ed towards those immortal beings who will feel the effects of this errour through eternity, or to those who would undo. them?

We shall notice the inventors and abettors of the new doctrines only as the propagators of what we believe to be dangerous errour; we are willing to concede to them all, and even more than their friends would be ready to claim for them; but still, whatever be the dignity, talents, or learning of those who would withdraw us from the truth, our course is plainly marked out in the word of God. "Though we," says the Apostle Paul," though we or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you, than that we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. If there come unto

you any and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed-for he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds." Whatever a counterfeit charity may pretend, we have the authority of the Bible, that it is an evil deed to corrupt the gospel of Christ.

Even supposing that the Church had no concern with the faith of its members, and that it may innocently bid God speed to them who are bringing in another gospel, still what shall we say of the ingenuousness of those who retain their connection with a church when they have rejected its fundamental doctrines, more who maintain this connection in order to subvert these doctrines. We concede to them the right as freemen to receive and teach what they please, but we deny that they can innocently use the confidence which the Church reposes in them in order to betray it; or profess a creed in order to overthrow it; or use the power, influence, and credit which they enjoy as members and pastors in the Church in order to sap its founda

tions.

Christians can innocently give their countenance to those who are introducing fundamental errour, only while they do it ignorantly. He that biddeth them God speed, knowing their true designs, is partaker of their evil deeds. The Church itself may extensively share the guilt and punishment of those who are introducing heresy. Bare silence alone is the most that these persons wish. Let them pursue their course of proselytism, of agitation and proscription upon those who are ignorant of their plans, unmolested, and they are sure of final success. By keeping silence only, the

Church would give them the whole weight of her authority. She would speak, and, in terms not to be misunderstood, say, that nothing is to be feared from these men. It is not necessary that the Church actually patronize such persons; she gives them actual countenance, if she do not make unceasing opposition to their works.

But it is said that before Christians can be justified in withdrawing confidence, errour must have been taught and acknowledged in the most plain and unequivocal manner. Now this is precisely that which will never be done. Where truth continues to be reverenced, fundamental errour can enter only secretly and in disguise. A plain disclosure would be its immediate ruin; it is always veiled in ambiguous language sure to be understood by the initiated, and misunderstood by the orthodox. Its abettors well know that they must use the sacred authority and influence of the Church to spread their opinions, and they have little scruple to use its confidence to undermine it. Hence they always begin by asserting that the difference is so slight, that on coming to definitions, it almost vanishes, that all alarm is groundless and ridiculous, and excited only from interested motives.

When those Pelagians who held the form of Arminianism in New-England, were preparing to introduce Socinianism into Massachusetts, did they give notice of their doings, did they themselves sound the alarm? On the contrary, the thing was conducted with such secrecy, that the defection was known in England sooner than in this country, and the news came to us only by accident, and from the other side of the Atlantic. How would any alarm have been received from the friends of truth at that time? Even after the defection had become extensive, all apprehension on the part of serious people was treated with ridicule. While Socinians were pouring ridicule and contempt upon the orthodox doctrines in one circle, asserting that none but the bigoted, ignorant, weak, and superstitious could receive such absurdities as the doctrines of the Reformation, in others they were giving assurances that the differences were slight, and mostly verbal, and that it would be criminal in the highest degree to allow them to interrupt the harmony, peace, and union which heretofore had prevailed. Doubtless every truth that is given up, is first deemed unimportant by those that surrender it. But did the Church bid them God speed, and by

countenancing them in their labours, become a partner in their guilt? No. No. Without the formality of a trial, or even of a citation, she did not indeed exscind them from all ecclesiastical connexion, but she did more. She withdrew from their communion, and thus, as it were, passed upon them the sentence of excommunication; and justly. For the other party must have despised them yet more in their hearts had they done less. They would justly have considered them insincere either in their creed or in their professions of union, should they continue communion with those who ridiculed, despised, and blasphemed what they believed to be the gospel of Christ. So far from preserving harmony, the only feelings such an union could produce, would be suspicion on one part and contempt on the other. It could only have given a wider spread to the corruption, and made a subsequent division more extensive.

Now who was it that caused this division? Was it those who continued to maintain the gospel which both parties had held in common, or those who introduced another gospel, and required their brethren to bid them God speed in spreading it? The other party had left the orthodox no alternative but that of abusing the patronage and the authority of the Church for the dissemination of heresy, or of dissolving communion. By taking the other course, not only must they have given their influence to the spread of dangerous errour, but even brought their own integrity into suspicion. What confidence could he claim, who on one occasion should teach one thing, and on another the reverse; in words that one thing was the gospel, in actions that the opposite was equally so? This course must have ruined

them, and perhaps their churches.

At the present time we hear some of the great doctrines of the Reformation treated with ridicule, and accused of the most licentious tendency, and the very same persons else. where claiming to hold them with differences merely verbal. We hear Pelagianism advanced with some degree of boldness, and then apparently retracted and denied. We remember hearing a distinguished Unitarian clergyman remark that, in general he found little to censure in the statements of the New-Haven divines on depravity, regeneration and imputation, but when they undertake to prove their orthodoxy on these points to their brethren, we see not much to choose between them. Now to whom do men VOL. V.

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give the most correct account of their sentiments?-to those whom they wish to instruct, or those they wish to satisfy? A system of concealment and ambiguous expression has become so common among a certain class, that we know of no surer mark that a person has received the system of Dr. Taylor, than to see him attempt to conceal his sentiments on the most important subjects under ambiguous terms. This is not the course of those who are conscious of only slight verbal differences. We commonly see these persons professing to regard the new system with decided disapprobation, but after an explanation of their ambiguous terms has been insisted on, avowing its fundamental principles. Now is this the course of those who have attained to new and important truths, such as they know will bless mankind. Is this the conduct of those who value truth beyond all things else, who are ready to become martyrs in its defence and extension? Does it not more resemble the skulking instinct of the vermin who clings to his hole, and steadily resists with all its strength, every attempt to pull him from his chosen concealment? What shall we say of the pretensions of those who conceal what they call the most valuable discoveries, discoveries which are instantly to change the face of the Church and regenerate the world? And what opinion shall we entertain of those truths of which the abettors are generally ashamed, which they conceal, and are willing to have pass for the opposite errours?

It is less owing to the prevalence of heresy, than to this system of concealment, that confidence is so generally impaired. When ordinary conversation, creeds, and the most solemn instruments are no longer able to bind men, there must ensue a general distrust. When men have been accustomed to use language, creeds and the most solemn compacts, all in which we have been accustomed to place confidence, not to express their opinions, but to conceal them, they have nothing left by which to regain confidence; and it is out of our power to bestow it.

Now we say we believe that the differences which prevail at the present time in the Church are fundamental. The great doctrines of native depravity and regeneration by the Holy Spirit, as they have always been understood; truths which lie at the foundation of all the great doctrines of grace are not barely denied, but held up to public odium and detestation. We see men assailing them with ridicule,

and charging them with all the consequences which infidels have always endeavoured to fix upon them; and these truths never have met so severe treatment from unbelievers as they now experience in the Church. And shall we decide with these persons, and accuse the Church since the Reformation, of teaching the most pernicious errours, and justify Socinians and infidels in all their cruel charges which they have brought against these opinions and those who profess them. If human nature is labouring under only a slight wound, one which it gives itself, and which, with sufficient persuasion it can be induced to cure, if we can be convinced of this, we will be the first to rejoice, and will retract every charge. But till then, when we hear men denying that grace which alone makes them Christians, denying the existence and even possibility of that depravity which alone makes grace necessary, whoever they may be, we will raise our voice against them; we will not call that a slight and unimportant difference which undermines the whole gospel system. The Catholic Church had not gone so far as to deny man's native depravity, and regeneration by the special influences of the Holy Spirit, when the Reformers thought themselves justified in a separation; and shall we pronounce that those who reject these fundamental doctrines, without which the others have no meaning, shall we say they have renounced nothing important, and differ from us only in trifles?

But it is said that both parties agree in the facts, though they use different terms to express them. Now we know that the reverse of this is true; there is an apparent agreement in words, but the facts are denied by those of the New-Haven school as warmly as by Socinians. Experimental religion is wholly swept away by this system; all the divine precepts relating to the affections are explained in accordance with the new philosophy, and the Christian graces are subjected to a crafty analysis till they vanish. We believe, that the system utterly excludes truth from the doctrines, and holiness from the precepts of the Bible. We regard it, when stripped of its ambiguous language, as little less at variance with spiritual religion than Socinianism.

We know it is said that it is not a new gospel, but only a new way of presenting the old one so as to make it efficacious. Now had the success of the gospel depended, not on the influences of the Holy Spirit, but on a mysterious way