that the voice and authority of the legislature ought to outweigh his lordship's opinion in determining the intent and meaning of a statute of the realm.

His lordship proceeds to a third observation.

3. "The exclusion of non-conformists of all sorts was not therefore the certain intention of either of these acts; and undoubtedly not of the latter."

Such consequences from such premises are matter of curiosity, and not every day to be met with. But having already considered the premises, I shall not venture to follow the great example before me so far, as to repeat at every turn what has been said before. I shall only observe that his lordship is not satisfied with his own arguments as to the corporation act, and therefore he ventures only to say that it was not the certain intention of that act to exclude non-conformists of all sorts. If so, it seems that his lordship is not certain but that might be the intention, which shows that he can find no certain conclusion in any of his arguments against such an intention; and consequently he ought not to have placed my ascribing such an intention to that act among the very visible mistakes which he was to rectify, since after all he does not pretend that it is visible even to himself that it is a mistake. Of the test act his lordship has given some account to show what other intention it had originally; of the corporation act he has not pretended to give any account, he has not once in his whole book told us what this act was made for; and yet it was much to his purpose to say what the true end of the act was, when he so often declares that I had ascribed a wrong meaning to it instead of this he tells us the certain intention of the act was not what I suppose it to be; but that it had any other probable or even possible meaning he knows not, or if he does, he has been very careful to keep that piece of useful knowlege to himself. I will not anger his lordship, nor return him any of the insult or reproach which I have received from him, yet I wish I could say enough to provoke him to open to us the true intention of this act. It will be a curious piece of history to know what this law was made for; whether it had no relation to non-conformists of any sort, or if only to some sort; by what words or article in the act the distinction is

made between the some that were to be excluded, and the some that were not. Let his lordship consider the several things required by this act, the three oaths, the subscription, the receiving the sacrament according to the rites of the church of England; and then let him tell us what sort of non-conformists they were, who neither refused receiving the sacrament in the church of England, nor renouncing the covenant, nor abjuring the legality of taking arms against the king, &c. nor taking the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, or either of them. When he has found such a set of non-conformists, it will be time enough to doubt about the certain intention of the act. As to his eight ministers full of zeal for the peace of church and state, and their particular followers, he will find them at least among those who thought it unlawful to renounce the covenant according to the form prescribed in the act; and therefore they are no exception to the general intention of the act. Mr. Baxter, in the history of his own life, tells us more than once this was the case of the most moderate nonconformists, the presbyterians; and it was plainly his own case, and that of his particular followers, as appears in his account of the people of Kidderminster.

As to the test act, his lordship tells us it was undoubtedly not the intention of it to exclude non-conformists of all sorts; and yet it is evident this was the effect, and that it would be undoubtedly the effect was foreseen on all sides: how is it then that the legislature had undoubtedly no intention to do what they undoubtedly saw they were doing, and did do? His lordship has very strongly declared himself against all legal suppositions, and I dare answer that his present supposition will never be charged with being either legal or natural. The truth is, as I conceive, that the test act was made principally and directly against papists; but the words of the act are general, "that all and every person or persons," &c.; and as the act is positive, requiring something to be done by all who bear office, so the plain meaning is, that every person who would not do what was required by the act, should be debarred from bearing office. This has ever been the case, and dissenters have for this reason been liable to many other acts made professedly indeed against papists, but being made against

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papists as recusants and separatists, all other separatists as such necessarily came within the reach of those laws; and therefore it was necessary in the act of toleration to exempt protestant dissenters, particularly from an act made 3 Jac, I. intituled, An Act for better discovering and repressing popish recusants;' and from another of the same year, intituled, ‘An Act to prevent and avoid dangers which may grow by popish recusants,' and from any other law or statute of this realm made against papists or popish recusants, except one statute made 25 Car. II. (which is the test act,) and another of the 30th made to disable papists from sitting in either house of parliament. From this account I think it must appear to every one to be very ridiculous to argue from the title of an act of parliament only, and to infer that an act made against papists ought not to be extended to dissenters; for it is plain, from the toleration act itself, that the case has always been otherwise, and the intention of the legislature is, that every person not complying with the conditions injoined by the law, whether papist or not papist, should be under the disabilities of it; to suppose any other intention is to destroy all sense in the law. For what is it the test requires? Is it not that every person bearing office should receive the sacrament according to the usage of the church of England? His lordship says this was undoubtedly not intended to exclude non-conformists of all sorts; and yet what exception has it made for non-conformists of any sort, who will not receive according to the usage of the church? And it is not denied to be evident that the great body of nonconformists of all sorts do refuse so to receive, and have done so ever since the restoration; it is a complaint frequently to be met with in Mr. Baxter, that the moderate non-conformists (as he calls them) who were for maintaining occasional communion with the church, lost ground daily with their own people, who were obstinately bent against such practice, and for that reason fell off to the more rigid sect, the independents ; which by the by may show his lordship that he builds on a very slight foundation, when he argues from the moderation and peaceableness of the eight ministers who waited on the king abroad, that their particular followers were of the same moderate peaceable dispositions. But this matter of occasional con

formity and its influence in the present argument will be cleared in its proper place.

His lordship's fourth reason is,

4. "There could be no such resolution in the legislature as the dean mentions; because receiving the communion according to the usage of the church of England, is so far from implying in it that he who so receives it is well affected to the ecclesiastical constitution of the realm, that it is perfectly consistent with the person's not so much as knowing one individual branch of that constitution, unless it be the office and manner of the celebration of the communion."

My argument stands thus: the corporation and test acts were made for the security of the church established by law; this I ground on the declaration made in the acts themselves, one being enacted for preservation of public peace both in church and state, the other to prevent dangers which may happen from popish recusants, (in which dangers surely the church established is not unconcerned,) and on the authority of the legislature declaring in the tenth of the queen, that both these acts were made for the security of the church of England as by law established; and that with a view to this security, the legislature chose to confine all places of trust to such only as would communicate with the church established in the most solemn act of Christian worship: from whence I infer the intention was to keep all out of places who wished the ruin of the established church, that is, non-conformists of all sorts.

In answer to this his lordship says, "that a man may receive the sacrament in the church of England without liking, because he may do it without knowing any thing more of the church of England than the single office in which he joins." In reply, I say,

1. That allowing this new and subtle distinction to be good, yet it is nothing to the present purpose; for whatever is the case of one who knows nothing of the church, and therefore neither likes nor dislikes it, yet the case of papists and non-conformists is very different they pretend to know and to condemn the church, and to avoid it as an unlawful communion. This reason therefore will not help them, and yet they are the only persons concerned in this dispute.

2. The lawgivers and everybody else consider the people of England either as well affected or ill affected to the church, and these laws were intended to discriminate them; it is very absurd therefore to introduce an unknown set of people, who know nothing of the church of England; and to consider how they would be affected by a law which has no relation to them.

3. The ground of his lordship's argument is false. It will not follow that a man had no intention to do this or that thing, because the means he made choice of were insufficient to effect it. The very nature of things often oblige men to make use of means which will not perfectly and in every respect attain the ends proposed; suppose therefore that receiving the communion in the church of England is not a certain means to prove a man's good affection to the church, yet it is no argument against the resolution ascribed to the law-makers: it will only prove that they did not perfectly attain their end, if they had such an end in view; that they had it not in view, it will never prove.

4. The speculations and new inventions of divines are no rule to interpret laws by. Law-makers consider the principles and practices of the people in general, who have not yet learned to communicate with a church without liking it, or to distinguish away all the duties of Christian communion.

The fifth and last observation on this head is of a piece with the former; only in this fifth his lordship as much outdoes himself as in the fourth he outdid every body else. His words

are:

5. "A true and real concern for the peace of church and state does not always imply in it so much as a conformity in any one act of communion with the church which happens to be established in any country; or, in the dean's phrase, to be the ecclesiastical constitution of any realm. The good and honest reformers were, I presume, as truly concerned for the public peace both of church and state in Queen Mary's days, as any of those papists who constantly conformed to her church; and yet they totally and openly separated from it. They were non-conformists, and yet had a true and sincere concern for the peace of church and state; which I only mention to show that non-conformity to a church established by human laws cannot