cular congregations for nations, and your plan is the utmost extent of my wishes. But are you promoting such a plan as this by giving your assent and consent to the creed and forms of a church which is the very reverse of what you have so beautifully described? Your creed certainly contains many more articles than are clearly revealed, and they are not expressed in scriptural terms. And if a mere variation of discipline appear to you to be so very inconsiderable a thing, how can the sin of schism be so great as you have represented it, when you make a man's salvation to depend upon it? And how can you justify such an interference of civil power in the support of religion as the Church of England has recourse to? To become a member of the Church of England, with such ideas as you here express of a much better church, is, in effect, saying with Medea in Ovid, Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor.

Nay though, in this passage, you discover a predilection for national churches, you do not seem to be fully deter mined on the subject. For you say, "How far it may be proper that Dissenters should contribute to the maintenance of the established clergy, I am not sufficiently clear."* And if so, you cannot be sufficiently clear that there should be any national or established church at all. For if the clergy were only paid by the members of the establishment, or those who attend upon their ministry, and not by the nation at large, their mode of worship would no more be established than that of the Dissenters, whose ministers are also paid by those who attend upon them. However, as you profess to have scruples on this subject, and the apostle Paul says, [Rom. xiv. 23,]" He that doubteth is damned if he eat," I take it for granted that you will decline taking the tithes of your dissenting parishioners.

When I read the paragraphs above recited, and find you tell your friend, that "the necessity of an unerring guide is of our own creating," (thinking, I suppose, that the Scriptures are sufficient, and all human creeds unnecessary,) I conclude that when you wrote them you were not far from being a Dissenter. And though you had conformed, you had not at that time any emolument in the church. I doubt not, therefore, but that you wrote from your real feelings; and though, after much suspense, your predilection for an episcopal church, (that is, for a church in which there were bishops, and in which a man might be a bishop, which I

* Defence, p. 98. (P.)

VOL. XIX.

G

↑ Ibid. p. 180. (P.)

sincerely wish you may be,) and the arguments of your episcopal friend, (who has since, I understand, given you some preferment, and is said to have promised you more,) determined you in favour of the Church of England, the traces of your former more liberal sentiments were never effaced ; and on this principle I account for the inconsistencies which appear in your writings on the subject.

Also, writing as you do from your real impressions at the time, and those having been various, you have left traces of other principles of subscription besides that on which you placed it above, viz. " the literal meaning of the words that you subscribe." You say, indeed, You say, indeed, "To the doctrines we assent for the sake of truth, and to the terms in which mankind have long agreed for the sake of peace."* But in other places a regard to peace seems to have carried you farther than this. You say, that the Articles of the Church of England are not so much articles of faith as articles of church communion; and "to the laity they are articles of peace, [and doctrine,] and that the belief of these articles is not so necessary as to exclude from a federal right to church communion, such as do not think them all conformable to revelation." Here I cannot help thinking the words and doctrine, which I have inclosed in brackets, to be an interpolation; for if the articles are not to be believed, how are they articles of doctrine? I dare say they were not in the original composition, with which they are so discordant, but were added afterwards, without considering how they would accord with the rest of the sentence.

Now if the laity may be members of your church, though they should not believe all its articles, may not the clergy be admitted on the same terms? The lay members are, no doubt, supposed to join in every part of your public service, and particularly in the recital of your creeds; and as you pronounce the everlasting damnation of all who do not believe every article of the most rigid of them, you surely cannot think them proper subjects of church communion! What fellowship has light with darkness? You will, at least, make it an unpleasant service to them, if not to yourselves.

I should also wish to be informed of the meaning of the phrase articles of peace, of which you have not given any explanation. I can imagine no other than that they are such articles as a man may choose to subscribe rather than quarrel with other persons, or with such things as are not to

* Address, p. 5. (P.) ↑ Ibid. p. 36. (P.)

Defence, p. 47. (P.)

be obtained without subscription, whether he believe them or not. For if he really believed them, they would certainly be entitled to the appellation of articles of faith. On the whole, therefore, I suspect that there was a time when you considered them merely as articles of peace, to the clergy as well as the laity; or such articles as, because you could not have better terms, you chose to subscribe rather than quarrel with the Established Church, and the appendages

of it.

Though you say, as above, that "the articles are not to be subscribed merely as far as you think them scriptural, nor merely as articles of peace, nor because they exhibit upon the whole a better system of religion than is found in any other society; but must be able fairly to declare your belief of the several points which they contain, in the very words in which they are offered to our acceptance;"* I think I can perceive in another passage of your Defence of the Reformation, that you once thought otherwise. For you say, "I shall continue in the church till I discover a better, one that maintains a more equal medium between fanaticism, superstition, and indifference; where the doctrines are more conformable to revelation, and the discipline to reason; where fewer defects are found, and the free and liberal mind has a fairer field to range in." "In some points," you add," relative to morality and religion, both you and I submit, although we do not pretend to assert that they are perfectly free from all obscurity. A man is sometimes called upon to act, though partly in the shade. Complete evidence on each occurrence, or absolute perfection in the object of his choice, are seldom within his reach. If he sees enough to guide him to that which seems best, he may, often must, proceed; and it will be a ridiculous excuse for a man to remain irresolute and inactive, that possibly there might exist a more perfect plan of action than that which he had adopted."

This, Sir, is cautiously expressed, and more seems to have been meant than directly meets the ear. It is easy to perceive the real state of mind under which you wrote this paragraph, and that you have not fully expressed your real feelings. If you had subscribed ex animo to the plain sense of what was proposed to you, why make this intricate apology, which, after all, does not apply to the case. You were' aware, I doubt not, of the great difficulty of reconciling t Defence, p. 210. (P.)

* Address, p. 42. (P.)

many of the articles to reason and the Scriptures; but you were willing to think that in any other established church (and among these alone your choice lay) you would find more objections of the same kind, and therefore you made the best you could of these. You would have expressed yourself more intelligibly, if you had said in fewer words, "Of two evils I chose the least. In any established church (and in some one of them I was determined to abide) I must have done more or less violence to my conscience; and there was that in the Church of England which made her communion more easy to me than that of the Church of Rome."

That your mind has been much harassed about this business of subscription, and that you have struggled hard to reconcile yourself to it, is evident from another most glaring inconsistency in your language on the subject. You say that "the articles are not to be subscribed as far as we think them scriptural," which you say, "would be trifling with common sense and honesty."* And yet you say, "It should satisfy the scruples of the most timorous conscience, that our church has declared that nothing is to be required of any man which cannot be proved from the written law; and, consequently, whatever ideas, or explanatory comments, any particular person affixes to some of its declarations or expressions, yet, if this sense is either inconsistent with other parts of its articles or creeds, or is plainly contradictory to scripture, or obviously clashes with the evidences of natural reason, he may be confident that this is not the sense in which either his assent or subscription is desired."†

Now, you could not, Sir, in plainer terms than these, have said the very reverse of what you advanced before; for it is saying that the articles are to be subscribed as far as we think them scriptural, and in no other sense whatever. On this principle I myself am fully authorized by you to subscribe the articles of the Church of England; for thinking them to be plainly contradictory to scripture, and, also, obviously clashing with the evidences of natural reason, I may be confident that whatever I find in them contrary to the Unitarian doctrine, is not the sense in which my assent or subscription was required. Any other person also, let his real opinions, and, consequently, his idea of the meaning of scripture, be what they will, may think himself authorized to subscribe the same articles; because he must judge for himself what he

* Address, p. 42. (P.)

† Defence, p. 58. (P.)

thinks to be agreeable to the Scriptures, and whatever is agreeable to them must be presumed, as you say, to be agreeable to the true sense of the articles.

Which now, Sir, of these two contradictory principles of subscription must we conclude to be yours? I cannot help suspecting that your ideas of this subject have changed, that you subscribed on one principle, and now defend your subscription on another; and yet the change must have been very quick, since both these publications are the productions of the same year. However, as your Defence of the Reformation was printed before your Address to me, and it is in the former of these that you defend subscription on the idea of the articles containing nothing contrary to the Scriptures, I conclude, that at the time of subscribing you thought that you had occasion for that salvo; but that afterwards you thought you could make a better defence on the other principle, viz. that of the latitude of interpretation, which I shall consider more particularly in the next letter; and in short, that you were no real believer of the articles either when you wrote the Defence or the Address.

I am, &c.

LETTER III.

Of a Latitude in the Interpretation of the Articles of the Church of England, and of the Scriptures being a Commentary on the Articles.

REV. SIR,

THOUGH you plead for subscribing according to the literal sense of the words, you plead for a latitude of interpretation, which, in the light in which you consider it, appears to me to be fully equivalent to any other mode of subscription, and to leave you as much at liberty to think for yourselves. This latitude of interpretation, you say, "the legislature designedly left us."* But where is the evidence of this? It does not appear in any act of the legislature, or in any writings of the age; nor does it appear to have been thought of, till it was suggested by Bishop Burnet; who, being an Arminian, took great pains to shew that a person who was no Calvinist might subscribe your seventeenth article,† but which, all who are Calvinists say, most clearly expresses their own opinions and no other.

* Address, p. 42. (P.)

+ See Vol. XVIII. p. 174, Note.