athen was in itself a test. He could not sit to
his meat, he could not retire to rest, he could not go through the most
simple transactions of life, without some act of acknowledgment offered
towards some heathen deity. Unless these observances were attended to by
the Christians, they were subject to the most cruel punishments, and yet
such means failed to preserve the dominant faith. In fact, it is well
known that one of the most violent persecutions of the Christians,
instituted by the Roman emperors, was followed, as it were, almost
immediately by the establishment of Christianity as the dominant
religion of the empire. Were tests any security to the Roman Catholic
religion, against the growing light and energy of the Protestant faith?
Tests of various kinds were adopted at the very moment the new doctrines
showed themselves, but it was soon found that they were vain and fragile
against the light and strength of the new doctrines. Were tests any
security to these very universities themselves? I have not looked very
deeply into this subject; I have no doubt that if I were to look closer
into it, I should find more instances of the sort; but I find that about
fourteen years after the establishment of King's College, in the
university of Cambridge, a decree was sent down there by King Henry VI.,
admonishing the scholars, that is to say, in the language of the present
day, the fellows of that college, against the damnable and pernicious
errors (so it styled them), of John Wickliffe and Richard Peacock, and
denouncing the pains of expulsion from college, and perjury, against
those of them who should show any favour to those doctrines. Yet, in two
years after this, this very king's college became what, at that time was
called the most heretical, but which now, in our time, would be called
the most Protestant college in the university; and we know that these
doctrines thus fiercely denounced, and strongly guarded against by
tests, about fifty or sixty years afterwards became, by law, the
established religion of this country. It is upon her native
strength--upon her own truth--it is upon her spiritual character, and
upon the purity of her doctrines, that the Church of England rests. Let
her not, then, look for support in such aids as these. It is by these
means, and not by tests and proscriptions, that protestantism has been
maintained; let her be assured of this.

_August 1, 1834._

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