that deserves the name of religion, to drive all truth and honour, and honesty from among men; and will justify a man's professing himself a Mahommedan at Constantinople, a Pagan at Pekin, a Papist at Rome when, I say, this infamous and base principle shall be treated with just contempt, and men shall be every where disposed to seek with impartiality, and to practise without disguise, righteousness, and truth:then, Sir, will the character of a rational dissenter be had in universal honour: then will such appear to have been the only consistent protestants, the true patrons of Christian liberty, church unity, and catholic communion, and the only body of Christians upon whom the guilt of schism does not really rest, because they open their communion to every sincere Christian, and require no terms but such as Christ and his apostles have required in the church. However, whether you will throw in your lot, and partake with us in these honours or not, rest assured that I am,

SIR,

Yours, &c.

A DISSENTER.

SERIOUS AND FREE

THOUGHTS

ON THE

PRESENT STATE OF THE CHURCH,

AND OF

RELIGION:

אנ

A LETTER to the BISHOPS.

Can ye not discern the Signs of the times? Matt. xvi.

[First printed in the year 1755.]

IT

My Lords,

T is a very dark, and it becomes every day a more just picture of the face of things around us, which was drawn by a late great prelate of your church, who thus paints and laments the complexion of the times.*

"An open disregard to religion is become, "through a variety of unhappy causes, the dis"tinguishing character of the present age. This "evil is grown to a great height in the metropo"lis of the nation, is daily spreading through every part of it, bringing in such dissoluteness " and contempt of principle in the higher part "of the world, and such profligate intemperance

66

· Archbishop Secker.

"and fearlessness of committing crimes in the "lower, as must, if this torrent of impiety stop "not, become absolutely fatal; and God knows, "far from stopping, it receives, through the ill "designs of some, and the inconsiderateness of "others, continual increase.

"Christianity is now ridiculed and railed at "with very little reserve, and the teachers of it "without any at all. Disregard to public wor"ship, and instruction hath increased; many are.

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grown prejudiced against religion, many more "indifferent about it. The emissaries of the "church of Rome have begun to reap great har"vest in the field, which hath thus been pre"pared for them.

"This melancholy state of things (his Grace "proceeds) calls loudly upon us (the clergy) to "correct our mistakes, to supply our deficiencies, " and earnestly to beg of God, that he would di"rect the hearts of those who presides over the "public welfare, and humbly to represent to them "on all fit occasions, the declining state of re"ligion, and the importance and the means of preserving it. These things are unquestion"able duties."

It is from a deep sense of this duty that I presume thus to address your lordships, and humbly to suggest some occasions of this spreading evil, which seem not to have been so thoroughly and so seriously adverted to, as their importance deserves. To know the cause of a disease, in the body politic as well as natural, is the first step to The causes of the present prevailing scepticism are, no doubt, complicated and various. The strictness of the Christian morals, and the restraint which the gospel lays upon the corrupt appetites of men, are probably the chief causes of some mens' violent opposition to it. But there are, my lords, I apprehend, a variety of inferior causes, offences the gospel calls them,

its cure.

which co-operate and help it on; offences, which confirm greatly mens' prejudices against Christianity, and which strongly tempt and seem to warrant their treating things, reputed sacred, with much drollery and ridicule; offences, which are found not in professors only, but in those who are SET for its propagation and defence. Maybe permitted, iny lords, with the freedom of a Christian, to expostulate on this subject? Things evidently seem to draw, as the archbishop above observes, to a dangerous and important crisis, When the exigency of affairs presses, a liberty of speech may with some confidence be claimed. Will your lordships then indulge me, whilst, with no greater freedom than the great danger of the cause seems plainly to require, I endeavour to point out some things which hang as a portentous weight upon the cause of Christianity, and are some of the fatal stones at which the sceptics of the present age stumble, dangerously stumble, and sometimes grievously tall. It is impossible, we are told, but offences will come; but woe to that man, woe to that church, by whom the offence cometh?

Great, it must be owned, is the felicity of this nation, in having so many of its established clergy, whose learning and whose lives reflect honour on their profession, and whose writings have blessed the world with some of the noblest defences of virtue and religion. But as matiers are at present constituted, are there not some things which greatly abate the force of the strongest arguments they offer? Some prejudices, which too naturally and too justly arise, of which disaffected minds not a little avail themselves in their opposition to Christianity!

The first unhappy cause of the growth of infidelity, which I beg leave to mention, is a general apprehension that the clergy themselves are not thoroughly persuaded of the truth and importance

of the Christian religion, inasmuch as they solemnly subscribe articles which they do not really believe, and declare publicly, in God's presence, their unfeigned assent and consent to forms, in divine worship, which they highly disapprove, perhaps heartily condemn.

If this apprehension, my lords, should appear to be well founded; if there be good reason to think that your lordships, the bishops, do rigorously impose, and that the clergy do subscribe articles of religion, which neither you nor they do really believe; and that, in the most solemn manner, your lordships require, and they are constrained to give, unfeigned assent and consent to certain matters and forms which, at the same time, you both judge to be highly censurable and wrong;-what will, my lords, what must a doubting inquirer naturally conclude, but that the profession of Christianity is an artifice and pretence! that there is no such thing as conscience, integrity, or faith, in transactions relating to ecclesiastical concerns! that the terrors, which the gospel threatens to the hypocrite or unbeliever, are known, by those who preach them, to be only an empty phantom, as is also the future glory which it promises to those who are courageous to confess and to avow the truth!*

"

• Bishop Burnet says, "He is forced to declare, that, hav"ing had much free conversation with many who have been fatally corrupted with atheistical and infidel principles, they "have very often owned to him, that nothing so much promot"ed this sin in them, as the very bad opinion which they took "up of all clergymen on all sides.

"That they did not see in them that strictness of life, that " contempt of the world, that zeal, that meekness, humility, "and charity, that diligence and earnestness, with relation to "the great truths of the Christian religion, which they reckon"ed they would most certainly have, if they themselves firmly "believed it. They therefore concluded, that those, whose "business it was more strictly to inquire into the truth of their "religion, knew that it was not so certain, as they themselves, "for other ends, endeavoured to make the world believe it