a course of years having discovered that it is produce tive of much good, and preventive of many evils.

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But the restless mind of man, rarely at ease with the present state of things, and still impatient for a better, has ever, as opportunities served, been assuming various projects, of visionary improvements, but all really tending to defeat or disturb this wellordered regulation.

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The most plausible, yet as visionary as any, is that called a COMPREHENSION. A word very expressive to distinguish the Thing, from that Unity of the Spirit; and even from that Uniformity, spoken of above. An Unity is the agreement in heart of those who aim at the same thing though by different ways; an Uniformity exacts a profession of the same thing by the same way; but a Comprehension would be for tacking together different things and different ways, even under the existing difference of profession. The first is brotherly-concord; the second is Church-communion: but the last is political combination. Nor is the Scheme less impracticable than it is mischievous; as may be seen from the following considerations.

1. This project hath of late been conceived by men who agreed in nothing but in a dissatisfaction with the present order of things. For one side having been unjustly prejudiced against the equity of a TOLERATION; and the other, as unjustly, against the rights of an ESTABLISHMENT; they readily concurred in a Comprehension, that seemed to supersede the use of both. But we needed not the gift of prophecy to foresce that it would come to nothing;

nothing; since the very thing which so naturally brought the confederates together, would, when they understand one another, as naturally separate them; namely, the profession of inconsistent Principles: and if not so; yet their Principles being at the same time equally false, it would make their staying together ineffectual: For what could a mutual falsehood produce but an impracticable absurdity. And well perhaps is it for Religion that it always does so. For this Comprehension, the ape, and mimic of Unity, tends to the destruction of that spiritual SOCIETY, which Unity strengthens and supports.

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2. The Projectors of it are generally private men, who undertake for more than they can perforın. For it is not the temper of Societies to come into what is promised in their names, by men uncommissioned to act for them.

3. The main end of a Comprehension being PEACE; indeed the only end that could induce the Magistrate to engage in such a business; and the Community being already in posession of this blessing by a well-ordered Toleration; He will, I suppose, be very hardly persuaded to exchange an experienced good in possession, for one untried; which, though it appear fair in prospect, yet the road to it may prove difficult and dangerous.

4. It hath been often essayed in vain by the worthiest and wisest men of their times, such as CASSANDER and GROTIUS. And it is no wonder this fancied Magisterium should still evaporate in the projection. For either the Comprehension

must

must be so large and loose as to dissolve all Church Government, and even Religious Society: Or, if it be so tempered as to keep these subsisting, there will be need of all the regulations which distinguish and separate things tolerated from things established; and then Comprehension will shrink back again into an empty name.

On the whole, Since the Church of Christ hath been so unhappy as to be deprived of its greatest blessing, the UNITY OF THE SPIRIT, let not the same, or even contrary follies, be of force to persuade such who are sensible of the loss, to try conclusions with what yet remains, the next best good of Society, THE BOND OF PEACE; but rather let them be content to preserve what we still possess, by such sober means as the genius and disposition of the times will permit us to employ. These we have long experienced to be abundantly sufficient. So that those who wish well either to the ESTABLISHED, or to the TOLERATED, Societies of Christians, have nothing to do but to prevent the exercise of their distinct powers from degenerating: This, indeed, might at last provoke the MAGISTRATE to lend an unwilling ear to the ignorant and destructive schemes of these vain and idle Visionaries: But till then, I suppose, Sober Churchmen, and experienced Ministers of State, will have this mutual confidence in one another, that neither the Church will abuse its privileges, nor the State leave it unprotected.

SERMON XIII.

THE INFLUENCE OF LEARNING ON REVELATION.

LUKE Xviii. 8.

-WHEN THE SON OF MAN COMETH, SHALL HE FIND FAITH ON THE EARTH?

THIS is one of those fatal MARKS expressive

of the latter fortunes of the Christian Church, as foretold, in the sacred Writings, amongst the Signs of the second coming of the Son of man. And with This, many other of those signs now concurring, seem, in the opinion of serious men, to point out to us the near approach of that awful period; the completion of the moral, and the renovation of the natural system of things.

But the labour of the Christian Divine will be perhaps better employed in searching out the natural causes of the rising disorders in the Church of Christ, than in hazardous conjectures about Futurity; although laid open to him in some measure by the import of those marks, which the predicted evils are supposed to bear.

And indeed, if He have not this discretion, his speculations will sometimes, as in the case before

us,

us, be rudely called off from the Prophetic matter, to other considerations, in which the honour of Christianity is more immediately concerned.

A late noble Writer, who, together with the Religion of his Country, hath attempted to erase from the minds of men the very idea of all that goes under the name of Religion, hath, amongst his discoveries of the FIRST PHILOSOPHY, laid down the following maxim : "That since the revival of learning in the West, and the consequent practice of thinking for ourselves, the CHRISTIAN FAITH hath kept gradually decaying; and men have given less and less credit to its pretensions †." From hence he would infer, and not illogically on such a gratuitous Principle, "that the Religion of Jesus is false."

I propose therefore to debate this matter with him; a point of the utmost importance to the honour of Revelation.

His Lordship's proposition may be expressed in plainer terms, "That the more the world has advanced in real knowledge, the more it has discovered of the intenable pretensions of the Gospel."

To expose the futility of his maxim, I shall first of all shew, that it was not IGNORANCE which Lord BOLINGBROKE.

*

The resurrection of Letters was a fatal period: the Christian system has been attacked, and wounded too, very severely since that time-And again, Christianity has been in decay ever since the resurrection of Letters.-Lord BOLINGBROKE, on the study and use of history, Vol. III, pp. 430, 31. Octavo Edition.