for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death?" Under such circumstances, can it be true, that the bible and the ecclesiastical creeds are alike?

But if they are alike--if the bible be the only rule of faith and practice -- if the Spirit of God, speaking in the scripture, be the supreme judge in religious controversy if the rights of private judgment, in all matters that respect religion, be universal and inalienable if "all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works"-if ministers must be workmen, who need not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth, -if they, who speak not according to the law and the testimony, have no light in them--and if the accused brother, to whose side mercy of course should lean, apprehensive that justice will not be done to him if a sectarian creed be employed, prefer to be tried by the BIBLE, what honourable objection can be made? I apprehend that, while the opponent of the creeds feels himself to be perfectly safe, if he shall be fairly met on scriptural ground, his judges must be equally aware of the fact. On the broad principles of truth and equity Pilate would not have condemned the Redeemer; but when he heard the Jews say

WE HAVE

A LAW - he was alarmed. So these brethren find the bible to be entirely too latitudinarian-"a test, which," says Dr. M. "the most corrupt and unqualified will bear, just as well as the most excellent." The anti-. creed brother would escape conviction. This they

know, and, in their dreadful infatuation, they mock his scruples. Have they forgotten what Calvin, the very man whom many of them admire so much, has said on the subject of human laws?"If they tend to introduce any scruple into our minds, as though the observance of them was essentially necessary, we assert, that they are unreasonable impositions on the conscience. For our consciences have to do, not with men, but with God alone. And this is the meaning of the well known distinction, maintained in the schools, between a human tribunal and the court of conscience. When the whole world was enveloped in the thickest shades of ignorance, this little spark of light still remained unextinguished, so that they acknowledged the conscience of man to be superior to all human judgments. It is true that what they confessed in one word, they afterwards overturned in fact; yet it was the will of God, that even at that time there should remain some testimony in favour of christian liberty, to rescue the conscience from the tyranny of men." It would appear, that the opponent of creeds has, not only the bible on his side, but the creeds themselves; and that his judges have entirely lost the spirit of the system they are seeking to uphold, and would extinguish that "little spark of light," -the vestal fire on the christian altar-which it seems Jehovah carefully preserved and fanned in the schools themselves.

I apprehend, that, as the creed is professedly an exhibition of scriptural doctrines drawn out in regular order, our ecclesiastical inquisitors, who are so fond of "hunting heresies," and condemning heretics, must be conscious of some exegetical imbecility. They

seem to admit, that, without the help of the creed, they could not present those doctrines in regular order. Nay, they charge the whole generation with like imbecility-for abandon the creed, and they say we will all become pelagians, or something worse. This appears to be the reason why commentaries are so popular, and appeals to the fathers so frequent; and why there is so much difficulty in understanding heretics, when these venture on biblical ground, and undertake to look at its various objects with their own eyes. I greatly fear that a dreadful secret is thus escaping to public view; and that, as has been often asserted, the fathers were giants, but we are all pigmies. Ignorance of biblical subjects, among those who ought to know how rightly to divide the word of truth, is the worst evil that can befall the church.

I wish I may be wrong in these apprehensions. But well do I remember the answer of one of the members of the synod of Philadelphia when it met in Baltimore, when asked, why that synod did not quote the scriptures in the trial then pending, instead of those "vain repetitions" which were so very abundant? he replied--"Because they could not." That brother has gone to his rest, and never withdrew his confidence from the men, who were at that time so unrighteously condemned. But I wish to keep clear of all personalties. The reader surely cannot fail now to understand what an ecclesiastical creed is, and what is its demoralizing influence in the church.

I must, however, allude to another class of facts. These voluntary associations treat each other as heretics. The catholic church, as she proudly styles. herself, so estimates protestants. They are of recent

origin, she avers, and fail to trace their SUCCESSION. Episcopacy in like manner assails presbyterians, and pronounces their ordination to be invalid. SUCCESSION here too is of mighty importance; notwithstanding the apostle Paul seems to think, that it was one of the most decisive marks of the unprofitableness of the Jewish economy, which consequently referred to the coming Saviour, as the ONLY competent HEAD of the church. By parity of reasoning, SUCCESSION must now show the incompetency of any ecclesiastical HEAD, save the Lord Jesus himself. The smaller sects find something else which the larger associations have left out of their exhibition of scriptural doctrines in regular order, and so bring in other organizations, of various sizes and peculiarities. The papal controvertist affects to smile at protestant divisions, and the sceptic, considering the maternal hierarchy to be but another sect, laughs at the whole. And thus we have popes, and bishops, and presbyters; while, besides all these, as the result of moral, rather than ecclesiastical divisions, we have Augustin, and Calvin, and Luther, and Henry VIIIth, and Wesley, and Edwards, all drawing off the affections of mankind from the glorified Jesus. The young man, who would not choose a master among them, but who prefers to honour and obey the King of saints, and that within the localities which have been allotted to him, the advocates of creeds would say, no one would think to be "possessed of common sense."

Such a silly reasoner was Milton, when he said"Seeing, therefore, that no man, no synod, no session of men, though called the church, can judge definitively the sense of scripture to another man's con

science, which is well known to be a general maxim of the protestant religion, —it follows plainly, that he who holds in religion that belief, or those opinions which, to his conscience, and utmost understanding, appear with most evidence or probability in the scripture, though to others he seem erroneous, can no more be justly censured for a heretic than his censurers; who do but the same thing themselves, while they censure him for so doing. For ask them, or any protestant, which hath most authority-the church or scripture? They will answer, doubtless, that the scripture and what hath most authority, that, no doubt but they will confess, is to be followed. He then, who to his best apprehension follows the scripture, though against any point of doctrine by the whole church received, is not the heretic; but he who follows the church, against his conscience, and persuasion grounded on the scripture. To make this yet more undeniable, I shall only borrow a plain simile; the same which our own writers, when they would demonstrate plainest, that we rightly prefer the scripture before the church, use frequently against the papist in this manner. As the Samaritans believed Christ, first for the woman's word, but next and much rather for his own, so we the scripture: first on the church's word, but afterwards and much more for its own, as the word of God; yea, the church itself we believe then for the scripture. The inference of itself follows: if, by the protestant doctrine, we believe the scripture, not for the church's saying, but for its own as the word of God, then ought we to believe what in our conscience we apprehend the scripture to say, though the visible church, with all her doctors, gain