creation, and representing other creatures as subjected to him, and intended for his use and benefit.

And

"They say that God made all things for man. Thunders, and lightnings, and rains are not the works of God. Or if one should grant these to be the works of God, they are no more for nourishment to us men, than to the plants, and trees, and herbs, and thorns. And if you should say, that these grow for men, viz. the plants, and trees, and herbs, and thorns; what more do they grow for men, than for brute animals? We indeed, working hard, and wretched, are scarcely and laboriously nourished; but all things grow to them unsown and untilled. Or if you shall repeat this of Euripides, That the sun and night serve mortal men;' what more us, than the ants, and the flies? for to them also the night is for rest, and the day for seeing and working.-If any should say, that we are the rulers of animals, because we hunt other animals, and feast on them: I shall reply, Have not we been rather made for them, because they hunt and eat us? Besides, we have need of nets, and arms, and dogs, against the hundred beasts; but nature hath furnished them with arms of their own, which easily subdue us to them. To what you say, that God has granted you to be able to take and kill the wild beasts, we answer, that before there were cities, and arts, and commerce, and armour, and nets, men were caught and eaten by wild beasts; but wild beasts were not taken by men. in this respect, God has rather subjected men to the wild beasts.-If men seem to excel the brutes, because they inhabit cities, and use the commonwealth, and magistracies, and governments, this is nothing to the purpose; for the ants and bees do the same. The bees have a ruler, and service, and battles, and victories, and destructions of the vanquished, and cities, and precincts, and succession of works, and judgements executed upon the idle and the evil. And the ants are most industrious in providing for the winter;-they help one another with their burdens, when they see any one fatigued;-to the dead ants the living set apart some proper place, and these are to them the monuments of their fathers. Yea, and meeting one another, they hold conversation, so that they do not wander from their ways. Is not, therefore, the completeness of reason with them? If one were to look down from heaven upon the earth, which would he think to excel, the things done by us, or those by the ants and bees?-But if men value themselves somewhat, by magic, yet even in this, serpents and eagles are wiser, seeing they know many antidotes against poison, and remedies of evils, yea, and the powers of certain stones for the preservation of their young, which, if men obtain, they think they have a possession worthy of admiration.-But if man be thought to excel other animals, because he receives the Divine notice, let them that say this know, that even in this many other animals will be opposed to him; for what would one call more divine, than to know and foreshow things to come? Now men learn this from other animals, and chiefly from birds. And as many as perceive the indication of these, they are prophets. But if birds and prophetic animals teach us by symbols things foreknown from God, these seem to be so much nearer to the divine conversation, and to be wiser and more beloved of God."-"No animal appears to be more observant of an oath, nor more faithful in respect to divine things, than the elephant: showing that he has the knowledge of God.-The storks are more pious than men, requiting their parents, and bringing nourishments to them; and so is that Arabian bird, the phoenix, who, after many years, came into Egypt, carrying its dead father, and burying him in a globe of myrrh, and putting him in the temple of the sun."

"The things around us, therefore, were not made for man, more than for the lion, or the eagle, or the dolphin; but this world, as the work of God, is entire and perfect, being composed of all things.”’*

21. Celsus blames the Jews for worshipping (as he supposes) the angels, and not rather the sun and moon.

"The Jews may be justly wondered at, since they worship the heaven, and angels that are there; but the most venerable and most powerful parts of heaven, the sun and moon, and the stars, both fixed and planets, these they despise; as if it were possible that the whole, indeed, should be God, but the parts of it not divine; or as if it were well to worship them that approach in darkness to those that are blinded by wrong magic, or that dream by obscure apparitions; but to make no account of those, which prophecy so clearly and splendidly to all, by which are brought forth rains, and heats, and clouds, and thunders, and lightnings, and fruits, and every production, by which God is revealed to men.'

22. Celsus insists that it is proper for every nation to have its own religion and laws; and blames the Christians for separating from the Jews and others, and pretending to have the only true religion.

"The Jews, being a proper nation, and making laws according to their own country, and observing these diligently amongst themselves, and keeping a religion such as they ought, seeing it is that of their country, do like other men because all men follow the custom of their country, whatever it be. Now this appears to be useful, not only because it came into mind to different persons to make laws differently, and the things publicly enacted ought to be kept, but because the different parts of the earth, having been from the beginning divided according to certain limits of jurisdiction, the same are also separately inhabited. And certainly the things done within each of them would be rightly practised; but it would not be holy to dissolve the laws enacted, from the beginning, in respect to dif ferent places."

"And now I will ask these (the Christians) whence they came? Or what law of country have they leading them? They will say, none. They have made defection from the Jews. They themselves proceeded from thence, and bring their teacher and prelate from no where else."

"One might use Herodotus for a witness against them, saying thus: The inhabitants of the city Morea, on the confines of Lybia, thinking to be Lybians, and not Egyptians, and not being able to endure the religion of Egypt, desiring not to be restrained from cows, sent to Ammon, saying that there was nothing common to them and the Egyptians; for they dwelt without the Delta, and they desired that it might be lawful for them to eat without restriction. But the god did not suffer them so to do, saying, That is Egypt which is watered by the Nile; and Egyptians are those, who, dwelling below the Elephantine city, drink of that river."

"It is far from being unjust, that each people should religiously observe their own institutions. To be sure, we shall find the greatest difference of these, according to the nations; and yet they think, each of them, that they especially have good laws; the Egyptians, inhabiting Meroe, wor

* Lib. iv. v.

shipping Jupiter and Bacchus only; but the Arabians, Ourania and Bacchus; and all the Egyptians, indeed, Osiris and Isis; but the Saitae, Minerva; and the Naucratiae, recently, Serapis ; and the rest, according to the provinces. And some abstain from sheep, reverencing them as sacred; some from goats; some from crocodiles; some from cows. But the Jews abstain from swine, abominating them. To the Scythians it is comely to feast even upon men. Yea, there are some of the Indians, who, eating their fathers, think they are doing funeral piety."

"Pindar seems to me to be in the right, saying, that the law is the king of all. If, according to these things, the Jews would diligently observe their own law, this were not blameable in them. But let them not, as more wise, boast and turn away from the communion of others, equally pure." "For I reckon it differs nothing to call the Most High, Diespiter, or Jupiter, or Adonai, or Sabaoth, or Ammon (as the Egyptians) or Pappai (as the Scythians). Neither are the Jews holier than others, because they are circumcised; for so were the Egyptians and Colchians formerly; nor because they abstain from swine; for so, likewise, do the Egyptians, and from goats also, and sheep, and oxen, and fishes; and Pythagoras and his disciples from beans, and all animals. Neither, indeed, is it at all likely, that they are esteemed with God and beloved more than others, and that angels should be sent to them alone, as having obtained some region of the blessed: for we see both them, and their region, of what things they should be worthy. Let that company therefore go, bearing just punishment of vain boasting, not knowing the great God, but being seduced and deceived by the magic of Moses.'

23. Celsus urges against the Christians, that if Jesus were an angel from God, by their own confession, he was not the first, nor the only one that has been sent.

"Passing by whatever things are confuted concerning the Teacher, let him be thought of as truly some angel; but did he come the first and alone, or have others come before? If they would say alone, they would then be convicted of speaking contrary to themselves; for they say that others came often, yea, sixty or seventy together, who became evil, and were punished with chains, being cast down into the earth, from whence also their tears are warm fountains; and that there came also to his own sepulchre an angel, some say one, and others two, showing to the women, that he was risen; (for the Son of God, it seems, was not able to open the sepulchre, but needed another to remove the stone;) an angel came also to the carpenter, on account of Mary's being pregnant; and another, on account of the infant's being obliged to fly; and what need we to speak of all, and enumerate those said to be sent, both to Moses, and to others of them."*

* Lib. v.

[To be Continued.]

ART. VIII. ROMANISM AND JUSTIFICATION.

By REV. R. SMITH, Waterford, N. Y.

THE doctrine of justification is an essential article in the Christian system. It is that doctrine, in which the primitive Christians gloried pre-eminently. The Reformers considered it the article, by which the church was to stand or fall; while the English martyrs and our Puritan fathers have ever clung to it as to the last plank after a shipwreck. And no marvel; for assuming the doctrine of our lost and ruined condition by sin-as surely we may assume it at present the doctrine of justification is no other than the way of a sinner's acceptance with God.

But what is this doctrine? and what do we wish to be understood as holding when we speak of the justification of a sinner before God?

We adopt here the language of the Westminster Confession, and we hold, that "those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth: not by infusing righteousness into them; but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting them as righteous, not for anything wrought in them or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone: not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them-they receiving and resting on Him and His righteousness, by faith."

If it were possible to make this language clearer, we would say it is our belief, that man, being by nature wholly destitute of holiness, can never, by any act of his own, prepare a ground of justification before God; that the notion of an infused righteousness, as affording any portion of this ground, is clearly an errour, since all right exercises and all good works are the results of faith-or, in other words, we distinguish between justification and sanctification: we suppose, moreover, that faith being the instrument of justification, and thus considered, an act of the creature, cannot itself be that, which is reckoned to man's benefit; but that the whole merit of Christ's work, called also Christ's righteous

ness, and God's righteousness, is that which is reckoned, and thus justifies the sinner;-in this life, clearing him from condemnation, and hereafter, by declaring his acceptance before God in a word, that God is the justifier, providing and declaring the sinner's acquittal and acceptance before him; that the subject is a sinner, wholly without holiness until he accepts Christ; that the ground is Christ's work only; and that faith is the instrument, clearing us from condemnation, and for Christ's sake, disposing us to all good works as its evidences and fruits.

But is this view according to Holy Scripture? Essentially, it seems to us, it is: and we cannot well conceive how an honest mind can deduce any materially different views of justification from such passages as the following: "I know it is so of a truth; but Oh! how shall a man be just before God? If he will contend with him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand." "If I be wicked, why thus labour I in vain? For He is not a man as I am, that I should answer Him, and we should come together in judgement neither is there any days-man betwixt us that might lay his hand upon us both." (Job 9: 1. 2, and 29, 32, 33.) If there be a controversy between men--then they shall justify the righteous and condemn the wicked." (Deut. 28: 1.) "He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the righteous, even they both are an abomination to the Lord." (Prov. 17: 15.) "Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good: and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God?" (Micah 6: 7, 8.)

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These were the views of humble inquirers after eternal life under the Old Testament dispensation. No doubt these men were encompassed with many difficulties; but they had some light: they had sacrifices pointing to Christ; and they had the promise, "In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory." (Isaiah 45: 25.)

In the New Testament the teachings on this important subject are more numerous and more explicit. "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world.' (John 1: 29.) "Neither is there any other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved." (Acts 4: 12.) "Justified freely by his grace, through the VOL. IV.

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