wealthy, refined, and learned city, contained not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble*, how few, capable of instruction by reading, must have been found among the semi-barbarian countries of Asia Minor, Phrygia, Cappadocia, Galatia, Pontus ; in a word, all the country except a few Greek cities?

Now, in regard to the New Testament, we must not forget that the writings to which we give that name did not exist, as a collection, for a considerable time after the publication of Christianity in fact, the CAUSE of their being made up into a collection, was the great increase of converts to the religion of Jesus. We must also remember that when our present New Testament was collected, there was not one of the apostles alive who could authoritatively deliver it as the verbal rule of faith to the Christian world. But suppose the collection known to the apostle John. He lived a long time at Ephesus, where the wildest notions on religion were afloat. He met with a most violent opposition, and was excommunicated by Diotrephes, who probably justified his conduct to the church by accusing John of some essential error. His first two Epistles are full of complaints against that class of Gnostics who denied the reality of Christ's person. What could be more natural, in such circumstances, than to appeal to, and fully explain, the nature of the RULE which, from that time till the end of things, was to settle controversies of faith in the universal church? But it is remarkable, that not only does not John refer to any such rule, but, even when he was not received by a church, he does not assert his right to be acknowledged as a supreme judge of disputed questions. Nay, in a part of his first Epistle, where he expressly cautions his disciples against men whom he calls ANTICHRISTS; men, who had gone out from among St. John's society of Christians, and who, in the orthodox sense of the word, might properly be called HERETICS, the apostle appeals-to what?-To his own inspiration? To some fixed standard of faith?

* 1st Cor. i, 26.

No

↑ I wrote unto the church; but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the pre-eminence among them, receiveth us not." 3d John, v, 9. This letter of John is one of the apostolic writings which has been lost.

such thing. He refers to the JUDGMENT OF EACH INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIAN. "Ye have an unction (he says) from the Holy One, and ye know all things. I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth....... Let that therefore abide in you which ye have HEARD (no written documents mentioned) from the beginning... These (things) have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you (no worse heretics in the modern sense could be described); but the anointing which ye have received of him, abideth in you: and ye need not that any man teach you*"....Can any one conceive that this address was made under the persuasion that Christ had intended to secure his Gospel, and the benefits arising from it, by a RULE of logical and metaphysical Orthodoxy? I leave the answer to the common sense and conscience of every unperverted mind.

But let me, if possible, prevent my being misunderstood. I have here stated some of the plainest facts which are attested in the New Testament; and they fully oppose the notion that the collection to which we give that name was prepared with a view to the controversies which have divided the church from the first days of Christianity to this moment. I might leave this statement to take its course. But, as the cloud of prejudice raised by Orthodoxy is apt to distort every ray of light which tries to penetrate it, I must, in the name of Christian charity, implore my readers not to suppose that I wish to disparage the value of the New Testament. What I have said proves only this-but it proves it to me beyond all doubt-that the New Testament was not appointed either by Christ or his apostles as a means of settling abstract questions among Christians. As an authentic record of the life of Christ, and of the simple yet sublime Gospel, which I have so frequently mentioned, as well as for every practical purpose of growth in the spirit of Christ, it absolutely has no rival; but an appointed rule of Orthodoxy for divinity, as a speculative science, it is not.

This being true in regard to the New Testament, who can think that the Hebrew Scriptures were appointed for that purpose? That they contain an authentic account of the divine * 1st John, ii.

dispensations which prepared the Gospel, I do believe; that they were justly considered by the Jews a divinely appointed rule of conduct to them, and that, as such, as long as the Jewish polity existed, it had the sanction of Christ and the apostles, I also believe. But I need not go about to prove, what must be clear to every mind not darkened by enthusiasm, that the Old Testament is not appointed to be the means of settling the points disputed among us.

I trust I need not remind you that the Roman Catholic evasion -the supposition of a perpetual, living, and infallible judge of the Scriptures-has been totally defeated by the Protestant writers. The very existence of such a flimsy theory is a superabundant proof of the great truth for which I have been contending for since the necessity of such a living judge arises from the notion that Christian faith necessarily implies ORTHODOXY, the evident non-existence of such a judge proves the falsity of the notion, upon the admittance of which the judge becomes absolutely necessary. God, we certainly know, would not make any thing necessary for salvation, unless he had put that thing within the reach of every sincere inquirer after it. SAVING FAITH is, therefore, not ORTHODOXY. I know no proposition in divinity of which I feel more assured.

I request you now to fix an undivided attention on the inevitable consequence of the truth which I have established. If no living authority has been divinely established to explain the Scriptures on disputed points, is it not clear that those writings have been addressed equally to all men, in order that every one may endeavour to make out their sense by comparing different passages, and trying the explanations which he hears from others by the general SPIRIT of those Scriptures? In other words, is it not evident that God has left the sense of the Scriptures, as far as that sense is of practical importance, free to every sincere Christian, and entirely to the judgment of his REASON? Can any other judge be proved to exist? The answer is placed beyond all doubt. The independence of human reason from all responsibility, except that which man feels in his inmost soul to the Eternal Fountain of that reason, is demonstrated.

In the order of supernatural gifts, God has engaged (so at least I understand the Scripture) to bestow his Spirit on those who ask for assistance from him. But the gift of the SPIRIT, that unction of which St. John speaks* (probably in allusion to the anointment of the Hebrew priests, the interpreters of the Old Law), was not intended as a check but as a GUIDE to the rational mind of man. The Divine Spirit of TRUTH has been promised to sincere Christians, to guide them in all that concerns their salvation. The two SPIRITS-the Spirit (i. e. the mind, so we may call it without irreverence) of God, and the spirit of man, though infinitely apart from each other in their nature, are clearly represented by Paul as analogous (I might say akin) to each other. Nor could it be otherwise, since the one is the fountain-head of reason, the other a derived stream. Let us not, however, be misled by taking reason in the sense of some of its lesser powers or manifestations. By REASON in its highest sense-in that sense which Paul seems to convey when he speaks of that spirit of man which the Spirit of God assists, and with which the divine intelligence sympathizes, we should understand that part of human nature, that multiform faculty which constitutes man a RATIONAL being§. It is to this spirit of man-i. e. to his RATIONALITY, as opposed to every thing which he has in common with brutes (a collective notion which St. Paul calls the FLESH)—that the Spirit of Christ, or that Spirit of God which was eminently in Christ, is promised as a guide whenever the human will shall desire its influence. Yet the character in which this guide acts must unquestionably be that of REASON. Whatever theories may be conceived in regard to the manner of inspiration-visions, voices, internal * In the passage of his 1st Epistle, quoted before.

+"He will guide you into all the truth," namely, of the simple Gospel. I "Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us (with sighs not expressed in words);" i. e. the divine impulse after holiness which is in us, makes us sigh for what we cannot express: but God, who gives us that Spirit, knows what it is we wish for.

§ "The consideration I shall have of it (reason) here....... is as it stands for a faculty in man, that faculty whereby man is supposed to be distinguished from beasts, and wherein it is evident that he surpasses them."-Locke on Human Understanding, b. 4, c. xvii.

impulses the reason of the individual must be convinced of its reality, else it could not be distinguished from insanity. Every thing not reasonable, either in itself, or by virtue of the ground upon which we accept it, is absurd. REVELATION can have no authority for a rational being, till REASON has recognized it as such.

TO REASON, therefore, every Christian must address himself, in order to prove all things, and hold fast that which is good. Paul, who gave to his converts this highly rational direction, though acquainted with the extraordinary powers which fitted him for his ministry, was perfectly aware of the inalienable rights which the Supreme Source of the intellectual faculties has conferred upon human reason. He never speaks in the tone of an oracle to which reason must bow, without examining its claims. "I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say*.' From the bold assumption of oracular infallibility, and the attempt to strike awe into the minds of those they address, the writings of Christ's apostles are perfectly free. language is characteristic of the pretenders to Such is the tone constantly assumed by Mahomet. no doubt in this book," is the first declaratory sentence in the Korant.

That sort of

inspiration. "There is

There are no attempts in the New Testament to paralyze the reason of man. Throughout that morally wonderful collection of writings, the Spirit of God, as it manifests itself in Christ and his apostles, appears with the tone and character of a friend, a helper, which feels for, and identifies itself with, the spirit of man. Every one is earnestly invited, not indeed to quench his own spirit, but to exert its powers so as not to quench in himself the mild flame of the Spirit of God.

God dwells in the true Christian by that direct ray of divine light, called reason (I speak of the highest part of reason), as in his temple. This indwelling of the Deity, this presence of the Supreme Reason, may be truly asserted of all mankind. The Logos, the Divine Reason (of which, in regard to religion, Christ is the human representative), is the "true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world."

* 1st Cor. x, 15.

But it