do it again. But the constitutional rule was not to his taste. It had its difficulties. It involved too much responsibility. His plan was rather to agitate, to deal in loose charges and popular declamation before the world, to get up a pressure on the outside of the church, to create a faction within, to make capital for this out of every new trouble that might arise, no matter from what quarter, and so to carry his object finally by violent assault. For years, he has kept up this dishonorable course, doing as much as in him lay to break down the credit of the institutions at Mercersburg, and to embarrass the professors in their work. Year after year, pains have been taken to have it noised abroad that they were to be brought to account, on charg es which there was no resolution to put into distinct shape, or to urge in a lawful and manly way; and then when these rumours came to nothing, the Synod was blamed for not allowing the investigation to go forward. We doubt if there ever was a more flagrant system of schismatical agitation, so patiently borne with for the like length of time by any ecclesiastical body When we consider the comparatively small strength of the church, and the unfavorable influences which have been constantly at work in the spirit of surrounding denominations, the only wonder is that this guerilla warfare has not long since proved triumphantly successful by bringing all the operations of the church to a dead stand. And yet it is of his untiring zeal in such bad form for such iniquitous end, that Dr. Berg is only too modest now not to borst, as an argument of his doing and suffering more for the German Reformed Church, during the last seven years, than any other minister in her communion! If he could have blown up her institutions altogether, and demolished half her altars by dissension and schism, the martyr-prophet might have considered his glory complete. No wonder that such a man should wish to blot the very idea of schism," that word which has so often been the catchword of spiritual despotisin," from the ecclesiastical vocabulary.

At the last meeting of the Synod in Lancaster, the old game was renewed again, under what were deemed to be the most favorable auspices, and with the most buoyant hopes of success. Six months before, the senior professor in the Seminary had tendered his resignation to the Board of Visitors, a measure towards which he had been openly moving for a whole year before. Afterwards, when the first article on Early Christianity appeared and created some talk, it was industriously reported on the outside, that the resignation was on account of reigning dissatisfac tion in the church Had there been any ground for prosecution,

the way was still open for Dr. Berg, and his staff, to undertake it in regular and right method, by tabling distinct charges before the Board of Visitors, and so bringing the case in the end, under due responsibility, into open Synod. Nothing of this sort however was done. The plan was rather, as on other occasions, to make a noise, get up an excitement, and then come down on the case with a sort of mob judgment, when the Synod was in session. On the question of receiving our resignation, it was proposed to intervene suddenly by some act that might amount to a general censure, without the formality of a trial. The Rev. Jacob Helffenstein, in particular, showed a very fierce, nay, even rabid, desire to go into a declamatory assault and battery on the spot, as though the party to be crushed had been already arraigned in fact, convicted and condemned. Every one can see, that it would have been the height of injustice, to have yielded to such irregular prosecution in any way. With great dignity accordingly, the Synod refused to allow any such declamatory assault and battery in its presence; and just because such an unrighteous effort had been made to load the resignation with an ex post facto sense, which did not belong to it in its own proper form, it was resolved farther almost unanimously not to accept it at the time, but to throw it entirely on the will of the professor to take such course in regard to it afterwards as to himself might seem best. Such generous and noble regard for justice, however, proved sorely displeasing to the unrighteous persecution whose purposes it served to disappoint and defeat. Mr. Helffenstein at once appealed to the unchurchly and antipopery spirit of other sects, boldly and falsely declaring that the G. R. Synod had made itself responsible for all our published views; and that these views included all the "gorgons, bydras, and chimeras dire," which he himself saw fit to hallucinate into them, in his twofold capacity of judge and jury. The representation, we say very deliberately, was false, though cordially echoed by many of our evangelical papers throughout the land. No such points, as it alleged, were ever brought before the Synod. There was no trial; no arraignment; nobody to acquit or condemu; no vote that looked towards the determination of any theological question; no question of that sort at all under consideration. Dr. Berg himself, at the time, knew very well that the action of the Synod was not to be taken in this way. When Mr. Helffenstein rose in a pet, and made a pititful threat of secession, the Race Street pastor promptly disclaimed every thought of this sort. He was resolved, as all along before, to remain in the church, of whose treatment he felt that he had

no cause to complain. So in the next number of the Protestant Quarterly, he very distinctly defended the Synod from the false sense put upon its action by his intemperate companion in arms, and expressed his full determination to be if possible the leader of a revolutionary party in its bosom. But now, all at once, the aspect of things is changed. The Helffensteins continue dutifully in their place; while Dr. Berg takes up the very lie he formerly disowned, makes the action of the last Synod to have been at once judicial and legislative, charges it accordingly before high heaven with wholesale heresy, and affects to leave it with violent secession as a martyr, fairly driven from its bosom for conscience' sake.

To cover this huge inconsistency, it is insinuated that new occasion has been given since the meeting of Synod for the act now perpetrated. "Subsequent developments have satisfied me," he says, "that my mission in its communion is fulfilled." What are these developments? We are not told. One main cause of offence might seem to be gone. The professorship which we once filled is vacant. Our resignation was carried into full effect, as originally proposed, before the tocsin of the Protestant Quarterly was sounded for a combination to oust us by main force. We know of no other developments, except the completion of our articles on Early Christianity, and the fact that his tocsin ery for a revolutionary convention found notwithstanding no favor, but was met rather on all sides, as it deserved to be, with silent indignation and contempt. Are these the ominous events, that have satisfied Dr. Berg at last that the G. R. Church is no longer his home?" So really it would seem.

We see here the true nature of this whole issue. The other points of accusation, in our case, are merely by the way. The grand cause of offence is, that we are not willing to hate and curse Romanism in the usual anti-popery style, and that we dare to call in question the enormous falsehoods, both exegetical and historical, on which this system of outrageous hatred is built. Our articles on Early Christianity are charged with being an assault on Protestantism, which the Church was bound to rebuke. They in reality show only that Early Christianity back to the middle of the second century was something materially different from modern Protestantisin, and closely related to the Catholicism of later times; a fact, which Dr. Berg himself has not pretended latterly to deny, and on which we hope to shed additional light hereafter in our articles on Cyprian. But this fact in the end makes it necessary to acknowledge a true historical succession of Christianity in the Roman Church, for the

rational vindication of Protestantisin itself. Dr. Berg, as we have seen, stands violently committed to the unhistorical hypothesis, by which the Papacy per se is held to be Antichrist, and the church of the middle ages the synagogue of Satan; and like this school in general, he has no power to tolerate any view different from his own. We have openly resisted the authority of every such hypothesis as an article of faith, and have chosen to construe history in some harmony with our Saviour's promise, that the gates of hell should never prevail against his church. In our articles on Early Christianity, we have taken pains to say very distinctly, that we do not own the anti-popery scheme to which Dr. Berg is sworn, as any part whatever of the proper orthodoxy of the German Reformed Church. This declaration of independence formed in his eyes the climax of offence. His whole position required, that the Church should visit it with indignant rebuke. The Church however has refused to acknowledge or sustain his position, in any such proscriptive way. Ten years ago, when he tried to get a vote of Synod declaring Roman baptism invalid, his motion was laid under the table; but the course of things lately has amounted to a still more distinct and unmistakeable intimation, that the genius of the G. R. Church is in no harmony with radicalism of this sort, and that it is not likely soon to brook the servile yoke of any such foreign and miserably narrow tradition. This is a rebuke for Dr. Berg. He feels it severely. It has touched his pride, and so his conscience. For years he has been laboring to inoculate the G. R. Church with the virus of his own fanaticism; and now this is the end of it. His labor has come to nothing. He finds his zeal foiled, his ambition defeated. Othello's occupa tion is gone, his "mission is fulfilled." The Church "is no longer his home." He does accordingly the best he can; makes a merit of valorously forsaking its communion, and endeavours to carry away with him the laurels of a great and glorious martyr. Requiescat in pace!

J. W. N.

THE

MERCERSBURG REVIEW.

JULY, 1852.

VOL. IV.----NO. IV.

THE DOCTRINE OF CHRISTIAN BAPTISM,

AND

THE BAPTISTIC QUESTION.

By DR. H. MARTENSEN, Prof. of Theology in the University of Copenhagen.

This is a small work of S1 pages, part of which is here presented to the English reader-the remainder shall follow. The occasion and design of it, will be best understood from the Author's own words in a short preface. "The by no means unimportant bap:istic movement in the Danish Church-a movement which has not yet run its whole course-is the direct occasion of this church pamphlet. Inasmuch as the Baptistic Theory has manifested itself also, in many points, in the Evangelical Church of Germany, and has become matter of attention, the author hopes that this small work may also be of interest to Gerinan readers. It asks to be permitted to take its place among those contributions, which have already appeared that are designed to lead to a more definite understanding of the dogmatic substance of this matter." It will be easily seen that

VOL. IV.NO. IV.

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