fying their own pride, stirring up itching ears in the people, and leading them away from their love and esteem of their own faithful ministers.

So again, ministers setting up to preach, without premeditation and study, looks plausible to the weak and ignorant, but is of dangerous tendency.

Again, encouraging illiterate persons publickly to exhort, which by speaking freely and boldly upon some points, lead the people to think they have more of the Spirit of God than ministers; by which means such novices are in danger of being lifted up with pride themselves; and the end of it with respect to the people, if it should go on, would be ignorance and error, for many of the gross errors and corruptions of the Church of Rome have come in at the door of ignorance."

The following passage is quite significant, as indicating Dr. Appleton's views of the dangers likely to arise from admitting into the ministry men unqualified for it by education or by grace. By implication it admits that errors on the subject had been prevalent:

"We should put none into the ministry but what we have reason to hope and trust have so much light and knowledge as that they are able to teach others, and instruct them in all the doctrines and duties of Christianity; and so much salt or grace in themselves that they will, by their doctrine, and by their example, recommend religion to others, and be a likely means to encour age others in the ways of God. I wont pretend to prescribe certain rules for ministers to go by in this matter; whether by a particular formal examination, or by observation; but this I say, that ministers should admit none into holy orders, but such as they have a satisfaction in their own minds about, that they will in a good measure answer as light to the world, and salt to the earth."

It was at this date that Dr. Chauncy put forth his "Seasonable Thoughts." The publication of this work was not needed to define his position. That, indeed, was sufficiently well known, for on public occasions he had already given emphatic expression to his sentiments. But the choice of him, in these circumstances, to deliver the Annual Convention Sermon of 1744, indicates the confidence with which he was regarded by the great mass of his brethren, and their sympathy with him in many of his views.

That this was his own opinion is shown by the language which he employs in a letter addressed to his kinsman, Rev. Nathaniel Chauncy, of Durham, Conn. In this he remarks: "As I have spoken freely, and printed my sentiments as far as was proper, upon the religious state of affairs among us, 'tis a satisfaction for me to think that I was so unanimously

chosen by the body of the clergy in this province, to preach a Convention Sermon to them; which I should not have mentioned, only that by this you may argue the thoughts of the ministry of this government about the present work.”

In this Convention Sermon he gives his view of the Revival :: "I doubt not saving impressions have been made upon some who were before thoughtless; and good Christians, a good number of them, have, I believe, been quickened to greater care and diligence in the business of salvation. But I can not say that the good has been more than a balance for the last (evil?)< Great disorders and irregularities have been almost general, and I know no place where there has been this religious commotion, but it has been accompanied with a very unchristian spirit of captiousness, a readiness to think well of all in one particular way of thinking and talking, to the condemning of everybody else. Passion seems to take the place too much in the room of reason; visions and trances have become common; and, I fear in a multitude of cases, an over-heated imagination is taken for the influence of the divine spirit. If we have reason to sing of mercy, I think we have equal reason to sing of judgment. The country was never in a more critical state, and how things will finally turn out, God only knows. The standing ministers of the land are evidently struck at, and so are the colleges; and, if itinerant ministers and lay exhorters are not discountenanced, I dread to think of the consequences. I am afraid that ministers are not so faithful as they should be in testifying against these things, which they can't but own are disorderly."

It is not surprising that when the writer of this letter was chosen to preach the Convention Sermon he should direct public attention to these matters of which he complains; undoubtedly it was expected of him, and he was chosen mainly with this in view. After quoting Richard Baxter's views of the Separates and fanatics of his day, Dr. Chauncy proceeds as follows:

"I will not go about to draw a parallel between the late times in this land, and those referred to by this learned writer; but thus much I may be allowed to say, that the body of the ministers were never treated with more insult and contempt than by multitudes, and of those too, who once esteemed them the glory of New England; nor were they ever more hardly censured than by some of their own order, from whom they might have expected better things. It will not be denied that they have had all manner of evil spoken against them, and this, in the face of crowded auditories. And are there not numbers, in many places, who have learned from their admired teachers to give them no better names than Pharisees, blind leaders of the blind, opposers of CHRIST and what not? and han't this contempt been thrown upon as valuable ministers as any the Lord Jesus Christ has in the country, of as known soundness in the faith, and as exemplary a walk in conformity to the precepts of the Gospel ?"

Another of what he regarded as the evils of the time, is,

thus adverted to. Speaking of the course pursued by some ministers, he says:

"I shall add here, they should be particularly careful not to mingle their own passions and prejudices with their prayers: Nor should they oblige a whole assembly to be of their mind, in matters of doubtful disputation, or else come to an undesired pause in their devotions. Ministers, when praying in public, are to be considered as the mouth of the congregation; and as such, there is a manifest impropriety in the going into the use of such petitions, or thanke givings, as a great part of the congregation can't, in faith, join with them in offering up to God. I the rather mention this, because it may have been too much a practice, among some ministers, more especially in the late times, to express themselves in language they could not but know, if they allowed themselves to think, a considerable number of those they were praying with could not give their hearty Amen to."

On the subject of preaching he remarks:

“Further, ministers, in their preaching should apply to the understandings of their hearers, and not lay out all their endeavors to work on their passions. Not that it is improper to speak to the affections, for they have their use in religion, and it may serve a great many good purposes to excite and warn them. But then it ought to be remembered, the understanding is the leading power in man, and ought, as such, in the first place, to be applied to. To be sure, the understanding ought not to be neglected."

It is quite a noticeable fact that Dr. Chauncy refers also to the same evil, in connection with the introduction of candidates to the ministry, to which Mr. Williams and Dr. Appleton had adverted, thus incidentally confirming the correctness of the widely prevalent impression that not a few of the ministers of the land were really unconverted. His sagacity enabled him to discern that one of the causes, or at least occasions, of the abuse of the clergy by the more zealous friends of the Revival, was to be found in their own faults and deficiences. He remarks toward the conclusion of his discourse:

"How careful should ministers be to introduce none in to the sacred office who are like to be despised? We are the persons to whom it belongs, according to the appointment of Jesus Christ, to separate men to the work of the ministry. And we ought to be cautious on whom we lay hands for this purpose. We should not suddenly do it in an affair of such importance; nor indeed at all, till first satisfied that the qualifications of the person are such that there is no prospect of their falling into contempt. And in order to this, there should be some trial of them before they are intrusted with the care of souls. It might be best, if we countenanced none in preaching till they had first been examined. I know it has been a long custom for young men to go into the

pulpit when they themselves think fit to do so. Perhaps the churches in this land are the only ones who take so little care in a matter of such consequence to the interest of the kingdom of Christ. "Tis high time it was rectified. And if, as a means to so good an end, ministers would be peremptory in refusing their pulpits to all candidates, till they had passed their trials before proper judges, it might be of singular service."

This language, stating a sad fact confirmed by other testimony, is very significant when taken in connection with the excesses that attended and followed the Revival. "It has been a long custom for young men to go into the pulpit when they themselves think fit to do so." Such is the testimony of Dr. Chauncy, and it is well sustained.

An Edinburgh reviewer, several years since, in a critique upon Lathbury's History of the Church of England during the Commonwealth Period, very ably and effectually retorted the charge of the latter that the Puritans occasioned all the sects and violence that marked the period following the execution of Charles I. He showed that the previous intolerance toward Non-Conformists, and the cruelties practised upon men like Leighton, Prynne and Bostwick, provoked the terrible reaction that followed, and that Laud and his allies were the responsible authors, not only of the convulsions amid which they fell, but of whatever violence overtook the adherents of Episcopacy. The root of the evil ran back to a preceding generation.

So it has been repeatedly in the history of nations and of churches. So it was in the Great Revival of 1740-1. There were causes in existence which provoked the reaction. Sagacious men anticipated mischief from them. Honest and candid observers subsequently traced the mischief to its source. The seeds of evil may outsleep the winter and never germinate. No suspicion may be excited of the harvest to which they will ripen. But the spring-time brings them up from the clods, and under the very warmth of revived religious emotion they develope their real nature. There are some chapters of history that are rich in lessons of Providential retribution.

ART. VII. THE DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER
IN THE RECENT LUTHERAN THEOLOGY.

By DR. AUGUST THOLUCK, Professor in the University of Halle, Prussia. * THOUGH the Lutheran opposition to the United Church, (of Prussia) and to the doctrines of the Reformed or Calvinistic Church, is now assuming wider dimensions, and thus seems to indicate that the antagonism between the two churches is becoming more sharp, especially upon their doctrinal differences, yet even here an approximation to greater unity may be seen in the recent discussions. The strict Lutheran type of theology, in its ancient form, as found from Luther to Gerhard and Quenstedt, and down even to Reinhard, is, in fact, no longer held by the Lutheran divines of the present dayexcepting Philippi, whose "Dogmatics" is not yet completed.

The present Lutheran divines feel the necessity of modifying their doctrinal statements on the contested points, though not without much hesitation and doubt; and this leads to several not unimportant consequences.

The primitive Lutheran doctrine of the Presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper, as stated by Luther in the Confession of 1528, was, that in virtue of the so-called communicatio idiomatum [i. e. the communication of the properties of the divine nature of Christ to his human nature], the human nature of Christ, personally united with the divine nature, and therewith impenetrated, was everywhere present in a supernatural manner, yet not as space-filling-and consequently was present in the Lord's Supper. This basis of the Lutheran doctrine on this point, of which we have a shy echo in Reinhard's notion, that the Presence of Christ in the eucharist is not to be extended "beyond our ball of earth," that is, "no further than the power of the sun,”—has been virtually abandoned, since Dr. Thomasius, of Erlangen, brought into question the theory of the communicatio idiomatum, even in the Christology. Dr. Chr. Ernst Luthardt, of Leipsick, in

*Translated by Prof. HENRY B. SMITH, from the Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1869.

[G. Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 3 Thle. (in 4 vols). Erlangen, 1853-61. Second edition, 1866. An able and comprehensive work.]