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    cpnformists , are members of the Church of England , as they would have bfeen of any church upon the face of the earth , whose communion the accident of birth or residence might have rendered convenient or profitable . They are attached from custom to the public liturgy , and praise it because it is customary for Churchmen to praise it , and because the eulogy is sometimes echoed fyack by Dissenters , They like a good moral sermon , well-delivered , iif it dp not exceed the canonical number of minutes ,, and they honour the

    clergy as scholars and above all as gentlemen ; but they have no desire to understand doctrines , the study of which they consider obsolete , and they deprecate the trouHe of being zealous . They would agree in quiet reformation to any extent . They hear without joining in the Athanasian Creed , and perhaps mark their opinion of this extraordinary formulary by smiles and nods . From indifference , perhaps from a tincture of scepticism , they care less for truth than for peace . Many of them have relapsed into the Church from old Dissenting families , who have grown too wealthy or too ambitious to be cooped up m the strait limits which law and custom prescribe for

    Nonconformists : the land was not able to bear them , that they might dwell together : for their substance was great 9 so that they could not dwell together . [ Gen . xiii . 6 . ] Conformists of this description are sometimes found , indeed , with the high-church party , as if they could not retreat too far from the principles of their education , or prove the sincerity of their conversion except by intolerance , or obliterate the sin of their birth but by the fire of zeahj but more commonly they are contented after they enter the

    Church to sit down on the lowest form , not courting observation , nor wishing to be cjatechized in their faith and motives . Some traces of former liberality will be seen in their new profession : though they will scarcely call themselves religious churchmen , they will avow ( so at least it has been in one case known to the writer ) , that they are still political Dissenters . In the Church they are hidden as in a crowd . They are no longer wondered at for being singular , nor called upon for personal exertion . A national establishment is a receptacle for all who wish to keep up a form of religion at the

    least individual cost and with most ease ; and the Church of England with Thirty-nine Articles , three Creeds , a volume of prayers and a host of canons and acts of parliament , enacted and ordained " for avoiding of Diversities of Opinions , and for the Establishing of Consent touching True Religion , " * exhibits the curious spectacle of almost every species of faith delineated in Dr . Evans ' s yearly growing " Sketch , " from the maximum of orthodoxy to the minimum o £ heresy . Let it not be thought , however , that we see only

    evil in this state of things : there are certain advantages arising from it , and amongst others this preeminently , that the Churchman never make inquisition into opinions without breaking her own communion into unnumbered schisms . We should be the last persons to complain of a diversity of faith in any communion , for we regard it as one of the means under Providence of intellectual improvement and social virtue . England owes no little of her rare internal feiicity to her being a land of opinions and sects . The confusion of tongues in the Church may undoubtedly produce some inconvenience , but

    every expression of ridicule and contumely , that he had received the Sacrament at the hands of the minister or his parish , to qualify himself for obtaining a home in one of our eleemosynary establishments , under the guardianship of the Church of England ! A Protestant Dissenter , with the piety of a Watts or the philanthropy of a JHoward , would have been stopped at the door of this charity , into which an Atheist can walk with a sneer upon his countenance . * Preamble to the Articles .

    Untitled Article

    On the State of Religious Parties in England . 5

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1827, page 5, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1792/page/5/