God;' and they believe the truth of his divinity to be contained in his divine nativity. They hear, he was before all time;' and this they take to be the same as if he were called eternal. The ears of the people are more holy than the hearts of their teachers." Such was the dissimulation of the Arians, when they were troubled with no forms but of their own composure. The present Arians and Socinians go a great deal farther. They step into the preferments of the church by solemnly subscribing, and declaring for, creeds, that, in the strongest terms, anathematize their principles; and, after all, they are not only tolerated by the times, but caressed and promoted by those who have discernment enough to see into their disingenuity. How truly may God say of us, as he did of the Jews in the time of Jeremiah! 'A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people,' my once favoured people, love to

have it so.'

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But, horrible and wonderful as this practice must seem to an honest mind, it is, as I have already observed, defended both in conversation, and through the press. Yet, that they who make the defence, are by no means satisfied with the validity of it themselves, is manifest from their every day publishing books and pamphlets against the expediency of the subscriptions and declarations mentioned; which shew, that their consciences, though large enough to swallow them, are not strong enough to digest them. Give me leave to make some observations on a few of their most distinguished objections.

First, They say these subscriptions bear too hard on Christian liberty, which gives every man a right to think and judge for himself; whereas the subscriptions tend either to deprive them of their natural right to the ecclesiastical emoluments of their country, or to deprive the church of their services.

I shall readily grant, that Christian liberty gives a right, nay, requires us, to think for ourselves, but not for others, because this would be a contradiction in terms. Now, he who desires the ministry, takes upon him, in some measure, to think for the ignorant, whom he would instruct. If he does not take himself to be more knowing than they, why

does he desire to be their teacher? He may say, indeed, he does not propose to give them any documents on his own authority, but on that of Scripture. He knows, however, that they will, they must, take his word for a great part of what he shall deliver to them as scriptural. He again, who desires the ministry, but peremptorily objects to the subscriptions that stand in his way to it, and would remove them if he could, pretends to think for the governors of the church, who require them, because they judge them expedient; that is, he demands a liberty from men in authority, which he, who hath none, will not give them. They think they are in conscience bound to preserve the people from the infection of his principles; for which reason they look on it as their duty to exclude him from the ministry; and he would force them to act the contrary part, if he could persuade the legislature to help him. Is this allowing the liberty he pleads for? As to the benefit the church might receive from his abilities and services, thinking for himself will not do in respect to that, whereof others must unavoidably be judges. And as to the profits he might receive from the church, thinking for himself, where the motive is apt to be so unallowably selfish, is still more unreasonable and dangerous than in the former case. The Scripture, it is true, does not any where exclude him by name from a rich benefice? but it stigmatizes those,' who, for filthy lucre, make merchandise of men's souls,' in such a manner, as leaves it not in the power of church governors to turn the house of God into a shop, or market, for a man who shews himself to be but a money-changer, by his throwing this lucrative argument into his plea.

These men object also, That our subscriptions are productive of divisions, and uncharitable disturbances; and that, instead of procuring peace by means of uniformity, they only serve to widen the breaches that are already made; to open new ones; and to inflame the minds of men on such religious differences, as, otherwise, would occasion no animosities in the church.

What! no animosities? Is not the controversy about the Trinity, or the pope's infallibility, of moment enough to warm us a little, unless the wealth of the church be added, as the only bone worth contending for? With what face can

a man declare it of himself, that his avarice is so much apter to give him warmths, than his zeal for the propagation of necessary Christian truths? I cannot do the objectors, even on their own testimony, so great injustice, as to imagine them perfectly indifferent in these important points, when worldly profits are not annexed. Were all subscriptions laid aside, and a free admission given to Papists, Arians, Socinians, Quakers, Moravians, &c. would it procure us peace and charity? Perhaps, for a time, it might give us the peace of men who are asleep or dead; but sure I am, it would not be long ere we should be totally corrupted both in principle and practice, and all together by the ears about controversies of as little moment as those trifles that occasion the scuffles of our children. Whatever the state may do with religion, we may presume it will never distribute its places of trust and power among sects thus religiously animated, or capable of being animated, against one another. A religious sect, converted by the possession of civil power into a political faction, cannot but give the judicious a hopeful prospect of peace!

It is farther objected also, That, whereas uniformity is the end proposed by our subscriptions, it is an end, which, as Christians, we ought not to be solicitous about, because God does not approve of it, delighting rather in variety, and with equal complacency receiving the worship of his creatures, howsoever diversified over the face of the whole earth.

This objection is false in all its parts. Our church does not propose to convert men, by her articles, to her principles. Nor does she aim, by her subscriptions, any otherwise at uniformity, than that her communion may be granted only to such as think with her in essentials. She shuts out no man from her ministry, purely because he differs with her in what she takes to be essential; but because, if she should admit him, she knows he will propagate such opinions among the people under her care, as she firmly believes to be pernicious and damnable. That she is in the right so to do, hath been sufficiently proved already; although, I must confess, no point in the world stands less in need of a proof.

But I hope, if she in her homilies, and her divines in their private writings, have endeavoured, by justifying her

doctrines, to bring the whole nation to conformity with her, this will not be imputed to her as a crime, especially by those who labour to draw all mankind into their own opinions, though ever so far detached from a probability of establishment, or, I may say, from even a shew of reason and Scripture. The very objectors, who tell us (I know not who revealed it to them), that God is best pleased with variety of religions, use their utmost endeavours to make the whole world Arian or Socinian; which must be highly wicked in them, since it is their principle, that God would rather have entire nations to worship idols and devils, as they have done, and do to this day. If God had never commanded us to 'be all of one mind, to think and speak the same thing,' we ought to have known it to be his will, because as in any particular point, truth is one, and error various, or rather infinite; and as God cannot but love the truth, and hate the contrary; so, in respect to religious matters especially, wherein he himself is our teacher, he must be pleased to see us embrace the truth, and displeased with all our avoidable errors. It is true, he permits error; and so he does sin. But we ought no more to infer his approbation, from his permission, of the one, than of the other. Besides, if error be a main cause, or rather, strictly speaking, the only cause, of sin, he must abhor the cause in the same proportion as he detests the effect.

But some of our wise objectors, having found out the necessity of subscriptions under some regulation or other; and disliking our method, for no better reason, as you will probably perceive just now, than because it is ours, and not their own; propose two other kinds of subscriptions, as vastly more convenient and adviseable.

The first is, That every candidate for holy orders be obliged to give in a schedule or summary of his principles drawn up in his own words; by which, say they, the slavery of saying after others, whatever they think fit to dictate, will be avoided, and his sentiments as thoroughly known.

The proposing this expedient, and actually reducing it to practice, as in many places is done, hath somewhat in it either very knavish, or very foolish. When it is practised by men of sense, as preferable to our method, it gives shrewd cause of suspicion, that they have no other end in

it, but to give the candidate an opportunity of concealing his real sentiments on some important points of controversy, wherein his silence or ambiguity is taken for a sufficient token, that his principles are more conformable to the minds of the examiners, than to those of Christians in general.

But when it is preferred to our method, without any such by-end as this, it is the effect of mere prejudice, and altogether foolish. Men of any understanding cannot but know, that there is no difference between the two methods, unless purely in the point of convenience, which is plainly on the side of ours, when both the examiners and the candidate have honestly the same intention, they to know his real sentiments, and he to declare them freely. If a form is to be subscribed at all, what is the use of it? Is it not that the ordainers may find out, as far as they can trust the solemn declarations of a man suing for holy orders, what are his real principles, in order, if they approve of them, to admit him, or if they find them unsound, that is, essentially contrary to their own, to reject him? If this is the end, surely there can be no difference between their tendering him such a form, and his tendering one to them, excepting that the one may be more full and express than the other. Since some confession is on this occasion to be made and subscribed, will the examiners, or ought they to ordain him, till his form of confession comes up in sum and substance to that which they would propose to him, were they desirous to know his mind? And, if they will not, where is the sense of choosing his form, rather than one of their own, or of that church in which their consciences lead them to communicate? His privilege of expressing himself by his own words, a thing extolled by these men, as if it were the only barrier of Christian liberty, will be found to be a very frivolous privilege indeed; since, do what he will, he must so express himself, as to set forth precisely their meaning, or, otherwise, the end of forms and subscriptions is wholly frustrated. If they do not perceive his meaning by his words, or do not like it, they must send him away to mend it; and they can never think it sufficiently mended, till it becomes, to all intents and purposes, their form rather than his. All this while, how shall he know what are the heads