ready at the time specified for the receipt of the manuscripts. And should the marks of that haste appear in its present form, it must be considered, that the author felt it to be necessary to ascertain its exact bearings upon the different portions of the spiritual Israel, by subjecting it to their inspection, in order to qualify him for guarding his statements and for putting the work into a form which should best adapt it to the end which he has in view. The longest assignable period of private thought and labor upon it, though it might have secured for him more credit as a writer, would not probably have obviated any of those more prominent faults which may disappoint his hope of doing good. Indeed, though the work has been rapidly written, and amid the pressure of other cares too, yet it is the fruit of long continued thinking and of much careful observation.

We consecrate it to the use of God's people, with this special request, that those who detect or expose its errors, do it solely with reference to prescribing more efficacious specifics for healing the dissensions of the spiritual family. We have long proved the blessing and the curse of division,-suppose we now resort to union and brotherly love to see whether the kingdom of Christ and that truth of which we are so jealous, will not flourish quite as well under their influence. Is it not worthy of the experiment? Perhaps we may find love and unity a more excellent way than division.

We hope our christian brethren will consider, that we have fixed no stakes about which to contend; and

we trust that nothing we have said will be met in this spirit. It were better that a millstone were hanged about our neck and that we were drowned in the depth of the sea, than that we should add another to the occasions of angry debate, or of unhappy offence to the little ones which believe in Jesus. But should our remarks on any point be esteemed as a signal for war, and met in this spirit, we are quite sure that the blows will all be on one side. We are willing to explain where our meaning is not clear; to modify our statements where they are shown to be unguarded; and we may be induced to recant some cardinal principle of our work; but more than this in the form of rejoinder we cannot promise. May Heaven preserve us from converting our efforts at peace into a means of strife.

Rochester, November, 1837.

EXPLANATION OF TERMS.

SET phrases in any subject, but most of all in those of an intellectual and religious character, become, in time, a sort of incrustation to cover the primary elements of truth from our view. Hence, they must be broken up by means of new combinations of thought and expression, that thus our concern may be with ideas and not merely with their signs. This consideration, we trust, will be sufficient to secure us against the imputation of affecting to be singular or original in our use of language. That no confusion, however, may arise in the mind of our readers from this source, we append this explanatory note.

1. The terms, facts, matters of fact,inspired sense, thought, phenomena or subject-matter, revealed statements or materials, and the like, as applied to our subject, we use with reference to the identical meaning or ideas conveyed by the words of Scripture, when interpreted according to the established laws of philology. The sense, or the sum of the sense, which these words convey as thus interpreted, we conceive to be that, and only that, to which God has affixed the seal of inspiration and miracles; and hence, apart from the concurrent light of natural religion upon some of its features, constitutes our only legitimate materials of theological investigation.

2. The terms, abstractions, nice definitions, articles of faith, sectarian systems, deductions, organized modes of thinking, and the like, as standing in opposition to the foregoing, we use with reference to two classes of subjects.

1. We apply them to those trains of thought or reasoning, as embodied in articles of faith or otherwise presented, which are founded wholly or in part, upon some axiom of philosophy, some real or supposed law of mind, or other basis existing apart from the sense of Scripture as legitimately interpreted. We do not mean to intimate that an abstraction cannot be true, or that, if true, it is not in its department a matter of fact. That every effect must have a cause, might be called an abstract matter of fact, though there were no two beings in the universe sustaining to each other the relation of cause and effect.

But in the use of these terms, we have in view the results which follow, from reasoning on premises, whether they be true or false, which are foreign to the sense conveyed by the language of the Bible; and then proceeding to adjust our idea of the religion taught in that Book, in some or all of its features, so as to make it suit the principles which we have thus ascertained, as we suppose, to be well authenticated. Take, for example, the incontrovertible axiom that every effect must have a cause; and then conduct on its basis such a conclusive train of reasoning in regard to the cause of moral action, as Edwards has done in his work upon the Will; still, it would not, in our view, be safe to employ it in the interpretation

of Scripture, or in judging of a single feature of the religion which it teaches. That sin is action in view of motive, also, or that sin may exist without the power of acting in view of motive, or any similar proposition, which is not in such form presented in the words of Scripture, whether true or false, cannot furnish a basis of reasoning whose results it would be safe to use in determining our conception of documentary christianity.

Of what use would such modes of reasoning be in their application to our Federal Constitution or other state documents? Could they be of the least service to a man who wished to acquaint himself with our laws, or with the genius of our government? Though our government as well as the government of God as revealed in his word, are both based on the principle that men are accountable; yet, inquiries concerning the ultimate causes of accountability, it seems to us, cannot greatly facilitate our acquaintance with either. At all events, they are precarious guides in settling questions regarding a religion, which is conveyed to us through the medium of written documents.

If we invert the order, however, and after acquainting ourselves with such religion by a just interpretation of its documents, we then proceed to trace out, as far as we can, its harmony with other departments of truth, no mode of inquiry can be more legitimate. It is founded in the obvious principle, that, as the same God who determined all that is true in those departments, taught us the religion of his Word, so there must exist between them, a perfect harmony and coincidence. And such works as Butler's Analogy and Edwards on the Will, derive their chief value from the extent to which they may be used in tracing out this harmony and coincidence. And it is our opinion that this line of Inquiry opens to our future Edwardses and Butlers, a wide field of yet unexplored truth. On this point we trust we shall not be mistaken.

We would be explicit also on another point; that so far as our knowledge of truths in departments foreign to the sense conveyed by the words of Scripture, or so far as the previous furniture of our minds from whatever source derived, do necessarily impart their hues to our idea of that sense, we suppose the error, if such it may be called, is venial; and due allowance is made for this species of influence in our chapter on the degree of uniformity which the gospel is adapted to produce. We conceive, however, that these foreign influences should be guarded against, in forming our idea of the religion taught in the Bible, instead of being resorted to, as they generally are, in determining that idea.

We use the terms in question, therefore, with reference to the results which have followed from proceeding in due form, as if it were a legitimate mode of inquiry, to institute processes of reasoning on these foreign premises, and then shaping our conception of revealed religion, so as to have it accord to the conclusions to which we have in this way been conducted. It seems to the writer, that not a few of the positions which now divide christians, have their basis in this mode of procedure.

2. We use these terms with reference, also, to attempts to generalize the statements of Scripture, so as to embody their meaning

and scope in a concatenation of propositions to be used as the tests of orthodoxy and fellowship. Though the facts of the Bible are the primary elements of truth and it is our privilege to reason on their basis; yet, we can never so fully exhaust the matter which it contains, as to be able to determine all the combinations of thought which it is adapted to awaken. As our knowledge of revealed religion as a whole, advances, its specific truths must needs be viewed with new relations and appendages. Hence, all attempts at transferring to schedules of christian doctrine the same power to command the belief and control the convictions of mankind, which belong to inspired documents themselves, are utter failures, and involve an assumption as dangerous in itself, as it has proved disastrous to the peace of the spiritual family. Specific deductions may probably create all the obligations of belief with the sacred premises from which they are derived. But when we come to a concatenation of deductions, under the notion of embodying in it every feature of the religion of the Bible which is now in the view of Christians, or which shall come to light in all time to come, the case is widely different. It is then that they assume the objectionable form which we have in view in the use of the terms in question.

We employ these terms,therefore, with reference to those attempts which are made, both, to adjust the religion of the Bible to something extraneous to its language as legitimately interpreted, and to generalize its teachings into the form of propositions to guide the thinking and control the convictions of mankind. The two are for the most part united, and our creeds or schedules of christian doctrine are compounded of materials partly from the Bible and partly from other sources.