met Goliah. Those opposed to establishments of religion upon Christian principles, cannot, however, endeavour to subvert them by conspiracies and violence. No : the weapons of our warfare are mighty, but they are not carnal.' 'Spiritual wickedness in high places' will not be pulled down, at least by the efforts of Christians, in the same way as it was set up, by those engines employed by superstitious or political men. True dissenters are not robbers of temples nor blasphemers of established religion. The sword they employ is that of the Spirit. Truth doth not destroy by violent convulsions, but by slow consumption. 'The Man of Sin,' indeed, hath received his death-wound; at least, if his soul and spirit remain, his body, the organs by which they acted, his secular power is struck in the fifth rib. Grey hairs are here and there also upon all his offspring; and with whatever wailings, the friends of the family may lament them, they shall not be able to re-animate their broken constitutions, but 'the consumption decreed shall overflow in righteousness.'”—Ibid, pp. 53, 54.

NOTE VII.

INFLUENCE OF CIVIL ESTABLISHMENT ON CHRISTIANITY.

THOMAS HARDY, D. D.

"Unhappily the early Christian emperors departed alike from prudence and from evangelical principle, in their public measures relative to Christianity. These measures had three objects: to oblige their Heathen subjects to become Christians; to oblige all the Christians to hold the same opinions on speculative subjects; and to increase the power of the clergy.

“The continued pursuit of these ends, for several reigns, produced effects which were decisive and fatal. The Pagans, perceiving that Christianity was become the road to preferment, and finding themselves first subjected to disabilities, and then to penalties, for continuing to worship the gods of their ancestors, abandoned their profession, and flocked into the church by hundreds and by thousands. Their conversion was nominal, and was not founded on conviction; they retained the prejudices of their superstition unsubdued, instead of throwing them down at the foot of the Cross. They could not see the kingdom of God' in its proper character, for they were not born again' in the spirit of truth; they came not as little children under

the tuition of Christ; they introduced into the church itself, the essential principles of Paganism; by their numbers they gave to those principles a footing, which was permanent, and which a great part of Christendom has not, even yet, been able to remove.

"The terrible influx of the Pagans, on the conversion of the court, corrupted the church; and the resolution of the emperors, to have but one religion among their subjects, brought unspeakable detriment to the cause which they meant to support. The other two objects of the imperial policy were not more fortunate in the event; for, in endeavouring, by the secular arm, to compel all the Christians, to entertain the same speculative opinions, on the questions then debated, the sovereigns at once turned free discussion into controversy and strife; they inflamed instead of extinguishing party spirit; they formally divided the church into sects; they entailed the disputes of their own times, as an inheritance of sorrow to posterity, and wrote INTOLERANCE Over the portal of the house of God.

The elevation of the clergy to power, by which the teachers of the humble religion of Jesus were transformed into an ambitious priesthood, was the creation of a formidable support, to any superstitions which might find access to the church, and, at the same time, an effectual clog to prevent the progress of the Christian faith, in new regions. Thus, in consequence of fatal indiscretion in the measures of the court, and of a system of policy erroneous in principle, Christianity suffered infinitely more from Constantine, than it had done from Diocletian, and received wounds from the hands of Theodosius, such as Julian could never have inflicted.

"The mode of corruption which Christianity experienced, during its period of decline in the fourth and fifth centuries, consisted partly in an extension of the ritual, which transformed the religion in its obvious characters from the discipline of the heart, to a pitiful exhibition of gestures, forms, and pageantry; and partly in the introduction of dark theories, imported from the academies of the Egyptian sophists, and mixed with the doctrine of the gospel, as alloy and dross, debasing the gold of the sanctuary. By the extended ritual and the mysticism together, the beauty and authority of religion as a practical rule was lost, the actual redemption from vice, and the improvement of men individually in piety and holiness, for which the Lord of the Christians had laboured and bled, were in effect set aside, and supplanted by new contrivances, which were adopted as substitutes for eternal virtue. From all this it followed, that to tender, to a new nation, the religion as now altered in substance, was to

offer something else, than that, which the experience of three centuries had proved to be calculated for success; it was to offer something, which having no foundation in human nature, no support from right reason, no accommodation to the general exigencies of the human race, could not succeed; of course, it did not succeed; men would not exchange for it the opinions and rites of their fathers, and their reluctance is in no degree surprising."-The Progress of the Christian Religion—A Sermon by Thomas Hardy, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity and Church History, in the University of Edinburgh, pp. 22-25. Edin. 1794.

The author of this admirable passage, was one of the ablest men of his time. It is to be regretted, that his few but valuable publications have not been collected, and thus put into wider circulation, and a more enduring form. It is still more to be regretted, that the thoughts and opinions of such a man, embodied in his Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, should be lost to the world.

NOTE VIII.

EUTHANASIA OF SECESSION AND DISSENT.

"We have no wish that the Secession should be perpetual. We have no expectation that it shall. Its founders had no such wish or expectation. Dearly as they loved the Secession Church, cheerfully as they suffered, willingly as they would have died in her cause, their prayer never was ESTO PERPETUA. They did not secede till, in their estimation, secession had become absolutely necessary; and it was their avowed intention, that when secession ceased to be necessary, secession should cease to exist. They seem for some time to have indulged the hope, that by the Established Church effecting the required reformation, the necessity of secession would be but of short continuance, for, in some instances, their places of worship were so constructed, as that, with little difficulty, they could have been converted into private dwellings.

"The Euthanasia of the Secession in this way is now at the end of a hundred years, an event far less probable than ever. But in another and a better way, that desirable event does seem hastening forward with a rapidity, as terrific to one class of persons, as it is delightful to another. Our forefathers hoped that the Secession would hon

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ourably close, in the reformation of the national church. The majority of their descendants are expecting materially the same event, in the dissolution of the national establishment. If we can at all decypher the mystic characters of unfulfilled prophecy, the cities of the nations' are tottering to their fall, and 'Babylon is coming up in remembrance before God.' If we can at all discern the signs of the times, the band which binds in corrupt union the Church and the State, is near disruption. It seems plain, that if not ere long cautiously unloosed by the wary hand of legislation, in compliance with the demand of enlightened public opinion, it will be rudely torn asunder by the reckless hand of tumultuary violence.

"That band, while it remains, necessarily perpetuates division in the church of Christ. It unites those who ought to be separate. It separates those who ought to be one. When that unnatural, loathsome conjunction of the living and the dead, which the Established Church of this country exhibits-which every established church ever has exhibited, ever must exhibit-shall be dissolved, the dead will soon be buried in that grave which is ready for them, and for which they have long been ready; while the living, freed from the fetters which bound them to disease and pollution, will walk at liberty, and associate with their living brethren who never were in bondage, in prosecution of the great objects for which spiritual life is bestowed. The corrupt part of the Established Church, deprived of the support of the State, could not exist for a year as a distinct religious denomination. The faithful portion of the church would naturally connect themselves, with those who, in their views of Christian truth, are already of one mind and heart with them, and the name of the Secession Church would be honourably merged in that of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

"And may we not hope that ere another century revolves, even this name will be felt to be unduly sectarian-that under the clear light and genial influence of a millennial sun, the true followers of Jesus Christ of every denomination will be made to see eye to eye,' —that there shall be a general return to the purity of primitive doctrine, the holiness of primitive discipline, and the simplicity of primitive usage that Christians shall be known only by names expressive of their subjection to one Lord, and their love to one another—

That sects and party names shall fall,

And JESUS CHRIST be all in all,'

—that it shall no longer be the Established Church, and the Seces

sion Church, and the Relief Church, and the Congregational Churches, and the Baptist Churches, but the Church of Christ in Scotland-that in our land, as by and by in all lands, there shall be but one fold,' as there is 'One Shepherd."”—Address at the Celebration of the Centenary of the Secession, Dec. 1833.-United Secession Magazine, vol. ii. pp. 120, 121.

NOTE IX.

ADVANTAGES OF THE VOLUNTARY SYSTEM CONTRASTED WITH THE COMPULSORY SYSTEM.

DYMOND.

"There are some advantages attendant on the voluntary system, which that of a legal provision does not possess.

"And, first, it appears to be of importance, that there should be a union, a harmony, a cordiality, between the minister and the people. It is, in truth, an indispensable requisite. Christianity, which is a religion of love, cannot flourish, where unkindly feelings prevail. Now, I think it is manifest, that harmony and cordiality are likely to prevail more, where the minister is chosen and voluntarily remunerated by his hearers, than where they are not consulted in the choice, where they are obliged to take him, whom others please to appoint, and where they are compelled to pay him, whether they like him or not. The tendency of this last system is evidently opposed to perfect kindliness and cordiality. There is likely to be a sort of natural connexion, a communication of good offices, induced between hearers and the man, whom they themselves choose and voluntarily remunerate, which is less likely in the other case. If love be of such consequence generally to the Christian character, it is especially of consequence, that it should subsist between him who assumes to be a dispenser, and them who are in the relation of hearers of the gospel of Christ.

"Indeed, the very circumstance that a man is compelled to pay a preacher, tends to the introduction of unkind and unfriendly feelings. It is not to be expected that men will pay him more graciously, or with a better will, than they pay a tax-gatherer; and we all know that the tax-gatherer is one of the last persons men wish to see. He who desires to extend the influence of Christianity, would be very