To the consciences of the entire mass of the clergy of the New School, it is, and can be nothing else than a continued snare. What must be the influence of making the asser on before God and the world, that we sincerely receive and adopt the Confession of Faith of this church, as containing the system of doctrines taught in the Holy Scriptures," when the system which we actually hold, has no other relation, in all its characteristic elements, to the one referred to, than that of direct opposition. Then the fact, of the existence of which we are well assured, that this declaration, in the case of a large portion of ministers of the New School, is made in almost total ignorance of the contents of the instrument thus adopted. Many who have been born and educated in New England, (we express our belief of the fact, without fear of contradiction,) never even look into the instrument at all, before they thus receive and adopt it. Let any minister from any other denomination also go into any of our New School churches, and having given an undeniably correct and impartial exposition of the essential doctrines of the Confession of Faith, hold up such doctrines as the real sentiments of Presbyterians, and he will be accused, at once by the minister and church both, as.a gross slanderer. Yet that very minister in the presence of that very church did make the solemn declaration that he did "sincerely receive and adopt this Confession of Faith, as containing the system o doctrines taught in the Holy Scriptures." What must have been the influence of such a declaration upon the conscience of that minister. It is high time that this fearful incubus was thrown off from the conscience of the church. We think, that in what we have written, we have had a solemn regard both to her purity and peace.

The attitude in which the theological discussions of the past few years have placed the brethren of the New School deserves the special attention of an attentive observer of the signs of the times. New Schoolism, in the form in which it now stands before the public, has manifestly lost its power. The zeal of its advocates in its behalf has strangely declined, and in many instances totally died away. On the part of many, a decided tendency back to the cold and soul-withering absurdities of Old Schoolism is apparent. The cause of this singular state of things may be very readily detected. Old Schoolism has one merit, that of self-consistency. New Schoolism, in its present form, involves the elements of the most palpable contradiction. To give it form and consistency one new element must

be introduced into it, the doctrine of Full Salvation through the. redemption of Christ. No one, without manifest self-contradiction, can maintain the fundamental principles of New Schoolism, and deny this doctrine. Of this fact its advocates are becoming painfully aware, and hence the state of things of which we are speaking. To show that we have not made these remarks unadvisedly, we present our readers with an extract from the reply to the celebrated articles of Dr. Woods, of Andover, Mass., on this subject. The articles were published in the American Biblical Repository. The reply appeared in the Oberlin Evangelist, in 1841. The extract contains the sentiments of Dr. W., as set forth in his articles, and embodies the creed of all New School men on this subject. All the propositions here presented they do, in fact, maintain. Nor can they deny any one of them, without an abandonment of their fundamental principles.

"Permit me here to express freely my views of what appears to me to be the inconsistency and absurdity of admitting what you have admitted in your articles, and still denying the doctrine of Entire Sanctification. There is always something absurd and contradictory in error, when all its elements are distinctly apprehended. Truth, on the other hand, is perfectly beautiful and lovely in itself, and harmonious in all its proportions. I will suppose that you rise in the house of God, and propose, as the subject of your discourse, to establish the following propositions;

1. Perfect holiness in this life is definitely required of us in the Bible.

2. Perfect obedience to every command of God all are naturally able to render. 3. Provisions abundantly adequate are revealed in the gospel, to render us in this life," perfect and complete in all the will of God."

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4. We are authorized and required in the Bible, by promises "exceeding great and precious, to look to the "very God of peace" to be "sanctified wholly, and preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." 5. To render us thus perfect in this life is one great and express object for which the Holy Spirit was given, the church organized, and the ministry and ordinances appointed.

6. That we may attain to this state in this life, we are required by the express example and instructions of Christ and his inspired apostles, constantly to pray, and to "pray in faith nothing wavering," and at this state we are required as constantly to aim.

7. This state is, in this life, actually attainable by us.

8. No one is authorized in view of the truth of any one of these propositions, or all of them taken together, to pray for, aim at, or set his heart upon attaining a state of complete sanctification in this life, with the rational expectation of doing it.

9. No man ever did or ever will, in this life, attain to this state.

Would you be willing to undertake to sustain, before any intelligent audience these nine propositions? Would a full belief, apprehension and appreciation of the import of the first seven, at all prepare their minds for the reception of the last two propositions? Would not every intelligent hearer, who was ignorant of your real views, by the time you had announced the seventh proposition, be fully convinced, that you were an advocate of the doctrine of Christian Perfection? Would he not be astounded at the annunciation of the last two, after he had listened to the preceding propositions? To lay a proper foundation for the last two, should not almost all the preceding ones be reversed? On the other

hand, what better foundation conceivable could be laid for the establishment of the doctrine of Christian Perfection, than the admission of the first seven propositions as affirmed by the word of God? Let these propositions stand, and reverse the last two, so as to make them affirm this doctrine, and then your discourse presents a perfect and beautiful consistency throughout. Does truth carry upon its face palpable and undeniable marks of absurdity and inconsistency; while error bears throughout, features equally distinct and manifest, of beauty and consistency?"

Such is an unvarnished exhibition of the position of all New School men before the public. Who can wonder, that they stand appalled at the difficulties involved in their own position. Old Schoolism, on the other hand, presents no such difficulties. However unscriptural and absurd it principles may be, it has the merit of self-consistency. To the fundamental principles of Reason and the Bible, it. stands, in all its essential elements, in palpable contradiction But it does not contradict itself. It is every where true to its own absurdities. Now the mind can endure almost any thing else in a received system, better than palpable selfcontradiction. Hence the general tendency of New School men who deny the doctrine of Full Redemption to the absurdities of Old Schoolism. Did our limits permit, we should here state some of the facts which lie before us, pertaining to this subject.

In our remarks hitherto, we have said nothing of the merits of the Exposition from which we have quoted so largely. As presenting a correct exposition of the teachings of the Confession of Faith, it deserves a place among the works which the student in theology may peruse with profit. In respect to the manner in which the argument in favor of the truth of those teachings is conducted, we are not able to express so favorable an opinion. The odium theologicum is the principle argument appealed to in large portions of the work. Its author and revisers seem to have been aware, that the readers of the work generally are under a fearful horror of every thing bearing the name of Arminianism, Socinianism, and Pelagianism. Hence the teachings of the Confession are almost every where placed in opposition to these affirmed systems. Such and such, the reader is first told, are the teachings of Arminians, Socianians and Pelagians, on this point. But our Confession," it is then added, affirms thus and so in respect to it. The reader would almost think that there are no other forms of christian doctrine, but those held by Arminians, Socinians, and Pelagians, on the one hand, and our Confession on the other. Nothing almost is permitted to stand upon its own intrinsic merits. Such a mode of argu. ment in our judgment deserves the deepest reprobation.

The reader throughout the work, we think, will not find a solitary paragraph the perusal of which will draw a tear from his eye; unless it be the reflection, that such a system of doctrines as that can command the belief and blight the moral sensibilities of so large and respectable a body of professing christians, for more than three centuries after the great reformer confronted the man of sin in the Diet of Worms, and the Bible has been proclaimed throughout the world as the text book of Protestants. As he travels through the work, on the other hand, its great subjects rise up around him like mountains of ice, to chill his sensibilities and bring the pulse of spiritual life within him to a perpetual stand still. Nor does he meet with a single sentiment which brings home to his heart the conviction, I ought to be a holy man, or to awaken within him any deep aspirations for the attainment of holiness. Not a solitary aspect of the divine government meets his eye which prompts the spontaneous exclamation, "True and righteous are thy judgments, O Lord, thou King of saints.” The cause of all this lies in what is intrinsic in the system of doctrines developed in the Confession itself. In the presence of such a system, the heart can no more be melted into love and tenderness, than if surrounded with

"A sea of stagnant idleness,

Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless."

A universe of intelligent beings doomed to the unmitigated endurance of "all miseries spiritual, temporal, and eternal,” for the single act of one solitary individual, an act perpetrated long before they existed. Then this same universe of miscalled moral agents doomed to a still more aggrevated and endless endurance of the "wrath of God, and curse of his law," for the mere possession of nature in the production of which they had, and could have had no more agency than in the creation of the world, and for actual transgressions which the possession of that nature rendered it absolutely impossible for them not to perpetrate. We will not go on with the picture. How is the heart melted at the conviction, that upon such principles as these the entire system of Christian doctrine is based. How true and righteous, in their light, do the divine judgments appear. This, reader, is the gloomy soulless specter to the horrid embrace of which new school men are flying, to escape the conviction of the truth of the glorious doctrine, that even in this life, the believer is "complete" in Jesus Christ. On a subsequent occasion, we design to enter upon an investigation of the fundamental principles of the Presbyterian form of government.

ARTICLE LVII.

The Law of Right.

BY REV. J. M. WILLIAMS,

Pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Springfield Pa.

MAN is the conscious subject of law. There is a rule in the mind usually called the Law of Right, which he holds himself bound to observe; one which he feels approved for obeying, and condemned for violating. Its existence is one of the most incontestable and universally admitted facts of humanity. It is evinced by the confidence with which man pronounces some actions right and others wrong. For manifestly such judgments are possible, only on the condition of his having first compared the actions with a rule in the mind. It is evinced also by the use of such phrases as "I ought" and "I ought not." Such expressions are an acknowledgment, that we are the subjects of obligation-that we are under law. This fact is too palpable to necd either proof or illustration.

This rule of right,' found in the mind, is not a product. of the understanding, the result of any process of reasoning, but an intuitive, moral judgment. It belongs to the Reason, and differs entirely from those truths acquired by observation and experience. The most uninitiated certainly understand this distinction-the distinction between such truths for example, as "Paris is the capital of France," "Autumn and winter succeed the summer," and such as “Duration has no limits," "Space is unbounded." The former are learned through the intervention of the senses; the latter the mind sees by its own intuitive power of perception. The former are contingent, they may or they may not be so. The latter are absolute. The mind affirms that they must be truths, with a positiveness which incapacitates us to doubt them, or conceive the opposite.

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The law of right' belongs to this latter class of truths. The child does not know he ought to do as he would be done by, in consequence of having been taught it. He has a higher