CONDUCTED BY MEMBERS OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. FOR THE YEAR 1804. BEING THE THIRD VOLUME. FROM THE LONDON EDITION. NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY WHITING & WATSON, NO. 96 BROAD WAY; AND THOMAS B. WAIT & SONS, BOSTON. DAVID HALE, AGENT FOR THE NEW-ENGLAND STATES. T. B. WAIT AND SONS, PRINTERS, BOSTON. 1814. PREFACE. Ar the close of the third year of our labours, it will be expected that we should address a few words to those persons who have either favoured us with their patronage, or perused our publication. Whether we have discharged the office of CHRISTIAN OBSERVERS in a manner calculated to promote the interests of true religion, must be submitted to their judgment. We hope, however, that in passing sentence they will not fail to bear in mind the magnitude and variety of those dificulties, under which the conductors of such a work as ours are laid. We would begin with returning thanks to the public for the liberal encouragement which they have continued to afford us during the last year, and more particularly to our correspondents for the valuable aid which we have received from them. Their contributions have been very numerous, and the only merit in this respect to which we are entitled, is that of selection. Whether that task has been judiciously performed, we will not take upon us to decide. Anxious for our own part to recommend plain, serious, and practical religion; and to affirm the great evangelical doctrines of our Church, without too much encouraging nice theological distinctions; we, nevertheless, tolerate some latitude of opinion on subordinate questions, particularly those which are at issue between the Calvinists and the Arminians; and we have occasionally permitted temperate controver ialists to speak for themselves. In endeavouring, however, to maintain that eren belance which we have professed to hold between them, we are sensible that We have frequently excited the jealousy of both parties: and we also suspect that we have been thought, by some, to countenance too much that kind of theological debate, which is found to be productive of little practical benefit. To the last mentioned description of persons we would suggest, that the Scriptures themselves exhort us to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints; and that the Apostles, as evidently appears from their Epistles, were jealous respecting many points of doctrine, especially those which relate to the great Article of Justification. It may also happen, that while to readers who have paid no particular attention to the origin and progress of errors in religion we may appear to be occupied by subtleties which are not worth pursuing, we are, in reality, engaged in the defence of some essential and fundamental truth. We would, at least, request them to consider, that the doctrinal parts of religion are of great and unquestionable importance; since these awaken the affections of the mind, and the affections excite to practice. We freely admit, at the same time, that the proportion of doctrinal discussion may easily become too great: and we ourselves have sometimes wished that a larger portion of the contributions of our friends were of the plain, devotional, and directly practical kind. The CHRISTIAN OBSERVER has been vehemently accused of having an Antinoaian tendency. We believe that this is the charge, of all others, against which Christ Observ. No. 25. A it is most easy to make our defence. To be an Antinomian, in the proper sense of the word, is to derive from the doctrine of the grace of God encouragement to sin. To our readers it seems superfluous to state, that we, on the contrary, have uniformly represented the undeserved mercy of God in Jesus Christ as the grand motive to obedience; affirming that a true faith in the Redeemer necessarily produces love to him who died for us; and that if God hath so loved us, we ought also to love one another. ! Viewing Christianity chiefly in this light, as a dispensation of mercy, calculat ed to inspire the love of God and of our neighbour, we have been desirous carefully to avoid making our publication a theatre of angry disputation. We have thought it our duty, indeed, freely, but yet, we trust, calmly and dispassionately, to point out the mischievous parts of other periodical works, especially of those which are professedly of a moral or religious kind. And even when, in, conse quence of this freedom, any of them have attempted, by means of invective, to injure us in the public esteem, it has been our wish not to return railing for railing, but to rely chiefly on the evident and uniform tendency of our work for defence. 4 our We have intimated that we are enemies to Antinomianism. This pestilent heresy has many shapes, and we are hostile to it under every form. First, we would resist that Antinomianism which professes, in plain terms, that the law of God is no rule of conduct for the believer, a sentiment, indeed, which we trust is not very common; and we would likewise oppose every doctrine and expression bordering on this sentiment. We would inculcate carefully, zealously, and plainly, that the man, who being justified by faith is freed from the condemnation of the law, is still under the law to Christ ;" and that his faith will be made manifest, both to himself and to the world, by his obedience. We would also contend against an Antinomianism of another kind, which is somewhat more prevalent. Many persons embrace a system of evangelical doctrine, and even connect with it a certain degree of moral practice; but a practice, at the same time, by no means sufficiently Christian: they bestow only a small proportion of their attention on this important part of their religion. We wish to place before the eyes of such persons the universal excellence of that life to which they should aspire, and to delineate that Christian temper in which, perhaps, they are more particularly apt to fail. We wish to remind them, that when evangelical doctrines are popular among large bodies of men, as they unquestionably are at this period, a growing laxity of practice is very likely to accompany a considerable degree of religious knowledge and that a man may feel much complacency in the consciousness of the orthodoxy of his faith, even while his life is not superior to that of many whom he condemns as unbelievers. He learns, perhaps, to deplore his sins instead of forsaking them and to acknowledge the corruption of his nature, instead of heartily resisting it. He, at the same time, confidently repels the charge of Antinomianism which men ignorant of the Gos pel bring against him; and because he knows that there is nothing lax or licen tious in his creed, he does not suspect the latent Antinomianism of his heart. Meanwhile his faith is not productive of good works. It is, therefore, that faith which the Scriptures denominate "dead, being alone," and which cannot save him. : But there is an Antinomianism which is still more common, and which calls, perhaps still more loudly, for the attention of THE CHRISTIAN OBSERVER. We How allude to that multitude of persons, who, though little acquainted either with the doctrines or practice of Christianity, nevertheless confidently lay claim to a participation of its eternal rewards, and assume that they are believers because they do not, with Infidels and Atheists, deny the authenticity of the Scriptures. We may be thought guilty of some inaccuracy in thus applying to the mixed mass of the vain, the thoughtless, the covetous, the ambitious, the dissipated, and the worldly Christians, of the present age, the name of Antinomians. We apprehend, however, that, in truth, there is no impropriety in fixing on them this appellation. Do they not take credit for being Christians, on the ground of an productive and merely nominal faith in Christ? Do they not account themselves members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of Hea ven, while they manifestly and habitually disobey the precepts of the Gospel, and while some of them are utter strangers, and others are even declared enemies, to that life of purity and holiness which Christianity requires? They, nevertheless, indulge no small degree of hope in a Saviour. Has not Christ, say they, died for us? And are we not as Christians entitled to the benefits of his redemption ? We feel exceedingly desirous of exposing this wretched and ruinous delusion; this too common but corrupt species of Christianity; a Christianity, if it deserves the name, which has in it nothing worthy of its author, nothing great or noble, nothing spiritual or holy, nothing raised above the world, nothing, in short, which sanctions its exclusive pretensions to a divine origin, or puts to shame the tival claims of infidelity. We wish to remind these thoughtless, and, we will add, These unbelieving men, whose case we are now contemplating, that it is not enough to admit the general authenticity of the Gospel; that it is not sufficient to have been baptized, to be a member of the Church, and on motives of reputation to pay some decent regard to morality. Their religion, if it carry them no farther than this, will prove utterly unavailing. A FAITH FRUITFUL IN GOOD WORKS-in works far exceeding, both in kind and degree, what they seem to have any conception of, is THE ONLY TRUE FAITH OF THE GOSPEL. 66 In short, it is one great object of our work to give a higher and more scriptural tone to the Religion of every one of those who name the name of Christ:" and we are disposed to defend the faults of no party. We certainly are of opiion, that the present standard of practice among the professors of Christianity is low. It may not, indeed, be lower than at many former periods, for corruption bas too generally predominated in the world; but it is unquestionably very low when compared with that of some bright ages of the Church; very low also when compared with the obligations imposed on us by the sacred name which we have assumed: and it is even low, as we conceive, when viewed in connection with the proficiency of many in evangelical knowledge, and their taste for theological disquisitions. But it has been also alleged, that we are no friends to the Church of England. Are we then her enemies because we would exalt the character of her sous; and point out the deficiency of a cold lifeless faith, and of a practice which is no better than that of many infidels? Are we unfaithful to the Church, because it is one tendency of our work to create a peculiar esteem for the more sound and pious part of it; and to discredit all its unworthy members, whether ministers or people? Is not this division of the professing Church, into "the good" and “the the tares" and the wheat," the great division of which the Scriptures speak, and which our work tends to establish? Is not this the schism, and the only schism, which we are promoting? Indeed we have scarcely any object more strongly at heart than that of producing an union, a cordial union, between all the members of the Church, who are solicitous to advance the interests of solid piety, however they may differ from each other in some nicer questions. bad," |