. As both of these systems require virtue and integrity in religion, as well as in every other transaction, both of them must reprobate their opposites.

Swedenborgians form another party in the Church. It was a fact very well known to the religious world, that

some individuals of the Clergy of the Church of England had embraced the tenets of Baron Swedenborg. The late Mr. Hartley, rector of Winwick, in Northamptonshire, presented himself before the public as the apologist of the Swedish seer, as he is styled by his followers. The Reverend J. Clowes, rector of St. John's, Manchester, has, in several performances, stood forth as the panegyrist and the strenuous defender of his system. Another Clergyman of the Church, whose name does not appear, but who wrote the Article, Swedenborgians, (in Mr. Adam's Religious World Displayed,) affirms that a numerous body of the Clergy, together with many individuals of their respective congregations, are receivers of the Baron's doctrines. The doctrine of a Trinity of Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost in the Unity of Godhead, is the primary Article of the Church to which all her Ministers subscribe, at their ordination, and there is not an order for prayer in the service of the Church, in which this doctrine is not recognized. The doctrine of Baron Swedenborg acknowledges but one Person as God, Jesus Christ; and denies the existence of the Father, and of the Holy Ghost, as Persons. He indeed taught that in the Person of Jesus Christ, dwells the whole Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the Father constituting the soul of the humanity, whilst the humanity itself is the Son, and the Divine virtue or operation proceeding from it is the Holy Ghost; forming altogether one God; just as the soul, the body, and operation of man, form one man. This Rhapsody of nonsense, the reader may see in Mr. Adam's Religious World, Vol. II, p. 400.

The doctrine of a vicarious Atonement constitutes an essential part of Christianity, and is accurately stated in the second Article of the Church; and the belief of it per20

VOL. II.