nor has any provision been made for the education and religious training of ministers, with a view to supply this allimportant desideratum.

The Congregational and Baptist denominations in Ireland. do not unitedly form a body approaching in numbers to the Wesleyan Methodists, but they exhibit a very different aspect. There are about thirty Congregational churches in Ireland, chiefly of modern foundation, comprising about 1,250 members in church-fellowship.* Some of these are inconsiderable; and the greater part are supported by the Irish Evangelical Society of London; but the labours of their pastors are brought to bear, statedly or more occasionally, upon a large field of exertion. The agents of this Society, to whom the cause of Protestantism is very greatly indebted for the diffusion of Scriptural knowledge, are about 50 in number; half of them are pastors, and the remainder Scripture readers and expositors. The Baptist Irish Society, a kindred institution, maintains six itinerants, and upwards of 50 Scripture readers. There are about twelve churches or congregations of this denomination; but they are all inconsiderable.

Under the general name of Dissenters, there are also included, in Ireland, three distinct bodies of Separatists.

The first of these is composed of the followers of the late Mr. John Walker, formerly a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and at one time a popular preacher in the Established Church of Ireland. Having adopted the tenets of Sandemanianism, he seceded from the Establishment, and formed a small society in Dublin, upon the principle of holding no communion with any other sect: hence their distinctive name of Separatists. They have also been termed Walkerites. Besides the parent society in Dublin, which is very small, there are only a few companies of these Separatists in the country parts; but, in 1820, a church of the same principles was established in London. On all doctrinal points, and in the main features of ritual and discipline, the members

The more ancient Independent congregations, founded in the time of the Commonwealth, have gradually become incorporated with the Presbyterian com munities.

of this isolated communion agree with the Glassites and Sandemanians.*

Mr. Kelly's connexion forms a second class of Separatists, nearly allied to the followers of Mr. Walker in their religious order and discipline, which may be described as Sandemanian, but holding doctrinal views more nearly accordant with those of the evangelical Dissenters. The Rev. Mr. Kelly, well known to the religious world by his popular hymns and sacred melodies, is the son of Judge Kelly, of Queen's County. He seceded from the Establishment, of which he was a minister, and was joined by the Rev. George Carr, of New Ross. Besides Mr. Kelly's chapel in Dublin, there are five or six branch churches in connexion with it, formed upon the same principle of ultra-Independency.

The third class of Separatists is composed of a new body of seceders from the Established Church, who are familiarly known under the name of Darby-ites, from the Rev. Mr. Darby, their most prominent leader. Several zealous and pious ministers of the Established Church have joined themselves to this society, the distinguishing principles of which are understood to combine evangelical doctrines with the peculiarities of Millenarianism. Their sentiments are believed to be spreading within the pale of the Irish Establishment.

The Moravians, or United Brethren,† have in Ireland one settlement, (at Gracehill, County Antrim, founded in 1765,) and five congregations, consisting of about 600 members. Including casual hearers and the youth committed to their care for education, it is supposed that a population of between two and three thousand are indebted to them for religious instruction.

The Society of Friends is found scattered over the three provinces of Ulster, Leinster, and Munster: quarterly meetings are held in each, and a yearly meeting in Dublin. There are meetings for worship at about 42 different places, which may be taken as the present number of their assemblies; and

The scientific Faraday is a member of this society.
See page 251.

their total number may be conjectured to amount to about 5,000 souls.

Altogether, these several denominations of Dissenters, viz. Congregationalists, Baptists, Separatists, Moravians, and Quakers, in the Report of the Commissioners, are set down as forming an aggregate population of less than 22,000 out of eight millions; and they cannot, perhaps, much exceed that estimate. But if to these we add the Methodists, we shall have an aggregate of at least 200,000, with 400 places of worship; a moderate estimate, since the Presbyterians, with 450 places of worship, are stated to amount to nearly 650,000, and probably exceed that number. If so, the total number of Protestants dissenting from the Established Church must approach to a million of the population. Deducting the Methodists from the number classed as belonging to the Establishment, there will be left as members of the Episcopal Church scarcely 700,000. We have no means of verifying this startling result.

I

CHAPTER IX.

PROTESTANT SECTS.

Extant Organized Sects in Great Britain.-History, Discipline, and Tenets of the Quakers.-The Swedenborgians.-The Irvingites.-American sects.

UNDER the denomination of sects (agreeably to the explanation offered in the first chapter) are comprised two different classes of religious bodies: those which, having their distinct and peculiar organization, form separate societies, and those which, distinguished only by holding the tenets of a particular theological school, are found within the pale of different communions, as the Jesuits and Jansenists of the Romish Church, and the Calvinists and Arminians of the Church of England. To the latter might be applied the appellation of sporadic (or scattered) sects, to distinguish them from the organized or concentrated sects of the former class, which will first claim our attention.

The only Protestant Sects in Great Britain forming distinct and separate bodies, are, taking them in the order of their origination, the following:

I. The Society of Friends or Quakers, who took their
rise about 1650.

II. The Sabbatarians (or Seventh-day Baptists). 1670.
III. The Sandemanians (or Glassites). 1730. (In England,

1760.)

IV. The Wesleyan Methodists. 1738.

V. The Swedenborgians. 1788.

VI. The Irvingites. 1826.

Of these six sects, the Wesleyan Methodists alone are very numerous, being more than equal to the aggregate of all the others. Though truly and properly a sect, considered

as the followers of Wesley, so slightly do they differ in doctrine and discipline from other denominations of Protestant Nonconformists, that, theologically, they class with them; and we have on this account described their characteristic opinions and usages, in the preceding chapter, in connexion with those of the other Dissenters. The Sabbatarians, who are distinguished by religiously observing the seventh day of the week, are a branch of the English General Baptists, now almost extinct. A single congregation only survives in London, and not more than nine or ten societies in the West of England, which are kept from dissolution by endowments. As they differ from other General Baptists upon no other point, no further account of them as a distinct sect can be requisite.* The Sandemanians, or followers of Glas and Sandeman, can scarcely claim to be any longer enumerated among extant sects, having, in Scotland, become merged in the "Independents," while in England a few obscure congregations alone survive. Their peculiar opinions have already been described, in the account of the Scottish Dissenters. The Quakers, the Swedenborgians, and the followers of the late Mr. Irving, constitute, therefore, the only three English sects which will require a particular notice.

SECTION I.

THE QUAKERS.

The most ancient of the English sects, and in all respects the most remarkable, is that of the followers of Fox, Pennington, Barclay, and Penn, known as the Society of Friends, or Quakers. The rise of this sect dates from the middle of the seventeenth century, when a number of individuals, dissatisfied with all the existing modes of worship, withdrew

In the United States, there are 32 congregations of Seventh-day Baptists, comprising, according to the latest accounts, 4,258 communicants.