on the Dissenters. No one, I should suppose, but a disputant either ignorant of the cause he upholds, or desirous of distorting the truth, could venture upon such a startling assertion. In truth, the Acts say not a syllable to this effect. Dissenters are no where told, that if they take the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, they will be fit for office; but that if they cannot or will not take that Sacrament, that is to say, if they pertinaciously continue to be schismatics, they are unfit;-equivalent precisely to a declaration to this effect:-You Dissenters are ineligible to a share in the civil polity of a constitution amalgamated with a Protestant Episcopal Church, for this plain reason that constitution that is required by the concurrent voice of the three estates of the realm to be essentially Episcopally Protestant; that is, equally remote from Popery by being Protestant-remote from Schism by being Episcopal. If you cannot or will not conform to the Apostolic Church established by law in this country, the religion of that Church being the religion of the King and Constitution, you cannot be, nor is it fit you should be, entrusted with political power; for what warranty has the Constitution that you will not again, were the opportunity again to arise, urge on those scenes which are already the

disgrace of our country?-what warranty has the Constitution that you will not again overthrow the established order of things, and again erect the standard of schism that desolating abomination on the ruins of Church and State? But if you will cease to be Dissenters-if you will deign to return to the bosom of the Christian Church,-the sinless communion of the establishment from which you are at present self-exiled, and will afford such proof of the renunciation of your wayward notions as to receive the Sacrament at the hands of an episcopally-ordained minister in that Apostolic Church, then will we admit you to office. For the law, doubtless, presupposes that a Dissenter, as such, cannot take the Sacrament: and it never was contemplated that Dissenters would resort to the paltry, the dishonest, the despicable evasion of "qualifying for office," as it is irreverently termed, by barely receiving the Sacrament, while they continued still, quoad cætera, in a state of separation from the Church.

Beyond the shadow of doubt, the Sacrament was propounded as a visible pledge of being in total and entire communion with the Church. The wisdom and right feeling of the Legislature never intended to impose an oath on one who would not ex animo take it, nor to impose

the reception of a certain religious rite on one who would not in all respects conform to the religion of which that rite was a distinguishing characteristic. Yet Lord John Russel and the adherents of the Dissenting cause would fain make the world believe that those Acts he wishes abrogated, compel men to take oaths, and to submit to a religious rite at which their consciences revolt. But so far from this being a just and fair statement of the case, it is evident, that no one is required to take the oaths or to receive the Sacrament, unless he actually ceases to be a Papist or Dissenter, and then, on giving such pledge and proof of his sincere abjuration of his former errors, he becomes qualified to partake of the honours and emoluments of that polity, civil and ecclesiastical; to the first of which he has thus become a denizen; to the latter, a proselyte.

In truth, this very fact-this admitted factthis fact so often, so unjustly made the subject of the harshest invective against the Church and civil Constitution,-is, next to their causeless schism, the most crying sin of the Dissenters, and of all others, militates most forcibly against their claims and admission to any thing in the shape of power. This disingenuous evasion this bartering of principle for the paltry ambition of the trappings of office, is instar

omnium, and proves incontestibly that all the boasted pleas of conscience so perpetually rung in our ears, are in fact nothing, or worse than nothing; and that consequently those who can thus make a merchandize of their religious principles, by sacrificing them on the altar of ambition and self-interest, are unfit to be entrusted with confidential stations; and that instead of the removal of tests, those tests ought, for the safety of the altar and the throne, to be doubled.

1.

We have now seen what the Corporation and Test Acts are, and with what objects they were passed, not for the sake of limiting but securing liberty of conscience, not through asperity or arrogance towards Dissenters,-not for the sake of making them comply with a rite which their consciences abjure, for that, be it ever remembered, was their own device, but for the sake of encouraging and inviting them home to the Church, and thus preserving that essential of the Christian religion-UNITY.

Hence we are enabled to discover that the grievance of which the Dissenter so loudly complains, is altogether imaginary, or if otherwise, it is one of his own imposition. For the State has no particular interest in his taking

the Sacrament: and if he will temporize for the sake of office and belie his conscience, we can only say to him as the Sanhedrim said to Judas, "What is that to us? See thou to that." Let him but practically shew that charity and forbearance that is ever in his mouth, let him banish all " envy and strife," let him abjure his sturdy rebellion; let him cultivate Charity and UNITY, and discontinue his needless separation from an apostolic communion in which he could certainly remain without sin; and, finally, let him with sincerity, having returned to the "one fold," and "the Shepherd and Bishop of Souls," cordially receive, and not as a mere " qualification for office," that most sacred rite which he has hitherto so wickedly abused and prostituted to temporal objects; and the Church will receive the returning prodigal with joy, and the State admit him, if otherwise deserving, to her highest honors.

As one of the best modes of serving the cause of truth is the exposure of error, I shall now proceed to point out one or two more fallacies which appear in the speech of the noble mover of the repeal; and shall afterwards advert to an admission unguardedly made in Mr. Brougham's speech, which alone is sufficient to open the eyes of the public, and to