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'And the justices at the sessions where any Protestant dissenting minister shall live, are required to tender and administer the said lastmentioned declaration to such minister, upon his offering himself to make and subscribe the same, and thereof to keep a register; for the registering of which he shall pay 6d. to the officer of the court, and no more; and 6d. for a certificate thereof signed by such officer.'

By stat. 10 Ann. c. 2, § 9. Any preacher or teacher of any congregation of dissenting protestants, duly qualified according to the act of W. & M., shall be allowed to officiate in any congregation, although the same be not in the county where he was so qualified; provided that the place of meeting hath been duly certified and registered: and such teacher or preacher shall, if required, produce a certificate of his having so qualified himself, under the hand of the clerk of the peace where he was qualified; and shall also, before any justice of such county or place where he shall so officiate, make and subscribe such declaration, and take such oaths as aforesaid, if required.

And by 1 W. & M. c. 18. § 11., and 19 Geo. III., c. 44. § 1. Every such teacher and preacher, that is a minister, preacher, or teacher of a congregation, having taken the oaths, and subscribed as aforesaid, shall from thenceforth be exempted from serving on any jury, or from being chosen or appointed to bear the office of churchwarden, overseer of the poor, or any other parochial or ward office, or other office, in any hundred of any shire, city, town, parish, division, or wapentake, and by 42 Geo. III., c. 90, and 43 Geo. III., c. 10, from serving in the militia, either personally or by substitute, if he be a licensed teacher of any separate congregation, and has been licensed twelve months previous to the yearly general meeting appointed to be held in October, &c.: and by 43 Geo. III., c. 96, § 12, from serving under the army of reserve act, If he be a licensed teacher of any separate congregation in holy orders, or pretended holy orders, and not carrying on any other trade, or exercising any other occupation for his livelihood, except that of a school

master.

By stat. 52 Geo. III., c. 155, § 2, no congregation of Protestants for religious worship, where more than twenty persons shall be present besides the preacher's family, shall be permitted (unless registered under former acts) until duly certified to the bishop, &c., or to the sessions, and a due return shall be made thereof once a year to the bishop or archdeacon, and registered in the court of the bishop, &c., on penalty of £20 on every person allowing any such congregation, to meet in any place occupied by him. Persons preaching in any place without consent of occupiers, are liable to a penalty of £30.

And by § 4. Every person who shall teach or preach at, or officiate in, or shall resort to any congregation or assembly for religious worship of protestants, whose place of meeting shall be duly certified according to the provisions of this act, or any other act or acts relating to the certifying and registering of places of religious worship, shall be exempt from all such pains and

penalties under any act or acts relating to religious worship, as any person who shall have taken the oaths and made the declaration prescribed by or mentioned in the 1 W. & M. or any act amending the said act, is by law exempt. And by § 6, it is provided, that no person shall be required by any justice to go to any greater distance than five miles from his own home, or from the place where he shall be residing at the time of such requisition, for the purpose of taking such oaths as aforesaid.

$ 7. Any of his majesty's protestant subjects may appear before any one justice, and produce to such justice a printed or written copy of the said oaths and declaration, and require such justice to administer such oaths, and to tender such declaration to be made, taken, and subscribed by such person; and thereupon such justice shall administer such oaths, and tender such declaration to the person requiring to take and make and subscribe the same; and such person shall take and make and subscribe such oaths and declaration in the presence of such justice accordingly; and such justice shall attest the same to be sworn before him, and shall transmit or deliver the same to the clerk of the peace for the county, &c., for which he shall act as such justice, before or at the next general or quarter sessions of the peace for such county, &c. And for the making and signing of which certificate, where the said oaths and declaration are taken and made on the requisition of the party taking and making the same, such justice shall be entitled to demand and have a fee of 2s. 6d. and no more: and such certificate shall be conclusive evidence that the party named therein has made and taken the oaths and subscribed the declaration in manner required by this act.

Dissenters chosen to any parochial or ward offices, and scrupling to take the oaths, may execute the office by deputy, who shall comply with the law in this behalf. Stat. 1 W. & M. st. 1, c. 18.—But it appears that they are not subject to fine on refusing to serve corporation offices. For where a freeman of London was elected one of the sheriffs, but refused to take the office on account of his being a dissenter, and, as such, not having received the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England, within a year before his election, an action was brought in the Sheriff's Court, for the penalty incurred by such refusal, and a judgment recovered; which judgment was affirmed in a writ of error brought in the court of Hustings. But the defendant having obtained a commission of errors, the judges' delegates reversed both judgments; and, on a writ of error in parliament, this judgment of reversal was affirmed; the judges being (except one) of opinion that the defendant was at liberty to object to the validity of his election, on the ground of his own nonconformity.

And thus the reader has before him a summary view of the existing legal situation and rights of the Protestant Dissenting body.

2. Of the principles common to this body as separatists from the establishment, we know of no general authentic summary: but dissenters at large are very familiar with those arguments for

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the liberty of conscience, the right of private judgment, and final obedience to God alone in religion, which they consider as involving the right and duty of the course they adopt. They are also not without respectable publications on the subject, by learned individuals of their body. It will be sufficient to mention those of Doddridge, Watts, Dr. John Taylor, Neal, Delaune, Palmer, and Towgood, all of whom have produced able defences of the dissenting system.

The celebrated Richard Baxter declared, what is true, perhaps, of a majority of the existing dissenters, that the Non-conformists of his day agreed with the doctrines of the thirty-nine articles, and differed only from the church in the form of government. He says, that the Independents, as well as Presbyterians, offered to subscribe to the articles, except as to prelacy and 'We are one,' he adds, with the ceremony. church of England in all the necessary points of faith and Christian practice.'

Yet these men departed from the church of England, at the expense of all their earthly comforts; and some of them braving persecution, 'even to death;' laid the foundation of the existing dissent, by denying the authority of any body of fallible men to 'decree rites and ceremonies' in the church. They contended, as do the modern dissenters, that what was left indifferent by the only lawgiver of his church, should not be made important and peremptorily enjoined upon his followers. They revolted, particularly, at subscribing to the principle of a power in the church to decree rites and ceremonies, and to have authority in matters of faith,' as so indefinite and extensive, that under the shadow of it, all the enormous usurpations and superstitions of the church of Rome might be and have been included. If the church of England, it is moreover said, claims and exercises this power, and obliges all its ministers to subscribe to articles of faith, which it hath authoritatively decreed, and to use in religious worship ceremonies and rites, which it hath authoritatively enjoined; hath not the church of France, or the church of Spain, the same authority and power? It cannot be an exclusive privilege of any one church. And if it be allowed that the church of Rome has this prerogative, such a claim would overthrow the Reformation and the foundatious of the church of England itself. They say, with a modern divine of the church of England, 'Whenever useless rites and ceremonies are imposed, corruptions are passed into a law, and the terms of communion are such as are not authorised by the law of Christ, then it becomes a duty to dissent, and they are the separatists who compel others to divide, not they who deplore the necessity of so doing.'

But dissenters have further enquired, who are the persons that are, in point of fact, invested with this authority and power? In other words, who are the church? This power to order the manner of God's worship, and to settle articles of faith, is not lodged in the bishops and clergy, who are usually denominated our spiritual pastors and guides, but entirely in the king and parliament of these realms, under whose direction and control the clergy are to act. Accord

ingly, the dissenters allege, that the church of
England is a parliamentary church; not pro-
perly an ally, but a mere creature of the existing
government, depending entirely upon the acts
and authority of parliament for its essence and
frame. The qualifications of its ministers, their
power to officiate, the manner in which they are
to administer the sacraments, are all limited and
prescribed by authority of parliament: and this
authority, which at first made, can alone alter
and new make it; can abolish, or add to, its arti-
cles or rites, according to its pleasure, even
though the whole body of bishops and clergy
ever so much dislike or ever so earnestly protest
against it. Therefore, while some dissenters
justify their dissent from the establishment,
because, for example, they think that some cere-
monies imposed, or the various orders of minis-
ters, or the received subjects of baptism, or the
mode of administering baptism and the Lord's
supper, or the state of her discipline, are incom-
patible with the scriptural pattern; others go
farther, and attempt to prove, that every religious
establishment is neither more nor less than a
direct violation of some of the strongest injunc-
tions of the great Head of the church.

These quote the words of Jesus Christ, 'My kingdom is not of this world,' as virtually forbidding all such attempted alliances between church and state, as every ecclesiastical establishment involves. They say that such a system debases Christianity into an engine of state, secularises its ministers and institutions, argues a concealed distrust of the apostolic weapons of faith, prayer, and 'the words of truth and soberness,' and is, in its influence on the conduct of the dominant party towards those who differ from them, essentially persecuting.

In confirmation of this view of the subject, they adduce the existing state of the laws with regard to dissenters. They argue that, every man has a right to the common privileges of the society in which he lives; and among these common privileges is a legal capacity for serving his sovereign and country; a right, so important, that the forfeiture of it is made the punishment of some of the greatest crimes. No man who does not forfeit that capacity of serving his sovereign and country, which is his natural right, as well as the honor and emoluments that may happen to be connected with it, by overt-acts, ought to be deprived of them; and disabilities that are not thus incurred, are unjust penalties, implying both disgrace and privation. Punishment, without the previous proof of guilt, cannot be denied to be an injury; and injuries inflicted, on account of religion, are undoubtedly persecutions.

The dissenters, therefore, contend, that the subjection to higher powers, and obedience to magistrates, which the Scriptures enjoin on Christians, relates only to civil, not at all to religious matters; and that so far is Christianity from enjoining, that it actually forbids obedience to civil governors in things of a religious nature. It commands us to 'call no man upon earth father or master,' Matthew xxiii. 8, 9, i.e. to acknowledge no authority or jurisdiction of any in matters of religion, but to remember that

'One only is our master' and lawgiver, even Christ; and that all Christians are brethren, Matthew xx. 25.

We cannot follow out the dissenting system into its numerous separate lines of divergence from the established church. Under the particular names of each of their well-known denominations will these be fully discussed. But many pious and excellent men, we may add, have divided from the church of England, on account of her laxity in discipline; others from the evident disagreement, as they allege, between the doctrines of the desk, or liturgy, and those of the pulpit; and while the major part of dissenters, as we have stated, profess agreement with her doctrinal articles, a respectable minority would object to several of them. The entire system of Wesleyan Methodism, a species of modern dissent, has grown out of the first of these complaints against the church. We do not feel ourselves called upon to add more as to the general principles of this body. See ME

THODISTS.

:

3. Their history, dissenters, of course, contend, commences with the persecutions of that early sect of our religion with whose affairs the book of the Acts of the Apostles is occupied: but, in this country, they consider themselves the successors of the Wicliffites and Lollardites of the fourteenth century. Of John Wicliff Mr. Gilpin says, 'The authority claimed by the church he strenuously opposed. It was a scandal, he would say, to the Christian church, that any of its members should set up their own authority against that of their Saviour. The great argument of that day (which was indeed a subtle one) for the authority of the church, was this. Many persons, besides Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John, wrote gospels; but the church rejected them all, excepting these four and this it did by its own proper authority. It might, by the same authority, have rejected those four gospels, and have received others. It follows, therefore, that the authority of the church is above that of any gospel. To this Wicliff replied, that the evidence for the received gospels was so strong, and that for the rejected ones so weak, that the church could not have done otherwise than it did, without doing violence to reason. But the best argument, he said, if it were proper to avow it, for supporting the authority of the church, was the necessity of it to support the tyranny of the pope. This was what made it worth defending at the expense of truth. In another place, speaking on the same subject, he says, that the pope would not submit his actions to the same criterion, by which Christ was contented to have his actions tried. If I do not, says Christ, the works of my father which is in heaven, believe me not. But the pope's authority, it seems, must be acknowledged, though he manifestly does the works of the devil. Thus, says he, Christians are in greater thraldom than the Jews under the old law; and that liberty, by which Christ hath made us free, is, by the wickedness of designing men, changed into the most absolute spiritual bondage. The days, says he, I hope, will come, when men will be wise enough to shake from their necks the dominion of human ordinances; and disdain

submission to any ecclesiastical injunctions, but such as are plainly authorised by the word of God.'

Early in the Reformation, a respectable party of the church of England contended for a more complete departure from the popish models of church government and discipline. Bishop Hooper, perhaps, led the way to the practical secession that afterwards took place, by refusing to be consecrated in the Roman pontificals. This was in the reign of Edward VI. On the persecutions that arose under queen Mary, a considerable number of the British exiles settled at Frankfort, and agreed to conduct their worship, without answering aloud after the minister, and without using the liturgy and surplice; to begin the public service with a general confession of sins, then to sing a psalm, after which the minister prayed for the divine assistance, and next proceeded to the sermon; after sermon, to use a general prayer for all estates, and particularly for England, at the end of which were subjoined the Lord's prayer, and a rehearsal of the articles of belief; then the people were to sing another psalm, and the minister to dismiss them with a blessing. Such was the order which they had unanimously adopted; and, having chosen a minister and deacons, they invited their dispersed brethren to join with them. In the year 1556 Dr. Cox joined them, with several of his friends; who interrupted the public service by answering aloud after the minister, and read the whole litany, in violation of the agreement upon which the congregation was formed. They out-numbered the first settlers, and, obtaining leave of the magistrates for the free use of king Edward's servicebook, performed divine worship according to the rites that had been authorised by that prince. The original party, upon this, left the city of Frankfort, and removed to Basil and Geneva. Here commenced the distinction of Puritans and Conformists, by which the two parties were ever afterwards known, the former being called Conformists, on account of their compliance with the ecclesiastical laws of Edward VI., and the latter, Nonconformists and Puritans, from their insisting upon a form of worship of a purer kind, as they alleged.

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On the accession of queen Elizabeth, the schism became more important. Dr. Cox was appointed bishop of Ely; and the standard of orthodoxy, according to this divine, and the majority of the bishops, was the queen's supremacy and the laws of the land;' whilst the Puritans contended for the decrees of provincial and national synods,' allowed and enforced by the civil magistrate; for neither party, it must be allowed, was for admitting full liberty of conscience, and freedom of religious profession.

Ministers were now obliged to comply with an act for the uniformity of common prayer and service in the church and administration of the sacraments; to subscribe a declaration of faith, issued by order of the archbishops and bishops, for the unity of doctrine; to take the oath of supremacy to the queen, &c. The question about habits was revived; and in 1566 these and several other ceremonies, imposed by law, compelled the puritaus to an open separation. In

the following year they published other objections against the hierarchy and various ceremonies, for the use of which, they contended, there was no foundation in Scripture or antiquity. The leaders of this separation were chiefly beneficed persons of the diocese of London; who first assembled, with such of their flocks as chose to follow them, in woods and private houses, subjecting themselves to a variety of legal penalties and frequent imprisonment. The adherence of the puritans to Calvinistic principles seems, in no small degree, to have urged the established clergy at this time to adopt the intricate distinc-, tions of Arminius on the subject of grace, freewill, &c. But several episcopal divines remained attached to the puritan system in the reign of James I.; and all these abettors of Calvinism, whether episcopal or presbyterian, were called doctrinal puritans. At length, according to Fuller (Church Hist. book ix. p. 97, book x. p. 100), the name was extended to stigmatise all those who endeavoured in their devotions to accompany the minister with a pure heart, or who were remarkably holy in their conversation.

Queen Elizabeth and James I. treated these early dissenters with that rigor which induced many of them to emigrate to the colonies. In the year 1629 they founded Massachusett's Bay. The colony of Connecticut was formed by emigrants of the same class in 1636, and that of New Haven by those who, in 1637, fled from the persecution of Laud, and the oppressions of the star-chamber and high commission courts. The puritans were afterwards not allowed to transport themselves to New England; we have seen, in the article CROMWELL, how singularly the future lord protector was then prevented expatriating himself; and many of them removed, with their families, to the Low Countries.

At

enlarged them; and each of the successive monarchs has renewed and redeemed his pledge to keep the toleration act inviolate: and while the parties interested are still hopeful of the abrogation of all excluding statutes, on the subject of religion, they wait with patience the final conviction of the government and country as to the period of awarding their rights.

DISSENTIENT; a word literally signifying they dissent or disagree, prefixed to protests, or rather to the reasons of dissent, given in by protesting peers, in the upper House of Parliament, to be entered on the journals of the house.

DISSERTATION, n. s. Lat. dissertatio. A discourse; a disquisition; a treatise.

Plutarch, in his dissertation upon the Poets, quotes an instance of Homer's judgment in closing a ludicrous scene with decency and instruction. Broome on the Odyssey.

I have known a woman branch out into a long extempore dissertation upon the edging of a petticoat, and chide her servant for breaking a china cup in all the figures of rhetoric. Addison.

ing, and the dissertations that accompany it so judicious and instructive, that the translator is confident his attempt stands in need of no apology.

The following relation is so curious and entertain

Johnson. Preface to Father Lobo's Voyage.
DISSE'RVE, v. a.
DISSERVICE, n. s.
DISSE'RVICEABLE, adj.
DISSERVICEABLENESS, n. S.

Dis and serve. To do injury to; to damage; hurt.

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All action being for some end, and not the end itself, its aptness to be commanded or forbidden, viceableness to some end. must be founded upon its serviceableness or disserNorris.

We shall rather perform good offices unto truth,

served. Browne. Great sicknesses make a sensible alteration, but

smaller indispositions do a proportionable disservice.

Collier.

Desires of things of this world, by their tendency, promote or disserve our interests in another. Rogers. DISSETTLE, v. a. settle; to unfix.

Dis and settle. To un

On the restoration of Charles II., in the year 1660, the name of Puritans, says bishop Burnet, was changed into that of Protestant Nonconformists, who were subdivided into Presbyterians, than any disservice unto relaters who have well deIndependents, Anabaptists, and Quakers. this time a second Act of Uniformity was passed, by which all who refused to observe the rites, and subscribe the doctrines, of the church of England, were entirely excluded from power. From this period until the reign of king William III. the Nonconformists were in a very precarious situation, sometimes involved in calamity and trouble, and at other times enjoying intervals of tranquillity, according to the varying temper of the court and ministry. But in the year 1689 the memorable bill for the toleration of all Protestant dissenters from the church of England, except impugners of the Trinity, passed in parliament almost without opposition, and delivered those who could comply with the conditions it imposed from the penal laws to which they had been so long subjected.

Fluctuations have taken place in the political treatment of dissenters since this period, and in the close of the reign of queen Anne the act of Occasional Conformity, which was pushed forward by the high-church party, threatened the extinction of their new liberties. But the accession of the present illustrious House of Brunswick to the throne of these realms has confirmed and

DISSEVER, v. a.
Dis and sever. In this
word the particle dis makes no change in the
signification, and therefore, says Dr. Johnson,
the word, though supported by great authorities,
ought to be ejected from our language. To part
in two; to break; divide; rend asunder; dis-
unite.

Dissever your united strengths,
And part your mingled colours once again.
Shakspeare.
The dissevering of fleets hath been the overthrow of
many actions.
Raleigh.

Shortly had the storm so dissevered the company, which the day before had tarried together, that most of them never met again, but were swallowed up.

Sidney.

The meeting points the sacred hair dissever From the fair head, for ever and for ever. Pope.

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The dissimilitude between the Divinity and images, shews that images are not a suitable means whereby to worship God. Stillingfleet.

As human society is founded in the similitude of some things, so it is promoted by some certain dissimilitudes. Grew.

The light whose rays are all alike refrangible, I call simple, homogeneal, and similar; and that, whose rays are some more refrangible than others, I call compound, heterogeneal, and dissimilar. Newton.

If the principle of reunion has not its energy in this life, whenever the attractions of sense cease, the acquired principles of dissimilarity must repel these beings from their centre. Cheyne.

Women are curious observers of the likeness of

children to parents, that they may, upon finding dissimilitude, have the pleasure of hinting unchastity.

Pope's Odyssey, Notes. Ideas of the same race, though not exactly alike,

are sometimes so little different that no words can express the dissimilitude.

Johnson. Preface to Dictionary. DISSIMULATION, n. s. ¿ Lat. dissimulaDISSIMULATING, n. s. Stio. See DisSEMBLE. The act of dissembling; hypocrisy; fallacious appearance or pretensions. See the

extract from the Tatler.

Who coude tellen you the forme of daunces So uncouth, and so freshe countenances, Swiche subtil lokings and dissimulings, For dred of jalous mennes apperceivings.

Chaucer. Cant. Tales.

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dis and seps, sepis, a venomous serpent, because whatever is bitten thereby, putrifies.-Minsheu To disperse; scatter; destroy: dissipation is th act or habit of dispersing or wasting: applied figuratively also to the mind, and particularly the attention. Dissipable is an obsolete adjective for, easily dispersed, or liable to dispersion.

The heat of those plants is very dissipable, which under the earth is contained and held in; but when it cometh to the air it exhaleth. Bacon's Natural History. Abraham was contemporary with Paleg, in whose time the famous dissipation of mankind, and distinction of languages, happened.

Hale's Origin of Mankind. It is covered with skin and hair, to quench and dissipate the force of any stroke, and retard the eige Ray.

of

any weapon.

Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant. Addison.

I have begun two or three letters to you by snatches, and been prevented from finishing them by a thousand avocations and dissipations. Swift.

The parts of plants are very tender, as consisting of corpuscles which are extremely small and light, and therefore the more easily dissipable.

Woodward's Natural History.

The circling mountains eddy in,
From the bare wild, the dissipated storm.

Thomson. This slavery to his passions produced a life irregular and dissipated. Johnson. Savage's Life. DISSIPATION, in physics, an insensible loss or consumption of the minute parts of the body; or that flux whereby they fly off and are lost.

DISSIPATION, CIRCLE OF, in optics, that circular space upon the retina, which is taken up by one of the extreme rays issuing from an object. When the distance of an object from the eye is too small or too great for perfect or distinct vision, the rays of each pencil, issuing from the object, cannot be united at a point on the retina; consequently, the rays of each pencil will occupy a circular space upon the retina, which circle is called the circle of dissipation, bcause the rays of a pencil, instead of being collected into a central point, are dissipated all

over this circle.

DISSIDENTS, a denomination applied in Poland to those of the Lutheran, Calvinistic, and Greek professions. The kings of Poland engaged by the pacta conventa to tolerate them in the free exercise of their religion, but they had often reason to complain of the violation of these promises. See POLAND.

DISSOCIATE, v. a. Lat. dissocio. To separate; disunite; part.

In the dissociating action, even of the gentlest fire, upon a concrete, there perhaps vanish some active and fugitive particles, whose presence was requisite to contain the concrete under such a determinate form.

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