But let us next, in considering the influence of the Society on the Established Church, take into account certain facts, which force themselves on the eye of the most cursory examiner. It is obvious, that the attendance at church in these times is considerably increased, and certainly not the least increased where a Bible Society spirit most abounds. In many places, also, great efforts have been made to build new churches, to accommodate an overgrown population; and, moreover, a most extraordinary increase in the circulation of the Liturgy has taken place. A new Society also has arisen, whose only object is to distribute the Formularies of the Established Church. But we are not yet at the end of the objections of this very industrious opponent. The meetings of the Bible Society, it is said, by breaking in a degree the line of demarcation between churchmen and dissenters, tend to injure the establishment; and that, although the dissenter may gain, the churchman must lose by them. But how can this be? can the union of persons, where the peculiarities of each is kept out of view, have any bearing upon those peculiarities? Is it the fact, that churchmen have been converted to dissenters by these meetings? If there is a danger of conversion taking place, is it not a bad compliment to the church to suppose that she will be the loser? In physics, when a larger body meets a less, as in the case of the heavenly bodies, the smaller never fails to follow the motion of the larger. Why in the case of the church and dissenters alone, is this law to be reversed? Will the author allow me to add this observation, that if danger to the establishment need not be apprehended from the distribution of the Bible, it is very much to be feared from the conduct of those who oppose this Society. In the first place, there is something very awful and ominous, in seeing those who are the appointed stewards of the Word of God, rising up to oppose any means by which its circulation is promoted; magnifying mole hills into mountains, if only they can throw them into the course of this Society. Opposition, such as this, is well calculated to shake “opinion,” upon which every establishment must mainly, under the blessing of God, depend. May not the enemies of the church, at least plausibly urge, that the church cannot be built upon the Scriptures, when so many churchmen oppose their distribution without their own commentary? And if the persuasion were established among the poor, that our church is erected on the foundation of commentaries and tracts, instead of that of the “apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone,” would not popular attachment quickly dissolve?