PAMPHLET. 283 



numerous class who now stand neutral, men who, like 

 the ministers of the Scottish Establishment, and the 

 men, clerical and lay, of a corresponding character in 

 England and Ireland, have a large secular stake in- 

 volved in the question, and who, much rather than that 

 Establishments should fall altogether, were they to find 

 them assailed in the mass, would unite in calling in to 

 their assistance and support the seven millions of Popish 

 Ireland. In the third place, we have, I think, direct 

 evidence, that though the war against Popery is, in its 

 effects on those who prosecute it, an eminently safe war, 

 the war against Establishments is not ; never, at least, 

 was the Church more spiritual than when she was war- 

 ring against Popery ; never did any Church, in any 

 controversy, become more thoroughly secular than the 

 Voluntaries of Scotland when warring against Establish- 

 ments. In the fourth place, while the war against 

 Popery would be strictly constitutional, the war against 

 Establishments would not : it would of necessity endan- 

 ger, with the assailed institutions, not a few precious 

 remnants of the Revolution Settlement, in which no class 

 have a larger stake than we ; and it is, besides, a grave 

 question, whether the Eree Church would not lose im- 

 mensely more by forfeiting the esteem of all solid men, 

 hostile to a position so decidedly revolutionary, than she 

 could possibly gain through any consequent accession to 

 the number of her allies, from the ranks of the restless 

 and the dissatisfied. In the fifth place, such a war as the 

 Doctor desiderates would justly lay our Church open, if 

 waged ere the present generation had passed away, to a 

 charge of gross and suspicious inconsistency ; seeing he 

 recommends it should be a war carried on not simply on 

 mere consideration of expediency, which may lead at 

 various times to various courses of conduct, but also on 



