has arisen for thus occupying the pages of the Repository, which ought to be devoted to other subjects than the attack and defence of personal cha racter. Should the "Old Dissenter" again appear before the public through the medium of your work, I hope he will not think it beneath him to follow the advice of a wise man of old," Understand first, and then rebuke."

SIR,

G. B. WAWNE.

Cork, May 26, 1822. ROM what authority your correspondent Junior," in the Monthly Repository for April, has been led to believe, "that" (in opposition to what " Senior" has advanced (p. 167) on the subject of Irish Presbyterianism) "Presbyterian Synods assume the power of putting down religious discussion whenever they please, inasmuch as by their laws no book or tract involving theological opinions can he published, unless the manuscript first undergoes the inspection of the Presbytery, who can withhold certain pecuniary benefits from those who are hardy enough to resist their mandates," I cannot imagine; but this I know, that his authority cannot be good and just, and that he is entirely misinformed in that respect. Were it so, I should heartily join in his censure on such a law, and admit it as being authority exercised over conscience. What regulations may have prevailed in Irish Presbyterian Synods, when they made subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith a necessary condition of admittance, and guarded what appeared to them to be orthodoxy, by tests and creeds, as did almost all English congregations, even of the ladependent denomination, I really cannot tell. Upon inquiry, made at the fountain head, I find that no such restriction now exists. Indeed, five or six years ago, a case occurred within my personal observation, which, if the law stated by Junior had existed, would certainly have called it into action. A young minister preached before a number of his brethren and a large mixed assembly, a sermon controverting all the favoured and generally-received doctrines. At the desire of some who heard it, the discourse was printed. It raised the storm of opposition and bigotry; but it blew

from the quarters of Lutheranism and of Dissenting Calvinisin, not from Irish Presbyterianism. The writer was not called to account by any Synod for not having submitted the composition to inspection before publication, nor for the theological doctrines which it set forth. Nor did the author suffer any pecuniary privation inflicted by the Synod to which he belonged. The ground upon which I rested my assertion, "that Presbyterian Synods in Ireland assume no authority over conscience," I could not but believe to be firm, since it was composed of the assurances of Irish Presbyterian ministers, individually, and in Synod assembled. The first time I was present at the meeting of a Synod, upon my putting questions with respect to what powers it claimed, I was informed by the Moderator, that it claimed no right of dictating religious sentiments to ministers, nor forms of worship to congregations. The Synod of Ulster did, no doubt, at one time, require subscription to the Westminster Confession, on which account a number of ministers and congregations separated from its communion, and formed the Presbytery of Antrim. Awakened, probably by that defection, to the consideration of Christian li berty, that Synod, long since, put away from the midst of it the odious test. But, Sir, to put the matter beyond all doubt, I will give you an abstract of principles on this point, from an official printed document issued by the Synod of Ulster, which is by far the most numerous and the most orthodox of the Irish communities, entitled "A Brief Outline and Illustration of the chief, distinguishing Principles of the Presbyterian Church, under the Care of the General Synod of Ulster:"

"The kingdom of the Redeemer is not of this world.

"The Lord Jesus Christ is the only King or Head of his Church.

God alone is the Lord of conscience.

"The right of private judgment, in all matters that respect religion, is universal and unalienable; and it is the duty, as it is the right, of all to read, to examine and to interpret the Holy Scriptures for themselves.

"The Holy Scriptures are the only rule of faith and practice, and contain

abroad on the ocean, and we see where the little bark, with the interesting group upon its deck, made its slow progress to the shore. We look around us, and behold the hills and promontories where the anxious eyes of our fathers first saw the places of habitation and of rest. We feel the cold which benumbed, and listen to the winds which pierced them. Beneath us is the Rock on which New England received the feet of the Pilgrims. We seem even to behold them, as they struggle with the elements, and, with toilsome efforts, gain the shore. We listen to the chiefs in council; we see the unexampled exhibition of female fortitude and resignation; we hear the whisperings of youthful impatience, and we see, what a painter of our own has also represented by his pencil, chilled and shivering childhood, houseless but for a mother's arms, couchless but for a mother's breast, till our own blood almost freezes. The mild dignity of CARVER and of BRADFORD; the decisive and soldier-like air and manner of STANDISH; the devout Brewster; the enterprising ALLERTON; the general firmness and thoughtfulness of the whole band; their conscious joy for dangers escaped; their deep solicitude about dangers to come; their trust in Heaven; their high religious faith, full of confidence and anticipation -all these seem to belong to this place, and to be present upon this occasion, to fill us with reverence and admiration."Pp. 11, 12.

:

The causes of the Puritan emigration are well described, its hazards are sketched with a glowing pencil, and the folly of bigotry and the value and force of religious liberty are asserted in terms becoming the mouth of a member of one of the freest Christian States that has ever existed in the world:

"Of the motives which influenced the first settlers to a voluntary exile, induced them to relinquish their native country, and to seek an asylum in this then unexplored wilderness, the first aud principal, no doubt, were connected with religion. They sought to enjoy a higher degree of religious freedom, and what they esteemed a purer form of religious worship than was allowed to their choice or presented to their imitation in the d world. The love of religious liberty is a stronger sentiment, when fully exed, than an attachment to civil or itical freedom. That freedom which ne conscience demands, and which men cel bound by their hopes of salvation to

contend for, can hardly fail to be attained. Conscience, in the cause of religion and the worship of the Deity, prepares the mind to act and to suffer beyond almost all other causes. It sometimes gives an impulse so irresistible, that no fetters of power or of opinion can withstand it. History instructs us that this love of religious liberty, a compound sentiment in the breast of man, made up of the clearest sense of right and the highest conviction of duty, is able to look the sternest despotism in the face, and, with means apparently most inadequate, to shake principalities and powers. There is a boldness, a spirit of daring, in religious Reformers, not to be measured by the general rules which controul men's purposes and actions. If the hand of power be laid upon it, this only seems to augment its force and its elasticity, and to cause its action to be more formidable and terrible. Human invention has devised nothing, human power has com. passed nothing that can forcibly restrain it, when it breaks forth. Nothing can stop it, but to give way to it; nothing can check it, but indulgence. It loses its power only when it has gained its object. The principle of toleration, to which the world has come so slowly, is at once the most just and the most wise of all principles. Even when religious feeling takes a character of extravagance and enthusiasm, and seems to threaten the order of society, and shake the columns of the social edifice, its principal danger is in its restraint. If it be allowed indulgence and expansion, like the elemental fires it only agitates and, perhaps, purifies the atmosphere, while its efforts to throw off restraint would burst the

world asunder.

"It is certain, that although many of them were Republicans in principle, we have no evidence that our New-England ancestors would have emigrated, as they did, from their own native country, become wanderers in Europe, and finally undertaken the establishment of a colony here, merely from their dislike of the political systems of Europe. They fled not so much from the civil government, as from the Hierarchy and the laws which enforced conformity to the Church Establishment. Mr. Robinson had left Eugland as early as 1608, on account of the prosecutions for Nonconformity, and had retired to Holland. He left England from no disappointed ambition in affairs of state, from no regrets at the want of preferment in the Church, nor from any motive of distinction or of gain. Uniformity in matters of religion was pressed with such extreme rigour, that a voluntary exile

hither to a land from which they were never to return. Hither they had brought, and here they were to fix, their hopes, their attachments and their objects, Some natural tears they shed, as they ieft the pleasant abodes of their fathers, and some emotions they suppressed, when the white cliffs of their native country, now seen for the last time, grew dim to their sight. They were acting, however, upon à resolution not to be changed. With whatever stifled regrets, with whatever occasional hesitation, with whatever appalling apprehensions, which might sometimes arise with force to shake the firmest purpose, they had yet committed themselves to Heaven and the elements; and a thousand leagues of water soon interposed to separate them for ever from the region which gave them birth. A new existence awaited them here; and when they saw these shores, rough, cold, barbarous and barren as then they were, they beheld their country. That mixed and strong feeling which we call love of country, and which is, in general, never extinguished in the heart of man, grasped and embraced its proper object here. Whatever constitutes country, except the earth and the sun, all the moral causes of affection and attachment which operate upon the heart, they had brought with them to their new abode. Here were now their families and friends, their homes and their property. Before they reached the shore, they had established the elements of a social system, and at a much earlier period had settled their forms of religious worship. At the moment of their landing, therefore, they possessed institutions of government and institutions of religion and friends and families, and social and religious institutions, established by consent, founded on choice and preference, how nearly do these fill up our whole idea of country! -The morning that beamed on the first night of their repose, saw the Pilgrims already established in their country. There were political institutions, and eivil liberty and religious worship. Poetry has fancied nothing, in the wanderings of heroes, so distinct and characteristic. Here was man, indeed, unprotected and unprovided for, on the shore of a rude and fearful wilderness; but it was politie, intelligent and educated man. Every thing was civilized but the physical world. Institutions containing in substance all that ages had done for human government, were established in a forest. Cultivated mind was to act on uncultivated nature; and, more than all, a government and a country were to commence with the very first foundations laid under

the divine light of the Christian religion. Happy auspices of a happy futurity! Who would wish that his country's existence had otherwise begun ?-Who would desire the power of going back to the ages of fable? Who would wish for an origin, obscured in the darkness of antiquity?Who would wish for other emblazouing of his country's heraldry, or other ornaments of her genealogy, than to be able to say, that her first existence was with intelligence; her first breath the inspirations of liberty; her first principle the truth of divine religion?

Local attachments and sympathies would ere long spring up in the breasts of our ancestors, endearing to them the place of their refuge. Whatever natural objects are associated with interesting scenes and high efforts, obtain a hold on human feeling, and demand from the heart a sort of recognition and regard. This Rock soon became hallowed in the esteem of the Pilgrims, and these hills grateful to their sight. Neither they nor their children were again to till the soil of England, nor again to traverse the seas which surrounded her, But here was a new sea, now open to their enterprise, and a new soil, which had not failed to respond gratefully to their laborious industry, and which was already assuming a robe of verdure. Hardly had they provided shelter for the living, ere they were summoned to erect sepulchres for the dead. The ground had become sacred, by enclosing the remains of some of their companions and connexions. A parent, a child, a husband or a wife, had gone the way of all flesh, and mingled with the dust of New England. We naturally look with strong emotions to the spot, though it be a wilderness, where the ashes of those we have loved repose. Where the heart has laid down what it loved most, it is desirous of laying itself down. No sculptured marble, no enduring monument, no honourable inscription, no ever-burning taper that would drive away the darkness of death, can soften our sense of the reality of mortality, and hallow to our feelings the ground which is to cover us, like the consciousness that we shall sleep, dust to dust, with the objects of our affections.

"In a short time other causes sprung up to bind the Pilgrims with new cords to their chosen land. Children were born, and the hopes of future generations arose, in the spot of their new habitation. The second generation found this the land of their nativity, and saw that they were bound to its fortunes. They beheld their fathers' graves around them, and while they read the memorials of their toils and