"the propositions they advance, and the arguments they allege." The things upon which they reason are "the things of the Spirit of God," which are only "spiritually" and not naturally "discerned." When, therefore, we can stand side by side with the sacred writers, and with an equality of spiritual discernment of things spiritual, we shall be as much at liberty to judge as they were to reason; and not before. However obscurely the Socinian may regard the Scriptures in reference to their divine inspiration, and notwithstanding the inconsistencies into which he runs, by reason of the doubts he entertains, yet he would charge us with calumny were we to deny his respect, in some sort, for the Scriptures, as containing a revelation from God upon subjects of infinite importance: but yet, how can he entertain a genuine respect, when he assumes that the revelation was made to us through the instrumentality of men, whom, in matters of such vast moment, God permitted to be "fallible as historians, and probably inconclusive as reasoners? for Dr. Priestley's language implies in them inconclusiveness, or, at the very least, a liability to it. What real respect (upon Socinian principles, as exhibited by Dr. Priestley,) can be due either to the Author of the revelation, the revelation itself, or the instruments through which it was made? I profess myself incapable of judging. If the revelation is made to bear the usual marks of human inefficiency, or admitted to be liable to it, then the "assurance of faith" is a term without a meaning; and we might as well, if not better, be without such a revelation,

and live and die upon the principles of natural religion. The real estimation in which Socinians hold the Scriptures may be readily gathered from their published version of the New Testament, in which every device is used to corrupt, obscure, and distort those fundamental truths of the eternal Word, which, when a long-suffering God shall permit, will give the death-blow to the obnoxious system. For a masterly examination of the Socinian Version, I must refer the reader to the last edition of Archbishop Magee's valuable work on the atonement.

II. While the true Church of Christ receives the Scriptures as the sole rule of faith, it cordially embraces, with an equality of faith, every thing that is therein stated.

While receiving the Scriptures as of general authority, though not as matters of particular inspiration, the Socinian, upon the grounds which have already appeared, refuses the exercise of simple faith, when called upon to receive and hold certain departments of truth contained in them. Perhaps he would say, he would not admit the Scriptures as being of a divine authority at all, did not the weight of internal as well as external evidence, by its demonstrative force, compel him: and therefore he will not admit such parts of their particular statements as admit not of an equal demonstration. But what, in reality, does this amount to? Why this: that revelation in general is not to be received on simple faith alone; and if revelation

in general is not to be so received, then of course that no mysterious and indemonstrable part of the general revelation can possibly lay claim to admission on faith alone. Thus, then, the simple and implicit faith, which, from one end of the Bible to the other, is clearly exhibited as the prime feature of the christian character, and the forerunner of all the rest, is by the Socinian treated as a nonessential, or rather as becoming essential only so far as demonstration may prepare the way. But, in truth, demonstration is not the atmosphere in which faith can live. When absolute demonstration is complete, faith dies. A belief in any fact, dragged forth by demonstration, is not that exalted gift which the Scriptures call faith, firm as it may be, any more than the borrowed light of the moon can be called the essential and proper light of the sun. Herein, then, lies another dangerous view of the Socinian heresy. It practically rejects such parts of divine truth as demonstration does not provide for the reception of: that is, it receives what falls within the limits of a creature's capacity to comprehend; and rejects that which partakes of the acknowledged incomprehensibility of its divine Author. But the danger to which I now refer will be more apparent, when we consider what revealed truths the Socinian rejects. In the list of his rejections we find included those leading and fundamental doctrines and principles which distinguish the religion of the New Testament from every thing else that has been called religion since the world began. The effect of his rejections is to

make Christianity nothing more than a re-enactment or more formal promulgation of the legislations of natural religion; and the sacrificial and vicarious sufferings of Christ but a testimony of its truth sealed with tears and blood; and human merit the ground of acceptance, and perfect obedience the viaticum to salvation. In a word, the rejections of the Socinian make out the Gospel dispensation to be only a republication of what was irrevocable, the death of Christ an unmeaning tragedy, and fallen man the author of his own salvation. In effect, it leaves man pretty nearly in the state in which it found him. The false principles which the rejections of the Socinian scheme involve, may be gathered from the following concise statement of one of the ablest champions of the true faith : * "That," according to the Socinian creed, "Christ was a person sent into the world to promulgate the will of God; to communicate new lights on the subject of religious duties; by his life to set an example of perfect obedience; by his death to manifest his sincerity; and by his resurrection to convince us of the great truth which he had been commissioned to teach-our rising to a future life. This, they say, is the sum and substance of Christianity. It furnishes a purer morality, and a more operative enforcement: its morality more pure, as built upon juster notions of the divine nature; and its enforcements more operative, as founded on the certainty of a state of retribution." If such, indeed,

Archbp. Magee on the Atonement, vol. i. p. 12, 5th edition.

were the sum and substance of Christianity, how much of the New Testament we might afford to cancel. Page after page might be committed to the flames; and the old doctrine of the Trinity in Unity, to which, from the very beginning, the Church has clung with the fervency of a holy faith, might be cast off as the mere subject of a thesis for the schools, and the eternal Godhead of Christ might become as worthless as a popish legend.

III. While the Church of Christ receives the Holy Scriptures as the sole rule of faith, and holds with a simple faith all that they reveal, she looks to the great doctrine of the atonement by the vicarious suffering and death of Christ, as the only ground of reconciliation between God and man; and in the doctrine of a Trinity in Unity she traces the economy of the work of human redemption.

The Socinian denies the fact of man's utter depravity, and so dispenses with all necessity for an atonement. If the doctrine of man's total depravity were not inseparably connected with every other doctrine of the New Testament scheme, and if man were (as the Socinian leaders would have us believe) a being of a mixed character, partaking both of the positively good and positively evil, and with a preponderance of the positively good, and endued therefore with an innate and independent capacity for virtuous action, then indeed the danger arising from Socinian rejections would be very sensibly diminished. Perhaps there never would