ful responsibilities. Let him see to them. It is at his peril, if "he receives not the love of the truth, that he may be saved."

Another of the great principles of religious liberty as disclosed in the New Testament is, that religion is a spiritual system, and must be promoted by a moral and spiritual influence. A man's opinions do not admit of coercion. You may coerce his professions, but not his judgment. You may compel him to acknowledge that he believes what he does not believe; you may make him a hypocrite; but you cannot make him a Christian. You cannot reach his understanding by pains and penalties, nor by any means of this sort give vigour to his conscience, or affect his heart. You may awaken resistance; you may rouse enmity; you may give hardihood to his obduracy and make him patient in suffering; but you cannot change his views, nor impart holiness of heart, or life. These are produced by the blessing of God upon his own truth. Men have a part to act in securing this result, but it is of no coercive kind. They may reason, expostulate, persuade, but it belongs not to men to compel. The field of argument and impartial investigation is the arena where the truth has ever won her most splendid victories. Christianity is no gainer, but has been uniformly the looser by calling in the aid of the secular arm. There never was a greater error than in supposing that the interests of truth and piety were thus advanced. We may be sincerely desirous to deliver men from

their intellectual and moral aberrations; we may oppose every system of delusion and wickedness, and endeavour to break the bondage of the prince of darkness; but physical force is not the way to accomplish this benevolent end. If you would promote error, persecute it. If you would establish false religions on a more permanent basis than they have yet occupied; if you would enlist the sympathies of men in favour of a cause, which otherwise would have no sympathy; persecute it—send its advocates to the stake and gibbet-persecute it to the death. "Persecution is disgraceful to those who inflict, but honourable to those who suffer it. It throws around them the charm and glory of a rela tionship to the apostles and prophets, and men of whom the world was not worthy." Error is not worthy of such an honour. I would not persecute error. I would not persecute at all; but, if there must be persecution, let truth have the honour of being the victim. There is a God in heaven, and a conscience in the bosoms of men; and it were infinitely better for the cause of righteousness to suffer wrong, than to do wrong. "In meekness instructing those who oppose themselves, peradventure God will give them repentance, to the acknowledgement of the truth,"-this is the way the Scriptures recommend of opposing error, destroying false religions, and turning the world to the service and worship of the true God.

There is still another very obvious principle of religious liberty disclosed in the New Testament;

and that is, that Civil Government, as such, has no other concern with religion than to respect the rights of conscience, and extend to men of all religious names and denominations its impartial protection. This is all that the true religion solicits of the secular power. This is not religious toleration merely, but religious liberty. I am acquainted with no writer who has discussed this single point with so much ability, as the celebrated John Locke. He contended with the monstrous error, to which we have already referred, and which was so rife during the reigns of the first and second Charles, and even through the intervening revolution in the days of Cromwell, that men ought to be coerced by pains and penalties inflicted by the civil power, to profess a definitely prescribed form of religious doctrines, and to conform themselves to one particular formulary of religious worship. His object was to draw the lines of demarcation between the Church and the State; to distinguish between the powers of civil government and the powers of religion; and to show that the one is exclusively concerned in promoting the spiritual and eternal interests of men, and that the other has the care of the Commonwealth. The province of the civil magistrate, is to secure to all the members of the body politic, the just enjoyment of life, liberty, reputation and property. This is the whole of its jurisdiction. The care of souls is not committed to the civil magistrate, any more than to other men. The power

of the civil magistrate, consisting only in outward force, is of such a kind that it can never be applied for religious purposes, in any other way than by the impartial execution of equal laws for the protection of religious liberty. The Church is a different society, formed for different objects, and acting within altogether a different jurisdiction. It is a spiritual community, and clothed with no temporal power. Its objects are the maintainance of the true religion and the true worship of God in the world. It has its principles and laws, and is bound by the authority of Jesus Christ as its only King and Head. The Church has no more power in the State, than the State has in the Church. They are perfectly distinct organizations, are pursuing different objects, and exercise a different authority. The liberties of the State are never in greater jeopardy than when the Church is invested with civil power; while the liberties of religion and the Church are sure to be endangered by giving ecclesiastical power to the State. The Church never acts more out of cha racter, or more unworthy of her high calling, than when she arrogates to herself the authority of civil government, and endeavours by fire, or sword, or civil disabilities of any kind to coerce men to receive her doctrines and worship. "My kingdom," says the Saviour, "is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight." The Church has no secular organization; no secular head; no secular nature. She

may not oppose force to force, as the kingdoms of this world do; nor may she exercise the force which this world exercises even in the execution of her own laws.

Such are some of the leading principles of religious liberty as contained in the New Testament. The world is under lasting obligation for the illustration and defence of these principles to the independent churches in Great Britain. It was among them that the immortal Locke became so deeply imbued with that manly liberality of sentiment which distinguished him above the men of his age. Lord King, himself of the established church, in his life of this celebrated philosopher, has the liberality to say, "By the independent divines, who were his instructors, Locke was taught those principles of religious liberty which they were the first to disclose to the world.-As for toleration, or any true notion of religious liberty, or any general freedom of conscience, we owe them not in the least degree to what is called the church of England. On the contrary, we owe all these to the independents in the time of the commonwealth, and to Locke, their most illustrious and enlightened disciple." Nor let us withhold the honour that is due to the personal exertions of Cromwell himself. There never was a firmer friend to the rights of conscience than Oliver Cromwell. It was his interest in the cause of protestantism that induced him, on his assumption of the protectorate to choose an alliance with Louis XIV. rather than with Spain