the glebes of us on whom you yearly lavish an abundant supply, consult what we believe to be our pecuniary interests, to the manifest injury and plunder of a numerous, an honest, an industrious, but distressed population. We have all the comforts, and through your bounty, the luxuries of life; and we pray, that you will provide that our markets be plentifully and cheaply supplied with corn.

But, alas! Parliament was addressed in a very different strain, and in a spirit directly opposed to this. The prayer of the petition amounted to this: That Parliament would protect their glebes, keep up and increase the price of bread, and benefit the petitioners at the expense of the people. Not satisfied with their comfortable manses, with their rich glebes, with their parliamentary grants, and other sources of emolument, they would enhance the value of their own property, at the expense of those who cannot obtain a sufficiency of the necessaries of life! I need not express the sense which I entertain of the gross, the lowminded selfishness, of this anti-corn petition; for I can scarcely find language sufficiently strong, to declare my abhorrence of the principle by which it was dictated. But I know, that if the Unitarians had, as a body, been guilty of a similar act of selfishness, their principles, their characters, would have been stigmatized in no measured epithets. They would have been held up to scorn and contempt; they would have been characterised as shepherds more anxious to fleece their flock, than to minister to their wants. Many of those terms, and much of that spirit, which have been exhibited in the Edinburgh Christian Instructor on the Apocrypha Question, would have been transferred to condemn the conduct of the heretics; and they would have merited it all, had they so far neglected the dictates of benevolence, or acted so directly in opposition to the spirit of Christianity.

This instance of pure selfishness will not be soon wiped away from the minds of the poor lay members of the Church of Scotland, nor from the more tenacious memories of the Sectaries. Years of preaching will be requisite to reinstate the petitioning clergy, in the good graces of their poor auditors, and incalculable injury will be done to the cause of religion, by thus shaking the confidence of the people in the character of their spiritual guides. Persons will reluctantly receive the bread of life from those who have endeavoured to deprive them of a

plentiful supply of natural sustenance. Like the poor man in the fable, they will not receive the costless blessing of him who will make no personal sacrifice in their behalf. The Edinburgh Christian Instructor lately contained some severe remarks on the Sectaries. The covenanting Church of Scotland, which is but of yesterday, talk of Sectaries! "Risum teneatis, amici." The petition which they have lately sent to Parliament, will open the eyes of men, and certainly will not diminish the number of Sectaries. Dissenters will rapidly increase, when the Church clergy manifest an utter indifference to the interests of the community, and show that they are more anxious to promote their own than their people's welfare.

The Church of Scotland has petitioned Parliament in favour of monopoly; it has petitioned Parliament in behalf of religious intolerance, against Catholic emancipation; but we do not find, that it has ever petitioned Parliament against ruinous and demoralizing wars-that it has petitioned Parliament against bribery and corruption-or has expressed any concern in behalf of civil and religious liberty. The established clergy of Scotland have ever been the tame and passive instruments of the Powers that be, except where their own interests seemed to be directly implicated.I am, SIR, yours,

ANNONE VILITAS.

Dr. Channing's Discourse, at New-York.
(Continued from page 385.)

VIII. I now proceed to a great topic. Unitarianism promotes piety, by meeting the wants of man as a sinner. The wants of the sinner may be expressed almost in one word. He wants assurances of mercy in his Creator. He wants pledges, that God is Love in its purest form, that is, that He has a goodness so disinterested, free, full, strong, and immutable, that the ingratitude and disobedience of his creatures cannot overcome it. This unconquerable love, which in Scripture is denominated grace, and which waits not for merit to call it forth, but flows out to the most guilty, is the sinner's only hope, and is fitted to call forth the most devoted gratitude. Now this grace or mercy of God, which seeks the lost, and receives and blesses the returning child, is proclaimed by that faith,

which we advocate, with a clearness and energy, which cannot be surpassed. Unitarianism will not listen for a moment to the common errors, by which this bright attribute is obscured. It will not hear of a vindictive wrath in God, which must be quenched by blood; or of a justice, which binds his mercy with an iron chain, until its demands are satisfied to the full. It will not hear that God needs any foreign influence to awaken his mercy; but teaches, that the yearnings of the tenderest human parent towards a lost child, are but a faint image of God's deep and overflowing compassion towards erring man. This essential and unchangeable propensity of the divine mind to forgiveness, the Unitarian beholds shining forth through the whole Word of God, and especially in the mission and revelation of Jesus Christ, who lived and died to make manifest the inexhaustible plenitude of divine grace; and, aided by revelation, he sees this attribute of God every where, both around him and within him. He sees it in the sun which shines, and the rain which descends, on the evil and unthankful; in the peace, which returns to the mind in proportion to its return to God and duty; in the sentiment of compassion, which springs up spontaneously in the human breast towards the fallen and lost; and in the moral instinct, which teaches us to cherish this compassion as a sacred principle, as an emanation of God's infinite love. In truth, Unitarianism asserts so strongly the mercy of God, that the reproach thrown upon it is, that it takes from the sinner the dread of punishment; a reproach wholly without foundation; for our system teaches, that God's mercy is not an instinctive tenderness, which cannot inflict pain; but an all-wise love, which desires the true and lasting good of its object, and consequently desires first for the sinner that restoration to purity, without which, shame, and suffering, and exile from God and Heaven are of necessity and unalterably his doom. Thus Unitarianism holds forth God's grace and forgiving goodness most resplendently; and by this manifestation of him, it tends to awaken a tender and confiding piety; an ingenuous love, which mourns that it has offended; an ingenuous aversion to sin, not because sin brings punishment, but because it separates the mind from this merciful Father.

Now we object to Trinitarianism, that it obscures, if it does not annul, the mercy of God. It does so in various ways. We have already seen, that it gives such views of

God's government, that we can hardly conceive of this attribute as entering into his character. Mercy to the sinner is the principle of love or benevolence in its highest form; and surely this cannot be expected from a being who brings us into existence burdened with hereditary guilt, and who threatens with endless punishment and woe, the heirs of so frail and feeble a nature. With such a Creator, the idea of mercy cannot coalesce; and I will say more, that under such a government man has no need of mercy; for he owes no allegiance to such a Maker, and cannot, of course, contract the guilt of violating it; and without guilt, he needs no grace or pardon. The severity of this system places him on the ground of an injured being. The wrong lies on the side of the Creator.

In the next place, Trinitarianism obscures God's mercy, by the manner in which it supposes pardon to be communicated. It teaches, that God remits the punishment of the offender, in consequence of receiving an equivalent from an innocent person; that the sufferings of the sinner are removed by a full satisfaction made to divine justice in the sufferings of a substitute. And is this "the quality of mercy?" What means forgiveness, but the reception of the returning child through the strength of parental love? This doctrine invests the Saviour with a claim of merit, with a right to the remission of the sins of his followers; and represents God's reception of the penitent as a recompense due to the worth of his Son. And is mercy, which means free and undeserved love, made more manifest, more resplendent, by the introduction of merit and right as the ground of our salvation? Could a surer expedient be invented for obscuring its freeness, and for turning the sinner's gratitude from the sovereign who demands, to the sufferer who offers, full satisfaction for his guilt?

I know it is said, that Trinitarianism magnifies God's mercy, because it teaches, that he himself provided the substitute for the guilty. But I reply, that the work here ascribed to mercy, is not the most appropriate, nor most fitted to manifess it and impress it on the heart. This may be made apparent by familiar illustrations. Suppose that a creditor, through compassion to certain debtors, should persuade a benevolent and opulent man, to pay him in their stead. Would not the debtors see a greater mercy, and feel a weightier obligation, if they were to receive a free, gratuitous release? And will not their chief

gratitude stray beyond the creditor to the benevolent substitute? Or suppose, that a parent, unwilling to inflict a penalty on a disobedient but feeble child, should persuade a stronger child to bear it. Would not the offender see a more touching mercy in a free forgiveness, springing immediately from a parent's heart, than in this circuitous remission? And will he not be tempted to turn with his strongest love to the generous sufferer? In this process of substitution, of which Trinitarianism boasts so loudly, the mercy of God becomes complicated with the rights and merits of the substitute, and is a more distant cause than these in our salvation. These are nearer, more visible, and more than divide the glory with grace and mercy in our rescue. They turn the mind from mercy as the only spring of its happiness, and only rock of its hope. Now this is to deprive piety of one of its chief means of growth and joy. Nothing should stand between the soul and God's mercy. Nothing should share with mercy the work of our salvation. Christ's intercession should ever be regarded as an application to love and mercy, not as a demand of justice, not as a claim of merit. I grieve to say, that Christ, as now viewed by multitudes, hides the lustre of that very attribute, which it is his great purpose to display. I fear, that to many, Jesus wears the glory of a more winning, tender mercy, than his Father; and that he is regarded as the sinner's chief resource. Is this the way to invigorate piety?

Trinitarians imagine, that there is one view of their system, peculiarly fitted to give peace and hope to the sinner, and consequently to promote gratitude and love. It is this. They say, it provides an infinite Substitute for the sinner, than which nothing can give greater relief to the burdened conscience. Jesus, being the second person of the Trinity, was able to make infinite satisfaction for sin; and what, they ask, in Unitarianism, can compare with this? I have time only for two brief replies. And first, this doctrine of an infinite satisfaction, or, as it is improperly called, of an infinite atonement, subverts, instead of building up hope, because it argues infinite severity in the government which requires it. Did I believe, what Trinitarianism teaches, that not the least transgression, not even the first sin of the dawning mind of the child, could be remitted without an infinite expiation, I should feel myself living under a legislation unspeakably dreadful,