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• reader to suppose that Christ or his apostles regarded an establishment as an eligible institution. "We find, in his religion, no scheme of building up a hierarchy, or of ministering to the views of human governments."" Our religion, as it came out of the hands of its Founder and his apostles, exhibited a complete abstraction from all views either of ecclesiastical or civil policy." The evidence which these facts supply respecting the moral character of religious establishments, whatever be its weight, tends manifestly to show that that character is not good. I do not say because Christianity exhibited this :6 complete abstraction," that it therefore necessarily condemned establishments; but I say that the bearing and the tendency of this negative testimony is against them.

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In the discourses and writings of the first teachers of our religion, we find such absolute disinterestedness, so little disposition to assume political superiority, that to have become the members of an established church would certainly have been inconsistent in them. It is indeed almost inconceivable that they could ever have desired the patronage of the state for themselves or for their converts. No man conceives that Paul or John could have participated in the exclusion of any portion of the Christian church from advantages which they themselves enjoyed. Every man perceives that to have done this, would have been to assume a new character, a character which they had never exhibited before, and which was incongruous with their former principles and motives of action. But why is this incongruous with the apostolic character unless it is incongruous with Christianity? Upon this single ground, therefore, there is reason for the sentiment of " many well-informed persons, that it seems extremely questionable whether the religion of Jesus Christ admits of any civil establishment at all."†

I lay stress upon these considerations. We all know that much may be learnt respecting human duty by a contemplation of the spirit and temper of Christianity as it was exhibited by its first teachers. When the spirit and temper is compared with the essential character of religious establishments, they are found to be incongruous-foreign to one another having no natural relationship or similarity. I should regard such facts, in reference to any question of rectitude, as of great importance; but upon a subject so intimately connected with religion itself, the importance is peculiarly great.

II. The question of the utility of religious establishments is to be decided by a comparison of their advantages and their evils.

Of their advantages, the first and greatest appears to be that they provide, or are assumed to provide, religious instruction for the whole community. If this instruction be left by the state to be cared for by each Christian church as it possesses the zeal or the means, it may be supposed that many districts will be destitute of any public religious instruction. At least the state cannot be assured before hand that every district will be supplied. And when it is considered how great is the importance of regular public worship to the virtue of a people, it is not to be denied, that a scheme which, by destroying an establishment, would make that instruction inadequate 'or uncertain, is so far to be regarded as of question⚫able expediency. But the effect which would be produced by dispensing with establishments is to be estimated, so far as is in our power, by facts. Now dissenters are in the situation of separate unestablished churches. If they do not provide for the public officers of religion voluntarily, they will not Paley: Evidences of Christianity, p. 2, c 2.

+ Simpson's Plea for Religion and the Sacred Writings.

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be provided for. Yet where is any considerable body of dissenters to be found who do not provide themselves with a chapel and a preacher? And if those churches which are not established, do in fact provide public instruction, how is it shown that it would not be provided although there were no established religion in a state? Besides, the dissenters from an established church provide this under peculiar disadvantages; for after paying, in common with others, their quota to the state religion, they have to pay în addition to their own. But perhaps it will be said that dissenters from a state religion are actuated by a zeal with which the professors of that religion are not; and that the legal provision supplies the deficiency of zeal. If this be said, the enquiry imposes itself-How does this disproportion of zeal arise? Why should dissenters be more zealous than churchmen? What account can be given of the matter, but that there is something in the patronage of the state which induces apathy upon the church that it prefers? One other account may indeed be offered that to be a dissenter is to be a positive religionist, whilst to be a churchman is frequently only to be nothing else; that an establishment embraces all who are not embraced by others; and that if those whom other churches do not include were not cared for by the state religion, they would not be cared for at all. This is an argument of apparent weight, but the effect of reasoning is to diminish that weight. For what is meant by " including," by " caring for," the indifferent and irreb gious? An established church only offers them instruction; it does not " compel them to come in," and we have just seen that this offer is made by unestablished churches also. Who doubts whether in a district that is sufficient to fill a temple of the state religion, there would be found persons to offer a temple of public worship though the state did not compel it? Who doubts whether this would be the case if the district were inhabited by dissenters ? and if it would not be done supposing the inhabitants to belong to the state religion, the conclusion is inevitable, that there is a tendency to indifference resulting from the patronage of the state.

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Let us listen to the testimony of Archbishop Newcome. He speaks of Ireland, and says, "Great numbers of country parishes are without churches, notwithstanding the largeness and frequency of parliamentary grants for building them;" but meetinghouses and Romish chapels, which are built and repaired with greater zeal, are in sufficient numbers about the country." This is remarkable testimony indeed. That church which is patronised and largely assisted by the state, does not provide places for public worship: those churches which are not patronised and not assisted by the state, do provide them, and provide them in "sufficient numbers" and "with greater zeal." What then becomes of the argument, that a church establishment is necessary in order to provide instruction which would not otherwise be provided?

Yet here one point must be conceded. It does not follow because one particular state religion is thus deficient, that none would be more exemplary. The fault may not be so much in religious establishments as such, as in that particular establishment which obtains in the instance before us.

Kindred to the testimony of the Irish primate is the more cautious language of the archdeacon of Carlisle :-"I do not know," says he, "that it is in any degree true that the influence of religion is the greatest where there are the fewest dissenters."† This, I suppose, may lawfully be interpreted into positive

Sce Gisborne's Duties of Men.
Paley: Evidences of Christianity.

guage that the influence of religion is the great-religion had not been sought out, it possesses little where there are numerous dissenters. But if aerous adherents to unestablished churches be ourable to religion, it would appear that, although re were none but unestablished churches in a ntry, the influence of religion would be kept up. established churches are practically useful to relin, what more reasonable than to expect that ere they possessed the more exclusive operation, ir utility would be the greatest? Yet the contrary, ppears, is the fact. It may indeed be urged that s the existence of a state religion which animates zeal of the other churches, and that in this manthe state religion does good. To which it is a ficient answer, that the benefit, if it is thus occaned, is collateral and accidental, and offers no teshony in favour of establishments as such;-and s is our concern. Besides, there are many sects animate the zeal of one another, even though none re patronised by the state.

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To estimate the relative influence of religion in o countries is no easy task. Yet, I believe, if we mpare its influence in the United States with that ich it possesses in most of the European countries ich possess state. religions, it will be found that e balance is in favour of the community in which ere is no established church: at any rate, the baace is not so much against it as to afford any evince in favour of a state religion. A traveller in merica has remarked, "There is more religion in e United States than in England, and more in ngland than in Italy. The closer the monopoly, e less abundant the supply." Another traveller rites almost as if he had anticipated the present squisition-" It has been often said, that the disclination of the heart to religious truth, renders state establishment absolutely necessary for the urpose of Christianizing the country. Ireland and merica can furnish abundant evidence of the falcy of such an hypothesis. In the one country we e an ecclesiastical establishment of the most costly escription utterly inoperative in dispelling ignoance or refuting error; in the other no establishent of any kind, and yet religion making daily and ourly progress, promoting enquiry, diffusing knowedge, strengthening the weak, and mollifying the ardened."+

In immediate connexion with this subject is the| rgument that Dr Paley places at the head of those which he advances in favour of religious establishnents—that the knowledge and profession of Chrisanity cannot be upholden without a clergy supported y legal provision, and belonging to one sect of Chrisians. ‡ The justness of this proposition is founded pon the necessity of research. It is said that Christianity is an historical religion," and that the ruth of its history must be investigated; that in order to vindicate its authority and to ascertain its truths, leisure and education and learning are indispensable so that such "an order of clergy is necessary to perpetuate the evidences of revelation, and to interpret the obscurity of those ancient writings in which the religion is contained." To all this there is one plain objection, that when once the evidences of religion are adduced and made public, when once the obscurity of the ancient writings is interpreted, the work, so far as discovery is concerned, is done; and it can hardly be imagined that an established clergy is necessary in perpetuity to do that which in its own nature can be done but once. Whatever may have been the validity of this argument in other times, when few but the clergy possessed any learning, or when the evidences of + Duncan's Trav. in America.

• Hall.

1 See Mor. and Pol. Phil. b. 6, c. 10.

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validity now. These evidences are brought before the world in a form so clear and accessible to literary and good men, that, in the present state of society, there is little reason to fear they will be lost for want of an established church. Nor is it to be forgotten that, with respect to our own country, the best defences of Christianity which exist in the language, have not been the work either of the established clergy or of members of the established church. The expression, that such "an order of clergy is necessary to perpetuate the evidences of revelation," appears to contain an illusion. Evidences can in no other sense be perpetuated than by being again and again brought before the public. If this be the meaning, it belongs rather to the teaching of religious truths than to their discovery; but it is upon the discovery, it is upon the opportunity of research, that the argument is founded: and it is particularly to be noticed, that this is the primary argument which Paley adduces in deciding "the first and most fundamental question upon the subject."

It pleases Providence to employ human agency in the vindication and diffusion of his truth; but to employ the expression "the knowledge and profession of Christianity" cannot be upholden without an established clergy, approaches to irreverence. Even a rejector of Christianity says, "If public worship be conformable to reason, reason without doubt will prove adequate to its vindication and support. If it be from God it is profanation to imagine that it stands in need of the alliance of the state."* And it is clearly untrue in fact; because, without such a clergy, it is actually upheld, and because, during the three first centuries, the religion subsisted and spread and prospered without any encouragement from the state. And it is remarkable, too, that the diffusion of Christianity in our own times in Pagan nations, is effected less by the clergy of established churches than by others.t

Such are amongst the principal of the direct advantages of religious establishments as they are urged by those who advocate them. Some others will be noticed in enquiring into the opposite question of their disadvantages.

These disadvantages respect either the institution itself—or religion generally-or the civil welfare of a people.

I. The institution itself. "The single end we ought to propose by religious establishments is, the preservation and communication of religious knowledge. Every other idea, and every other end, that have been mixed with this, as the making of the church an engine, or even an ally, of the state; converting it into the means of strengthening or diffusing influence; or regarding it as a support of regal, in opposition to popular forms of government; have served only to debase the institution, and to introduce into it numerous corruptions and abuses." This is undoubtedly true. Now, we affirm that this "debasement of the institution," this "introduction of numerous corruptions and abuses," is absolutely inseparable from religious establishments as they ordinarily exist; that wherever and whenever a state so prefers and patronises a particular church, these debasements and abuses and corruptions will inevitably arise. How will you

"An engine or ally of the state."

Godwin's Pol. Just. 2, 608.

In the preceding discussion, I have left out all reference to the proper qualification or appointment of Christian ministers, and have assumed (but without conceding) that the magistrate is at liberty to adjust those matters if he pleases. Paley: Mor. and Pol. Phil. b. 6, c. 10.

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frame-I will not say any religious establishment, but-any religious establishment that approaches to the ordinary character, without making it an engine or ally of the state? Alliance is involved in the very idea of the institution. The state selects, and prefers, and grants privileges to, a particular church. The continuance of these privileges depends upon the continuance of the state in its present principles. If the state is altered, the privileges are endangered or may be swept away. The privileged church, therefore, is interested in supporting the state, in standing by it against opposition; or, which is the same thing, that church becomes an ally of the state. You cannot separate the effect from the cause. Wherever the state prefers and patronises one church, there will be an alliance between the state and that church. There may be variations in the strength of this alliance. The less the patronage of the state, the less strong the alliance will be. Or there may be emergencies in which the alliance is suspended by the influence of stronger interests; but still the alliance, as a general consequence of the preference of the state, will inevitably subsist. When, therefore, Dr Paley says, that to make an establishment an ally of the state is to introduce into it numerous corruptions and abuses, he in fact says, that to make an establishment at all is to introduce into a church numerous corruptions and abuses.

It matters nothing what the doctrines or constitution of the church may be. The only point is, the alliance, and its degree. It may be episcopal, or presbyterian, or independent; but wherever the degree

of alliance-that is, of preference and patronage is great, there the abuses and corruptions will be great. In this country during a part of the seventeenth century, independency became, in effect, the established church. It became of course an ally of the state; and fought from its pulpits the battles of the state. Nor will any one, I suppose, deny that this alliance made independency worse than it was before, that it "introduced into it corruptions and abuses."

The less strict the alliance, the fewer the corruptions that spring from an alliance. One state may impose a test to distinguish the ministers of the preferred church, and leave the selection to the church itself: another may actually appoint some or all of the ministers. These differences in the closeness of the alliance will produce differences in the degree of corruption; but alliance and corruption in both cases there will be. He who receives a legal provision from the minister of the day, will lend his support to the minister of the day. He who receives it by the operation of a general law, will lend his support to that political system which is likely to perpetuate that law.

"The means of strengthening or diffusing influence."

This abuse of religious establishments is presupposed in the question of alliance. It is by the means of influence that the alliance is produced. There may be and there are gradations in the directness or flagrancy of the exercise of influence, but influence of some kind is inseparable from the selection and preference of a particular church.

"A support of regal in opposition to popular forms of government." This attendant upon religious establishments is accidental. An establishment will support that form, whatever it be, by which it is it self supported. In one country it may be the ally of republicanism, in another of aristocracy, and in another of monarchy; but in all it will be the ally of its own patron. The establishment of France supported the despotism of the Louises. The establishmen of Spain supports at this hour the pitiable policy of Ferdinand. So accurately is alliance main

tained, tnat in a mixed government it will be found that an establishment adheres to that branch of the government by which its own pre-eminence is most supported. In England the strictest alliance is between the church and the executive; and accordingly, in ruptures between the executive and legislative powers, the establishment has adhered to the former. There was an exception in the reign of James II.: but it was an exception which confirms the rule; for the establishment then found or feared that its alliance with the regal power was about to be broken.

Seeing, then, the debasement of a Christian church -that the introduction into it of corruptions and abuses, is inseparable from religious establishments, what is this debasement and what are these abuses and corruptions?

Now, without entering into minute enquiry, many evils arise obviously from the nature of the case. Here is an introduction, into the office of the Christian ministry, of motives, and interests, and aims, foreign to the proper business of the office; and not only foreign but incongruous and discordant with it. Here are secular interests mixed up with the motives of religion. Here are temptations to assume the ministerial function in the church that is established, for the sake of its secular advantages. Here are inducements, when the function is assumed, to accommodate the manner of its exercise to the inclinations of the state; to suppress, for example, some religious principles which the civil power does not wish to see inculcated; to insist for the same reason with undue emphasis upon others; in a word, to adjust the religious conduct so as to strengthen or perpetuate the alliance with the state. It is very easy to perceive that these temptations will and must frequently prevail; and wherever they do prevail, there the excellence and dignity of the Christian ministry are diminished, are depressed there Christianity is not exemplified in its purity: there it is shorn of a portion of its beams. The extent of the evil will depend of course upon the vigour of the cause; that is to say, the evil will be proportionate to the alliance. If a religious establishment were erected in which the executive power of the country appointed all its mininisters, there would, I doubt not, ensue an almost universal corruption of the ministry. As an establishment recedes in its constitution from this closeness of alliance, a corresponding increase of purity may be expected.

During the reformation, and in Queen Elizabeth's time, "of nine thousand four hundred beneficed clergy," (adherents to Papacy,) "only one hundred and seventy-seven resigned their preferment rather than acknowledge the Queen's supremacy," yet the Pope to them was head of the church. One particular manner in which the establishment of a church injures the character of the church itself is, by the temptation which it holds out to equivocation or hypocrisy. It is necessary to the preference of the teachers of a particular sect, that there should be some means of discovering who belong to that sect:-there must be some test. Before the man who is desirous of undertaking the ministerial office, there are placed two roads, one of which conducts to those privileges which a state religion enjoys, and the other does not. The latter may be entered by all who will: the former by those only who affirm their belief of the rectitude of some church forms or of some points of theology. It requires no argu ment to prove that this is to tempt men to affirm that which they do not believe: that it is to say to the man who does not believe the stipulated points, Here is money for you if you will violate your con

Southey: Book of the Church, Sir Thomas More.

*

science. By some the invitation will be accepted; and what is the result? Why that, just as they are going publicly to insist upon the purity and sanctity of the Moral Law, they violate that law themselves. The injury which is thus done to a Christian church by establishing it, is negative as well as positive. You not only tempt some men to equivocation or hypocrisy, but exclude from the office others of sounder integrity. Two persons, both of whom do not assent to the prescribed points, are desirous of entering the church. One is upright and conscientious, the other subservient and unscrupulous. An establishment excludes the good man and admits the bad. "Though some purposes of order and tranquillity may be answered by the establishment of creeds and confessions, yet they are at all times attended with serious inconveniences: they check enquiry; they violate liberty; they ensnare the consciences of the clergy, by holding out temptations to prevarication." †

And with respect to the habitual accommodation of the exercise of the ministry to the desires of the state, it is manifest that an enlightened and faithful minister may frequently find himself restrained by a species of political leading-strings. He has not the full command of his intellectual and religious attainments. He may not perhaps communicate the whole counsel of God. ‡ It was formerly conceded to the English clergy that they might preach against the horrors and impolicy of war, provided they were not chaplains to regiments or in the navy. Conceded! Then if the state had pleased, it might have withheld the concession; and accordingly from some the state did withhold it. They were prohibited to preach against that, against which apostles wrote! What would these apostles have said if a state had bidden them keep silence respecting the most unchristian custom in the world? They would have said, Whether we ought to obey God rather than man, judge ye. What would they have done? They would have gone away and preached against it as before. One question more should be asked-What would they have said to an alliance which thus brought the Christian minister under bondage to the state?

The next point of view in which a religious establishment is injurious to the church itself is, that it perpetuates any evils which happen to exist in it. The reason is this: the preference which a state gives to a particular church is given to it as it is. If the church makes alterations in its constitution, its discipline, or its forms, it cannot tell whether the state would continue to prefer and to patronise it. Besides, if alterations are begun, its members do not know whether the alacrity of some other church might not take advantage of the loosening alliance with the state, to supplant it. In short, they do not know what would be the consequences of amendments, nor where they would end. Conscious that the church as it is possesses the supremacy, they think it more prudent to retain that supremacy with existing evils, than to endanger it by attempting to reform them. Thus it is that whilst unestablished churches alter their discipline or constitution as need appears to require, established churches remain century after century the same.§ Not to be free to

"Chillingworth declared in a letter to Dr Sheldon, that if he subscribed he subscribed his own damnation, and yet in no long space of time, he actually did subscribe to the articles of the church, again and again." Simpson's Plea.

Paley: Mor, and Pol. Phil. b. 6, c. 10.

"Honest and disinterested boldness in the path of duty is one of the first requisites of a minister of the gospel." Gisborne. But how shall they be thus disinterested? Mem. in the MS.

§ It was not to religious establishments that Protestants were indebted for the first efforts of reformation. They have uniformly resisted reformation. Mem. in the MS.

alter, can only then be right when the church is at present as perfect as it can be; and no one perhaps will gravely say that there is any established church Dr on the globe which needs no amendment. Hartley devoted a portion of his celebrated work to a discussion of the probability that all the existing church establishments in the world would be dissolved; and he founds this probability expressly upon the ground that they need so much reformation. "In all exclusive establishments, where temporal emoluments are annexed to the profession of a certain system of docrines, and the usage of a certain routine of forms, and appropriated to an order of men so and so qualified, that order of men will naturally think themselves interested that things should continue as they are. A reformation might endanger their emoluments."* This is the testimony of a And the dignitary of one of these establishments.

fact being admitted, what is the amount of the evil which it involves? Let another dignitary reply: "He who, by a diligent and faithful examination of the original records, dismisses from the system one article which contradicts the apprehension, the experience, or the reasoning of mankind, does more towards recommending the belief, and with the belief the influence of Christianity, to the understandings and consciences of serious enquirers, and through them to universal reception and authority, than can be effected by a thousand contenders for creeds and ordinances of human establishments." If the benefits of dismissing such an article are so great, what must be the evil of continuing it? If the benefit of dismissing one such article be so great, what must be the evil of an established system which tends habitually and constantly to retain many of them? Yet these "articles, which thus contradict the reasoning of mankind," are actually retained by established churches. "Creeds and confessions," says Dr Paley, "however they may express the persuasion, or be accommodated to the controversies or to the fears of the age in which they are composed, in process of time, and by reason of the changes which are wont to take place in the judgment of mankind upon religious subjects, they come at length to contradict the actual opinions of the church whose doctrines they profess to contain." It is then confessed by the members of an established church that religious establishments powerfully obstruct the belief, the influence, the universal reception and authority of Christianity. Great, indeed, must be the counter advantages of these establishments if they counter balance this portion of its evils.

II. This last paragraph anticipates the second class of disadvantages attendant upon religious establishments: their ill effects upon religion generally. It is indisputable, that much of the irreligion of the world has resulted from those things which have been mixed up with Christianity, and placed before mankind as parts of religion. In some countries, the mixture has been so flagrant that the majority of the thinking part of the population have almost rejccted religion altogether. So it was, and so it may be feared it still is, in France. The intellectual part of her people rejected religion, not because they had examined Christianity and were convinced that it was a fiction, but because they had examined what was proposed to them as Christianity and found it was absurd or false. So numerous were the "articles that contradicted the experience and judgment of mankind," that they concluded the whole was a fable, and rejected the whole.

Now that which the French church establishment did in an extreme degree, others do in a less degree. Archdeacon Blackburn's Confessional: Pref. Paley Mor. and Pol. Phil. b. 6, c. 10.

If the French church retained a hundred articles that contradicted the judgment of mankind, and thus made a nation of unbelievers, the church which retains ten or five such articles, weakens the general influence of religion although it may not destroy it.

Nor is it merely by unauthorized doctrinal articles or forms that the influence of religion is impaired, but by the general evils which affect the church itself. It is sufficiently manifest, that whatever tends to diminish the virtue, or to impeach the character, of the ministers of religion, must tend to diminish the influence of religion upon mankind. If the teacher is not good, we are not to expect goodness in the taught. If a man enters the church with impure or unworthy motives, he cannot do his duty when he is there. If he makes religion subservient to interest in his own practice, he cannot effectually teach others to make religion paramount to all. Men associate (they ought to do it less) the idea of religion with that of its teachers; and their respect for one is frequently measured by their respect for the other. Now, that the effect of religious establishments has been to depress their teachers in the estimation of mankind, cannot be disputed. The effect is, in truth, inevitable. And it is manifest that whatever conveys disrespectful ideas of religion diminishes its influence upon the human mind. In brief, we have seen that to establish a religion is morally pernicious to its ministers; and whatever is injurious to them diminishes the power of religion in the world.

Christianity is a religion of good-will and kind affections. Its essence, so far as the intercourse of society is concerned, is Love. Whatever diminishes good-will and kind affections amongst Christians, attacks the essence of Christianity. Now, religious establishments do this. They generate ill-will, heart-burnings, animosities-those very things which our religion deprecates more almost than any other. It is obvious that if a fourth or a third of a community think they are unreasonably excluded from privileges which the other parts enjoy, feelings of jealousy or envy are likely to be generated. If the minority are obliged to pay to the support of a religion they disapprove, these feelings are likely to be exacerbated. They soon become reciprocal; attacks are made by one party and repelled by another, till there arises an habitual sense of unkindness or ill-will. The deduction from the practical influence of religion upon the minds of men which this effect of religious establishments occasions, is great. The evil, I trust, is diminishing in the world; but then the diminution results, not from religious establishments, but from that power of Christianity which prevails against these evils.

From these, and from other evidences of the injurious effects of religious establishments upon the religious condition of mankind, we shall perhaps be prepared to assent to the observations which follow: "The history of the last eighteen centuries does, indeed, afford, in various ways, a strong presumptive

I once met with rather a grotesque definition of religious dissent, but it illustrates my proposition:-"Dissenterism that is, "systematic opposition to the established religion."

"The placing all the religious sects (in America) upon an equal footing with respect to the government of the country, has effectually secured the peace of the community, at the same time that it has essentially promoted the interests of truth and virtue."-Mem. Dr Priestly, p. 175. Mem. in the MS.

Pennsylvania.-"Although there are so many sects and such a difference of religious opinions in this province, it is surprising the harmony which subsists among them; they consider themselves as children of the same father, and live like brethren because they have the liberty of thinking like men; to this pleasing harmony, in a great measure, is to be attributed the rapid and flourishing state of Pennsylvania above all the other provinces." Travels through the Interior Parts of North America, by an Officer. 1791. Lond. The officer was Thomas Auburey, who was taken prisoner by the Americans. Mem. in the MS.

evidence, that the cause of true Christianity has very materially suffered in the world in consequence of the connexion between the church and the state. It is probably in great measure the consequence of such an union that the church has assumed, in almost all Christian countries, so secular a character

that Christianity has become so lamentably mixed up with the spirit, maxims, motives, and politics of a vain and evil world. Had the union in question never been attempted, pure religion might probably have found a freer course; the practical effects of Christianity might have been more unmixed and more extensive; and it might have spread its influ ence in a much more efficient manner than is now the case, even over the laws and politics of kings and nations. Before its union with the state, our holy religion flourished with comparative incorruptness; afterwards it gradually declined in its purity and its power until all was nearly lost in darkness, superstition, and spiritual tyranny.” * "Religion should remain distinct from the political constitution of a state. Intermingled with it, what purpose can it serve, except the baneful purpose of communicating and of receiving contamination? "†

III. Then as to the effect of religious establishments upon the civil welfare of a state-we know that the connexion between religious and civil welfare is intimate and great. Whatever therefore diminishes the influence of religion upon a people, diminishes their general welfare. In addition, however, to this general consideration, there are some particular modes of the injurious effects of religious establishments which it may be proper to notice.

And, first, religious establishments are incompatible with complete religious liberty. This consideration we requested the reader to bear in mind when the question of religious liberty was discussed. "If an establishment be right, religious liberty is not; and if religious liberty be right, an establishment is not." Whatever arguments therefore exist to prove the rectitude of complete religious liberty, they prove at the same time the wrongness of religious establishments. Nor is this all; for it is the manifest tendency of these establishments to withhold an increase of religious liberty, even when on other grounds it would be granted. The secular interests of the state religion are set in array against an increase of liberty. If the established church allows other churches to approach more nearly to an equality with itself, its own relative eminence is diminished; and if by any means the state religion adds to its own privileges, it is by deducting from the privileges of the rest. The state religion is, besides, afraid to dismiss any part even of its confessedly useless privileges, lest, when an alteration is begun, it should not easily be stopped. And there is no reason to doubt that it is temporal rather than religious considerations-interest rather than Christianity-which now occasions restrictions and disabilities and tests.

In conformity with these views, persecution has generally been the work of religious establishments. Indeed, some alliance or some countenance at least from the state is necessary to a systematic persecution. Popular outrage may persecute men on account of their religion, as it often has done; but fixed stated persecutions have perhaps always been the work of the religion of the state. It was the state religion of Rome that persecuted the first Christians; not to mention that it was the state religion of Judea that put our Saviour himself to death." Who was it that crucified the Saviour of

J. J. Gurney: Peculiarities, c. 7. + Charles James Fox: Fell's Life. Essay 3, c. 4.

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