of charity and love; if we overlook the weightier matters, which CHRIST himself enacted, as articles of his religion, indispensably to be subscribed by all who hope for salvation in him; I mean forgiveness of injuries, mercy, philanthropy, humility? There is nothing so heterodox, I speak under the correction of the reverend prelacy, as war, and the passions that lead to it, such as pride, avarice, and ambition. The greatest heresy I know, is to shed the blood of an innocent man, to rob by authority of a Christian government, to lay waste by law, to destroy by privilege, that which constitutes the health, the wealth, the comfort, the happiness, the sustenance of a fellow-creature, and a fellow Christian. This is heresy and schism with a vengeance! against which we ought most devoutly to pray, in a daily litany, or a new form of prayer. Where, after all the heart-burnings and blood-shedding occasioned by religious wars; where is the true church of Christ, but in the hearts of good men; the hearts of merciful believers, who from principle, in obedience to and for the love of Christ, as well as from sympathy, labour for peace, go about doing good, consulting, without local prejudice, the happiness of all men, and instead of confining their good offices to a small part, endeavour to pour oil into the wounds of suffering human nature? In the hearts of such men, united in love to God and his creatures, is the church of Christ. Stone walls and steeples are not necessary to the true church; and mitres and croziers are little better than helmets and swords, when the wearers of them countenance by their counsels, or even connive at by their silence, the unchristian passions and inhuman practices inseparable from a state of war. The poor soldier in the field is but an instrument in the hands of others. The counsellors of war; they are the warriors. The

ministers of state;-they are the disturbers of peace; and surely it is lawful to censure them, for their heads are unanointed.

The passions which lead to war are diseases. Is there no medicine for them? There is a medicine and an antidote. There is a catholicon provided by the great Physician; and it is the pious office of the clergy to administer it, ægris mortalibus, to poor mortals lying sick in the great hospital of the world. "Take physic, Pomp," they may say to all princes who delight in war;-imbibe the balsamic doctrines of the gospel. Pride, avarice, and ambition, are indeed difficult to cure; but it must be remembered that the medicine is powerful; and the good physician, instead of despairing, redoubles his efforts, when the disease is inveterate.

I hope the world has profited too much by experience, to encourage any offensive war, under the name and pretext of a holy war. Whether religion has been lately made use of to justify war, let others judge. We read in a recent form, an ardent prayer for protection against "those who, in the very centre of Christendom, threaten destruction to Christianity, and desolation to every country where they can erect their bloody standard!" It is meet, right, and our bounden duty to pray for protection against such men; but it would be alarming to those who remember the dreadful havoc of religious wars in former ages, if at this period, religion were publicly and solemnly assigned as a reason for continuing war. I think the apostolical method of converting the "declared enemies to Christian kings, and impious blasphemers of God's holy name," must be more desirable to bishops and archbishops than the arm of flesh, the sword of the destroyer. The prayer ends with these. words: "We are devoutly sensible, that all our

efforts will be ineffectual, unless thou, O God, from whom cometh our help, and from whom alone it can come, goest forth with our fleets and armies. Our counsels, our hands, and our hearts, are under thy Almighty direction. Direct them, (the hands, &c.) O Lord, to such exertions as may manifest us to be under thy guidance. Convince our adversaries that thine arm (assisted by our hands) stretched out, can defeat the most daring designs against our peace; and that those who lift up their banners against thee, (that is, against us), shall be humbled under thy Almighty hand." If this is not to represent a war as a holy war, what constitutes a holy war? As the prayer comes from great authority, it is to be received with deference; but it may be lawful to suggest, that it would have been very consistent with Christianity to have prayed in general terms, for peace without blood; to have prayed for our " adversaries" that they might be "convinced" of their fatal errors, not by our hands, but by persuasion, and by the grace of God. There follows indeed another very ardent prayer for our enemies; than which nothing can be more proper. It is only to be lamented, that Christianity should be represented in the former prayer, by those who are supposed best to understand it, as in any respect countenancing the propagation of the faith, or the conversion of unbelievers, by the sword, by fleets and armies, by exertions of the hand in the field of battle. Let Mahomet mark the progress of the faith by blood. Such modes of erecting the Cross are an abomination to Jesus Christ. Is it, after all, certain, that the slaughter of the unbelievers will convert the survivors to the religion of the slaughterers? Is the burning of a town, the sinking of a ship, the wounding and killing hundreds of thousands in the field, a proof of the lovely

and beneficent spirit of that Christianity to which the enemy is to be converted, by the philanthropic warriors? Have not Jews, Turks, and infidels of all descriptions, triumphed in the everlasting wars of those who profess to be the disciples of the peaceful Jesus, the teachers and preachers of the gospel of peace?

The composers of these prayers are probably pious and good men; but, in treading in the footsteps of less enlightened predecessors, are they not, without intending it, rendering religion subservient to a secular ambition? They sometimes censure politics as the subject of sermons; but are politics more allowable in prayers than in sermons? and is it right in twelve million of men to pray, by order of the shepherds of their souls, for vengeance from their common Father on thirty million? To pray for mercy on them all; to pray that wars may cease over the whole world; to pray that those who have erred and are deceived may be persuaded to think and to do what is right;-This is indeed princely, episcopal, Christian, and humane.

The Christian religion is either true or untrue. If true, as the church teaches, as I firmly believe, and as the law requires us all to believe; then it must be of the highest importance to men individually, and therefore in the aggregate. It is the first concern of the whole human race. National policy shrinks to nothing, in comparison with the happiness of the universal family of all mankind. If the Christian religion be true, it must supersede all the measures of worldly wisdom, which obstruct its views or interfere with its doctrines; therefore it must supersede war: if false, then why a national establishment of it, in the very country which pronounces it false? why an order of clergy publicly maintained to sup

port it? why do we see churches every where rising around us? why this hypocrisy? why is it not abolished, as an obstacle to military operations, and to other transactions of state necessity? The language of deeds is more credible than the language of words; and the language of deeds asserts that the Christian religion is untrue. They who defend war, must defend the dispositions which lead to war; and these dispositions are absolutely forbidden by the gospel. The very reverse of them is inculcated in almost every page. Those dispositions being extinguished, war must cease; as the rivulet ceases to flow when the fountain is destitute of water; or as the tree no longer buds and blossoms, when the fibres, which extract the moisture from the earth, are rescinded or withered. It is not necessary that there should be in the gospel an absolute prohibition of war in so many express words; it is enough that malice and revenge are prohibited. The cause ceasing, the effect can be no more. Therefore I cannot think it consistent with the duty of a bishop, or any other clergyman, either to preach or pray in such a manner as to countenance, directly or indirectly, any war, but a war literally, truly, and not jesuitically, a defensive war pro aris et focis; and even then, it would be more characteristic of Christian divines to pray for universal peace, for a peaceable conversion of the hearts of our enemies, rather than for bloody victory.

Wars of ambition, for the extension of empire or for the gratification of pride, envy, and malice, can never be justified; and therefore it is, that all belligerent powers agree to call their several wars defensive in the first instance, and then, just and necessary. This is a tacit, but a very striking acknowledgment, on all sides, that offensive war is