detecting, not trifling faults, not imperfections, from which perhaps no human institution is exempt, but radical errors, but fundamental mischiefs, affecting the very vitals of our religion? If these evils really exist, if they indeed escaped the penetration, eluded the vigilance, and mocked the wisdom of those mighty champions, then to say those holy men were blameable, is saying little they were indeed ideots, voluntarily to suffer a violent death, rather than renounce a church too erroneous for the new reformers, not only in which to preach, but in which to remain.

The penetrating genius of Luther seems not only to have exposed all existing, but to have anticipated all future heresies, especially when he inveighs against that which declared that "The Ten Commandments ought to be taken out of the Church!"

This Coryphoeus of the doctrine of faith, in contradiction to the new system, says: "Faith is by no means an

ineffective quality, but possesses so great excellency, that it utterly confounds and destroys all the foolish dreams and imaginations of sophisters; but if works only are taught, faith is lost." But if nothing but faith is inculcated, carnal men begin to dream that there is no need of good works." Again: "If, indeed, faith saves us without works, let us have no anxiety about good actions; let us only take care and believe, and we may do what we please. It is true," adds he, "that Paul tells you that faith without works justifies; however he also tells you, that a true faith after it has justified, does not permit a man to slumber in ignorance, but that it worketh by love." Again: "You now see, that though it is faith alone which justifies, yet that faith alone is not sufficient."

There is not a single doctrine of the New Testament which does not involve practical consequences. The necessity of holiness, now unhappily not insisted

on, is more exalted by the death of Christ than by all other means that ever were devised. God's hatred of sin is more forcibly expressed by the sacrifice of his Son, than it could have been by any other method, although we do not presume to set limits to infinite power. Yet this most glorious doctrine, this cleanser from all sin, may be converted by the manner in which it is administered into an open door to that licen tiousness which it is its special design, its obvious tendency, and, when truly received on scripture grounds, its natural consequence, to cure.

But if men come to the perusal of the Bible with certain prepossessions of their own, instead of a simple and sincere desire after Divine truth; if, instead of getting their obliquities rectified by trying them by this straight line, they venture to bend the straight line till it fits their own crooked opinions; if they are determined to make between them a conformity which they do not find,

they are not far from concluding that they have found it. By such means a very little knowledge, and a great deal of presumption, has been the groundwork of many a novel and pernicious system.

Systems, indeed, there will be as many as they are novel and pernicious; for though men are as tenacious of error, for a time, as if their convictions were as strong as they could be if it were truth, yet the persuasion of error is not likely to be so lasting. As no error can be so irresistible as a known truth, it cannot long carry the same weight with it. He who adopted it, at length finding it not to go, as we say, on all fours, is more likely to plunge into a succession of errors, each deeper than the other, than to return to the truth which he has abandoned. Whether the pride of not going back, or the hope that, in his wider wanderings, he may extricate himself, it is hard to say; for error is as endless as truth is powerful. Some

minds are so constituted, that it is easier to them to produce objections to truth, than to embrace it; they therefore resist truth, when they might resist the obstacles which prevent their receiving it. Our adoption of error as naturally proceeds from our abuse of reason, as our adoption of truth from the right use of it. The question, to a plain Christian, seems to be settled by this declaration of our Lord: "He that doeth His will shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God."

As, in many of those to whom we have been alluding, their aberrations seem to have been occasioned rather by the vagrancy of the imagination, than the corruption of the heart, we are not without hope that they may yet retrace their steps; that the way they have lost may be recovered; that their involution in this labyrinth may not be past extrication; that Divine grace may furnish a clue to lead them back to the plain, obvious, intelligible meaning of the un