obstruct the entire action of the truth, making the dispensation, as a whole, to be an entirely different sort of dispensation in its pervading spirit and genius. To prove this I need only remind you, that it is of the very essence of Christianity, rightly understood, to induce a perfectly spiritual faith and worship, to make every thing to depend at last on inward fealty, on the faith of the heart and holiness of life; whereas, for all I can see, the Church of Rome makes religion to be as much an outward thing, and presents it under forms as gross, and palpable, and sensuous, as did the more refined and polished systems of paganism which she supplanted. Neither does it seem to me that any reform of proper Catholicism can go any further than to accommodate a little better a spurious principle of religion, or a false mode of religious action, to an improved state of society.

Besides, it is not necessary for Protestants to deny, that the Catholic religion was better than any other would have been during the feudal times,-that in the providence of God, whose prerogative it is to bring good out of evil, its very corruptions may have had an important mission to fulfill in the education of the human race. Sir James Mackintosh somewhere observes that we probably owe it to the celibacy of the clergy, which is commonly and justly reckoned among the worst abuses of the Church of Rome, that advantage was not taken of the almost unlimited influence of the priesthood in the Middle Age to impose on Christendom a spiritual despotism, far more to be deprecated than the papal, because every where watched over and sustained, as in Egypt, by the power of an hereditary caste. So, too, in regard to its doctrines respecting the corporal presence, the entire ritual, relics, images, and pictures, when all were unlearned, these things, through their suggestive power, must have been to the great body of worshippers as books, and in this way must have answered a good and important purpose; or at least, under such circumstances, they must have come under the denomination of what Calvin calls "tolerable fooleries." But such have been the changes in society, and the diffusion of other means of light and thought, that these appendages to worship are no longer needed; nay more, the moral associations connected with them being lost or reversed, they have become pernicious or vain, either suggesting nothing, or suggesting what prevailingly offends or repels. The Catholic religion has VOL. XXIII.- 3D S. VOL. V. NO. 1.

4

had its day. In the providence of God it had a purpose to fulfill, and it has fulfilled it. It can do no more; and it is only an obstacle in the way of faith and piety, so long as it hinders the prevalence of forms of religion that are more in harmony with advanced stages of general civilization.

But all this is mere skirmishing. The solemn call, at which Protestants should rally as one man, is for the defence of the sufficiency of the Scriptures, and the right of private judgment in the interpretation of the Scriptures. We must give over this babbling about "the Doctrines of the Reformation;" we must learn that there was no set of theological tenets by which the first reformers, as such, were distinguished; but that in this respect they differed among themselves, and were understood to differ from the beginning. They agreed only in the principles, on which they professed to come to their doctrines; and it is over these principles, rightly denominated "the Principles of the Reformation," that the battle is to be fought. It is not enough considered that a man may hold all the doctrines of the Catholic church, not excepting those of papal supremacy and infallibility, as now explained by some Catholic writers,* and still if he holds them as matter of per

* "The infallibility of the Church was not believed during the first centuries. Between the period of the Nicene Council, in the fourth century, and Gregory the Seventh, many traces of this opinion appear. From Gregory the Seventh until the Western Schism, in the fourteenth century, it was placed mostly in the infallibility of the Pope. From that period until the Council of Trent, the idea prevailed, that only the church collected in General Council is infallible. Since that period, the opinions of Catholic theologians have been divided on this point. Some (the genuine Romanists) make the Pope the subject of this infallibility; others (and among these, even Febronius,) suppose the Ecumenical Councils alone infallible; others still (and principally the French theologians since the middle of the seventeenth century) attribute infallibility only to the Church dispersed at large. At present this doctrine is wholly abandoned by some of the more liberal Catholic theologians. Vid. the excellent book, (written by a Catholic,) entitled, Kritische Geschichte der kirchlichen Unfehlbarkeit, zür Beförderung einer freyern Prüfung des Katholicismus, Frankf. a. M. 1792, 8vo. Cf. also the very learned and liberal work, entitled, Thomas Freykirch, oder Freymüthige Untersuchung von einem katholischen Gottesgelehrten über die Unfehlbarkeit der katholischen Kirche, 1r. B. Franckf. und Leipzig, 1792, 8vo." Knapp's Christian Theology. Vol. II. p. 490.

sonal inquiry and conviction, and protests against the exercise of any form of arbitrary authority, he is in heart and in deed. a Protestant. On the contrary, a man may hold all the doctrines of Calvin, or Arminius, or Socinus, and still if he holds them, not because he has reproduced them in his own mind, but only as matter of tradition or dictation, he has nothing of the Protestant but the name. The Protestant Reformation has utterly failed of its great purpose, and needs itself to be reformed, if it has not abolished, I do not say the papal institution merely, but the papal spirit. It is a poor change indeed, if all that has been done has only had the effect to put down one pope in order to set up a hundred; if men refuse to prostrate their understandings before the decision of a living church, and yet do not hesitate to do this before a dead creed, which is nothing perhaps but the decision of that same church in an age of comparative rudeness and ignorance; we have thrown off the tyranny of the "Lords Bishops," merely that we may submit to that of the "lords brethren." usage, or numbers, or authority, or imagination is to decide the question of faith and worship, the Catholic is right, and the Protestant is wrong.

If

if

However, in our zeal for Protestantism, let us not make it, as is the manner of some, a merely negative thing. It has its conservative as well as its radical side. Let us remember that we cast off the yoke of prescription and authority, merely that we may inquire for ourselves; and that to do this with any prospect of success, we must first put ourselves, intellectually and morally, into a condition to inquire; and then be willing to bestow some labor and thought on a subject, the most interesting and profound that can engage the attention of the human mind. It is a hollow and spurious Protestantism, that which makes liberty of conscience to consist in the mere assertion of the right of private judgment, without having the courage, or without taking the trouble, to exercise that right. There are but too many, I am afraid, who are Protestants so far as this, that they will not take any thing in religion on trust, and yet do not seem aware of the palpable obligation involved in this step, to make the subject a matter of personal investigation. Besides, let me add, that in casting off the yoke of authority in matters of faith and conscience, we are not to be understood as discarding a proper deference for that authority which is founded in nature and

reason. For, after all, there is a sense in which religion itself, under many of its aspects, and so far at least as it depends on a knowledge of history or criticism, must be taken on trust, to a certain extent, by the bulk of mankind; nor is there any thing in this inconsistent with the spirit or the letter, of Protestantism, so long as we are left entirely free to choose in whom we will confide, and confide in them no further than we see just cause.

And now who will say that Protestantism, so understood and so guarded, tends to unsettle the foundations of morality or religion? It was not Protestantism but popery, in the last century, which made France a nation of infidels; and it is not Protestantism but popery, at the present day, which is making almost every enlightened and independent thinker in Spain and Italy, a despiser of revelation.* And even in those Protestant countries, in which, as in some of the German states, unbelief is understood to prevail extensively, it is not because men have been true to Protestantism, but because they have been false to it. It is because, though they did not insist on the infallibility of the Pope, they insisted on the infallibility of a creed, refusing to allow it to be revised and modified, as was required by the progress of inquiry. For this, of course, made it necessary that many of their divines should have one faith for the study, and another for the pulpit and the lecture-room; and whoever undertakes to teach others what he does not believe himself,-I care not how ingeniously, I care not how eloquently, will make nothing but infidels; and the effect on his own mind will probably be to induce, under the mask of the popular religion, universal skepticism. Accordingly I do not regard the explicit and frank

"I have been enabled," says Blanco White, "to make an estimate of the moral and intellectual state of Spain, which few, who know me and that country, will, I trust, be inclined to discredit. Upon the strength of this knowledge, I declare again and again that very few among my own class (I comprehend clergy and laity) think otherwise than I did before my removal to England." At this time he had renounced Christianity, - and was "bordering on atheism.” He goes on: "The testimony of all who frequent the continent, a testimony which every one's knowledge of foreigners supports, represents all Catholic countries in a similar condition." Evidence against Catholicism,

p. 39. The last statement, I would fain believe, is made more broadly than facts will warrant,

avowal of Rationalism and Anti-Supernaturalism on the part of some of the leading German theologians, during the last half century, as being an aggravation of their error. It is a return to honesty at least; nay, I cannot but hope, and present appearances are doing much to encourage and confirm this hope, that, if a perfectly free expression and discussion of opinion be allowed, it will prove the first step towards a return to a living and saving faith. And thus, among Protestants themselves, fidelity to Protestantism will be found the only effectual remedy for the melancholy defection which treason to it has caused.

I speak to Protestants, who are not afraid of the truth, and who mean that it shall not be restrained by mortal man. I speak to descendants of the Puritans, who have inherited from their fathers an equal reverence for liberty and law. I speak also to young men whose minds are here to be imbued and nourished with good learning; and "Learning," says Jortin, "has a lovely child, called Moderation." Be it so. For it is only by a union of zeal for truth and liberty, with a profound reverence for law and order, both being tempered and presided over by a spirit of moderation, that the youth of this land can come up "to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty." In this way, and in this way only can they hope to ward off the perils by which the country is menaced, see realized its sublime destinies, as the only selfgoverned nation on earth, and vindicate and secure to it forever the glorious inheritance of Protestantism, "the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.'

THERE has been much discussion, in former times, in regard to the particular department of poetry and literature, under which the book of Job should be classed. Undue importance has without doubt been attached to this question; and the scope and spirit of the work have in a degree been lost sight of in the eagerness to establish its claim to a particular name,