and decrees, have perverted the truths of the gospel. Peter, Jack, and Martin have tore the lace from off the coat; but still the coat remains, and Martin has restored it in a considerable degree, and brushed it up, and made it look decent. But where have they laid my Lord? Have they hid him in the Athanasian creed and confessions of faith? Come, let us reason together; for "God "has a controversy with thee!" Yes! they have hid him; but the gospels still remain, and there he may be found, if your "soul loveth him," and I will tell you who and what he is; for you are not yet acquainted with him. I speak not this in bitterness or in wrath, but in argument, in pity, and in tears. Jesus, the gospel, the good-news, the glad tidings, is "meekness and lowliness in "heart, peace on earth, goodwill towards men! "His yoke is easy, his burden is light." Here the peculiarities" are described. They are preached on the mount, they are contained in a few aphorisms. "Do unto others as you would they should do unto you;" " love your enemies, "do good to them that hate you and persecute

"

you, and pray for them who despitefully use

you." These are the principles of the divine ethics, which Christ revealed and preached; and on these topics there is a field for descanting, and preaching usefully till the end of the world.

For what purpose has God made man? Is it not to enjoy him, to glorify him, to be happy in this state and the next. That he should create beings, endowed with such wonderful faculties as

reason, memory and imagination, for any other purpose, it is impossible, without denying his attributes of goodness, mercy and benevolence, to conceive and believe. How, then, is God's glory and the happiness of mankind promoted? By obedience to his first command, " increase and "multiply, and replenish the earth;" by rendering that existence which God confers happy, by doing good universally to all, being equally God's creatures; by worshipping God the father of all. And how is the happiness of the millions that inhabit this world to be effected and ensured? By the wisest laws, and universal charity, that love inculcated by our eldest brother, who gave us a new law, the commandment of love.

Here are no metaphysical disquisitions. The purest morality, on the most sublime motives, viz. the love of virtue for its own sake. The intellectual pleasures arising from a contemplation of all the adorable attributes of the divine mind, imitation of those attributes, by comprehending the whole race within our love and charity, being all brethren of one great family, looking up for every good in the present and future life to the general and great father of all; these enforced by threats and promises, are the duties required of man.For the practice of these, and enjoyment of the delights arising from the observance of them, sublime endowments, bright genius, extensive reading, and profound erudition are not necessary.-The attributes of God are written on the works of nature, in characters legible to the meanest

capacity. It is duties in actual life that God has required of us; and the eternal allotment of man is not determined by any gloss, or speculative, metaphysical creed, of human invention. If so, "who "then can be saved?" What ecclesiastic in the world can tell who the author of the Athanasian creed was, or, if he speaks honestly, can say he understands it, and believes the whole of it? If, then, the learned, excepting Hannah More and the non-descripts, who are in the "secrets of the Almighty, and perfectly know and understand "all his decrees from eternity," do not comprehend this complicated piece of metaphysics, shall the middling and the labouring classes of the people of this country, as well as those nations who never heard of it, without doubt everlastingly "perish?" I think Mrs. Hannah, as she knows several senators, and pretends to have great influence, ought, in charity to them, to apply to move the "Omnipotence of Parliament" to pass an act of indemnity, to exempt, at least, his Majesty's subjects from the penalties of this creed. Let not Mrs. Hannah, who can reason maliciously when it serves her purpose,.run away with and propagate the idea, that Sir Archibald is not orthodox. I have always been orthodox, and I am sure more so than she, or my brother Sir Abraham Elton, I am always, I hope, more charitable; and I am a steady and an invariable friend to the Hierarchy in the church, and royalty in the state, because that mode is most conducive to order and good government. The ecclesiastic is the best

assistant the magistrate can have. A government cannot exist without religion; and to render religion, like government, respectable, it ought to have a public establishment. Now that christianity, the present established church of England, or the people, should lose any advantage, temporal or spiritual, by the abolition or the expunging of the Athanasian creed from our otherwise most excellent Liturgy, there would be just the same reason to lament, the nine Muses would have to weep, if all the poetry, including sacred dramas, Miss Hannah ever wrote, were burnt.The church can spare it; and Mrs. H. may order herself to be wrapped in it as a winding sheet. A most reverend Archbishop, perhaps Tillotson, said, "I wish we were well rid of it." But as long as it stands in its present place, I will, as I always have done, continue to read it in obedience to authority. And what turpitude can there be to me in reading the Athanasian creed, when the immaculate Mrs. H. More, in her "Strictures on Female Education,' : tells the British ladies, that there are among the excellent moral songs of Horace, some "famous" loose, I had almost said bawdy "odes," which she has often perused, and does still read; but though, these, she says, "ought not to be read by females, ❝or to be even named or referred to," she takes care to tell the ladies, for the men may have long ago forgot them, that such "famous odes" exist.

It is very possible that Mrs. More herself may consider the reality, as well as the locality of the future punishment, that is hell, as an abstract

idea. Men of learning, certainly have no doubt respecting the certainty of future rewards and punishments. They, however, I believe, differ from Mrs. More respecting the degree of it. We have no communication with the other world. The dead return not to relate to us the affairs of the invisible state. From the various lot of man in this life, as well as from revelation, the chief end of Christ's advent, our faith is strong respecting the future existence; and that men will be rewarded and punished, is our glorious hope. But that the most wicked shall be everlastingly punished, that is to say, a punishment without end, is totally inconsistent with the divine perfections. The scriptures say, eis aiona, for ages. The punishment is no doubt terrible, and sufficient to deter the most obdurate. But Mrs. More is too bloody and tyrannical. She is for everlasting torments, torments beyond the heat of any pyrometer the human imagination can conceive, and she is ready to cast all into that furnace who do not agree with her in modes and opinion. Because she breaks her egg at the small end, she condemns those who break it on the round; and me, because I am indifferent at which end I break it, who am determined to get the food out of the shell any way, even by a Cæsarian operation, I have no doubt she would wish

"Grill'd, roasted, carbonaded, fricasse'd."

But let the human race "rejoice evermore ;" the power of man extends not beyond the grave.