Hager man Colization THE PREF A CE. T HIS publication owes its rife to the Remarks I wrote on Dr. Brown's propofal for a code of education. Several perfons who were pleafed to think favourably of that performance, (in which I was led to mention the fubject of civil and religious liberty) were defirous that I fhould treat of it more at large, and without any immediate view to the Doctor's work. It appeared to them, that fome of the views I had given of this important, but difficult fubject, were new, and fhowed it, in a clearer light than any in which they had seen it represented before; and they thought I had placed the foundation of fome of the most valuable interests of mankind on a broader and firmer basis, than Mr. Locke, and others who had formerly written upon this fubject. I have endeavoured to answer the wishes of my friends, in A the the best manner I am able; and, at the fame time, I have retained the fubftance of the former treatife, having distributed the several parts of it into the body of this. In this fecond edition, I have alfo introduced what I had written on Churchauthority, in anfwer to Dr. Balguy's fermon on that fubject, preached at Lam- · beth chapel, and published by order of the Archbishop. As I do not mean to republifh either the Remarks on Dr. Brown, or thefe on Dr. Balguy, feparately, and the subjects of both those pieces have a near relation to the general one on Civil and Religious Liberty, I thought there would be a propriety in throwing them into one treatise. I had no thoughts of animadverting upon Dr. Warburton in this work, till I was informed by fome intelligent and worthy clergymen of my acquaintance, that his Alliance is generally confidered as the best defence of the present system of of church-authority, and that most other writers took their arguments from it. In a poftfcript to this work he informs us, p. 271, that, in it, the reader will fee confuted at large, what he calls a puritanical principle, and alfo an abfurd affertion of Hooker's, by which he entangled himfelf and his caufe in inextricable difficulties, viz. that civil and ecclefiaftical power are things feparated by nature, and more efpecially by divine inftitution; and fo independent of one another, that they must always continue independent. Whatever fuccess this writer may have had in pulling up other foundations, I think he had bet ter have left those of the church as he found them: for the difficulties in which the scheme of the Alliance is entangled, appear to me to be far more inextricable, than those of any other scheme of churchauthority that I have yet feen. All that can be faid in its favour is, that, having lefs of the fimplicity of truth, and, consequently, being fupported with more art and fophiftry, the abfurdity of it is not so obvious at first fight, though it be ten |