coachman mentioned by your correspondent, might think the woman not possessed of common sense, when she wondered at his changing horses between London and York: yet the woman might not want common sense: for, as L. S. G. justly says, she might not have mixed with people from whom she could learn anything relating to horses. The engineer in a steam-vessel, the printer at his press, or the mathematician at his problem, might make the same remark to persons ignorant of their several arts; but then these people might have very good common sense, though not intimately acquainted with the construction of an engine or a press, or with the science of mathematics; and it is just possible, the party using the offensive expression, might be more in want of it than those to whom he applied it. Had the lady been accustomed to ride in a coach beyond a single stage, and to see horses tired, and re-placed, she would certainly have wanted common sense had she made the observation: her judgment must have been weak; she had not benefited from the opportunities she had had of judging. The inhabitants of Africa might laugh, when told that a river would become so hard, from cold, that a person might walk over it. But the Africans would only express their disbelief: they had never seen any thing approaching to it; they could form no idea of it: and, consequently, it was rather a mark of common sense in them to disbelieve what they considered so unnatural. It is the characteristic of a weak mind to take things for granted without due investigation, and data from which to draw conclusions.

But the difference of opinion on the same subject, between individuals in different circumstances in life, has nothing to do with the question at issue. Galileo asserted that the world revolved: he was thrown into a dungeon; and by men, too, of education and talent. No one now doubts about the revolution of the earth: and yet we cannot say that his persecutors were devoid of common sense. It is the same with every great discovery: people are incredulous until they witness through their senses; and this shews the contrary of a want of common sense: it is ignorance, not folly.

Consequently I can conceive common sense to be nothing more than good natural sense; capable of forming a correct estimate when all the data are placed correctly before it. A ploughman who did not know wheat from clover, or a coachman who should not consider it necessary to change horses between London and York, would equally show a want of common sense: but not so if the one was ignorant how to make a shirt, or the other to write an essay, and so forth.

But L. S. G. is wide of the mark in the illustrations of his argument; and his positions cannot be proved by incorrect data. To say that one man is wicked or dishonest, is no proof that all men are so : and the appeal to common sense is not less effective, because Cobbett asked whether it was common sense to have hereditary legislators, or because the old woman thought George III. had not common sense, since he did not know how an apple dumpling was made. My worthy mother considered that a very scientific gentleman wanted common sense, because he attempted to teach her to boil eggs on scientific principles.

But people do not appeal to common sense in such instances as these. I say again, that the appeals which L. S. G. has quoted are not at all to the point; and it rather shows a want of common sense

in L. S. G. in quoting them. We only appeal to common sense where the cause and effect are clear: when from our experience, we know a certain cause must have a certain effect. For instance, water must freeze from intense cold; man requires rest to restore his energies; there must be a great and all-wise Creator for the universe, to fashion and form every thing in such inimitable order. Here the cause is evident, and the result is evident; and our experience teaches us such a cause must have such an effect. Now, the idiot cannot trace the effect from the cause; therefore he truly shows a want of common sense. Then common sense is nothing more than the faculties of reason with which our all-wise and beneficent Creator has endowed his creatures. It is this common sense which makes us responsible beings in His sight; which enables us to distinguish right from wrong; and according to which we are to be judged at the last day;" the Gentiles, which have not the law," without law, having "the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts accusing or else excusing," and as many as have sinned in the law, shall be judged by the law." Erring and wicked creatures we all are, and deserving of condemnation: but "if we repent truly of our former sins, stedfastly purposing to lead a new life, have a lively faith in God's mercy through Christ, with a thankful remembrance of his death, and are in charity with all men," then though our sins, negligences, ignorances, and blackslidings render us totally unworthy, yet we know the blood of our Saviour has washed away our sins, and made our robes white.

SENEX.

ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN HER SARDIAN STATE.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

In the sixth Lecture of Mr. Blunt's practical exposition of the Epistles to the seven Churches of Asia, (p. 176,) he thus speaks:

"In the last epistle to Thyatira, when we brought before you the predicted punishment of Popery, the bed of languishing into which she should be cast, we bore witness to the truth of God's word by reminding you how evidently this prediction was even now receiving its completion. But here our notices of accomplished prophecy must cease. have now arrived at that point when prophecy is, if we may so say, in its tranWe now enter upon untrodden ground. We sition state, and when we ourselves are forming the important link between predictions fulfilled, and predictions remaining to be accomplished; in fact, the step between prophecy and history. We may be, as a nation, now standing in that gap, where during our backward view, we have beheld generation after generation remaining for a moment exposed to the wrath of God, and then falling prostrate before his avenging arm. If, therefore, thou shalt not watch,' says our Lord to this Church-state of Sardis, in which our lot is cast, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.' Unless as a nation we repent, unless we retrace our steps, unless we acknowledge God more readily and more respectfully in the great council of the realm, and are willing, by our public acts, to make some sacrifices for His sake and for His glory, maintaining His Church, honouring his ever-blessed Son, hallowing His sabbaths, His threatening also will be fulfilled, and England, who has sat as a queen among the nations, will see, as the due reward of her ingratitude, these predicted judgments come upon her as a thief, and Her religious privileges, Her highest glories, trampled in the dust."

In considering these words, and in revolving Christ's threatening, it has appeared to me, that the accomplishment may be said to have

partly taken place, and to be taking place, in a remarkable manner, in the state of the Church of England. The threatened execution is, "I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee." Now let us look to the past pre-eminence of the Church of England, and mark some acts by which she has been robbed of that pre-eminence-not directly, but indirectly, as by a thief, unexpectedly, in an hour and way not foreseen as to the effects, but yet really and truly depriving her of her former pre-eminent state and standing in the British empire, and in its colonies.

I might notice the Episcopal Church in Scotland and in America ; in both which countries the episcopacy derived from the Church of England has been brought low, and robbed of its pre-eminence. But in both these countries, we trust, the Episcopal Church is beginning to be "watchful," and to "strengthen the things which remain, that were ready to die." And we may be encouraged to hope, that episcopacy will rise in those parts of the world to a better standing, and to greater efficacy.

But in the mean time, several acts in England have come upon our church as a thief, indirectly depriving her of certain portions of her former pre-eminence. The standing of our Protestant Church was greatly lowered, and continues to be lowered, by that act of Mr. Pitt's ministry, which gave, and continues, an annual support to the Popish college of Maynooth. This act proves, that in vain we call ourselves a Protestant nation, a Protestant legislature, if the minister of the Crown has not in his heart a practical sense of the Protestant doctrines of our Church: in which she proclaims the supremacy of the Scriptures, as the foundation of her faith and worship; and, in her liturgy, her articles, and her homilies, she marks out a tangible distinction between herself and the Church of Rome. Mr. Pitt did not feel, as a Protestant minister of the British crown ought to feel, this great difference and distinction. He did not remember how we had heard and received our Protestantism from the Scriptures. He did not hold fast, but lowered, our Protestantism: and he raised and supported the anti-scripturalism of Popery. The threatening was fulfilled through his instrumentality, I will come on thee as a thief.

Several ministers of the crown have since been not sincere Scriptural Protestants in heart, but mere worldly-minded men ; and some of them not even well-trained statesmen; but devoted to the gaieties of fashionable life; play-goers, novel-readers, and in their public capacity favourers of dissent, and embracers of flattery and support from Maynooth Papists. Hence the acts have been multiplied by which our Church has been robbed of its pre-eminence, as by a thief, and its standing has been lowered, that the supporters of the ministers of the crown might be raised. It had once the lead in the corporations of our towns and cities; and a test was in operation which gave higher standing to its members in such national communities. But the ministers of the crown have taken away indirectly a portion of this national standing which was due to the National Church; and they have lowered that pre-eminence, by coming on our Church as a thief, instead of raising her standard and extending her influence.

In giving to the members of the Church of Rome the rights of citizenship, the nominal Protestant ministers of the British throne have proceeded also to make the legislature only nominally Protestant. Nothing was done, at the same time, to make our Protestant Church CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 23.

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more secure, more efficacious, and more progressive. This ought to have been done, when increased civil rights were given to Roman Catholics. It was then recommended earnestly to Sir Robert Peel, that Scriptural schools, similar to those in Scotland, should have been established and supported in every parish of Ireland. All Protestants would have rejoiced to see a minister of the crown proving himself, by such a measure, a lover and extender of Scriptural instruction. Had Sir Robert Peel done this, I believe he would have been a minister of the British crown now. His works on this point were not perfect before God; and his power was subverted as by a thief. The boon which he gave to the Papists, unaccompanied by measures for giving extension to Protestantism, is now turned against him. It is the duty, and it ought to be the desire, of the Prime Minister of the British throne, to promote the glory of God by the instruction of the people in those Holy Scriptures, which are able to make them wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

From the want of this Scriptural Protestant spirit in ministers of the crown, from their being more read in secular literature than in the Bible, our Church has been further robbed, as by a thief, of the national standing due to her ministrations. The holy solemnities of matrimony have been taken away, as far as legislation can take them away, from our churches, and transferred to a layman's celebration in a Register office; and Protestant Christians have been led to consider the most sacred connexion in life as a merely civil contract. Thus not only our Church has been robbed of her ministrations to the people, but God has been robbed of the regard due to His blessing: or rather the newlymarried Christians have been robbed of the consolations and hopes with which our Church teaches her people to look to God for His blessing at the solemn commencement of the matrimonial life.

Another act which has come on our Church as a thief, has been the disjoining of the registration of births from the celebration of the sacrament of Baptism; a nominally Protestant legislature has enacted a registration, which only announces when a British subject was born. Our Church had always desired to register her children as the children of God, the members of Christ, and the heirs of heaven; nominal Protestants, in union with Papists, have now deprived the legal registration of all reference to Christianity, as if there were no thought and concern in British legislators, whether registered subjects may become Christians or not, and seek a better kingdom-that is, a heavenly one.

The last act which, as a thief, has come upon our Church, by the instrumentality of nominally Protestant ministers of the crown, has been a commission for taking away the children of the empire from her catechetical instructions, and from education in her principles and doctrines. That our Church might not know in what hour or in what manner this act should come upon her, the servants of the Throne have not dared even to ask the legislature in what way they might effect the separation of British children from the ministers of our National Church. They have not dared to appear with their measure before the Parliament assembled to legislate on the subject; but they have made haste, and not delayed, to execute the subtraction of the children from education by our National Church by a commission, and means not sanctioned by any act of legislation.

The results of the measures taken, and taking, respecting the Tem

poralities of the English and Irish Church, are not yet seen. There is reason to fear those results. There is great need that all who have power and influence in settling the temporalities and other affairs of the Church, should be indeed watchful, and strengthen the things that remain and are ready to die.

Again, in looking to the British colonies, there was a time when the Bishops of our Church were called pre-eminently to send out thither ministers who should teach her doctrines, and maintain her discipline. But now, in both our Eastern and Western colonies, the ministers of the Crown have, without an act of legislation, given to Popish prelates and clergy pensions and support; and the influence of our Church has thus been discouraged, not extended.

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Has the state of the ministry in our Church drawn down this execution of threatening? Have we been in the state in which the Church of Sardis is described ? I know thy works, that thou hast a name, that thou livest and art dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die for I have not found thy works perfect before God." On this very important part of the subject, allow me to quote the words of the Popish agitator, as spoken June 6th, at the first annual meeting of the "Catholic Institute," and printed in the "Catholic Magazine," No. 30, p. 450. Having stated how many more churches and chapels were in England before the Reformation, than now, he says: "Was it not astonishing that there should not be more than 12,000 churches belonging to the Establishment? There must have been a great deal of plunder to reduce them to that number." And then respecting the state of the Established Church, in its ministrations, he says: "It was no proof in itself of the existence of a religious principle, that a man belongs to the Establishment, because the Establishment was always good enough for the man who had no religion at all. The less religion a man had, the more ready he was to acquiesce in that which was established. Thus they had, on the one hand, a slumbering Establishment, including in numbers all those who did not entertain any active principle of religion:(of course there were no doubt many belonging to the Established Church, who were sincere Christians, labouring under involuntary error, but, in addition to these, there were many who cared very little for religion, and were therefore quite content with the Establishment); while, on the other hand, there were the members of the Catholic Church, who, from conviction, adhered to the ancient creed, active and vigilant in the cause of truth and holiness."

How great at the present moment is the responsibility of all who profess themelves to be members of our Church! and how great is their blame who give occasion to the Irish agitator and its other enemies, thus to speak of the Establishment! May God awaken us, by the acts and words of our enemies, and by the neglects of our nominal friends, to a due sense of our duties, as members of the Church Established, for its security and extension. May its ministers and people strive and pray, that we may be numbered among those who have not defiled their garments; that we may hope to walk with our Redeemer in white, and be accounted worthy of His name, and through Him be made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light. Then shall we understand, in due time, that these afflictions have fallen out for the furtherance of the Gospel; and many of the brethren waxing confident by the Church's difficulties, will be much more bold