and benign spirit of pure Christianity, and that there is in consequence a tendency in them to embrace and uphold another Gospel than that promulgated by Christ and his apostles.

I may be accused of making common cause with infidels— I expect to be thus misrepresented, and am willing to bear such reproach: but I plead not for Atheists, infidels, or scoffers; neither for any political party or religious sect, but for that which is alike sacred to all, and which I maintain is the right of all, so long as they keep the peace. I plead the cause of civil and religious liberty—the sacred rights of conscience and the freedom of the press; for the liberty of the press is neither more nor less than the liberty of speech, multiplied by the ingenuity of man, and should be held as sacred as the rest. I think no man should be persecuted for his opinion or creed, however bad: such things are not to be remedied by coercion. Such means, as I have endeavoured to show, are contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, and in my opinion are also contrary to those prophetic declarations which speak of a state of universal peace in the latter days; amongst them is one to this effect" they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more, but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid, for all people will walk every one in the name of their God, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever." Now I conceive that the portion of this prophecy which says "all people will walk every one in the name of his God," does not simply mean that that is what men do generally, but is descriptive of what will then really be the existing state of things; that all men will be allowed to do so without molestation or coercive interference. This principle will be universally acted upon by the common consent of mankind; that is, "the sword of the Spirit," will be the only weapon the Christian will make use of in order to assail the kingdom of darkness, and moral suasion the only weapon the atheist, infidel, or scoffer the deist, rationalist, or idolater, will make use of in defence of their principles. And truly until this principle be universally received and acted upon, I see not how universal peace can prevail;

it certainly cannot while men are to be persecuted for opinion; and the only way, in my estimation, to prevent the inundation of obscene and blasphemous publications, is to improve the moral taste of the people by preaching and publishing the pure Gospel. It is the demand that creates the supply; and to endeavour to stop the supplies by coercive means, only gives a stimulus to the already vitiated appetite of the people.

Doubtless in this imperfect state, the blessings of religious liberty will be abused, such offences must needs come, but shall British Christians endanger or sacrifice their liberties because infidels, atheists, socialists, and scoffers abuse these sacred rights, and make use of them as a cloak for their licentiousness? Away with such a thought; rather let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and not be entangled with such a yoke of bondage, but let us beware that we abuse not that liberty. The powers of darkness are in array against us, stirring up the bold blasphemer on the one hand, in order that blind superstition on the other may have a pretext for persecution, and thus rob us of our liberty; this is one of the ways in which that mystery of iniquity worketh, deceiving mankind under the specious appearance of its regard for the truth.

I trust I have now shown that it is contrary to that gospel delivered to us by Christ and his Apostles to put down moral evil by physical force: it must be opposed by its antagonist principle only, which is the truth or words of God. What! is not the truth of God omnipotent for such a purpose, and does he want the swords and staves of the civil magistrates to stop the impiety and obscenity of the bold blasphemer? it is a libel on the truth to suppose that of itself it is not able to contend with error; the sword of the spirit alone is amply sufficient for such a purpose, and if it prove not so it is for want of faith in those who wield it, for Christ has given us no reason to expect a blessing on the word when doled out to the people with a dead and cold formality. I believe I shall be guilty of no breach of Christian charity in expressing my belief that not a few of our established clergy are practical infidels themselvs, who believe not in the power and efficacy of the word they preach; and such I fear will continue to be the case so long as

the church is subject to state patronage and cleaves to secular power. Now we read of some of old "whom the word did not profit, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it;" how much less then shall it profit, when not only this is the case, but it is not mixed with faith even in those who profess to preach it.

I now proceed to maintain my position, that every church allied to secular power for the purpose of promoting its own. views or of suppressing moral evil by force is a harlot, and all who are found supporting such systems are in consequence guilty of spiritual fornication with the Mother of Harlots, although they may be in possession of a creed delivered from the mouth of Paul himself, word for word, and their end in promoting their creed may be good, yet the means they adopt makes it bad. It is in my opinion spiritual despotism, which is of Antichrist.

Though all may not have drunk of the mother's cup to the same degree, yet if they are seeking to aggrandize themselves by the aid of secular power, or suppress others (although they may be false churches or systems) by force, I believe they have imbibed the spirit of apostacy first exhibited by Cain, and are in alliance with the children of transgression, the seed of falsehood, the offspring of Antichrist.

Although the term whore may not be used in Scripture until the formation of God's Church amongst his ancient people the Jews, and whoredom never applied except to denote the departure of his people from himself, and in thus departing they are said to be guilty of whoredom, yet it appears plain to me that the germ (if I may be allowed the expression) of the Great Whore, that spirit of apostacý that withdraws God's people from him, and causes them to commit fornication, was in the world during the Patriarchal ages, before the formation of any system whatever, and was, as I have said, first exhibited in the conduct of Cain as an individual, which was the first perversion of true religion.

God had previously revealed to man the way in which he would be worshipped-viz. by sacrifice that should be typical of Christ: this, doubtless, had been attended to up to that time, from the circumstance of Adam and Eve's covering being

C

made of skins, which we may infer were the skins of those animals slain for sacrifice. Abel believed God, and therefore, in the exercise of his faith, came to worship in the way God had directed; Cain chose a way of his own, lusting for the exercise or dominion of his own will, in opposition to the will of God. We all know what was the result. Not that Cain was destitute of a sort of religion, but it was one of his own making, founded upon human merit; and I doubt not, if another brother had been found impious enough to blaspheme God, or deny his existence, that the same spirit that actuated him to slay one on account of his superior piety, would also have actuated him to slay the other on account of his impiety, thereby supposing he had rendered God a service. Alas! how much of this spirit has been manifested, in both ways, by the apostate of mankind since the days of Cain? Now when Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, we read that he built a city. It behoves us to consider what is meant by a city. In that infant state of the world we cannot suppose this city to have been very large, I therefore think it refers, not so much to the magnitude, extent, or number of the buildings erected, as to a community of men in which some form of civil and religious or ecclesiastical dominion was set up, in accordance with the views of him possessed of the power so to do; and as Cain had become an apostate it was by his influence, I conceive, that the mystery of iniquity thus began to deceive the nations by corrupting the first social and religious system ever formed; for, as I have shown, Cain was not destitute of a sort of religion, but chose to worship God in his own way, and therefore probably established this city or system with a view of teaching or compelling others to do the same; and this I believe has been the model after which every apostate system has since been formed. Men have forgotten that nothing constrained or forced can be acceptable to God; every offering to be accepted of him must be a free-will offering, and that after our own wills have yielded obedience to the will of God.

Though this whorish or apostate spirit was first strikingly apparent in the conduct of Cain in his openly perverting true religion, and of whom we read, "he went out from the presence of the Lord," which indicates, I think, an absolute and entire

departure from him, as we do not find he ever returned; I believe it came into the world with sin, and operates, or is the moving principle of the mind of every unrenewed individual, exhibiting itself as in the conduct of Adam and Eve-seeking to hide themselves amidst the trees of the garden from the presence of the Lord, and therefore may be said to have had an existence before the formation of any religious or social system; yet since these have been formed it has perverted them all, and has been more or less manifest in all, in proportion as unrenewed individuals have had the preponderance, or have formed the majority of such systems; yet I believe it has been most strikingly exemplified in what is called the Romish system; for although, as I have said, it may be exhibited separately in either ecclesiastical, civil, or military power, in that system all these have usually been united, inasmuch as that religion, whether Pagan or professedly Christian, has scarcely ceased to be solely subservient to the state, a mere political instrument, guided and governed by worldly men; therefore I conclude that Rome has been the principal seat of the Whore.

The Great Scarlet Whore then, the Mystic Babylon, the Mother of Harlots and abominations of the earth, I believe to be comprehended in the word lust, or that which corrupteth, the very opposite of love; the latter descriptive of the attributes of God, the former those of the devil. It may therefore be said to be lust of dominion or lust of our own way, taken in its most comprehensive sense; whether it be manifest in an individual or individuals, in tribe or tribes, in church or churches, in a nation or congress of nations; whether it be manifest in civil, ecclesiastical, or military arbitrary power, in part or all united. Wherever a man or a number of men have been found holding in unlawful subjection their fellow men, whether such lordship be exercised over their minds or their bodies, or both; they, I say, who have acted most on this principle, have drunk deepest of the cup, and have committed fornication with this Great Scarlet Whore, who thus herself has been eating and drinking and making herself drunk with the blood of the slain, "wiping her mouth and saying, I have done no wickedness;"" for in her was found," the Scripture saith, which cannot be broken,