polity are the same as those of the primitive churches. These only are in harmony at once with the principles of Christianity; and the genius of all institutions which adorn, as well as fortify, a republic, are most favorable to the cultivation of personal virtues, and possess the only real claim on the regard of republicans. "Where one particular priesthood has rank in the state, others are not free; and where they all have, the people are not free. So far as the ceremonies of one particular faith are connected with filling any particular occupation, entering into the relations, or enjoying any of the advantages, of civil life, there is not religious liberty. It is a fallacious distinction which has sometimes been drawn, that a state may patronize, though it should not punish. A government cannot patronize one particular religion without punishing others. A state has no wealth but the people's wealth; if it pay some, it impoverishes others. A state is no fountain of honor. If it declare one class free, it thereby declares others slaves. If it declares some noble, it thereby declares others ignoble. Whenever bestowed with partiality, its generosity is injustice, and its favor is oppression."

It has ever been the ambition of false religions to employ solemn and hypocritical attempts to drain the multitude for the benefit of priestly aristocracies and the defence of regal wrongs. The most flagrant instance of this feudal barbarity now extant flourishes around the head-quarters of Episcopacy in England. There, as Robert Hall has said, "in theory, the several orders of the state are a check on each other; but corruption has oiled the wheels of that machinery, harmonized its motions, and enabled it to bear, with united pressure, on the happiness of the people." But such a state of things cannot be long endured. For, as the same distinguished advocate of English freedom remarks, "to invest idleness and dissipation with the privileges of laborious piety is an impracticable attempt. For by a constitution more ancient than that of any priesthood, superior degrees of sanctity and of exertion will gain superior esteem as their natural reward. We must not wonder to find the public forget the reverence ue to the sacred

profession, when its members forget the spirit and neglect the duties on which that reverence was founded. The natural equity of mankind will not suffer the monopoly of contradictory goods. If the people are expected to reverence an order, it must be from the consciousness of benefits received. If the clergy claim authority, it must be accompanied with a solicitude for the spiritual interest of their flocks, and labor sustained. To enjoy at once both honor and ease never fell to the share of any profession. If the clergy neglect their charge, if they conform to the spirit of the world, and engage with eagerness in the pursuits of ambition or of pleasure, it will be impossible for any human policy to preserve them from sinking in the public esteem.”

It is pitiable indeed to see a bench of bishops conspiring with tyrannical lords of the secular orders against the popular desire for liberty already too strong to be overcome, and which is constantly on the increase. How vain and futile the effort, in this nineteenth century, to interpose bayonets before the progress of free principles, the prerogatives of supercilious rank and sanctimonious presumption, as barriers in that path which conducts to the wider area and loftier privileges in reserve for mankind! "The pope eats the grain, we the straw," said Luther. But millions of Christians are, even in this enlightened age, worse conditioned. They are obliged to assist in supporting a pompous show of religion, which they abhor, and yet, out of the scanty resources that remain, provide preaching more genial to honest piety and the word of God. Milton told splendid "hirelings," long ago, that "forced consecrations out of another man's estate are no better than forced vows, hateful to God, who 'loves a cheerful giver;' but much more hateful wrung out of men's purses to maintain a disapproved ministry against their consciences."

It is manifest, that God never purposed to bind redemption to forms, fixed and inviolable; it is a divine kingdom that "cometh not with observation," but is established "within us," that it may pass freely from heart to heart, through all ranks and

degrees of mankind. By this independence of forms, Christianity admits the poorest and most humble to rites that soothe and doctrines that save without money and without price. The religion of Israel, which was ceremonial and transient, could not exist without the temple, with its treasures, its vessels of brass, of silver and gold; hence, when the sacred vessels employed in the service were carried away to Babylon, the whole was removed. But pure religion borrows nothing from worldly wealth and power; the cross of wood is her only instrument given to conquer the world. Devout worshippers of gowns and bands, and the whole round of ecclesiastical mummery, are only attempting to revive what eighteen hundred years ago became obsolete. Great and glorious improvements are taking place in every other department of life; and yet what do we see in the most important of all? Nations are calling for the word of life, with their myriads of immortal souls in danger of eternal death, which urgent demands must be set aside till bigots shall terminate their transcendental controversies on tapers, bowings, and surplices, till they shall have decided whether the salvation of the world depends upon their having a stone altar instead of a wooden one, and when they stand up to read a prayer, whether they shall face the east or west. The directions of the rubric are in debate, and the bishop of Exeter, for one among the spiritual lords, insists upon their observance in every church throughout his diocese, whatever may be the opposition of the laity assembled in town and parish meetings. All agitation in favor of greater freedom of thought and speech is suppressed with a zeal exceeded only by the gross and brutal outrages which are frequently committed on the most sacred feelings of humanity. For instance, a short time since, in London, the body of a child was brought by its parents to the churchyard, that its remains might rest by the side of its brother or sister; but the weeping parents were rudely repulsed from the gate, because the little infant had not been sprinkled in "the regular apostolic succession." A dissenting preacher is not allowed to bury in consecrated ground.

A line of demarcation is set up among the dead, as every where among the living. His father may have been buried there if he was a member of the church, but he is not permitted to lie by his parent's side; at least, with his own chosen minister to consign him to the grave and pray over his body. It is this same bigoted feeling that has excluded the republican Cromwell's statue from the new palace of legislation, and still more recently has denied the statue of John Wesley a place in Westminster Abbey. It is the more remarkable that the latter should be denied Christian honors, since he lived and died in the establishment.

As the great mother gives the word beyond the sea, her loyal children, with apish pretensions to infallibility, repeat the arrogance among ourselves. But the end draws nigh. Pri matical religion is death-struck throughout the world, and no ostentatious forms can vivify it with spiritual life, nor can fine dresses long hide its putrescence. The decree of the Omnipotent has gone forth, that the will of one or a few shall no longer break down the will, the heart, and conscience of the many. The religion that will not educate and bless the multitudes of earth is doomed speedily to be extirpated by them. Episcopacy has always and every where been as tyrannical as the spirit of the age would permit; therefore is it to be deprecated as anti-Christian and anti-republican. It tends to subvert all true religious liberty, and all political freedom. It began by removing the checks and guards of a popular government against the exercise of arbitrary power. It invested the bishops with prerogatives, which can never be safely intrusted to any man or body of men. The subsequent history of this church abundantly confirms the position that popular rights can never be confided to the hands of the clergy without detriment. Says Arnold, one of the most magnanimous and enlightened of the English Episcopacy, "To revive Christ's church is to expel the Antichrist of the priesthood, which, as it was foretold of him, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God, and to restore its disfranchised

members, the laity, to the discharge of their proper duties in it, and to the consciousness of their paramount importance.”

Horne Tooke, quoting from Christ's words to Nicodemus, said, "Truth is that which a man troweth." That which another man thinks is as true to him as what I think is true to me. This right and duty, resting on every rational creature to examine and decide for himself, was the first lesson inculcated by Christ, and the last privilege which selfish bishops are disposed to grant. The patrons of ceremonialism have too much mercenary interest in their hollow rites willingly to give them up, though they are known to constitute almost invincible obstacles to the inward spiritual life. The absurdities of the gloomiest superstition are attempted to be modified in our day, not for the better, but the worse. It is not enough that the world for centuries should have derived its principal illumination from wax lights, fixed on iron spikes, before pictures; while its most substantial nutriment for the soul was derived from the sacrifice of the mass; not as the Neo-Catholics refine and explain it, but such as it is defined by the council of Trent-to sacrifice the Lord by manducation—to eat and drink the Lord God himself; or, according to the terms of the council, in "his flesh, blood, soul, and divinity." The happy period has arrived when high Episcopacy, insolent and insipid, reviving the faith of the middle ages in a modern dress, would impose on us the carcass of defunct Catholicity without a particle of its soul, wax tapers lighted up, not as an act of worship to the virgin, but to gleam on moral as well as political falsehoods designed to confuse the vision and enchain the understandings of mankind.

Spiritual truth is moral force, and thought, as moral force, is spiritual truth in action, and adoration; though that action is most often revolution, still we had better have anarchy than stupidity. the heavings of the ocean rather than its stagnation. A great human or divine reality, in whatever garb it appears, is always better than a great pretence deceiving all, itself the most deceived. What the world most