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ADDRESS

OF THE

GENERAL BODY OF PROTESTANT DISSENTING MINISTERS,

RESIDING IN AND ABOUT THE CITIES OF LONDON AND WESTMINSTER,

To Protestant Dissenting Ministers throughout the United Kingdom, and to the Religious Public in general,-agreed upon unanimously at a Special Meeting held by Summons at the Library of the late Rev. Dr. DANIEL WILLIAMS, in Red Cross Street,--on Tuesday, December 11, 1827 ;-

The Rev. Dr. JOHN RIPPON, in the Chair.

CHRISTIAN BRETHREN,-With a warm feeling of Christian friendship, and under a weighty sense of moral duty, we take the liberty to address you at the present moment upon a subject that lies near our hearts; namely, the application to Parliament upon the CORPORATION and TEST Acts. It gave us unfeigned pleasure to observe the zealous but temperate spirit with which this application was made by Protestant Dissenters generally, in the last session of Parliament. As a body, we have unanimously resolved to renew our petition in the session that is approaching; and being most anxious that our brethren throughout the kingdom should unite heartily with us on this occasion, we cannot forbear submitting to your serious attention some considerations relating to this highly important matter, which have forcibly impressed our own minds, and will, we doubt not, influence yours. Far be it from us to seem to dictate to our brethren. We rejoice in the persuasion that they are well informed upon this subject, and fully prepared to discharge their duty, as in the presence of Almighty God. They will not, however, we feel assured, deem a friendly address from us upon a topic of common interest, unseasonable or obtrusive; especially since it cannot have escaped the notice of any that have bent their

minds to this great question, that the peculiarly religious and Christian view of it has not received all the consideration which it merits, from some of the Protestant Dissenters.

We entertain a deep and unalterable sense of the injustice, impolicy, and uncharitableness of the Test Laws;-which deprive a very large portion of the people of this kingdom of the common rights of subjects; treat a conscientious religious profession as a civil offence; disable His Majesty from availing himself of the services of many who might effectually promote the best interests of his kingdom; divide a people, born to be united, into two parties-the one a favoured, the other a degraded party; and thus plant a root of bitterness where all the considerations both of civil expediency and of religious duty call for mutual respect, esteem, and kind

ness.

We do not overlook the operations of the Annual Indemnity Acts in arresting the penal consequences of the Test Laws: but were these Acts a more certain protection of Nonconformists than we are instructed that they are, we could not rest satisfied with receiving a pardon where we are conscious of no crime, and with being connived at, instead of standing justified to the eyes of our countrymen, in the exercise of

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our civil and political rights and privileges.

With our views, which we are happy to believe that we hold in common with all Protestant Dissenters, we could not submit, without remonstrance, to any Religious Test of fitness for civil office; because every such test has a tendency to secularize the religion of our Holy Redeemer, whose kingdom is not of this world, and is, besides, an assumption of infallibility on the part of such as impose it, and of a right to dictate to the consciences of those on whom it is imposed.

But it is not upon this branch of the subject that we are most anxious to address you; and, indeed, it is unnecessary to dwell upon the civil and political view of our case, which has been so amply and satisfactorily explained, in the "Statement" published by the "United Committee,' and in the "Petition" of our Deputies to the House of Commons,†documents which have been very widely circulated, and which, in our judgment, must carry conviction to the mind of every dispassionate reader, that the present application of the Protestant Dissenters to the Legislature is founded on the solid basis of fact and argument, and is pre-eminently entitled to the grave consideration of Parliament.

Our principal design, Christian Brethren, is to call your attention to the scandal thrown upon our

* "Statement of the Case of the Protestant Dissenters under the Corporation and Test Acts, published for the United Committée appointed to conduct their ApSold, price 6d., by Hunter, Holdsworth,

plication for Relief. Third Edition. 8vo.

and Wightman and Cramp, London.

+ This "Petition" is expected to appear in an early nuinber of "The Test Act Reporter," a monthly publication by the "United Committee," announced as forth coming on the 1st of January, 1828.

It is

holy religion by the Sacramental Test. The ordinance of the Lord's Supper is the most solemn institution that was ever established, and its ends are the most momentous that were ever contemplated, even in the scheme of the Divine dispensations. Our Saviour, in commending the Supper to his disciples, said, Do this in remembrance of me; and the faithful Apostle who received it in command from the Head of the Church to guard and vindicate and enforce the ordinance, has explained, that as often as we eat this bread, and drink this cup, we do shew forth the Lord's death till he come. manifest, therefore, that the celebration of this sacred rite with any other than serious and purely spiritual views, must be a gross perversion of it, a dishonour to the religion of which it constitutes so vital a part, and a high indignity to its great Institutor, "the Lord of all." Yet, by the Corporation Act, no person can hold office in any corporate town or borough, and, by the Test Act, no person can hold any place of trust or emolument under the Crown, or exercise any function of magistracy, without qualifying himself by receiving the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rites of the Church of England, under very heavy mulcts and ruinous penalties. No account is taken by these Acts of the faith or the character of the communicants. The Sacrament is to be received in all cases, without distinction; and hence, of necessity, many are driven by the Law to the Lord's Table, of whom it is no breach of charity to say, that they have none of the qualifications required by the Christian Scriptures of the partakers of the solemn symbols of the new covenant,and some, who are notorious evillivers, and others, who are un

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Scarcely daring to allow our feelings to dictate words, with regard to this prostitution of the holy ordinance, we choose to quote the language of a member and minister and bishop of the Church of England, in a "Letter to a Member of Parliament:""If you will but seriously and impartially consider this thing, I am sure you will conclude, (as I have done for many years,) that the prostitution of the most solemn and sacred Supper of our Lord, to secure places of profit or honour to those who, though ever so notoriously wicked, will (by complying with the said Act) entitle themselves to be called Churchmen, is a high affront to God, and a foul blot upon any Christian Church that encourages such a corruption; of which Church I profess myself an unworthy member, but one that mourns for all our imperfections, and would rejoice to see all Christian Churches firmly established and flourish upon the doctrine and practices of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself (and no other) being the chief corner-stone."*

In accordance with these sentiments, the Protestant Dissenters have always reasoned, " that Religion is wounded in the house of her friends, when the Lord's Supper is administered and received for any other purposes than those of genuine piety; that if this ordinance be a test for any world, it is a test for another, and not for this; that the introduction of the temptation of secular hopes and fears to the performance of this act, vi

• "A True Churchman's Reasons for Repealing the Corporation and Test Acts," by Dr. Hoadly, who, when Bishop of Salisbury, gave the MS. of the traet to Dr. Avery, with leave to publish it, which the Doctor did in the year 1732,

tiates its acceptableness, decides not the religion of the communicant, repels the conscientious, invites the unprincipled, and corrupts the weak, and that, in every view, it is a prostitution and profanation of holy things." This is not to eat the Lord's Supper.*And we cannot but remind you, that the chief of the apostles, to whom we have referred, pronounces a fearful sentence against him that, not discerning the Lord's body, in this Supper, eateth and drinketh unworthily; "the sense of which phrase," (says the learned and pious Dr. Doddridge, † whose praise is in all our churches,) must extend to every manner of receiving contrary to the nature and design of the ordinance; and consequently to the case of doing it merely in a secular view, which" (he adds) "I heartily pray that all concerned in it may seriously

consider."

The abuse and profanation of the Lord's Supper, by making it a mere civil or political test, would, in our conscientious judgment, be the same, in whatever manner it was administered. Were the ordinance legally permitted to be received, with this view, in our own churches, and with our own forms, we should equally remonstrate against the Sacramental Test; saying, in effect, with a much-esteemed predecessor in the Christian ministry, and in the service of Protestant nonconformity, -" No! blessed Redeemer! we will never prostitute the memorials of thy death and sufferings, to obtain secular advantages. We will stand in awe of thy word, which saith, As often as ye do this, do it in remembrance of me.' - No! we will never go to Calvary to seek temporal emoluments. Never will

*1 Cor. xi. 20.

† Fam. Expos. on 1 Cor. xi. 29. 8νο. ed. IV. 307,

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We are neither required nor disposed to deliver any opinion upon the practice, once common amongst some Protestant Dissenters, of occasional conformity to the Church of England, in her Communion Service, as a testimony of brotherly charity.

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Whilst, therefore, we feel the injustice of the proscription under which we lie, as Protestant Dissenters, by the Test Laws, we feel more deeply the dishonour which they put upon the religion of our Lord and Saviour; and thus feeling, we say, (as was said with a noble and Christian fervour, when this question was last brought before the Legislature, *) " If injustice must be practised, let it not be in the name of God and Christ! Let not God and Christ be summoned to be instrumental thereto!"

this thing, let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." Our remarks apply to the Sacrament only as a civil test; with regard to which we must be allowed to observe, that it cannot be submitted to by a Protestant Dissenter with the sincerity and good faith which ought to accompany every act of life, and especially every public act, and more especially every public act of religion: for it is evidently designed as a token and proof that he who complies, is a bona fide member of the Church of England, and wellaffected to all its doctrine and discipline. This was the precise ground taken by those that opposed the repeal of the Bill to prevent Occasional Conformity, in the year 1719.-" The bare receiving of the Holy Eucharist" (said one noble speaker on that occasion †) "could never be in-one of the churches of Christen

tended simply as a qualification for an office; but as an open declaration, an indubitable proof, of being and remaining a sincere member of the Church, Whoever presumes to receive it with any

* See a Sermon published in the year 1790, by the late Rev. Samuel Pearce, of Birmingham, entitled, "The oppressive, unjust, and profane Nature and Tendency of the Corporation and Test Acts." 8vo. p.31. This valuable discourse is reprinted by "The United Committee," and may be had, price 6d., of all the Booksellers. † The then Lord Lansdown. See Lords'

Debates.

N. S. No. 37.

As Protestant Dissenters we have learned, and as Protestant Dissenting Ministers we teach, that a practice which is not warranted by the Holy Scriptures, and much more one which is in opposition to them, can derive no religious authority or sanction whatsoever from antiquity or custom; but we cannot refrain from observing, with regard to the practice in question, that it is of recent origin, and peculiar to England, a land of Protestants; and further, that we know of no similar abuse of a Christian rite in any

dom. To our own nation belongs the unhappy distinction of desecrating the solemn ordinance of the Lord's Supper by applying it to secular and political uses; and this humbling consideration should surely arouse both our patriotic and our Christian zeal to roll away the reproach from our beloved country.

* See "The Dissenters' Plea, or Appeal to the Justice, the Honour, and the Religion of the Kingdom, against the Test Laws. Published at the Request of the Committee of Protestant Dissenters of the Midland District. By George Walker." 8vo. p. 35. C

The operation of the Test Laws to our cause, we should deprecate

upon the Protestant dissenting interest has been, as far as our observation and knowledge extend, not a little unfavourable. If the Dissenter comply with them, his conformity is a scandal and a stumbling-block to his brethren, towards whom his Christian relation is changed, to the disadvantage of both parties; and either his own conscience is wounded, or he falls into a habit of indifference, which prepares the way for other worldly compliances, and, in the end, he and his family cease to be effective supporters of our cause:-if he refuse compliance, either he takes place or office with a violation of the law, and is at the mercy of the common informer, and may be long harassed, and, at last, heavily fined, unless he can take shelter under the Annual Indemnity Acts, which are, as was before stated, a doubtful protection, and may or may not be passed, at the option of the Legislature;-or, he is debarred from offices, emoluments, and honours, to which he may be entitled by his services and talents and the good opinion of his fellowcitizens, and is thus punished for his conscientiousness; his family suffering with him for that which is their truest honour, and the public being defrauded of the contribution of good service, which a gifted and patriotic member of the community would bring to the commonwealth.

But although we feel and reason in this manner, as Protestant Dissenters, we are eager to acknowledge that there is a still higher interest than that of Dissent, the interest of Religion, pure and undefiled; with a reverential view to which we declare, most sincerely and solemnly, that were the Test Laws as serviceable, as we believe them to be injurious,

them with equal earnestness as an offence against our common Christianity.

We rejoice to find that many of our Scottish brethren participate with us in these sentiments; and we are prompted by this encouraging circumstance to express the hope that the Church of Scotland itself will at length be awakened to a sense of the importance of this question, and will come forward to pray the Legislature to abolish laws which are as oppressive to the conscientious members of that communion, residing in England, as to the Protestant Dissenters. The act of conformity required of them on taking place or entering into office, in this country, is unquestionably at variance with the purity of the Presbyterian faith and discipline. This view of the English Test Laws in relation to the Church of Scotland is not taken merely by strangers at a distance; it was again and again set before the General Assembly, with great weight of argument and fervour of eloquence, in the discussion upon the subject which took place in that venerable body in the year 1790. "Those of our church," (said an eminent minister of the Scottish Church, on that occasion, the Rev. Sir Harry Moncrieff Wellwood, lately deceased, in the maturity of his days and his Christian reputation,)* "who take the Test sincerely in England, become pledged to the communion of another church, and cannot therefore be friendly to ours: those who take it insincerely, and without principle, become hardened against all religion, and return to Scotand prepared to dis

* See "Debates in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, on taking into Consideration an Overture from Jedburgh, respecting the Test Act, May 27, 1790. 8vo. (London.) pp. 34, 35.

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