of the Gospel, before the ministers of the Church could give their hands to that unballowed fellowship. But as they were prompt in their advances when the occasion presented itself of forming a union with the powers of the world, so had they been long in a course of preparation which fitted them for the new relation. If the spirit of the men of Galilee had been the spirit of the successive ministers of Christ, the pastors of the Christian Churches in the time of Constantine would never have shown themselves so eager to possess acknowledged preeminence in the imperial court, and to covet an office which made them parties in the guilt of applying external violence to aid their cause. Contentions for distinction, and struggles for power, had long prevailed among the pastors of the second and third centuries. The claims they set up had completely altered their relation to their flocks; they were now "lords over the "heritage of God," and, to guard their usurpation, they found it extremely useful to practise as many of the arts of intolerance as they could. The Ante-Nicene associations exhibit but too much of the spirit which afterwards led the members of other synods and assemblies to the extreme of intolerance. Intolerance, which, in the maturity of its strength, was to distinguish itself in the commission of so many enormities, took indeed the direct road to dominion when it acquired the sword of Constantine; but it had long existed, and had long held on its march, before it was able to boast of its new and dazzling alliance. To fix, then, on that era, and to assign to that circumstance the rise of intolerance, is, we repeat, to present a very inadequate view of the subject: it is to other times that we must look for the origin of the evil among professed Christians.

Intolerance originated in the deviation from a principle recognised in every page of the Christian law, as the only rule or expedient by which it is allowable to Christians to support the interests to which they have pledged themselves,-That in the cause of religion only moral means are to be employed. To these all scriptural zeal is to be limited. These alone are the auxiliaries of truth; and they furnish the sovereign antidote to persecution.

It is a very just remark of the Author whose work we are now reviewing, that the world has not wanted examples of persons fully sensible of their own right to religious liberty, to whom it has not occurred that all other people have as good a right to it as themselves. These same worthy persons disown the authority of the Popes; they protest against the interference of Princes; they discard the alleged pretensions of legislators to touch their religious responsibility, which they challenge as

a sacred deposite; but they do not see the incongruity of proceedings by which they infringe on the rights of other men, whose exemption from religious control is as sacred as their own. Is not religious control assumed over others in all those cases in which professors of religion and ministers of the Christian faith unite for the furtherance of a design which includes cognizance of the erroneous opinions of men, and the official denouncement of them as offences? Surely, it is no part of th business of Christians, to assume the office of judging the faith of mankind. Nothing can be more incongruous with the obligations of persons who avow their common responsibility to the Supreme Judge of all, than to put themselves forward as the arbiters of religious profession. In all cases in which such an office is assumed, the principle of persecution is adopted. It may be fearlessly asserted, that any interference with the religious sentiments of other men, otherwise than by means strictly moral, is, to the same extent, a deviation from the true and proper means of upholding the cause of religion; and such a deviation as subjects the offending party to the charge of intolerance. Such an interference is as really a violation of the spirit and letter of the law of Christ, as the infliction of the severest penalties by civil rulers. It is intolerance in one of the many forms in which we are doomed to view this Proteus. We cannot consider religious interference as dangerous only in the hands of secular personages; it is not less mischievous when it is assumed by ecclesiastics: and the latter have, equally with the former, been the willing and efficient instruments of persecution.

Iliacos intra muros peccatur et extra.

Many aberrations of this description from "the spirit of a "sound mind," we could easily enumerate as chargeable on professors of religion who boast loudly of their own liberality, and declaim with energy against intolerance. There are individuals who would move earth and heaven to remove the burden which aggrieves themselves, and who yet can associate to legislate measures opposed to every principle on which religious freedom must be sustained. In 1796, the Wesleyan Methodist Conference passed a law, that no preacher shall publish any thing but what is given to the Conference, and printed at our press; the Book-Committee to determine what is proper to be 'printed.' About twenty years afterwards, another law was promulgated by the same body, to regulate the admission of preachers, which enacted, that every candidate for the ministry shall be examined as to his acquaintance with the works of 'John Wesley;' and should be, in the opinion of the judges appointed by this same law, not be accurately and extensively instructed in this species of theology, whatever in other respects

may be his qualifications, they are authorised to pronounce him ineligible to the office of a minister. On such laws as these, it is scarcely necessary for us to comment. Could they take their course in a state of society that was unprovided with the strongest counteractions to their design and tendencies, they would produce the most serious mischiefs. They are clearly at variance with the simple and only efficient means of supporting truth; and should not be overlooked in a history of intolerance There are some other associated Protestants whom it behooves to look well to the spirit and tendency of their enactments. So long as the ministers of religion confine themselves to the proper duties of their office, and discharge them in the spirit which becomes their sanctity, the charities which favour the peaceable profession of religion will be effective. But they are not legislators in Christ's kingdom.

It is one of the most distressing reflections which the facts recorded in a history of intolerance excite, that the sufferings of the persecuted were often insufficient to produce the conviction that moral means are the only proper ones to be used in the service of religion. When the Puritans were aggrieved by the oppressions of the Star Chainber and High Commission Courts, under the administration of Archbishop Laud, they complained loudly and justly of the severities exercised towards them. They urged their conscientious scruples against the compulsory laws to which they were held amenable, and asserted their freedom from the control of men in the homage which they owed to God. Unable to obtain, by other means, the relief which they sought from the restraints and penalties of statutes, enacted in contempt of the rights which they asserted, many of them left their native shores for distant lands, in which they hoped to find an asylum from the terrors and pains of religious proscriptions. Such an asylum, some of the Puritans obtained in Connecticut, and there they enjoyed the liberty which they had been denied in the country of their birth. What they had not learnt from their persecutions, may be understood from the following laws, which, among others, formed the code of Newhaven, the settlement of these formerly proscribed and persecuted Christians. We copy them from Mr. Clarke's preface.

'No one shall be a freeman, or give a vote, unless he be converted, and a member in full communion of one of the Churches allowed in this dominion.

No man shall hold any office, who is not sound in the faith, and faithful to this dominion; and whoever gives a vote to such a person, shall pay a fine of one pound. For a second offence he shall be disfranchised.

Each freeman shall swear by the blessed God, to bear true allegiance to this dominion, and that Jesus is the only King.

No Quaker or dissenter from the established worship of this do minion, shall be allowed to give a vote for the election of magistrates, or any officer.

No food or lodging shall be afforded to a Quaker, Adamite, or other heretic.

If any person turns Quaker, he shall be banished, and not suffered to return, but upon pain of death.

No priest shall abide in the dominion. He shall be banished, and suffer death on his return. Priests may be seized by any one without a warrant.'

Mr. Clarke's work is distributed into six chapters, which comprise-I. General and Introductory Remarks. II. History of Intolerance among ancient Nations. III. From the Introduction of the Evangelical Economy to the End of the Sacred History. IV. From the Close of the Acts of the Apostles to the Establishment of Christianity as the Religion of the Roman Empire. V. Reflections on the Establishment of Christianity by Constantine the Great, and on the obvious and necessary consequences of connecting secular rewards with the profession of religious truths, or secular penalties with their rejection. VI. History of Intolerance from the Death of Constantine the Great to the complete Dissolution of the Western Empire in Augustulus. Among the qualifications which Mr. Clarke possesses for the task which he has undertaken, we are gratified in noticing the liberal and equitable spirit which his work uniformly exhibits. He presents himself to us as an upright advocate of truth, without partiality and without prejudice. He is never disposed to compromise the principle of religious freedom, which he correctly understands and appreciates, and which he resolutely asserts and defends. The fulness and exactness of his opinions on this subject may be estimated from the following passages.

'I scarcely need remind my readers that the nature of intolerance is not altered by the accidents of time, place and persons-that whoever may be the agents, or whoever the sufferers, and that whatever may be the mode or degree of torture or privation-under every latitude, and in every name and shape, intolerance is still substantially the To cut off a man's hand, because he does not worship God, or because he worships him in a way of his own, is as truly intolerance, as to cut off his head; and to withhold from him a benefit, as to inflict on him a punishment.

same.

In this plea for the liberty of all religions, it is taken for granted that no religion is at variance with common honesty and civil government. If such anomalous religions should any where be found, let their devotees be arraigned for the crimes they commit from principles of devotion, with those who commit the same crimes from motives of mere villany.

It is possible that a religion may be at variance with common sense and with the word of God, and yet so far as civil society is concerned, be perfectly harmless. For instance, some may believe

that the body and blood of Christ, are, in contradiction to their senses, verily and indeed taken by the faithful in the Lord's Supper, and yet be as temperate, upright, and beneficent as their neighbours who believe that the bread and wine in that ordinance are merely symbols of the body and blood of Christ. Again, some may be pleased to have other gods besides Jehovah, the living and true God, in opposition to the first precept of the decalogue; and some may go a step further, and have pictures and images of God, in defiance of the second, and yet be as good citizens as the most rigid Unitarians, or the most orthodox Calvinists. Probably some of my readers begin to think that this is carrying toleration too far, and that the writer is criminally indifferent to the honour of God; and yet, perhaps, there is not one of all these who is not in the daily habit of breaking the third commandment. by taking the sacred name in vain.

Is then every ridiculous vagary on which the human mind may light, to be tolerated in religion! Why not? Considered in a political point of view, there is not a worse-in a religious point of view, not a more absurd vagary than intolerance: and the tendency of intolerance, to give consistence and perpetuity to the fleeting shades of mental weakness, may be received as a good argumentum ad hominem, by those who think it may be employed to promote truth and uniformity.

Is it not the height of folly to attempt the reduction of foibles and follies, by means adapted to increase their number, and add to their strength?

Those who love their neighbours as well as themselves, will not be offended, that this volume contends for religious liberty, unrestricted and absolute, not as the exclusive privilege of any particular party, but as one of the paramount and inalienable rights of man.

The conclusion to which, it is humbly hoped, these pages will lead the inquirer, is that on no pretext, in any manner, or under any circumstances, is it politic or just, to use violence, penalties, or privations in aid of religion; but that since miracles have ceased, religion, properly so called, can be advanced only by instruction, persuasion, and upright deportment-that it is a matter which rests between man and his Maker, and not between one man and another-that discrepancy of religious sentiment is no necessary hindrance to social concord, and, that men of talents and integrity, ought not to be rendered ineligible to offices of the state, by the peculiarities of their church.' pp. 22—26.

We entirely agree with the Author, that, as Christianity is, and ever must remain, both as to doctrine and worship, what the New Testament represents it, a rigid adherence to its authority is most necessary to the purity of Christian churches. To shew the importance of resisting every deviation from the simplicity of Christian institutes, it may be of some use to consider the state of Christianity as depicted, very correctly, by Mr. Clarke.

The practice of modifying and adorning the gospel, in order to render it the more attractive and captivating, became so prevalent, and was carried to such a pernicious extent under the auspices of im