maintain a steady course of inquiry be-` tween the opposite errors, or from a scrupulous timidity about surmountable difficulties, are accused of being indifferent to every thing but our temporal interestsSuch are the blessed effects of cur fastidious reserve in this age of gross misconstruction

and audacious innovation.

It remains only for the Author to add, that for the sake of retrenching many of those superfluities which are incidental to, and pardonable in a letter, he has thrown his thoughts into a more connected and didactic form; and that he has interwoven the substance of some digressions in Notes, which however would not have swelled to what may be deemed a disproportionate size, did not his opinions occasionally rest upon authorities taken from such works as are not in general circulation.

b 2

}

PREFATORY ADDRESS.

In these distempered times, when the most audacious and systematic attempts have been made to spread throughout the country a practical contempt for Christianity, and for all its ordinances; when the floodgates of

* Although, in concurrence with every other minister of the establishment, I always wish to see a greater attention paid to the spirit than to the letter of toleration, yet when every day produces some fresh instance of attack upon the fundamental doctrines of our creed, I cannot help thinking that there is much sound wisdom contained in that remark of Blackstone, where, alluding to the statutes of Edward VI. cap. 1. and Elizabeth,

cap. 1. which enacts fine and imprisonment against the revilers of the Sacrament, and 1 Elizabeth, cap. 2. which decrees penalties against those who speak in contempt of the book of Common Prayer, he says, "That the terror of those laws, (for they were seldom or ever carried into execution), proved a principal means, under Providence, of preserving the purity as well as decency of our national worship." Though the above statutes then

licentiousness have been set wide open, and when every epithet of contumely and reproach which malignity * can invent, has been

are at the present moment unfortunately considered as a mere dead letter, still, however, it is matter of consolation to all reflecting and pious minds, that when a trading infidel (need I add the name of Carlile?) dared to attack the sacred Gospels, and the divine revelation of the Bible; an impartial Jury, with an honest indignation that any one should be found impious enough, in the very centre of Christianity, to publish his rejection and contempt of its eternal truths, confounded and appalled the needy wretch by a verdict, which the consciences of all who reverence the principles of religion and virtue must sanction and applaud.

*For proof of this assertion, see Clerical Character, in Hazlitt's Political Essays, p. 285. 291. 299. Another disciple of the same detestable school has the ineffable effrontery to declare, " that the clergy, from the earliest to the latest periods of our history, were always the corrupt tools of arbitrary power."-State of the Times, p. 18. One would be unwilling to suppose that any man could knowingly inculcate so foul a falsehood:-while, at the same time, it requires a large stretch of charity to believe that a writer, who seems to pique himself upon his historical knowledge, as this does, should be ignorant of the principal hand which William Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, had in rearing the first and great column of our freedom-Magna Charta. Still more difficult is it to believe that he should be ignorant what a noble stand the clergy made for our liberties, religious

fastened upon the clergy of the establishment, to sink them in the estimation of their congregations—the favourable reception of a work, whose professed aim is to inspire a more becoming reverence for the real dignity and importance of the most solemn act* of our religion, but which the Unitarian and Socinian, in the pride † of reason, have sought

and civil, in the Revolution of 1688, and that for their conduct upon this occasion the whole body received the thanks of the Parliament. To be sure Mr. Hume says in his History of England, chap. XL. " that the precious spark of liberty had been kindled, and was preserved by the Puritans alone; and it was to this sect, whose principles appear so frivolous, and whose habits so ridiculous, that the English owe the whole freedom of their constitution." But the genius and character of Mr. Hume's philosophy is well known to be much at variance with his real sentiments of respect for the established Church.

* I believe the assertion will be corroborated by those who have taken similar pains with myself, to ascertain the average proportion of communicants in a given number of parishes; that the increase of those who have been in the habit of partaking of the Sacrament within the four last years, has been very considerable-viz. onefourth.

The following observation seems much more applicable to the present state of religion, than at the period at which it was delivered: "The source of our