buried obtained a resurrection. Now this truth is simplicity itself: the mere fact that a man is a sinner, and Christ the only Saviour. After the recovery of this truth, which delivers man from every false refuge made up of private merit exclusively, or private merit conditionally and conjointly with the great work of the Redeemer, differences obtained relative to forms of worship, church government, orders, sacraments, &c. The majority of religious men in England were led to the arrangement of such particulars upon the plan now called Episcopacy, or, more commonly, the Church of England. In this institution we have the saving doctrine of the Gospel, and at the least no rule, order, or ceremony subversive of that principal possession. This church, in her operations, afforded a pure worship to her members, inculcated on them collectively and individually the total depravity of human nature, the awful responsibility of every intelligent being to the Deity, and sounded to every man the summons to close in faith with the Redeemer. Thus worked the church when king and people upheld Christianity, when the profession of the state was perfect and thus the church works still, though that profession be mutilated and curtailed. Even in the present condition of our constitution there is a regard for consistency, an effort and provision to ensure it; and while every just toleration is allowed to dissenting creeds and parties, our national arrangement certainly answers as a recognition of God, and a solemn warning to every man to fear Him and obey.

Secondly, An expression that the real strength of a people lies in their morality.

National strength we may define to be, the learning, industry, obedience to law, and corporeal energy of the people. Such things are obviously incompatible with immorality. It was the iron system of morals that made Sparta powerful; it was the same which rendered Rome once invincible; it was the wreck of morality at Capua which left Hannibal almost helpless; it was the wreck of morality which instrumentally has reduced Rome, we may add all Italy, to its present degenerate enervated condition. If licentiousness or immorality destroy learning, industry, obedience, and physical energy, the religion of the state should work them down at least

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should be ranked and directed against them. Our simple religion, which has long borne the calumny of indifference to moral practice, excels all others in its adaptation and capacity to produce sound morality. It goes not on expediency, the old rule of the heathen: this did well for a commonwealth, while men of mighty talents and exemplary virtue raised on a political eminence existed, but fled when they vanished from the stage of life: at best it had but the sanctions derivable from time. It moves not on the false principle of purchasing eternal safety for the soul by a course of life teeming with selfdenial, and fruitful in acts of bounteous generosity a principle while really fatal to all chance of immorality, productive continually of delusive austerity and spurious imitations of virtue easily and constantly united with licentiousness. It goes on the uncompromising truth, that immorality, sin of every hue and grade, merit eternal misery; it denounces all the everlasting judgments of God against the profligate and impenitent; and pari passu pourtraying the gracious readiness of Heaven to receive and pardon at once and forever the believer in Christ, while it carries to the soul the most fearful threatenings against vice presents the purest and most potent incentive to industry, obedience, and sobriety-viz., gratitude. Of what we have just written, this is the sum-During the professed allegiance of our kingdom to God, even in the person of the ruling monarch, the church necessarily exists; during the existence of the church we have a suitable provision for a general if not an universal extension of religion and morality among the people; a provision for the increase of political strength.

Let us now calculate the consequences of a final and total abolition of religion from our constitution. The consequences will be two-fold-natural and spiritual. The abolition is effected when the law declares it unnecessary for the king to hold the present faith: that is to say, when, in keeping with modern liberalism, the repeal of the Test Act is extended to the throne. Such an emancipation of the king would be a plain declaration in deeds, if not in words, that the mind of the empire estimated all creeds and professions of equal value, or rather, of no

value. Such an estimate at once discards the labours of our church.

Then would cease the moralizing influence of religion; and then must rage without a curb, the deep depravities of human nature, whose element is abandoned profligacy! We may be told that necessity, without religion, will produce industry and obedience to law, while public opinion will support virtue and sobriety. Aye, but they have not done so in other states which have discarded religion. But the progress of general knowledge will do all this and more! How knowledge, destitute of religion, can counteract the baneful propensities of nature, mould the heart into a love of honest industry, sound loyalty, and the culture of general morals, yet remains a mystery. Knowledge without religion has hitherto served merely to make men proud, disputatious, fickle, discontented with existing institutes; most unsafe constituents of any empire. The prosperity of the United States may be adduced in proof against us of the inutility of constitutional religion and the sufficiency of other means to produce national strength. To this, we reply, that the American union cannot be quoted as a distinct case in point against us. It is not an original empire, it is a mere off. shoot from Britain, has borrowed the best of our laws and polity and dressed them in another form. The Union has not sufficient standing either, to be a full proof that a state may work well without religion: and if we may judge of futurity by present appearances and facts, the general mind of her people, restlessness, thirst for change, and insecurity of social compact, tend to no distant rupture in the kingdom, perhaps no distant downfall. Such a natural result must follow from the defect of public religion, while the spiritual result is sure, the wrath of Providence.

Such a natural result must occur in Britain when she casts off the sanctifying profession of allegiance to God, and with it, the church, the public school of morals. But the spiritual result to us must be tremendous. Be it remembered that we stand not in a neutral posture, balancing for the first time between the good and evil of putting on religion; that we are not now calculating on the propriety of repenting and departing from constitutional

contempt of God into acknowledgement and worship of God. No, the consideration is, we have served God long enough, shall we abandon him? Shall we, in one word, become Apostate? This is the question; and a question fitted to make a man of any conscience shudder. Of individual Apostates only three of any eminence have reached us in the annals of history, Satan, Judas, Julian. Shall our King be made the fourth? Of Infidel kingdoms, Heathen Kingdoms, Popish kingdoms and their fates, we have abundant instances. But of kingdoms apostate from the true faith we have but one solitary example-Israel! (2 Kings, 17 chap.) 2500 years have passed away since judgment opened on her people, and yet it has not ceased! that judgment was at first political madness, then thraldom to the Assyrian, and finally, dispersion without compassion! Shall England prove, before the close of time, that national ingratitude, national rebellion against God, national apostacy are twice to happen? Shall England rival Israel and brave that vengeance which she knows to be in active exercise upon the guilty? God forbid! and to this prayer we hope and trust every honest man will say, Amen! Yet, if this crime be acted in our empire we have the spiritual consequence before us, total, inevitable destruction!!

To prevent this evil, to oppose its approach and consummation, perhaps we can do no more than we have done already, in stating truth with honest plainness. If the nature of the crime revealed, its moral and spiritual results foreshown, cannot deter the agents of a plot against religion from working their desires, cannot excite the horror and precaution of the good against the deep and desperate conspiracy, our further suggestions will be fruitless. But we trust that when such statements as we have made, raised upon the sacred basis of unerring truth, come before the public mind, many a sincere friend to religion, many a powerful and real friend to our country will arise in her defence, We justly believe that such exist in sufficient number and ability: we lament that in amazement at the wild measures and restless turbulence of a party governed and impelled by a spirit of revolution, they have sat so long silent and inactive. Above all,

we grieve over the infatuation, and strong delusion which have so long enchained the efforts of our staunchest members. Protestants have met with contempt, sound constitutional Protestants have received insult and injuries innumerable, and borne them unmoved, in the hope of a better and brighter day, when true loyalty shall be distinguished from covert treason. They have waited long in vain, and disappointment has led them to believe there is no hope, no remedy, no defence against approaching ruin. Now there is hope, there is remedy, there is defence against that apostacy to which affairs seem tending. View that apostacy in all its deformity, turn from it resolved to act as men, as men of principle. Agitation may be the watchword and main-spring of infidels, radicals, and papists. Let union and firmness form your defence. The disjointed state of protestantism yields you a ready prey to the tumultuous rabble; despair and indecision facilitate your destruction. You possess the wealth and real strength of the empire; only use them. Combine; let there be no base conciliation, no wretched fawning on the enemies of your religion and constitution, no treacherous desertion of your fraternity in humble life, to buy the favor of an opposite party. Remember real christianity calls on you to prefer those of her profession-of your profession before all others. Be firm -No surrender was a good word once and must be so for ever in a good cause. Resist every encroachment on your rights and properties, resist steadfastly every further inroad on the remnant of our constitution; resist legally. Shake off that delusion which has deadened your consciousness of power. You have power, prove it. Do this, do all this, and infallibly shall you not only procure and preserve safety, but by the trial and success of your ability, acquire confidence and opportunity to repair the injuries already inflicted. Had we space and leisure we might lay before you examples of the triumphant success of union and firmness amongst Protestants even in this degenerate period; but we must hasten to another method of averting the work and consequence of national apostacy. This should be and can be properly effected solely by a true and virtual reform in individual and social religion. What we shall VOL. I.

now say on the subject must not be separated from the preceding advice. Were we to trust in our skill, power, or resolution, we should fall into the very sins of our enemies, the enemies of the state. Our trust must be in Him who will one day take to himself the government over all people, nations, and languages. Our efforts must meet His sanction to be crowned with victory. Therefore, religion must be the matter and substance of such efforts.

We adverted to a dreamy delusion which has long covered our people, and blinded them to a sense of their moral and physical weight in the political balance. This delusion seems judicial, the evidence of Divine censure for our faults. Let every single Protestant remember that, as a citizen of the kingdom, he is called on to avert the ruin in which he must fall if it occur. Let him aim at a genuine reform in himself, a religious reform. Let him not boast his zeal for our cause, while ignorant of our doctrines and our worship-in such ignorance he is before God our enemy. Let him square his views and actions according to that volume which is the pedestal of our profession. Let him reform from indifference, and turn to that cast and character of obedience which may endure Divine investigation, and meet Divine approval. Then, if "sin be the reproach of any people, your righteousness shall be your safe deliverance.

You are aware of the outcry against the corruptions and infirmities of the church: you know also, that it burst forth at the first from the very men who care nothing for religion, and desire only its extinction; from men, too, who were notoriously active in multiplying and exaggerating the very evils they condemned! Now, we would have you choke this clamour utterly. We entreat all sober Protestants to take the word "Church Reform" out of the mouths of the malevolent, and the work of that reform out of their hands. 'Tis all true that our establishment was endowed with a revenue to support an efficient clergy; was never formed to be the resource of the ignorant and the profane, who are sometimes pawnedand thrust into her offices by the minions of power; was never purposed to serve as a refuge, through unholy patronage, to men who had proved incompetent to rise or live in

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There is no condition of human existence more truly deserving of compassionate sympathy than that of a young Irish barrister. It cannot be denied that the preparatory labours of the Inns of Court are somewhat more than agreeable; they develope the carnivorous propensities; keep the tiller always "hard to post," and send the young counsellor into the world with a relish for the delightful subjects, presented to his notice in the most excellent "Law Digests," rendering him a very sombre companion for the table of Duke Humphrey. It will be seen that I am preparing the reader to lend a kind and tender ear to the story of my calamities; and when I state, that I am not only a hapless young Irish counsellor, but that I am a "paterfamilias," "the proprietor of a wife and child," I fully calculate on a tear stealing down the gentle reader's cheek, the offspring of compassion, or the fruits of laughter. The day on which I was called to the Irish Bar is a memorable date in the annals of my destiny. I thought I beheld every one admiring The ladies in the gallery of the King's Bench were evidently saying, "what a handsome young man with the black whiskers, "and similar face;" and what an agreeable contrast to the powdered wig." Several of my attorney friends, who were to have overwhelmed me with business, congatulated me usque ad nauseam; and, at length, one kind hearted friend presented me with "Instructions for Declaration." I received it with great solemnity; not the least appearance of nervous excitement arising from the overflowings of joy and surprise; smothered the rejoicings of my heart, until the gentlemen had retired, and then I proceeded to examine the guinea fee. Probably, in all the arrangements of money dealings, nothing is more to be admired than the

me.

adaptation of the shilling to the convenient fold of the 17. note in lawyers' fees. It renders it fit for immediate lodgment in a purse previously empty; it gives it a permanence in the pocket, a solidity to the touch, a degree of weight and steadiness, well suited to the dignified gravity of the profession. I may so far digress as to mention a useful rule, suggested to me by an experienced practitioner, who told me, when I got a fee, never to analyze it in the presence of the attorney. 66 Hurry your hand into your pocket,' said he; "don't let go the fee. When the donor retires, take out your hand quietly, and see that the pretty, interesting shillings are all safe." In conformity with this hint, I now examined my guinea fee. All was right; I gazed upon the note, and then upon the shilling; I shifted them from hand to hand; I stared and looked, and hastened home to tell my wife of the "lucky boy" she had got for a spouse, and before I got a second helping at dinner I rose to work at the Declaration. It was drawer against acceptor of a bill of exchange; most important that it should be done with accuracy and despatch. My professional character, my whole prospects in life, I imagined might be at stake. Three times the pen dropped from my fingers. I examined the number of the 17. note, and once again gazed upon the shilling. The official air that I assumed, on this occasion, confirmed my "better half" in the opinion, that it is unquestionably a fine thing to be the wife of a counsellor. Matters went on in an ordinary course till the day arrived when I was to start for the circuit, as a probationer. I scraped together a few pounds. My wife packed my trunk with her own hands, putting in a quiet corner a box of antibilious pills; gave me abundant charges about the airing of my linen, which might get damp on