With such a recent portion of history before your eyes, I cannot see, I confess, either the justice or the policy of your travelling back over a century and half of ground in order to find matter of accusation against those of our fellow-subjects, with whom a sense of common danger has united us, and with whom it is as important now as it was two years ago, that we should continue united. The politico-religious strife which subsisted between our ancestors and theirs is not a sacred inheritance. I trust the various denominations of Christians of the present day would think themselves as much disgraced by the events of “the grand rebellion,” {39a} as the modern members of the establishment would by the revenge with which it was followed. “The church” has, I know, “her sores and scars;” and so, I lament to say, have those who dissented from her. Let us own the truth—“the heavenly dove” {39b} has been sometimes encouraged to make a little too free with “the wings and feathers” of the smaller birds, and it must not therefore be wondered if her own have suffered. Let her but act up to the sweetness of her nature, and allow the other tenants of the air to have their note; she then may plume her golden breast without annoyance, and bear her grateful blessings on outstretched wings to every nation under heaven. Your zeal for extending the boundaries of that church in which you minister, is both natural and just: I participate in it with all the feelings of my heart. It is an object which has my prayers, and shall, by God’s assistance, through life command my services. But I will not set her up as the entire and only spouse of Christ: for how can I then curse those whom God hath not cursed?—Away with those superannuated fears, that she must grow barren because her younger sisters are fruitful. I have no doubt but both she and they have “borne many an illustrious child of God” {40a} to their heavenly bridegroom, and will continue to bear many more. I lament with you, that they prefer their _Gerizim_ to our _Zion_: but I must not therefore refuse to have any dealings {40b} with them, or to entertain any charity for them. If they worship God in spirit and truth, if with the heart they believe on the Lord Jesus unto righteousness, if they “agree in the essentials of our most holy faith, and look for pardon through the merits and intercession of the Saviour,” I cannot, I dare not, I will not put them out of the covenant of grace and mercy and peace. Aliens from our external commonwealth, they are yet fellow-citizens with the saints: and though the earthly Jerusalem disclaim them, they will hereafter be acknowledged by the Jerusalem above—the mother of us all. {40c}