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The various national churches which emerged from the apparent chaos of that tremendous struggle, were all designed to be constructed, and except where untoward obstacles in a few cases hindered the work, were all constructed on the same plan, from the same divine model; evangelical in doctrine, pure and strict in morals, simple and free in order, faithful and exact in discipline-they were, with few exceptions, essentially apostolical, Presbyterian. And from that day to this, as states and communities have most thoroughly felt the power of those great principles on which repose their highest glory and success, they have in a corresponding degree cherished the true spirit of Reformed Christianity. The era of the Synod of Dort, or that of the Westminster Assembly, or that of our own Assemblies of 1837 and 1838; the case of the Puritans, of the Covenanters, or our own; the struggles and results in Switzerland, in Holland, or in Scotland, where nature has done least, and where of all the old world, the principles of the Reformation had the freest scope; the synchronous rise of liberty and Christianity in our own land, their mutual relations, and their widely diffused and increasing influences, starting from our bosom and operating through so many channels and in so many lands; all these things and ten thousand like them, are so many proofs of this sympathy which we assert, this unity which we observe amongst all the elements of human progress. A progress easy to be traced whether in its grand combination, or in its separate elements moving side by side across the track of ages. A progress which has been not only real and immense, but total, that is in all things; and which for three centuries past, has advanced, and is still advancing with a progressive ratio inconceivable to those who have not attentively compared successive generations with each other, and all with the standard of eternal truth.

It is not pretended that this progress has been uniform; nor even that its separate elements have been steadily developed. We have already shown how in re

gard to religion the basis of all, it has been remarkably otherwise; and in regard to freedom, to knowledge, to civilization, and to every other element, the same truth, which on our theory would be inevitable, might easily be separately established upon indisputable proofs. Nor is it for us to say that this progress either separately or generally considered, will be more uniform in the ages to come than in those that are past. It is our part to learn what has been, and what is: and while we survey with steadiness and intelligence our present position, and courageously perform our present duty, meekly but confidently commit the future into his hands with whom is the disposal of all its issues. And blessed be the name of God, whether he condescends to use our poor services or not, one thing is certain, he will never forget them.

II. There can be but two aspects in which religion can be presented in its last analysis. It is of God, or it is of man. It ascribes every thing to God; or it ascribes something, more or less, to man. And this something, however minute, so that it be essential, conditional, and meritorious, makes it, at the hinge of our destiny, man's work and religion, and not that of God. Under the grand dispensation of revealed truth, from the first Prophet to the last Apostle, the form in which this fundamental and all pervading error most frequently exhibited itself, was in the way of dishonour to the person and glory of the Lord Christ. For these eighteen centuries, its prevailing manifestation has been in derogation of the work of God the Eternal Spirit. Whether it be the Man of Sin who claiming that vicariate of Christ which Christ himself hath assigned to the Holy Ghost, thereby blasphemes unpardonably; or whether the teachers of that subtle infidelity, which, in various forms, impeaches the personal existence of the Divine Spirit; or whether that pest of Christianity which passes under the name of Pelagius, and reasons away the necessity of his Almighty work; or whether that madness of wild sectaries, which claims his miraculous powers and inspiration; or whether that

boastful and obdurate reliance on a mere form of godliness in which no power abides; still, and alike throughout, it is the person, the work, and the glory of the everblessed Spirit which men attack.

The innocence of error is amongst the most absurd imaginations of a corrupt and shallow philosophy. It is indeed our duty to maintain with modesty all possible opinions, since nothing is more certain than that even the wise and good have erred; and to extend even to apparent errors, a charity heightened by the remembrance that our own foundations are often esteemed immoveable, only because we have not carefully examined them. But to maintain the innocence of error is to confound all the distinctions of good and evil, truth and falsehood, to obliterate the characteristics of our moral and rational nature, and remove the very foundations of all religion. So far otherwise is the truth, that the worst errors in religion have their origin far more in the derangement of our moral, than in the mistakes of our intellectual faculties. And it seems unquestionable, not only that heresy in general is to be classed with moral delinquencies, but that each particular form of it is invested with its own peculiar and uniform moral character, which will be found to differ as widely from the standard of righteousness as its opinions do from that of faith.

The grand mission of the Church of Jesus Christ is to perpetuate and extend the truth committed to her. The great obstacles to her success are corruption in her own bosom, and oppression from the outward and surrounding kingdom of Satan. When she has been openly pursued with fire and sword, when she has been terrified into silence, when she has been bribed into unholy support of wicked rulers, when faithless intruders have been forced upon her, when she has been seduced into adulterous union with secular authorities-when she has sunk down into a sinful conformity to the world; in all such cases, we see her hallowed mission arrested by the influence of outward wickedness upon her. But when we

see her resting in dead forms and outward ceremonies; opening her arms to embrace as her children, those who have nothing of the spirit of her Master; throwing wide her portals to the entrance of every form of doctrine; mitigating her testimony against sin, explaining away the glorious but hated peculiarities of her faith, lowering the exalted tone of her piety, shorn of her eager and intrepid zeal then it is the working of inward folly that defeats the end of her sacred vocation, and reveals her self-convicted before God. Who shall say that the dangers from within are less than the dangers from without, or that less grace is needful to deliver a Church from false but pretended friends than from open enemies, to restore her from an insidious poison consuming her vitals than to sustain her under storms beating upon her head?

Fathers and Brethren of the General Assembly, it is to the work of inward purification of our beloved Church, and thereby of her perfect preparation for the whole performance of her divine mission, that we have been called. This has been emphatically our lot, the matter for which God did set us. And as it was the temper and fashion to consider the danger but small, until we had well nigh been swallowed up; so, is there now danger that we shall consider the signal deliverance but little more than ordinary, and the work complete before all its blessings are obtained. I thank God for this peculiar opportunity to testify to the greatness of that work which he has wrought for our Zion; to record, as her organ, her grateful sense of his blessed interposition; and to exhort her, in his name, to perfect in faithfulness that to which she has set her hand.

For that form of renunciation of God's religion, and adoption of man's religion-which, under the general assault upon the office and work of the Spirit of life and grace, goes under the name of semi-Pelagianism; and which, under a form of sound words, attacking the very essence of religion in the soul, as well as the very ground of man's acceptance before God, manifested, both to

wards God, the sinner, and the Church, a shameful perfi. diousness as its chief moral characteristic; had so entered amongst us, and so spread its insidious spirit, and so shot forth its roots and branches, that it remains an equal wonder how it so grew, and how, having so grown, it was ever cast off.

In the year 1801, a treaty under the name of “ A Plan of Union between Presbyterians and Congregationalists in the new settlements," was formed between our General Assembly, and the General Association of Connecticut, by force and virtue of which the outward form of Presbyterianism, was, to the whole extent of the operation of the treaty, prostrated, for the benefit of the peculiar and antagonist principles of Congregationalism; but with the avowed purpose of ultimately transferring the interests that might grow up under the treaty, to the sole care of this General Assembly. This extraordinary act, performed under the hope of advancing the general interests of Christ's kingdom, was steadily used to ruin those of the chief party to the act itself. Though by its very terms it was in derogation of Presbyterianism, and therefore upon the clearest principles was to be strictly limited to the cases specified in it; yet was it used as a pretext for every thing needful to be done to break up our Church order, and substitute one the opposite of it in many important particulars. Though it related exclusively to Church order and discipline, it was made the instrument of introducing, fostering, and spreading amongst us every sort of doctrinal and speculative error. Though it was, by its terms, confined to frontier and destitute places, it was adhered to, and the interests growing up under it consolidated and extended until it covered four entire Synods, had insinuated itself extensively into three or four others, and had affiliated, as its friends boasted, six hundred ministers, and sixty thousand communicants, in a single section of the Church, who, as the event proved, had adopted our standards without embracing them, and in order to wield the whole power of those who really believed them.

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