indeed be counted a sin. He enlarged
on those texts which permitted Christian liberty, and laid it down as a
fundamental rule for the only difference allowable in a state, that one
church should be approved and all the rest tolerated. The approved
church should be that which had most members, and it should afford
public maintenance and greater encouragement to its pastors; but all
opinions might be promulgated with equal freedom, and every person left
at liberty to interpret Scripture as he pleased, and to serve God in his
own way.

Dr. Beaumont conceived the adoption of this plan would give occasion to
much talk about religion, but would ripen none of its fruits. The
attention of most men would be too much engrossed by temporal pursuits
to exercise this privilege of choice, till sickness or calamity urged
them to think of a future world. Weak minds, he said, would be "ever
learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth," and the best
disposed would be most apt to fall into error from extreme solicitude to
be right. The differences between Christians chiefly consist in
mysterious or speculative points; hence the perpetual controversies of
those who were struggling to enlarge their communities, would divert the
attention of mankind from moral duties. Every preacher would become, as
it were, a religious prize-fighter, drawing round him an auditory as a
means of subsistence, instead of instructing a congregation in their
duty to God. So there would be endless dispute, nice sifting of abstract
ideas, and censorious inquisitiveness into the spiritual state of our
neighbours, but little humility, charity, or true piety; which consist
in grateful adoration of, and sincere obedience to our Creator,
Redeemer, and Sanctifier, and not in speculations on the
incomprehensible nature and unfathomable purposes of God. From such
unedifying pursuits our church, in her articles, dissuades even her
riper members; how much more then must she, in her elementary
instructions, avoid exciting a taste for them in the tender minds of her
catechumens.

"Respecting the texts which require us to exercise Christian liberty, we
ought" observed Dr. Beaumont, "to remember two considerations, which will
assist us so to understand, as not to misapply Scripture. We should first
consider the occasion which called forth the precept, and I believe you
will find many of those you quoted, were meant to dissuade Gentile
converts from observing the