posed to this fabric the one simple, scriptural tenet of justification by faith only in the infinitely meritorious sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The vast building fell before the force of truth, and on its ruins the essential doctrine of gratu itous forgiveness was once more raised, to the glory of the Saviour, and for the salvation and consolation of the souls of men.

and more to Scriptural divinity. Let the fair and simple meaning of all the words of the Holy Ghost, be more entirely admitted and reverenced. While they condemn, and avoid, the systematic dereliction of Scriptural truth in the Church of Rome, let not the authority of names, and the fashionable tenets of the day, and the current sentiments of their own circles, and the technical phraseology of a party, take In the present day, and indeed in every pethem off from the broad, unsophisticated tenor riod, an unrelaxed jealousy over this mighty of the Divine word, which will not be cramped truth must be exercised. It is only within the by human schemes; and which will not stoop last thirty years, that, in our own church, we to petty definitions, or flow in the confined have recovered the ground lost on the subjectchannels men may prepare for it; but which, of justification, by the gradual defection of so rising above and beyond all mortal minds, bears many of our clergy from the purity of our rethe impress of its Divine Author, and can only formed articles, which the school of Archbishop be adequately expounded in its general spirit, Laud began, and the prevailing iniquity and its mighty principles, and its undisputed doc- vice of the court of the Second Charles consumtrines of pardon, justification, and holiness, af- mated. We thank God that the meritorious ter the model of the Apostles and primitive death of the Son of God is, generally speakteachers of the Gospel. The Bible is a booking, now again admitted to be the foundation of principles and of motives; snd all our subsequent advances in knowledge are not to su persede that book, but to be referred to it as alone containing the elements of Divine truth, and to be kept subordinate to its unerring decisions.

3. But besides the great principle of the reformed bodies, these historical records teach us the importance of insisting strongly on those doctrines of the Scripture which appear peculiarly adapted to the circumstances of the times in which we live. No one portion of revealed truth indeed is to be inculcated to the omission of the rest; all must be in unity and symmetry; and we trust that none of our readers will misunderstand our remarks on this subject. But there may be some particular doctrine or precept of revelation, which, being more directly opposed to the prevailing notions, has been lost sight of, and yet may be peculiarly adapted to correct the predominant errors and evils of the day. At the time of the Reformation, the remedial doctrine demanded was that which went directly to counteract superstition, the fond notion of the merit of works, the inventions of purgatory, the intercession of saints, the invocation of angels, the obligation of pilgrimages, mortifications, scourgings, in short, all the false refuges and satisfactions which were accumulated for appeasing conscience, and acquiring the favour of God. Under the superincumbent load of these human contrivances, the true doctrine of pardon was buried; the very idea of what justification meant had vanished; an infused habit of grace was the tenet substituted for it, from the days of St. Augustine to the time of Luther; and in this notion the council of Trent reposed. In like manner the doctrine of good works, as the fruit of faith, and following after justification, had not only been perverted, but the very notion of what good works really were had perished. Works of moral duty to God, according to the tenor of his holy law, were superseded by superstitious performances, by penances, ringing of bells, oblations, attendance at mass, or abstinence from certain foods. On this false foundation was reared all the superstructure of tyrannical impositions on the conscience, excessive claims of ecclesiastical power, and blind submission to the dominant church. Luther op

of all hope; though we agree with Mr. Scott (p. 37) in the fear that mere indifference and carelessness of mind, as well as a real understanding of the doctrine of pardon, have their share in producing that admission. Still the admission is made, and the truth is proclaimed; and we are therefore called to push on to the next spiritual conquest. A very important struggle in the present day is respecting the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. At the Reformation this was less contested. The press of the conflict in a superstitious age was on justification; but the prevalent disease of our own times is self-sufficiency in matters of religion, presumptuous inquiry, scepticism, reliance on the powers of human reason, learning abused to the perversion of Divine truth, a rage for criticism and refinement, and the pride of intellect. We condemn the ancients in a mass without giving them a hearing. We fancy ourselves to be enlightened, and without any parallel in attainments. We are amazed that our ancestors should have been so long deluded, and are little aware that our own follies, though of another character, may be quite as gross and more fatal. With an admixture of superstition, vital piety could consist-debased indeed and fettered, but still living, and uniting the soul with Christ, by the influence of his Spirit; but with pride, and self-conceit, and a mind puffed up with vain knowledge, the power of religion is at once extinguished and lost.

Now, the specific for this infectious moral malady seems to be the Scripture doctrine respecting the operations of the Holy Ghost; the necessity of an entire submission of the understanding to his teaching; the effects of his influences in the regeneration and progressive sanctification of all the powers of the soul; our dependence upon him for every right emotion of the affections, and every just determination of the will; and the folly and impotency of human reason in matters of religion without his constant influences. This commanding truth is just as much adapted to meet the evils of a reasoning age, as the doctrine of justification was to correct those of a superstitious one. As Luther overthrew the whole edifice of human merits and traditions, by the one great principle of free pardon, through the blood of Christ; so must we "cast down imagination

and every high thing that exalteth itself against
the knowledge of God, and bring into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ," by
the mighty principle of subjection to the
ing and grace of the Holy Spirit.

of it but as a man whose entire hope reposed on this free remission. In like manner, the doctrine of the Holy Ghost will never be scripteach-turally brought out and made prominent but by deep and awful convictions of our own ignorance and weakness, of the evil of sin, of the impotency of nature, of the power of temptation, of the hourly necessity, to our own right perception of truth and our own comfort and holiness, of the gracious influences of the Spirit.

4. But a fourth inference from the volume of ecclesiastical history before us, and one connected with the preceding, is, a conviction of the decline of the Protestant Churches gene

Independently of this argument, drawn from the peculiar current of evil in a day like the present, there is a further reason for calling attention to this doctrine. A peculiar effusion of the influences of the Spirit of God is the blessing promised under the New-Testament dispensation, as the promise of the Messiah was that of the old. At the Reformation, the doctrine of free justification by faith in Christ, which had been lost for ages, was recovered. We now need to recover that appropriate bless-rally since the period of the Reformation, and ing of our dispensation, the doctrine of the operations of the Holy Ghost. It requires to be developed fully, to be enforced in connexion with the responsibility and the efforts of man; tried by the written standard of the Bible and the Bible only, and evidenced by the solid virtues of the Christian temper and life. Our parishes will never be roused, our congregations never converted, the objections of human reason never silenced, the souls of men never brought to the Saviour, ministers never clothed with the panoply of righteousness, societies for Bibles and missions never vigorous and united, and their efforts never adequately blessed, till the need of our dependence upon the influence of the Holy Ghost is more proclaimed, and his presence more ardently and constantly implored by fer

vent prayer.

of their languid progress in the course which was then opened. The great revivers of Divine truth set before the Protestant nations, whom they were the instruments of illuminating, an open door. The progress of the Reformed doctrines was only begun by themselves. Popery remained to be assailed and overthrown, by the succeeding age, in large portions of Christendom, and the dawn of grace in various lands was left to be brought on to the meridian day. The heathens were to be illuminated and the Mohammedan states reduced to the obedience of the faith. The truth of Christ was to be extended also throughout the mass of those countries where it had been adopted by the established authorities and incorporated into the public creed. Unity, peace, holiness, and spirituality were to be permanently established, so far at least as the efforts of human agents could secure this blessed result. All things courted the Protestant communities to pursue their noble career. But what has been the history of the three centuries which have since elapsed? What have been the advances and conquests of truth?What the measure of zeal in missions? What the labours for converting the world? What the care to preserve peace and truth in the Protestant countries? What the purity and zeal which have burnt in the sanctuary of their temple? What the jealous watchfulness over the deposit of the Gospel? What the diligence in educating children, catechising youth, and diffusing in the several subdivisions of Protestant lands the holy truth consigned in their public formularies? The answer to such inquiries will, unhappily, disclose a decline in the Reformed Churches. We cannot extend our remarks, as regards this inquiry, to any length; but we may select, as a specimen, the system of Rationalism, so called in Germany. Let the reader compare the Saxon churches

It occurs to us, also, that perhaps more remains to be done as to the further illustration of the Scripture doctrine respecting the Holy Ghost, than as to any other great topic. The blessing of justification, obscured or unknown for eleven or twelve centuries, was regained to the church by the immense and reiterated labours of Luther. Perhaps the full doctrine of the Holy Ghost, after three centuries more, is now to be developed by the joint efforts of those who at all imbibe his Spirit. The baptismal controversy has opened the subject, and shed much light upon many parts of it. Still the language of the Reformation, on the sacrament of baptism and the kindred topics, has not yet perhaps been completely and satisfactorily examined, and the clergy of our church are far from feeling entirely convinced of the manner in which all the different statements of the Scriptures on this wide subject may best be understood and reconciled. Is it too much to hope that more light may be soon shed on this question, and that human authorities may be held of less monfent and the Divine record be more simply allowed to sway in the arbitra-in 1826, with the same bodies in 1526-Luther, tion of it? Perhaps it was reserved for this with the present theological professors-the late age, when the glory of the Spirit of God Confession of Augsburg, or the comment on is to be manifested, to vindicate this mystery the Galatians by him, with the wretched and of grace in the eyes and to the hearts of the almost blasphemous things called comments of universal church. A great step to such a suc- the last fifty years-the humble faith in the cess would be feeling our need of his blessed authoritative word of Christ of the Reformed influences more deeply, and more earnestly age, with the levity and unbelief of the preuniting in prayer for the actual increase of sent. But why do we say compare? Let the them amongst us. Luther was the better pre-reader contrast the doctrine of the inspiration pared to receive the doctrine of justification of Scripture, and the reverence of interpretaby his own acute feelings, by a conscience agitated with a sense of sin, by the necessities of his religious state before God. He never speaks. I

tion flowing from it, and the holy subjection to its plain meaning, which elevated and sanctified the first Reformed teachers, with the de

volt from God. Religion is the stability of states. Obedience to God is the way to national prosperity. The true philosophy of a Christian government is to act upon the great principles of the Gospel. We thank God for what amendment has taken place of late years; and we make these reflections, that, knowing from whence we have fallen, our return to God may be more entire and immediate.

nial of all inspiration, the flippant presumption | faults of others are no excuse for our own reof criticism, and the wresting of the sacred text to the destruction of souls, which disgrace the present, the Trinity, the incarnation, and the descent of the Spirit denied; the doctrine of the Fall set aside; heathen philosophers raised almost to a level with Christ-the gift of prophecy explained away-the miracles enervated, and overthrown as proofs of a Divine mission; in short, every law of thought, of sense, of language outraged; and such improbable reasonings, and false and misapplied philology, introduced, as no church, no nation, no age can furnish, except the philosophical school of divinity erected in the Protestant Church of Germany in the eighteenth century: (see Rev. H. J. Rose of Horsham's State of the Protestant Religion in Germany:) and can we wonder that the judgments of God should avenge such defection?

5. The next deduction, therefore, which the review of the times of Luther suggests, is, the importance of using all means, individually and collectively, for the further revival of religion in our own circle, and throughout the universal church, especially by prayer to God for the influence of his Holy Spirit to raise up men in church and state to assert his truth and carry on his cause. The history before us proclaims, that a general revival of religion can only be reasonably expected in the use of suitable means. It was thus that the glorious brightness of the Reformation was introduced. Efforts were made by each person in his own circle; devout men were raised up, in answer to the prayers of the faithful; the churches were filled with holy and enlightened pastors; governments lent their aid; princes and counsellors of state felt the influence of religion, and obeyed that influence; the doctrine of Christ was diffused by means of schools amongst the poor; a bold and consistent stand was made against fundamental error in the face of persecution; in a word, men "sought first the kingdom of God and his righteousness." Nor were leading and distinguished characters wanting, in the different depart ments where great daties were to be dis charged, to marshal the hosts of the faithful, and lead them on to their peaceful and holy conquests. An open and effectual door was set before the church; and she entered in and triumphed.

But let us look at home: what lamentable departures from the principles and doctrines and incipient triumphs of the Reformation have taken place! Compare England in the reign of Edward VI. and Elizabeth-that is, in the sixteenth century, the century of the reform in religion-with England under George II. and III., that is, in the nineteenth. We admit, and bless God for, the improvements, the large improvements, of the last thirty years. But what ought a Protestant, an enlightened, a free, and powerful nation, like England, to have been at this period of time, with the Bible open before her, with her free senate and laws, with the experience of unnumbered deliverances from the hand of God?What especially ought, and might, and would have been our progress, had we been faithful to our Saviour, since the Revolution of 1688? And yet a defection in all the vital truths of the Gospel subsequently to that deliverance spread through the church; an open disregard of religion invaded too many of our public men; a fatal omission of the duty of In like manner we cannot, from reason or educating our poor paralysed our general mo- Scripture, expect the wide diffusion of the rals; inadequate means of attending the public Gospel now without means being employed, worship of God were too long suffered to con- and suitable instruments being formed by the tinue, and national sins have been accumulated, great Head of the Church. These will vary partly by the relaxation of our laws, and partly in their particular characters, according to the by the non-correction of many of our flagrant circumstances for which they are to be adaptpublic evils. Even now, after so much has ed. We cannot expect a Luther, or Melancbeen effected by the revival of religion amongst thon, or Pontanus, or Frederick to reappear, us, how feebly do we present the image of a any more than their individual proceedings or Christian nation; how inadequately does a writings to be repeated. We might almost as large portion of the clergy preach the Gospel; well look for the wonders of Pentecost, and of how vast a mass of our population is left un- the miraculous propagation of the Gospel, to educated; how much have our Bible and Mis- revisit the church; and yet in a proper sense, sionary institutions been frowned upon; how both the prodigies of the one, and the amazing tardily have any real efforts to extend the re- labour and success of the other, shall bless and ligion of Christ been made in the body of our are blessing these later ages. We have not own church; how faint is the prevalent notion, the gift of tongues, but we have a far greater in the educated and higher classes, of what a variety of languages acquired by ordinary exclergyman should really be, and what are the ertion. We have not apostolic preaching and true character and dignity of the episcopal miracles, but we have multiplied copies of the function! Even in our houses of parliament, Holy Scriptures, which reproduce that preachwhere is the meek but firm voice of Christian- ing and those miracles in every tongue. We ity to be heard, where the sacred principles on have not a pacified world united under one which revelation proceeds admitted, where the sceptre, but we have the same world accessifoundations of the Christian faith fairly laid ble by the relations of commerce and the art under the superstructure of our policy? We of navigation. We have not that extraordinaare reminded indeed of the errors and enthu- ry machinery of Providence which accompasiasm of the Puritans. Allowing this, thenied the first establishment of Christianity, but

we have similar aids in the progress of ordinary events. Nor are the means afforded to Luther and his comrades, fifteen centuries after the death of the Apostles, such as to discourage us under the aspect of things around us in the present day. Whatever that great reformer effected, in shaking to its foundation the antiChristian corruption, and proclaiming the heavenly doctrine of Christ, was in a way rather to enliven our hopes of a similar success three centuries after his labours. The exertions of individual Christians are as open to us as to him and his contemporaries. The extraordinary simplicity and efficacy of the Bible Societies place us on an elevation which the progress of the arts, connected with the power of the press, the wide diffusion of general education, and the resources and commerce of Christian countries, enable us to employ to an extent far beyond any thing known by the Reformed leaders. We have only to labour at the diffusion of this one fundamental blessing, in order to prepare for the reception of every other. Missions again are far more within the reach of the present age, than they were of the newly reformed one. The powers, quite unparalleled, of small individual contributions and efforts, united by voluntary and recognised principles of association, are the offspring of our own times, and have only yet begun to produce their astonishing effects.Again, the free constitution and moral energy of our own land, and the diffusion of similar blessings in other Protestant countries, premere circumstantials, nor confounding all order pare a way for the piety and decision of rulers, and nobles, and statesmen, and scholars, and by a vain attempt at amalgamating in one unimerchants, and artists to evince themselves.form body the heterogeneous mass of Christendom. The scheme-the vain, the narrowFurther, the disposition to inquire into the Christian records, manifested by the chief minded scheme-of promoting union by a heathen nations, especially in India, encouforced uniformity, must not again be obtruded on the Christian Church. It is inconsistent rages our expectations of a vast diffusion of the religion of Christ. The spirit of discovery with the infirmity of man, and tends to irritate and commercial enterprise also needs only to the divisions which it may succeed for a time be consecrated to religion, to open new chan- in concealing. The plan of the reformers, nels for communicating the blessings of the which for twenty years seemed to promise a Gospel. The horrors of West India slavery ground of concord-the convoking of a general cannot be separated in our minds from that and freely elected council-was not more vitotal want of religious feeling which has occasionary than the enterprise of reducing all the sioned them, and that increase of the extent of the spiritual church which we trust will accompany their suppression. And, in our national establishment, the rapidly augmenting tial and scriptural union, wholesome, enlightnumber of devoted and enlightened ministers ened, and pure. The present day is distinis an omen of untold blessings. Each faithful guished for a more noble and catholic temper clergyman is a pastor to the truly pious, and an than was prevalent in former times, partaking evangelist to the formal and unrighteous; less of the acrimony of party, and more of the whilst the Bible and missionary institutions af inspiration of truth and love. There is far ford, to a considerable extent, the means of less disposition than formerly to confound exciting every part of the country from occapoints of doubtful speculation with the fundasional languor, and propagating a higher tone mental doctrines of the Gospel. These docof religious charity and love. These advan- trines are now pretty generally considered, tages in our English Church, aided by the efnot in that dogmatical metaphysical form which fects of a full toleration, and the labours of the mixes doubtful inferences with plain asservarious bodies of sincere Christians which that tions; but as facts, to use the fine observation toleration nourishes, only require to be more of a living writer, believed on the sole authoadequately employed, to raise our own popularity of the Supreme Being, and inculcated in tion to the true Christian character; and, in the words, and for the purposes, for which he doing this, to promote the temper and propagate the zeal which will extend Christian missions on every side. To all these means there must, however, be added a fervent perseverance in prayer for the blessed influences of the

Holy Spirit of God, with a deep practical conviction that all depends, in a ruined, lost world, on his supreme grace and benediction, not only to give efficacy to the labours used for the illumination of the world, but also to preserve clearly and strongly at home, the holy fire of love and truth by which all foreign missions ought to be animated.

6. And this thought immediately leads to a further inference from the volume of church history now before us; the danger of false candour and undue concessions, whilst we aim at sinking subordinate points and cultivating a spirit of union and love. For to cherish a temper of benevolence and Christian love is of essential importance. Nothing can be expected without it. The joint labours of the various religious bodies by which the work of the conversion of the world must be carried on, can

only be held together by a deep and genuine Christian benevolence. Subordinate matters must be left to their subordinate importance. Secondary or doubtful truths must not be elevated into the exclusive tests of a party. Novelties in religion must be diligently avoided; and the plain, old, acknowledged doctrines and precepts of Christianity must be strongly insisted on, and insisted on in the temper of love. The different divisions of Christians must pursue each its own course of interior discipline and external benevolence, with mutual good will, mutual prayers, mutual sympathy; neither wasting time in controversies or

modes of Christian profession to one uniform standard. We thank God that considerable advances have been made towards a substan

has revealed them.

But with this spirit of Christian affection and unity, which after all, we are only now be ginning to learn, we must join that firm and unambiguous profession of every essential truth

which is necessary to the character of the true Christian. And here a formidable, though concealed, danger lies hid. Charity may and will be counterfeited in a day like the present. A false candour, an indifference to truth, undue concessions to the spirit of the world, timid compliances on the score of peace, may and will be pressed upon us. In a time when the church is free from persecution, and when a wide range is given to the avowal of some of the peculiar doctrines of Christ, there is danger lest we should compromise our duty, and come down from the high elevation of the Gospel to the opinions of mankind. Much harm is now in progress in this way. Persons shrink from the bold originality of the peculiar discoveries of revelation, and attempt to recommend them to the acceptance of proud and worldlyminded men, by the artifices of palliation and disguise. Thus the edge is taken off from the truths of Christianity; the depth of the Fall of man and his utter ruin are concealed or palliated; the need of the operation of the entire mercy of God is weakened; the Scripture doctrine of justification is obscured; the complete renewal of the whole heart after the image of God is couched in softer terms, and made less prominent than the Scriptures represent it; the holy deportment of the believer, his communion with God, and the consolations of the Spirit, in a life dead to the vain society and pleasures of the irreligious, are lost sight of: in a word, a secret, but fatal, step is taken towards a decline from the pure evangelical standard of Christian truth.

ty, but as co-operators in its efforts for an union with Christ himself.

7. But this point will be more fully developed when we proceed to make our next deduction from the whole subject; namely, That in a great revival of religion, we must expect, and yet guard against, the evils inseparable from it, not letting such evils indispose us to the infinite blessings of such a revival. For evils, and great evils, though often greater in appearance than reality, have attended every considerable revival of Christianity. That the Reformation was not accomplished without such accidental consequences, who can deny? Witness the civil wars in Germany and the Low Countries; witness the disorders of the Anabaptists; witness the divisions in the Protestant churches; witness the relaxed tone of discipline in some of the Reformed districts; witness the infidelity and scepticism which cloaked themselves under the spirit of free inquiry. And yet all these evils were so incomparably less in extent than the universal idolatry, superstition, ignorance, torment of conscience, vice, dishonour of the Gospel, neglect of the Bible, and anti-christian corruption of the whole design of revelation, under the Papacy, that they are not to be named as an argument against the blessed Reformation.

This is a point so much misunderstood, and of so great moment, that we must pause to give it a somewhat further development.

Let us first adduce the matured determination of Luther upon the case.

that kind, that it is every where exposed to the opposition of the world and of satan. They who are not aware of this will fail when dangers arise, and will condemn the Gospel as a seditious doctrine.'" p. 153.

Nothing can be more wise or scriptural than this remark; but it yields in fulness to the following striking and elevated sentiments of the same reformer.

"In our time, the success of the Gospel was The history of the Reformation is full of the at first great; and all hoped, as the Apostles dangers arising on the side of undue conces- did, before they were enlightened by the Spirit sion, to which Melancthon and even Luther of God in the nature of his kingdom, that our were exposed from their love of peace, and by doctrine would introduce public liberty and which Erasmus was ultimately lost to the cause tranquillity; but when disturbances arose, and of truth. Timid and artful politicians were the true character of the spiritual kingdom was never employed to any good purpose in the ser- discerned, with the infirmities of good men, vice of Christ. The systems of refinement and and the like; then many drew back, and began mediocrity which they propose are, in fact, per- to hate the Gospel. What was the cause of fect chimeras; for, as Dean Milner admirably all this, but ignorance of the nature and conobserves, “The cross of Christ must be under-ditions of the kingdom of Christ—which is of gone by those who mean to glorify God, to preserve a good conscience, to rebuke by their lives and conversations the evil practices of the world, and to promote the salvation of mankind. Erasmus was employed many years in these nugatory schemes; and while he courted the favour of the great, and secured himself from the danger of persecution, he promoted not one of those peculiar truths of Christian doctrine on account of which the good reformers suffered grievously from the tyranny of powerful princes and prelates." Something of this dangerous spirit may of late years have been contracted incidentally from the general intercourse among persons friendly to the cir-It is not easy to get over those scandals, when culation of the Scriptures which the Bible Societies have occasioned. If that should be found to be the case, one remedy for the evil is not to limit those blessed institutions, or to narrow the comprehension of their rules-but to infuse into the public meetings of such societies, more and more of the true temper of the Gospel of Christ, and to watch more jealously than ever against mistaking our union as individuals-in a vast society whose glory it is to embrace the whole world, not only as the object of its boun

"Another passage presents Luther's own answer to those who exaggerated the mischiefs consequent upon the Reformation, and represented them as so great that it would have been better had no change been attempted.

satan, or when subtle and able men set them forth in glaring colours, and charge us as the authors of them. Erasmus, among others, has told us, that there are certain diseases which it is better not to meddle with, the attempt to cure them is attended with so much danger. This sounds wise; and we ourselves are well aware of the evils complained of: we see the licentious liberty that prevails, and the dissolution of discipline, greater than existed under the Papacy. But are we answerable for this?