believers, and even profane scoffers!

Scarcely daring to allow our feelings to dictate words, with regard to this prostitution of the holy ordinance, we choose to quote the language of a member and minister and bishop of the Church of England, in a "Letter to a Member of Parliament :”"If you will but seriously and impartially consider this thing, I am sure you will conclude, (as I have done for many years,) that the prostitution of the most solemn and sacred Supper of our Lord, to secure places of profit or honour to those who, though ever so notoriously wicked, will (by complying with the said Act) entitle themselves to be called Churchmen, is a high affront to God, and a foul blot upon any Christian Church that encourages such a corruption; of which Church I profess myself an unworthy member, but one that mourns for all our imperfections, and would rejoice to see all Christian Churches firmly established and flourish upon the doctrine and practices of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself (and no other) being the chief corner-stone.'

In accordance with these sentiments, the Protestant Dissenters have always reasoned," that Religion is wounded in the house of her friends, when the Lord's Supper is administered and received for any other purposes than those of genuine piety; that if this ordinance be a test for any world, it is a test for another, and not for this; that the introduction of the temptation of secular hopes and fears to the performance of this act, vi

"A True Churchman's Reasons for Repealing the Corporation and Test Acts," by Dr. Hoadly, who, when Bishop of Salisbury, gave the MS. of the traet to Dr. Avery, with leave to publish it, which the Doctor did in the year 1732.

tiates its acceptableness, decides not the religion of the communicant, repels the conscientious, invites the unprincipled, and corrupts the weak, and that, in every view, it is a prostitution and profanation of holy things."-This is not to eat the Lord's Supper.*And we cannot but remind you, that the chief of the apostles, to whom we have referred, pronounces a fearful sentence against him that, not discerning the Lord's body, in this Supper, eateth and drinketh unworthily ;-" the sense of which phrase," (says the learned and pious Dr. Doddridge, † whose praise is in all our churches,) must extend to every manner of receiving contrary to the nature and design of the ordinance; and consequently to the case of doing it merely in a secular view, which" (he adds) "I heartily pray that all concerned in it may seriously consider."

The abuse and profanation of the Lord's Supper, by making it a

mere civil or political test, would, in our conscientious judg ment, be the same, in whatever manner it was administered. Were the ordinance legally permitted to be received, with this view, in our own churches, and with our own forms, we should equally remonstrate against the Sacramental Test; saying, in effect, with a much-esteemed predecessor in the Christian ministry, and in the service of Protestant nonconformity,

"No! blessed Redeemer! we will never prostitute the memorials of thy death and sufferings, to obtain secular advantages. We will stand in awe of thy word, which saith, As often as ye do this, do it in remembrance of me.'-No! we will never go to Calvary to seek temporal emoluments. Never will

1 Cor. xi. 20.

+ Fam. Expos. on 1 Cor. xi. 29. 8vo. ed. IV. 307,

we visit Gethsemane with our feet, while our hearts are set on our idols! We will never make thy tomb the path to earthly preferment!"*

We are neither required nor disposed to deliver any opinion upon the practice, once common amongst some Protestant Dissenters, of occasional conformity to the Church of England, in her Communion Service, as a testimony of brotherly charity. In this thing, let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." Our remarks apply to the Sacrament only as a civil test; with regard to which we must be allowed to observe, that it cannot be submitted to by a Protestant Dissenter with the sincerity and good faith which ought to accompany every act of life, and especially every public act, and more especially every public act of religion: for it is evidently designed as a token and proof that he who complies, is a bona fide member of the Church of England, and wellaffected to all its doctrine and discipline. This was the precise ground taken by those that opposed the repeal of the Bill to prevent Occasional Conformity, in the year 1719.-" The bare receiving of the Holy Eucharist" (said one noble speaker on that occasion †)❝ could never be intended simply as a qualification for an office; but as an open declaration, an indubitable proof, of being and remaining a sincere member of the Church. Whoever presumes to receive it with any

See a Sermon published in the year 1790, by the late Rev. Samuel Pearce, of Birmingham, entitled, "The oppressive, unjust, and profane Nature and Tendency of the Corporation and Test Acts." 8vo. p.31. This valuable discourse is reprinted by The United Committee," and may be had, price 6d., of all the Booksellers. +The then Lord Lansdown. See Lords' Debates.

N. S. No. 37.

other view profanes it, and may be said to seek his promotion in this world, by eating and drinking his own damnation in the next."

Whilst, therefore, we feel the injustice of the proscription under which we lie, as Protestant Dissenters, by the Test Laws, we feel more deeply the dishonour which they put upon the religion of our Lord and Saviour; and thus feeling, we say, (as was said with a noble and Christian fervour, when this question was last brought before the Legislature, *) "If injustice must be practised, let it not be in the name of God and Christ! Let not God and Christ be summoned to be instrumental thereto !"

As Protestant Dissenters we have learned, and as Protestant Dissenting Ministers we teach, that a practice which is not warranted by the Holy Scriptures, and much more one which is in opposition to them, can derive no religious authority or sanction. whatsoever from antiquity or custom; but we cannot refrain from observing, with regard to the practice in question, that it is of recent origin, and peculiar to England, a land of Protestants; and further, that we know of no similar abuse of a Christian rite in any one of the churches of Christendom. To our own nation belongs the unhappy distinction of desecrating the solemn ordinance of the Lord's Supper by applying it to secular and political uses; and this humbling consideration should surely arouse both our patriotic and our Christian zeal to roll away the reproach from our beloved country.

* See "The Dissenters' Plea, or Appeal to the Justice, the Honour, and the Religion of the Kingdom, against the Test Laws. Published at the Request of the Committee of Protestant Dissenters of the

Midland District. By George Walker." 8vo. p. 35.

C

The operation of the Test Laws upon the Protestant dissenting interest has been, as far as our observation and knowledge extend, not a little unfavourable. If the Dissenter comply with them, his conformity is a scandal and a stumbling-block to his brethren, towards whom his Christian relation is changed, to the disadvantage of both parties; and either his own conscience is wounded, or he falls into a habit of indifference, which prepares the way for other worldly compliances, and, in the end, he and his family cease to be effective supporters of our cause:-if he refuse compliance, either he takes place or office with a violation of the law, and is at the mercy of the common informer, and may be long harassed, and, at last, heavily fined, unless he can take shelter under the Annual Indemnity Acts, which are, as was before stated, a doubtful protection, and may or may not be passed, at the option of the Legislature ;-or, he is debarred from offices, emoluments, and honours, to which he may be entitled by his services and talents and the good opinion of his fellowcitizens, and is thus punished for his conscientiousness; his family suffering with him for that which is their truest honour, and the public being defrauded of the contribution of good service, which a gifted and patriotic member of the community would bring to the commonwealth.

But although we feel and reason in this manner, as Protestant Dissenters, we are eager to acknowledge that there is a still higher interest than that of Dissent, the interest of Religion, pure and undefiled; with a reverential view to which we declare, most sincerely and solemnly, that were the Test Laws as serviceable, as we believe them to be injurious,

to our cause, we should deprecate them with equal earnestness as an offence against our common Christianity.

We rejoice to find that many of our Scottish brethren participate with us in these sentiments; and we are prompted by this encouraging circumstance to express the hope that the Church of Scotland itself will at length be awakened to a sense of the importance of this question, and will come forward to pray the Legislature to abolish laws which are as oppressive to the conscientious members of that communion, residing in England, as to the Protestant Dissenters. The act of conformity required of them on taking place or entering into office, in this country, is unquestionably at variance with the purity of the Presbyterian faith and discipline. This view of the English Test Laws in relation to the Church of Scotland is not taken merely by strangers at a distance; it was again and again set before the General Assembly, with great weight of argument and fervour of eloquence, in the discussion upon the subject which took place in that venerable body in the year 1790. "Those of our church," (said an eminent minister of the Scottish Church, on that occasion, the Rev. Sir Harry Moncrieff Wellwood, lately deceased, in the maturity of his days and his Christian reputation,)* "who take the Test sincerely in England, become pledged to the communion cf another church, and cannot therefore be friendly to ours: those who take it insincerely, and without principle, become hardened against all religion, and return to Scotand prepared to dis

* See "Debates in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, on taking into Consideration an Overture from Jedburgh, respecting the Test Act, May 27, 1790. 8vo. (London.) pp. 34, 35,

regard the institutions of our faith."

The pious members of the Church of England appear to us to be no less interested in the discontinuance of a practice, which dishonours religion in general, and makes it the jest of the scoffer, and is the peculiar burthen and opprobrium of their own communion. Many of them, we know, have long mourned in secret over this great and crying evil. On the conscientious clergy it presses with a weight that is often painful and sometimes intolerable. The pious minister of the church is placed in this distressing predicament:—the canons and rubrick of his church require him to warn from the Lord's Table, all immoral persons, and even all persons unprepared for worthy communicating; but the Test Laws make the Sacrament a sort of civil right and privilege, and some eminent legal authorities have laid down the opinion, that were any person applying for the sacramental qualification to be refused by the minister, although on the ground of wicked character or of notorious infidelity, an action at law would lie against the minister so refusing he might, in consequence, be harassed and even ruined for the faithful discharge of his duty as a servant of the King of kings, and Lord of lords. This is no new point in the argument. So long ago as the year 1704, the Lower House of Convocation agreed in representing the legal obligation upon the clergy to administer the sacrament, by whomsoever de

See the Appendix, No. II., to Towgood's "Dissent from the Church of England," containing the "Case respecting a clergyman's refusing to administer the Sacrament to an open and notorious evil

liver, with the several opinions of Mr. Serjeant Hill, Mr. Madocks, and Mr. Hargrave."

manded, as a civil qualification, to be one of their great grievances.

We make these statements to show that not the Protestant Dissenters only, but all serious Christians likewise of the United Kingdom, are concerned in the abolition of the Sacramental Test, by which the Christian sanctuary is polluted; and to excite, if possible, a general co-operation amongst Christians, zealous for the honour and purity of their religion, in the effort to vindicate the sanctity of the solemn ordinance of the Lord's Supper, and, in fact, to recover that "worthy name whereby we are called," from the indignity under which it has so long lain by the prostitution to secular uses of the sacred memorial of the death of the Saviour of the world.

If, Christian Brethren, you agree with us in our principles and sympathize with us in our feelings, you will not fail to use all your influence in promoting applications to the Legislature, in the ensuing Session of Parliament, for the repeal of so much of the Corporation and Test Acts as relates to the Sacramental Test. Permit us to remind you, that it is only by an unanimous and zealous appeal to the justice, and wisdom, and Christian feeling of Parliament, that we can convince the members of the Legislature that we are sincere in our representations of this grievance, or make an adequate and serviceable impression upon the public mind. At the same time, we implore, with all Christian meekness and brotherly affection, that you will be temperate as well as firm in both your measures and your language; that you will keep our great question pure from the admixture of any other, and especially poliand that tical, considerations; whilst, as Englishmen, you set

forth your wrongs and claim your rights, you will also, as Englishmen, testify your attachment to the civil and political constitution of your country; and that, in the still higher character of Christians, you will manifest unbounded good-will to your fellow-christians of all denominations :-for, as our venerable fathers in the Protestant Dissenting Ministry, in and about the metropolis, declared in a body, in their address to their Royal Patron, George the First, in the year 1717,- Our principles are, as we hope, the most

friendly to mankind; amounting to no more than those of a general toleration to all peaceable subjects, universal love and charity for all Christians, and to act always, in matters of religion, as God shall give us light in his will about them."

We commend you, Christian brethren, to the keeping and heavenly blessing of Him, who, by your Christian calling, hath set you for the defence of the Gospel. Signed on behalf of the Body, JOHN RIPPON, D. D., Chairman.

THE FIRST CHURCHES.

No. I.

(To the Editors.)

GENTLEMEN,-I believe, that a satisfactory defence of congregational discipline, is still a desideratum in modern literature. We have many excellent works on the subject of Nonconformity generally; but I am not aware that we have any book which is confined to an illustration and defence of the great principles of Independency; the principles by which we are distinguished not only from the Church of England, but from almost all parties of professing Christians throughout the world. We do not want controversy with any particular sect, so much as a clear and satisfactory demonstration, that the discipline of congregational

churches is the institute of Christ; and

that no human authority in the first ages of the church ever did dictate, or in succeeding ages ever ought to have dictated, any other ecclesiastical polity. If you think a few papers on this subject worth insertion, they are very much at your service. I merely premise, that I make no pretensions to any thing like a complete examination of the subject; as I write only to serve a temporary purpose, until some abler hand shall

Your's, &c.

R. H.

THAT the first Christian churches were strictly Independent,-that until the rise of the hierarchy every church was a voluntary society, fully competent, without foreign assistance, to manage its own affairs,-that it was esteemed the inviolable right of the people to elect their own officers, to preside merely by virtue of authority delegated by themselves; are propositions, the evidence of which is so full and satisfactory, as to promise the most important results, if it were frequently presented to the attention of professing Christians. Candid scholars, both Episcopalians and Presbyterians, both Lutherans and Calvinists, have frankly acknowledged, that the primitive churches were independent of each other; and that the people had and exercised the right of electing their own officers.