character, for now a hundred and fifty years. And if the North furnished for that Revolution the iron, the South contributed the tow and the fire; and while Washington, nursed at the Church's breasts, kindled in the camp the fires on his country's altar, the Venerable White, chaplain to the first Congress and afterward Bishop of Pennsylvania, kindled in the same cause, the fires on the altars of his country's God.

CHAPTER XIX

LIBERTY OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT.

THERE is, as I have shown in a former place, a species of liberty, so called, which Presbyterianism originally had no intention to encourage, but to which, in her downward tendencies, she inevitably conducts; and against which, as Antichristian, Episcopacy irreconcilably protests. She protests against levelling down the sublime mysteries of religion to the intellectual grasp of every sewing girl; every text of Scripture to the exegesis of the washerwoman; the Church of God to the dignity of a temperance society; the Priesthood to an office made and unmade by the hands of men; Government to a social compact that parties may dispense with at their will; Sacraments to a place beneath the mystery and power of masonic symbols; the ancient severities of repentance to a spasmodic agitation, lasting sometimes not an hour; the majesty of divine worship to a weekly off-hand prayer: and a thousand like things, that strive to leap the intellectual space between finite and Infinite, strike at the crown of Jesus, and sink the redeeming God into a feeble man. Saint Peter and Saint Jude, in concert, warn us against "dreamers," that should come "in the last time," or under the last dispensation, who, having "denied the Lord that bought them," shall "despise government, and shall not be afraid to speak evil of dignities;" who, "with feigned words

make merchandise of men,' 99.66 waves of the sea, wells without water, clouds carried about by the winds, wandering stars," "speaking great swelling words of vanity," "murmurers, complainers, promising men liberty."* "Religious liberty," as the phrase is, and as some men count liberty, is not the liberty of religion, but the liberty of irreligion, to assert itself, and obtrude itself into all places and companies with its whole execrable brood of profane and licentious fancies. The moment you call it to order on the score of reverence, or of common decency, you are considered as impertinently interfering with religious liberty; so that, in portions of our land, in companies where the reverence and deference of Catholicity are out of the question, in the stage-coach, at the hotel, at the dinner-table, in the ship at sea, one can scarcely, in mixed companies, get through the day without submitting to undue and ill-mannered flings at the dearest object of his faith and hope. One has said, that "if you wish to think a little, you may be an Episcopalian; if you wish to think a little more, you may be a Presbyterian; if you wish to think a little more, you should be a Congregationalist; and if you wish to think as much as you please, you must be a Unitarian." Now this chain itself indicates the power of thinking; and yet, poor man! if he would but "think a little more,” he will see, that of this stuff the infidel, pantheist, atheist, may each one weld and add his potent link to this portentous chain! 'Having heard that it is a vastly silly thing to believe every thing, some persons get the idea that it is a vastly wise thing to believe nothing."

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Reason is the mind's eye or telescope, for the perception of truth; nor is it any more necessary that the mind should comprehend the truth perceived, than that the mountains or the stars should be compressed into the lenses of the eye or of the telescope. The medium through which reason discov

See Jude and 2 Pet. ii.

ers truth, is light-the light of nature, and the light of reve lation; but reason can no more create these lights, than the eye or the telescope can create the light of day. In the truths that reason arrives at by the light of nature, we travel from link to link along the chain, until we come into individual contact with the conclusion: in the truths that we perceive by revelation, we skip the chain; we bound across the intervening gulf; we see the bright object in the heavens; we admire; we adore; we have no means of reaching it. The Christian religion descends upon the earth. It fmds reason on the throne, and demands her allegiance. Produce your credentials, replies the haughty mistress. If I do not works, none other ever did; if I speak not words, none other ever spake; if I live not a life, none other ever lived; if I die not the death, none other ever died; if I rise not again as none other ever rose; if I ascend not to heaven to show that from heaven I came; believe me not: is the answer. Reason until your heads shall burst, to prove that I am to be believed at all; then yield me up the right to say for you, what you are to believe and what you are to do. Let the child reason its little self to death, to know whether this is the mother that bare him; although a mother's voice and hovering love will, in the very dark, strike conviction to its heart: but once having satisfied itself that she is its mother, let it honor her with faith and obedience to the death. Reason, if you will, till a thousand suns go down, whether the heavenly Jerusalem, "the Lamb's wife," "the Mother of us all," is the "Faithful and True Witness" left by Jesus upon earth to "fill up that which is behind" of His teachings and His sufferings: then follow Her, to the prison and the cross. Reason if you please, till the lamps of night expire, that it is safer to believe what the universal church of God believes, than to imagine that your own unaided reason can decide where all the individual reasons round you differ and have differed

ever; or reason, if you please, until the world grows old, to prove that it is more likely that God's guiding Spirit would "lead into all truth" the universal company of His elect, than that He should send that Spirit to guide you alone into the truth, when you have cast yourself on the ocean of conflicting doctrines with the rash hope that a miracle would interpose to save you! Yes, saith the Church; reason at the threshold: but let it be once for all. Establish the claim; let faith and obedience follow. Be not for ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. Do not reason, and reason, and reason, against each article and particle, and fight every inch of your unwilling way to heaven, and look to "irresistible grace" to force you Establish the mother's claim; you can know Her by Her voice and very look, for they speak to the heart: let reverence follow. There is truth in the saying,

on.

"Quand l'homme commence à raisonner, il cesse de sentir,"

as a child that will reason and face down his parent at every trivial turn, will shortly cease from reverence, obedience, and filial affection. I would not for a universe of gold risk my salvation on the deduction of my "private judgment," unless I could be sure of the repetition for my benefit of the alleged Alexandrine miracle. The Jews have a tradition that when the Seventy in Egypt translated the Old Testament into Greek, for their brethren who had lost the Hebrew tongue, each translator was immured for a long period in a private cell, and when the seventy-two translators at the expiration of the time were brought together, it was found that, word for word, they had all by divine guidance made the same exact translation. Now if earnest and devout men could come forth from their closets where they expect individual guidance, and speak the same thing, even on the awful question of the Divinity of Jesus, and on the thousand ques