we virtually admit the other also, and, according to the principles which regulate the communion of churches, must actually admit them, if required. We have known of many facts of a private nature, illustrative of the force of this reason for non-intercourse; and we mention it at present, more especially, as receiving practical demonstration from what transpired at the last meeting of the General Assembly, in the case of Mr. Chambers. This gentleman, who now officiates in the church in Thirteenth-street, Philadelphia, had applied to the Presbytery of Philadelphia for ordination, had been examined by that Presbytery and rejected as unqualified. Subsequently he applies to the Western Association, New-Haven county, Connecticut, by whom he is ordained. He returns to Philadelphia, and, according to the principles of intercommunion, claims ministerial fellowship with the very Presbytery which had rejected him! This is a state of things which admits of no effectual remedy. For a church to be bound to receive to her fellowship those over whose admission to membership and office she has no control, is a solecism in church government; which is not only destructive of good order, but must sooner or later introduce anarchy and confusion tending to dissolution. How many, both ministers and people, in this way obtain a place in the Presbyterian church, who, if examined by their own courts would be rejected, it is impossible to say; and the fruits of this intercourse in the prevalence of Hopkinsianism in that church is lamentable in the highest degree. The existence of facts like these, (and facts are stubborn things,) prove, with the " clearness of demonstration, the utter inconsistency of that scheme of church policy under which they can exist. The following strictures on this system are believed to be from the pen of the late Rev. Archibald Bruce, professor of Theology, under the General Associate Synod of Scotland and were occasioned by seeing an account of the plan of intercommunion among the churches in America. We consider them valuable not merely as containing the views and reasoning of a most profound and accurate divine; but as furnishing us with the deliberate views of the Westminster Assembly on this subject; than which no human authority will, or ought to have greater weight with all who bear the Presbyterian name.

From the Edinburgh Christian Magazine, for 1800.

STRICTURES

ON THE PLAN OF INTERCOURSE BETWEEN THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES IN THE UNITED STATES.

In

your last number you inserted "a plan of intercourse between the churches under the superintendence of the General

Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, the General Synod of the Reformed Dutch Church, and the Synod of the Associate Reformed Church." The following are a few remarks which have occurred to me upon reading that paper.

A re-union of the different parties into which the professing body of Christians has been divided is confessedly an object of great importance. Until this desirable event be in some measure brought about, we have little reason to expect that religion will generally flourish. Nevertheless, proper attention ought to be paid to the means by which such an union is attempted, as, by a mistake in these, the scheme may not only be defeated, but the breach rendered more wide and irrepairable. Those who are acquainted with the various attempts which have been made since the time of the Reformation to unite Papists and Protestants, Arminians and Calvinists, Lutherans and Reformed, Episcopalians, Independents, and Presbyterians, and who recollect the issue to which these were brought, with the effects produced by them, though planned by persons of known abilities, acquainted with the principles of the dissentient parties, and sometimes conducted in the way of a close investigation and free discussion of the points of difference, will not be sangnine in their expectations of good from hasty coalitions, or schemes of union, where the matters of difference are never examined, but industriously concealed and kept out of view; nor to them will human plans of "correspondence and intercourse," reared on the sandy basis of "propriety and expediency," afford much consolation.

I am not sufficiently acquainted with the state of the Presbyterian bodies referred to, to be able to say what real differences subsist among them; but if I may judge from the plan under review, there are none, and consequently no reason for their remaining separate. The following fundamental principle " of the intercourse" certainly implies as much. "From considerations of propriety and expediency, it is to be received as the basis of the plan, that the several ecclesiastical bodies or judicatories concerned, are to remain and be preserved entirely separate and independent." It is only " consistently with this fundamental principle," that the three "kinds or degress of intercourse" proposed "appear to be practicable, and ought to be recommended."

It is one of the most striking features of the schemes for promoting union in the present day, that they proceed upon or tolerate disunion, and often make it a fundamental principle. This radical inconsistency renders the plan before us a felo de se, while VOL. III.

3

I provides that the bodies or judicatories concerned are to remain and be preserved "entirely separate and independent." Such an "Independent" principle is a strange basis of intercourse and communion among "Presbyterian churches;" and such scrupulous care in constituting barrier laws, by which it is provided that they shall "be preserved entirely separate," augurs ill for the approach of union. Corporations and other societies, whether civil, political, military, or commercial, which are only "the ordinance of man," may be allowed to make laws that shall secure their separate existence and independence; and they may declare these to be the fundamental principles and basis of any plan of co-operation and correspondence with other societies of the same kind: But societies which hold of divine right, and, which are parts of the "one body" of Christ, (to which “Presbyterian churches" have hitherto laid claim,) can have no warrant for such procedure. Such fundamental principles bear too strong marks of the narrow, illiberal policy of civil corporations in maintaining their old charters, while they are obliged to compromise their preservation by admitting persons to their privileges according to the terms of an ill-connected and contrived codicil.Perhaps the persons who drew up this plan, formed it somewhat after the model of the different United States, under whose civil jurisdiction they live; (agreeably to a fashionable modern opinion, that Christ hath left the form of church-government to be modelled according to the form of the civil constitution in every nation where Christianity is introduced;) and had the American rulers only studied a little more attentively the soothing "considerations of propriety and expediency," which certainly are as well adapted to civil as to ecclesiastical policy, they might easily have allayed the ferment which lately prevailed in that country, and reconciled the dissentient states to the general federation.—— But our ecclesiastical projectors should have considered that there is an essential difference between the United States and the three Presbyterian bodies scattered throughout the different parts of the country which is under the jurisdiction of these states. Each of these states is separated from the others in local situation and by exact boundaries; the inhabitants of each live together, and are more distantly connected with others, and accordingly a se· parate internal jurisdiction may take place among them; and not inconsistently with this, there may be a general correspondence or confederation of all the states for purposes connected with the common good of all. But it is quite different with the Presbyterian bodies or judicatories, which have no fixed boundaries, but which all exist in the same place, being respectively composed

of and having jurisdiction over persons who live promiscuously together. In this case, there is no room for different judicatures erected upon separate independent foundations. Let us illustrate this by an instance. Suppose that those who settled the civil government of the different states of America had appointed three different ways of administering justice, to subsist in every state and in every city, with separate and independent courts of judicature, judges, places of meeting, laws, forms, &c. and had granted liberty to all the inhabitants to be subject to one or other of these, as they pleased; what a system of anarchy, confusion and absurdity, must this have been? Or if this supposition is too ridiculous, let us suppose, that the mass of the people had been cast into such a state during the confusions of a civil war or revolution; and that a set of quack politicians, under a pretence of remedying these evils, should propose a plan for bringing about correspondence and harmony, the fundamental principle of which should be, that the three judicatures should be preserved entirely separate and independent; and that persons might, as often as they pleased, withdraw their subjection, support and connection, from one to another! Risum teneatis, amici! No less incongruous and hurtful, in a religious point of view, does the present plan of correspondence and communion appear to me, although it does not produce the same effect upon civil peace and society.

But what are the weighty reasons for their remaining separate? Would any point of truth, or duty, suffer by their coalition? Is it supposed that they will propagate more extensively the knowledge of the gospel by remaining separate?* None of these are so much as pretended; but merely "considerations of propriety and expediency." However plausible such considerations are, it is now pretty generally understood that they are for the most part urged as a pretext for declining any step which is attended with difficulty or danger. No person who reflects upon the sinfulness of causing or supporting unnecessary separations, of dividing, or preserving divided, the church of Christ into a number of independent bodies, will pretend that this ranks among the indifferent things which the apostle reckoned lawful for him, but not expedient. Had the object of the plan been, that the members of the three Presbyterian bodies or judicatories should occasionally meet together, dine, and have a little friendly chat, "considerations of propriety and expediency" might have had some place; but as here understood and applied, they are too

*This is a common, though futile and unwarrantable pretext for erecting separate independent congregations and parties in this country, and thereby splitting the church into endless divisions.

mean to be mentioned in the great work of promoting communion among Christians.

But what can these "considerations of propriety and expediency" be? Is regard to the honour or antiquity of a party, one of them? Would the stipends of particular ministers, and the existence of particular congregations, be endangered by an union? Would there be reason to fear that the most popular preachers would thin the audiences of their brethren, if they had no longer the name of a party to retain them? Is it necessary to make such a basis in order to allay the fears of some less enlightened souls among them, who may be alarmed at the principle of complete union? Or, are they afraid of exposing themselves to the reflections of certain persons with whom some of them were once connected, and who would consider their former predictions concerning them as accomplished?

Every conscientious society that maintains a separate communion will do so only for important reasons, and as soon as these are removed, it will rejoice to yield up its separate existence. It may be necessary for the preservation of a party, that its indępendence be declared a fundamental article of any union or agreement; but it can never be necessary for any part of the church of Christ; nor will any ecclesiastical body or judicatory that has the glory of God and the good of the church for its object, ever lay claim to such a principle. It is an attempt to build a partition wall, which would be more prejudicial to the unity of the church than that which the Judaizing teachers would have reared. It is to establish schism by law, to throw around it a three-fold cord, and, as far as human authority can go, to render it perpetual.

Hasty coalitions, and such as throw a bar in the way of necessary and seasonable duty, or lay a grave-stone on any part of revealed truth, are to be deprecated and avoided. They have produced much evil. One of the Presbyterian bodies alluded to did already stumble on this stone. Had the plan proposed been intended for investigating the grounds of difference, that so they might bring about an union consistently with truth and duty, the design would have been highly praiseworthy, and its defects should have been laid open with a gentler hand. But no such design is in view. Such an investigation is purposely avoided. It is evidently implied, that truth would not suffer by a complete union. A plan of intercourse is allowed and recommended, which is inconsistent with the idea that any conscientious obstacle is in the way; and "considerations of propriety and expediency" are the only reasons alleged why the different bodies are to remain and be preserved entirely separate and independent.→