civil authority with those that are purely moral or religious. Nor is it so easy a matter in practice, to ascertain the boundary in every instance, and draw the line by which the one may be effectually discriminated from the other, as one at first would be apt to imagine. The distinction has been better preserved in our own country, notwithstanding the few exceptions of little moment which I shall mention, than perhaps in any other. There is a part of the office of a minister in this country that is purely of a civil nature, derived from the law of the land, and quite extraneous to the business of a pastor, which, in strictness, is only what is called the cure of souls. By this secular branch I mean, the power with which presbyteries are vested by the legislature, in giving decrees, after proper inquiry, against the land-holders, or heritors as we more commonly term them, for the repairing or the rebuilding of churches, manses, and parochial schools; in the taking trial, and the admitting of schoolmasters; in the alloting of glebes, and perhaps some other things of a similar nature. That the presbytery, in these matters, does not act as an ecclesiastical court, is evident, not only from the nature of the thing, but from this further consideration-its not being in these, at least in what relates to churches, manses, and glebes, as in all other matters, under the correction of its ecclesiastical superiors, the provincial synod and the national assembly, but under the review of the highest civil judicatory in this country, the Court of Session.

Another kind of civil power committed to presbyteries, is the power of presenting (as some understand the law) to vacant parishes, upon the devolution of the right, by the patron's neglecting to exercise it for six months after the commencement of the vacancy. In this, however, our ecclesiastical ideas and our political so much interfere, that the power of issuing out a presentation has never yet, so far as I know, been exerted by any presbytery in the manner in which it is commonly exerted by lay-patrons, or in the manner in which it was formerly exerted by bishops in this country in the times of episcopacy, or in which it is at present exerted by bishops in Ireland, as well as in the southern part of the island. Presbyteries do commonly, I think, on such occasions, con

sult the parish, and regulate their conduct in the same manner as though patronages were not in force by law. I should, perhaps, add to the aforesaid list of particulars not properly ecclesiastical, the concern which the pastor must take, along with the heritors and elders of the parish, in the management and disposal of the public charities; also the power of church judicatories, in appointing contributions for pious uses to be made throughout the churches within their jurisdiction.

The conduct of a minister, in regard to the few cases which, in strictness, are without the sphere of his spiritual vocation, is, it must be owned, extremely delicate; and not the less so, that in some of the particulars enumerated, as in what regards manses and glebes, he will naturally be considered as a party, from the similarity of situation in which they are all placed, in the very cause in which he must act as a judge. Whether it is a real advantage to us to possess this kind of secular authority, is a question foreign to my present purpose. For my own part, I am strongly inclined to think, that if the legislature had made proper provision for supplying parishes and ministers with sufficient churches and manses, by means of the civil magistrate only, it had not been the worse for us. As, on the one hand, we should have been freed from temptations to partiality, which will, no doubt, sometimes influence our judgment as well as that of other men; so, on the other hand, we should have been freed from the suspicion and reproach of it, from which the strictest regard to equity and right will not always be sufficient to protect us. And in a character on the purity whereof so much depends, I must say, it is of no small consequence, not only that it be unbiassed by any partial regards, but even that it be beyond the remotest suspicion of such a bias.

In England, the natural limits have been very ill preserved, and both kinds of jurisdiction, the civil and the religious, are made strangely to encroach on one another. I do not here so much allude to the judicial power of the consistorial courts in matters matrimonial and testamentary, though these are purely secular, as to the confusion in what regards the executive part of jurisdiction. As, with them, church censures are followed with civil penalties, the loss of liberty or impri

sonment, and the forfeiture of the privileges of a citizen, the clergy must have become absolute lords of the persons and properties of the people, had there not been lodged in the civil judicatories a paramount jurisdiction, by which the sentences of the spiritual courts can be revised, suspended, and annulled.

Add to this, that the participation of one of the sacraments having been with them, by a very short-sighted policy, perverted into a test for civil offices, a minister may be compelled, by the magistrate, to admit a man who is well known to be a most improper person, an atheist, blasphemer, or profligate. The tendency of this prostitution plainly is, by the law of the land, to make void the institution of Jesus Christ, as far as regards its meaning and design. By the appointment of Jesus Christ, the participation was to serve in the participants purely as a testimony of their faith in him, and love to him: "Do this in remembrance of me." By the law of the land, it is rendered a qualification or test, absolutely necessary for the attainment of certain lucrative offices, and for securing a continuance in them when attained; so that, in a great number, it can serve as a testimony of nothing but of their secular views. And to render this testimony, if possible, perfectly unequivocal, such people must have a certificate from the minister of their receiving the sacrament, to present to their superiors when required. For my own part, I do not see how the divine commandment, in what regards its spirit, power, and use, could be more effectually abrogated by statute, than by thus retaining the form, the letter, the body of the precept, and, at the same time, totally altering the purpose, object, and intention.

Men have been very long in discovering, and even yet seem scarcely to have discovered, that true religion is of too delicate a nature to be compelled, if I may so express myself, by the coarse implements of human authority and worldly sanctions. Let the law of the land restrain vice and injustice of every kind, as ruinous to the peace and order of society, for this is its proper province; but let it not tamper with religion, by attempting to enforce its exercises and duties. These, unless they be free-will offerings, are nothing; they

are worse.

By such an unnatural alliance, and ill-judged aid, hypocrisy and superstition may, indeed, be greatly promoted, but genuine piety never fails to suffer.

Another consequence of the confusion of spiritual jurisdiction and secular in that church, however respectable on other accounts, (for these remarks affect not the doctrine taught, the morals inculcated, nor the form of worship practised, but only the polity and discipline); another consequence, I say, is, that ecclesiastical censures among them have now no regard, agreeably to their original destination, to purity and manners: they serve only as a political engine for the eviction of tithes, surplice fees, and the like, and for the execution of other sentences in matters purely temporal. Would it have been possible to devise a more effectual method, had that been the express purpose, for rendering the clerical character odious, and the discipline contemptible? Luckily, with us, in those few matters of a secular nature above specified, wherein presbyteries are, in the first instance, appointed judges, when the presbytery have given their decree, they have no part in the execution, and, indeed, no further concern in the matter. Their decision is merely declarative of right; and their power is exactly similar to that of arbitrators. The only difference is, that the former are authorized by law, the latter by the nomination of the parties; but in neither is there any coercive authority. The party in whose favour the sentence is given, applies for the intervention of the Lords of Session to compel the obedience of all concerned. This interposition is always granted as a thing of course, unless when the presbyterial decree is brought under the review of that court by suspension. In this case, the Lords may affirm, reverse, or alter, as they see cause. Then it becomes their own sentence, and is enforced in the usual manner. But no process in our church can terminate in excommunication, or in any ecclesiastical censures, but a process of scandal,-by which term is commonly understood some flagrant immorality. These censures our constitution does not permit us to employ, on any occasion, as expedients for either securing our property, or asserting our prerogatives and power. And as we have not the same temptations with our neighbours to abuse them, so neither does the con

stitution in this country permit the civil magistrate to interfere with the procedure of the ecclesiastical courts. A sufficient security is provided against the rashness or injustice of the inferior judicatories, the presbyteries, by the right of appeal to the immediately superior tribunal, the Synod, and thence, in the last resort, to the General Assembly. Besides, where no civil penalty follows the sentence of the church, as is now very properly the case with us, the church courts have this additional motive to be cautious of employing those censures except in clamant cases, namely, that if their sentences. be not supported by what I may call the verdict of the country, the general sense of the people, they will very soon, and very justly, become contemptible. And this is the true footing on which all ecclesiastical censures ought to stand. But from what has been said it is evident, that in our establishment sufficient care has been taken that there be no material encroachment of either side on the natural province of the other. What I have said on this article, it will be observed, militates chiefly, if not solely, against what may be called a coercive power in the ministers of religion, either direct, by seizing the persons and distraining the goods of obnoxious people, or, which in my judgment is still worse, an indirect coercion, by employing ecclesiastical censures as the tools for effecting the same worldly purpose. Thus much only by the way.

I return to the narrative. When the western provinces were entirely severed from the eastern, Italy, France, and Germany, making one empire, and Spain a kingdom, the principal bishops in all these four provinces, who, to a considerable share of the national riches, had this advantage also, that they were at the head of an order which engrossed almost all the little learning of the times, were commonly chosen by the prince for his counsellors. The weight which this honourable distinction gave them in temporal matters, and in affairs of state, brought an immense increase of authority to the episcopal tribunal. In less than two hundred years afterwards, they pretended an absolute and exclusive right to all criminal and civil jurisdiction over the clergy, and, in various cases, over the laity also, under pretext that, though the persons