God, is by the actual indwelling of Christ in them. Christ is formed in them ;--lives in them;-dwells in them; and this is the language in which the scriptures describe the application of divine power in the acts of the spiritual life. "No man cometh to the Father but by me;" says Christ himself; and this doctrine of the mediated presence of God with his people the apostles maintain in their assertions, that through Christ we have access to the Father. Christ joins God and man in himself; then with his complex nature becomes the life of his people; doing in them, and through their free and personal agency, what he did in his separate and personal life as a manifestation of God in the flesh. With God then united to the humanity in Christ, with the divine power in him subjected, under certain conditions and in certain matters, to the human will; and then, with Christ, the first born of every creature, the first formed spiritual man, the principle, the model, the embodied power of the new life of man, so reproduced in his people, so concorporate with them, as to bring forth in them and through them, such works as he first wrought in his separate person without them ;—we have the mysterious and adorable constitution of the new crea tion in Christ. And in this constitution we clearly discern, as an essential and unchangeable feature, an optional control of di vine acts by the human will;-natural freedom in the use of supernatural power.

This natural freedom in the use of supernatural power we witness in the miraculous works of Christ, and in the similar works of his disciples, which originated from his presence and power in them. We may distinguish these miraculous works as physical phenomena of the spiritual life. They are more striking than the ethical, because impressions from the supernatural changes of sensible things receive powerful aid through the senses. We more readily perceive in them the difference between the natural and the supernatural. Of the ethical phenomena of human nature, we distinguish with more difficulty those which are spiritual from those which are merely natural. But knowing from the scriptures that all holy acts and affections in man are effects of divine power, and that these holy acts and affections are required by authority and rewarded as virtue, we trace the same relation of divine power to the human will in the common works of the christian life as in the miracles of Christ and the apostles.

*The term ethical is here used to distinguish only the effects of the volition; with no reference whatever to the quality of the volition itself.

Of this relation of divine power to the ethical volitions of human nature, the invariable prerequisite is that same submission which was given as the condition of divine co-operation in miracles. shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you." "If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love." "Have faith in God." The faith required in the last of these directions is the submission and obedience supposed in the other two. It is the disposition to say, I come to do thy will; My meat is to do the will of God; Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? It is the consent of the soul to the divine requirements; acquiescence in the motions of the Spirit, already given as signs of the divine will, and as impulsive guides for the will of the man. The whole complex of this mental state is expressed by the term faith, because in this consent or acquiescence, the leading exercise of the mind is that faith which holds a lively and steady apprehension of God as the fountain of power for human redemption, and the head of authority for human obedience.

" If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye

Of the origin of this faith we have decisive instruction. It is God that deals to every man the measure of faith; and he is said to give to one, by the Spirit, the word of wisdom, to another faith by the same Spirit. The faith originates in the divine power. It is a fruit of the Spirit. And the supernatual power in the support and increase of this faith is so subordinated to the voluntary motions of the soul, that the exercise of the faith itself, like all its ethical concomitants which are to be sought by selfdirection and discipline, is enjoined by authority and inaintained by conscious endeavor for that end.

The beginning of faith arises out of the act of Christ, by which he begins his residence and the operation of the Spirit in the soul. By this the voluntary exercises are brought at once into such an agreement with the presence of Christ and the motions of his Spirit, that the instant determination of the mind is towards the act of faith. And thenceforward, the will continues its submission to the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus now reigning within, while at the same time it occasions, by its own determination, such acts of divine power as result in the other appropriate phenomena of the spiritual life.

The husbandman learns from his own experience or that of others, the properties of his soil and the laws of its production, and also the nature of his seed, and the laws of its vegetation. He begins his agriculture by submission to the laws he has thus ascertained, making them his guide in tillage, and in fixing the

time and manner of sowing his seed, and by his voluntary agency, always maintained in this posture of submission, he directs the operation of natural powers without which his agriculture could do nothing. The spiritual man comes under the law of his proper life by the indwelling of Christ, and the work of his Spirit, and this submission to the law of life in Christ is faith. It is acquired, not as the faith of the husbandınan, by experience or observation, but by the work of the Spirit of Christ who dwells in him. In this state of submission to the laws of life in Christ, he directs by his voluntary agency the acts of a supernatural power, without which he could do nothing.

All things are now ready for the process of spiritual culture by divine power, under the conduct of the human will. The spiritual man is not sufficient to do any thing of himself, but with the sufficiency of God, he can do all things. For all true knowledge he is dependent on the Holy Spirit; and yet by the study of the word of God, by the devout exercise of his thoughts upon the heavenly mysteries, by prayer, by all the natural helps of mental activity amidst the doctrines of Christ, he can increase his knowledge at pleasure. All true christian love is a fruit of the Spirit, and is so in the strictest sense; yet by guarding, in obedience to the laws of our moral nature, against vicious influence, and by the habitual and active contemplation of the things which are pure, honest, lovely and of good report, the believer accomplishes a voluntary growth in the spiritual grace of love. The discipline of our salvation is carried on by this submission of divine power to the conditional command of the personal wili in man; and thus, with fear and trembling, that is, with that reverential and submissive sense of the divine presence and and power, which is the true form of faith, we work out our own salvation, while it is God that worketh in us to will and to do of his good pleasure.

In this view of the divine and human agencies united in the spiritual life of man, the questions relating to divine sovereignty and human freedom, are resolved into questions of fact to be settled by history. From the earthly history of our Lord, and the miracles of his apostles, the settled facts are these: First, the submission of the human will to the divine in the acts of faith, then, the command of the human will over divine power in the acts of freedom. The freedom is seen in both the submission and the command. Matthew was called from the receipt of custom to follow Christ, and obeyed. The young ruler was required to sell his estates and to follow Christ, and did not obey. Now, while no one can deny, that the divine impulse which pre

disposed the will of Matthew to obedience, whether that impulse was conveyed through a long course of antecedent events in the history of the man, or by an instantaneous act, was directed by sovereignty, it is also undeniable that the compliance of Matthew and the non-compliance of the ruler were alike voluntary. When Matthew has yielded to the guidance of faith, and is prepared to receive from Jesus the promise of miraculous power and to rest implicitly upon it, he takes command of the power of miracles, and he finds that power at his disposal, as occasions arise, whenever he complies with the conditions.

The submission and the command are thus historically estab lished in relation to miracles. Then, having established this relation of the divine and human agencies to one another in working miracles, it will be, in the common views of christian people, an argument from the greater to the less, to conclude that the law which thus holds in miracles prevails in the ordinary acts of the spiritual life. Add to this the doctrines taught by the apostles and the precepts enjoined by them, which show that in their judgment the whole work of christian discipline depends on this law, and the mutual relation of the divine and human agencies in this course of discipline becomes fully established.

The train of thought above presented begins with our Lord Jesus Christ, the original and model of dependence and freedom in the spiritual life of humanity, and follows that constitution of the new creature in its propagation in the church. If it offers any facility in clearing, and consequently reconciling, the views of Christians concerning dependence and freedom, and in maintaining the consistency and truth of the Calvinistic exhibition of this subject, it will commeud itself to the reader as one theological argument among many in which illustration. serves for proof.

N. M. S.

THE HEIDELBERG CATECHISM.

WE find in the last number of the Princeton Repertory a long article on Ursinus and the Heidelberg Catechism, (attributed to the pen of the Rev. Dr. Proudfit of New Brunswick,) in which we are called to account, not in the sweetest tone imaginable, for our article on the distinguished author of this formulary, which appears as an Introduction to Williard's translation of his Commentary on the Catechism, and which was published also in a late number of the Mercersburg Review. To make out a more full and ample case, reference is had also to our small volume, published some years since, under the title of the "History and Genius of the Heidelberg Catechism," as well as to the first and second of our recent articles on "Early Christianity."

First comes the unfortunate tail of the 80h question; a point, hardly entitled, in our opinion, to half a dozen pages of grave discussion in an ostensibly scientific review, and of which in the end just nothing at all is made for the reviewer's main purpose. The only show of advantage he may seem to have against us, (and it is but a thin show at best.) is found in some slight discrepancy there is, between our statement of the matter in 1817 and the representation we have made of it in 1851; this too concerning a single doubtful historical particular merely, and not changing the substance of the principal fact. In 1851 we say, of the tail of the 80th question, that it formed no part of the original Catechism as published under the hand of Ursinus himself; that it is wanting in the first two editions; and that it "was afterwards fois'ed in, only by the authority of the Elector Frederick, in the way of angry retort and coun'erblast, we are told, for certain severe declarations the other way, which had been passed a short time before by the Council of Trent." Dr. Proudfit has no historical authority to urge in opposition to this statement. But on turning to our own book published in 1847, he finds the same statement in relation to the tail of the question, namely that it did not appear before the third edition, but along with this an intimation that the whole question was wanting in the first edition; while it is added, that the Elector took pains afterwards, in view of the decrees passed by the Council of Trent, "to have the question restored in fall to the form in which it was originally composed," allowing the previous text to go out of use as "defective and incorrect." That this representation differs some from the other, is at once evident enough. The reviewer allows, that it may be accounted for by a change