Imatges de pàgina
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truth for himself, and express his apprehensions according to his ability, a variety in thoughts and phrases will necessarily take place. Every man when he enters the church must have a Creed-for the characteristic of a christianis, that he is a believer. Let us look at it. "Without faith it is impossible to please; for he that cometh to God, must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." Again, "if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema, maranatha." And once more "whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor the world to come." Now here are articles of a Creed: and the man who does not possess them, cannot belong to the church of God. Not one of the apostles would have baptized, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, the individual who did not believe in what is represented here, as to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. But is this a Creed imposed upon the human conscience by human authority? Or will any reasoner on our present subject suggest such a case, as fully replying to all our argument?

But let us frame a ministerial Creed: "If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed." If under a declaration like this, a man who denied our Lord Jesus Christ, should be excluded from ministerial privileges, will this be called the operation of a human Creed, and the exercise of ecclesiastical authority, resulting from sectarian

combination? Assertion and argument, couducted in this manner, must grow out of misapprehension, and lead to no satisfactory issue. The cases are evidently predicated upon divine. legislation, as clear as words can make them; and human authority can neither confirm nor repeal the law which is applied to them:-no church court can either enact or amend these things; but the human conscience receives them as coming immediately and directly from God himself.

And there must not only have been Creeds, but living and visible Confessions too; for again the divine law saith-"If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."-"Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God""Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven." Now here is confession-a Confession of Faith; and a Confession of Faith too, which is a term of communion in spiritual things. But then the reader clearly perceives, that it owes none of its obligation on the human conscience to human authority. The Master himself has established the law, and no man may object to it, without incurring the most awful penalties. We make no objection to a divine Creed, or to a divine Confession; but we do object to a human Creed, and to a human Confession.

We then, let us repeat, never have denied that there were a multitude of such Creeds and Con

fessions in primitive times, and that there must be in all subsequent times, and in all states of society, wherever christians are to be found. But then it may be objected, that all this is our interpretation, and that our own admitted Creeds, are after all but a fully formed sample of the very thing, which we professedly reject. Indeed?-Most certainly we have offered no interpretation of the divine law; we have simply recited the law itself, and, without a single comment, as to its individual meaning, have left it to speak for itself; and every man to pronounce for himself what his own eyes see, his own ears hear, his own hands handle, his own lips taste. And in what has been thus adduced, we contend, consisted the simplicity of the primitive church, which was afterwards so grievously corrupted by the ambition of bishops, and the intrigues of ecclesiastical courts.

But after all, is not this adventuring a great deal, jeoparding the purity of the church, and most incautiously sacrificing her peace? We do not think so. For, we believe, that thus the primitive church did actually live in purity and peace; and that her purity was never corrupted, nor her peace destroyed, until the idea of ecclesiastical power had maddened and degraded her sons and daughters; and led them to substitute human for divine law. We believe, that the whole world is, at this present moment, aiming at a return to the principles and habits of original simplicity, in political, as well as in ecclesiasti

cal, matters; and that all the political and ecclesiastical powers on earth, cannot prevent the changes which have commenced their reforming and revolutionising process. We believe, that there is a scriptural point where divine truth concentrates all her rays, in one powerful, burning, focus, and where no man can resist her authority and be guiltless: so much so, that not even the Gentiles, according to Paul's reasonings in his epistle to the Romans, who had not the formal privileges of the Jews, can escape divine judgments for not obeying truth, or for holding it in unrighteousness.

On this latter idea we think it necessary to enlarge. The elemental principles of divine truth do not constitute such a difficult, obscure, mysterious, matter, as they are often represented to do; and on which presumptions have been founded so many of our synodical documents, as if a poor sinner could not understand what God has said to him in his Bible, unless a number of learned ecclesiastical logicians, convened too by special order of civil rulers in many cases, should interpret his law. The fact is, that divine truth never appears with so much plainness and simplicity as it does in God's works, and in God's word. One of the finest illustrations of moral principle which men can find, and which the Redeemer himself could find, is derived from the structure of God's works, or from the course of his providential transactions. And when we

wish to have a clear moral idea, which no man can dispute, we are never so happy as when we

obtain it directly from the scriptures, and can sustain it by comparing the scripture with itself. This every man knows, who has separated himself, like Gregory Nazianzen, from sectarian regulations, and addressed himself, with all the ardour of an accountable being, to the study of the Bible, for his own spiritual and intellectual advantage.

The whole arrangement of human things, under the superintendance of the great and good Governor of the world, appears to have been made purposely coincident with evangelical law: or evangelical law has been purposely made to correspond with that arrangement. And if this be so, then the Bible must address itself with the clearest evidence to the human mind; and those who reject its testimony, which they are commanded to believe, must do it for some other reason than its obscurity. And accordingly the Master himself says-"THIS is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil." And his Apostle, when giving a description of the moral character of the Gentile mind, says, "The Gentiles, which have not law, do by nature the things contained in the law;-which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts (disputations or reasonings) the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another." Now if this view be true, then must there be such a correspondence between the present state of the human mind, and

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