loudly of our "charitable views" and "liberal sentiments," our "freedom from a sectarian spirit," "our benevolent associations," and "our liberal donations." We are a large body; we have our improved mode of conducting public worship, and of illustrating doctrine; and the praises of our religious meetings, down pourings of the Spirit, hopeful conversions, and fervent piety, might rend the very heavens.

Blasphemers," that is, those who speak evil of any of God's names, titles, attributes, ordinances, word or works. If the Reformation was a work of God, (and who dare dispute it,) then this generation cannot satisfy itself with enough of evil said of it. The sole use of

the inspired Psalms in the praise of God, is, we know, one of his ordinances. Some are proud to be perfectly ignorant of them, and ask with an air of curiosity, "if they are made use of in your churches." Others charge upon them the most grevious things, such as hindering devotion, breathing a revengeful spirit, and being unfit for christian worship. If the Sabbath be his ordinance then are there many blasphemers of it. If the doctrines of a free salvation, be, in substance, a part of his word, then we know they are evil spoken of, in the most solemn and deliberate manner from the pulpit, the press, and in the private circle. The names and titles of God are exceedingly profaned in common conversation, in almost every circle.

"Disobedient to parents." It is not obedience to parents to submit to their authority until the age of twenty-one, merely because the law of the country will compel us to do so, or because it is commonly done. It is not obedience to parents, if we do it from the same disposition with a slave. It is not, unless we do it from love and veneration, and a sense of gratitude; nay, not unless we "obey them in the Lord," and if this be a correct statement, then disobedience to parents has become one of the great transgressions of this generation; and out of it springs that mpudence that mocks at superiority, and that bold licentious daring which sets all law at defiance. Children put on the airs of men, and treat men like children, just because they have been allowed to trample on parental authority. The first human beings we should esteem, and esteem the highest, is our parents; and if our turbulent passions are allowed to disregard them, it is impossible that we should be expected to esteem any other according to their place or station.

"Unthankful." That is the same as ingratitude, which is a base disposition in the estimation of all men. To say nothing of what is done in private, if a man would give away a whole estate in aid of what are called benevolent associations, he will get no thanks. It is enough for him that he escapes the reproach of being behind the spirit of the age.Humble petition has almost grown into a demand, and voluntary donation into a debt. And it were the less a matter, if the name of charming benevolence were in many cases not used to conceal base hypocricy, selfishness and down-right villany. But we ought to wonder the less at ingratitude towards inen, when the countless benefactions of God himself are overlooked and abused, to the service of sin, his greatest enemy, or altogether denied. His air which we breathe, his light which we behold, his earth which we enjoy, his rain &c., is nought, or ours of right. fine country, our abundant crops, our prosperous trade, our national prosperity, free institutions, &c., all are ours. It is our right hand and our arm that has done all-as much as if there were not a God in heaven at all! Reader, the utterance of such a sentiment in the light of your understanding may well make you startle, but it is indeed the language of many hearts. And as for religious freedom and pure gospel ordinances, who and where is he that is careful to bless God for them? Generally speakVOL. XI.

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ing they are rather matters of tolerance than of gratitude, and it is quite enough if men give to them a yawning drowsey attendance.

"Unholy." If allowed vanity be as defiling as it is disgusting, if covetousness be equivalent to idolatry which is spiritual whoredom, if carnal talk on a Sabbath-day be an unholy thing, and if a carnal mind through the wreck be a troubled ocean "continually casting up mire and dirt;" if, when the sow that was washed, again wallows in the mire, and the dog returns and eats his own vomit; or, when we confess and pray and fast, and then deliberately return to the commission of the same sins again, it is by all reckoned abominable,—then what multitudes of unholy people are there.

ART. III.

Vindication of the Principles of the Church of Scotland, in relation to Questions presently agitated: An Address by the Associate Synod of Original Seceders.

(Continued from Vol. XI.)

The Synod having thus declared their disapprobation of what is denominated the "Voluntary System," consider themselves called upon to express their views regarding the corruptions which attach to the religious establishments of this country, and particularly that of Scotland, from which they are more immediately in a state of secession. And they cannot enter on this subject without premising, that one reason why they regret the extreme to which some Seceders have of late proceeded, is the tendency which it has to discredit and weaken the force of that testimony which they still continue to bear against these corruptions, and to induce the members of the Establishment, in self-defence, and from the dread of revolutionary efforts, to color over, to support, and to cling to, what otherwise they might have been disposed to condemn and re

move.

It was quite natural that ministers and members connected with this Synod should have been led, in the contest which has lately arisen, occasionally to co-operate with those of the Establishment in opposing the scheme which aims at a divorce between religion and government; and to take part in meetings and petitions for the repeal of the law of patronage a grievance which affects men as citizens as well as church members. Had they remained passive and indifferent as to this last article, which entered so immediately into the ground of the contendings of their fathers, and the causes of the secession, they would justly have exposed themselves to the suspicion of insincerity in the testimony which they have borne against that evil, if not also to the suspicion of wishing it to hang as a millstone on the neck of the Establishment, or to remain as a ground of perpetual separation. Some have taken occasion, from this circumstance, to represent the ministers of this Synod as ready. to return to the Established church, if lay patronage only were abolished, and a door opened by the church herself for their reception. To remove this misrepresentation, to give direction to the people under their charge in a critical time, and to let all men know what are their principles and views, they think it necessary to be explicit on this head.

Our objections to the Established Church of Scotland are not confined

to her administration. We cannot unreservedly approve of her constition, as it was established at the revolution. Though our fathers were in communion with that church, yet they, together with many faithful men who died before the Secession, and some who continued in the Establishment after that event, were all along dissatisfied with several things in the settlement of religion at the revolution, and in the ratification of it at the union between Scotland and England. The first Seceders, in their Judicial Testimony and Declaration of Principles, specified several important points with respect to which that settlement involved a sinful departure from a previous settlement of religion in Scotland, which distinctly held forth as exhibiting the model, in point of scriptural purity and order, of that reformed constitution to which they sought by their contendings to bring back the church of their native land. This Synod Occupy the same ground with the first Seceders. They are aware that the Established Church of Scotland has it not in her power to correct all the evils of the revolution settlement, which they feel themselves bound to point out; but they cannot warrantably quit their position of secession, until the Established church show a disposition to return to that reformed constitution, by using means to correct what is inconsistent with it, so far as it is competent to her, in the use of those powers which belong to her as an ecclesiastical and independent society under Christ, her head, and by due applications to the State for having those laws rescinded or altered which affect her purity and abridge her freedom. It will be found, on a careful and candid examination, that a great part of the evils, in point of administration, which are chargeable on the Church of Scotland, may be traced, directly or indirectly, to the defects and errors cleaving to her Establishment at the revolution; and, as it is her duty, so it will be her safety, seriously to consider these, and, following the direction of scripture and the example of our reforming ancestors, to confess them before God, and seek their removal.

The revolution settlement came far short of embracing the former attainments of the church and nation in religious reformation. In geneeral, its grand defect lay in wholly overlooking the civil and ecclesiastical reform attained to between 1638 and 1650, generally termed the period of the Second Reformation.

The Synod are not disposed to judge harshly of men who had recent ly escaped from the furnace of persecution, and who had strong temptations to contend with; but truth compels them to say, that the proceedings of the church at that period were also marked by sinful defects, which, from the injurious influence they had on her future history, demand especial notice. Pleased with what they had obtained, and afraid of offending the civil powers by what might be construed as unseasonable interference, the first General Assembly which met after the revolution, in the year 1690, sat down under the above Establishment, without making a single remonstrance against its defective character, or exerting their intrinsic powers as a court of Christ, to supply, so far as lay within their own province, what was wanting. No act was passed approving of the several steps of reformation during the second reforming period, confessing the defections made from it by the church and nation, or vindicating it from the indignities cast on it in the great apostacy of the two preceding reigns. Though the royal prerogatives of Christ had been then daringly invaded, and the whole government of the church impiously usurped by the crown, yet that Assembly neither formally condemned these usurpations, nor expressly asserted the sole headship of Christ over his church, or her intrinsic power, as his spiritual, free and independent kingdom. Nor did the Assembly, either at that or any subsequent meeting, assert the perpetual obligation of our national covenants, or even the

morality of these deeds, in the perfidious violation of which all ranks had contracted so much guilt.

But what tended more perhaps than any thing else to swell the torrent of defection which overrun the Church of Scotland so soon after the revolution, was the tame submission of the church to the terms prescribed by the State for the admission of the Episcopalian ministers into her. communion, simply on their subscribing the Confession of Faith, and their engaging not to seek the subversion of Presbytery, as being the only recognized government of this church. The consequence of this was, that hundreds of ministers were admitted into her judicatories who were either secretly attached to episcopacy, or destitute of all fixed principles on the subject of church government, justly suspected of error in doctrine, and chargeable with having given their countenance to all. the defections and the tyrannical measures of the former reigns. The consequences of this unfaithful policy, particularly as it effected the northern parts of Scotland, where conformity to prelacy had chiefly prevailed, continue to be felt in the councils of the church down to the present times. Nor were persons excluded from acting as elders in these judicatories, who had dipped their hands in the blood of the saints, and gave no satisfaction for this and other sins. In consequence of the defects of the revolution settlement, and the neglect of the church to assert firmly and explicitly the divine right of church government, encroachments were repeatedly made on ecclesiastical liberty; and even when the State did not directly interfere by proroguing and dissolving General Assemblies, the church courts fell under political management, from which, and its baneful effects, they have not escaped to this day.These causes led, at an early period, to the formation of what has been called the moderate party, which, for upwards of a century, has had the. management of the judicatories, and has not only defeated every attempt to reform the church, but uniformly supported the encroachments of the State on her remaining liberties, and given its decided countenance to Arian, Pelagian and Arminian errors, vented by ministers in her communion. At the same time, the minority, who, from the pulpit or in the church courts, bore testimony against these evils, were subjected to censure for their faithfulness. And thus the leaven of heresy, publicly countenanced by the judicatures, soon spread throughout the church, pervading all her administration, till the most numerous, as well as the most influential party became the avowed supporters of doctrines eversive of the gospel. This charge is not brought against them by Seceders alone: it has been admitted by members of the Establishment themselves, among whom nothing is more common than to distinguish the opposing parties in the church by the names of moderate and evangelical. It was this rapid progress of error in doctrine, connected with the tyrannical administration of the church, particularly in the application of the law of patronage, which had been restored in the year 1712, that was the immediate cause of the secession in 1733--a step which our fathers considered absolutely necessary for the vindication of truth, and no less necessary for the relief of parishes groaning under the oppression of a system which intruded on them an unfaithful or unedifying minister.

This Synod have always condemned that article in the treaty of union between England and Scotland, by which the Scottish nation gave its consent to the perpetuating of the hierarchy in England, as inconsistent with a previous treaty, sacredly ratified, which provided for "the reformation of religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland, in doctrine, worship, discipline and government, according to the word of God, and the example of the best reformed churches," and for the complete abolition of prelacy, as the great obstacle to this most desirable object. In

consequence of the legislative union with England, the imposition of the abjuration oath and the test act, with other causes, the members of the Scottish Establishment were gradually led to look upon conformity with the Church of England as innocent, until at last all proper sense of the evils of prelacy, and of the semi-popish ceremonies with which it has always been combined, is in a great measure worn off their minds. After what the Synod have already advanced, it is hardly necessary for them to say that they feel no sympathy with such views. They look on the refusal of the English church to reform, and the obstinacy with which she continues to cling to flagrant abuses, as one great cause of the critical state into which our ecclesiastical establishments have been brought.Had the plan of religious reformation and uniformity laid down in the Westminster standards been honestly carried into operation, it would have prevented that vast increase of dissent which now threatens, and at no very distant period may accomplish, the subversion of the whole English Establishment: nor, in that case, would Ireland have presented the humiliating spectacle, in the nineteenth century, of a nation forming so intimate a part of this Protestant empire, groaning under the miseries superinduced by papal ignorance and superstition. It is deeply to be regretted that the Church of England, which promised, in the reign of Edward VI., to become the bulwark of Protestantism, should have fallen into the hands of arbitrary princes and ambitious churchmen, who, by moulding it to suit their own worldly views, deprived it of the power of self expansion and self purification. As it is, the Synod must condemn the constitution of the English Establishment as decidedly Erastian, in consequence of the power granted to the king, as the temporal head of the church, and supreme judge in all causes ecclesiastical. . The civil places and power of churchmen, and in particular the appointment of the bishops as a constituent portion of one of the estates in Parliament, under the denomination of lords spiritual, we consider to be as detrimental to the interests of religion, as it is inconsistent with the nature of Christ's kingdom, which is "not of this world." The whole frame of the heirarchy is without the shadow of foundation in scripture; a corruption of the primitive order instituted by Christ in his church, which originated in human invention, and was carried to perfection under antichrist; a government in which the discipline and laws of Christ's house, for maintaining truth and purity, are deprived of all force; and which, therefore, may be abolished without endangering the existence or marring the beauty and efficiency of the English Establishment. We have not overlooked, nor have we contemplated with an indifferent eye, the late increase in the number of evangelical and zealous ministers within the Established churches of England and Ireland; but on the other hand, we cannot conceal from ourselves that these Establishments, as presently constituted, are fitted to be the tools of statesman; that their bishoprics and other rich benefices will generally be bestowed on those who have the greatest political influence, and that it is vain to expect that an effectual check will be to put to pluralities, non-residents aad sinecures. While, therefore, we disclaim all connection with the principles of those who are now seeking the subversion of the Establishments of England and Ireland, we are equally unprepared to join in the latitudinarian scheme, which, regarding all forms of church government as indifferent, would perpetuate the hierarchy, in the vain hope of seeing it converted into an effective organ for reforming the church, and diffusing the blessings of religion throughout. the nation.

To return, however, to the Scottish Establishment, in which we are more immediately interested, the Synod readily admit that, of late years, there has been a revival of evangelical doctrine within her pale, and it