I am really sorry, Sir, you were so much at a loss to interpret the meaning of that “liberal basis,” upon which his Lordship recommended the Society to your notice. The terms “broad bottom,” [35a] which you substitute in their place, would have expressed well enough his Lordship’s intention; but as he was writing to a Country Clergyman, and not to “a preaching blacksmith,” he would not “fail in the respect” that is due to “a gentleman and a Christian.” [35b]—“Those who are used to good company (you say) know how to behave.” [35c] What then is his Lordship to think of you, when you tell him, that you have “not been educated on liberal-basis’d or broad-bottomed principles,” [35d] but that either you have not put on your prettiest behaviour, or that you would “feel” less “uneasy,” than you pretend, in that class of company to which, as a member of the Bible Society, you would expect to be introduced?
But were there no other authorities to which you could have recourse, when the lexicographer failed you, than the mouths of the “vulgar?” [36] I have an authority before me, which throws so much more light upon his Lordship’s “liberal basis,” than either the synonyms of the “lexicographer,” the slang of the “vulgar,” or the etymological quirks of the “Country Clergyman,” that I shall make no apology for producing it:
“Give us all grace, to put away from us all rancour of religious dissension, that they who agree in the essentials of our most holy faith, and look for pardon through the merits and intercession of the Saviour, may, notwithstanding the differences upon points of doubtful opinion, and in the forms of external worship, still be united in the bonds of Christian charity, and fulfil thy blessed Son’s commandment, of loving one another as he hath loved them.”—Form of Prayer for the Fast, October 19, 1803.
Now here, Sir, I found that “liberal basis” upon which the Society is erected, and I am surprised you did not think of looking for it in the same place. But perhaps the liberal basis of the prayer, like that of the Society, “has no charms for” you. I will not presume such a fact; but if you were to affirm that it is so, I should have very little difficulty in believing you.
You do not however intend “to deny the possibility of any sort or degree of union among certain descriptions of persons composing the Society.” [37a] You are “perfectly aware that all the various and discordant tribes of dissenters from the church of England may unite from the Papist down to the Quaker; for they frequently have, and frequently do unite against the church.” [37b]—“But when (say you) was it ever known that they have united with the church? Show me the history, lay your finger on the page, and say, my Lord, when, where, and upon what occasion, did they ever unite with the church for any important and righteous design. I must be satisfied on this point; I must request some fair example and precedent, to prove that the thing is neither impossible nor improbable, before it can be even prudent to listen to your Lordship’s proposal.” [37c]
Now here, Sir, you throw out a challenge, which, with his Lordship’s permission, I am willing to accept. I will show you the history of such union as you indirectly deny: I will lay my finger on the page, and say, when, and where, and upon what occasion the different tribes of Dissenters did unite with the church for an important and righteous design. The history then to which I refer is that portion of our country’s annals which commenced with the autumn of 1803, and which is not yet completed. The page upon which I lay my finger is that which displays the voluntary creation of a national force; in which, if one feature was more illustrious than another, it was the magnanimity with which the subjects of the same government agreed “to put away all rancour of religious dissension,” and to unite in the prosecution of that righteous and important design in which they had embarked, “notwithstanding their differences upon points of doubtful opinion, and in the forms of external worship.” Let the Country Clergyman peruse this awful yet luminous page of our history; let him weigh well the danger which threatened the throne, the church, and the nation; let him read in those discourses, which gratitude will not allow us to forget, how that danger was proclaimed by preachers of every denomination; let him walk through the land, in the length of it and the breadth of it, and see how many myriads were added to the national force by those powerful and seasonable appeals to the feelings, the conscience, and the spirit of Britons; and he will want, I think, no other “example and precedent” to prove that an union of the various tribes of Dissenters WITH the church of England, for an important and righteous design, “is neither impossible nor improbable.”
With such a recent portion of history before your eyes, I cannot see, I confess, either the justice or the policy of your travelling back over a century and half of ground in order to find matter of accusation against those of our fellow-subjects, with whom a sense of common danger has united us, and with whom it is as important now as it was two years ago, that we should continue united. The politico-religious strife which subsisted between our ancestors and theirs is not a sacred inheritance. I trust the various denominations of Christians of the present day would think themselves as much disgraced by the events of “the grand rebellion,” [39a] as the modern members of the establishment would by the revenge with which it was followed. “The church” has, I know, “her sores and scars;” and so, I lament to say, have those who dissented from her. Let us own the truth—“the heavenly dove” [39b] has been sometimes encouraged to make a little too free with “the wings and feathers” of the smaller birds, and it must not therefore be wondered if her own have suffered. Let her but act up to the sweetness of her nature, and allow the other tenants of the air to have their note; she then may plume her golden breast without annoyance, and bear her grateful blessings on outstretched wings to every nation under heaven.
Your zeal for extending the boundaries of that church in which you minister, is both natural and just: I participate in it with all the feelings of my heart. It is an object which has my prayers, and shall, by God’s assistance, through life command my services. But I will not set her up as the entire and only spouse of Christ: for how can I then curse those whom God hath not cursed?—Away with those superannuated fears, that she must grow barren because her younger sisters are fruitful. I have no doubt but both she and they have “borne many an illustrious child of God” [40a] to their heavenly bridegroom, and will continue to bear many more. I lament with you, that they prefer their Gerizim to our Zion: but I must not therefore refuse to have any dealings [40b] with them, or to entertain any charity for them. If they worship God in spirit and truth, if with the heart they believe on the Lord Jesus unto righteousness, if they “agree in the essentials of our most holy faith, and look for pardon through the merits and intercession of the Saviour,” I cannot, I dare not, I will not put them out of the covenant of grace and mercy and peace. Aliens from our external commonwealth, they are yet fellow-citizens with the saints: and though the earthly Jerusalem disclaim them, they will hereafter be acknowledged by the Jerusalem above—the mother of us all. [40c]
But the treason can no longer be dissembled; the eleventh article of the Society’s constitution proclaims it: that article purports, that “the committee (which is to conduct the business of the Society, appoint all officers except the treasurer, have power to call special meetings, and are charged with procuring for the Society suitable patronage) shall consist of thirty-six laymen; of whom, twenty-four, who shall have most frequently attended, shall be eligible for re-election for the ensuing year; six shall be foreigners resident in London or its vicinity; half the remainder shall be members of the church of England, and the other half members of other denominations of Christians!!!”
“We have here (say you) a standing majority against the church!” and then, after declaiming, with all the art of the buskin, upon this “death-warrant of the established church,” and with all the prescience of the seer upon the return of the “halcyon days of 1648,” you surround yourself with the imaginary ruins of “our” demolished “Zion,” and make your exit “weeping.” [41] I thought indeed when you played such awkward antics upon “his Lordship’s liberal basis,” that every thing was not right. I could not but regard the laugh in which you indulged, as a symptom of something very different from humour; and I have not been deceived. It was, I perceive, a moody laugh, and has ended, as all such hysterical affections do, in a flood of tears. As the fit is now over, we may examine this treasonable article, with a better chance of coming to a mutual understanding upon it.