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THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE DISSENTERS.* 



WHO has not read the Legend of Montrose ? and who that has 

 read it can forget the inimitable Dalgetty, and his description of the 

 then state of parties in Scotland and England ? " Loyalty is your 

 password, my Lord. ' Liberty !' roars another chield from the other 

 side of the strath. f The King !' shouts one war-cry ; ' the Parliament !' 

 another. ' Montrose for ever !' cries Donald, waving his bonnet. 

 ' Argyle and Leven !' cries a west-country Saunders, vapouring with 

 his hat and feather. '' Fight for the Bishops !' says a priest with his 

 gown and rocket. ' Stand fast for the Kirk !' cries a minister. Good 

 watchwords all excellent watchwords." 



Now, with a very slight alteration in some of these names, this 

 would be a very just picture of our own times. The same general 

 spirit of political and religious discord has spread through all 

 classes, and diffused itself through the whole body of society. All 

 ranks of men have enlisted themselves on one side or the other, and 

 clamour as loudly for liberty of conscience, orthodoxy, and the 

 church, as their ancestors shouted for the covenant or episcopacy. 

 Nor can this be a matter of surprise : for so long as there is any one 

 predominant party in any country, all others will look upon it with 

 envy and jealousy ; there must inevitably be a struggle for ascend- 

 ancy ; and bodies of the most opposite and conflicting opinions will 

 band themselves together to attain the common purpose, dislodging 

 their rival from his hated pre-eminence. And so surely as they shall 

 have attained that common end, will they divide themselves into a 

 thousand different factions, each opposed to the other with animosity 

 and hatred ten times more bitter than had animated them against the 

 object of their attack. This is human nature. It is a principle 

 which we hold in common with the brute creation. The wild dog 

 and the wolf pull down their prey in packs, and fight over the 

 mangled remains. Men league themselves together to plunder a 

 traveller, or to pillage a province, and, the work of spoliation com- 

 plete, the division of the booty ends in the death grapple of the 

 bandit, or the exterminating war of nations. 



But of all hatred, religious hatred is the most bitter and envenomed. 

 Of all contests, that between rival sects is the most furious and irre- 

 concileable. Of all miseries that can happen to a nation, a religious 

 war is the most grievous. To avert such a calamity, all good men 

 would join themselves together ; they would sacrifice much to restore 

 peace ; they would struggle to redress all real grievances ; they 

 would as steadily oppose all factious and unreasonable demands. At 



* A Second Letter to a Dissenter, &c., Thoughts on the Admission of Dis- 

 senters, &c., by the llev. 11. W. Sewell, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Exeter Col- 

 lege, Oxford. (Talboys.) On the Admission of Dissenters to Graduate, &c.,by 

 the Rev. C. "Wordsworth, M.A. Trinity College, Cambridge. (Rivington.) 



