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in pain. The services which it is the business of Governments to render, the services in the rendering of which their whole utility i consists, require but a trifling expenditure; and strictly to that measure ought the expenses of Government to be confined. The expences of government are only a means to these services as an end. The end and the means ought to be proportioned to one another. If the useless expenses of Government, if the money which it consumes beyond what the services of Government require, were made out of nothing, if it were rained from heaven, like manna upon the camp of the Hebrews, we might be content to see it expend as much as it pleased, unless we saw its expenditure directed to the ruin of our liberties; (a direction, by the by, which the excessive expenditure of Government can hardly fail to take;) but unhappily every thing which Government spends, belongs to somebody else, and cannot be given to Government without being taken from the owners. Now this is horrid, that one set of inen, under the denomination of Government, should be allowed to take from other men what belongs to them, only that they may spend it for no good; for nothing for which the other men are the better. This is the interior, essential description of pure injustice. This is the genuine sacrifice of one man to another; and if allowed to be practised by other men among themselves, as it is by Governments towards all, would be the destruction of human society, and of the human race.

Our case is far from being mysterious. There is a great mass of suffering; and this, with the exception of those who live upon the taxes, is universal. The nation has suffered some great calamity. The land mourns. When we ask for the source of the evil, we easily discover one; and our utmost search can discover no more. But that one, it is plainly seen, is fully sufficient to account for all the melancholy effects. We have been rushing on for a space of nearly five and twenty years, consuming nually at the hands of the Government, such a portion of property created by the people, as the world never saw consumed by any Government before. It ought to have been foreseen, that the moment the pace of consumption at the hands of Government outran the pace of reproduction at the hands of the people, misery, intense misery, would ensue.

Had the pace of destruction at the hands of Government not outrun the pace of production by the hands of the people, would no evil have been done?-Yes! abundance of evil would have been done; but it would not have existed in quite so visible a form. No feature of wretchedness, entirely new, would have arisen. The pain would have been of an old, habitual kind; and the people would, therefore, have been much less roused by it; would have been much more disposed to bear it without murmuring. There would have been less impatience, less noise, less

complaint. Ministers would have been much less annoyed, and might have gone on the usual career of expense with more ease and safety. Would this have been an advantage? In our opinion, the very reverse! For when a great disease exists in the constitution, it becomes the more dangerous the longer it lurks in the frame without being known, without exciting all the attention of the patient, and rousing him at the earliest possible moment, to the application of the specific remedy. If the people suffer no harm by the unnecessary destruction of their property at the hands of Government, though they are able every year to create as much new property as the Government destroys; then, no landlord is injured when his rents are rising, though he is every year robbed by his steward, to the full amount of this increase no merchant or manufacturer is injured, while succeeding by excessive labour to make his capital every year more and more productive, though he is each year robbed by his clerks and servants to the full amount of the addition he has made: no man who labours for his bread, and by excess of industry and frugality has got a little surplus at the end of the year, suffers any injury, if this little surplus is annually snatched away from him by a thief!

Such is the reasoning upon which the excessive and unnecessary expenditure of Government must be defended! Such the reasoning, whatever be the external shape, more hidden or more visible, which circumstances may allow the evil to assume! No reasoning will suffice, but that which subverts all the foundations of justice and morality; and establishes the will, that is, the interest, of the strongest, as the only principle of right and wrong. We challenge, upon this point, all the advocates of misgovernment upon the face of the earth. Let Government spend so much as one shilling, without which the services due from Government might have been rendered as well, and we defy human ingenuity to produce an argument in favour of it, which will not involve a defence of every species of crime. Let the wise who are in the nation ponder upon this. Let them think of the school of morality which is set up by the numerous preachers, both in Parliament and out of it, whose favourite, or at any rate constant employment, is the vindication of expense. Is it any wonder, when a doctrine which involves the defence of every breach of morality, is so diligently propagated, and so highly countenanced, that morality in this nation should be in a lamentable state that it should continue far below the state of civilization to which we have otherwise attained; and spread thick disgrace upon our Legislature?

Art. II. 1 Two Tracts intended to convey correct Notions of Regene ration and Conversion according to the Sense of Holy Scripture, and of the Church of England. Extracted from the Bampton Lecture of 1812, and published in a Form adapted for Circulation among the Community at large, at the Request of the Salop District Committee of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, by Richard Mant, M A. Chaplain to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Rector of St. Botolph's, Bishopgate, &c. A new Edition, 12mo. pp. 96. Rivington. 1815.

2. Baptism a Seal of the Christian Covenant: or Remarks on the Former of two Tracts intended to convey correct Notions of Regeneration, &c by Thomas Biddulph, A. M. Minister of St. James's Bristol, and of Durston, Somersetshire, &c. 8vo. pp. viii. 256. Price 58. Hatchard. 1816.

3. An Enquiry into the Effect of Baptism, according to the Sense of the Holy Scripture and of the Church of England: In Answer to the Rev. Dr. Mant's Two Tracts, by the Rev. John Scott, M. A. Vicar of North Ferriby, &c. 8vo. pp. 270. Seeley. 1815. 4. Spiritual Regeneration not necessarily connected with Baptism, in Answer to a Tract upon Regeneration, published by Dr. Mant. In which is examined the Doctrine of the Church of England upon above subject; and the Clergy of the Established Church justified in preaching the Doctrine of Regeneration to Persons who have been baptized. By George Bugg, A. B. 12mo. pp. 172. Price 3s. Kettering, Printed. Seeley. London. 1816.;

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T is now one hundred and fifty years since two thousand pious and many of them learned clergymen of the Church of England, were compelled by the Act of Uniformity, to resign their stations in the Establishment, and in many instances relinquishing their only means of subsistence, to embrace the alternative of contumely, poverty, and suffering, rather than bow their consciences to the usurped authority of an impious faction. These conscientions recusants became nonconformists, not on the ground of any abstract principles respecting the lawfulness or the expediency of ecclesiastical establishments, but because the conditions, on which alone they could have retained their connexion with the National Church, were such as it was well known they would not, because conscientiously they could not, comply with. The Act of Uniformity was framed deliberately and expressly with a view to exclude them from the Church. It required them to declare their unfeigned assent and consent to all and every thing contained and prescribed in and by the book entitled, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments:' and to subscribe ex animo to the declaration that the book of Common Prayer and of ordaining bishops, priests, and deacons, containeth nothing in it which is contrary to the word of God, and that it may be

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lawfully used; and that they themselves would use the form in the said books prescribed in public prayer, and administration of the Sacraments, and no other.' With this, it was foreseen, the principles of many of the elergy would not admit of their yielding compliance; and one of the reasons assigned by the ejected ministers for their refusing to sign this declaration, is this, That the book of Common Prayer teaches the doctrine ' of real baptismal regeneration, and certain salvation consequent thereupon.' This was not a solitary objection, but it assumes a prominent place among their reasons, for nonconformity; and proves that in their apprehension there was no room to doubt that the doctrine of the formularies they were called upon to subscribe, was that of real baptismal regeneration in the sense now contended for by Dr. Mant, as the doctrine of the Church of England.

As these good men had the best opportunities for ascertaining in what light the subject was viewed both by those who imposed, and those who subscribed to the declaration, which so specifically refers to the administration of the Sacraments, and as they had no rational inducement to quit their stations in the Church, but the reasons that forbade their compliance with this authoritative requisition, it would seem very strange that they should be under any mistake as to the real import of the language of the Church in the prescribed ritual. And if they were, it was still more strange that no benevolent attempt was made to convince them of their error by those who could so easily have removed at least this objection, by simply denying the assertion on which it rested. It is, however, not a little remarkable, that after the lapse of a hundred and fifty years, the validity of this reason, assigned by those pious clergymen for their nonconformity, should be virtually called in question by ministers of the very Church from which the former were ejected; and that one of those very doctrines, for objecting to which they 'became Nonconformists, should now be denied to be the doctrine of the Church of England. So then, all parties have laboured under a mere mistake; for the formularies of the Church involve no such notion as the majority, to say the least, of her dignitaries and officiating ministers, have during this period been subscribing to, and persisting in, and promulgating both from the font and the pulpit, in almost every parish throughout the kingdom. And the mode of reasoning by which it is attempted to establish this singular fact, is not less remarkable. The arguments by which Dr. Mant's quotations and statements are met by Mr. Biddulph and Mr. Scott, may, without any intentional misrepresentation, be stated thus: I. The doctrine contended for by Dr. Mant, is not the doctrine of the Bible" ergo, it cannot be the doctrine of the Church of England. 2.

The doctrine of Dr. Mant is not fairly deducible from the articles of the Church, and the Church cannot be inconsistent with itself: ergo, it cannot be the real meaning, unequivocal as the language may be, of her ritual. 3. The doctrine of Dr. Mant is inconsistent with the sentiments of Bishops, Martyrs, and Reformers of the Church, as well as with our own belief who have subscribed our ex animo assent and consent to all and every thing in the Book of Common Prayer: therefore-and Oh that those misguided nonconformists had reasoned thus !-it cannot be the doctrine of the Church of England.

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Mr. Biddulph alleges, as a further objection to Dr. Mant's doctrine, as he terms it, that he considers it to have a very dangerous tendency. So did the Nonconformists; but what has this to do, in determining either the truth of a doctrine or the question of fact, as to its being the doctrine of the Prayer book? Dr. Mant considers Mr. Biddulph's sentiments as no less dangerous in their tendency. Let the doctrine, however, be shewn to be agreeable to the dictates of Divine truth, and its tendency cannot be dangerous. But the doctrine may be both untrue and pernicious, and yet-we speak as of hypothetic possibilities-it may nevertheless be the doctrine of the Church of England. What then is the state of the question, as matter of fact?

The office for the ministration of public baptism, to which we naturally refer for a declaration of the sentiments of the Church on this point, opens with an admonition to the people to pray, that the child' may be baptized with water and the Holy Ghost, and received into Christ's holy Church.' The second prayer has the following words: We call upon Thee for this infant, that he coming to the holy Baptism, may receive remission of his sins by spiritual regeneration.' The address immediately following the baptismal rite, calls upon the people to give thanks: Seeing now that this child is regenerate, and grafted into the body of Christ's Church.' The subsequent prayer contains expressions of thanksgiving, that it hath pleased God to regenerate this Infant' with his Holy Spirit,' to receive him' for his own child by adoption, and to incorporate him' into His holy Church. And the petition which immediately ensues, is, that as the child is made partaker of the death of thy Son, he may also be partaker of his resurrection.' Wheatley informs us, that by the first Common Prayer of King Edward, after the child was baptized, the Priest, according to an ancient custom, was to anoint the Infant upon the head, saying, Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath regenerated thee by water and the Holy Ghost, and hath given unto thee Remission of all thy sins; He vouchsafe to anoint thee with the Unction of his Holy Spirit, and

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