qua

erally discerned, in condemning the principles and lities of an individual in the gross, for the fault of some of his peculiarities. It is unjust; because there may be more principles true, and more qualities good in him, than there are false and bad ones.

It is not my object to advert to the wholesale censures thus unjustly passed upon liberal Christians. I would forgive and forget them, and only dwell on the recriminations to which we may be sometimes provoked.

I

cry for a truce to the warfare on our part, if not for sweet charity's sake, yet for the wisest policy's sake. It is warring against ourselves. It is warring against our own most valued principles, this undistinguishing hostility to the characteristics of our opponents. Not to speak of blunting the powers of moral discrimination, it is crushing those principles in our own breasts. Candor and charity are our first principles, and this proceeding exterminates them, and implants bigotry and intolerance in their place. It is, furthermore, crushing our principles in the breasts of our opposers: for our principles are there, though, it may be, blended with others, and sometimes neutralized and vitiated by them. Whatever is not directly and professedly against us, is for us. In this, our Christianity agrees with that Christianity, of which the divine author is speaking in the declaration at the head of our paper. presumption it affords in favor of the two, I will not now stop to point out.

How strong a identity of the

There are many things, we rejoice to say it, in those who will not say the same of us, that are good and wise.

Now all these things we claim of course as the peculiar marks and tokens of our party. I call them the peculiar signs, the distinguishing badges of our party; for the peculiarities to which we attach importance are not abstract doctrines, so much as practical virtues; not a creed, but a spirit; the spirit of liberal, concientious love of truth and goodness; and therefore our party may embrace a hundred creeds, provided none of them interfere with freedom of inquiry and perfect complacency in those who honestly dissent from our conclusions.

Now, should we not value more, might we not make more of this coincidence of practical principles between the contending sects? We should see that we are in fact of the same sect in these principles. While there are so many points in speculation, driving us apart, should we not prize more highly this community of active virtue? It would be a good thing, not only for our christian affections, but for the advancement of our religious views, to encourage as widely as possible this idea of resemblance, nay, of virtual union, of identity with the remotest and most repellant of the Orthodox denomination. It would insensibly but unfailingly draw us more frequently together; and from such intercourse we are warranted, both by the nature of the case and by experience, confidently to anticipate accessions to the cause of liberality. Only let its merits be dispassionately viewed, and we have no fears for the result; there being already so many sentiments unconsciously arrayed on our side in the breasts of Christians of all denomina

tions. The spirit of the gospel will not, cannot, be wholly smothered throughout any communion by all the incumbrances men may heap upon it; and wherever one spark of that spirit is, with its light for the mind, and its warmth for the heart, there is so much reasonableness and love; and there is hope and aid for us; there are our allies, whether they call themselves so or not, and whether they know it or not.

It is cheering to recount the particulars which even in the most calvinistic communities are for us; and to compare them, for number and nature, with those that are against us. It is cheering, and it will both enforce my plea for catholicism and charity, and at the same time furnish grounds incidentally for one or two presumptive arguments in favor of our simpler system of religion.

In the first place, then, there is no little indifference to the peculiar dogmas of Calvin in some of the most excellent people who call themselves by his name; and there is a great deal of thorough piety not built up on these dogmas, and entirely independent of them. There is doubtless a deep fund of sincerity and conscientiousness in many who hold them, and a heartfelt desire to obey the truth; and all this eventually is favorable to us. There is a considerable struggling against the spirit of Calvinism where its tenets are loudly professed; and in this neighborhood, of late years, there has been undeniably a softening of their harsher aspects, if indeed some of them have not been fairly shamed out of credit, and openly disavowed. And where the dark spirit has

but too truly penetrated to the soul, there are still nature and reason there, which wage continual battle with it; and though they may not achieve its defeat, they are sure to cramp its malignant energies. All the charities of nature are for us. All the instinctive affections of the heart, all the unbiased judgements of natural reason are unweariedly fighting for us. All these things are on our side, I repeat, because they are not against us. Their natural operations, when left to themselves, favor us. The things which are against us, are only those which are artificially built up, as special bulwarks, for the defence of the Orthodox system. Such are exclusiveness, encouraged prejudice, wilful ignorance; impatience of inquiry, represented as strength of faith; caution in adopting opinions, stigmatised as unbelief; unnatural excitement; morbid fears; and those most artificial of all the inventions men ever have sought out for themselves, the complex, metaphysical doctrines which defy common sense, and astound simple nature, and turn away the charity of man from his brother

man.

Now let us pause on this simple statement, and ask which of the two systems of religion derives from it the strongest appearance of truth; that which possesses so much native probability, so much innate strength and vitality, that it gathers sustenance from all things except what are directly and laboriously contrived to oppose it; refusing to die; incapable of famishing; striving and thriving on, in the midst of the most deadly weapons that skill could forge on purpose to destroy it;

thus evincing all the hardihood of truth: Or that system, which must be bolstered up all round with factitious elaborate aids, or it falls and perishes of its own feebleness; which finds no aliment in the healthy simplicity of nature, but must receive it from the stimulating compounds of art; which has all things against it, but what are made by its adherents to be for it?

That the defences of orthodoxy are artificial, and that its leaders are afraid to trust it for a moment out of these defences, I need not refer for proof to the nonintercourse measures which they have adopted as their only safe policy. They keep their Orthodoxy shut up, vigilantly guarded, within the high castles of their exclusiveness; and think they cannot be too diligent in multiplying the walls of separation around them. They will not let it come out to breathe the free air of heaven; there is danger in it. There is danger. Experience has made them wise. Wherever there is a free and equal ecclesiastical communion between different sects, they know the tendency is to liberal sentiments. The generous principles of our nature no sooner feel the check, which intolerance has fastened on them, taken off, than they show that whatever is not factitiously against us, is naturally for us.

I may point, for a striking illustration of this, to both the English and American Episcopal Churches. In these, it is true, there are palpable standing fixtures for the maintenance of the popular faith, which are not found in other churches; but this makes the argu