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at liberty, not only to attend to the public prayers and instructions of the national church, which is reasonable and proper, but also to approach her altars, and there to receive at her hands the memorials of the death of our Redeemer; provided they will consent to receive them in a kneeling posture. Let this condition be observed, and it is extremely rare that any inquiry is made, whether the communicant be a saint or a profligate, a believer or an infidel. This laxity, so remote from the primitive practice, can hardly fail to reflect some dishonour on any church where it is suffered; to cause some alienation or regret in her more serious members; and to breed in others a neglect, if not a contempt, of all religion. Nor is our own church insensible to this danger, as appears from her commination office, where, as we have already remarked, she laments the want of that godly discipline, which was exercised in the first and best ages of christianity. Whether indeed it would be expedient (supposing the possibility) to revive this discipline in its whole extent, might be justly disputed.

There is certainly in this, as in most other things, an extreme of rigour, as well as the contrary; and it is the part of wise men to find out that medium, which in the existing circumstances of the church and of the world, is most favourable to peace and edification.

A national church, formed according to the above rules-in her doctrine sound and evangelical, equally remote from a dry heathen morality and a wild enthusiasm, from Pharisaic confidence and Antinomian presumption;-in her instruction of children familiar and catechetical ;-in her public teaching, plain and expository; —in her worship, pure and devotional ;-in her discipline, strict without rigour;-in her ministers, exhibiting her pastoral care, as well as her aptitude to teach;-in her pretensions, reserved and modest; in her conduct towards other churches, candid and liberal; -and, in the last place, in her terms of admission to her communion, moderate without laxity; neither so narrow as to make it difficult for wise and good men to enter without some wound to their conscience, nor

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so wide, as to allow an easy ingress to the profane and the profligate.-A church that bears these characters, and answers to this description, can have nothing to fear from the most complete toleration; she would have few separatists from her communion, at least, few of such as held the faith in a pure conscience; and as to the conventicles of heresy and schism, they would have no other effect, than to draw off those noxious humours and inflammable spirits, which, if retained, would only have served to corrupt her purity, or disturb her

peace.

S

CHRISTIAN POLITICS.

PART III.

ON THE CONDUCT OF A GOOD CITIZEN, PARTICULARLY UNDER ANY MODER

ATE GOVERNMENT.

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S without some degree of conformity between our interior dispositions and our external circumstances, there can be no contentment, it is evident, we can only attain this blessing by bringing our circumstances to our liking, or the contrary; and as the former method is generally impracticable, we must either succeed by the latter, or probably be left to struggle through life with bitterness and sorrow.

Man, finding himself ill at ease, and not

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