: but merely suited to particular circumstances, and intended for local observance. The answer to such an argument would be, that if there is any thing va luable in that revelation which Deity had given to man; the means of preserving it in society must have been equally worthy of the Divine Being to communicate to his creatures that as the believers of this revelation were to be united in one family, and to form, under Deity, a separate and peculiar people, the principles on which they should be united, the laws by which they were to be governed, would be of primary and vital importance, as on them, more than on any thing besides, would depend the efficacy of this union, and all the purposes and objects of revealed truth. There seems then a necessity that Deity should have communicated these laws, and that they should not have been left at any period to the caprice and imbecility of man to alter or to modify. The New Testament furnishes evidence that Deity did communicate these laws in the manner we have been speaking of. Over the family of God, Jesus was the appointed bead, as will appear from the scripture selections which are presented in this work, in reference to the authority of Jesus the apostles, who appear as the active and immediate agents in organizing the church, and giving its laws, were appointed by Jesus for that very purpose, and fully instructed in all those things which Jesus had received from the Divine Being. "Henceforth, (said Jesus to his apostles) I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth, but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from my father, I have made known unto you." Immediately before his death, be declared : I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my father hath appointed unto me;" and after his resurrection we learn he was "with them forty days, instructing them in the things pertaining unto his kingdom." The Acts of the apostles gives the history of the manner in which these friends of Jesus directed and established the affairs of his kingdom; their writings to the assemblies they had formed, bring us acquainted with the laws they established among them. Certainly it must be confessed the apostles left no regular code of written. laws, for the church was to be the depository of their instructions, and the means of handing down their principles and directions to after ages. It is perhaps a striking instance of the wise pre-ordination of Deity, that no code of laws was written by the apostles for the government of the church; for as, for great and benevolent purposes, Christianity was to fall away from its primitive purity, and to become perverted by the ignorance and wickedness of man-a code of written Jaws, under such circumstances, would, above all other sorts of composition, have presented the greatest inducements and the greatest facilities for corruption; and when once corrupted, would have furnished no riva de means of restoring them to their original purity. But Land Jaws appearing as they do in the New Testament, only occasionally and incidentally, distributed over a variety of writing, and running through the different reasonings and aguments of the writers, have been more securely preserved from the touch of corruption and the injuries of time, whilst that which is obscure or doubtful becomes corrected or explained by the general spirit of the whole. The manner then in which we arrive at the laws that were given for the b government of the church, is safe and simple-our obligation to obey them is imperative as long as we retain the name of Christians; and to contend for any opposite principle, is to seek to enjoy, with the privileges of citizenship, the liberty of violating the laws by which these privileges are secured. To sanction such a principle, Jesus should be made to say, "if ye love me, break my commandments." To those, however, by whom the following pages are presented to the world, the principles on which the disciples of Jesus were united together-the laws by which they were governed, appear so excellent, just, and simple-so suited to all the possible circumstan· ces of society-perfect alike in the smallest sphere, as in the widest range of operation-that if, for a mo▾ ment, they could divest their minds of their divine origin, they would still receive them as preferable to every thing besides which the wisdom of man could propose as answering all the ends of Christianity, and as competent to achieve all the noble and the vast objects which Jesus commenced when on earth. -When, indeed, a system presents itself for the government of Christian professors, which acknowledges the rights and equality of all, which secures to all the same privileges and the same advantages, which is calculated to promote the virtue and the improvement of all, and which imposes no restraints on the opinions and consciences of any, who will object to it that is capable of understanding it, or that is not in terested in opposing it? FOURTEEN years ago you submitted to the world the laws and government of the church of God, which you had selected from the New Testament, and by which you agreed to regulate yourselves as a Christian church. But just separated as you then had been from a church, which you considered to be antichristian-but just acting on a system which was new to you, which was contrary to your previous prejudices, and opposed by all parties, a degree of doubt and uncertainty followed your steps, in the solitary and untrodden path you had entered upon. The consciousness of the rectitude of your intentions cheered you on; and by the kind assistance of the Father of Mercies, you have been conducted through a variety of circumstances, in which the laws you had adopted have been brought into play, their beauty and efficacy made apparent, and the value and truth of your principles of union established by the effect they have produced. It was the conviction you felt that all religious societies with which you were acquainted, contained, in the elements of their constitution, principles inimical to truth, to free enquiry, and Christian liberty, which determined you to withdraw from all existing establishments, to recur to first principles, and to adhere only to that system of discipline and government, which should appear, upon enquiry, to have been ap. pointed by divine authority for the regulation of the church. And what, brethren, has been the result of this your determination? Think on what you were !-call to mind the many doctrines and practices you had received as Christian, only because they had been handed down to you from your fathers, and which you have since rejected, because upon examination, they have appeared to you to have no place in the records of revelation, and to be inconsistent with the spirit of Christianity. Among the sects and parties of the day, what could have led you to the change of your opinions,' where creeds and dogmas are avowed as the essential ground of their union, and in which the religion oftheir votaries is estimated by the pertinacity of their adherence to a certain set of opinions, and to a particular mode of thinking? If, however, by possibility, and in spite of this obstacle, you had chanced to have suspected the accuracy of your opinion, how could you have suggested your doubts to others, when free enquiry was unknown and unallowed-when one man was the sole instructor of the people-and when your only duty was to listen and to learn? how, indeed, could you have abandoned, as you have done, those ordinances and ceremonies, the staple commodity of the priestly trade? What man employed by you, paid by you, kept in ease, and raised to power by you-what man could have quietly consented to have seen his authority and office frittered away, and to have contemplated without emotion the falling in of those forms and public modes of worship, on the administration of which he rested his claims to your support and respect? But you, brethren, without |