not yet made up their minds as to what that will really is-who have flitted from speculation to speculation with unceasing restlessness, and rioted as it were in the exhibition of human mutability-who reject to-day what they maintained yesterday, who may be expected to hold to-morrow what is essentially different from the opinions both of yesterday and to-day, and who at every successive era of their wanderings are alike assured and alike dogmatical—who have so perplexed themselves with hypothesis, and got so entangled by their struggles to make the Scripture speak according to their own exigencies, and not according to its real import, that they may be safely challenged to give a positive and consistent statement of their present belief—and who, with all this changeableness and uncertainty, affect to look upon us with compassion or disdain because we have a settled system of doctrine, in some parts of which they have not been able to acquiesce, and scruple not to unchristianize us because we cannot consent to follow them through all their changes, or account ourselves quite safe and happy amidst all their bewilderments.

Or, they are persons who, though office-bearers in our church, and pledged by solemn, and public, and recorded vows to abide by her standards, and to maintain her doctrine all the days of their lives, yet such is the awful delusion which has blinded their understanding, or blunted their moral sensibi

lities-unblushingly eat her bread and betray her cause; retain authority in her bosom, and declaim against the essentials of her Confession; partake of all the immunities she confers upon her sworn defenders, and enjoy all the influence they can derive from the high places of her communion, and yet openly, and avowedly, and constantly, through the whole length and breadth of her domain, and in defiance of all that is essential for securing respect and confidence to her ministry, join with her declared foes in holding her up as ignorant of what constitutes the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and as, even in the very articles of her creed, hostile to the character of God, and to the salvation of souls.

Or, they are persons in whose minds imaginativeness, or sentimentalism, or the romantic in religion, or the love of novelty, is so predominant, that sober and established truth has no chance of a kind reception, or a permanent abode,—with whom, whatever is wild, or new, or mystical, or removed from ordinary thought, and ordinary feeling, and ordinary belief, finds a ready and exclusive welcome,-by whom, every notion that is propounded to them, marked with these characteristics, and especially if recommended by the oracles of their school, is instantaneously embraced as if by instinct, cherished as a sort of fresh revelation from heaven, and immediately pressed upon others with as much confidence as

could have been, had it resulted from the in iry and the meditation of a thousand years,→ d who, because we look more steadfastly “to the and to the testimony," and will not be "carried, out with every wind of doctrine," and prefer "the ith once delivered to the saints," to the extragant fancies and perilous errors of the abettors universal pardon, banish us all, by one sweep g sentence, from the pale of salvation, and uneremoniously shut us up in "outer darkness." These are the persons,-I know of no other,hom we blame for the rashness and the forwardess of their zeal, for their want of due respect to he authority of those Scriptures which they proess to expound, and for the arrogance with which hey treat all who differ from them, by standing ip for the old doctrine of justification-of pardon and acceptance by faith only in the Redeemer's perfect righteousness. These are the persons, whose sentiments we repudiate and condemn, as equally contrary to evangelical truth, to sound speech, and to holy practice, and to whom there fore, to their influence, to their labours, to their work of proselytism, we do set ourselves in broad and uncompromising opposition. And when we do so, our consciences not only acquit us of every thing that partakes of a persecuting spirit, but we feel it to be our duty to give this explanation of our grounds of acting, so as at once to vindicate our

own conduct, in the estimation of those before whom it is arraigned, and to deprive our opponents of all that sympathy which the plea of persecution, and even the very idea of it, is so apt to secure for them in generous and unsuspecting minds, and of all that adventitious and unmerited patronage, to which they would be thereby indebted for no small portion of their success, in ensnaring the hearts and misleading the footsteps of our people.

Well, but though there may be no persecution in the case, still we are accused of giving to that difference of opinion which has occurred, the form of a controversy, which may not speedily terminate, and which may nourish evil tempers and produce evil consequences. Our opponents find fault with this as indicative of a contentious spirit, as unbefitting the sacred and peaceful nature of the subject, and as unlikely to advance the prosperity of the gospel, or the cause of personal godliness. And even some of our friends, while they allow that our views are correct, and that it is important to maintain them, would yet have us to maintain them without a struggle, and let them find their own way, without running the risk of kindling up the flames of strife, and provoking angry words.

Now we grant that it is wrong to enter into

troversy, when the subject is of trivial mont; a trifle will not justify eager or lengthendebate. We grant, that in the mode of coneting a controversy, all violations of the royal of charity ought to be avoided; the exercise charity is not incompatible with the maintece and vindication of truth. We grant that s neither wise nor good, to carry on controversy - its own sake, or to prolong it after its legitite ends are answered; in that case it has not e glory of God, and as little has it the welfare man for its object, and therefore it is unlawful d injurious. We grant all this, but we grant thing more. Controversy is not in itself an l; circumstances may render it indispensably cessary for upholding religion and virtue; and en managed under the government of Christian inciple and Christian feeling, it may, by God's essing, serve the best and noblest purposes. nd, therefore, I have no sympathy with that decate and morbid sensibility, which shrinks from ntroversy as a mighty and unqualified mischief, id would suffer error to spread ever so far, and prevail ever so much, rather than have its deerits exposed, and its progress arrested, by the strumentality of dispute.

Why, my friends, if we are real Christians, ɔntroversy is our daily-our continual оссираion. We have a controversy with the preju