I, by my attendance, give one hour's support to a church which has lost the succession, and which persists in maintaining the shadow of sacraments she never had authority to administer.' No words can describe the indignation occasioned by this repulse. By Pertinax the evening was spent in sullenness, and muttering to himself; the cause of which he angrily refused to explain. The Popish recusant, on his part, idled away the close of the same Sabbath with his priest and usual associates; describing, with extravagant elation, the discomfiture of Pertinax, and the triumph of the true church.

But religionists such as these soon find their way back to the neutral territory of this present world. If they quarrelled on the Sunday, yet at the next morning's assemblage to expedite the concerns of an enclosure, a canal, or a mine-of course there was nothing wrong in the engagement itself; we speak only of the spirit of the individual—and also at the evening party and ball, there was a perfect identity of feeling. On the race-course and in the chace, all religious discussion was merged in the pleasurable sensations of the hour. If they did not cement their union by an attendance at the gambling-table or the cock-pit, they did

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not abstain on purely Christian principles. The occupation did not suit their taste; or was too low, too gross, for their department of the world. No question was asked, how it stood with regard to the Divine law.

Now, what does this tale unfold, but that such men were unbelievers in masquerade; whether concealing their Antichristianity under the visor of Catholicism, or dressed in the various costumes of the Reformation? They never contemplated the Gospel in the abstract; or considered forms of ecclesiastical polity valuable, only in proportion as they bring men personally acquainted with the religion of Jesus Christ.

Pertinax was not aware that the majority of mankind, and himself among the rest, were nihilists,-indifferent to every thing, except to the secularities and perversions superinduced upon the Gospel by human contrivance. Such is the Papal system-such the religion of the Reformation-as frequently exhibited, by the adherents of either scheme, to the gaze and compassion of a genuine Christian.

Will the reader be startled at the re-appearance, on our present ground, of the Infidel Antichrist? Is this same Pertinax to be detected in the front rank of unbelievers, "aliens

from the covenant of promise, and without God in the world?" We can only answer, that his pretence to religion is the most melancholy feature of his character. He might be acting a more honourable part, if he deserted the Church and circulated the Age of Reason: he would possibly, at the same time, be acting a less injurious one. He is one of those partisans who remind us of the couplet of Swift, so much admired by Dr. Johnson :

'Some dire misfortune to portend

No enemy can match a friend *?

We may well apply the spirit of the sentiment to a man who, under the robes of Christianity, hides the stiletto of an assassin; who says to his confederates, "Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he; hold him fast!"

The infidels of the present times are calculating upon the assistance they already have, and expect to have, from the false friends of the faith of Christ. Let the Gospel be degraded into names and usages, and this is exactly what Voltaire, Condorcet, Rousseau, and their allies, wished to find, and did find. Our

* Verses on his own Death;' founded on a maxim of Rochefoucald.

own domestic foes (of whom the above character is an example) may differ from the Continental infidels, among other points, in this: the former lower Christianity to their own purposes, and then defend a system so debased, as though it were the original; the latter look to such defenders as auxiliaries, and discover that no enemy can match a friend.'

The formalists of the world are, indeed, too cold to be strictly compared to one of the Asiatic churches; although to each of those formalists might be addressed part, at least, of what the Spirit said to the Laodicean, "Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." They are ignorant of God, and of themselves. To know that we know

nothing, is no inconsiderable advance towards true wisdom. It is something to suspect our blindness. But Antichristians of all classesand here the nominalists of orthodoxy and heresy are exactly on the same level-assume their knowledge, however crude and scanty, to be principle. They have the paper and print of the Bible, or of their own selected theology, and suppose themselves rich. It is

the possession of a revelation,' says a Christian philosopher*, not the use, which these men are accustomed to contemplate and to value. As a miser conceives himself rich by the treasure which he never employs, so the persons to whom we allude suppose themselves enlightened by a book from which they profess to derive no information, and saved by a religion which is allowed to engage little or none of their attention. Such a system presents a neutral ground, on which professed Christians and infidels may meet, and proceed to assail with their joint force the substantial truth of our religion. There is nothing in such views of Christianity to appal the infidel; nothing to mortify the pride, nothing to check or controul the exorbitances, of the carnal mind, which is enmity against God. In stripping the religion of Christ of all that is spiritual, it renders it weak and inefficacious as an instrument of renovating the mind; and by fostering its pride, and sparing its corruption, prepares it for shaking off the restraints of religion altogether.'

Hence is formed the alliance, in these critical times, between outside Christians and the avowed enemies of Christianity. It is the

* Rev. Robert Hall.