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to suit them to his bedstead, he effectually stretches or clips every adverse passage till it suits him: he confuses the perspicuous, distorts proportion, penumbrates the luminous, illustrates the obscure; breaks the neck of one passage to straighten it, of another to crook it; clothes one passage with as many glosses as the daughter of Aurengzeebe wore suits of imperial gauze, and scaiths another as the morbid dissector does his subject, to lay bare the muscles:-in fine, his theory is his line, which he stretches upon the Bible, and, like a master workman, raises or depresses, advances or retreats, every part till it hits the line. The work is done; and he has displayed great learning and equal talents, with which the reader is charmed, and no less awed by his authority and name. He has done it with a master's band, and perhaps it might require learning and talents equal to his own to confute him.

Men admire, and the world follows him; but, reader, if God's word were like the human body, it would bleed under his hand in every part, and suffer pain in every member. By these methods, every doctrine of the Roman, the Greek, the Arminian, the Antinomian, is made out. But the word of God is not such a book as can naturally lead to this infinite confusion of opinions. It is ambition and selfishness that do the work. When the day of God shall pour resistless light on every understanding, men shall see that their errors have been the offspring of pride and wilful blindness.

Every man is ready to say, "show me that I am wrong, and I will reform." But, alas! when errors have become popular, supported by great names, beautified and adorned by wealth and fashion, and fortified and defended by prejudice, passion, influence, and power, who is willing to see them in the light of error? Who has fortitude to meet the frowns of the powerful, the censure of those reputed for wisdom, the contempt of the learned, and the hatred or pity of the multitude? Barriers these, through which few can break. Here lies the strength of error, and the strongest bulwark against reformation. Errors are generally weak in themselves, far less supported by reason or evidence than truth; but they derive gigantic force from

their agreeableness to the mind, and from the difficulty there is in resisting the multitude.

I am no enemy to biblical criticism; I would be quite willing that our masters and professors in that noble science had ten times more of it than they have. I do not think them yet mad through much learning; yet I am aware that biblical criticism, as a profession, and as a science, may assume an attitude so imposing; may be so managed as to check, discourage, and crush the taste and spirit of inquiry into the import of the scriptures in the great body of the people. And I have seen, with inexpressible regret and disgust, that the professed expositors of the Bible, in this city, do artfully carry that business with so lofty and mysterious a hand, that the people, without knowing it, are led to regard the Bible, except when its meaning is dealt out to them in precious morsels by their teachers, as an almost sealed book.

I ask every reflecting man whether a wise nation will surrender up their liberties at the discretion of their rulers, because those rulers are wise and virtuous men? If they do, they are a ruined people; and this has been the ruin and downfall of all free governments. But how much more so has it ruined the church of Christ! When mankind surrender their understandings and consciences, without examination, to a set of men, they never more deserve to be entrusted with understandings, since they refuse to use them in the grandest of all concerns for which an understanding is given, or can be of use.

The moral maxims of vital importance to human happiness, the great body of practical wisdom, and, indeed, all the grand truths essential to salvation, are made perfectly plain in the Bible. But that which never engages the attention cannot be known, however plain it is made. Nothing can sufficiently engage the attention which is not made the subject of thought, reflection, conversation, and discussion. Conversation with a familiar friend, expressing our own conceptions and views of a subject, is the only way in which we become acquainted with that subject. Why is it necessary that ministers of religion should have about them such a vast apparatus of learning-should know so much and so accurately about theology?

Is it merely to make a splendid show, and now and then come out and dazzle and astonish their hearers with the pomp of their rudition? Doubtless; if we may judge from the conduct of many. Of what use is it if a man is looked upon as a walking, moving mass of divinity, if it must live and die in his carcass, and his infatuated admirers go on gazing and admiring him for his great knowledge, while they, alas! are comparatively ignorant, sleek and easy, as the horses that drag their carriage?

One grand reason why it is useful for a clergyman to possess great knowledge is, that he may communicate that knowledge, and take measures that his people may also excel in knowledge, which I hesitate not to declare is not done at all, or most miserably done, by many in this city.

I have said the study of the scriptures, and the discussion of scripture doctrines, among the people at large, is not encouraged in this city. Who has taken any vigorous measures for the attainment of that object? What associations were ever formed among the people, and what progress made. So far from it, I venture to affirm, that, were any one of all these triangular pontiffs to discover, that a large number of his most judicious hearers had associated together, to meet once a week, to read the scriptures, and discuss doctrinal points, he would feel the greatest alarm, and would take immediate measures to suppress it. I put it to the consciences of those gentlemen that I speak the truth. Yes, they would feel much alarm, and with much reason: for so sure as the sun gives light, should the religious people of this city take a simultaneous determination to" read the scriptures daily," and, like the noble Bereans, examine for themselves, "whether these things be so," this wretched triangular, limited, contracted scheme of Antinomian *selfishness would vanish away.

No: there are no such associations.-And whilst there is not a nobler object for which an association could be formed; whilst there are missionary societies, charitable societies, praying societies, Sunday school societies, bible societies, there are no societies, amongst rich or poor, male or female, old or young,

pious or impious, for reading and understanding that invaluable book; for discussing and understanding those glorious and awful, those sublime and venerable, doctrines on which man's eternal felicity depends. They are willing, it seems, that people should pray, and give their money bountifully; that they should send Bibles to the Heathen, but do they wish them, in earnest, to take up that Bible, and adopt the only true and vigorous methods of understanding it? "I trow not."

A nobler amusement, a richer repast for the mind, an exercise better adapted to invigorate the faculties, enlarge the understanding, to amalgamate different minds, and conflicting opinions, cannot be devised. And the progress which the mind makes in these exercises is delightful and surprising. "I will speak," said Elihu, “that I may be refreshed." The mind, like the body, is invigorated by exercise; and if never exercised it is ever feeble and unformed. Six men, as I said above, who shall give their opinions on but six verses of the scriptures, however weak they may appear, at first, will, in a little time, acquire facility by repeated efforts, system and arrangement by previous reflection, and from those very words, which they have heard pronounced hundreds of times, without awakening a single idea, new thoughts will occur, new beauties will expand, and important knowledge will be gained. It is well known that the human mind will improve in nothing to which it is made but the passive spectator. And this remark applies with greater force to that species of instruction derived from hearing, The habitual and orderly expression of our own thoughts, at stated periods, invigorates the powers of association and combination, fixes the mind to its object, assists comparison and deduction, while the mind resembles the distaff, and the discourse the hand which draws out the thread.

But, alas! if self-evident truth fails of any effect, if the noblest motives are without force against a tide of prejudice, and against the influence of a set of men, who patrole every street, and stand, arrectis auribus, at every corner, catching the undu lations of every whisper, and forestalling the incipient symptoms of conviction, in vain do I dwell on this theme. Nevertheless,

it will not disturb the repose of my dying pillow, that I have lifted my voice while others were silent; that I have incurred the resentment of those whose friendship will prove more formidable to thousands than their enmity can be to one.

With few words I shall close this number. I have stated some of the methods used to prevent any disposition to inquire after truth, any taste for doctrinal discussion; and, combining with other, and, perhaps, accidental causes, they have rendered it altogether unfashionable. The very taste for such conversation, reading, reflection, and pursuit, is extirpated, and there may also be clearly perceived in it the operation of judicial blindness. It is in the nature of man to love darkness rather than light, because his deeds are evil.

But there is one other method more recently resorted to, to which I shall briefly advert. The sword is drawn, and the point of ecclesiastical censure is now fairly presented and opposed to the breast of every one who dares to deviate from what these divines term orthodoxy. In the last number of the last series, I noticed the pastoral letter of the synod of Philadelphia, in which Hopkinsian tenets are denounced as heresy. They have also fairly past a test act by which every minister licentiate is to be examined touching those points, and if found a Hopkinsian, is to be rejected. I noticed in the first series the expulsion of Mr. D- from a seminary in this city, because he advocated those sentiments; and the same man whose signature adorned that disgraceful act of expulsion, has very lately, in a missionary society of this city, exerted his influence successfully against Mr. C, and procured his rejection as a missionary, on the charge of his not being sound in the faith; although one third of the board of directors of the society agree in sentiments with Mr. C

This gentleman is becoming famous on the list of bigotry and intolerance, and it is fitting that his official conduct be held up to public observation. Neither ought the reader to imagine that I am actuated by mere gratuitous malice in calling his attention to such conduct. The people of this country, and of this city in special, ought to study the fable of the shepherd's

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