My Lord, I repeat it again, I am convinced you have been deceived. Were you a known enemy to the church, or even a suspected one, doubtless it would be highly gratifying to your Lordship and companions, to accomplish the object to which you solicit my concurrence. At present, the church is far too strong for her combined adversaries; the contest is unequal. Confident, I am, there is none but an enemy could have advised this:—an enemy, with whom it is far more dangerous to treat than to fight; therefore let her take a friend’s advice, for once, and stand upon her guard. Let her be _true_ to herself, and the gates of hell shall never prevail against her. In point of strength, therefore, to establish herself, and to resist her numerous foes, it is impossible that the church can be any gainer by your Lordship’s heterogeneous society; on the contrary, it is perfectly evident that she would be extremely injured; in as much as she is deprived of _more than three-fourths_ of her natural strength, which is given by your Lordship to the general mass of her avowed enemies. A standing majority of dissenters is constituted _against_ her. Nor can I devise one argument sufficient to tempt her, unshielded as she is, by want of discipline and good government, to throw away that natural defence which God Almighty has given her, and trust to the liberality and protection of those who threaten, and are daily compassing her destruction. Nor is the church more likely to gain any thing to her dignity by her new associates, than to her interest. It is prophesied in scripture, as a comfort to the church, that one day she should have “kings for her nursing fathers, and queens for her nursing mothers.” Your Lordship holds out nothing of this sort in your society. It cannot be denied that a few nobility are found in your list, and some other folk of high rank, but of such a description as we should not have expected to find there. But, my Lord, as it is not the mere presence of a nobleman that can make the company which he honours with his presence, either creditable or polite, so I presume at once, that I am not required to consider your association as a creditable one, merely because I find at its head your Lordship, and a few other respectable names. For when I cast my eye downwards to the motley list of subscribers, I find such names as can certainly reflect no credit upon the church. There I recognize the dissenting teacher, the Methodist preacher, the preaching blacksmith, &c. who can make but awkward nurses of the church. But one thing is plain, that although _our_ credit will be no gainer by the company you propose, it is not so with _them_. If we may take their account of themselves, their doctrines and communications have hitherto been confined chiefly to the inferior ranks. If your society succeeds, it will be a society for “bettering their condition;” a thing to them, it may be presumed, by no means unpleasant or ineligible.