its advantages and disadvantages were weighed, he believed to be best for mankind upon the whole?-How much stronger is this conclusion, when it is shown that there is no danger to the church at all!

The next sentence, in this passage of Dr. Marsh, is remarkable on another account. After the preceding questions relative to the people and clergy of the church, he says, with regard to all Dissenters holding any test-demanding office, "It may indeed be asked, whether every man, from the lowest to the highest, who holds an office of trust or power, whether religious or civil, which he could not have obtained but by professing himself a member of the National Church, is not bound by such profession, if not openly to discountenance, at least not openly to promote, a system of education from which the national religion is discarded." (p. 8.) Take notice here, in passing, of the use of the word discarded. The BIBLE, (being taught) discards the Church of England religion!-Is the binding a son an apprentice without inserting an article for the teaching of religion ever called discarding religion?-We see to what uses language serves, in the hands of such a man as Dr. Marsh *.” All this, however, is by the bye; what we have at present in view is Dr. Marsh's construction of the Test Act. "He gives us another passage on that head. "Every man who accepts an office of trust or power even in the civil administration, is by law required to profess himself a member of their church, by assisting at the most solemn of its rites, the celebration of the Lord's supper." (p. 28.) We here see what, in the opinion of Dr. Marsh, is the situation of the Dissenters. It is neither more nor less than that they are absolutely excluded from offices of power and trust. If they take the test, they by that act declare themselves Church of England men. If they do not take the test, and yet hold offices of power and trust, as by the acts of indemnity they are enabled to do, they yet, by the very act of" holding the office," says Dr. Marsh," profess themselves members of the national church;" that is to say, they are guilty of an act of solemn and legally-operative falsehood; or, in other words, they are guilty of an act which is tantamount to perjury!-All that we desire to say upon this is-Can it be wise, right, reasonable, fitting, or tolerable,

The education among the blackguards in the streets (for that too is educa tion, though of a bad sort,) did any body ever hear Dr. Marsh complaining that the National Religion was discarded from that? It is not discarded by a mischievous education, then; it is only discarded by a good one.

that such a test as this should exist? The PHILANTHROPIST has in this same number (p. 17 to 22) made some observations on the effects of the test laws, to which we bere beg the reader to turn back it is a subject which deserves that he should take so much trouble about it. Let us hear also what Dr. Paley (which is authority) says to the point :-" It has indeed been asserted," says that celebrated theologian, "that discordancy of religions, even supposing each religion to be free from any errors that affect the safety or the conduct of government, is enough to render men unfit to act together in public stations. But upon what argument, or upon what experience, is this assertion founded? I perceive no reason why men of different religious persuasions may not sit upon the same bench, deliberate in the same council, or fight in the same ranks, as well as men of various or opposite opinions upon any controverted topic of natural philosophy, history, or ethics*."-Surely, too, if men of different religious opinions may thus act together, they may be taught reading and writing together.

We now come to show that there is no doctrine, how explicitly soever renounced and reprobated by the greatest men whom the church has produced, how completely soever proved to be mischievous in all its effects both religious and political, which Dr. Marsh and his fellows are not prepared to bring forward in glittering array against the Lancasterians. The reader will recollect what we quoted above from Dr. Paley respecting the unavoidable corruption and debasement of religion which springs from the alliance (as it is called) of the church with the state. He will recollect also, we hope, what we proved respecting the political use of such an alliance; that it never could be any thing else than the protection of misrule and the obvious conclusion which thence resulted, viz. that the alliance of church and state is, to the last mite, the union of religious abuse and corruption with political abuse and corruption. If he does not recollect all this distinctly, and the grounds on which it proceeded, we beg he will turn back and read carefully the 72d and four succeeding He may then make his own commentary on the fol

:

pag passage which we quote from Dr. Marsh.

"We are now concerned with the facts, that there is a religion by law established in this country; that the State has made an alliance with the Church; that it has allied itself Paley's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, b, vi. ch. 10. vol. ij.

p. 338.

with the Church of England; that for the security of this church provision has been made, not only by repeated acts of parliament, but by His Majesty's coronation oath; and lastly, that every man who accepts an office of trust or power, even in the civil administration, is by law required to profess himself a member of this church by assisting at the most solemn of its rites, the celebration of the Lord's supper. Now whether men consider religion as merely an engine of the state, or regard it also, as they ought, for its own excellence and truth, as the means of obtaining happiness in another world, they must in either case admit that its alliance with the state implies utility to the state. Without a prospect of some advantage to be derived from the churc', the state would have neither sought its alliance, nor granted it protection. Whether our ancestors judged rightly in this respect, or whether civil society (as some modern theorists imagine) can be as well conducted without the aid of an established religion, yet, as long as the present constitution remains, it is both the duty and the interest of all who are members of it to adhere to the principles on which it is founded. It is the interest of statesmen, as well as of clergymen, to preserve to each of the contracting parties sufficient power to enable it to fulfil the terms of the compact; to enable therefore the church to render that service to the state which the state requires, and compensates by reciprocal aid. By weakening either of the contracting parties we diminish the strength of the whole. By detaching men from the church we create divisions in the state which may end with the dissolution of both. So congenial is the Church of England with the State of England, that, since their alliance at the Reformation, they have neither fallen alone nor risen alone. They fell together in the reign of the first Charles; they rose together in the reign of the second Charles. Let not statesmen therefore imagine that the church may fall without danger to themselves. If no reverence, no devotion is excited by the divine origin of our religion, yet, unless men reject also the opinion that religion advances the good of civil society, they will pause at least, before they contribute to the dissolution of an alliance which has so long and so usefully subsisted. They will be cautious bow they treat the institutions of the church as unnecessary ingredients in a plan of national education, They will be cautious how they patronize seminaries from which the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England are openly and avowedly discarded. But if such patronage is bestowed, where we have most reason

to expect support to the establishment, we may then despair of being able to fulfil the condition of our alliance. Our utility will cease. We shall lose the power of doing good. No residence, no preaching, no catechizing will further avail. Our flocks will have deserted us; they will have grown wiser than their guides; and the national creed will have become too narrow for minds accustomed to the liberal basis."

We add nothing at all to this. It is far too luminous to need any lights thrown upon it extraneously,

We shall conclude this part of the discussion with an argument which we really should hope, notwithstanding the sneers of Dr. Marsh against liberality, would have an effect, and that an important one, upon all the liberal part even of the Church of England; upon all those who join not with Dr. Marsh in his contempt of liberality. It has been proved, and indeed is so obvious and certain as not to stand in need of any proof, that by enlarging the basis on which schools are erected, so as to admit into them persons of all religious persua sions, education can be much more easily and completely diffused, than on the exclusionary and confined basis of particular and distinctive creeds. This extension consists in embracing in the scheme of instruction only so much of religious doctrine as all Christians are agreed in. Oh, but, cry the antagonists, this is to give up religion; or at any rate the religion of the Church of England. Now it is remarkable, and we trust it will make the impression which it ought to make, that Dr. Paley, the admired Dr. Paley, the grand defender of Christianity, the greatest ornament of the last age of the church, recommends this very same expedient; this abstracting from all the disputed and distinctive parts of religion, not for schools of reading and writing merely, but for the very religious service of the church. "We allow," says he, "to each church the truth of its peculiar tenets, and all the impor tance which zeal can ascribe to them. We dispute not here the right or the expediency of framing creeds, or of imposing subscriptions. But why should every position which a church maintains be woven with so much industry into her forms of public worship? Some are offended, and some are excluded: this is an evil in itself, at least to them: and what advantage or satisfaction can be derived to the rest, from the separation of their brethren, it is difficult to imagine; unless it were a duty, to publish our system of polemic divinity, under the name of making confession of our faith every time we worship God; or a sin, to agree in religious exercises with those

from whom we differ in some religious opinions. Indeed, where one man thinks it his duty constantly to worship a Being, whom another cannot, with the assent of his conscience, permit himself to worship at all, there seems to be no place for comprehension, or any expedient left but a quiet se cession. All other differences may be compromised by silence. If sects and schisms be an evil, they are as much to be avoided by one side as the other. If sectaries are blamed for taking uanecessary offence, established churches are no less culpable for unnecessarily giving it: they are bound at least to produce a command, or a reason of equivalent utility, for shutting out any from their communion, by mixing with divine worship doctrines, which, whether true or false, are unconnected, in their nature, with devotion*." But if a scheme for the embracing of all or almost all sects of Christianity in the same religious worship, merely by abstaining from the mention or inculcation of polemical or distinctive points, would be a good measure; surely it must be very wrong to oppose a scheme for embracing all sorts of Christians in one set of schools, for the mere purpose of learning to read and write!

The schools which our adversaries are now making a show of being in earnest to erect, must be either upon the comprehensive principle here recommended by Paley even for religious worship; or they must be upon the exclusive and narrow principle. If they are upon the exclusive principle, every disinterested and intelligent person will presently see, that they are inferior to the Lancasterian schools in the most essential and important of almost all respects: and whoever is in earnest about the education of the poor, whether Church of England man or Dissenter, ought still to support the Lancasterian schools, If they are upon the comprehensive principle, then all objection to the Lancasterian principle, which is the same, is given up. Then the Lancasterians and the clergy are con current. For we can venture to promise, whether the clergy would or would not permit a Dissenter to be the master of any of their schools, that the Lancasterians would have no objection to making Church of England men masters in theirs. In point of fact they have already done so; and examples could now be pointed out of persons belonging to the Church of England officiating as masters in schools erected by the Lancasterians. Indeed, as often as a Church of England man

P. 66.

Paley's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, b. v. ch. 5. vol. ii.