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    congregations in the metropolis , fully warrant the foregoing observations , and lead to the conclusion that they will ere long share a similar fate .

    When men cease to be interested in what they hear from the pulpit , their motives for an attendance upon public worship will relax . A transition from the meeting-house to the parish church , will fully prove that the

    powers of moral suasion are not sufficient to keep alive the atten - tion , " nor to attract a large number of people upon motives that are truly religious . The reason is obvious . The relative duties

    between man and man arise so evidently out of the nature of society , and are so secured by the laws of the community , that they may be easily known and appreciated by eveiy person who makes

    a proper use of bis reasoning faculties , independently of revelation ; and where there is a constitutional bias to a vicious

    habit , it will never be corrected by the most elegant harangues on the beauty of virtue , how much soever we may admire the reasoning ,, and admit its validity . To convert man from a state of profligacy ,

    or , which is equally odious in the sight of the Divine Being , from a self , complacency in his own righteousness , is the leading design of the doctrines of the gospel . Where these are explained and

    practically enforced , conviction will seize the mind , the understanding becomes informed , and the affections receive a tone that is consistent with the dictates of reason and sound morality . Now , to apply these remarks to the pre - sent subject . ! I have attended occasionall y * at most , if not all ,

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    the meeting-houses called Presbyteiian , about London ; and 1 must aver , that as to the most ot them , the strain of the discourses

    would laada stranger to conclude that the preacher had never tend his Bible , and that the sum of his faith was contained in Seneca ' s

    Morals , or in Wollaston ' s celebrated book on ii The Religion of Nature . " I protest , Mr . Editor , that this is not a strained picture ; and notwithstanding their apparent difference and known enmity , I can find no difference in this

    particular between Arians and So . cinians . At present 1 can recollect but a single exception , and that is at Essex Street , where the preacher certainly quotes much of the New Testament , if it is only

    to confute it . This is ingenuous ; and I have no doubt but the open avowal of his principles is the reason of his having a larger congregation than most of his brethren *

    In my argument with respect to the tendency of merely moral preaching , I am borne out by one or more of your correspondents .

    The main design of public worship being to acquire a knowledge of God , and of the way in which we may serve him most acceptably , and as revelation gives us the most

    accurate information upon those points , it is natural that they should form leading topics in our public sermons . But as there is a considerable difference of opinion with regard to those subjects , the safest way is to keep close to Scripture * We preach Christ crucifte / i , was the emphatic lan - guage of the great apostle to the Gentiles , and in this he gloried ; but in which of our Presbyterian meeting-houses * so called , does

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    On the Decline of Preshytwiun Congregations . 6 \

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1810, page 61, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2401/page/13/