their children, out of error. But, as the blessed Gospel directs us to look upon all mankind as our brethren, shall no exertion be made to bring our brothers to a right understanding of the truth? Shall we shut ourselves up in up in privacy, convert our houses into monasteries, and think nothing of the world without, but leave the people to blunder on in the high ways and hedges of destruction? Shall we take no pains to persuade the ignorant that religion is not priestcraft; shall we suffer the wolves of blasphemy to devour the sheep, instead of guarding them, and guiding them, to their Divine Shepherd, and placing them in his sheepfold? It has been my lot to be placed in a situation where I have witnessed the benefits of lay exertion, and from my experience in that situation, I am convinced that there is no just cause for despair of the apparently most depraved and hardened. Some one has observed, "The rock must be struck" before it can be expected to

pour forth water, the water of life. Howard struck the rock, and his name will endure to the last hour of the world, and we may confidently hope his reward will be more than an earthly one. Honor is due also to the name of Fry! Every member of the Established Church, whose "heart is right towards God," will exult in such beneficent and truly Christian actions. He must have a very confined mind who can feel envy or jealousy of such exalted piety, because he considers, as I do, the tenets of her sect to be erroneous. What would this world be, if, instead of persons, differing in opinion, attacking with malignant feelings, their dissenting brethren, we only lamented their errors, but cherished an indispensable regard towards them as fellow-christians! I declare this sentiment not from indifference to the tenets of the Church of England; on the contrary, I have been charged (in consequence of some expressions in a former publication) with too rigid an adherence

to those tenets. Can there be too strong an adherence to the Doctrines, which we have avowed, and to which we have declared our assent and consent? But it is said, what right have any to talk of orthodoxy, what right have any to assert that the tenets of the Church of England are the only right ones? To this I will answer in plain and direct terms. In the first place, whoever does not think them to be. right ought not to hold the ministerial office. I do think them right for the following reasons. There is no other persuasion which I could not confute, and which has not been confuted. Our tenets have never yet been proved to be false, and my opinion is, they never will, nor can be. Still the Protestant ground is open to argument, no door is shut against investigation. We pronounce no such doctrine as infallibility. We know what church lays claim to that character, and ascribes it to their mere mortal and pec cable head. A writer in the last century,

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in his letter to Pope Clement, observes, "The only difference (I quote from memory) between your church and ours, I find to be this; that you cannot err, and we never do; therefore, we have all the benefit of infallibility without the absurdity of pretending to it." I have digressed from my object, but I mean this Letter to be general and desultory. I return to declaring the duty of contending for the faith. The parable itself, in which our Saviour made use of the expressions of "children of this world," and the "children of light," will forcibly point out this duty. What does the blessed Jesus mean to enforce in this parable, but the necessity of exertion? He asserts, that worldly people are more wise than religious ones, but why? because they spare no pains, no diligence, to effect their objects; they will rise up early, and lie down late, and eat the bread of carefulness; but the children of light are satisfied with their faith only,

are dormant, and inert. Is not this rebuke from the highest authority, sufficient to command exertion? The enemy of the Christian faith is ever watchful, ever at his post, ever looking for opportunities to make a breach in our fortifications, and ought we to sleep, ought Christians to act as if they thought the citadel were not worth the pains of defending, as if it were a matter of indifference whether faith or infidelity prevailed, whether God or Mammon? If zealous Christians are either to distrust their own powers and capacity, and therefore argue, that it is not necessary for them to write, to preach, or to act; if each man is to sit down, as the great Athenian orator observed, "himself hoping to do nothing, but that his neighbour would do every thing for him,"* the enemy must necessarily prevail.

When blasphemy, of the most

* Και παυσαςθη, αυτος μεν εδεν εκαςος ποιησειν ελ πιζων, τον δε πλησιον πανθ' υπερ αυτό πραξειν.

First Philippic of Demosthenes.