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of faith, and points of difcipline. But the church funds, from the voluntary contributions of chriftians, being fufficient. for the purpose of them, they made no farther provifion for the support of the clergy. They only fhewed their piety, as other rich individuals did, by building churches, making prefents of plate, and veftmer.ts, and grants of lands to some of them. By their example they encouraged these donations, and thus the church grew rich, and was fupported by its own proper funds, as any other corporate body might be.

But the emperors never interfered in the choice of bishops, till the bishops of Rome becoming very wealthy, and from their peculiar fituation having great power, the emperors affumed a negative on the choice of the people, though there is hardly any example of their making a real use of it. They feldom or never prefumed to recommend any particular perfon antecedently to the choice of the people. the appointment of the ordinary bifhops and clergy they never interfered at all, directly or indirectly.

In

When, upon the irruption of the northern nations, and the establishment of the feudal fyftem, churchmen got poffeffion of eftates in fee, those estates were fubject to the fame laws as if they had been held by other perfons. And as the bishops and abbots had no natural heirs, the princes beftowed them, at least the temporalities, as the estates were called, on whom they pleased. By this means the greater bishops and abbots became temporal lords, and in confequence of this obtained a right to fit in the great council of the nation, along with other peers of the realm. But this did not better the condition of the ordinary clergy, or provide for their maintenance by law.

Tithes, by which they are now legally maintained, took place very gradually, and were firft given voluntarily, fometimes to the poor, and fometimes to the church, at the pleasure of the donor. By degrees, however, the clergy excluded the poor, and appropriated all the tithes to themselves; and about A. D. 600, tithes, from being established

as

as a custom, became in fome inftances legal rights; because many estates were bequeathed with an obligation to pay tithes to particular churches. When tithes were left to diftant churches, the priests of the parish in which the eftate lay used to complain; and at length, but fo late as the reign of our king John, the pope made a law that all tithes should be paid to the parish priest; and after fome time they were levied by law, in all parifhes without exception*.

Thus you see that this boasted establishment of yours, venerable, as you think, for its antiquity, is in fact but of yesterday, and derives its being from a fucceffion of innovations, all of them departures from the genuine principles of christianity; and all together they form a system of which the apostles could not have had any idea. On the contrary, all our customs are exactly thofe of the primitive church, and fuch as were universal in the chriftian world before any establishment was known.

I am,

My good friends and neighbours,

Yours, &c.

*There was much more reafon for an univerfal tax upon the kingdom to fupport religion in former times, than there can be at prefent. But the times, or circumstances of things, change, while the inftitutions, to which they gave birth, continue. When this tax was imposed, there was no other religion then one in the country. At least, avowed fe&taries were very few; and as the particular inconvenience of tithes was not then attended to, and all derived what they deemed to be a benefit from the establishment which was fupported by them, no perfon complained. But now the cafe is widely different. Great numbers are so far from deriving any advantage from the established religion, that they are oppressed by it, and yet they are compelled to fupport and enforce that oppreffion. They have, therefore, great cause of complaint, whether there be any fenfe of equity in the nation to attend to the complaint

or not.

LETTER

F 4

LETTER VIII.

Remarks on what Mr. Madan has obferved on this Subject.

My Townsmen and Neighbours,

MR. Madan reprefents the cause of churchmen, in op

posing the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, as a great conflitutional caufe, and this, he fays in his Preface, is the chief motive for the publication of his Sermon. But be affured it is constitutional only with respect to the clergy, and not to yourselves. For it is only a power of compelling you to pay them for what inftructions they are pleased to give you, and to pay them in the moft burthensome manner poffible; which often operates to defeat the end of all their inftructions, and which leaves you no controul upon their conduct, whether you approve of it or not. This, indeed, is the case of almost all establishments; but it is evidently a diminution of your liberty, and an augmentation of their power. It is, befides, an infult upon you, as it implies that, if you were not thus compelled to have such a religion as the government provides for you, you would have none at all.

But in the primitive times, religion, and the maintenance of it, were, as I have fhewn, voluntary things, and the compulsory payment of tithes, &c. (of which no hint is given in the New Testament) introduced the tyranny of the clergy, and the oppreffion of the laity; and this kept increafing, till, at the time of the reformation, no tyranny was ever fo dreadful. The heathen emperors themselves never carried on a more bloody perfecution than did chriftians who had power against other chriftians who had no power, and all for the support of an antichriftian hierarchy. And all that was done in England by Henry VIII. and queen Elizabeth, was setting up another hierarchy in its place. Mr. Madan, however, quite forgetting the primitive and apoftolic state of

things,

things, in which all perfons were perfectly free to support their religion in whatever manner they pleased, says, p. 6, "the indispensable neceffity of some national church," (that is, a church to which men are compelled to contribute) "is so clear in itself, fo capable of abundant proof, that it may be rather affirmed as an axiom, than offered as a propofition." Indeed, it is much more easy to affirm this, than to prove it; and in fact, the very reverse of what he affirms as an axiom, may be demonftrated from the New Teftament (to which such a constitution is altogether unknown) from the nature of things, and from actual fact. But Mr. Madan, taking his axiom for granted, fays, p. 7, << every state and its national church have a mutual con"nexion, and a reciprocal intereft." But here the national church means nothing more than the national clergy, and not the christian people of which that church confifts. For your interefts, as I have fhewn, are facrificed for theirs.

The affurance with which churchmen continually repeat their favourite maxims, without the leaft regard to the actual state of the world, which is a ftanding refutation of their affertions, is aftonishing. Thus Mr. Madan fays, p. 7. "what civilized state was ever known permanent and "flourishing, unconnected with fome fyftem of religious "tenets." To fay nothing of this maxim being equally capable of being urged in favour of heathenifin, mahometanism, popery, or any system of religion whatever, Mr. Madan certainly never thought of America, when he wrote his Sermon. For that country has been permanent and flourishing for near two centuries, without any such system, as he imagines to be abfolutely necessary. In many of those provinces no man was ever compelled to pay to the support of any particular fpecies of religion approved by the state: for the state left every man to chufe his own. And in Penfylvania, which, unfortunately for Mr. Madan's hypothefis, was from the first, and ever continued to be, the most flourishing of them all, no man was compellable to fupport any religion, and yet there never was any want of religion, or of good morals, in that proyince.

All

All the ftates of America are now in the same fituation. They have no national religion at all. In that respect every man does what is right in his own eyes, and all persons, without distinction, are admiffible to every civil office; and yet they see no caufe to apprehend that ruin and deftruction which Mr. Madan forebodes will be the confequence of the diffolution of our national establishment. Since their emancipation from the power of this country, the North Americans are imitating our civil institutions, and adopting a form of government fimilar to our excellent one; but they wifely avoid every thing like the ecclefiaftical part of it, as the clergy always affect to speak.

If these establishments of chriftianity were fo neceffary, as Mr. Madan reprefents, the American States could not have fubfifted a single year without one; and in the late unfettled state of their civil government, when the ecclefiaftical constitution was certainly, as Mr. Madan himself would fay, most wanted, they found no want of it at all. They have now done without one, in a state independent of England, fourteen years, and for any thing that appears, they may do as well fourscore, or four hundred, years. Now, why may not Englishmen on this fide the Atlantic do without a national church (this appendage, or rather excrescence, of our constitution) as well as Englishmen on the other fide of it?

To fubdue your minds to a disposition to submit to every thing that you find established, and to oppose all innovation, Mr. Madan brings into one view, p. 14, all the paffages in which the apostles urged fubmiffion to the Roman government in their time; without confidering the peculiar fituation of christians at that time, and without confidering that his application of those maxims would inculcate fubmiffion to every government, however tyrannical, that happens to be once established, be it heathen, mahometan, or popish. If the powers that be are ordained of God, was not Henry VIII. guilty of a great fin in refifting them? For certainly he found the power of the pope as fully established in this

country