holder of opinions is treated with the same reprobation as the opinions themselves, as long as he is prospectively consigned over to perdition as they are to detestation, as long as ideas of merit and demerit are associated with the convictions of the understanding, or blame is attached to the act of making those convictions known, not only will the subordinate principles of the Gospel remain in part unrecognized, but its essential principles will be violated; for it is clearly a duty of piety to reveal all that is believed to have been discovered of the works and ways of God;--and of benevolence to communicate what, being conceived to be truth, is conceived to be intended for the universal benefit of the race. It may excite surprise that we have not here examined the claim of the Holy Catholic Church to spiritual supremacy: but it will better accord with our plan to take that claim into consideration while treating of the temporary institutions of Christianity. From the essential principles of the Gospel we derive our belief that Christianity, is not designed for any union, permanent or temporary, with worldly power and grandeur; that it is incapable of such a connexion; being injured instead of confirmed by the support of temporal authority, and impaired instead of adorned by the adjuncts of worldly pomp. This principle is asserted in words by every Christian Church in existence; but violated, in fact, by almost as many. Christianity is acknowledged to be a religion of poverty of spirit, of self-denial, of looseness from the world and its possessions. If this principle were carried out into each individual case, it is plain that the pomp and ambition which have despoiled the Gospel of its purity could no longer exist. It is remarkable that this poverty and self-denial are most insisted on in those Churches where the temporal power and luxury are the most excessive. We hear of them above all from Catholics, whose popes, cardinals, and bishops have, in every age, exceeded all temporal princes in the enjoyment of splendor and luxury. We hear of them from the Church of England, whose superior officers revel in unbounded wealth, and especially prize the connexion with the State which their office occasions. While we Unitarians, who hold that Christianity is of a purely spiritual nature, and therefore dishonored by the pretended support of powers inferior to its own, insist much less earnestly than the Catholic Church on the duty of self-mortification and voluntary poverty. Our Church, were it as extensive as the Catholic, would contain no ecclesiastical princes, and no friars; no potentates clothed in purple and fine linen and faring sumptuously every day from the revenues of the Church, and no believers whose piety is testified by a vow of poverty. We believe that our religion ought to be exerted in controling the passions, exalting the desires, and equalizing the affections, not