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asked, What would be the answer if these half-pay clergymen were called upon to serve again?

FOREIGN.

Memorial of Mr. Locke.-We find the following in the New Monthly Magazine for January," Histor. Reg." p. 20. It is not stated where the intelligence is picked up; probably from some French Journal. We confess that we regard the story with suspicion.

"Montpellier-A workman employed in removing the foundation of an old house near this city, found a glass bottle hermetically sealed; it was found to contain, in an excellent state of preservatiou, the following Latin inscription on vellum :

"Mortalis ! In thesauros incidisti! Hic in Christo FIDES, rebus in humanis MODUS patent. Ampulla nec vacua, nec vilis, quæ animo hilaritatem, corpori salutem, affert. Ex hac imbibe, et haustum, vino vel Falerno vel Chio, gratiorem hauries. Scripsit Johannes Locke, Anglus, A. D. 1675.

The following is a translation: "Mortal! Thou hast found a treasure! Here are placed before you FAITH in Christ and MODERATION in things terrestrial. The bottle is neither empty nor of little worth, which affords cheerfulness to the mind and health to the body. Quaff of this, and thou shalt imbide what is more precious than the juice of Falernum or Chios. So wrote John Locke, Englishman, in the year of our Lord, 1675."

The news from abroad is not characterized by variety. The UNITED STATES of America are rapidly reducing their debt, and at the same time increasing the means of national defence and improving their civil institutions. A proclamation has been addressed to the citizens of the United States by the Greek Senate at Kalamata, claiming their sympathy and aid as freemen on behalf of a people struggling for liberty against barbarous and sanguinary oppressors. The cause of the GREEKS is in abeyance. The greater part of the Morea and of the islands seems to be in their possession. Their capital, the seat of their senate and government, is Kalamata (just named) in Messenia. Here they have established a printing-office, from which the Acts of the Senate and the Bulletins of the armies are regularly issued, and from which also proceeds a new Journal, called The Hellenic Trumpet, edited by Theoclitos, a learned ecclesiastic. Their leaders judge rightly, that a free press is a formidable

weapon against imposture and tyranny. The tragical end of the Persian prince, Mahomet Ali Mirza, a powerful enemy of the Turks, who was found dead in his tent, is said to have damped (though we trust but for a moment) the enthusiasm of the Greeks. The negociations between TURKEY and RUSSIA are not as yet brought to a conclusion. Some students at Constantinople, training up as teachers of Islamism, lately made a stir on occasion of the banishment of one of their Professors for alleged seditious expressions, which recalled the government to moderation: a proof that even here, under the throne of ignorance, there is felt the impulse of that popular feeling which agitates the rest of Europe.The leaden sceptre of AUSTRIA presses upon the heart of beautiful Italy. The despot knows his enemies by instinct rather than wisdom, and we hear of the suppression of schools in LombardySPAIN and PORTUGAL are consolidating their free governments: the Priesthood in these lands of promise are declining daily in numbers and influence. A cloud is over FRANCE, portending, as some think, an explosion at no distant period. Superstition has shewn itself in a disgusting form in the conversion of the two daughters and the niece of Mr. Loveday, an English gentleman, to Popery: the actors in this gloomy farce were a Parisian school-mistress, certain priests and prelates, and, it is said, a prince of the blood in a mask. The event will, we trust, operate as a warning to our countrymen who send their children to France for education, some of whom have not scrupled to place their daughters for that purpose in religious houses. The new Royalist Ministry have succeeded in carrying through the Chambers a law with regard to the press, of a more despotic character than any measure brought forward in Europe for the last half-century. The discussions amongst the Deputies were exceedingly stormy: a considerable body of the patriots withdrew before the passing of the law, that they might not seem by their presence to give the colour of legislation to so fatal a violation of the Charter of Liberties. By this law it is a crime to question " the Divinity of Christ:" the French are not theologians, and the phrase may loosely mean the denial of the Christian religion; but the ambiguous wording of the law may be strained by bigots to the oppression of the liberal Protestants. How well was the present reigning family in France described by their late Rival, as having, in their exile and their experience during the Revolution, "learned nothing and forgotten nothing"!

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On some of the existing Disabilities and Inconveniences which attach to Dissent from the Church of England.

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F we may credit the doting eulo"best constituted church in the world," she has never shrunk from the fullest investigation of her tenets, and has constantly been distinguished by the most unparalleled forbearance towards those who dissent from her doctrines and discipline. But without resorting to other sources of history, the records of our statutebook, which cannot be gainsayed by a church founded on Acts of Parliament, disclose her character in a somewhat less consistent and amiable point of view. The secret motives in which her separation from the Church of Rome originated, when compared with those which gave rise to Protestantism in other countries, were not peculiarly laudable for their purity, whether we trace them to the caprice and infidelity, or to the grasping avarice, of a sensual and arbitrary tyrant. How far the first public act of her separate existence displayed an enlightened preference to truth and simplicity in doctrine, or the most charitable spirit towards her opponents, is recorded in the statute passed in the 31st year of Henry's reign, "for abolishing of Diversity of Opinions in certain Articles concerning Christian Religion," by which, transubstantiation, the denial of the cup to the laity, private masses, auricular confession, and others of the most scandalous corruptions of Christianity, were consecrated as leading articles or doctrines of "the whole Church and Congregation of England," and the extreme penalty of death was denounced against all oppugners of

the edict. *

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The cool and unhesitating arrogance with which the omniscience and infal

mediately under him, of this whole Church and Congregation of England, intending the conservation of the same church and congregation in a true, sincere and uniform doctrine of Christ's religion; calling also to his blessed and most gracious remembrance, as well the great and quiet assurance, prosperous increase and other innumerable commodities which have ever insued concord and unitie in opinions, as also the manifold perils, dangers and inconveniences which gions, grown, sprung and arisen of the have heretofore, in many places and rediversities of minds and opinions, especially of matters of Christian religion; and therefore desiring, that such an unity should be charitably established in all things concerning the same, as might chiefly be to the honour of Almighty God, and, consequently, redound to the ment, and also a synod and convocation Commonwealth, had caused his Parlia of the Archbishops, &c. to be assembled.

deration were six, relating to transubstanThe articles proponed for their consitiation, communion in both kinds, celibacy of the priests, voluntary profession of celibacy, private masses and auricular confession. The King's most Royal Majesty, most prudently pondering and considering, that, by occasion of variable and sundry opinions and judgments of the said articles, great discord and variance had arisen, as well amongst the clergy of his vulgar people, his loving subjects of the realm, as amongst a great number of the same, and being in a full hope and trust, that a full and perfect resolution of the said articles should make a perfect concord and unity generally amongst all his loving and obedient subjects, of his most excellent goodness, not only commanded that the said articles should deliberately and advisedly, by his said Archbishops, &c., be debated, and their opinions to be understood, but also most graciously vouchsafed, in his own princely person, to descend unto his High Court of Parliament and counsel, and there, like a prince

libility denied to the long acknowledged Vicar of Christ, are by this parliamentary Bull attributed to the new usurper of supremacy in the Christian church, cannot fail to excite a smile in modern days; and this notable statute remains a standing index of the height to which the tide of intolerant presumption had mounted, even after the waters of the great flood of Papal pretension had partially receded, and the everlasting hills of truth and Christian science had begun to re-appear. It is not competent to the partisans of that undefined and fluc tuating abstraction, called the Church of England, to urge that the Roman Catholic religion was still the ruling religion of the country: the separate existence and moral reputation of their church must be dated from the period when she cast off her allegiance to the Court of Rome, but deliberately retained all the prominent points of the Catholic doctrines and ritual, in opposition to the arguments of more en

of most high prudence and no less learning, opened and declared many things of high learning and great knowledge, touching the said articles.

With such princely help it was finally

resolved as to the first article.

"That in the most blessed sacrament of the altar, by the strength and efficacy of Christ's mighty word, (it being spoken by the priest,) is present, really under the form of bread and wine, the natural body and blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ, conceived of the Virgin Mary, and that, after the consecration, there remaineth no substance of bread or wine, nor any other substance but the substance of Christ, God and man."

The other articles received a resolution equally favourable to the good old practices and notions, and thus far his Majesty's faithful Parliament may be tolerated in lauding his "godly studie, paine and travell;" but his godly enterprise was not thus to be accomplished: and it was, therefore, ordained, that if any persons by word, writing, imprinting, cyphering, or in any otherwise, did publish, preach, teach, say, affirm, declare, dispute, argue, or hold any opinion to the contrary, they and their aiders, comforters, counsellors, consentors and abet. tors therein, should be adjudged heretics, and should suffer death, by way of burning, without any abjuration, clergy, or

sanctuary.

lightened Protestants in this and foreign countries.

The Church of England has, however, reluctantly lowered her pretensions, both in theory and in practice. The statute-book has recognized the right not only of thinking, (which no law could ever controul,) but also of professing religious opinions inconsistent with those established as the national creed; and some of her most illustrious members have signalized themselves by the most enlightened principles of religious liberty: yet there are several civil inconveniences and disabilities to which Nonconformity still exposes its professors, the continuance of which can be justified by no reasonings in favour of the utility of civil establishments of religion, which must and ought to fall to the ground, if they can only stand by paralyzing the bonds of civil union, and erecting invidious distinctions between subjects equally attached to the constitution and well-being of their country.

It is well known, that, out of the phalanx of statutes behind which the Church of England was entrenched, before the Revolution in 1688, the Acts, Test Acts, are, at the present day, the commonly called the Corporation and most extensive infringements of the civil rights of Protestant Dissenters.

I shall not attempt imperfectly to echo the general arguments which have been so unanswerably urged for

I say reluctantly, because every concession to the consciences of others has been opposed by a host of those of her members who have sustained her highest offices, or have put themselves forward as her only true champions. There never was an æra in her history in which the heads of the Church generally admitted the possibility of extending toleration without risking her existence. The majority are, indeed, satisfied when once the tolerant decree is passed; but a more consistent minority still indulge fond retrospections towards the golden days of proscription and penalty. These ecclesiastical curs will snarl over and guaw the bare bones of intolerance, until they are wrested from their gripe by animais of a more generous breed. Their miserable feast is, I trust, for their own sakes, swiftly verging towards its final

close.

The Nonconformist. No. XXIV.

the repeal of these falsely-imagined bulwarks of the Church, and which were very early put upon record in a Protest, by several noble Lords, against the rejection of a clause for taking Dissenters out of their operation, in the first session after the Revolution. *

The following are the principal heads of this interesting document, extracted from a collection of the Lords' Protests, Vol. 1, pp. 121-123.

"Ist. Because it gives great part of the Protestant freemen of England reason to complain of inequality and hard usage, when they are excluded from public employments by a law, and also, because it deprives the King and kingdom of divers men fit and capable to serve the public in several stations, and that for a mere scruple of conscience, which can by no means render them suspected, much less disaffected, to the government.

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2dly. Because his Majesty, as the common and indulgent father of his people, having expressed an earnest desire of liberty for tender consciences to his Protestant subjects; and my Lords the Bishops having, divers of them, on several occasions professed an inclination, and owned the reasonableness of such a Christian temper; we apprehend it will raise suspicions in men's minds of something different from the case of religion or the public, or a design to heal our breaches, when they find that, by confining secular employments to ecclesiastical conformity, those are shut out from civil affairs whose doctrine and worship may be tolerated by authority of Parliament, there being a Bill before us by order of the House to that purpose; especially when, without this exclusive rigour, the Church is secured in all her privileges and preferments, nobody being hereby let into them who is not strictly conformable.

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4thly. Because it turns the edge of a law (we kuow not by what fate) upon Protestants and friends to the government, which was intended against Papists, to exclude them from places of trust, as men avowedly dangerous to our religion and government; and thus the taking the sacrament, which was enjoined only as a means to discover Papists, is now made a distinguishing duty amongst Protestants, to weaken the whole by casting off a part of them.

"5thly. Because mysteries of religion and divine worship are of divine original, and of a nature so wholly distant from the secular affairs of public society, that they cannot be applied to those ends; and therefore, the Church, by the law of the

131

But amongst the opponents of the more recent applications of the Dis

gospel, as well as common prudence, ought to take care not to offend either tender consciences within itself, or give offence to those without, by mixing their sacred mysteries with secular interests.

"6thly. Because we cannot see how it can consist with the law of God, common equity, or the right of any free-born subject, that any one be punished without a crime: if it be a crime not to take the sacrament according to the usage of the Church of England, every one ought to be punished for it, which nobody affirms; if it be no crime, those who are capable and judged fit for employments by the King, ought not to be punished with a law of exclusion, for not doing that which it is no crime to forbear: if it be urged still, as an effectual test to discover and keep out Papists, the taking the sacra ment in those Protestant congregations where they are members and known, will be at least as effectual to that purpose."

I subjoin an extract from Mr. Beaufoy's long and able speech upon his application for the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1787, as reported in Dodsley's Annual Register for that year, p.116.

"The former act, which passed in the year 1672, at a moment when the first minister of state and the presumptive heir to the crown were professed Papists, and the king himself generally believed to be one in secret, bears the express title of "An Act for preventing Dangers which may happen from Popish Recusants." The minister, Lord Clifford, who was a Catholic, attempted to persuade the Dissenters to oppose the bill, as subjecting them to penalties, who confessedly were not in any respect the objects of the law. The Dissenters, on the contrary, through the mouth of Alderman Love, member for the city, declared, that in a time of public danger, when delay might be fatal, they would not impede the progress of a bill which was thought essential to the safety of the kingdom, but would trust to the good faith, the justice and humanity of Parliament, that a bill for the relief of the Dissenters should afterwards be passed. The Lords and Commons admitted, without hesitation, the equity of the claim, and accordingly passed a bill soon after for their relief; but its success was defeated by the sudden prorogation of Parliament. A second bill was brought in, in the year 1680, and passed both Houses; but while it lay ready for the Royal assent, King Charles the Second, who was much exasperated with the

senters for relief from the sacramental Test, it has been a favourite topic of argument, that the acts annually passed for indemnifying persons who have not qualified for office according to law, give the Dissenters a substantial practical protection against the penalties and disabilities incurred by noncompliance with the Test, and render their petitions for relief factious and unreasonable. * Without examining the consistency of this view of the subject with the supposed necessity of the Test, it may deserve some little inquiry, how far the argument is in itself founded upon fact; in other words, how far a professed Nonconformist, who scruples the Test as a qualification for civil offices, is protected by the present practice of passing annual Indemnity Bills. The inquiry will derive some interest from the circumstance, that there are understood to be at the present time individuals personally and materially affected in the determination of the question.

It will be necessary shortly to state the tenor of the original enactments, in order to bring the subject more clearly into view..

The Corporation Act (13 Charles II. Stat. 2, c. 1 †) is intituled, "An

Dissenters for refusing to support the Catholics, prevailed upon the clerk to steal the bill. With respect to the Corporation Act, which passed in the year 1661, when the kingdom was still agitated with the effects of those storms that had so lately overwhelmed it, it was allowed to have had the sectaries of that day, who had borne a conspicuous part in the preceding troubles, for its object. But the Dissenters of the present day were not responsible for them, and were as well affected and peaceable subjects as those of any other description."

* Mr. Pitt concluded his speech against Mr. Beaufoy's motion in 1787, with declaring, "that the discretionary power wisely lodged and liberally exercised every year in Bills of Indemnity, left the Dissenters no reasonable ground of complaint." Mr. Canning and others have since echoed the same declaration, and the Dissenters themselves appear to have felt the force of the reproof.

+ The Acts of the 13th of Charles II. are formally stated to have been enacted "to the high pleasure of Almighty God, and to the weal public of the realm;"

Act for the well-governing and regulating of Corporations,"-to the end that the succession in corporations might be most probably perpetuated in the hands of persons well-affected to his Majesty and the established government: (such are the words of the preamble :) it enacts, that no person should be placed, elected or chosen in or to any the offices or places aforesaid, (viz. mayors, aldermen, recorders, bailiffs, town-clerks, common-councilmen and others bearing any office of magistracy, or places, or trusts, or other employment relating to or concerning the government of cities, corporations, boroughs, cinque-ports and port towns,) that should not have, within one year next before such election or choice, taken the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, according to the rites of the Church of England; and in default thereof, every such placing, election and choice, is declared to be void.

The Test Act (25 Charles II. c. 2) is intituled, "An Act for preventing Dangers which may happen from Popish Recusants," and enacted that all persons that should be admitted into any office, civil or military, or should have command or place of trust, from or under his Majesty, &c., should, at specified times and places, take the oaths prescribed by the statute, and should also receive the sacrament according to the Church of England,

and include, besides the law as to Corporations, Acts for a free and voluntary present to his Majesty, for providing necessary carriages for his Majesty in his royal progress, and against the unlawful coursing of deer, &c. &c.

* It was even once contended, that common freemen ought to take the Test, but decided otherwise in the case of the Borough of Christchurch. 2 Strange, 828.

The grand source of danger, against which this statute was directed, is impressed upon its forehead. It would be a climax of injustice, as whimsical as it would be detestable, if, as it has been whispered, the present government, in consenting to the emancipation of the Catholics, should leave Protestant Dissenters under the ban of a law which originated in the dread entertained by Protestants in general of the return of Popish ascendancy.

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