ommonwealth, what are now the six million Presbyterians and
Independents, etc., had a British Government wholly representative of
themselves; while what are now the twelve million Episcopalians and
the eight million Papists had none.

England at the time produced one of those men, of a type surpassingly
great, that the world fails to see once in centuries; and, like
Brennus of old, he flung his sword into the lighter scale, and it
straightway outweighed the other. There then ensued a period of
twenty-eight years, in which Government represented only the
Episcopalians and Papists: and then a period of a hundred and forty
years more, in which it represented only the Episcopalians and
Presbyterians. And now--for Popery, growing strong in the interval,
had been using all appliances in its own behalf, and had not been met
in the proper spiritual field--it represents Episcopacy, Roman
Catholicism, and a minute, uninfluential portion of the Presbyterian
and other evangelistic bodies. But how, it may be asked, has this
result taken place?

How is it only a moiety of these bodies that is represented? Mainly, we
unhesitatingly reply, through the influence exerted by certain
crotchets entertained by the bodies themselves on their political
standing. When Government at the Revolution, instead of being as formerly
representative of Episcopacy and Popery, became representative of
Episcopacy and Presbytery, Cameronianism broke off, on the plea that the
governing power ought to be representative of Presbytery only, and
that it was apostate because it was not; and the political influence
of the body has been ever since lost to the Protestant cause.
Voluntaryism, on the other hand, neutralized _its_ influence, by
holding that, though quite at freedom to exert itself in the political
walk in attaining secular objects, religious objects are in that walk
unattainable, or at least not to be attained; and so _it_ also has been
virtually lost to the Protestant cause. And now a cloud like a man's hand
arises in our own Church, to threaten a further secession from the ranks
of the remaining class, who strive to stamp upon the Government, through
the operation of the representative principle, at least a modicum of
the evangelistic character. And all this is taking place in an age in
which the battle for the integrity of the Sabbath as a national
institute, and other similar battles, shall soon have to be decided on
political ground. If 'apostat