in general, signifies the signature put at the bottom of a letter, writing, or instrument.

In commerce, it is used for the share or interest which particular persons take in a public stock or a trading company, by writing their names, and the shares they require, in the backs or register thereof.

Subscription to articles of faith is required of the clergy of every established church, and of some churches not established. Whether such subscription serves any good purpose, in a religious or theological view, is a very doubtful question. It may be necessary in an establishment, as a test of loyalty to the prince, and of attachment to the constitution, civil and ecclesiastical, but it cannot produce uniformity of opinion. As all language is more or less ambiguous, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to determine in what sense the words of long established creeds are to be interpreted; and we believe that the clergy of the churches of England and Scotland seldom consider themselves as fettered by the Thirty-nine Articles, or the Confession of Faith, when composing instructions either for their respective parishes or for the public at large. See INDEPENDENTS.

in the commerce of books, signifies an engagement to take a certain number of copies of a book, intended to be printed, and a reciprocal obligation of the bookseller or publisher, to deliver the said copies, on certain terms. These subscriptions, which had their rise in England about the middle of the 17th century, were lately very frequent in France and Holland, and are now very common among ourselves.