9. They who have studied even cursorily the history of ecclesiastical affairs in England since the Reformation, may trace in Subscription another circumstance discreditable, if not disgraceful, to the English Church, and one which present times bring before our view. The most earnest and devoted section of the clergy, whatever their peculiar views in past or present times, have been frequently branded by the imputation of departing from the literal sense of the Articles, and of the Subscription required to them and the Book of Common Prayer. They have been censured also as disaffected to the Church, sometimes to its doctrines, sometimes to its rites and ceremonies. The next step has been to speak of them as unfit to remain in the ministry, and to desire their exclusion. No candid man can doubt the piety, the ability, the zeal in their Master’s service, of the puritanical divines. Yet many of them were excluded at the Restoration, and thus the Church lost a large body of Christian men, and itself laid the foundation of a considerable portion of our present non-conformity. At the end of the seventeenth century, the eminent divines who attempted to repair by healing counsels the damage thus occasioned were branded as latitudinarians, and denounced as disaffected to the Church. In the last century no attempt was made to turn into a more regular channel the zeal of Wesley and Whitfield, and their associates. They were excluded as unsound in doctrine and dangerous to true religion. With difficulty for a long time did the evangelical clergy, who sprung from them, maintain their position as a proscribed race, condemned as disaffected to the Church. Suppose in all these cases that the charge of objecting to some parts of the Articles and Liturgy, and to the Subscription required, were true; yet to what does it amount? With these assumed errors, did not these persons believe the Bible and love it? Did they not believe all the main Articles of the Christian Faith, as taught by the Church? Was it not the earnestness of their belief which made them what they were? Were they not the very men, who, by their faith and energy, were calculated to accomplish the object of the ministry, namely, to win souls to the Redeemer’s kingdom, and to form a peculiar people zealous of good works? What then was the ground of exclusion or objection? Subscription—assent to the Thirty-nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer, according to the strict and exact terms imposed by the Church. There was not an objection, nor even indifference, to the smallest portion of the Word of God; but in some non-essential points they wished for alteration or liberty. Subscription caused the difficulty.