conveying this supremely important knowledge. to every member of the community, rests on a basis which it would be at once absurd and impious to compare with the pleas of heathen philosophers in favour of their pagan ecclesiastical establishments; except perhaps to afford an argument à fortiori for us who are blessed with incomparably higher motives, to imitate their zeal.

The case of the ancient Jewish Church furnishes a more legitimate parallel; but having been already touched upon in the early part of this chapter, we shall only briefly remark in addition, that it is surely a very strong corroborative circumstance, that in the only instance in which God ever saw fit visibly to interfere in the ex-. ternal administration of religion in a nation (for the primitive Christian church consisted, as before remarked, only of detached bodies of individuals, and therefore is not a case in point), he shewed the necessity of a public ecclesiastical establishment by himself instituting one.

In referring to the records of history and the testimony of experience, in order to discover what light they cast upon the present question, the mind is immediately struck with that powerful argument for ecclesiastical establishments which results from what may be called their conservative property. If we refer, for example, to

the Church of England, how great have been her struggles, how manifold her trials! We have seen her coping, in the sixteenth century, with the machinations of a foreign hierarchy; bearing up, in the reign of Charles the First, against the disgrace heaped upon her by her semipopish friends; surviving subsequently the fanaticism of her ultra-Protestant enemies; resisting, in the reign of Charles the Second, the deluge of universal profligacy; and at length, after various alternations of prosperity and adversity, of evil report and good report, arousing herself, in our own day, to new vigour, clothing herself with the garments of her ancient sanctity, and promulgating with youthful zeal, yet with the wisdom of mature age and holy discretion, the blessed truths which are the standard of her opinions, and which amidst every vicissitude have remained imperishable in her confessions of faith, her formularies of instruction, and her manuals of prayer. How often, during these periods, have our dissenting brethren themselves kindled their torches at our altars! And when any remarkable instance has occurred of renewed earnestness in religion among the body of the people, what has usually formed the nucleus of it but our own Protestant Establishment?

It is readily allowed that there is a tendency

in a bad national church to perpetuate error, as well as in a good one to perpetuate truth. The objection does not, however, materially affect the present argument; for it is not because a corrupt church adheres to its opinions, but because the opinions adhered to are unscriptural and injurious, that we ought to oppose it. It is as with individuals in whom we justly distinguish between perseverance and obstinacy, according as the cause is meritorious or the contrary; and it needs not to be repeated that it forms no part of the design of the present Essay to interfere with questions of detail, which affect not the general arguments for a national church establishment, however important they may be in reference to the circumstances of any particular institution.

The case of the Syrian Church in India may be introduced as a useful illustration of the present subject. That church was, in its days of prosperity, a strictly national establishment, at least sufficiently so for the present argument; for the Christians had formerly regal power in Malayala and even under their present subjugation to the yoke of heathen rajahs, they form a national community among themselves, having settled formularies of public worship, and maintaining a regular system of ecclesiastical jurisdiction; their clergy being subject to

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their bishops, who have great power and influence among them, and their bishops to the patriarch of Antioch, by whom they are appointed. And what has been the result of these provisions? Pressed upon by heathens on the one hand, and bigotted and persecuting Romanists on the other, they have for centuries, in all probability from the time of the Apostle St. Thomas, preserved a comparatively pure, though.certainly far from perfect, episco-palian church, acknowledging only two sacraments, while most of the Eastern Churches of equal antiquity have either vanished from the earth, or have merged in the dominant hierarchy of the corrupt Church of Rome. But what is most important for the present argument is, that the long smouldering embers of the Syrian altar are beginning to burn anew; the form of religion, which their recognized liturgy and ecclésiastical jurisdiction had preserved in the darkest of times, is becoming again animated with the power; and, what must be peculiarly gratifying to the friends of our own church, the assistance of its members and ministers has been eagerly implored in repairing the breaches of that long-neglected and dilapidated, but not wholly subverted, edifice. But where had been the Church of Syria had it. been constructed on the principles of Indepen

dency? Would it not, in all human probability, have been long since melted down, particle by particle, among the surrounding nations? And what hope would there have been in such a case, as there now is, of a revival of its primitive purity?

The following remarks of the late Dr. Buchanan strongly corroborate the foregoing statements. Speaking of the Syrian Church, he observes:

"Here, as in all churches in a state of decline, there is too much formality in the worship. But they have the Bible and a scriptural liturgy; and these will save the church in the worst times. These may preserve the spark and life of religion, though the flame be out. And as there were but few copies of the Bible among the Syrians (for every copy was transcribed with the pen) it is highly probable that, if they had not enjoyed the advantage of the daily prayers, and daily portions of Scripture in their liturgy, there would have been, in the revolution of ages, no vestige of Christianity among them."

He adds: " In a nation like ours, overflowing with knowledge, men are not always in circumstances to perceive the value of a scriptural liturgy. When Christians are well taught, they think they want something better. But