Mr. S.—Well, admitting that you are right, and that my view of the text is just as ignorant as it is common among Dissenters, would you not consent to abolish the Church-rate on account of the opposition that is made to it?
Mr. C.—Most certainly not. If on that principle the Church-rate is abolished, on the same convenient principle, you might abolish every other kind of rate, and at last refuse to pay to the State, as well as the Church.
Mr. S.—I should now like to hear what you have to say against an annual subscription, as the best way of raising the money wanted for your Church.
Mr. C.—It might do pretty well if your Voluntary principle could be relied on. But how can we rely on that which you are afraid to trust?—Nothing is more certain than the uncertainty of an annual subscription; and if our old churches were made to depend on annual subscriptions to keep them up, my opinion is, they would soon fall into decay, and this I suspect is the opinion too of you Dissenters. Many of your Dissenting meeting-houses have been sold, and not a few of them have been converted into churches;—and why? Because they could not stand on their own Voluntary principle.
Mr. S.—Really, I feel as if you had knocked me and the Voluntary principle both down together. But have you any other objections to an annual subscription besides its uncertainty?
Mr. C.—Yes, annual subscriptions generally fall exclusively upon those benevolent persons who give to everything; whereas the Church-rate obliges those selfish persons to bear their part who would not, if they could help it, do anything for the bodies or souls of their fellow-creatures.
Mr. S—Then, you would have no annual subscriptions?
Mr. C.—That is not my meaning. Sunday School, and Religious Societies may be properly supported by annual subscriptions, or congregational collections; and what Christian would like to miss such appeals to his charity?
Mr. S.—To tell you the truth, I begin to think that there is some wisdom in not allowing your venerable old churches to depend on the Voluntary principle; and that there is no great objection to raise money for the necessary expenses of the Church by a rate, which divides the burden among so many, according to the property of each, that it is hardly felt by any. Those who, like our Squire and other great men, pay the most, feel it perhaps the least. Really, my scruples have almost vanished; I fear they had but little foundation in religion, reason, or common sense; and I shall go again to my wheel, and let my neighbours see, for the time to come, that I have too much good sense to be again made the tool of a party.
Mr. C.—Mr. Spinwell, [12] let me speak one word to you before we part. Days and weeks, months and years, like your wheel, go round and round, with wonderful rapidity, but with this difference, that you can stop your wheel, whilst neither of us can stay the progress of time. The thread of life is far spun both with you and me. Let me then advise you to leave the noisy “potsherds of the earth” to “strive together,” how they may most effectually resist the payment of a few shillings a year, in support of a Church, which the wisest and best of men have maintained to be so necessary to our national welfare.—Considering how the world is passing away with all its transient concerns, let us pray for grace and strength to “press towards the mark for the prize of our high calling of God in Christ Jesus,” that so we may meet at last in the paradise of God, there to dwell in perfect love and everlasting peace.