whose time error had spread wider, and taken deeper root, is still stronger. Do not these great exam ples then, justify the most vigilant attention that we can now give to the purity of christian doc

trine?

As new errors and mistakes are continually arising, it is of importance that these be corrected, even to keep the ground that we have already got; and it may well be presumed that the great corruption in doctrine, discipline, and worship, which began in the very age of the apostles, and which kept advancing for the space of near fourteen hundred years afterwards, may furnish matter for the labo rious and spirited enquiries of a later period than ours. We have seen, indeed, the dawn of a reformation, but much remains to the light of perfect day; and there is nothing that we can now allege as a plea for discontinuing our researches, that might not have been said with equal plausibility at the time, by Wickliff, by Luther, or by later reformers, who stopped far short of the progress which you who now hear me have made. We think that they all left the reformation very imperfect, and why may not our posterity think the same concerning us? What peculiar right have we to

say,

say to the spirit of reformation, So far shalt thou ge and no farther....

Luther and Calvin reformed many abuses, especially in the discipline of the church, and also some gross corruptions in doctrine; but they left other things, of far greater moment, just as they found them. They disclaimed the worship of saints and angels, but they retained the worship of Jesus Christ, which led the way to it, which had the same origin, and which is an equal infringement of the honour due to the supreme God, who has declared that he will not give his glory to another. Nay, the authority of the names of those reformers, who did not see this and other great errors, now serves to strengthen and confirm them. For those doctrines of original sin, predestination, atonement, and the divinity of Christ, which deserve to be numbered among the grossest of all errors, are even often distinguished by the appellation of the doctrines of the reformation, merely because they were not reformed by those who have got the name of the reformers; as if no others could have a right to it but themselves; whereas, excepting the doctrine of atonement (which in its full extent was an error that originated with the reformers themselves, who were led into it by an im moderate

moderate opposition to the popish doctrine of me. rit) they are, in fact, the doctrines of the church of Rome, which Luther and Calvin left just as they found.

It was great merit in them to go so far as they did, and it is not they, but we who are to blame, if their authority induce us to go no farther. We should rather imitate them in the boldness and spirit with which they called in question, and rectified, so many long established errors; and, availing ourselves of their labours, make farther pro gress than they were able to do. Little reason have we to allege their name, authority, and example, when they did a great deal, and we do nothing at all. In this, we are not imitating them, but those who opposed and counteracted them, willing to keep things as they were, among whom were many excellent characters, whose apprehensions at that day were the very same with those of many very good and quiet persons at present, viz. the fear of moving foundations, and overturning christianity itself. Their fears, we are now all sensible, were groundless, and why may not those of the present age be so too?

Dissenters, who have no creeds dictated to them by any civil governors, have, nevertheless, at this

day

day no less need of such admonitions as these than members of established churches, because they may have acquired as blind an attachment to the systems in which they were educated as the members of any establishment whatever, and may be as averse to any farther improvement. Indeed, a similar temper is necessarily produced in similar circumstances, while human nature is the same in us all, and therefore a person educated a dissenter may be as much a bigot as any person educated a churchman, or a baptist; and if he now be what he was brought up to, the probability certainly is, that had he been educated differently, his prejudices would have been no less strong, though intirely different; so that the rigid dissenter would have been as rigid a baptist or a churchman.

No person whose opinions are not the result of his own serious inquiry can have a right to say that he is a dissenter, or any thing else, on principle; and no man can be absolutely sure of this, whose present opinions are the same with those that he was taught, though he may think, and be right in thinking, that he sees sufficient reason for them, and retains them on conviction. This, however, is all that can be expected from any man. For it would be most absurd for a man to adopt new opi

I'

nions, opinions entertained by no person besides himself, merely for the sake of proving that he has actually thought for himself. But still, thinking as others have thought, and for reasons which others have given, is no proof of a man having thought for himself, and therefore will not authorize his censuring of others. Such a person may have the true spirit of inquiry, he may have exerted it, and have found the truth; but he is incapable of giv

ing that satisfactory evidence of it which can be gi ven by one, whose present sentiments are different from those in which he was educated, and which he could not have learned but from his own researches.

How few then among you who were educated dissenters can have a right to say that you would have been dissenters if you had not been so educated? It is more than I would presume to say concerning myself. If those persons who now dislike the spirit of innovation were to go back in history, and place themselves in every age cf reformation; still censuring that spirit which always gave of fence in its day (being always the rebellion of a few against the authority of the many) they could not stop till they came to the heathenism of our barbarous