punished they should be. Punished?-but who? the innocent or the guilty? the helpless infant, or the grey-headed suborners, and inexcusable authors of the unwitting and unwilling transgression of the thus gradually and insensibly corrupted innocents?

"Those portions of their religious books should "be strongly rivetted in their minds," continues the Reverend Doctor," which warn against lying,"

then follows a list of other transgressions, of which lying, we see, stands at the head:-Oh yes, good Doctor, rivetted in their minds should those books be, by which this pander to all vices and all crimes, is warned against. But, out of those same tender and susceptible minds, with how much more anxious care should be kept the poison of that book, by which that vice of all vices is not only forced into practice, but inculcated as the first and most sacred of all duties?

Answer. (Pronouncing the child's name.)
Question 2. Who gave you that name?

Answer. My Godfathers and my Godmothers in my baptism(1); wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven (2).

OBSERVATIONS.

(1). [Godfathers and Godmothers in my Baptism.]— Thus far the answer appears not to stand exposed to any considerable objection: it being supposed, that to this examination no child is subjected, on whom the ceremony called baptism has not been performed. So far as this is true, the answer is nothing more than the statement of a matter of fact, of the existence of which, though, generally speaking, it is not possible the child should have any

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remembrance of it, it is but natural that he should feel himself assured by satisfactory and unsuspected evidence. But this blamelessness—it will soon be seen, whether it be of any long continuance.

(2). [Wherein I was made, &c.]—Already the contempt of truth, pregnant with those incongruities, of which that corrupt affection is so naturally productive, begins to manifest itself. In this formulary, styled a Catechism, will be found involved, though many of them tacitly, in a manner and without any sufficient warning, a system of assertions, prodigious in extent and variety, contained in another formulary, being the verbal part of a ceremony of prior date, called baptism. Of this anterior ceremony, the examinee, a child, commonly but just able to speak-a child, in which the faculty of name has as yet scarcely begun to develope itself a child completely incompetent to the forming of any judgment, or so much as a conception, in relation to the matter contained in it, is made to take upon himself to pronounce the effect.

Here, then, the first lesson which he is made to learn, and that under the notion of forming his mind to the sentiment of piety, is a lesson, which, if it amount to any thing, and has any meaning, is a lesson of insincerity: and which, in as far as it forms him to any thing, forms him to insincerity. For hereby what is the declaration which he is made to utter?-a declaration, asserting in the character of a true fact, the fact of his entertaining a persuasion which in truth he does not entertain, and which that he should entertain, is, in the nature of the case, not possible. When by Rousseau, on the occasion of the stories commonly put into the hands of children, under the name of fables, the practice, of thus drawing from the fountain of falsehood and misrepresentation the first aliment presented to the infant mind, was held up to view, and the

absurdity and mischievous tendency of it displayed, deep and extensive was the sensation produced by the remark, not less so the conviction and recognition of the justice of it. But if, in any such profane book of instruction, the admission of falsehood be incongruous, and the habit of regarding it not only with indifference but with approbation pernicious, how much more so in a book of religious instruction?—in a book professing to introduce men to the favour of the God of truth?

Yes, if by misrepresentation—yes, if by falsehood, any real and preponderant good effect could be produced, such as could not be produced by any other means. But by this or any other of the falsehoods, so plentifully strewed all over this Catechism, and which will successively be held up to view, in what imaginable shape can any good be seen to flow?

Question 3.-What did your Godfathers and Godmothers then for you?

Answer. They did promise and vow three things in my name (1): First, that I should renounce the devil and all his works (2), the pomps and vanity of this wicked world (3), and all the sinful lusts of the flesh (4): Secondly, that I should believe all the articles of the Christian faith (5): And, thirdly, that I should keep God's holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of my life(6).

OBSERVATIONS.

1. Things is the name given to the courses of conduct, which are he subjects of the vow here spoken of. But

before we enter upon the consideration of these things, one thing presents itself as calling for consideration,-and that is the implied-the necessarily implied-assumption, that it is in the power of any person,-not only with the consent of the father or other guardian, but even without any such consent,-to fasten upon a child at its birth, and long before it is itself capable of giving consent to any thing, with the concurrence of two other persons, alike self-appointed, load it with a set of obligations-obligations of a most terrific and appalling character-obligations of the nature of oaths, of which just so much and no more is rendered visible, as is sufficient to render them terrific,-obligations, to which neither in quantity, nor in quality, are any limits attempted to be, or capable of being assigned.

Every child, at its birth, is cast into bondage, under the power of three persons, who, for any provision that is made to the contrary, may have been self-chosen, and in practice frequently are. Even though these bonds were not more coercive than those of temporal slavery-of slavery in the temporal sense-this surely would be bad enough-the notion of a power, derived from the Almighty, to cast men into such bondage, absurd and indefensible enough. But such bondage, what is it in comparison of the bondage actually supposed to be thus imposable and imposed? It is as the space covered by human life, to eternity: to that eternity over which the effects, here supposed to be produced by this bondage, are here supposed to extend.

Oh but, by our wisdom and our care (say the lawgivers, by whom this formulary was devised and imposed),—by our wisdom and our care, against abuse of this power, provisioneffectual provision-has, in and by this very instrument, been made....