not be in an infinitely lower condition than the Jews. Under the supposed necessity of embracing certain dogmas, and receiving certain sacraments (the latter, of course, at the hands of legitimate ministers), as conditions of salvation, our Christian LIBERTY ought rather to be called the Christian anarchy. It would be such liberty as that which sailors would enjoy upon a coast abounding in sunken rocks, when every lighthouse, and buoy, and signal, had been removed; or rather, when every family who lived in the neighbourhood had been allowed to set up lights, and to float buoys, according to their respective notions of the safe and the dangerous parts of those seas; and to distribute contradictory charts of soundings, which each family had tried with lines of some three feet in length.

The New Testament is, indeed, deprived of its very life on the usual supposition that Orthodoxy is identical with or constitutes an essential part of saving faith. That passage, in particular, which I paraphrased at the end of my second Letter, becomes a collection of empty sounds, if we admit that supposition. There is, indeed, but one sense in which it expresses a definite notion, in conformity with the meaning of the word Gospel (i. e. glad tidings), and presents a real contrast between the new and the old dispensation. Permit me to call again your attention to the 3d chapter of the 2d Epistle to the Corinthians, taking it up at the beginning till we come to that passage which I explained in my second Letter. But I wish to make one observation as an introduction to the exposition of the passage.

Had one of the principal offices of the apostles been that of establishing such a VERBAL rule of faith as would have been indispensable for the existence of an association of men who were to depend on Orthodoxy for union in this world, and for salvation in the next, the delivery of that RULE would certainly have been their most solemn and public act. If, to settle the question concerning the deference which gentile proselytes owed to the law of Moses (so long as the Mosaic polity existed), the apostles issued a formal decree, preceded by a mature and public deliberation, how can it be imagined that they would have omitted to publish some such creed as that which was afterwards attributed to them, if they had been persuaded, by inspiration, that an ac

ceptance of such articles was necessary to the attainment of eternal happiness? Both the appearance of the pretended creed of the apostles, about the time when the notion of articular Orthodoxy, as identical with saving faith began to be general, and the non-existence of a real apostles' creed, before that period, combine to prove irrefragably the un-apostolic character of that notion.

we

But in the passage to which I again call your attention, have a more direct and positive proof that Paul's views were quite opposite to the notion in question. His apostolic authority having been disputed at Corinth, and again recognized in consequence of the effect produced by the first of his Epistles addressed to that Christian community, and of the exertions of his faithful friend Titus; this second Letter contains, as it might be expected, numerous observations on the legitimacy of his apostleship. Most, however, of these observations are rather attributable to bursts of feeling, which the writer is desirous to check, than to a deliberate intention of recommending himself to the Corinthians. At that point of the Letter which, according to our arbitrary divisions of the text, we call the beginning of the third chapter, the writer suspects that he is addressing his reconciled Corinthian converts in the tone of self-commendation. He accordingly checks himself, though not without hinting at the mean arts of his rivals, who used, it seems, to procure commendatory letters to the various Christian assemblages, among whose members they were anxious to gain popularity. Paul, remembering this unworthy method of canvassing for the favour of those whom, with so much labour, he had "begotten to Christ," expresses a well grounded confidence that he himself was above the necessity of procuring recommendations to his own spiritual children. "Others (I express his meaning) may want letters introducing them to your favour; but in yourselves I have a LETTER which much exceeds all other such writings in value. The world may read in you one of my clearest titles to the apostleship of which some interested and envious men would deprive me. You, Corinthians, appear before the world as an epistle of Christ, in my favour. You are a letter, written, not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, like those

which attested the mission of Moses, but in the fleshly tables of the heart, whereupon we, the apostles of Christ, are commissioned to engrave the law of the Spirit."

As soon, however, as the idea of a contrast between the old and the new dispensation arises in the apostle's mind, he seizes it with his usual eagerness, and gives his readers a lesson on which Christians cannot dwell too long or too intensely. "God (I continue to give the meaning of Paul's words) has made us ministers of the new covenant, under a character entirely opposite to that of the mission of Moses. The law which Moses was sent to proclaim and establish was LITERAL; that which we are publishing to the world, has no LETTER: it is a law of PRINCIPLE; and herein consists the superiority of the Gospel above the law. A literal law is a burden which deadens the human mind; a spiritual law, on the contrary, adds activity and power, especially under the influence of that spirit of life which we have received, and of which we, the original preachers of the Gospel, have been appointed ministers. This is our title to the authority we claim of bearing witness to messengers, and to the honour due to that office. For if Moses received honour from God, though he was the minister of a literal law, from which the people subject to it could expect nothing but a constant sense of transgression, and the blame (the condemnation) of the law which they broke, how much more must our ministry be entitled to glory and honour, whose office is to proclaim a covenant which does not depend on VERBAL or LITERAL statutes, but which announcing the spirit of the Lord Jesus, which is a spirit of LIBERTY, invites mankind to cast off the yoke of statutes and ordinances of all kinds relating to religion, and thus to be free from all sin and the fear of sin ?-a freedom which the most religious observers of the law of Moses, even when totally devoted to the fulfilment of the conditions of the Mosaic covenant, could not attain."

Christ, as his peculiar

If this be the reasoning contained in the passage before us (as I trust you will find it upon due consideration, especially in connexion with the portion of the same chapter which I explained in my second Letter), what can be more plain and direct than the inference, that the apostle Paul considered the Gospel as being

subject to no LITERAL conditions; to demand no obedience to LITERAL PRECEPTS ?-Now, I ask, is this LIBERTY consistent with the pretended law of Orthodoxy? Can any obedience be more burdened with verbal precepts and limitations than the dogmatic faith on which the various parties, called churches, will have salvation to depend? Precepts laid upon the mental faculties —LITERAL, VERBAL directions to the understanding, compelling it to admit certain propositions as true, in spite of the total indefiniteness of the impressions conveyed by the words, in opposition to previously established principles, and under the absolute necessity of taking the most inadequate material figures for the objects which they are said to represent,-such precepts are infinitely more burdensome than the whole Levitical law. The laws of sacrifice, of external purity, and of difference of meats, were definite and intelligible. The man who submitted to them was morally a slave; but he might know how far he had succeeded in the fulfilment of his ceremonial task. But if the most important part of the Gospel (as it is represented) consisted of intellectual PRECEPTS,-propositions directing Christians, upon pain of damnation, "how they are to think" (as the Athanasian Creed tells us*) upon things beyond all the power of thought, we should be "of all men most miserable." We might well envy the condition of the Jew, who, though loaded with precepts, could know with certainty whether he obeyed or failed. But how can we, when we embrace one particular Orthodoxy, be sure that we have not chosen a belief the very opposite of that which the metaphysical rule of right thinking, on what is beyond the pale of reason, intended? The Jew (to mention one out of a multitude of instances) well knew the composition of the Water of Separation; but what prophet can quiet men's scruples as to the ingredients of a creed that shall contain neither more nor less than the true metaphysical deductions which may be drawn from the letter of the Old and the New Testament? The letter that killeth is declared by Paul not to belong to his ministry: could he, then, have been the minister of a dogmatic faith-of that double-edged sword, which, for so many centuries, is supposed to have been killing souls-ay, and bodies too-to right

* Whosoever will be saved, must thus think of the Trinity.-Athan. Creed.

and left ?—could he preach the accursing, the anathematizing, Gospel of Councils, Popes, and Synods, Catholic and Protestant, ancient and modern? Can any mortal calculate the millions of millions of souls which must, at this moment, be irrecoverably sunk in everlasting perdition, if the LETTER of the various Orthodoxies has been allowed to kill according to the wishes of their respective supporters ?-if heresy be "a sin unto death?"

But let us suppose, for a moment (though I fear to weaken the impression of this argument), that St. Paul and his fellow labourers, the other apostles and immediate disciples of Christ, had preached a dogmatic faith, the genuineness of which was to be proved by its conformity with some LETTER, i. e. some declaration in writing. Where did that declaration exist? When did the apostles deliver it to the Christian world as the rule of its faith throughout all future ages? The law of Moses, because it depended upon the letter of the law, was solemnly delivered to the people of Israel, to be preserved and transmitted by means of authenticated documents; but when was any thing of this kind performed by the apostles, much less by Christ himself* ?

Nothing is more difficult, when we treat of events which took place at a very distant period, than to divest ourselves of our modern notions, and never to lose sight of the then existing circumstances. We are so accustomed to see the Old and New Testament bound together, and to regard that collection as an individual book, written for the express purpose of establishing Christianity, that I fear many will be misled, in the present question, by the notion that St. Paul must have referred his converts to their BIBLE. That he referred the Jews to the Old Testament for predictions of the Messiah, i. e. for the conformity of the character described in those books with the character of Jesus of Nazareth, is certain; but we do not find that he recommended the same search to the Gentiles. Such a search, considering the difficulty and expense of obtaining manuscripts in those days, must have been impracticable to by far the greater part of the Gentile converts, even when we take in such as had learnt to read, and could understand the translation of the Septuagint. If the Christian society at Corinth, a

* See note at the end.