I will not promise, in return, that your “liberality will be sounded forth by every gospel-preacher in the church, and every twanging teacher in the conventicle;” {47b} but I may then venture to promise you, what I should think would afford you quite as much pleasure—the satisfaction of having converted a standing majority _against_ the church into a standing majority _in her favor_. I will not dispute with you, whether the established church will be a gainer by this new connexion on the score of _dignity_ and fashion. I am told, indeed, that there are among the nonconformists those who can wear as gay a coat, play as good a hand at whist, and give as modish an account of an opera or a play, as “those men of the world” among us, who “think it more creditable to be accounted members of our venerable church, than a subscriber to the meeting-house:” but I cannot say how many there may be of this description among the subscribers to the Bible Society. However, though “few men of opulence, and fewer still of rank, frequent the meeting-house or conventicle,” there is “influence and consideration” {48a} enough among the members of our communion to give respectability to both. I grant, indeed, that “the presence of _a nobleman_ cannot make the company which he honours with his presence either creditable or polite,” yet surely the presence of a _number_ will go a great way towards doing it: but then I admit with you, that they must not be “wandering stars,” {48b} which shed a momentary lustre, but luminaries which keep a _fixed_ position, and dispense a _certain_ light. You expect, as the result of this new association, that all will become unity, and charity, and Christian benevolence, and that you shall see “realized the pretty hand-in-hand frontispiece to the Christian Ladies Pocket-Book 1803.” {48c} Now though I am not so sanguine in my expectations as you are, yet I trust you will not be wholly disappointed. And, in my opinion, a Protestant clergy will be not acting less out of their character by promoting “unity, charity, and Christian benevolence,” than by disturbing them: nor can Christian prelates be quite so much disgraced by shaking the hands of Dissenting ministers in the frontispiece of a pocket-book, {49} as they would be if represented as drawing those hands through the holes of a pillory.