Huntingdon: Printed by Robert Edis, High Street.

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CHARGE,

&c.

MY REVEREND BRETHREN,

WHEN we last met, I called your attention to the prevalence of certain opinions respecting Civil Establishments of Religion; from which I drew the inference, that an attempt would probably be made to dissolve the union at present subsisting between the Church and the State in this kingdom. Subsequent events have shewn that I had not altogether misinterpreted the signs of the times. It is true that no proposition for the dissolution of that union has been actually submitted to the Legislature. But the attack, though suspended, is not abandoned. Our opponents have not found the support and co-operation on which they had calculated. A large majority of the members of the Legislature have declared their determination. to maintain the Church Establishmen., on the ground that it is the bounden duty of every Government to provide for the religious instruction of its subjects; and consequently to pro

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vide that the Ministers of Religion shall be rendered independent of the capricious exercise of voluntary bounty. While the people, far from joining in the cry for the destruction of the Established Church, have shewn a disposition to come forward with declarations of attachment to its doctrines and its ordinances, and of their deep sense of the benefits which it has conferred upon society. Disappointed in their expectations, our adversaries have deferred the execution of their schemes to a more convenient season; and have contented themselves, for the present, with placing on record their inextinguishable hostility to all Religious

Establishments.

I am assured, my Reverend Brethren, that I only express a feeling which you all share with me, when I say that I have seen, at once with grief and surprise, the sentiments avowed in many of the public declarations of the Protestant Dissenting Communities of this kingdom-with grief, because it must be painful to every conscientious member of the Established Church, to find that by a numerous portion of the community it is regarded with determined enmity; with surprise, because on looking back to the conduct adopted by its Ministers, more especially in recent times, towards those who are separated from it, I can find nothing

to account for the existence of this hostile spirit. Seeing, however, that it exists, I am thankful that it has been avowed. Had not our opponents thus openly declared their intentions, we might have indulged in a false security, and taken no steps to avert the impending danger. We are now apprised of its full extent; we are apprised that our only choice is between tame submission and firm and uncompromising resistance. In vain do we offer terms of peace to those who proclaim aloud that the evils arising from the union of the Church with the State are of a character so malignant as to be susceptible of no mitigation; and that the dissolution of the union is the only cure. The time for attempting to conciliate by concession has passed; the attempt will avail us nothing; it will be regarded as the effect of fear, or of a base desire to retain for a brief space the temporalities of the Establishment; instead of averting, it will accelerate our destruction, and will render us contemptible in our fall. We must therefore prepare for the contest; and in preparing for it derive comfort from the reflection that it is not sought by us, but forced upon us; that we are not assailing others, but acting in self-defence; and struggling for the preservation of Institutions which we are pledged by the most solemn engagements to maintain in their essential integrity.

While, however, I renounce as vain and illusory the hope of softening by concession the hostility of the enemies of the Established Church, I am prepared to co-operate cordially in the removal of any real grievance to which the Dissenters of this kingdom may be subject; for this I conceive to be not a concession, but an act of justice. They have themselves furnished the following list of the practical grievances of which they demand the immediate redress. They complain of the liability of Dissenters to the payment of Church-rates and other Ecclesiastical demands:

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Of the want of a legal registration of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, without submitting to religious rites to which they conscientiously object :

Of the compulsory conformity to the rites and ceremonies of the Established Church in the celebration of Marriage :

Of the exclusion of Protestant Dissenters from the privileges of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge: and

Of the denial to Dissenters of the right of burial by their own ministers, according to their own forms, in parochial cemeteries.

See the Brief Statement of the case of Protestant Dissenters, signed on behalf of the Committee of Dissenters of the Three Denominations, by Robert Winter, Secretary, and dated January 4th, 1834.