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A 
 
 A 
 
 PEESBYTERIAN CLEEGYMAIS" 
 
 LOOKING FOU THE CHURCH. 
 
 3Y ONE OF THREE HUNDRED. 
 
 TORONTO: 
 
 PRINTED AT THE DIOCESAN' PRESS. 
 U DCCC L. 
 
t 
 
 'C 
 
 I 
 
 ^ m> 
 
 ) 
 
t 
 
 'C 
 
 A PRESBYTERIAN CLERGYMAN 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 •^ 
 
 I 
 
 THE CONFLICT. 
 
 The writer of this narrative was once a Presbyterian ; I 
 may add, that my numerous relatives, near and remote, with 
 a single exception , are Pi csbyterians still. And that which 
 I had been by birth and education, and without my consent 
 or fault, I afto-v-^.^d became from conviction, and unhap- 
 pily that species ■ f conviction which is always absolute — 
 satisfied with the potent reasoning, which even to a 
 Nathanael, may sometimes seem conclusive—" Can there 
 any good thing come out of Nazareth ?" The question v/as 
 unfortunately one, which modest worth has always found 
 it difficult to answer; and I had never met with a Philip 
 of Bethsaida, to say, '' Come and see." 
 
 Of the Episcopalians, whose friendship I had enjoyed 
 from childhood up, not one, so far as my recollections serve 
 me, ever made the slightest attempt to proselyte me to his 
 faith ; and even after it came to be suspected that my mind 
 was disturbed upon the claims of Episcopacy — when an 
 expression of sympathy, or an exchange of vieAvs, or a 
 friendly consultation upon personal and local difficulties, 
 that never find their solution in books and authors, would 
 have been unspeakably refreshing to the mind, then grap- 
 
 Xl^i 
 
 I \ 
 
4 LOOKING ¥0R THE CHURCH. 
 
 pling in ilB own solitude with its new perceptions of truth 
 and duty— still, ilthe I'act be creditable to Episcopalians, 
 I may record it to their praise, that I never met with either 
 layman or priest among them, who seemed so much as to 
 care, whether a wanderer should come into his Ibid or not ; 
 but I felt many a time perplexed by the indifference with 
 which they appeared to entertain a subject, on which my 
 own mind was expending its most restless and intense anxie- 
 ties. Whether those on the other rounds of the ladder, 
 reaching by God's ordinance from earth to heaven, were so 
 far above me, as not to understand the pressure of an at- 
 mosphere that they had never breathed, or had not the skill 
 to reach the helping hand so low ; and that those lower 
 down upon the same perceived so little difference between 
 my elevation and their own, as to wonder that I should 
 have suffered inconvenience or should have desired a 
 change ; or whether both high and low had i'orgotten that 
 that ladder, with its facilities for climbing to the skies, was 
 for me as much as for them ; it would be irrelevant, and 
 perhaps unbecoming, at present to inqu'.re. It is enough to 
 say, that I was excluded from the sympathies of Churchmen, 
 both high and low ; and, in looking at the past, I often feel 
 like one who has made his way across some desert, where 
 the foot-prints of the wanderers, in a thousand different 
 directions, seemed rather to bewilder than to guide, and 
 who therefore must ascribe his preservation and his better 
 fortune to the grace that kept his eje upon the guiding 
 star. 
 
 I may not be able to tell the precise moment, up to which 
 I remained a Presbyterian, nor the moment at which I be- 
 came from conviction an Episcopalian ; but one thing I 
 know, that " whereas I was blind, now I see." To speak 
 more accurately, while " seeing men as trees walking," 1 
 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 u 
 
t 
 
 THE CONFLICT. 
 
 5 
 
 ^ 
 
 » *» 
 
 I 
 
 had been at no pains to form a definite or fixed conception 
 of the ministry, the sacraments, the keys, the Church ; but 
 had rather passed these matters over, as things that we were 
 not required to define, and which perhaps it were better not to 
 define too nicely ; lest, peradventure, by running lines and 
 fences, we should be found " cursing whom God had not 
 cursed, or defying whom the Lord had not defied." But 
 now that, through the mercy of Him who hath touched my 
 eyes and told me to " look up," I see all things clearly," I 
 am more •' ready to give a reason to them that ask me," 
 and to say what that Church with its ministry and sacra- 
 ments must be ; and, standing on the great fact, that truth 
 is positive and therefore exclusive, I am ready, too, to incur 
 the imputation of an uncharitableness which I can only say 
 my principles do not inspire, and of a bigotry which, I can 
 only add, my private feelings are infinitely far from 
 cherishing. As soon might we hesitate to allow the doc- 
 trine of the Holy and Ever Blessed Trinity, for fear of 
 branding with heresy the amiable Unitarian, the martyred 
 Nestorian, or the ancient Sabellian: or, as soon should we 
 hesitate to define carefully and guardedly the awful requi- 
 sites of repentancf and faith, and prayer, and self- 
 mortification, and holiness, lest we should cast a shade, 
 perhaps a deep and disheartening shade, upon the safety, as 
 regards the future life of many excellent persons — as to 
 withhold accurate definitions of things pertaining to the 
 Church, lest we should rouse the suspicion in others, or be 
 accused of harboring the thought ourselves, that, however 
 well our neighbours excluded by these definitions may be 
 faring, we are persuaded that they might fare better still, 
 and that however safe those beyond these lines may be. we 
 feel some solicitude that they should be safer still. 
 
 The truth is, that in a world like this, and with such 
 
 (» 
 
1 
 
 6 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 hearts as ours, and amidst the endless influences that within 
 us and arounci us threaten to disappoint the very best of us 
 of His salvation, where no fact is so certain or so terrific, as 
 that even " the rii,'hteous shall be scarcely saved ;" it is 
 our duty to dig deep, if we would lay foundations for 
 eternity— to make the definitions as accurate as possible — 
 to place and wake the watch at every post — to spare 
 nothing from the means of fi;race that a merciful God has 
 placed within our reach ; if by any means we " may ap- 
 prehend that for which we are apprehended of Chris 
 Jesus." 
 
 Although unable perhaps, as already staled, to determine 
 the exact moment of the change which I have undergone, 
 I may yet be able, before progressing a great deal farther 
 with this narrative, to convince even the staunchest believer 
 among my former brethren in instantaneous conversions, 
 thai mine to Episcopacy, however gradual and cautious, 
 has been earnest and honest — Ihe result of a conflict deep 
 enough and enough prolonged, to furnish one plausible 
 phenomenon more for the theory of irresistible grace. In- 
 deed, one who has not been fated to pass the same ordeal, 
 can never understand " the fightings without and the fears 
 within," of a soul escaping, as it has been my lot to do, 
 from the mazes ot sectarianism, in its endless genealogies, 
 into the genial bosom of the Church. 
 
 To abjure a well-compacted system of opinions, to which 
 I have been publicly committed, and which I must now 
 allow that I have held on insuflicient grounds — n determine 
 that I will " not consult with flesh and blood,' where all 
 who are dear to me in life would earnestly resist me ; to 
 resolve that I may not even " go and bid them farewell 
 that are at home at my house," well knowing that I cannot 
 answer their inquiries to their satisfaction ; to disturb and 
 
 ¥ 
 
I 
 
 t 
 
 * r- 
 
 ■^9 
 
 THE CONFLICT. y 
 
 break asunder the ties of brotherhood, which time and a 
 friendly intercourse and many an occasion of" sweet coun- 
 selling together," have long and endearingly connected ; 
 to withhold the homage that nature seems to claim for the 
 ashes of the cheiishod dead, by appearing to insinuate a 
 defect in their religion, and, with motives easy of misap- 
 prehension, to leave " the dead to bury their dead"— to 
 overcome the countless expedients and sophistries to which 
 the heart resorts, in order to persuade itself that whatever 
 be the secret conviction, it is at least unnecessary to avow 
 it openly ; to encounter the obloquy that one must look for, 
 in breaking old associations for reasons that, by implication, 
 offend human pride ; to admit that I have '< run without 
 being sent," and have performed the holiest offices of the 
 altar without the Loid's annointing ;to " go out not knowing 
 whither," and incur the necessity of long probation, before 
 J may earn the confidence of my brethren in my new rela- 
 tions; to be day and night agitated and unhappy on a 
 question, on which it would be imprudent to seek sympathy 
 either in the ties about to be sundered, or in those about to be 
 formed; to "go up to this Jerusalem, not knowing the 
 things that shall befall me there ;" to feel goaded on by in- 
 exorable truth, to the fatal moment of proclaiming the 
 change my mind has undergone ; and, at last, under a pres- 
 sure of conviction, which it would be unsafe longer to resist, 
 and impossible ultimately to overcome, to take my new 
 position, and yet to have not a doubt that I am right in 
 taking it ; this is a task that lays under exhausting tribute 
 every resource and element of our frail nature. The pa- 
 tient investigations, and the sifting of reasons, the earnest 
 longings for Divine guidance, and the searchings of heart ; 
 the wakeful nights and anxious days, wearing the spirits and 
 corroding the health ; now a determination to dismiss the 
 
 i 
 
w 
 
 mm 
 
 m 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 subject, as one of externals and not ofesspntials,or of order 
 and not of faith ; now an efTort to believe that it would be 
 a lesser evil to continue, even at some hazard, in the old 
 communion, than to suffer and to produce in others the 
 necessary mischiefs of a change ; now a recurrence to old 
 prejudices, a carping at the theory in some of its details, or 
 in its practical and local workings, or a magnifying of some 
 incidental circumstance, to divert the mind, or to embitter 
 it against the new relation, or to satisfy it that on the whole 
 the change would not be materially for the better; now the 
 suggestion, that many learned and devout men, " of whom 
 the world was not worthy," have believed that Presbyte- 
 rianism was a scriptural religion; now the old feeling 
 stealing over me, that my mother, who first brought me to 
 Christ, and first taught me to pray, and who now " sleeps 
 in Jesus," lived without blemish, and passed " the swellings 
 of Jordan" without fear, in the laith which, only as to its 
 securities, I a:Ti proposing to abandon ; and again, the recol- 
 lection that my venerable father, now leaning with Jacob 
 on his staff, is in the same religion waiting with the bright 
 anticipations of a holy hope " until his change come ;" 
 these are but some of the tumultuous tossings in the mind 
 of the anxious inquirer. The happier child of the Church, 
 who was " free-born," can scarcely conceive the tribute 
 to be paid to old prejudices, old habits, old associations, old 
 modes of thinking, and chieily to the old pride of human 
 nature, by one who would become " partaker of his liberty.'* 
 In the words of one who purchased at great expense the 
 freedom of Rome, when Rome was free — words which 
 were appropriated by another, who long ago preceded me 
 in this uneven path — " With a great sum obtained I this 
 freedom." 
 
 A struggle like this may perhaps somewhat excuse the 
 
 ■1 
 
 I 
 
{ 
 
 i 
 
 
 i 
 
 THE CONFLICT. Q 
 
 enthusiasm, which those, who '* from without" have found 
 their way into the church, have now and then betrayed. 
 My own enthusiasm, if any I have felt, I have endeavoured 
 not to make oflensive to my brethren, either old or new. 1 
 have chosen rathei, under many provocations, to •• keep 
 silence even from good \vords," and to enjoy my liberty in 
 <[uiet thankfulrif^ss to Him whose word hath made mo free. 
 Sometimes I have been questioned, and, it would almost 
 appear, in the same spirit in which the man, twice unfor- 
 tunate, if I may so say, unfortunate in having been born 
 blind, and unfortunate in havini? received liis sight. ws«s 
 persecuted with the questions, " What sayest tliou 1 What 
 did he unto thee? How opened he thi" eyes'?" And 
 sometimes, '• out of a good and honest heart," I have been 
 asked to give " a reason of the hope that is in me." But 
 Irom considerations that will readily occur to a discreet 
 mind, I have felt it proper not to break the covenant with 
 my lips. Time may however be now supposed to have 
 sobered down the gushing impulses of the " new convert," 
 and also to have in some measure healed the wound which 
 only "the necessity laid upon me" could have induced me 
 to inflict on those " with whom [ once walked in company," 
 and therefore, from motives which I know will be approved 
 by Him, who alone has the power to discern, or the righf 
 to judge, I now venture to give a degree of form and per- 
 manence to a brief chapter from my own " experience." 
 
 T am but one among more than three hundred ministers, 
 who, in this coimtry alone, have, within a few years, been 
 ' grafted again into the good olive tree,' from which, on the 
 responsibility of our forefathers, we had in evil and violent 
 times been *' broken off." In reaching this result, there has 
 doubtless been no little variety in the trials that we have 
 each encountered ; but it is reasonable to suppose that " a.s 
 
■^ ■.=«'■«. im' 
 
 10 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 the billows went over our soul nd deep answered to deep," 
 in the general features of our " experience" we have re- 
 sembled each other, as " face answereth to face in a glass." 
 And forasnnuch as few have taken in hand to give account 
 of those things which are most surely believed among uS; 
 and especially of" that darkand terrible wilderness'' through 
 which the Lord halh brought us to the lold that was once 
 " one," and is as certainly to be one again, it bus been sug- 
 gested by others and has seemed good to me also, '' ha\ing 
 perfect understanding of that way," that it might be a 
 means of usefulness, and perhaps a source of consolation, 
 or even an humble guide to those who may come after us in 
 the same rough path, or who may be at this moment, grap- 
 pling with the same rude difficulties to see that " the fiery 
 trial has happened" to others before them, and that a goodly 
 '• cloud of witnesses," still panting at the goal, are looking 
 on them with affectionate sympathy, as they run the same 
 race from which we are now resting, and have their eye on 
 the same invaluable prize which we have grasped. 
 
 l* 
 
 ■A 
 
» 
 
 ft 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 TRADITION. 
 
 It was enough to attach my young heart to the Presby- 
 terian rehgiou, that my mother, besides possessing in a 
 high degree the most amiable and striking virtues other sex, 
 was formed in that religion to an elevated piety ; that from 
 her my mind has received those early religious inclinations 
 which it can never lose ; and that her flesh was resting in 
 unclouded hope of a blessed resurrection. True, I was a 
 child too young to know the nature of my loss, when I lost 
 my mother ; but never shall that mother's prayer pass away 
 from my memory ; never shall her tear dry away from my 
 sight; never shall her hund be lilted from my brow, as she 
 laid it there to bless me ; never shall I forget the pleasing 
 task shf> assigned me, as the little bearer of her basket and 
 its burdens at her side in her almsgiving visits to the poor ; 
 never shall I lose from memory the little sanctuary, 
 whither she often resorted with her child ; and whence her 
 soul soared upward and taught niine to follow ; and, until 
 death shall restore me to her, I shall feel her influence, 
 and, for aught I know, enjoy the defence and succor of her 
 spirit, hovering about me still. My venerable father, too, 
 for half a century, had been a prudent and efficient minis- 
 ter of Presbyterianism ; had, in the phraseology of that 
 school, " dedicated me in baptism." and admitted me when 
 yet a child to " the ordinance of the Lord's Supper ;" had 
 by much exertion expensively educated me ; and had laid 
 on me his hands, imparting the commission to bless the 
 people and to preach the gospel and administer the sacra- 
 
4 
 
 12 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 ments as Presbyterians hold them. A few will find it in 
 their hearts to censure me, if I shall here confess, that, 
 when other and graver obstacles had given way before the 
 force of truth, yet there rem:iined this, which flesh and 
 blood could not willingly profane, and found it no light 
 matter to surmount ; that the guide of my youth, now " old 
 and well-stricken in years," might '< go down with sorrow 
 to the grave," if he should hear that his son had abjured the 
 religion of his ancestors. 
 
 With that homage which parents such as mine seldom 
 fail to command from their children, I could not for a mo- 
 ment doubt, so long as I yet '< thought as a child, and un- 
 derstood as a child," that it was my duty to believe exactly 
 as they had believed before me. And far be it from me to 
 condemn this feeling, now that I have " become a man." 
 If the commandment to " honor thy father and thy mother" 
 be imperative, He who scarcely takes things temporal into 
 the account, can hardly be supposed to have forbidden us 
 to honour them, by embracing and defending their religion. 
 It is unquestionably the original design of Providence, that 
 this instinctive, and therefore divinely implanted, venera- 
 tion for our parents' faith ; a wise and holy instinct, 
 which Cain first violated and Esau next ; should have its 
 application, not only to the Church in her perfection, where 
 the cas9 suggests no difficulty ; but also to those forms of 
 religion, which, although we call them defective, we 
 rejoice to hope may be radically Christian. Nor do we 
 feel free to limit even here the application of the principle ; 
 but v/e believe it to be as truly, although less obviously, 
 wise and salutary, even when employed in the transmission 
 of the faith of the Mohammedan, or the Socinian, or the 
 Pagan, or the Jew. For, if the children of such were not 
 trained in the religion of their parents, they would grow 
 
TRADITIOX. 
 
 13 
 
 up to manhood without those ideas of accountability and 
 retribution, which lie at the foundation of moral improve- 
 ment and restraint. As we say of " the powers that be," 
 that any government whatever is better than none, because 
 its very existence affords a basis for progress and improve- 
 ment ; so we say that any religion whatever, Turk, Jew, 
 or heathen, is unspeakably better than none, because it 
 makes a creature of hope, and preserves the idea of ac- 
 countability and law. Few, indeed, would be willing to 
 see the experiment, if it could possibly be made, of severing 
 the Mohammedan or Pagan from the teaching and religion 
 of his parents, and of letting loose on earth whole nations 
 of Africans, or Turks, or Hindoos, without the conception 
 of a God or of a future life. I need not extend this 
 reasoning to the Atheist, until the question be settled, 
 whether there has ever been this monster among men des- 
 titute of the first fundamental instinct of humanity; and 
 until the Atheist should be willing, which the pretended 
 Atheist is never, to initiate his children into the arcana and 
 the consequences of his faith. 
 
 As it is then the duty of the parent to hold his own re- 
 ligion infallible, until he shall have seen convincing proof 
 of its fallaciousness, so is it equally the obligation of the 
 child to hold as inviolable the religion of his parent ; his 
 best friend under heaven ; one who would not " for bread 
 give him a stone, nor for an egg a scorpion" — until he shall 
 at the maturity of reason, have encountered overwhelming 
 demonstration, or at least satisfactory proof, of some fatal 
 flaw or falsehood in the system. And when Christians 
 shall be again " of one mind and of one heart ;" shall ' eat 
 the same spiritual meat, and drink the same spiritual drink ;' 
 shall acknowledge one baptism into (>*'e body, and with 
 " one mouth" confess " one faith ;" that faith shall be per- 
 
14 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 petuated, as once it was, from sire to son, through the 
 happy and unbroken ages of millenial blessedness, to which 
 we are taught to look exultingly forward. And although 
 this instinctive and inviolable rule of entailing a particular 
 faith, may work inconveniently, and often disastrously, in 
 these days, when there be creeds many, and baptisms many, 
 yet it is not to be set aside, except for the most serious and 
 weighty reasons, to be cautiously considered in each par- 
 ticular case ; for " from the beginning it was not so ;" and, 
 in happier days to come, the working of this very rule 
 shall bring it to pass, that " all thy children shall be taught 
 of God,*' and an unsullied faith and worship shall be en- 
 tailed from generation to generation. Thus it is, that the 
 *laws of nature, grace, and instinct, have all been intended 
 to cover vast circles of time, and to accomplish a vast pre- 
 ponderance of good, and are not to be suspended on account 
 of any local and short-lived inconveniences that may result- 
 As the wind must breathe, and the sun go on, the lightning 
 play, and the volcano continue to blaze, the rains descend, 
 and the rivers flow, and the ocean roll, and all nature keep 
 in motion, to accomplish vastbeneficient results, regardless 
 of the partial evils that here and there may incidentally oc- 
 cur ; so, without the necessity of tracing out the parallel, 
 nr.ust the laws ordained for our religious nature, whether 
 they come from revelation or from instinct, be implicitly 
 obeyed. 
 
 Nay, we go farther and assort, that while the religion of 
 tradition is th'^ only relig'jn of which childhood is capable, 
 it is, almost to an equal extent, the only religion that we 
 receive in manhood. Not more incapable is the pious child 
 of demonstiating that the adorable Jesus, at whose name 
 he bows and in whose name he prays, is both God and man 
 and must be God and man if lie would lay his hand on both 
 
 „ 
 
TRADITION. 
 
 15 
 
 I 
 
 and reconcile the two, than older Christians for the most 
 part are incapable of settling the canon of Scripture, or of 
 establishing the fact, that the Scriptures have been faithfully 
 preserved in their original tongues, or have been duly ren- 
 dered in the received translations ; although upon these 
 facts, and others equally beyond their reach, they build the 
 blessed hope of eveilasting life. 
 
 Nay, this principle is one of still wider range. Our know- 
 ledge, on nearly all subjects, is the simple knowledge of 
 tradition. The results in the whole circle of the sciences, 
 and the facts of the whole field of literature, and the occur- 
 rences of every day life, are received on tradition, or the 
 word of others. Thus the child at School is the passive 
 recipient of traditions. He believes, not only in innumer- 
 able facts, and histories beyond his sphere of observation ; 
 but he believes in facts, that his own observation would go 
 tar to contradict— that ihe earth is a sphere, although 
 he sees it as a plane — and that the son does not rise and 
 set, althouijjh his eyes assure him that it does. He believes 
 that an eclipse will occur to-morrow although he can- 
 not understand the stupendous calculations that furnish 
 the result ; he believes that there are a thousand countries, 
 rivers, seas, and cities that he has never seen ; and every 
 event anterior to his birth, and every fact of which he has 
 not been personally witness, he must and does receive on 
 the testimony of tradition. He who would receive no- 
 thing on tradition must be without ideas except as he 
 acquires them in common with the brutes: carry the 
 principle into religion, and he is an infidel and an Atheist. 
 Unless we could have lived from the times of Christ, 
 and through all the succeeding ages from the Apostles 
 down, we could not so much as know, that we have the 
 scriptures as they were then given to the Church. 
 
16 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 When, therefore, I have said that mine was the faith of 
 tradition ; a tradition that Ijustly venerated, because it came 
 froin my parents to me, as it had done from theirs to them 
 — but a tradition that I have since discovered to be not very- 
 venerable for its years— I do not repudiate, but mean most 
 distinctly to sanction the principle ; a principle, which, if 
 from the lirst days of Christianity it had been, sacredly and 
 without interruption, followed, would have found univer- 
 sal Christendorri at this moment '• of one heart and of one 
 mind." 
 
 But as we have often remarked, that persons who pre- 
 tend to have discovered the defectiveness in all creeds and 
 iiave made the high and flattering resolve to take the Bible 
 as the expression of their faith, and with a sort of unwritten 
 unsettled, elective and ever-varying creed, made up of 
 shreds and patches from the creeds around them ; or, as 
 we have sometimes seen the teachers of religion, dissatis- 
 fied with all the existing churches, as though '' the gates of 
 hell" had equally prevailed against them all, broaching 
 some new organization, or sortie inorganic spiritual bi'o- 
 iherhood, which was presently, like Aaron's rod, to swallow 
 up all others, but which after gathering some " itching ears" 
 around it, shortly became but another of the innumerable 
 " churches," that, like the dust of Egypt, are " found in all 
 our borders ;" so it is worthy of notice that greater practi- 
 cal sticklers for tradition, a tradition too of the most dan- 
 gerous sort, the tradition of a mere yesterday, are nowhere 
 to be found, than are every day met with, in the very- 
 churches and sects that declaim with lugubrious piety 
 against it. And, as those teachers, who are constantly 
 getting dissatisfied with all extant churches, or rather with 
 those in which their own lot has fallen, and find something 
 to complain of in them all, and profess to have left all 
 
 \r 
 
TRADITION. 
 
 17 
 
 \r 
 
 " sects ;" sometimes with the preposteious dream that all 
 will presently fall in with t/iem ; cannot for their lives per- 
 ceive, that they are only setting up themselves another 
 " sect," which will by and by be right glad to get into 
 a corner, dignified with the recently repudiated name of 
 " church ;" or, as those pious souls, women not less than 
 men, " seven women," it may be, " at the skirts of one 
 man," who " have thrown away all human creeds," cannot 
 for the life of them understand, that the result of their 
 '' comparing spiritual things with spiritual," has been to 
 invent with overbearing positiveness a new human creed, 
 perhaps unwritten, and all the more dangerous for that; 
 so the Presbyterian, the Methodist, the Quaker, the Secta- 
 rian in general, cannot at all perceive, that while professing 
 to reject tradition, he is in fact the most rigid traditionist to 
 be found on earth. The young Quakeress is compelled ta 
 swallow, as amicably as her years will allow her, the tra- 
 ditions of " mother Eunice and grandmother Lois," even to 
 the gloss upon her hair, the shape of her bonnet, and the 
 pinning of her shawl ; and the Quaker boy comes up to 
 manhood,with the traditions as he received them from his 
 father, and the father from broad-brim ancestors before him, 
 even to the curves and angles of his coat, and the wearing 
 of his hat in meeting ; while all the little ones preserve 
 the traditions of the parents, even to the crucifying of the 
 English tongue, in tne everlasting jargon of thee-and-thou. 
 In vain the boy remonstrates, " Why Father, t/iee is a pro- 
 noun of the second person, and in the objective case ; and 
 commands is a verb in the third person,, requiring the nomi- 
 native ; yet thee communis me to violate the first rule of 
 grammar." The father finds it quite satisfactory to answer, 
 " What has grammar to do with religion 1 O^ son, we live 
 \xi degenerate times ! Thee had a great deal better violate 
 
 B 
 
18 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 a hundred rules of grammar, than one tradition of the 
 Church." How fortunate it is for some religions, and es- 
 pecially for such as originated, and could have originated, 
 only in a wi' j fanaticism, that there is such a thing as tradi- 
 tion ! How long would Quakerism live without it 1 
 
 The same is true, mutatis mutandis, of the Presbyterian, 
 the Methodist, the Baptist, and all the host of them. "Who, 
 in times past, has more rigidly enforced traditions, creeds 
 and catechisms on their children, than Presbyterians *? For 
 my own part, before I knew the difference between the 
 nominative and the objective cases, I was a sincere believer 
 "that the decrees of God are his eternal purpose, where- 
 by, according to the counsel of his own will, ho hath, for 
 his own glory, foreordained whatsoever comes to pass." I 
 never in my life met with but one consistent anti-tradi- 
 tionist; a good-natured Baptist preacher, who undertook to 
 bring his children up unbiassed as well as unbaptized ; that 
 on coming to the years of discretion, they might-investigate 
 the conflicting claims of the Shaster and the Bible, and 
 choose between Confucius and Christ, to settle the triple 
 crown, yet in dispute, between Pius the Fourth and Calvin 
 the First. But the worthy man soon grew tired of his con- 
 sistency, and the unbaptized urchins had hardly got into 
 their teens, before he discovered that " bodily exercise 
 profiteth a little," (see marginal reading,) and by such 
 exercise as the saints of the middle ages called Ha'^cllantes 
 or whippers, practised for godly di&cipLne, the good minis- 
 ter found it quite necessary and highly edifying to inoculate 
 his boys with somewhat of the ciius of tradition. 
 
 The truth is, that the leligion of tradition is universaL 
 We see it everywhere. The principle is never violated. 
 The Mohammedan, of every sect; the PaL^an, of every 
 caste ; the Papist, of every order ; the Jew, of every shape 
 
TRADITION. 
 
 19 
 
 and form ; all equally -with the true Catholic, transmit their 
 religions in genealogical descent from sire to son, by a 
 hereditary sequitur. And we repeat, that we find no fault 
 with the principle on which this fact depends. We have 
 seen good results from it already. And when the " glorious 
 things that are spoken of Zion" shall " begin to come to 
 pass," we look for it, by that prerogative whereby it now 
 perpetuates both good and evil, to bequeath from age to age, 
 in a millenium whose years no man can number, still 
 ^' better things than these." 
 
 If then the abstract principle be so important, of what 
 serious concern to every thoughtful parent must it be, to 
 establish himself for his children's sake, in the current of a 
 pure and safe and, if possible, unchangeable tradition ! Be- 
 fore I became a Churchman, I had become a parent ; and 
 as I looked, first on the unruffled faces of my children, and 
 then on the sea of clashing sects and creeds all claiming to 
 be Christians; to-day noisily and fiercely jostling each 
 other, and to-morrow sinking into- oblivion again ; now 
 startling entire communities by the phenomena of a violent 
 galvanic life, and lapsing once mare as suddenly into silence 
 and inertness ; oh, many is the sigh I have ejaculated for a 
 heritage to leave them, th'at should give some promise that 
 it would not pass away with " every wind of doctrine;" 
 and often have I felt a saddening, sickening of the heart, at 
 the destiny that S3emsd inevitably to await them in a 
 church, whose actual condition in this country, and whose 
 history in every other, gave ma little reason to hope, that, 
 however pure in my day, it would continue to be so in 
 theirs ; and out of the only church thac seemed to possess 
 the elements ol perpetuity ; the only church i hat history 
 had proven to be conservative of our holy faith ! Sad and 
 «till sadder grew my thoughts. I knew that if I should 
 
 I 
 
20 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 live and die a Presbyterian, so in all human probability 
 would they : whatever Presbyterian might come to mean 
 hereafter ; for I saw that it continually changed its meaning, 
 and I had more than once in England been mistaken for 
 a Unitarian, because I had announced myself a Presbyterian. 
 Ih short, could I feel satisfied or justified, in that hour when 
 the things of Christ and of his church, and of eternity and 
 our immortal part, assume their just magnitude in the eyes 
 of men, to leave these children to the mercies of a sect, four- 
 fifths of which, as a future page of this narrative will show, 
 have become already, and with amazing facility and con- 
 cert, Arian, Socinian, Neologian, oi Pantheistical ; and the 
 only pure remnant of which has, under my own eyes, 
 abjured the exalted view once taken in her own Confessions, 
 of the ministr^^ and sacraments as essential to the preser- 
 vation of the more essential faith, and is rapidly declining 
 Into cheerless, intellectual theories, and has been rent within 
 my own brief memory into a hundred schisms 1 Should I 
 not be better satisfied, when looking on my little ones for 
 the last time in life, to commend thtm to the nursing of a 
 Holy Mother, that would enforce only the simple and suf- 
 ficient creeds, which preserved the church's unity, so long 
 as unity existed ; and that would protect and perpetuate 
 those creeds by liturgies, possesoing some mysterious charm 
 whereby she binds her children from age to age in mutual 
 and indissoluble union 1 
 
 It may seem singular that this view of the subject should 
 have occurred to me so forcibly. But, enler:a:ning it, I 
 could not hesitate : and with the instincts of parental love 
 —though resolutely resisting, and i^ca ce'y conscious of, 
 the slight:st tendency toward th.it clauch myself- and ijt 
 a momsnt wh:n I fully expected t;) spend my ownrcmaiu- 
 ing days in a filial adherance r^ the c mnjuuion in which 
 
TRADITION. 
 
 ii 
 
 I was born ; seven years before I entered the church, I 
 submitted my children, although " secretly for fear of the" 
 synagogue and elders, to Episcopal baptism; that they 
 might hereafter the more readily glide into a church, which 
 at this time I regarded as having no other advantages above 
 " the fair daughters of the Reformation," than in her mani- 
 fest and tried conservatism, by virtue chiefly of her noble 
 and unalterable liturgy. 
 
 One design of relating this circumstance, has been to 
 give the reader some just idea of the anxieties through which 
 an inquirer must pass ; and to teach the unreflecting that a 
 conversion to Episcopacy, in certain circumstances, is not 
 likely to be the result of caprice, or of blind or sudden im- 
 pulse. For myself, so long as stern conscience allowed me 
 to remain a Presbyterian ; so long as my leanings toward 
 Episcopacy involved, or appeared to involve, no funda- 
 mental principle, but were at the most suggestings of taste, 
 policy, expediency, I was content to abide in the commu- 
 nion wherein I had been born. But knowing the difficulty 
 and the danger of breaking asunder the tie that binds one 
 to the religion of his childhood, I determined to make it 
 easier for my children to glide out of the accidental religion 
 of their father, into the church that he even then distinctly 
 regarded, in the present state of the world and of human 
 nature, to be sufficiently, ana more than any other, and 
 after ample trial, the conservator, amidst the world's 
 changes and chances, of " the faith once delivered to the 
 saints." For the same reason, it was my determination, 
 regardless of the inconveniences to myself from such a 
 course, to recommend to therr, in due time afterward, the 
 religion in which by true-hearted clergymen of the Church 
 of England I had caused them to be baptized. 
 
 4 
 
as 
 
 LOOKING FOB THE CHURCH. 
 
 And now the reader, having seen my children " received 
 into the congregation of Christ's flock," will not be sur- 
 prised to find the parent envying his children's lot, and, by 
 more painful stages making progress, as he did for the seven 
 following years— toward the same result. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 APOLOGY. 
 
 In my seventeenth year, I became a member of the 
 theological seminary at Princeton ; a village widely and 
 justly renowned for its academical and theological learn- 
 ing. The Episcopal liturgy had probably, up to that time, 
 never giated on the atmosphere, that lay in homopjeneous 
 repose, within a circumference of thirty miles. A priest 
 all dressed in white, as one uprisen from the grave of Po- 
 pery, had never appeared to frighten the quiet villagers out 
 ot their propriety. The faces ground us -the traditions 
 around us— the very sepulchres around us— the strangers 
 who came among us— the pious and venerated men, whose 
 shoes we felt unworthy to bear, and under whose obser- 
 vant eye was passing, as we felt, our every thought— all 
 were Presbyterian " after the most straitest sect." And 
 what was I, at sixteen years of age, that I should entertain 
 a doubt, that the men, whom there it was our privilege to 
 know and to revere, had sifted their fa-ts, and considered 
 well their premises, and reached by the most cautious rea- 
 soning their 2cnclusions 'i To me it would have seemed 
 little less than parricide to have resisted the direction they 
 were giving to my mind. 
 
 Being of an inquisitive turn myself, I would have pur- 
 sued a doubt on any important alleged fact, to any ex- 
 tremity. But being also in my mental bias, both happily 
 and unhappily, confiding and disposed to faith, and having 
 been educated strictly a traditionist, I must confess, whether 
 to my discredit or not, that, during a residence of more than 
 three years at the seminary, I swallowed every fact and 
 
24 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 dogma as most wholesome tmth, " asking no questions for 
 conscience sake ;" and, with a credulity that would have 
 gained me laurels in a school of Loyola, I never for a mo- 
 ment doubted the essential truth of the prevailing system. 
 
 One exception I must briefly mark -as it is the key to 
 much that is to follow in this narrative. I did, at one time, 
 deeply doubt the lawfulness of infant baptism. The doubt 
 did not last long ; its consequences will last forever. A 
 thorough investigation dispelled every shadow of misgiv- 
 ings that nature, revelation, and antiquity suctained the 
 practice. But how to reconcile this fact with the popular 
 idea of regeneration ; or how it should be lawful to baptize 
 an infant before it had given signs of a spiritual birth, when 
 I was taught to believe that the very design of baptism was 
 to proclaim that birth before men and angels ; was a pro- 
 blem that haunted me, as the reader will see, both then 
 and afterwards. 
 
 While my companions in study, either older in years, or 
 more inquisitive, or less confiding than myself, were rash 
 enough now and then to hint thei>" dissent upon some point 
 of merely metaphysical importance, there was certainly 
 one subject on which no one ventured to suggest a doubt. 
 During my long residence at that " school of the prophets," 
 I am not able to say with a clear conscience, that I ever 
 laid my eyes on a volume — a line — a syllable, in defence 
 of Episcopacy. This may appear strange, but it is not in- 
 excusable. Episcopacy came up of course among the 
 conflicting forms of Christianity, but was summarily dis- 
 posed of, to make room for some more plausible or more 
 important theme. Everything else " came into our assem- 
 blies," as " a man, with a gold ring, in goodly apparel," 
 while Episcopacy stood there as " a poor man in vile rai- 
 ment," or as a woman not distant of kin to " the mother 
 
APOLOGY. 
 
 25 
 
 of abomination," and as an Episcopalian seemed in our 
 limited horizon to be a ram avis in terris, and his sect un- 
 popular and unimportant, and inevitably destined before 
 the rising lights of Jerome and Augustine to melt like snow 
 beneath concentric suns, or doomed more certainly, should 
 it prove more obstinate, to be ridden over rough-shod by a 
 more popular religion ; and as we felt also sure that it 
 could Lever thrive in a republic, we agreed that it 
 was sufficiently honoured in receiving at our hands the 
 little notice that it got. " The sect is a small part of the 
 christian world. In this land it is and will continue to be 
 among the smallest of the tribes of Israel ; its numbers are 
 iew in comparison with those ot other denominations; 
 its ministers are also comparatively few, and in point of 
 talent, learning, piety and moral worth, not eminent above 
 all others. . . • .—It is at variance with the spirit of 
 this age and of this land. This is an age of freedom, and 
 men will be free. The religion of forms is not adapted to 
 the free movement, the enlarged views, the varying plans 
 oi this age. It makes a jar on American feelings. It will 
 not be tolerated by this covmunity" So says Mr. Barnes, 
 the serenity of whose dreams has been disturbed, if we are 
 rightly informed, by the tumbling of this barley-cake into 
 the hosts that lie round about as grasshoppers, smiting in 
 its progress his own particular tent on Washington Square, 
 and eliciting more than once, in that unanswered ad ho- 
 minem of his to " the evangelical party in the Episcopal 
 church," the lamentation, that " Episcopalians are every- 
 where endeavouring to win [weshould have said,a;e every 
 where winning,] the young from the churches of their 
 fathers." 
 
 Although I was, and may say it without boasting, to an 
 intense degree, a student, and my lamp at night often the 
 
II 
 
 ^1 
 
 26 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 last to be extinguished ; and though, in the various depart- 
 ments of study, I was " n t a whit behind the chiefest '» 
 of my companions, in giving satisfaction to my teachers, as 
 their own obliging testimonials may show ; yet one who 
 has any knowledge of seminary life, or of the endless range 
 of theological investigation ; or one who has ever seen how 
 impetuously the student must be hurried forward from one 
 topic to another, without the possibility of pausing ; will 
 readily understand how it may have happened, that one 
 young as myself; the youngest of a hundred and twenty 
 brethren ; should not have employed his time in pouring 
 over the defences of a religion, which seemed then to have 
 scarcely an existence in the land, ond which it appeared 
 impossible that the republican should tolerate, or the for- 
 malist himself be able long to endure, and which " the 
 spiritually-minded," even among Episcopalians, would by 
 and by instinctively and loalhingly repudiate. By refer- 
 ring to copious notes of lectures, which I had a facility of 
 taking with great accuracy, I observe that we were em- 
 ployed from December the twenty-seventh to the seven- 
 teenth of January on the topics in question ; that is, deduct- 
 ing the portion of this interval allotted to other duties, we 
 were employed upon Episcopacy altogether, about three 
 days of continuous time. How had we the opportunity to 
 dwell on this silly question of " the washing of cups and 
 pots and brazen vessels," in the space of three weeks, when 
 all the other, and to us higher departments of study, were 
 at the same time hungrily pressing upon our attention 
 with the expectation that we should be equally proficient 
 in them all 1 
 
 Neither did I lay down Episcopacy, as I did most other 
 subjects, with the intention of a deliberate investigation 
 at some future time ; but grudging it the little notice it had 
 
APOLOGY. 
 
 27 
 
 got, among what seemed to be " the weightier matters of 
 the law," and fastening tenaciously upon several facts or 
 points, which, if their verity might be depended on, were 
 certainly enough to silence all the Episcopal batteries in 
 creation— and I was not one to question the accuracy of 
 traditions from these, who, to me, " sat in Moses' seat,"— 
 I laid the subject down, supposing, that in parting with it 
 here, I had done with it for ever. 
 
 Besides this routine of study, which allowed us scarcely 
 respite for our daily meals, the " revivals of religion," that 
 broke out at the time in every section of the Presbyterian 
 Church; exhibiting a wonderful mixture of good and evil, 
 and accompanied by unusual and strange developments ; 
 were enough, with a temperament less ardent than mine, 
 to absorb one class of energies end sympathies; while the 
 theological disputes, that like a desolating flood were 
 swelling in every direction to a most formidable height, 
 and which resulted a little later in violent disruptions and 
 in the addition of another large batch of sects to the already 
 portentous list, were sufficient to engross the leisure mo- 
 ments of a young divine, in whose eyes, unread in history 
 and unused to such phenomena, '' the ends of the world had 
 come upon us," and heaven and earth were mingling in 
 
 the strife. 
 
 I permit myself to give prominence to these facts, as an 
 apology (I am compelled to use the word,) for these, who 
 have come out of the Babel— let me not call it Babylon— 
 of sects and schisms, into the quiet home provided by the 
 Church. Recantation is never a pleasing task. Even on 
 the e^de of truth or goodness, it has its bleeding sacrifices. 
 And we think that we lighten the harsh terms of penance 
 to which we are condemned, by thus accounting for our 
 having once conscientiously held opinions that we now con- 
 
28 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 scientiously tepudiate. If we had Ldd our opinions on the 
 Episcopal claim, believing it to be a subject of grave impor- 
 tance ; or, il we had adopted them in circumstances that had 
 allowed a fair opportunity for investigation ; we should not 
 have deserved the indulgence that we now presume to ask. 
 But, so long as we regarded it as a question of the very 
 least importance, the other engrossing topics of inquiry did 
 not, either de merito or de facto allow us to pause. 
 
 It is but fair that this should be borne in mind, that we 
 may be spared the objurgations which we sometimes hear 
 as thou-h, in a moment of caprice, we had changed well- 
 formed opinions, and might possibly hereafter change agam; 
 as though the vibration that brought us into Episcopacy, 
 miobt, som- day swing with us into Popery, or back again 
 onUie other side, to a position farther f.om the central 
 truth than we were before. And yet among the Three 
 Hundred Ministers to whom I have alluded, and among 
 the thousand and thoi r^nd late lay converts to Episcopacy, 
 I have never known c any such relapse, except of a Bap- 
 tist in a recent instance in Ohio. I have known Episco- 
 palians, baptized and educated in the Church, although I 
 must suspect not educated on church principles, to make 
 the said transitions to Romanism and Dissent ; but, per- 
 sonally, I do not know an individual, denied a birth and 
 training in the church, and who has come to " this Mount 
 Zion ""at his peril, that has afterwards lapsed into either of 
 these errors. That such cases exist, we believe on the 
 testimony of an excellent Bishop who has " taken pains to 
 inquire," and has proclaimed the fact ; and that such cases 
 would exist, we should have thought not at all unlikely, 
 especially if, of every two hundred and eighty- five persons 
 ordained in the Church, as was the case under Bishop 
 Griswold, of Massachusetts, two hundred and seven are from 
 
APOLOGY. 
 
 29 
 
 other denominations ; and if, as some have computed two 
 thirds at least of. the Episcopal clergy throughout the land 
 were once dissenters by their baptism or their educ.aon 
 For, without undertaking to extenuate their error or wish- 
 ing tc become the apologist for these mistaken brethren, 
 let us not use this sword against them, lest even in a 
 bishop's hands, we find it a two-edged blade that may 
 wound in a different quarter Irom the one irtended. 
 
 For to tell the plain truth, the convert trom sectarianism, 
 whose' conversion has been one of either his head or his 
 heart, may well feel disappointed at finding the prac'tical 
 condition of the Church so vitally at variance with its 
 theories. His convovsion has been the result of long in- 
 quiry and anxious struggles. He has been converted to 
 Christianity as expounded by the P'-y^^-^^f-^.I^^^^ 
 symmetrical, sublime, satisfaetmr^Ie^^t^d^^^ <;?" 
 
 Address, .hich In. apP-.l i;.^ T^;: ^J,^^ l^^^J'i^^^l 
 "'""l:' ;?om^hV'T;u ;rVo o, lulsm. have bee., originaily 
 Tdlt d S t ai -ed';;; luu,i.s not Frotestan. Kpiscopa^. ihe 
 iiing is the result of my enquiries on the sulject :- 
 
 CbtUGYMEN. 
 
 Dioceses ^^f''^ Brought up as 
 ^'atnes. uioctses.. D,if.c:io7i. 
 
 Rer VirpilH.narher.jnn. N w Vork . . 1H15.. Congregationalist. 
 
 " Virgil H.B.irber, sen. Connociuut. 
 
 " John Kovvlev ^>^v \ovk . 
 
 " Pierce (Jonnily Mississippi. 
 
 '• J. Koosovclt U.iyli'y-- Nt'w Y<.rk . 
 
 '« Henry M;ij >r Veinisvlvania 
 
 '• Natli.miel A llewiit MaiylHn.i. 
 
 " Kd>Jar P Wailhams.. New York 
 
 " William U. ll>yt.... Vermont.. 
 
 Candidates M Order a. 
 
 Mr. Clarence Walworth .. ^y-^'-^'"^ \%- 
 w Benin. J. McM.isters.. Now V.rk.. ^4.}. 
 .. .■• Putnam . . . . Nor.CaroIhia 1^4.>, 
 
 1815.. 
 IHIK.. 
 1M3(). . 
 Ih4'2.. 
 IS4(i.. 
 IH f). . 
 
 is4r... 
 
 lH4iJ.. 
 
 Con>?n'K'alionalist. 
 
 Meiiiodist. 
 
 I'resliyterian. 
 
 r.piscopalian. 
 
 Metliodist. 
 
 Coiigretjationalist. 
 
 Presi'vteriaii. 
 
 Coiigregationalist. 
 
 Presbyterian. 
 lU'f scouh Prrs. 
 Coiigregiitiunalist. 
 
30 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 portunity to discover the practical Puritanism that has re- 
 duced the church at so many points to a level, 'and into 
 feeble and fruitless competition,vv^ith the sects around her ; 
 and can we wonder that when he finds himself in the 
 church, still hampered andharrassed by the same teachings, 
 practices, and spirit, that he had imagined had been left 
 forever behind him, he should in a moment of unlooked-for 
 disappointment, throw himself with a desperation analo- 
 gous to that of the weak-minded suicide, disappointed in 
 the ideal object of his admiration and his love, into the arms 
 of a more conservative system; conservative, although it 
 be of error and wrong, as well as of truth and right 'I If 
 the Church were actually the Church held up to the world 
 in her Prayer-Book and in the writings of her great divines, 
 the men who have thus been driven to a desperate deed, 
 would more probably have been ready to lay down their 
 lives in her and for her. We m.ay be allowed to say, 
 therefore, that we have felt it to be somewhat unkind, 
 when one of these converts has happened to do something 
 not quite churchmanlike, to attribute the error to a te.siduum 
 of the old leaven ; while the eyes of the veriest neophyte 
 could see that the snaie errors, or errors still greater, and 
 
 namod was ever a .iisM-iuii.g !niiii>t»T ; and lint (uic was the liev. 
 iu KpwIcv. wlin. Iiirii!,' hi-.n U.iptised in tlie Church, was in hoy- 
 hood sedmVd hy the .Irsuitx fnm his parents in E eland, and was 
 cducatt'd at St Omor's in Fiai ce (ins pan-uts not knowiit!; whrre 
 h^ was) hilt only rccvixii jr annnvmnus as-nra c<'s that ho was doing 
 v'cll the while), and. altrr a stcahhy ♦•mmp-' to Fnpiand, hccame a 
 Protfstant and 'i ^!eth.>di^<t tnmister On roininc? to An erica, he 
 fntered the Church, and licc.me Uector of St. (;eorf;c's palish, in 
 New Yo'k cifv which h.- afei wards rcMuned, Am\i\\ following this 
 8t(p hy hw r.tiiMi to iMir pc and to the Honii-h cnnimiinion Mo e- 
 over without brinj:.-.' 11 uch • p dns to enquie" we as; ertain that 
 the (Minrchl) rn ai)' stall s to licnie in this country hear (jnire their 
 p-oportion tothealiMVe Lsts .mimx the cle }jy. and that in Ki glaii-i 
 the prop(.ni< n is hevo -I c arparison t-reater Onr oily ..lj(Ct la 
 to check these iinneci>sa' y an ; invidious distinctions, and I ha! lor no 
 othtT reason than that they seem t' ns likely t.- (heck tlie progress, 
 as they coulraditt the spiiit, of a Catholic-htartcd Chuich. 
 
APOLOGY. 
 
 31 
 
 departures still more serious from the canons, liturgy, 
 principles, and spirit of the church, were more numerously 
 and more strikingly perpetiated by those whose better for- 
 tune should have taught theai belter manners toward their 
 lawful mother. 
 
 It has been the occasion of satire to the Sectarian, and of 
 pleasantry even to the Churchman, that the professed con- 
 vert to the church of God should belruy any earnestness in 
 the cause, which he has at such pe.il espoused. For my- 
 self, although the feeling has never been officiously or of- 
 fensively obtruded, because it has never been obtruded at 
 all upon the notice of oihe.s, and has been sometinnes even 
 studiously repre,s.d, yet I am not ashamed to plead, guilty 
 to that sense of holy satisfaction, which only a gieat sacri- 
 fice to conscience can impart ; and of gratitude, which only 
 a-reat benefit conferred, can enkindle; and ot comfort, 
 which only a blessing long desired, and inestimable in it- 
 self, can bring ; and, for one, I am content to put my hind 
 while living, to the sentiment which a noble son and 
 father of our Church inscribed on all his actions, and again, 
 for the thousandth and the last time, subscribed, with his 
 .'ying hand, P/o Ecc/c'..a 2)a/ Pro Eccle 4a Dei ! My 
 answer to the dissenter is, Who but a Churchman, that has 
 tasted the qukt delights of the sanctuary, can appreciate 
 the church's excellence 'J ]\ly vindication to the Church- 
 man is, Who but the soul that has been " tossed up and 
 down like a locys!," upon ♦' the winds of doctrine" and 
 the sea of sects, can understand the mazes, the dangers, 
 theundercurrents, and the disasters, of Sectarianism ^ Sec- 
 tarians, you know nothing of the church's blessings! 
 Churchmen, you know nothing of Sectarianism's mis- 
 
 cnicis ' 
 The'young churchman, as a theological student, has this 
 
32 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 advantage over tha sectarian ; that, besides his being tu- 
 tored to a system better adapted to bind its sons in loyal 
 attachment to itself, the subject of church order, in his 
 course of study, is so prominently kept, before his mind, 
 and so assiduously followed out in its bearings, thai he acts 
 earlier in life under a clearer apprehension ol the subject ; 
 and, if he have been but moderately attentive to the ques- 
 tion in dispute, is not very likely to retract the results at 
 which he has arrived. But it is right to recollect, that the 
 case of the Sectarian is otherwise. His course of study is 
 assigned, and every hour of his time so filled, as nearly to 
 exclude, and certainly to force into a corner, the whole 
 question of E^piscopacy, and the still more vital questions, 
 liturgical, catholic, and sacramental, that with the Episco- 
 pacy, as all experienceteaches, are to stand or fall. Hence 
 the phenemenon, arguing indirectly, but conclusively, for 
 Episcopacy, that, in face of the outcry and the odious nick- 
 names of the day, invented to arrest the wholesome reac- 
 tion, hundreds of dissenting teachers, in England as well 
 as in America, and thousands of their Ibllowers, are flock- 
 ing bick to the ark, from which, in an evil hour, they 
 went out, seeking rest upon a tu bulcnt and dangerous sea; 
 and that in this country alone, within the memory of man. 
 Three Hundred Ministers, with a corresponding number of 
 adherents, have returned to the ancient fold ! 
 
 If t may repeat what seems to be the only explanation 
 of this fiict, it is, that the Church student ia»in little danger 
 of meeting with new suggestions upon church polity; 
 whereas, the dissenting mJnister is in continual peril ot 
 encountering new facts, or the refutation ot the facts on 
 which he has been accustomed to rel}'. And this defec- 
 t'.on from sectarianism must continue to annoy our '* sepa- 
 rated brethren," so long a3 tiie high prerogative of tha 
 
APOLOGY. 
 
 33 
 
 Church, as the visible Body of Chnst, witnessing Hs 
 Word, perpetuating His Presence, and innparting His For- 
 given;ss and His Grace, shall continue to be '' pnvily thrust 
 out " Let it also be remembered, that in subsequent life, 
 the pressure of domestic avocations, the limited access to 
 book., the resangusta domi, and the absorbing nature of 
 parochial engagements, as effectually exclude it from the 
 attention of th; student, when promoted to the pastoral 
 lifet so that nothing but a seeming accident, or the ill- 
 working of an intolerable system, is likely, in he first 
 Ltance, to rouse his inquiries, or send him to the tomes of 
 the Fathers and the fountain-heads of information. 
 
 Because these facts have hot been allowed a hearing, 
 the -new convert » has been regarded sometimes wi ha 
 certain feeling of distrust; and attempts that look like 
 playing back into the hands of Dissenters, have been made, 
 to make the period of probation, for those who have been 
 dissenting ministers, so burthensome, as effectually to ex- 
 clude them from the priesthood of the Church. We might 
 be led into some curious speculations, were we to pry into 
 the motives for these attempts. It is, that the Church so 
 lax in her discipline at other points, wishes to be understood 
 as taking the high ground, that we have cornn.itted some 
 sin almost unpardonable in having been dissenting teachers . 
 Or may it be, that in the judgment of some, we have per- 
 x)etrated a most damning sin in abjuring communions which 
 a-e in their opinion, on all vital points, as much churches 
 of Christ as the one we seek 1 Have you ever known one 
 in a hundred of these converts from sectarianism, to return 
 to his - first iove f Have you ever Isnown one of Ihem 
 to apostatize to Rome, except in sadnes. and bitterness, at 
 finding the living Church so flattered by its portrait in the 
 Prayer-Book, and by the pencils of her masters 1 Are they 
 C 
 
34 
 
 LOOKING fOR THE CHtTRCH. 
 
 not in general, ^ firm, and filial, andobedient ,ons .hough 
 ..coming from far," a» those that have be'^" ' ™'^ ^ 
 her side " and as •' able to give a reason of the hope that 
 t nthem " But I mean not to argue. Take a«ay those 
 minUterrat her altars who have been bapt>« or educated 
 rrssent aud the Church in America will be left a w.dow 
 ;„deeni'h but little if anything more than her th.rds for 
 
 ■"Zt soiry am I to tell it in this place, that there are 
 quarters, in which the unchurchmanlike, unscr.plural, un- 
 christian uncatholic. and behind-.he-ase senUment .s fa- 
 miiarly uttered, that you would rather those chsscnters 
 luld'remain where thev are ! Remam where they re ! 
 I confess I do not understand you. Remam where they 
 are ' Is Your Church the living representative of Chris 
 on Jarth, and you would rather they should not be bapt.zed 
 ;„to that body,and derive throu.jh it, " by that which every 
 loint supplieth," their nourishment and growth unto ever- 
 lasting nfe 1 You pray incessantly, " Thy kingdom come 
 and yet you are startled at the hrsl shaking of the dry 
 bones.arcund you ! You say that your Church is destined 
 to absorb all others, and yet, .he moment .he bright result 
 begins to dawn, and wake you from your slumbers, you 
 deprecate the spreading light, and cry, " Yet a ittle _s eop, 
 a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep .■ 
 
 I speak not for myself. For myself I have nothing to 
 ask. I have not found the Church the step-mother Iha my 
 former frien.ls predicted, and my own fears foreboded. I 
 have found fathers among her elders; and among heT sons 
 1 have found brothers ; and from her breasts I have drawn 
 consolations, for the sacrihces 1 have made. Yet I remem- 
 ber the words of a judicious writer, that " men are but men, 
 what room soever among n:en they hold." Nor do I forge. 
 
APOLOGY. 
 
 35, 
 
 the words of a friend, dropped by the way-side, a few hours 
 before I received the grace of holy orders, that " you will 
 find human nature in the Church, as well as out of it ; you 
 must expect to meet everywhere with narrow minds and 
 pent-up hearts." To which I have only to add, that the 
 mere fact of our abandoning systems, that some within 
 the Church regard with so much tenderness, may in some 
 instances subject us to the mistrusting glance, as it is an 
 awkward thing to be explained by those who at the 
 Church's altars act as the apologist of dissent and schism, 
 and over the Church's walls reach down the left hand of 
 fellowship to " the brethren without." 
 
 My remarks look to the ^uture, and, at the risk of incur- 
 ring the rebiike, that " this one fellow came in to sojourn,. 
 and will needs be ajudije," I cannot but confess, that it 
 would be painful to see the Church— free as it is, and free 
 as it ought to be preserved— legislating herself out of her 
 own liberties, and inventing new and unnecessary hin- 
 drances to the enlargement of her borders. ^' IMuch land 
 remains to you to be possessed." - The field is the world." 
 If the dissenting teacher, applynv; for her orders, is not 
 qualified for the responsibilities that they impose, then, 
 thou-h he be as old as Methuselah, use the Church's pre- 
 rogative, and bid him away. But if he be -oady with 
 "the answer of a good conscience," then u e all that 
 come to you-for alas ! you have room for all-and ordam 
 them, though they be young as Timothy, and though, like 
 his, their fathers have been '' Greek." " What God hath 
 cleansed, that call not thou common." Take the word ot 
 one, whose word in the present case may not go for nought, 
 that you need inllict no greater penance, than that which 
 these men have suffered, in crossing ''' the great gulf fixed" 
 between them and you. What is the policy of Home 'J 
 
36 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH* 
 
 What the policy of the Dissenter "? Fas est ah hoste doceri 
 — freely translated— /(a; n a lesson from your nciyhbours. 
 In days like these, when those who come to you must for- 
 sake the popular for ihe unpopular— must stem a breast- 
 deep tide to reach you— must leave an unburitd father, or 
 an offended house, to follow you— must wear in no mean 
 sense a crown of suffering and one of which for Christ's 
 sake they are not ashamed— receive, as did Paul and Peter, 
 all that come to you. Althoutjh, like Timothy, without 
 our fault, we may not have been "of Israel, according to 
 the flesh," yet " from a child we have known the Holy 
 Scriptures," and have loved, " though half in the speech of 
 Ashdod," the faith that dwelt albretime in our mothers and 
 our grandmothers. 
 
 Only let the Bishops see, that ministers from other com- 
 munions, seeking orders in the Church, leave no room for 
 the suspicions that ccclum, non aninutm mutant; and the 
 Church may safely throw open her door. Her walls, the 
 world over, and the world knows, are strong enough, "and 
 high enough : and if her gates be needlessly obstructed, 
 those who would have entered, will go away wondering 
 at the " grievous burdens " that your own scribes and 
 lawyers " would not touch with one of their fmgers." It 
 was a fearful accusation, " Them that were entering in ye 
 hindred." Let the Church, that we believe to be "after 
 the pattern of heavenly things," assert her prerogative, as 
 *' the mother of all living," and " travail," like her apos- 
 tles, "the second time" for her disaffected children, and 
 do nothing to deserve the reproachful name that sectarians 
 have given her, and\Aith which, if my own experience 
 may testify, they seek to deter their adherents from her 
 bosom, as a noverca injusta. 
 
 1 am not ignorant of the discipline of the primitive 
 
APOLOGY. 
 
 37 
 
 I 
 
 Church toward those who returned to her from heresy and 
 schism. Perhaps it is unfortunate that that discipline has 
 been interrupied. But were it even in force, we might 
 still without presumption remind you, that we were sec- 
 tarians by tradition, and not by election ; that fev/ of us 
 ever rejected any article of the Catholic Faith, as it is ex- 
 pressed in the ancient creeds ; and that in encountering all 
 the inconveniences and hards,nips of a conversion, we have 
 done a penance that should satisfy the Church, and at which 
 a Hindoo breaking cas<e would justly marvel. 
 
 Perhaps few would bo more ready than myself to bode 
 danger from a sudden influx into the Church. 1 have seen 
 disastrous consequences trom the letting loose of Congrega- 
 tionalists into the Presbyterian communion— taking it by 
 surprise, and cutting it adrift from its ancient moorings.— 
 It is notorious that her doctors have recently descended not 
 only to Congregational mitigations other faith, but to Con- 
 gregational grounds in her defence— resorting, if I may give 
 an example of recent and memorable date, to the silly hy- 
 pothesis, urged formerly by Congregationalists against 
 themselves, of a crew of Christians cast without the ministry 
 and sacraments upon a desert island. And I know, that, 
 when it was remarked in a circle of New School Divines, 
 a few years ago, that a number of New England ministers 
 were going into the Episcopal Church, a Congregational 
 Doctor of Divinity, fresh from Ohio, replied, " I am glad 
 of it ; they will revolutionize the Episcopal Church, as we 
 have done the Presbyterian." And it may be, that now 
 and then an adventurer may make his way into the Church, 
 from carnal or mercenary motives, (although, where Dis- 
 sent is " fat and well-liking " in the land, this can hardly 
 be conceived,) and such to their ne<v spouse may be forever 
 commending and canonizing their first love. It may even 
 
nB 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 be, that the Cincinnati Divine has not been entirely disap- 
 pointed, in seeing here and there the revolutionary hand at 
 work. But let it h- remembered, that the gliding from 
 one sect to another, is a ver) difterent thing from a submis- 
 sion to the Church. In one you cross the street ; in the 
 other, a great gulf. One is a caprice; the other a conver- 
 sion. Besides, I need not remind the Episcopalian, that 
 Episcopacy has guards, which Presbytery has not— that 
 Episcopacy has claims, which Presbytery has not— that 
 Episcopacy has promises, which Presbytc^ry has not— that 
 Episcopacy has a deslinij, which Presbyteiy has not— a 
 destiny as Catholic as the family of man— a destiny which 
 she must inevitably fulfil, and can fulfil only by conver- 
 sions as thick strown as " the drops of the morning dew." 
 Either you must give up your high-sounding claim to be 
 the Church of God, or every conversion must fill your heart 
 with joy. Either you must not look for her future univer- 
 sality, and consequently must at once surrender her pre- 
 tensions, and leave the undisputed field to Rome : or, like 
 Rome, you must keep vigils for her straitness, and jubilees 
 for her extension. Leave not these waters teeming with 
 living myriads, to the Roman fisherman, who will let down 
 his net at the master's bidding, not fearing, like you, that 
 "for the multitude of the fishes" his net will ''break." 
 Be ye not so like the brother in the field, who "was angry, 
 and would not go in." " It was meet that we should make 
 merry, and be glad ; for this thy brother was dead, and is 
 alive again ; and was lost and is found." ^ 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PRINCETON. 
 
 Between the years 1830 and 1840, on the deck of a 
 steamboat between the cities of Washington and Alexan- 
 dria, I remember to have met, for the first and only time in 
 
 my life, with the Reverend Mr. , an Episcopal 
 
 clergyman, and one of three brothers ''according to the 
 flesh," who had themselves, as I was afterward informed, 
 come " from without " into the Churtfh. It so happened, 
 in the course of conversation, that this gentleman made 
 some allusion to the hurried notice taken of the subject of 
 Episcopacy in certain theological schools, and hinted 
 broadly that this was very much the case at Princeton.— 
 I do not recollect the reply that his remarks elicited, or 
 whether I did not let them fall unnoticed into the Potomac ; 
 but I have not torgotten the indignation that burned 
 in my young heart, at what I regarded as an unmanly and 
 unfounded imputation upon my church, my alma mater, 
 and myself. 
 
 Fortunately for me too, a few weeks before, on making 
 my ministerial debut in the first Presbyterian Church in 
 Washington, in the presence of President, Senators, and 
 Rulers of the nation, the minister who " made » what is 
 oddly but aptly termed "the long prayer," that is, the 
 prayer before the sermon, thought proper to introduce me 
 to his audience as " thy servant not yet nineteen years of 
 age." For although it was an extemporaneous error of 
 more than a year, and intended to flatter the vanity of a 
 debutant, still, by not allowing me to forget that I was 
 yet a boy> it may have done me service in restraining me, 
 
40 
 
 LOOKING jfOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 on this occasion, from giving utterance to a feeling like 
 this • " Sir ! art thou a teacher in Israel, and knowest not 
 vet the difference between the Gospel and the Church ; be- 
 tween externals and essentials ; between the casket and the 
 jewels ; between the net and the fishes ; between the shell 
 and the kernel ; between the spirit and the body ;— 
 between the chaff and the wheat ; between the mere 
 scaffolding and the glorious building 1 » And certainly, 
 on this occasion, " discretion was the better part of 
 valor-" for had the young bachelor in divinity given 
 way to his pugilistic impulses, he might have been sadly 
 puzzled ; nay, I mayVear, muzzled ; if the excellent clergy- 
 man had, in his mild way rep'ied ; " My dear young friend 
 _you will excuse me for reminding you agam that you 
 are young-would you deposit a jewel in a frail casket 
 without a fastening 1 Would you expect to see the kernel 
 come to maturity, if you should rend to tatters the protect- 
 ing shell 1 Would you think to detain on earth the spirit of 
 one you loved, if you should neglect or divide the body it 
 inhabited \ Would you, with a weak and broken net, ex- 
 pect, in all weathers and in all waters, to drag your fishes 
 to the shore '? Would you tear off the " useless chaff" that 
 God has thrown around the grain, and hope, when the 
 sickle should be thrust in, to fill your garner with the 
 wheat 1 Would you throw down the scaffolding, and ex- 
 pect to'see the temple rear its bright pinnacles toward the 
 sky 1 The jewel would perish without the casket, and 
 the kernel without the shell ; the life would depart but for 
 the body, and the fishes be lost but for the integrity of the 
 net; the wheat would die but for the chaff, the temple 
 never rise but for the scaffolding, and the gospel pass away 
 from the hearts of men but for the Church, its channel and 
 its witness. You must, then, my young friend, find other 
 
PRINCETON. 
 
 41 
 
 similitudes from the objects around us to support your 
 theory. Ask nature. Does she furnish the analogies you 
 wantr' But fortunately for the reputation of Princeton, 
 as represented in her youthful graduate, I did not lay my- 
 self open to the annihilation to which this would have been 
 but the playful prologue. 
 
 Although the clergyman thus encountered was justified 
 in the allegation, that the time allotted to the subject of 
 Episcopacy, in certain schools, is unreasonably short; for, 
 if I mistake not, he had been himself a pupil at Princeton, 
 and now only " testified what he had seen ;" yet the young 
 graduate flatters himself into the consciousness that he is 
 amply mailed and equipped to confront a universe of mitres, 
 and all the ingenuity and learning of the heads that wear 
 them. As we made our rapid transit over the ground, my 
 own mind fastened distinctly upon what appeared to be its 
 more plausible pretensions, and at the same time upon 
 what promised to be the annihilating sources of attack.- 
 Contenting myself with these leading and, as I thought, 
 strong positions, which I shall presently enumerate, I was 
 the subject of a mental process, resting strictly on tradition 
 and fairly reducible to the following syllogism : 
 
 If what our Lecturer has drawn' from the records of an- 
 tiquity be true, Episcopacy is a fraud. 
 
 What our Lecturer has drawn from the records of 
 antiquity is true by every guarantee of honesty, learning 
 
 and piety : 
 Ergo, Episcopacy is a fraud. 
 Or thus : 
 
 Facts must settle this question : 
 Our Professor has given us the facts : 
 The question is therefore settled. 
 The nature ol the facts on which my youn^ und had 
 
 . i| 
 
42 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 ivsi^ 
 
 seized, and on which it had as undaunted influence, as had 
 the Hebrew stripling in - the smooth stones from the 
 brook " may be inferred from the followin- examples, 
 ^vhichlshall repeat m the form in which, for the most 
 part, they were at that time presented to my imagmation. 
 I ' Episcopacy is, in its structure, anti-republican, and 
 in its spirit, hostile to human liberty ; in the pleasant places 
 where our lot is fallen, we need not therefore fear its pro- 
 trress, nor concern ourselves about it. 
 * II. It is now conceded, that the official names of Bishop 
 and Presbyter in the New Testament are of the same exact 
 meaning; therefore all Presbyters, or, which is the same 
 thins, all Pastors are Bishops, and the setting of Bishops 
 above Presbyters or Pastors is a usurpation and an anti- 
 Christ. 
 
 III. The Apostles were but twelve, and their number 
 was no more intended to b6 increased than that of the 
 twelve tribes or the twelve constellations. The apostles 
 saw the Lord, whom their pretended successors have not 
 seen ; the apostles wrought miracles, which their pretended 
 successors cannot show : the apostles possessed individually 
 the gift of inspiration, which their pretended successors ^ 
 unle'Is indirectly or collectively, do not even claim ; there- 
 fore their pretended successors are Apostati, non Aposioli; 
 Seductore3,nonDoctares; Pifati, non Prelati-not Apos- 
 tles, but apostates ', not Doctors, but seductors ; not prelates, 
 
 but Pilates ! 
 
 IV. Hilary declares that " In Egypt, even at this day 
 [say,'the end of the fourth century,] the Presbyters ordain 
 in the Bishop's absence;" and Jerome a writer of un- 
 bounded learning, declares that Episcopacy was introducied 
 " by degrees " into the Church ; that at Alexandria even 
 in his day, " net only the election, but the ordination of the 
 
PRINCETON. 
 
 43 
 
 Bishops was by the Tresbytevs themselves," and demands 
 exultingly of the proud Bishop of Rome, "What does a 
 Bishop°ordination excepted, ttiat a Presbyter may not do 1" 
 in other words, " what prerogative has a Bishop, ordmation 
 excepted, that a Presbyter has not 1" 
 
 These will answer for specimens of the positions, on 
 which, as a graduate in this department, I relied for all 
 future emergencies ; and these, together with a few other 
 quotations from the Fathers to save appearances, and es- 
 pecially a modest remark of the great Bishop of Hippo res- 
 pecting his order, extracted, by a more searching process 
 than is known in alchymy, from the fifteen huge lolios of 
 Saint Augustine : and also, the marvellous tradition^ we 
 were taught, that " there is not one word in favor of Epis- 
 copacy to be found in the writings of the Fathers for the 
 first three centuries ;" and that, if there were, " the Fathers 
 are not to be trusted," and their records are no better than 
 '' Old wives' fables;" constituted the stripling's armor, as 
 he came forth to meet " this uncircumcised Philistine." 
 The Episcopal reader will readily understand the process, 
 by which my mind was enabled afterward to perceive the 
 irrelevancy or the inconclusiveness of these and the like as- 
 sumptions •, and the reader to whom it may appear strange 
 that they should ever have lost with me their force, may 
 have his curiosity gratified, by accompanying me a little 
 farther in the stcy. 
 
 But those who are curious to remark such things, will 
 see that I was all this while a Presbyterian by tradition, 
 believing with a loyalist's- 1 might almost write it. Loya- 
 list's implicitness in the historical infallibility of my 
 manuals and doctors. As yet I had neither the motive nor 
 the time to call in question these traditions, on a subject, 
 as it seemed then to be, of infinitely secondary moment- 
 
44 
 
 LOOKING FOB THE CHURCH. 
 
 the veriest " tithing of mint ?.nd anise and cummin ;" and 
 the sea of Presbyterian faces, lecturers, doctors, books, and 
 temples, spreading to the horizon which my eye com- 
 manded, was hartiiy likely to disturb my confidence. 
 
 While in England, Episcopacy appeared to retain its 
 footing by the argument of the sword and of a grinding 
 aristocracy, in America it appeared to us to be breathing 
 out a sickly existence, with scarcely a place of promise 
 for its sepulchre, or any to " sing or say » its own burial 
 service over it, when it should die. In some way or other, 
 I got over the ground at Princeton, without knowing the 
 causes that had held back the Episcopal Church from its 
 destiny upon this continent, or the sorrowful fact, that from 
 Massachusetts Bay to the Gulf of Florida, it was by friend 
 and foe bound hand and foot, and systematically and pre- 
 servingly degraded to that miserable state, from which the 
 wonder is, that it ever revived, or outlived the crisis of na- 
 tional independence. Although I knew that the solemn 
 legislation of Connecticut made it death for a priest to be 
 seen, after the first warning, within the settlements, yet I 
 was not aware of the untiring and successful resistance, in 
 the other colonies, to the introduction of the Episcopate 
 into this land, whenever the attempt was made, and even 
 when a Queen's bounty at one time, and private munifi- 
 cence at others, had furnished ample securities for its sup- 
 port. Soon after the Restoration, Dr Murray was actually 
 appointed the Bishop for Virginia, but the measure was 
 defeated by the joint agency of Erastian indifference and 
 Puritanical remonstrance. Again, forty years after, in 
 1704, the clergy in this country unanimously urged the like 
 step on the attention of the English government, and, to 
 avoid the odium of taxation, offered a tenth of their own 
 substance to meet the expense. Again, about eight years 
 
 
PRINCETON. 
 
 45 
 
 after, in the reign of Queen Anne, and ^^thout oppress on 
 to any of her subjects, a fur.d was actually provided by the 
 sal. of wild lands in the West Indies, for the ma.ntenance 
 of th. Episcopate at four different points in the Amencan 
 colonies, where it would have been most cordially received ; 
 but the death of the Queen and a change ot government, 
 g e test opportunhy for the opponents of the Church to 
 keep her under foot. Again, m 1713, the venerable So- 
 ciety for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts- 
 a Society still prosecuting its ancient wotk with the wis- 
 dom and dignity of age, and the ardor and energy o youth 
 -purchased at Burlington (the very spot now redeemed 
 by the exertions of a n.ble Prelate to the church) a house 
 and glebe for a Bishop's residence. Within the wenty 
 years following, not only the living but the dying " wep 
 vhen they remembered Zion" in America, and frequen 
 donations and legacies from hands in England hat would 
 have reached that Zion if they could, and hearts that it 
 pitied to see her in the dust," from persons known and un- 
 known, from male and female, from the humble layman to 
 the highest dignitary of the church, contmued to swell he 
 fund, and invite the extension ol the Episcopate to the 
 American colonies. Bat Government was deaf And t 
 was jealous. And it had troubles at home. And the age 
 was an .ge of indilference, such as experience has now 
 taught us to look for, after a long prevalence of noise and 
 cant, attended, as they usually are, and as they were with 
 the English Puritans, by animosity and violence. In short, 
 the Puritans and the Presbyterians would not allow it ; and 
 they then held the balance of power. 
 
 A hundred and thirty years it was, after Dr. Murray was 
 nominated Bishop for Virginia, that Samuel Seabury-a 
 name impossible to speak, without associating it with the 
 
 i ! 
 
 
46 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 purest and brightest that have been '♦ written in heaven " 
 —was sent forth the first apostle to America. For nearly 
 two centuries had the Cliurch in this land travail and sor- 
 row, before her lirst Bishop was born. In vain did she 
 pray to be delivered. The marvel is, that she did not, as 
 it was intended, perish in the crisis. And now the chil- 
 dren of those very Puritans have the courage, or it may be 
 in their case, as it was in mine, the ignorance, to challenge 
 this recurrence to the past, by turning the late, or if you 
 please the present condition of our Church to our reproach. 
 " Among the least," says Mr. Barnes, " of the tribes of 
 Israel." Be it so. " As for this sect, we know that every- 
 where it is spoken against." Not in the British Parlia- 
 ment alone, are Romanist and Protestant combined against 
 her, and '' Herod and Pilate made friends together. "— 
 <' Among the least of the tribes of Israel !" So was Beth- 
 leheni'Ephratah, " little among the thousands of Judah," 
 yet the wise men, and even the shepherds of tlorks, got 
 to hear how the Lord had made it beautiful with his pre- 
 sence, and found their way to, and knelt in humble adora- 
 tion in its dust. " Among the least of the tribes of Israel," 
 says a Presbyterian ; " Christianity was born in a manger," 
 said a parishioner of mine, the son of a Presbyterian, '' and 
 ought to be kept there." Go a little further, I replied, and 
 say, " she was once nailed to the cro.^s, and ought to be 
 kept tfiere.''' Nearly two centuries was the Church down- 
 trodden in this land ; none to administer her discipline ; her 
 sacramental character obscured, and one-third of her pious 
 sons, who were forced away to England for ordination, de- 
 terred from returning, or dying from the hardships of the 
 voyage. Nor was the Church emanoii~a1ed, or a Bishop 
 allowed at her altars, until the drums of the revolution 
 roused in her unwilling heart, at last, a sense of this injus- 
 
 5) 
 
PRINCETON. 
 
 47 
 
 tice, and some of her very priests went girded to the field, 
 and, with her own Washington at the head of the conti- 
 nental army, and her own While as chaplain to the conti- 
 nental Congress, she became forever free. 
 
 But, to return from this apology for the depressed con- 
 dition of our Church, as the present generation has seen it 
 in the United States : in England, as 1 have said, quite ig- 
 norant of the almost universal hold that the Church has 
 there on the aiFections of the people, we were led to think 
 that it retained its footing rather by the argument of the 
 sword, and of an overawing aristocracy. Nor did it then 
 occur to me, that it might be perhaps the conservative 
 character oi her religion, that had put into her hand that 
 '' crlittering spear," and had given such power to her aris- 
 tocracy, imposing upon Europe the hatred policy-Pacem 
 cum Anglo, bellum cum reiiquis. Of the Greek and 
 Oriental Churches I had scarcely heard. Rome was not 
 to be taken into the account, and the whole world of or- 
 thodoxy, piety and common sense, seemed, in my youthful 
 and honest eyes, to be Pioteslaiit and Presbyterian. The 
 little island of Great Britain was accidentally Episcopal and 
 litur<^ical-the universe beside, both earth and heaven was 
 anti-liturgical and Presbyterian. - Why are you forever 
 preaching against Bishops 2" said a dissatisfied hearer to a 
 Presbyterian divine. - Because," was the prompt reply, 
 - I always find it in the text." '* Well, I will give you a 
 text where you will not iiiid it; Genesis, first chapter, 
 first verse." Accordingly the next Sunday the preacher 
 began-" The Book of Genesis, the first chapter, at the 
 first verse-' In the beginning God created the heaven and 
 the earth,'— but not one word, my brethren, of his creating 
 
 Bishops." 
 To speak plainly and honestly, Episcopacy was, m our 
 
48 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 estimation, a religion for masters and their slaves; but 
 Presbytery for the free; Episcopacy for such as would be 
 startled at the question, '' Canst thou speak Greek V and 
 are therefore without the means of knowing that " Bishop 
 and Presbyter are titles of the same import in the New 
 Testament ;" and Presbytery for those who can establish 
 the synonymes m Greek, and transhite J i^romc, Chrysostom 
 Augustine, and even Clemens and Ignatius, by the hair of 
 the^ead, over to the side of Presbyterianism : Episcopacy 
 for men who must have books to tell them what to pray 
 for ; Presbytery for such as can get this iniormation Irom 
 their hearts: Episcopacy for " sentimental formalists and 
 priestly drones," as a late writer in Connecticut has called 
 them, who cannot be spuired by the warmth of an emotion 
 or by the abundance of the theme, to swell their sermons 
 beyond twenty mi .utes ; and Presbyterianism for men, 
 whose feelings can warm with their themes, and whose 
 discourses bid defiance to hour: Episcopacy for such as 
 loiter in the cool shade, and beneath the ripe clusters of the 
 vineyards; but Presbytery for laborers, who "bear the 
 heat and burden of the day ;" Episcopacy for those who 
 would cling to the stereotypes of the past ; Presbytery for 
 those who can adapt, and modify, and change, as often as 
 the times and the tide require : Episcopacy for intolerably 
 plain and prosy preachers, dwelling continually on the 
 tame maxims of morals and religion ; Presbytery lor minis- 
 ters who can rise, and carry their flocks up with them, 
 a1)ove such trifling matters as the obligations of daily life, 
 and can entertain their audience by showing that they have 
 at their fingers' end the intellectual universe. We regarded 
 Episcopalians, at the time I speak of, and that time with 
 many is not by any means past, as far behind us in piety 
 and scholarship, owing in some measure, as I suppose, to 
 

 PRINCETONi 
 
 49 
 
 the fact that individualism is happily lost in the Church, 
 and that the Episcopal clergy are, for the most part, con- 
 tent with the fixed " yea, yea, and nay, nay » of the primi- 
 tive creed, and are satisfied if they can imbue their preach- 
 ing, like their prayers, with the simple learning and the 
 simple piety of other days, gathering as they do from the 
 short and melancholy history of Presbyterianism, that 
 " what soever is more than these cometh of evil." Said 
 an eminent divine, who was asked why he had exchanged 
 the declamatory manner of his earlier ministry, for a style 
 more dispassionate and mild, " When I was young, I 
 thought it was the thunder that killed, but when I grew 
 wiser, I discovered that it was the lightning ; so I deter- 
 mined that in future I would thunder less and lighten more.'* 
 With these views, which might have been rectified by 
 better acquaintance with the Episcopal Church, and par- 
 ticularly with her clergy, who for the most part deny 
 themselves the luxury of exhibiting their learning or their 
 piety, as incompatible in general with the intentions of 
 their office, and their own proper fitness for its duties, I 
 entered the Presbyterian ministry. I had been personally 
 acquainted, in my whole life, with but two or three of the 
 Episcopal clergy ; and of these, the only one that I ever 
 intimately knew, I had seen, in the day of " revivals '» 
 spying out, and to all appearance coveting the liberty of 
 his dissenting brethren, and mingling, to great disadvan- 
 tage, with all sorts ot sects, who amused themselves much 
 at his awkward balancings among them, and assigning as 
 his best reason for not admitting these brethren into his 
 pulpit, that '' one of the canons of his church forbade it." 
 By the way, it was an apology that elicited from an illite- 
 rate old lady, that had been for many years the housekeeper 
 in my father'^ family, a remark having a range and force 
 D 
 
it 
 
 i 
 
 ^Q LOOKING FOR THE CHrRCH. 
 
 Of meaning, of which she in her dotage and r^ys^^^^r. 
 fourteen years of age, but little dreamed, that if that were 
 trcTse she thought the, had better fire thai canon off, 
 tht 'l^^^^^^ to myself-and so I acknowledge that 
 
 U str kes me stUl-th.t .f Episcopacy be ol he small m- 
 it strikes nie „. .K m if " thev had better fire that 
 
 portance that some attach to it, mey iiau 
 
 canon oft." , .. ■ ♦ „r 
 
 Leaving Princeton will, such impres..on9, .t .3 not sur- 
 pris ng ttat, with no len.p.ation to coll tl.em u, quesfon 
 ^itT" Bi.lop au,l I'rcsbyter lor convertible terms m the 
 ; w T^n,c„.;" with "the testimony o. the famous 
 
 •jerle," called by >'-P" '"■^''-^r.^ rL7o t 
 „«„</.-, and by Erasmus long afterwan^ * -mce °U 
 vines " ringing forever ni my ear ; with a laint etno i 
 Wustine, "Ure most brilliant and orthodox hnk of the 
 Augustme, „ J ^^,il^gj „„jg 
 
 those throes gave birth, to review opinions ^^^^^^^^ 
 their favour, as I had been taught, and as I .ti 1 believed, 
 tbeir tav our, a* _ •,,.,,^,. j.„d '< the unanimous con- 
 
 the entire evidence of scripture, ana i ^^ 
 
 sent of the first three centuries of the Church. 
 
 
 \ 
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ABUSES AND DISUSE OF BAPTISM. 
 
 I am aware th:it it is quite easy to discover incon- 
 veniences and evils in the workin;; ol particular theories or 
 systems, iiowover wisely . ^-nceived, so long as those sys- 
 tems must depend lor ih- ir ( .eservation or clflciency upon 
 tlie saijacity and purity of human counsels. But where 
 the evils are found to be co-extensive with the system ; and 
 where the system is unshackled and free to work out its 
 leijitimate results, and yet makes no elFort to throw these 
 evils off; but they circulate invariably with its life, and 
 pursue it as closely as the shadow does its substance, and 
 eat as a canker to its very core ; it is perfectly fair to sus- 
 pect some radical defect, and to look into the system itself 
 for an explanation of the fact. 
 
 One of the worst and earliest inconveniences, that I found 
 adhering to the system from which [ have been emanci- 
 paied, was its unwarrantable restriction of the sacrament 
 of baptism. I had received, so far as those around me 
 could impart it, a power to baptize, and to " sutfcr little 
 children to come'' — and expressly, it had been, as 1 sup- 
 posed, enjoined me by the master, to " forbid them not." 
 But I presently discovered that my church forbade them. 
 So well is this prohibition understood among Presbyterians 
 that a minister is seldom, and many a minister among 
 them never, called on to baptize a child, unless at least 
 one ol its parents be a communicant in the church. If it 
 be said, that their written discipline does not necessarily 
 impose this restriction, and that formerly a better custorn 
 
^2 LOOKING FOR THE CHTJECH. 
 
 .btained, I have only to reply, that .hi. is *en »ot W 
 th instances, to be often adverted to hereafter, m which 
 t :Z. a'nd fixed traditions of the ^yst- have be™ 
 supplanted hy the unwritten or the variable and the 
 
 popular. 
 
 But before proceeding further, let us know what are the 
 facts which we intend to employ as premises m this discus- 
 sion. And let us first adduce those of a more genera! na- 
 tore and from authentic documents, that, when we come 
 to state those of our own private experience, they may not 
 be suspected of exaggeraiion or distortion. 
 
 In the month of May, 1848, ihere were in connection 
 with the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church 
 r92,022 communicants ; and the number of infants baptized 
 witliin the ecclesiastical year, was 9,837 ; °'. »--'-' » 
 between nineteen a, twenty communicants. It would 
 
 therefore require niu een »"^ ^ '■^''y^^"''! "'="'^''^4 
 number of baptized children, if every one of them should 
 live, equal to the present number of communicants. 
 
 Now take the Presbyteries of th. sreat cities from Ca- 
 nada to Florida, and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. 
 
 Proportir'n of 
 Presbyteries. Commumcants. Infants baptized, ^^^^f^ 
 
 . ,-0 195 1 to 33 
 
 Albany, 4,1.3 i-o ^ ^^ ^^ 
 
 New York.......... 4..i9 ^-^ ^ ^^ 27 
 
 New Brunswick.... 4,.5.U H)5 ... ^ ^^^ ^^ 
 
 BaUitnore, 2,39.) i^J ^ ^ ^^ ^7 
 
 Cincinnati, ^t>'^ . l to 20 
 
 St. Louis, I'lJ^ 1 to 24 
 
 Charleston, 843 ^ 
 
 19,50.5 779 1 to 25 
 
 Now, in contrast with this, as far as I ^^ ^^^^^J^ 
 1 p„„...o or,d-Tn,.rnals.the proportion of mlants bap- 
 
 iUlIiUtU ivcpuiio «.iiM V , i 
 
 ^ 
 
ABUSES AND DISUSE OF BAPTISM. 
 
 53 
 
 tized to the number of communicants, in the Episcopal 
 church, is a little more than one to five.* Baring a 
 ministry of six years in the Church, I have with my own 
 hand baptized as many children as the whole Presbytery 
 of New York with its thirty-five ministers, according to 
 the above table, would do in three. 
 
 But, to go still more into detail. The mother of Presby- 
 terian churches in New York numbers 373 communicants ; 
 the Rev. Dr. Phillips reports fifteen infants baptized the 
 past year. The Brick church has 668 communicants ; Dr. 
 Spring reports twenty-six infants baptized. The Rev. Dr. 
 Potts, who has written against Episcopacy as " illiberal 
 and anti-republican," has 282 communicants, and reports 
 twelve infants h^.^\:vi.edi. The Rev. Dr. Smith, of Charles- 
 'ton, who was my classmate at Princeton, and has written 
 a book in defence of Presbytery, has 408 communicants, 
 and reports six infants baptized. The Rev. Dr. Boardman, 
 of Philadelphia, also my cotemporary at Princeton, reports 
 482 communicants, and one infant baptized. He too, I be- 
 lieve, has written a book against the Episcopal church.— 
 Thus, while the books multiply, the flocks diminish. 
 
 Early in my ministry, a circumstance occurred, that 
 forced this subject very affectingly upon my notice. I had 
 in those days, a sister, in whose heart had long dwelt a 
 measure of the grace of God, that is, if some of the most 
 pleasing fruits of piety may make it lawful so to pro- 
 nounce ; although the spark often trembled for existence, 
 unreplenished as it was from the fires of the altar. She 
 was one of those many persons, who, under the influences 
 of insufficient teaching, look unfortunately on the sacra- 
 
 * In some few Calvinistic conpregatlons. the proportion sinks to 
 one half ihis estimate. Thus, in St. George's, New York, according 
 to the last Report, the numher of communicants was 463, and of infants 
 baptized, 45 ; or one to ten. But the same year, the number of com- 
 municants iu the Diocese wan 13,486, and of infants baptized 2,658, or 
 one to five. 
 
.^ LOOKING FOB THE CHDRCH. 
 
 „c«t Of the altar, not with too much awe-that were im- 
 nossble-hut with that iMoS dread, which man^ ch.ef 
 Ter^y employs to keep back the hungering and fa.ntmg 
 heart fromthestrengthenmg nouAhioen. of" the c uldren s 
 W." And my .i.ter's soul was of that sensmve and 
 senile texture, that it stood amazed, and at times half w Id, 
 Tthe exactions of a stern and frigid CaU m,sm ; and he 
 bruised reed had been ofen well nigh broken, and the 
 smoking flax well nigh been quenched. 
 
 Havin" myself embraced with much satisfaction that 
 view of the sacraments, which is yet to be found m the 
 C ntesion'of Faith, where it stands - =- «' ^^ ;«;!1 
 =„ nnbelievin.' age, I fell into conversation with my sister 
 esp™ttthe°educLtion of the lovely children which the 
 L rd ad°give„ her, and pressed her with the fact, that the 
 only " good beginning " she could make with them, must 
 da e from the g'ace of baptism. She told me, that .had 
 beln the most painful desire of her heart, to have them 
 Wized; but knowing as she was not a communicant 
 E f, that the customs other church did not allow it, she 
 Snever dared to ask it. She then inquired of me, .1 
 wouW baptize them for her. "Can any man torbid 
 Tater," said I to myself, " that these should not be bap- 
 Ld Is well as we," we, who are far -o™ J^kd than 
 thev, with all manner of unbelief and sm. "i^hat am I, 
 WUhould usurp the throne of judgment, and " visit the 
 If the fathers upon the children i" What right have 
 I even were the parents visibly withering in the blight ot 
 a'secret and eternal decree, to include in it those little ones, 
 that 1 ke"he " six score thousand" in Nineveh, that turned 
 G ' u ment into mercy, "cannot discern their right 
 hi from their leftr The practice of my church o. 
 bids them i but my heart, and One greater than my hm 
 ^ , . , ., ♦ 53 T rniild not hesitatc. 1 leu 11 
 
 Bays, " A'OIDiU UiCHl "VI. A ' 
 
ABUSES AND DISUSE OF BAPTISM. 
 
 66 
 
 proper however to advise her, first to make trial of her own 
 pastor, who was weary himself, as I knew, of some of the 
 asperities of his theology; and who accordingly gave the 
 sweet inUnts, privately, for fear ofestablishing an injurious 
 precedent, the sacrament, which his church in the like 
 circumstances, universally withholds. It must be added 
 however, that this excellent man thought it necessary 
 afterward to apologize for this act of mercy, on the ground 
 that,inthe right and mightofhisown '' private judgment," 
 he had himself for a long time regarded their mother as a 
 believing Christian. Only in two other instances, during 
 a ministry of seven years, can I recollect having been re- 
 quested to baptize the children of a non-communicant. It 
 is a pleasing reminiscence now, that, in all these instances, 
 the practice of a purer age invited me to rise above the 
 tramels of a new-invented theory, and to refuse to do it 
 homage where it did violence to every teelingof the heart. 
 And sad and chill would be my visits now to the silent 
 field, where the three flowers, snatched from a sister's 
 bosom, lie e.vch in its bed, waiting to rise and bloom side 
 by side again, when the Sun of righteousness shall return 
 and shine upon the sod, were I to recollect, that, before 
 they were planted in that dust, I had raised a finger to pre- 
 vent their being watered, by avy human hand, with the 
 dews of baptism. But little did I suspect that that mother 
 would have so soon been called to bathe with her tears the 
 brows that had been so lately bathed at the fountain of 
 grace. Not many have drunk, at a single draught, so 
 deeply of the Master's cup as she. 
 
 '• The shaft flew thrice, and thrice her peace was slain, ^ 
 And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had hlled her horn. 
 
 •• For God, to draw her spirit heavenward, 
 Severed the golden chains that bound her here, 
 And placed her idols nearer to himself. 
 To lure her onward to the better land. 
 
56 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 iJ 
 
 For, as they have been planted in the likeness of His 
 
 death, they shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. 
 
 And it is sweet to think, 
 
 " Babes, thither caught from womb and breast, 
 Have right to sing above the rest, 
 For they have gained the happy shore 
 They never saw nor sought before. 
 
 " We are the babes no more 
 That gave their feeble wailing to thine ear, 
 Free from the cumbering clay, w-. mount, we soar. 
 Onward and upward through a boundless sphere. 
 
 " We dwell no more wi^h pain— 
 We shed no tears— we feel no panting breath- 
 Sweet mother, do not grieve for us again, 
 We are so blest, '.ve bless the hand of death. 
 
 " Turn with unwavering trust 
 From the green earth-bed where the body lies, 
 Thou didst but lay our covering in the dust. 
 Thy children live, will live beyond the skies. 
 
 " There we shall meet again, 
 O yes! believe it, meet to part no more! 
 We'll welcome thee with heaven's angelic train, 
 And lead thee to the Saviour we adore." 
 
 But again to the cold regions of speculation, and to my 
 chilling theme. To me the reasoning was direct and just, 
 that the child that is unfit to be baptized, is unfit to die ; 
 the child that may not be admitted into the church below, 
 for fear of tainting it, may not be admitted into the pure 
 bosom of the church above. There is no evading the start- 
 ling inference, and humanity shudders and /alls back from 
 the terrible conclusion ! Tell me not, when my child is 
 dead, that it has gone safe ; why then did you withhold 
 the token of its safety, that antitupon of St. Peter, of which 
 he declares that the ark upon the water, and the water 
 bearing up the ark, and both conspiring to save tb^. eight 
 members qf the church of God, were together the type l 
 "The like figure whereunto," he declares, " even Baptism, 
 doth also now save us." Tell us not, when our children 
 ftre dead, that although tbe Bible is not a, revelat^iou to in- 
 
ABUSES AND DISUSE OF BAPTISM. 
 
 57 
 
 fants, yet the intimations that it drops give us reason ta 
 believe that they have gone safe ! for these insinuations 
 pierce the heart with a sting more acute than death, and 
 your withholding Baptism leaves with us the awful feeling 
 — mistify and disguise it as you may -that you are not 
 quite certain that our dear departed ones were born again. 
 The Presbyterian church, not content with making so 
 prominent the disheartening view of election, wTiich it has 
 chosen to incoporate into her faith, has undertaken to inti- 
 mate, at least in a general way, which of our babes are not 
 of" that happy number," by allowing Baptism-the " sign 
 and seal," as they believe of that election— to one infant 
 and by refusing it to another. Yet the laitv, for the most 
 part, submit tamely to the usurpation-— a usurpation un- 
 matched, so far as I know, both in its essence and its ex- 
 tent, by any tyranny of priest-ridden Rome. Yet I have 
 known instances, in which the parent, urged on by the c' y 
 of nature, and the voice of God within him, \as taken his 
 child " by night " to the minister of a Church, that claims 
 to be " the Lamb's wife " and the " mother of us all "—a 
 Church that, since the beginning of the creation, has never 
 withheld her Baptism from the lost children of Adam. 
 Yes, we proclaim it with unmingled satisfaction, that this 
 same Church so denounced as exclusive, bigoted,. intolerant 
 —pours from her open hand the waters of pardon and of 
 promise on the universal family. How is it that Presby- 
 terianism— with a confession that speaks of " elect men" 
 and of '' elect angels " and of "ELECT INFANTS'^ 
 (see Conf. chapters iii and x.)--and notoriously and every 
 hour withholding baptism from new-born babes, for no 
 other reason than the lurking apprehension that these babes 
 may not be " of the happy number "—has claimed so long 
 to be considered "liberal" and democratic ; while the 
 
6S 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 church that clasps your infant to her heart as soon as it is 
 born, and beckons the whole family of man within her pale, 
 has been branded as illiberal, intolerant, and bigoted ? 
 
 The day for this ad captandum -declaration is passing 
 away, and the eyes of the people are opening to the facts. 
 '' Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid 
 them not," say the Lamb and the Lamb's bride:—" Suffer 
 the children of communicants whom we have privately ex- 
 amined, and pronounced to have in ourjudgment the marks 
 of distinguishing grace to come," says the Presbyterian re- 
 ligion. " He died for all," '> a ransom for all," " that He 
 by the grace of God should taste death for every man," 
 declares the Holy Ghost, and redeclares it by the church 
 that he inspires :-" Neither are any other redeemed by 
 Christ, but the elect only," contends the Presbyterian con- 
 fession, (chap. iii. sec. 7.) "The grace of God, that 
 bringeth salvation, hath appeared unto all men,^' proclaim 
 the Bible and the echoing Church :-" All those whom God 
 hath predestinated unto life, and those only, he is pleased 
 in his appointed and ac ^epted time, effectually to call, by 
 his word and spirit," reasserts the Presbyterian confession. 
 " Who will have all men to be saved," is the teaching of 
 the Gospel and tne Church :-" By the decree of God, for 
 the manifestation of hie glory, some men and angels are 
 predestinated unto everlasting life, and others are foreor- 
 dained to everlasting death," and, "These men and angels, 
 thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and 
 unchangeably designed, and tiieir number is so certain and 
 definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished," 
 is the sad wail of the Presbyterian confession, (chap, iii, sec. 
 3-4.) 
 
 We appeal to the understandings of men. Which of the 
 two is illiberal and bigoted 1 Let the Presbyterian, whose 
 
ABUSES AND DISUSE OF BAPTISM. 
 
 59 
 
 child, for which Christ died, and which Christ pronounced 
 more fit for the kingdom of God than we, and to be the oh- 
 ject of an angel's watch and guard, has yet been excluded 
 from the church on earth and from the only Sacrament 
 which an infant can receive, answer this question. A day 
 will come, when the Presbyterian ministry will be com- 
 pelled to a better practice, or their people into a better 
 Church. That day may be delayed by prudently keeping 
 the subject in the back ground, and the people in ignorance 
 of the efficacy and the grace of Baptism. Their ministers 
 dare not bring it foiwavd, and hold it up, as it is exhibited 
 in their own Confession of Fuith. Listen to its solemn and 
 delightful testimony ! Baptism is a sacrament of the New 
 Tes'tament, not only, for the solemn admission of the party 
 baptized into the visible church, but also to be unto him a 
 sign and seal of the covenant of iirace, of his ingrafting 
 into Christ, of REGENERATION, of remission of sins'' 
 — " The efficacy of Baptism is not tied, to that moment of 
 time wherein it is administered ; yet notwithstanding, by 
 the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not 
 only offered, but reaW/ exhibited and conferred by the Holy 
 Ghost, to such, whether of age or INFANTS, as that grace 
 belon<-eth unto, according to the counsel of God's own wdl, 
 in his' appointed time." (Conf chap, xxviii, sees. 1 and 
 6 ) " Let but the commons hear this testament !" With 
 the recovery of the lost doctrine of "efficacy ," and '' grace'* 
 and '' regeneration," and '' ingrafting into Christ" and " re- 
 mission of sins ""no<o«/y offered, but reaUy exhibited and 
 eonferredby the Ho'y Ghost,'' in Baptism, their ministers 
 would be compelled to make its living waters agam free 
 for all, or parents, driven by the instincts of their natures, 
 would fly, with their children in their arms, like doves into 
 the church windows. Ministers of the Presbyterian churchl 
 
60 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 I 
 
 I call upon you by the deep solemnity of an awful sacra- 
 ment—and many a pained heart among your people joins 
 me in the call— to justify this language that you hold re- 
 specting " elect infants/' or to abandon the practice that 
 results from it in drawing a dividing line among infants, 
 and excluding the majority from the grace of Baptism.— 
 The rains of heaven fall alike on all. The sun in heaven 
 shines equally on all. The wind Irom heaven is wafted 
 alike to all. The rivers and the fountains spring and flow 
 for all. Free for all, is the plain handwriting upon every 
 work of God. What then is this distinction you have 
 drawn between my neighbour's children and my own"? 
 Speak 1 Tell us plainly, are some of them elect, and others 
 not? or aie some of them born but once and others born 
 again 1 I venture to term it an oppression that the Church 
 in no age and in no instance ever dared to impose— nay, a 
 cruelty that Rome, in the days of her worst tyranny, would 
 have shuddered to inflict ; this punishing the parent in the 
 child, repelling a redeemed infant, because its parents have 
 sinned, from the only Sacrament of which it is capable, 
 the heaven-ordained point at which grace is sent forth to 
 meet it. It '* asks bread," and, because its parents have 
 not eaten the bread that you break, with a heart as cold 
 and hard as your gift, you " give it a stone :" " it asks an 
 egg," and, to sting the erring parent, you put into its little 
 liand a " scorpion:" it ''asks a fish," and you " give it a 
 serpent," and leave it to become the serpent's prey. 
 
 It is a discipline that is fast driving off reflecting Presby- 
 terians among the Baptists, or back by God's blessing to 
 the Episcopal Church. So few already are the infants 
 baptized in the Presbyterian denomination in this country, 
 that it differs but little from a Baptist community, and may 
 in strict propriety of phrase be called a semi-Baptist church. 
 
 
ABUSES AND DIStJSE OF BAPTISM. 
 
 61 
 
 The difference between them is, that the ""^ «-'"'';; 
 all infants indiscriminately from Baptism i the other, 
 venturingto discriminate, excludes more than three-foorths. 
 Asmighl have been expected, the Baptists in their posi- 
 tion are altogether the stronger of the two. Every Pres- 
 byterian min.stor well knows that even his communicants 
 often acquiesce in infant Baptism on vague and >"'" hjMent 
 grounds:or are constantly harassed by most painful and 
 perplexing doubts. Let me be rather the cons.s cnt Bap- 
 r, in a good conscience denying Baptism to all infens 
 alike, than the sem,-Baptist, daring to tread where Gabriel 
 wld quake to follow, and to draw among the infants of a 
 scan Ion- the tremendous separation between sheep and 
 Tl Is a layman I might have tamely submitte to the 
 fron ule, and without resistance have heard the c mking 
 Zy opening the kingdom to one infant and locking t 
 a ainstanotLr; but, as a theologian, I could not endure 
 the thought, or long believe, that this was the represeirta- 
 tive or the lawful almoner of God'slove npon earth. I be- 
 came early and clearly satisfied, that, on this n,ost inter- 
 esting point at least. Episcopacy was m the right, gather- 
 ing as the rightful mother, the nniverse of n.lants to her 
 arms and that I'resbytery was in the wrong, to a e^ 
 Lt the world can hardly ever forgive or any longer 
 
 endure. 
 That sectarianism has ever borne a singular resemblance 
 
 ro Komanism, has been remarked ever smce "' >>'" 
 is not surprising, if we reflect that they are of a common 
 pa'ntage hornM the same time, one at ^-'™"^-> ^^ 
 one at Trent, and that the twins alike decline to hine their 
 e'toacyt s,ed,by bringing into court the ancient mo- 
 Slthe catholic or nniversal faith. My musino. on the 
 Ise and disuse of Baptism brought the coincidence of 
 
 :i fl 
 
62 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 the two systems strikingly to mind. If the Romanist has 
 erred and played the tyrant, in substracting tVom ** the peo- 
 ple "the more significant part of the Christian sacrifice; 
 the part of which the Lord emphatically, as if to forestal 
 the usurpation, said, " Drink ye a// of it ;" the Presbyteiian 
 has erred and played the tyrant, in substracting the whole 
 of another most precious sacrament from millions of little 
 ones, all pure in heart, of whieh the Saviour of the work!, 
 with the like emphasis, as if to anticipate this usurpation 
 also, said, and said in a moment when he " was much dis- 
 pleased," " Sutler the little children to come unto me and 
 forbid them not ; for of such is the kingdom of heaven." 
 If then I am bid to [iy from Romanism, for withholding 
 the more significant portion of one sacrament, from those 
 who are entitled to receive it; with all the- holy instincts 
 of parental love, let me Hy from Presbyterianism, for with- 
 holding another sacrament— the only one of which my 
 child is capable — from infants, who, by a Redeemer's le- 
 gacy, are entitled to its benefits, and who, after the Testa- 
 tor's resurrection, were still upon his hc^art, when he said 
 to a shepherd of his flock, '' Feed my lambs," //'ye love 
 me, " feed my lambs." 
 
 I know the Pelagianism that thrives wherever Presbytery 
 
 has prepared the soil, and the secret thought with many, 
 
 and the practical feeling with more, that infants do not need 
 
 the grace of Baptism, nor indeed any grace whatever. 1 
 
 was once invited, in this land of ours, into a pious family in 
 
 New York, for the purpose of baptizing a dying infant, 
 
 whose Baptism had been already vr ly carelessly delayed. 
 
 Even at that time I had so far a j^iimmering perception of 
 
 the truth, as to understand that Baptism was at least a 
 
 joyful expression of the parents' faitii in the new salvation ; 
 
 that it was the visible bond of the Christian brotherhood on 
 
ABUSES AND DISUSE OF BAPTISM. 
 
 63 
 
 earth • that it conveyed the grace which to one " conceived 
 in sinandshapenin iniquity" is indispensable ; and that 
 infant Baptism, to take the lowest view of it, was a com- 
 pliance with the will of Christ, and was the dictate of 
 natural humanity and of parental instinct. Such were my 
 musings as I went on my unaccustomed errand to baptize 
 a dying child. Aware that Pelagiauisni had deeply tainted 
 the minds of both the parents, I rathor wondered that this 
 should have been the only instance of the kind in which I 
 had ever been invited to officiate. But on my arrival at the 
 house, where the healing waters wore already sparkling 
 in the bowl, and the 'sNvoet infant about to return to the 
 arms that encircled infants when He was on earth, the 
 mother of the child, seeming to understand that the Baptism 
 of an infant must after all mean something, interposed a 
 murmur, that -it needed no Baptism -and was as safe 
 without it-why should it be disturbed ?" Her infant died 
 ^died unbaptized-went into eternity without faith's mark 
 upon its Irow-and was saved, as the child of the infidel 
 or Hottentot is saved, with nought to impart to it a dif- 
 ference of glorv in the resurrection, nought by which angels 
 mi-ht know that it had come from a christian land, in fact 
 without the only sacrainont by whicli the gospel can be 
 preached, or its distinctive grace conveyed to an infant 
 mind I have not to thii hour received the shock that this 
 occurrence gave me ; nor could I now tell whether the 
 stronger emotion was disgust or grief. Even then I sym- 
 pathized not only with Baxter, and Owen, and Edwards, 
 and Miller in their view of the privileges to which Baptisrn 
 exalted the recipient, not only with Presidents Finley and 
 Smith, who, in the belief that original sin is washed away 
 in this sacrament and the recipient placed on a new footing 
 and under happier auspices, were ia the habit of baptizing 
 
64 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 as many infants as they could reach ; hut my sympathies 
 were entirely with the Confession of Faith, which, in com- 
 mon with all others of the period of the Reformation, 
 exalts this sacrament to be the vehicle of quickening and 
 regenerating grace. Such views, although I have never 
 seen a Presbyterian layman that either embraced or under- 
 stood them, have not, it is fair to say, entirely disappeared 
 among the Presbyterian clergy. The present Professor of 
 Theology at Princeton — perhaps as profound a divine as 
 Calvinism in either hemisphere can boast of, and whose 
 qualities of heart are noi inferior to those of his mind, on 
 the subject of Baptism, for a moment partially eluded the 
 trammels of his system, as that system has been recently 
 developed, and, consistently enough with the written con- 
 fession of his church, has dropped the following language: 
 <' And when about to dedicate their children to God, in 
 Holy Baptism, how earnestly should they [the parents] 
 pray, that they mi^-ht be baptized with the Holy Ghost- 
 that while their bodies are washed in the emblematical 
 laver of regeneration, their souls may experience the re- 
 newing of the Holy Ghost, and the sprinkling of the blood 
 of Jesus. If the sentiments, expressed above be correct, 
 then may there be such a thing as baptismal regeneiation " 
 [the italics are his own ;]".... and, what time 
 in infancy is more likehj to be the period of spiritual quick- 
 ening, than the moment when that sacred rite is performed, 
 which is strikingly emblematical of this change. . . . 
 If by means, be understood something which is accom- 
 panied by the divine efficiency, changing the moral nature 
 of the infant, then in this sense, baptism may be called the 
 means of regeneration." * ^______ 
 
 « Thoughts on Kcligioiis Kxperience by the Hev. Archibald Alex- 
 ander, D. D., Professor, &c.; publish.ul by the Presbyterian Board of 
 Publication, 400 pages, see page 26 of the Third lidilion. 
 
 I 
 
ABUSES AND DISUSE OF BAPTI9IW. 
 
 65 
 
 But the view of this Sacrament, that stares them in the 
 face, on the pages of their written standards, Presbyterians 
 have tor the most part lost ; and we fear that there is no 
 conservative or counteracting principle in the system, to 
 which we can look with any hope for its recovery. We 
 rather fear, that, havinj- gotten so far away from their 
 standards, the gravitation toward them is continually less- 
 ening, and the whole body is fated to go farther still into 
 still chillier regions. Some few perhaps may fall in love 
 with the opinions put forth in a volume some years ago by 
 a living and eminent divine of New York, that infants have 
 a law written on their hearts, against which they are ca- 
 pable of wilful sin, and may be the proper subjects of ever- ^ 
 lasting perdition before they have even seen the light of 
 day ;-from which the inference will be direct, that they 
 must not therefore be baptized, until they have given ac- 
 tual signs of repentance. Others will adopt the more 
 popular Pelagianism, that infants, being not yet sinners, 
 do not yet stand in need of Baptism ; -from which, though 
 an opposite quarter to the former, the same result must 
 follow, that infants by and by will receive no Baptism. 
 A more consistent and ingenuous portion will adhere to 
 the old Calvinistic ground of their Confession, that there 
 are " elect infants," as well as " elect angels and men,"— 
 which, from the difficulty of ascertaining them, will 
 greatly abridge, as it has fearfully abridged already, the 
 extent of infant Baptism, and must cause it ultimately to 
 fall into disuse. With others, again, the Quaker or mystic 
 notion of a spiritual church, into which Presbyterians are 
 fast degenerating, will continue rapidly to gain ground, 
 and will greatly discourage, and eventually wipe out the 
 last vestiges of infant Baptism. It is demonstrable from 
 facts and figures, that if infant Baptism grow as rapidly 
 
 a 
 
66 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 w 
 
 into disuse among Presbyterians for the time to come as it 
 has done for fifty years past, one hundred hence, the Pres- 
 byterian church as a pcedobaptist society will exist no 
 more. It is already as we have called it, a semi-Baptist 
 denomination. In the Presbytery of St. Louis, the number 
 of adults baptized the last year wanted but eight, to be 
 equal to that of baptized infants : that of Cincinnati wanted 
 but twenty-two ; that of New Brunswick, including 
 Princeton, wanted but twelve ; the adults being one hun- 
 dred and fifty three, the infants one hundred and sixty five. 
 The Baptists see distinctly that infant Baptism cannot 
 be maintained, and is not worth maintaining, on the popu- 
 lar grounds adduced by Presbyterians in its defence. In 
 fact they see that separated from regeneration, it ceased to 
 be a Sacrament ; and not knowing " a more excellent way," 
 and laying themselves the stress which Holy Scripture 
 lays upon the ordinance, they will stand firm, and must 
 necessarily increase by continual accessions from the Pres- 
 byterians, who will find it more and more out of their 
 power to resist the encroachment. Meanwhile the Church, 
 planting one foot on the ground of the Baptists, as to the 
 value and efficacy of the Sacrament, and the other on the 
 ground of the Bible and ol humanity, and of historical 
 Christianity, as to its extent, will continue to flourish, with 
 •I stability and growth that shall provoke the losers in this 
 game to jealousy. Already, among the Presbyterians, in- 
 fant Baptism has fallen into ihe disuse that Anabaptists 
 could desire. Already thousands of parents, who still, 
 from a vague compliance with old customs or with the 
 wishes of a jealous pastor, " svffer " their little ones to 
 come to the sacrament, are free to admit, that they scarcely 
 see a necessity for what they do. Already, the pious 
 Presbyterian is not made a whit more unhappy for having 
 
 I 
 
 f 
 
ABUSES AND DISUSE OF BAPTISM. 
 
 67 
 
 failed to imprint the token of its safety on the pale fore- 
 head of a deceased or dying child, than the pious Pelagian ! 
 
 Indeed, Presbyterians are now but little behind the 
 Quakers in reform. The " spiritual " — the " spiritual " — 
 the '■' spiritual " — this is the sense in which every thing is 
 to be understood ; and if you speak to them of order and 
 ordination, the daily prayer, the weekly oblation, outward 
 reverence and external rites, bodily fasting and alms-deeds 
 an'' worship, external Sacraments, and a visible Churcn 
 bi: g the past to the present, and the present to the fu- 
 ture, you seem but a Papist to many, and the lament of '< a 
 mixed multitUi.o" rings sorrowfully in your ear, "Take 
 these things hence I Are ye so carnal 1 Having begun in 
 the spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh V In the 
 determination to be " spiritual," they are hardly a whit be- 
 hind Swedenborg himself in his flight from the regions of 
 flesh and sense. To them as to him, it would seem that 
 the Jewish Church was Jjut the creeping worm out of whose 
 shell the Church Christian was to take wing, and the 
 Church Christian, as it has heretofore existed, but the shell 
 in its turn, which the '* spiritual " brotherhood are to des- 
 pise and leave behind. This crying down extei nal order 
 and sacramental privilege, and this assuming superior 
 " soiritual "discernment, as if they were" out of the body," 
 or as if Christ had never come in the flesh, may lull for a 
 while the sense of injury on the subject which we are here 
 discussing. But let Baptism get to be restored among them 
 to the place assigned to it by the Westminster divines in 
 the Confession which their ministers still vow at their or- 
 dination to defend, and not more certainly will the ice relax 
 under the returning sun of summer, than the people will 
 demand, according to the charter of their rights and of un- 
 limited redemption, that the sign of that redemption be set 
 
68 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 on the foreheads of their children ; and that, when infants 
 die, no cold perhaps shall follow them to the bosom of 
 God ; no chilly reasoning shall come to bind up the parent's 
 heart ; no such language as " elect inlants " shall be toler^ 
 ated another hour ; but that every heartless distinction and 
 doubt shall be wiped out, and the brotherhood of the human 
 family be restored, as the second Adam intended it to be, 
 in the '* One Baptism." It still they should be denied the 
 heavenly boon — if still they should be driven from the 
 healing waters, then their alternative will be, as with many 
 it has already been, to fly from the chill atmosphere of an 
 exclusive and repulsive system — a system so stern that it 
 can frown upon an infant in its cradle— to tlie more genial 
 bosom of the church. 
 
 Do not tell us that Presbyterians, in some other countries, 
 still baptize children indiscriminately. 
 
 We have something to say hereaftei' of the system as it 
 exists in other countries. In other countries, it is ham- 
 pered by the State, and " cannot do the things that it 
 would." We are dealing now with Presbyterian ism ** un- 
 der its own vine and fig-tree," where it is free, and freely 
 working out its legitimate results. We raise our voice for 
 the rights of parents among a preacher-ridden people- 
 rights which a strange oppression springing up in this re- 
 public is trampling under foot. We lift our voice for the 
 rights of infants to the blessings of " the kingdom of hea- 
 ven " — infants, that like the " six score thousand" speech- 
 less but successful pleaders for the " salvation of Nineveh," 
 have not known " their right hand from their left." We 
 demand, in presence of a people who, like the Jews, sup- 
 pose that they have never been in " bondage to any man," 
 that there shall in the eye of the gospel be, at least among 
 infants, no privileged or elect class. We demand the broad 
 
ABUSES AND DISUSE OF BAPTISM. 
 
 69 
 
 5) 
 
 confession, that all our children have been redeemed by 
 the blood gushing warm from a Saviour's heart, and that 
 the water flowing with it from his side was intended to 
 bathe their brow. In the ears of earth and heaven, we in- 
 voke the ancient charter of the Church against this en- 
 croachment on the inalienable rights and liberties of man. 
 
 If I could give no other reason for my return to the 
 Church, than has been here presented, I might, with a heart 
 full of peace, here rest ray appeal with God and men — ^^that 
 God, who with a Parent's heart has said, '' Suffer little 
 children to come unto me, and forbid them not " — and that 
 humanity, which He has endowed with the same sympa- 
 thies and the same parental instinct. 
 
 But my dissatisfaction did not stop here, for the reason 
 that the frightful evil does not stop here. Presbytery, like 
 Popery, has in its way, multiplied the sacraments, by, in- 
 evitably, suggesting the idea of two Baptisms. Or, as the 
 Romanist has divided a commandment, to make up the ten ; 
 so the Presbyterian has divided the sacrament of Baptism, 
 to answer private views. I can recollect a time, when I 
 imagined that the chief practical virtue of Baptism con- 
 sisted in imposing vows and obligations on the parent, and 
 that its efficacy depended entirely on the faith of the parent 
 in making the dedication of his child. Poor child ! regene- 
 rate or not, according to the parent's mind ! Wherein does 
 this differ from Popery, which quickens the water or the 
 wafer to its purpose, according to the intention of the 
 priest 1 
 
 Yet this is perhaps the prevailing explanation of this de- 
 lightful sacrament among my former brethren. But if 
 this be so, why—as I learned afterward to reason — why 
 are not the words of the ceremony addressed to the parents "? 
 And why is Baptism considered complete, even if the pa- 
 
70 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 rent be not present 1 And why, though the parent should 
 immediately die, is the impressive ceremony never to be 
 repeated, so that there should be never but the one Bap- 
 tism ■? And why are the words of Baptism addressed to 
 the infant 1 For instead of something impressive to the 
 parent, the minister speaks in an unknown tongue— for it 
 might as well be in Greek as in English -to a passive in- 
 fant, saying, " N., I baptize thee in the name of the Father 
 and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost !" Very extraordi- 
 nary all this, thought I— that infants may not only be bap- 
 tized in the same water with adults, but may be addressed 
 in the same mysterious words, " I baptize thee " — if Bap- 
 tism mean one thing — regeneration — in the adult — and 
 something else no mortal can tell what— in the infant ! 
 
 Let Presbyterians answer the charge which we here 
 make, that they hold two Baptisms ; a Baptism declaring 
 to men and angels, as a fact, the regeneration of the adult ; 
 and a Baptism declaring something else, certainly not le-. 
 generation, in an infant. If, when administered to an adult, 
 it signifies that he is born again and restored to the favour 
 of God, and, when ministered to an infant, it signifies that 
 he is not born again ; we certainly perceive two Baptisms. 
 Nor is there a possible escape from this dilemma, except 
 on ancient and Bible premises, that neither adult nor infant 
 is " born again," but as it is accomplished by the joint 
 agency of " the Spirit and the Bride," or, as our Lord ex- 
 presses it, " except ye be born of water and of the Spirit." 
 Tell us not, that Baptism administered by you to infants, 
 signifies prospective regeneration. This is Pelagianism. 
 Tell us not, that it signifies their need of that regeneration ; 
 for why then do you not baptise them all, or even, like the 
 Jesuit, catch the wild Indian, and bon gre mal gre baptise 
 him, as the most solemn method of declaring that he 
 
 lIV 
 
ABUSES ANP DISUSE OF BAPTISM. 
 
 71 
 
 ** must be bom again 1" But you tell us, Baptism repre- 
 sents regeneration as accomplished, un fait accompli, in 
 the adult ; then tell us, we ask again, what it does signify 
 in the infant ? We repeat that we think you cannot tell. 
 You know that your views are vague. 
 
 No, sirs ; you must give up the ground you occupy to 
 the Baptists, or you must go back i^ your Confession of 
 Faith— the offspring of a more vigorous and healthy Re- 
 formation. You must go back to the principles with 
 which you set out three centuries ago, "one Lord, one 
 Faith, one Baptism ;" for " by one Spirit we are all bap- 
 tised into one body." What Baptism means in one it 
 means in all. What it signifies in the sinner of a hundred 
 years, it signifies in the infant of a span long. " I baptise 
 THEE in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
 the Holy Ghost." You lell us what this is in an adult ; 
 pray tell us, if you have the courage or the power, what it 
 is in an infant. Only beware, that, in attempting it, you 
 do not fall into a grand error of the Papists, and multiply 
 sacraments, as they have done, or divide them, as they 
 have divided a commandment, and as they have divided 
 the communion, and that you do not give a wAo/e sacrament 
 to adults, and a half sacrament to infants. For, besides 
 dividing the communion, and withholding the cup from 
 the laity, we hear that Romanists, in certain cases of 
 discipline and penance, to prevent scandal and to save 
 appearances, will allow a prince, or any other individual 
 where the motive is sufficient, to approach the altar, and 
 receive a wafer, but a wafer not consecrated, and therefore 
 without virtue ; which has been called a blank or white 
 communion. Precisely so, the Presbyterian ministry, it 
 would now appear, give the same water and words, and, 
 as the world looking on would think the same thing, to 
 
72 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 the infant as to the adult; but to the cheated infant, it is 
 not the baptism that an adult receives-it is a blank, white 
 baptism. And while the Papist and the Presbyterian must 
 look about them for a vindication of these strange abuses, 
 I may in the meantime be allowed to think that I have 
 something to be gratified for, in being extricated from the 
 toils of an oppressive system, and led out of the sic volo, 
 sic jubeo, of Popery and Presbytery, into '' the glorious 
 liberty" of a Church-Catholic— Reformed— and Free. 
 
IS 
 
 te 
 
 St 
 
 s, 
 /e 
 he 
 to, 
 us 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SACRAMENTS. 
 
 I have never remarked whether Presbyterian church 
 edifices have eastern ends. Popish as it is, I suppose they 
 sometimes have. But I have heard that in an old Presby- 
 terian burying ground on Long Island, the feet of the dead 
 of a certain epoch lie all toward the West, and that many 
 years agd, an Episcopal clergyman, who desired to repose 
 within its precincts, required by his will, that he should be 
 interred, according to the ancient custom of all Christian 
 folk, with his feet and face toward the East; and that so 
 it was allowed, and that the burial-place is still shown, 
 whereby, " he being dead, yet speaketh " But, in a Pres- 
 byterian church, that stood a few years since in Wall-street, 
 there was a Nothern window— I believe, behind the ;7«/pt7 
 —of some ecclesiological merit— perhaps of stained glass. 
 An Episcopal clergyman, wishing at that time to see the 
 specimen, applied to a gentleman of that congregation, who 
 very obligingly offered to accompany him into the church. 
 As they stood together in the aisle, this gentleman, feeling 
 doubtless safe in his own castle, took the opportunity to 
 say to the clergyman, " Those Oxford men are doing an 
 immensity of mischief ; only to think, sir, of their altering 
 the Bible 1" ''What!" said my friend, with some as- 
 tonishment, " I was not aware that they had gone so far as 
 that:^ '* Yes, sir ; if you will step with me into the pulpit 
 I will show you. Here, sir, is en Oxford edition of the 
 Bible, that we have lately got out from England ; and a 
 young mhiister, officiating for our Pastor on Sabbath last, 
 
74 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 was reading the Revelation of John, and read •: over and 
 over—' the four living creatures-ihe four living creatures,' 
 instead of ' the four beasts ;'-I believe those Oxford men 
 rather disrelish John's Revelation, particularly what he 
 says about beasts :-yes, sir, they are altering the Bible V 
 '• I hardly think that can be so," said the Episcopalian ; 
 ♦' let us look !" The layman, as much as to say, " Now I 
 have you," dashed into the Apocalypse, looking through 
 crrave glasses that had never deceived him before, for his 
 ^' living creatures ;" when,Io, and behold, " the four beasts" 
 _<' the four beasts "-there they were, " the four beasts, 
 lion, calf, man, and eagle," staring him in the face, '' with 
 eyes before and behind." '' There's something wrong,^ 
 said the layman, after a pause, " he certainly did read it 
 so." •' Very likely he did," replied the clergyman of the 
 weather-beaten Church; "There was nothing Roman 
 however about it; it was your young man wanting 
 to show off his Gieek; I think I have heard that your Pres- 
 byterian ministers of late, in reading the Bible, ofien stop 
 to correct the translation, and thus weaken the confidence 
 of the people in its truthfulness ; 6m< ours never do; I do 
 not think, Mr. N., you need be ur'ji>sy about the Oxfo'd 
 divines; at least about their altering the Bible." 
 
 I have related this anecdote, because it is one of a clasi^ 
 and in my ovs-n mind is connected with another, which 
 lies more direr ay in the plane of our narrative. A friend 
 of mine-once, like myself, a Presbyterian minister, and 
 now a clergyman of the Church— who had got a little 
 weary of the pious lamentations of a Presbyterian neigh- 
 bor, in the city of New York, over the fearful stridings of 
 the Episcopal Church towards Rome, was at the house of 
 his friend on a certain occasion, when, not much to hif 
 •surprise, the old subject was brought forward. " Poh !' 
 
SACRAMENTS. 
 
 75 
 
 said the ?rave Elder of an up-town congregation, " your 
 Church is going over to Popery as fast as it can !" ** A 
 very grave charge," said his reverend guest, " I confess 
 that I do not see how you would support it ; but, if you 
 have any good reason for thinking so, no man would thank 
 you more than myself, and no Church would be more 
 thankful than the old acknowledged * bulwark of the Refor- 
 mation,' if you would let us know it." '* Why," said the 
 Elder, with a look over his spectacles more searching than 
 his ratiocination, " you are teaching regeneration in Bap- 
 tism, and something wondrous-like transubstantiation in the 
 Lord's Supper ; — just see that ' Churchman ' published in 
 this city ! Is not that Popery 1" •' Let me understand 
 you, my dear sir," said my friend, " for now-a-days we 
 scarcely know what Popery is;— would you caiW/zji' Po- 
 pery V (Reads from the last number of the Churchman) 
 — " Baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, not 
 only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the 
 visible Church, but also to be unto him a sign and a seal of 
 the covenant oi' grace of his ingrafting into Christ, of RE- 
 GENERATION, of remission of sins." . . . . " Yes, 
 that's it ! that's it ! Don't you call that Popery ?" inter- 
 rupted the Elder. " Just wait a moment," said the cler- 
 gyman, " let us hear it out : — ' The efficacy of Baptism 
 is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is adminis- 
 tered ; yet notwithstanding, by the right use of this ordi- 
 nance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really ex- 
 hibited and conferred by the Holy Ghost.'' " — 
 
 *' There, I told you so,'' again interrupted the impatient 
 Elder ; '*ah ! you are all going over to Popery ; just what 
 I told yon !" '• Well, you object to that — what have you 
 to say to this ? (Reads) * There is in every Sacrament a 
 Sacramental union between the sign and the tiling sigui- 
 
 n 
 
76 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 .11 
 
 flg(j Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking 
 
 tf the visible elements in the Sacrament of the Lord's Sup- 
 per, do then also, inwardly, by faith, really and indeed re- 
 ceive and feed upon Christ crucified ; the body and blood 
 of Christ being then, not corporally and carnally, yet as 
 really arid truly, but spiritually, present to the faith of be- 
 lievers in that ordinance, as the elements themselveH are to 
 
 their outward senses And they that worthily 
 
 communicate, feed upon his body and blood, to their spiri- 
 tual nourishment and growth in grace." "Yes! there! 
 I told you so ! I told you so ! All Popery ! Popery ! 
 That's what your Oxford men are about ! Well, John 
 foretold it all ;" (my friend had been a Presbyterian, long 
 enough to know that John was neither the coachman of 
 that name, nor the waiter that had answered the bell) ; 
 '' what is to be, will be ; and John says, that ' the deadly 
 ■wound,' that the Beast got at the Reformation, is to be 
 ' healed," and all the world is again to go after the— I beg 
 you pardon -6ea4-</" " Now, Mr. D.," replied the cler- 
 gyman, " I have only waited to hear your opinions of the 
 passages that I have read ; I brought this paper with me 
 this morning, on purpose that you might see what j/our own 
 church teaches, or did teach, when she came from the 
 hands of Knox and Calvin and the Westminster Divines. 
 Just look and see for yourself; all that I have been reading 
 has been taken from your own Confession of Faith.'' ( The 
 old gentleman takes the hebdomadal and reads— fidgets in 
 his chair-looks into the fire-then looks up at his antagonist.) 
 '• I don't believe that the Confession of Faith teaches 
 any such thing ; I shall not believe it, until I see it."— 
 (My friend draws from his pocket a volume, with a leaf 
 turned down at a certain page, and hands it to the Elder— 
 who reads a moment— fidgets— looks at th outside of the book 
 
SACRAMENtS. 
 
 77 
 
 ^fidgets still more— examines the title page— reads the 
 marked passage— fidgets tremendously— gives back the hook.) 
 " Well, 1 can't say," said the Elder, " I never saw that in 
 the Confession of Faith before ; if it is there, I shall go 
 and ask my minister to explain it." " The truth is," said 
 the morning visitor, '« you Presbyterians formerly held upon 
 these points about the same doctrines that we do; witness 
 the strong language of your own Calvin and Luther— but 
 you have departed from your standards, and now imagine, 
 because we adhere to ours, that we are going back to 
 Popery. As you glide from the wharf, or recede from the 
 shore, you imagine that the land is moving from you ; but 
 it is not the land that moves ; it is your ship ; the land 
 stands still. In like manner, the Church, the building on 
 the Rock stands still. The Church is where it was. It is 
 you and your ship that are moving away, and throwing 
 back the puny ripple against the everlasting Rock." Suf- 
 fice it to add, that my friend still keeps up his acquaint- 
 ance at the Elder's house, but that the old gentleman is by 
 no means so lachrymose on the subject of Popery as for- 
 merly. It is said that he is waiting with some impatience 
 for that explanation by his pastor. 
 
 Certain it is, that the Presbyterian Confession of Faith 
 (much more the Dutch Reformed and the Lutheran) is as 
 clear as the teachiijg of the Church Catholic, concerning 
 the value and efficacy, both of Baptism and of the Lord's 
 Supper. But Presbyterians,almost to a man, have departed 
 more widely from their standards, on the design and uses 
 of the latter, than we have shown them to have done on 
 the benefits and efficacy ot the former. 
 
 We have seen, that out of the doctrine of election, and of 
 regenerating grace and of effectual calling reaching only 
 to the elect, has sprung up as a natuial growth, the refusal 
 
 r I 
 
 11 
 
 ii 
 
LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 78 
 
 m 
 
 of the grace of Baptism to half the purest subjects of the 
 kingdom of heaven. But, us if this were not enough for 
 this " king of iierce countenance and understanding dark 
 sayings," and opening the lorbidden leaves of fate, the work 
 of decimation must go lurther still. The Presbyterian 
 standards enjoin, that " children, born within ^ he pale of 
 the visible Church, and dedicated to God in Baptism, when 
 they come to years of discretion, if they be free from scan- 
 •lal, appear sober and steady, and to have suflicient know- 
 ledge to discern the Lord's body, they ought to be informed 
 it is their duty and their privilege, to come to the Lord's 
 supper." And, for more than a hundred years, this order 
 was universally obeyed. But now their baptized ch'ldren 
 are denied " the children's bread," as much as if they had 
 been crowned in their infancy with the turban or ^i cres- 
 cent, or had been devoted in the Ganges to the pollutions 
 of Bramha. Only their communicants are complacently 
 addressed as " fellow citizens with the saints, anu of the 
 household of faith ;" but all others, without regard to Bap- 
 tism, are treated as "aliens from the commonwealth of 
 Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, iiaving 
 no hope, and without God in the world." Such is this mo- 
 ther's love, and method of appealing to her children. 
 
 How often are my ears delighted, and my eyes gladdened 
 now, to see the kind pastor going back with the youth of 
 his flock to the bright fountains, where he had bathed them 
 in the morning of life's sultry day, and to hear him speak- 
 ing, in soft and winning tones, of sins forgiven, and of pro- 
 mised grace, and of the Angel that troubled the waters, 
 and of the Holy Ghost that descended like a dove, and of 
 the ministering Spirit that hovered near to receive its new 
 charge, when the Lord " sware and entered into covenant 
 with them, as he said: In the day that thou wast born, 
 
SACRAMENTS. 
 
 i9 
 
 ami w '.st cast out on the opc-u field, lo, I passed by and 
 p'tj'p' thee and threw my skirt over thee ; then washed I 
 tbP9 with water, and I girded thee about »vith fine linen, 
 nn' I covered thee with silk, in the day that thou wast 
 born; I decked thee also with ornaments, and I put brace- 
 lets upon thine hands, and a chain of pure gold on thy neck, 
 and I put a jewel on thy forehead, and earrings in thine 
 ears, and a beautiful crown upon thine head." 
 
 How often do I now see even " the stong man that 
 keepeth his house," successfully resisting every approach, 
 until, behold a stronger than he cometh, and by the chain 
 that bound him when an infant, leading him back to the 
 still waters, where, as in a glass, he too may see himself 
 reflected, and how changed the crown fallen from his head 
 and the fine gold become dim, and the white robe, intended 
 for his resurrection-dress, all soiled and vent, aad now a 
 deep shade upon his brow once bright with the sign of the 
 cross, and his bosom, once peaceful, now swelling high 
 with the fears of eternity ! Oh, I have seen " the keepers 
 ot the house tremble, and the strong men bow themselves," 
 at the recollections of Baptism. ^ 
 
 But long as I was a Presbyterian, T never knew a bap- 
 tized child to be admonished from the pulpit, of any privi- 
 leges, or of any obligations, arising from the fact of Bap- 
 tism. A baptized child is taught and trained, precisely as 
 a Baptist would train one unbaptized ; and a Presbyterian 
 congregation is addressed, as if the preatlier were declaim- 
 ing from a Baptist pulpit. And why is this, said T, when 
 one apostle has called Baptism the Antit;ipe (avTirvTrov) 
 of the ark: and another has called it, " the washing of re- 
 generation ;" and he who poured water on an apostle's 
 brow, said, ** Arise, and be baptized, and ^vash away thy 
 sins;" and He, who sent the same Saul to Ananias, said, 
 
80 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHITRCH* 
 
 " Except a man be born of water and of the spirit he can- 
 not see the kingdom of Gcd !" Are there two Baptisms- 
 one admitting regenerate adults to all the privileges of the 
 church— and the other admitting unregenerate infants to 
 no«/iiW(^ /—Whether they live or die poor children, they 
 fare no better for their Baptism ! The Bible says, " One 
 Baptism," as distinctly as it says " One God." The Bible 
 declares " Baptized into One Body " as plainly as it pro- 
 claims " One Lord, One Faith, One Hope." In the Bible, 
 Baptism is the door of admission to all other promises and 
 privileges of the church. " If you baptize your children, 
 or any part ot them, why do you not admit them to the 
 Lord's Supper V is therefore the standing and effective ob- 
 jection of the Baptists. The Confession of Faith long ago 
 yielded to its force. F.ven Dr. Miller, in the nineteenth 
 century , succumbs to it himself. After advising that every 
 means should be employed to retam baptized children in 
 the communion of the church, he recommends, that if, after 
 due admonition, they should continue to slight their birth- 
 right and neglect the communion ; '' they should be pro- 
 ceeded with, and cut off, as if they had been communicants, 
 and had afterwards apostatized from their profession."— 
 But this is all theory. Animum plctura pascit immi. The 
 new wine would make those old bottles burst and perish. 
 Revivalism and election would go down together. No, 
 Bible-baptism can never exist again among Presbyterians; 
 it can never again be the door of entrance upon all the pro- 
 mises and privileges of the faithful ; they will do as they 
 have done— shut out more than half their little ones from 
 the ark— and refuse, except on certain hard conditions, the 
 bread for the voyage to few that are admiUed. A new 
 departure, I discovered, from the principles of the Refor- 
 mation ; let me fly with my children to a Church, where 
 these principles are yet respected. 
 
SACRAMENTS. 
 
 dl 
 
 But Presbyterians cannot see their church thus falling 
 off as under this discipline it must always do, in numbers ; 
 and therefore, repudiating the healthy increase by the Scrip- 
 tural method of " discipling and baptizing," they fall into 
 human expedients, fraught with amazing opportunities for 
 abuses and corruptions, by which the baptized and the un- 
 baptized alike are urged on to a crisis, at which hey are 
 encouraged to believe, that they are born again, in a sense 
 that shall forever make temptation essentially powerless, 
 and apostacy utterly impossible. Ingenuity is tortured ; 
 new measures are invented ; methods still newer and still 
 newer are resorted to, to urge the imagination on to the ideal 
 point, at which the exhausted fancy, in its moment of col- 
 lapse, "lets go" the world, " gives up " its sins and its 
 associates, loses its relish for its former ways, yields every 
 point it once disputed ; like the death-bed penitent, when 
 nature is too weak and weary any longer to sustain the 
 controversy; and this collapse, with the hysterical relief, 
 and, it may be, ecstacy, that follows it, is understood to be 
 the essence of conversion. The soul is now supposed to 
 have received the afflatus of an imperishable life, so that 
 the person never can fall entirely from grace ; and an in- 
 corruptible seed of the word is implanted in his understand- 
 ing, which shall make him personally, and beyond what 
 the Pope has ever claimed to be, infallible and indefectible 
 in the doctrines of grace ; in a word, because his consci- 
 ousness has undergone a strange disturbance, he thinks that 
 he has experienced the needful change—" the ictus from 
 beyond the fixed stars," as Mr Bushnell, of Hartford, strug- 
 gling in this net himself, has dared recently and manfully 
 to call it. I know that many, who have felt as they think, 
 this lighting down of the omnipotent arm, are pure and 
 " meet for the inheritance with the saints in light," But 
 
 P 
 
g2 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 it was not this sudden - ictus from beyond the fixed stars," 
 that made them so. They have been under other mfluences, 
 both before and since, that have made them what they are. 
 I have been subjected, when a boy, myself, to the starthng 
 and electrifying agency of this species of "^chinery and 
 know it, even in the most prudent hands to be lull of de- 
 lusion and danger. Instead of being the one new birth, it 
 ig a regeneration that may be repeated at every camp meet- 
 ing I have known the southern negro, and I have known 
 the illiterate white man, to be twice, and thrice, and per- 
 hapUwenty times, regenerated in this way; although a 
 mind more enlightened or better balanced is seldom caught 
 in the snare but once. As a Presbyterian, I saw much of 
 such regenerations, and the more I saw of them, like Mr. 
 Bushnell, the more I doubted them. " What careful minis, 
 ter seeing how many are gathered around him in the 
 church, who manifest no real love to God in the practical 
 duties of life, and have never shown any Christian chaiac-^ 
 ter save that they once were subjects of a religious -aph- 
 sody has not often staggered under the suspicion of some 
 dismal error, in the current views of religious experience ? 
 For myself, I feel obliged, in faithfulness to God, to declare 
 that I have more than a suspicion on this subject." If the 
 victim ever awake to the delusion, his awakening will be 
 like that of the death bed penitent, who in a stormy and 
 troubled hour built his hopes upon the sand-too late. The 
 revival convert recovers his composure,-the powers ol 
 nature are restored,~the passions in their vigor return,- 
 the world hangs out its lure,-and lo, the apostacy a little 
 while ago pronounced impossible, has taken place ! Sau 
 memory here crowds its facts upon me. I will not speak 
 of individuals, where tioops and .cores are rushing on my 
 thoughts. I have known a congregation in New-York, of 
 
 
 w 
 
 t 
 
 k 
 
 % 
 

 
 ■ 
 
 SACRAMENTS. 
 
 83 
 
 four hundred communicants, to disappear, « as the early 
 cloud," not even outliving the revival that had given it 
 birth. I was myself, in the city of New York, the pastor 
 of a congregation, of, nominally, live hundred communi- 
 cants—the fruits, as the phrase was, of " powerful revi- 
 vals ;" but, when, as a shepherd, I made it my first busi- 
 ness to <' know my sheep and to be known of mine," and 
 I sought them diJlJgeatly in the ways and byways, and 
 employed a corps of twenty deacons and elders to aid me 
 in the task, and more than once read the names of those 
 we could not find to the whole body of communicants, and 
 also in a published church manual designated them as mis- 
 sing, and though these inquiries were extended through a 
 period little less than a year, one hundred and forty com- 
 municants could never be found. But what roused still 
 more my suspicions respecting this theory of regeneration, 
 was the fact, which I personally encouiitered early in my 
 Presbyterian ministry, that the "Campbellites"or '' Chris- 
 tians," or, to speak properly Socinian Baptists, denying 
 the Lord that bought them and the very existence of the 
 Holy Ghost, found it no difficult task to equal, and often to 
 exceed, the Presbyterian and the Methodist, in the power 
 of these "revivals," with singular readiness startling vrhole 
 communities with the same phenomena, filling m :n's soli- 
 tude with impressions, visions, dreams, and voices, and now 
 numbering, after a career of less than thirty year^, oetween 
 three and four hundred thousand converts and » mmuni- 
 cants ! If any thing could more than this > -; .e my con- 
 fidence in such a theory of the new biru , it would be a 
 personal knowledge of the flict which i only know to be 
 alleged, that siinilar phenomena, and espetuui^, the tran- 
 sitions from agitation to ))eace, from vi'ild terror to ecstatic 
 rapture, from agony of conscience to complete seienity, 
 
;1 
 
 84 
 
 X/)OKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 m 
 
 from actual prostration to actual shouting, are not at all 
 unfamiUiar to certain forms of heathenism and of demon- 
 
 worship. 
 
 The reader will pardon this digression. My object has 
 been, without entering on a new subject, merely to call at- 
 tention to the fact, that human expedients have grown up, 
 and have become necessary, for the continuance and en- 
 largement of the denomination, in sheer consequence ot 
 having set aside the Scriptural view of the church as a 
 a household of faith," with its "little ones," its "young 
 men "and its '♦fathers," to be perpetuated and extended 
 by the spontaneous increase of itself. The " anxious seat" 
 or the " inquiry meeting" has been conceived to possess 
 far more sacramental virtue to regenerate than any Bap- 
 tism. And singular it is, that, amidst all the agitations 
 and theories which have shaken the Presbyterian body, 
 and among all the reformers, that have risen to purge and 
 restore their temple, there hath not risen one to suggest the 
 restoration of the Sacraments. My own awakening on 
 this subject, I owe, by God's blessing, mainly to a care- 
 ful revision of the Confession of Faith, which as a minis- 
 ter I had with great tenderness of conscience subscribed. 
 And in this state of mind, with many prayers for the Divine 
 guidance,in atask so novel, and requiring a measure of wis- 
 dom greatly in advance of my years, I prepared for the press 
 a treatise on the Sacraments ; which, however, I withheld 
 from publication, not only because it would have created 
 one frif'htful element more of distraction, in a body already 
 most sadly rent, but also, because I saw reason to fear, that 
 the tendencies of Pvesbyterianism were, e t semper etubique, 
 80 uncontrollably downward, that it might as soon be ex- 
 pected to stop the stars in their courses. Still I wonder, 
 that the men, who have undertaken to reclaim that body 
 
 f/ 
 
SACRAMENTS. 
 
 85 
 
 f/ 
 
 from the rationalistic influences of the new school of theo- 
 logy, have not first cast out the beam out of their own 
 eyes. Only by the preservation of the Sacraments, will 
 they preserve a vigorous theology. The Sacraments are 
 the epitome of Christianity. As to the Sacrament of Bap- 
 tism> we can scarcely say of it, stat nominis umbra ; it has 
 got to be regarded, and to be called, an unessential " rite." 
 All idea of its efficacy has passed away, with the exploded 
 dogmas of a less enlightened age ; and with it, the doctrine* 
 of birth-sin, and of the new heart, and of regenerating 
 grace descending on the soul, sit loosely on the popular 
 mind, and are in danger of ultimate extinction. The Sa- 
 crament of the Body and Blood of Christ has been also de- 
 graded into a mere human commemoration ; and, with it, 
 the great Catholic doctrine of <' a full, perfect and sufficient 
 sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction," as the Communion 
 service of the Prayer Book defines it, •* for the sins of the 
 whole world," is openly excepted to, and, throughout New 
 England absolutely lost. I have heard sermons upon free 
 will, natural ability, " you can and you can't," the modus 
 operandi in regeneration, and other metaphysical subtleties, 
 until my soul was sick. I have heard sermons about some 
 desolating fire ; the stranding of some ship ; the burning of 
 some steamboat ; the havoc of some storm ; until fire, air, 
 earth, and water, were exhausted. I have heard from the 
 pulpit lectures upon great social enterprises, fourth-of-July 
 orations, discourses on impending elections, eulogiums upon 
 associations of men, and harangues upon the revolutions of 
 empires and the abdications of princes. I have heard Uni- 
 tarianism. Popery, Infidelity, dragged in from a distance, 
 to supply themes for exciting declamation, and food for 
 morbid appetites. I have heard sermons and lectures 
 rambling into the future, pretending to " understand all 
 
m 
 
 \ 
 
 86 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 prophecy," and helping, with startling events to come, to 
 fill up that great moral and practical vacuum that Calvin- 
 ism creates and leaves. But never in my whole life, have 
 I heard, from Presbyterian lips, a sermon on the efficacy 
 of the Sacraments: as, for example, on the graces, fruits, 
 uses, promises, and helps, of Baptism. If baptism has been 
 ever named, itiias been, perhaps amidst the Iteat of a revi- 
 val, when converts must decide to which sect they would 
 belong, or at the request of some unhappy questioner, to 
 resist the encroachments of the Baptists, by endeavouring to 
 make good the isolated, naked, cold, historical (act, that in- 
 fants were baptized in the primitive church, or the still less 
 edifying and moredifficult assumption ,that pouring or sprink- 
 ling was the common mode of its administration. Thus Pres- 
 byterians have retained the form, but have long ago denied 
 the power of the Sacraments, They perform ihera mecha- 
 nically. They keep the letter ; they have lost the spirit, 
 the words that I speak unto you, they are spcrit and they 
 are life." Qui manet in litera, hceret in cortice. For my- 
 self, I went further in my own teaching, and well recol- 
 lect', that one of my elders took me severely to task, in 
 presence of his peers, for calling the Sacrament of infants, 
 what Dr. Alexander has called it in the extract lately 
 quoted, '* holy Baptism." Still I preached the gospel of 
 grace, and the grace of the gospel, in the Sacraments, and 
 was able to do it in the language of their own confession, 
 that " there is in every Sacrament a sacramental union be- 
 tween the sign and the thing signified." But like the Bap- 
 tist in the desert, I was preaching to the rocks. When I 
 asked them of the doctrine, " Is it from heaven , or of men V 
 they reasoned, I suppose, among themselves ; " If we shall 
 say, From heaven, he will say, why then do ye not bring 
 dl your little ones to Baptism 1 but if we shall say, of men 
 
 (( 
 
 ^ C 
 
 • • 
 
 1 
 
 t 
 
SACRAMENTS. 
 
 87 
 
 ^ < 
 
 • • 
 
 he will say why then do ye bring any ?" So that although 
 Presbyterians appear to have two Baptisms— one pro- 
 claiming that the adult is regenerate, and is now an heir 
 of the promises of God— the other, implying only, that the 
 infant either needs regeneration, or will need it at some fu- 
 ture time, according as the animus imponentis is Pelagian 
 or Calvinistic ; and, although they seem to have a Sacra- 
 ment in the Lord's Supper, yet, denying it the " efficacy '' 
 ascribed to it in their Confession, as a " means of grace,^* 
 it is perfectly clear, that they 'have after all, and strictly 
 speaking no Sacrament at all. Not once in a thousand 
 times do they grant Baptism to the dying penitent ; not 
 once in a thousand more, do they allow the Lord^s Supper 
 to the dying believer. The one is sent unwashed into the 
 presence of his God ; the other unfed into the solitudes 
 and wastes of death. Both are compelled to violate, in 
 the dying hour, the commands of Christ ; while the living 
 look on, and with easy aptness learn, that Sacraments may 
 be neglected both by the living and the dying, as entirely 
 unnecessary to salvation. 
 
 1. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 4 
 
 ^^;i 
 
 CONFIRMATION — LORD's SUPPER — EXCOMMUNICATION. 
 
 Let US now suppose the child, baptized or unbaptized — 
 it makes no difference with the Presbyterian, to have 
 reached the next stage in life. We suppose him to he one 
 of the elect, and to have received, at the " appointed time^'* 
 that irresistible ictus of regeneration, for the want of which 
 all the good things of his whole life before have been 
 counted as evil, and by virtue of which, all the sins of his 
 life afterward shall be so far counted to him for good, that 
 they can no more " quench the spirit," that they can 
 no more separate him from the favor of God, than they can 
 ieparate him from his own existence. 
 
 He is now to •' make a profession of religion, by the re- 
 ception of the Sacrament." We stay not to find fault with 
 the phraseology. We stop only to ask men who profess 
 to be guided by the Bible alone, where in that book it is, 
 that they find the '' taking the Sacrament " — unless that 
 they mean by the sacrament of baptism — the authorized 
 mode of" making a profession of religion V 
 
 We suppose our candidate to have passed one ordeal ir> 
 those agitating experiences, which so often rend and tear, 
 and as if the evil one went out of them, are the accompani" 
 ments and signs of this species of regeneration. He has 
 now to pass a more dread ordeal than the former, in rela- 
 ting these experiences to the company of the elders, or, if 
 his lot have fallen among the Congregationalists, the Bap- 
 tists, and the like, to the whole body of communicants. — 
 These elders, as my predecessor in a Presbyterian Pari«ii 
 
CONFIRMATION. 
 
 89 
 
 is said to have remarked, have been sometimes " made 
 when timber was scarce," and, like annuitants, ol course 
 they never die. Albeit, I knew an instance, in which one 
 died, and with a dry smile and sigh the good man's pastor 
 remarked to me, that it was one of those seeming afflictions 
 by which the Lord works great deliverances for his peo-« 
 pie. Can we wonder, that men of education and fine feel- 
 ing, shrink from a catechizing by a bench of elders 1 If 
 they hesitate for months and years and even until the end 
 of life— of which we have known many a striking instance 
 — are we, therefore, to set it do»vn as evidence of some ir- 
 regularity in their conversion 1 Or, suppose these elders 
 to be grave, dignified, well-read, capable of voting intel- 
 ligently, when ** deep answers to deep " in theological de- 
 bate, and ministers may be on trial for abstruse opinions, 
 that are supposed to involve and sap the foundations of re- 
 ligion— it is evident that in presence of such a company, 
 the different and meritorious, the meek and humble babe 
 in Christ will appear as a lamb before her sheareis ; while 
 the rash and the vain will but reap assurance, from passing 
 with the more eclat, the inquisitive — I might not err in 
 calling it, inquisitorial conclave. 
 
 Thousands there are, to whom this " going before the 
 Session," as the phrase is, to relate their experience, has 
 haunted their lying down ftnd their rising up, more than 
 auricular confession has ever disturbed the papist, and, on 
 the eve of the communion, when, above all other seasons, 
 the mind should be quiet and self-possessed, has had a most 
 painful influence in distracting and tormenting it. And 
 scarcely a pastor but bewails the fact that, having passed 
 this ordeal, his converts live thenceforth as light-hearted 
 as if the day of judgment were appointed only to unseal 
 and publish the verdict of the elders. And the monthly 
 
 I 
 
I 
 
 90 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 and quarterly repetitions ot experience, and confessions in 
 classes, under a complete system of espionage, adopted by 
 the Methodists, is but a poor remedy for these pernicious 
 results. 
 
 It has often been the case, that these elders in session 
 have felt themselves moved to pry into private histories 
 with unnecessary and annoying interrogatories. One of 
 their own ministers has complained, that the conditions or 
 tests of communion, have erected around 'the sacramental 
 table in some of their churches, '* a fence ten rails high." I 
 have heard the modest maiden interrogated whether she 
 belonged to a temperance society, and I have seen an indigo 
 narit woman refuse to answer whether she drank in- 
 toxicating liquors. The pUrity of this page reminds 
 TTie, that here I must arrest my pen. But I do so 
 with the question, " Quid domini facient, audent cum (alia 
 fures?'" If in a decent congregation, and against the 
 minister's remonstrance, these impertinent questions have 
 been asked, what may not be done, and what rights may 
 not be trampled tinder foot, where the reins are thrown 
 loose upon the neck 1 The legislation of these elders will 
 admit a candidate to the Communion, at this moment, in 
 one thousand congregations, only under the Nazarite and 
 Popish vow of eternal abstinence from wine ; and it rs bla- 
 zoned for the information and admiration of all mankind, 
 that wine is novi^ prohibited, even on their altars, in more 
 than eight hundred churches. My spirit went heavily 
 within me ; it was more than I could bear. Compared 
 with such arbitrary and irresponsible tyranny, to which 
 there can be neither law nor limit, and which may forge 
 new oppressions to'-morrow, as it has invented these but 
 yesterday, Rome, with its fixed and ascertainable exac^ 
 tions, is i^ill gloriously free. 
 
CONFIRMATION. 
 
 91 
 
 But now the experience is told, and the conclave ad- 
 journed. There frequently remains a third ordeal to be 
 passed, by the baptized and the unbaptized alike, before 
 partakin;? of the Lord's supper. The candidate, in face of 
 the congregation, is to answer a series of questions, em- 
 bodying, in some instances, nice metaphysical subtleties, 
 that chance to feed the controversies of the hour ; while 
 the questions themselves are sometimes extemporaneously 
 put, but are more commonly agreed upon, under the local 
 and joint counsels of the pastor and the elders. To pro- 
 duce uniformity in this particmlar, a living divine, whose 
 confidence I am not betraying in stating the fact, was a 
 few years ago employed in preparing a confession — for 
 creed-making is not yet at an end, and will live the life- 
 time of Popery and Sectarianism — to be adopted by the 
 General Assembly, for the admission of communicants 
 throughout the Church. He proposed also— owing, I be- 
 lieve, the sRgges'tion to myself— that the new formulary 
 should clearly recognize the distinction between the un- 
 baptized and the baptized. Such a meastire vva-s not likely 
 to succeed ; in fact, it lailed. 
 
 With regard to this mode of admission to the Lord's sup- 
 per, it is worthy of remark, that the whole thing is an 
 innovation upon Presbyterianism, and although borrowed 
 along with some other matters from the Congregationalists, 
 within the short period of thirty years, has become almost 
 everywhere prevalent. And the rapid sjjread of such a 
 usage from parish to parish, demonstrated to my mind, 
 many a year ago, the conscious icant, throughout the church, 
 of a connecting link between Baptism and the Communion, 
 to ratify the vows and pledges of the former, and to con- 
 duct the maturing Christian to the grace and consolation of 
 the latter. I certainly must have felt that want myself, 
 
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 92 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 when, thirteen years ag:o, in the printed formulary which 
 I composed for the reception of new candidates to the com- 
 munion, I used the iollowing language: " You acknow- 
 ledge the responsibilities whereunto you were appointed in 
 Baptism, in which you forever renounced the world, the 
 flesh and the devil, and consecrated in a perpetual covenant 
 your body soul, and spirit, &c., .... (Assent) . . . . 
 This being the faith wherein you have witnessed a good 
 onfession before many witnesses, and as, from the begin- 
 ning, you have been baptized into the privileges and pro-" 
 mises of the Church Catholic, therefore I now pronounce 
 and constitute you members of the body in which we wor- 
 ship the Father, and welcome you to share our grace and 
 tribulation. And as we open before you to day the higher 
 and wider mysteries of the kingdom in another ordinance, 
 and confirm you in the covenant of the faithful, we beseech 
 you, as strangers and pilgrims, &c." 
 
 When looking in those days, at the baptized child, in- 
 sensible to the responsibilities, and indiflferent to the grace, 
 accruing from his Baptism, or purposely taught, it may 
 have been, to regard that Baptism as the lowest and me- 
 rest rile of Christianity— forgetting that Christianity has 
 in this respect no such rites, as had the Jewish faith be- 
 fore it, but has merged the shadow into the substance, and 
 rites into realities — I have been often unable to check the 
 thought, that, if Presbyterians had retained the use of Con- 
 firmation, it would not only have answered for an edifying 
 link between Baptism and the Communion, but it would 
 have brought many a baptised child, year after year, into 
 personal contact with his pastor, and would have afforded 
 a golden opportunity, in youth's fearful crisis, for admoni- 
 tion, for reproof, for instruction in the dangers and respon- 
 sibilities of life. It seemed reasonable— so reasonable, that 
 
 
 
CONFIRMATION. 
 
 93 
 
 infant Baptism seemed incomplete without it, and uncon- 
 nected with the after-life— by some solemn form to ask 
 the child, now coming to the years of wisdom and discre- 
 tion, •' Do you abide by the terms on which you were bap- 
 tized 1" and, if the answer justified it, to renew the com- 
 forting assurance, that God would enlarge his grace, and 
 most surely keep and perform the promises, which He for 
 His part had vouchsafed to make. 
 
 About the same time, I ascertained, that Presbyterians, 
 in portions of Germany and other countries, had not cast 
 off the rite of Confirmation. Luther retained it, and his 
 followers retain it still. " I sincerely wish," said Calvin, 
 " that we retained this custom of imposition of hands, which 
 was practised amongst the ancients." Eeza and Owen 
 and Adam Clarke speak in much the same strain. I had 
 seen clergymen also in our own Communion, who would 
 not have been unwilling to see the rite restored. Such 
 facts induced me to look into the scriptural authority for 
 this intervening ordinance between Baptism and the Holy 
 Supper. For if any such rite be necessary for us, and if 
 we betray our conscious want of it in the adoption of an 
 awkward substitute, it could not have been less necessary 
 in the times of the fipostles,, and we might therefore expect 
 to find something in the word of God, beautifully interven- 
 ing, as the connecting link, between the two Sacraments. 
 
 " To the law then and to the testimony "—what saith it 1 
 '« Leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us 
 go on unto perfection ; not laying again the foundation of 
 repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of 
 the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and 
 of the resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment." 
 (Heb. vi. 1^2.) According to this, "the foundation"^ 
 ** the principles of the doctrine of Christ "—what aie they "? 
 

 ^v^ 
 
 94 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 " Repentance — Faith — Ba.\)\isms—Lrtping on of hands— 
 the Resurrection—the eternal Judgment." For the first 
 time in my life, I here saw that Christianity had filled the 
 vacancy between the Sacraments, and had assigned a so- 
 lemn rite to its place next after Baptism— the very place 
 to which the human invention of a confession in broad 
 aisle had been assigned by Congregatioualists and Pres- 
 byterians. First, " Repentance;." secondly, "Faith;" 
 thirdly, " Baptisms," (whether that of John, or that of 
 Jesus, or that of the Holy Trinity, or the doubling wash- 
 ing with water and the Spirit, or the trine immersion, 
 which some allege to have been primitive,) fourthly, 
 *< Laying on of hands." Let me think, said I within my- 
 self; — is this the order of teaching among the Presby- 
 terians '? They teach, first,. Repentance ; very well ; for 
 St. Paul says, first, " Repentance. " They teach, secondly, 
 Faith ; very well again ; for St. Paul says, secondly, 
 ^' Faith." They teach, thirdly. Baptism; very well once 
 more ; for St. Paul says thirdly, " Baptlsms.^^ But, at the 
 fourth stage, St. Paul and the Presbyterians part ; St. Paul 
 says, fourthly, " the Laying on of hands'," Presbyterians 
 break the chain, binding our youthful Isaacs to the altar, 
 and our young Samuels to the ,temple, and cast the bright 
 link away. 
 
 As a Presbyterian, I had nothing to gain, by supposing 
 that ordination, was in the apostle's mind as a matter to be 
 inculcated on a young convert next after Baptism, and in 
 company with the tremendous doctrines, of repentance, 
 f^ith, resurrection, and judgment. I came therefore to the 
 conclusion, from which only an unnatural straining and 
 dislocating of the passage could offer an escape, that St. 
 Paul was speaking of the sacramental rite, or, if you 
 please, the lesser sacrament, of Confirmation, coming next 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
CONFIRMATION. 
 
 95 
 
 
 after Baptism, and filling np one of the confessed and con- 
 scious vacancies of Calvinism. Again, my attention was 
 struck with the fact, that Baptism, and the Lfiying on of 
 hands, were, in the apostle's estimation, of sufficient ex-, 
 cellence aud dignity, to lie at '' the foundation ," and to be 
 written down among the tremendous " doctrines "of" Re- 
 pentance— Faith— the Resurrection— and the Judgment." 
 What ! Baptism mentioned in the same breath with Faith ! 
 the Laying on of hands raiseil to a correlative dignity with 
 the Resurrection and the eternal Judgment ! and both this 
 and that lying at the foundation, where an apostle is do- 
 liberately reciting « ivhich he the first principles of the doc- 
 trine of Christ !'> Make ot the passage what ye will, it 
 falls upon our ears much more like the natural utterance 
 of the Episcopal Church, than the teaching of Presby- 
 terianism in the rfineteenth century. 
 
 But did not "the Laying on of hands" impart the ^xit 
 of tongues and miracles 1 Yes ; and it was necessary that 
 it should ; that the Infant Church might-understand, at once, 
 the sacramental naluie of the ordinance. For the same 
 reason, Baptism was at first, accompanied by the visible 
 descending of a dove, that its sacramental character, the 
 spirit brooding on the waters, might be a fixed and under- 
 stood fact; so that apostles might preach, "Repent, and 
 be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, 
 for the remission of sins, and- ye shall receive the Holy 
 Ghost." In like manner, Ordination was accompanied at 
 first by the communication of the gift of miracles, even to 
 the humblest deacon, that it might be an unde .tood and 
 settled prmciple of Christianity, that each vocation in the 
 church should receive by the laying on of hands its pro- 
 portion of grace. Li the same way also, the first preach- 
 ing of the gospel to the Gentiles was marked by visible and 
 
'^:i 
 
 M 
 
 ii!i 
 
 n 
 
 !ll ! 
 
 ■ 
 
 1 ! 
 
 96 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 audible effusions of the spirit, to establish the fundamental 
 principles that the wall was broken down between the Jew 
 and the Gentile. For the sanne reason, Confirmation at 
 first had its " signs following," that the Christian, in con- 
 firming the pledges of his Baptism, might be assured of 
 his own confirmation in grace, by a new afflatus of the 
 Holy Ghost, for the higher responsibilities of the Christian 
 life. Thus, in the city of Samaria, Philip, not the apostle, 
 but the deacon, " one of the seven," we are told, preached 
 to the people, and baptized a great multitude, " both men 
 and women." More he was not empowered to do. But 
 " when the apostles, which were at Jerusalem, heard that 
 Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto 
 them Peter and John, who, when they were come down — 
 laid their fiands on </jem,and they received the Holy Ghost." 
 Philip, the deacon, converted and baptizec'. them, " both 
 men and women;" Peter and John came down, and 
 " laid their hands on them "—certainly not to ordain them, 
 for it says, " both men and women, ''^ This was a rite that 
 Simon Magus had never before seen ; Philip had been 
 there, preaching, baptizing, and working miracles, healing, 
 we are told, the paralytic and the lame, and ejecting devils 
 with wonderful success, "iut Simon, whom Philip bap- 
 tized, and who " continued with Philip," never saw, until 
 those that ordained the seven deacons came into Samaria, 
 this rite of the imposition of hands. " And when Simon 
 saw," says the narrative, " that, through laying on o(the 
 apostles' hands, the Holy Ghost was given, he oflTered,'* 
 &c. (See Acts viii, 5-19.) We cannot see how the force 
 of these simple facts can be evaded ; and we set Confirma- 
 tion down as one of the things which Presbyterianism has 
 irrevocably lost. 
 Some of my ministerial brethren, I knew entertained 
 
 >^ 
 
 11. 
 
CONFIRMATION. 
 
 97 
 
 upon this subject a similar impression to my own. Pres- 
 byterian reviewers, I observed, and even gentlemen at 
 Princeton, and in the Princeton Quart '^rly, touched tenderly 
 upon the topic. The whole Lutheran church retained the 
 practice. Those Protestants who had laid it aside, were 
 already all feeling after somcithing to supply the vacuum. 
 I could not find, in antiquity, any beginning to this " Lay- 
 ing on of hands," but at the hands of the apostles. I 
 would trace it beyond the apostles to the Jewish synagogue, 
 where I could find it even to this day intervening between 
 circumcision and the passover. I heard of it in the re- 
 motest East ; in the heart of Abyssinia ; in the fastness of 
 Carmel and of Syria. I was glad that my children had 
 been baptized and introduced before me into a fold, that 
 would thus again throw its protecting shield of Confirma- 
 tion around them, when they should arrive at the years of 
 discretion and of danger. 
 
 And if I was glad in the anticipation, what tongue, 
 shall express my happiness in the 3sult. One of those 
 little ones ; the first that was given me, and the first that 
 I gave the Church ; is now among them that sleep in Jesus. 
 In the glow of childhood— in her fifteenth year— an age, 
 when among Presbyterians, the minister is avoided, and 
 the approach of a zealous elder dreaded and shunned ; she 
 expressed the usual desire to be confirmed, at the next 
 visitation of the Bishop. As her father was beyond the 
 sea, her friends advised her to await his return. But, with 
 the grace already given her, she urged her request very 
 importunately ; and it brought her at once under the teach- 
 ings and counsels of a judicious andafiectionate clergyman. 
 She was accordingly confirmed, under the most gratifying 
 appearances of sincerity and earnestness. A new measure 
 of the spirit evidently rested upon her from chat hour; 
 G 
 
ra 
 
 98 
 
 LOOKING rOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 she spoke in a sweeter tongue ; she led a more heavenly 
 life: not noisy, but still; not ostentatious, but retiring; 
 not even conscious was she of the impression made upon 
 her heart and life, nor of that impression so sweetly re- 
 flected upon those around her. The solemn litanies of the 
 Church were often observed to bring tears into her eyes ; 
 the church's fasts were her most pleasant feasts ; morning, 
 and evening, and at noonday, she was ufiany a time observed 
 to dwell long upon her knees ; often was she known to 
 retire Irom the midst of her young companions to the 
 exercises of the closet ; and such a life of gentleness and 
 holiness, and self-denial, and prayer, and humble useful- 
 ness, and cheerfulness, it has never been my lot to know 
 in one so young. And God has rew^arded it. Within a 
 year from the time that she knelt under the Bishop*s hands, 
 she entered joyfully into the rest, for which she had been 
 unconsciously maturing ; and was " so blessed, she blessed 
 the hand ot death." And often have I been consoled in 
 the reflection that Contirmation in a father*s absence, 
 espoused her by a new vow to Christ, just at the moment 
 when the world first comes to claim the virgin-heart. 
 What a happy opportunity it gives, in all times and climes, 
 to bring the influences of religion to bear upon youth^s 
 generous affections t The father may be far away, and 
 the mother sleeping in the dust; yet the Church is a 
 mother that dies never ; and the time comes round, the 
 opportunity comes up, at the most critical period of life, 
 for the hallowed associations, Counsels, and instructions, 
 incident to Confirmation. If I have introduced a case in 
 illustration of this important point, it has been not without 
 violence to my more tender recollections of a precious 
 child ; but as, in a former chapt r, I had told of her Bap- 
 tism, I have now, for a higher purpose, permitted myself 
 
CONFIRMATIOK. 
 
 99 
 
 to record her Confirmation and her end. And, to extend 
 the illustration, I may add, that, during the six years of 
 my Presbyterian ministry, not an individual, so far as I 
 can recollect, seemed drawn toward me for counsel, or 
 attracted onward by the arrangements and natural leadings 
 of the system, to assume the responsibilities of Baptism, 
 If an inquirer came to me, he came not from the gentler 
 drawings of the common influences around him, (for Cal- 
 vinism knows no gentleness,) but from some sudden ictus 
 or impulse, that happened to him alone, and left hundreds 
 undisturbed behind him. In contrast with this, during the 
 first six years of my ministry in the Episcopal Church, 
 more than six hundred baptized souls have come spontane- 
 ously within my personal reach and private counsels, for 
 the ratification of the tremendous vows of Baptism. 
 Some of them have been among my dearest friends on 
 earth, towards whom I might otherwise have felt a reserve 
 in offering religious advice ; and hundreds, I have reason 
 to believe, have thus been brought under my secret coun- 
 sels, whom otherwise I should never have reached. Really, 
 without Confirmation, or its positive equivalent, brifi^' g 
 back the infant to the altar, not only would infant Baptisn^ 
 appear cumbered with a real difliculty, but the provisions 
 of Christianity would seem obviously incomplete. 
 
 Let us now go back to our candidate for the Communion. 
 He has passed the ordeals of conversion, the confession to 
 the elders, and the open profession in the congregation. 
 Why he is not now baptized, to signify that he is born 
 again, I cannot understand, except on the Pelagian hy- 
 pothesis, that Baptism may be lawfully administered in 
 anticipation of a possiple future event. But why the per- 
 son should not be now baptized, who is loud in reiterating, 
 I had almost said, in glorying, that his Baptism in infancy 
 
T-t, 
 
 100 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH* 
 
 'i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ?■ 
 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 k 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 1 
 
 m 
 
 lli::i 
 
 ) r 
 
 III- 
 
 *' never did him any good "—a boast, and sometimes uttered 
 in the form of challenge, which I have often heard—l 
 leave for the elders and their minister to answer. And 
 why the Anabaptist, who hesitates not to re-baptize an 
 individual, though priest, prelate, or pope, may have bap- 
 tized him in his infancy, on the assumption that he was 
 baptized before he was born again or before he believed, 
 does not re-immerse the grown up man, who, although he 
 was immersed at twenty or at forty, now solemnly declares 
 that the same mistake was perpetrated upon him, and that 
 he too was immersed before he believed, and that his 
 former immersion, so far from doing him any good, pub- 
 lished to the world a lie, is entirely beyond my com- 
 prehension. 
 
 But to follow our candidate to the Communion. If ever 
 in his life he felt like lying low under the droppings of 
 that most precious blood here flowing from the cross, it is 
 now ; but prostration is forbidden him, and his knees are 
 not allowed to come in contact with the dust. If ever he 
 desired to draw nigh and cling to the horns of the altar, it 
 is to^ay ; but he is required to sit aloof from the table of 
 the show-bread that showeth forth the Lord's death until 
 He come. And, instead of receiving the emblems of his 
 Saviour's own body and blood, from that good man's hand, 
 who perhaps received him when a little one' in the person 
 and the name of Christ, or who has led him in after years 
 to Christ ; and, instead of hearing a paternal voice speak- 
 ing in words of comfort, and uttering a pastor's blessing, 
 he is compelled to take the hallowed elements from hands 
 that yesterday he saw employed in the counting-room, or 
 in the market-place, or in occupations which the dignity 
 of my subject will not suffer me to name. If out of the 
 abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh ; if a clean 
 
lord's supper. 
 
 101 
 
 heart will naturally robe itself in a clean dress ; so a true 
 Christianity, properly alive to the purity and dignity and 
 majesty of that worship in which Angels and Arch3*ngelg 
 join with men, must instinctively loathe this slovenly ap- 
 pearance, and these familiar manners, and, if she Kave 
 more beautiful garments, although she can never mistake 
 them for the beating heart and living soul within, will 
 surely put them on, to appear before her King. 
 
 In early life, I had, at the south, been used to see the sa- 
 cramental table spread, and the guests seated decorously 
 around it. Princeton, which should have been the last 
 place on earth, was the very first, in which I saw the 
 communicants receive the elements while seated in their 
 pews. I shall never forget the violence done to my feel- 
 ings, and not to mine only, but to those of several others 
 by this spectacle ; a chill crept over me, a chill that re- 
 turned as often as the festival came back ; and I felt be- 
 cause it was true, although I knew it not, that the sacra- 
 mental character of the solemnity was vanishing away.— . 
 Those very churches at the south, wfcich, in my youth, or 
 fifteen years ago, celebrated the Lord's supper with much 
 decency and reverence around a table spread with ^^i^ir 
 linen cloth, have been unable, even in the matter of "rac. 
 and mint and cummin," to resist the irruptions of the 
 north-men, and have engrafted on their old, venerable 
 forms, the rude and freezing usages of New England Con- 
 gregationalism. But so it is. Downward, and downward 
 still, is the course of a system, that has once broken away 
 from the unalterable past. Chill) , and more chilly still, 
 becomes the atmosphere of a body, that has once left the 
 warm orbit to which nature had assigned it. 
 
 I had noticed, when a boy, as the communicants in suc^ 
 cessive companies approached the table, that certain indl- 
 
102 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 t' 
 
 I 
 
 1^ 
 
 1 1 
 
 ■ 
 
 ■ 1 , 
 
 viduals waited their opportunity to secure the places imme- 
 diately on the pastor's right and left, that they might receive 
 the communion immediately at his hands ; thus clearly be- 
 traying the natural working of a pious instinct. Later in life 
 I reached the question: Why not indulge the generous desire, 
 and kneel, and receive at the pastor's hand, and with the 
 pastor's blessing, these seals of grace 1 Who would feel con- 
 tented that some tradesman should pour the water on his head 
 in Baptism, while the minister should say the sacramental 
 words'? And who should feel satisfied, to receive "that 
 bread and that cup," from a merchant's or a tradesman's 
 hands 1 Does it require a high degree of Christian reve- 
 rence, to feel instinctively, through every fibre of the soul, 
 a deep repugnance to such familiarity 1 " Is it not the com- 
 munion of the body of Christ ? Is it not the communion 
 of the blood of Christ 1" We feel that the minister is the 
 only proper individual, to impart the water in Baptism ; is 
 he not the only proper and lawful person, to impart " that 
 bread and that cup," wherein, it will be to our everlasting 
 condemnation, if we " discern not the Lord's body." — 
 And why not also kneel, thought I, in the one Sacrament^ 
 as well as in the other % Adult candidates tor Presbyte- 
 rian baptism generally kneel. Candidates for Presbyte- 
 rian ordination invariably kneel. Why not approach as 
 near His sacred feet as I can, and kneel as lowly as I wish 
 in receiving " the true bread from heaven," while this sa- 
 crifice of Melchizedec, the bread ar.d the wine, show the 
 Lord's death upon the table, and plead for my soul with a 
 fervour and a purity, which my own prayers are incapable 
 of approximating 1 If it be objected, that kneeling may 
 beget too much reverence for the symbols, we only answer 
 for the present, that sitting may beget the more dangerous 
 too little. For more than a thousand years, there were 
 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 103 
 
 but two upon earth, that sat at the communion; one of 
 these was the Arian, " who, denying the divinity of the 
 Saviour, thought it not robbery to be equal with Him at 
 His table ;" the other was, and yet is, the Pope of Rome, 
 who, claiming the same equality in another and higher, 
 although it is fair to remember, not in the highest sense, 
 receives the Communion on certain occasions, in the pos- 
 ture of the Presbyterians. Treat the symbols with irre- 
 verence, and irreverence toward Him whom they repre- 
 sent, will inevitably follow. Already, in this respect, are 
 the Presbyterians where the Arians were once, and the 
 Unitarians are now. 
 
 Again. As the Episcopal arrangements bring every 
 child of the congregation, just at the moment when the 
 world breaks enticingly upon his eye, and whispers his 
 meretricious flattery into his ear, and makes her resolute 
 descent upon his heart, into personal intimacy with his 
 pastor, in the preparatory steps to confirmation, so does 
 the Episcopal mode of celebrating the Holy Eucharist, 
 bring each communicant, many times a year, under the 
 immediate eye of his pastor, who thus possesses the in- 
 valuable opportunity of noticing the absent, of kindling 
 anew his interest in each communicant present, and of 
 cherishing a persoial acquaintance with them all. Under 
 such a discipline, a fact like the one already stated would 
 have been utterly impossible, that one hundred and forty 
 communicants, or nearly one-third of the whole number 
 in a parish, should have been lost sight of, from the recol- 
 lections ol the elders of the whole body of parishioners. — 
 But so it ever is ; under the workings of a true system, 
 every thing falls naturally into its place, and harmony and 
 beauty and propriety are in all its parts ; the machine re- 
 gulates itself; the jar is not felt; anarchy is impossible, — 
 
( 
 
 ■■ 
 
 5 
 
 ! I' 
 
 1 ■• ' 
 
 H: 
 
 
 
 m 
 
 104 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 And, when the little things of a church, as we may per- 
 haps consider them, like the joints and bands of the body, 
 seem to be fitly framed together and to fill the very place 
 that without them would be unseemly blanks, and to per- 
 form their minute ofiices in mutual and self-adjusting har- 
 mony, it would appear, that, as in Ezekiel's vision, " the 
 spirit of a living creature was among the whole. 
 
 And when the painful necessity for discipline arises, 
 although it be for sins th?t should not be named, Congrega- 
 tional Presbyterianism invests the whole body of communi- 
 cants— male and female— young men and maidens— the 
 wise and the unwise— the silent and the gossipping— with 
 the equal right of investigating and pronouncing ; while a 
 numerous eldership, according to the theory of Presby- 
 terians proper, neutralizes but a portion of this evil. How 
 much more likely to be salutary are the private " admoni- 
 tions " and " repellings " of Episcopacy. And under the 
 Episcopal regimen, if an appeal be taken, it is conducted 
 with the same delicacy and considprati<i|i, and with greater 
 probabilities of rectifying mistakes, up to the Bishop ; 
 whereas, among Presbyterians, it must be ^ragged into 
 open Presbyteries, and thence to Synods, and thence again 
 to General Assemblies, where hundreds of ministers lost 
 hundreds of days, in adjusting some petty wrong, or 
 in adjusting a neighbourhood quarrel, in some remote and 
 miserable village. And any attempt, such as an eminent 
 divine among them has suggested, to arrest these appeals 
 at the lower courts, is but an interference with the 
 liberties of the people, and a departure from the Presby- 
 terian theory. We shall not in this place notice that fea- 
 ture of Presbyterianism, which all jurists have established 
 as the definition and essence of tyranny, and which places 
 the sword, the sceptre, and the purse in the same hands ; 
 
 Bl 
 
EXCOMMUNICATION. 
 
 105 
 
 and combines the legislative, thejudicial,and the executive 
 functions, in the same body ; so that the General Assembly 
 ibi^ixample, is, at the same moment, legislature, jury, 
 judge, executive and executioner. 
 
 The Confession of Faith declares, that " to the officers 
 of the Church the keys of the kingdom of heaven are 
 committed, by virtue whereof they have power respec- 
 tively to retain and remit sins, to shut that kingdom against 
 the impenit^t sinners, by the ministry of the gospel, and 
 by absolution from censures, as occasion shall require." 
 Rome itself has scarcely a more terrific form of anathema 
 than that which Knox, the reformer, devised, nor a more 
 soothing absolution than the two, which the curious in 
 such matters may see in the Liturgy which he prepared 
 for the adoption of the Presbyterians in Scotland, but 
 which ultimately fell of course, into disuse. But, now, 
 ihe individual, thus assailed by a church censure, may 
 laugh at the elders for their pains, and '' join " some other 
 of the sects which lie so numerously about his door. 
 What is to prevent him? They are all " ciiurches "— . 
 standing on the same basis of private judgment — equally 
 pure; equally spiritual; equally free. Every day this 
 evasion is actually practiced. I once knew a man, who, 
 having lost a sum of money, was induced to consult one of 
 those gifted individuals, that, not two centuries ago would 
 ^ave graced the stake or the gallows upon the shores of 
 JMassachusetts Bay. The good lady gave him information 
 certainly very remarkable, and ventured some predictions, 
 afterward most singularly verified. With this, however, 
 my story has nothing to do. But out of the occurrence, 
 an offence grew up, which made it necessary for the Pres-» 
 byterian clergyman to excommunicate some two or three 
 persons. The very day and hour of their excommunica* 
 
i 
 
 III 
 
 • i 
 
 106 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH, 
 
 ' t^ 
 
 tion, they were immersed by a Baptist preacher, and re- 
 ceived triumphantly to the communion. A few years 
 afterward, the same mdividuals were excommunicated by 
 their new brethren, and became, and are now, members 
 of the Campbellite sect, "in good and regular standing." 
 Thus are the keys so held among the sects, that as one door 
 of the kingdom is shut, another may be immediately opened* 
 
 This result of sectarian discipline is not varied, by en- 
 larging the sphere of its operation. For, within a few 
 years, we have seen whole synods, embracing sixty thou- 
 sand communicants, ''exscinded" from the Presbyterian 
 church, and forthwith investing themselves anew with all 
 the prerogatives of a Church of God. An ejected Pres- 
 bytery, a Presbytery still; an exscinded Synod, a Synod 
 still; an excommunicated Church, a Church still ; stand- 
 ing on the conceded basis of private judgment — tolas teres 
 atque rotunda — equally pure ; equally scriptural ; equally 
 competent to hold the keys ; and with plenary right and 
 plenary power, to originate a ministry, and celebrate sacra- 
 ments, as valid as if the twelve apostles had risen from 
 their graves, and had laid on them their consecrating hands. 
 
 ^1 i 
 
 W ; 
 
 
 !i 
 
CHAPTER Vin. 
 
 LITURGIES. 
 
 However well-proportioned I might have found the Epis- 
 copal Church in its structure : however safe-guarded 
 against the outbreaks of fanaticism, and the incursions of 
 heresy ; however high her walls, or beautiful her gates, or 
 strong her towers ; however studded her whole frame-work 
 with the inscriptions of the earliest ages : although on 
 every portal I should have seen a martyr's name, and on 
 every column the handwriting of an Ignatius or a Polycarp ; 
 yet I may confess, that all this symmetry and beauty, if it 
 were possible that they should exist as a body without a 
 spirit, ought to a devout mind, to present no irresistible 
 attraction, if, upon closer inspection, the interior arrange*- 
 ments were found unfriendly to the great end to which 
 every thing else in the temple must be secondary and sub- 
 servient—the high and pure devotions of the heart. As in 
 human friendships, we value not the lip's cold word with- 
 out the heart's warm love, so, with an emphasis beyond 
 comparison, as ** God is a Spirit," " they that worship Him, 
 must worship Him in spirit and in truth." But I have 
 supposed a thing impossiblo. It cannot be, that 
 
 " On the cold cheeks of Death smiles and roses are blending." 
 Such symmetry and beauty as we have described, are 
 the results of a life within ; as the beautiful flower is the 
 spontaneous evolution of a healthy seed, or as the propor- 
 tions of a fair edifice are the developments of cultivated 
 thought and feeling, or as the beauty and perfection of the 
 material body are but the natural expression of an instinc- 
 
I ! 
 
 108 
 
 LOOKING FOB THE CHURCH. 
 
 )! 
 
 .in 
 
 •|i 1 if 
 
 li-it 
 
 I 
 
 llhllli i 
 
 tive and vigorous life. As Nature hovrever, ever seej:s a 
 clothing verdant, bright, radient with its Maker's image, 
 80 a true Christianity v^^ill lay aside the swaddling-clothes 
 for ;he robe without seam, and in all that is external will 
 exhibit strength, symmetry and beauty. I can, however, 
 recal the time when Episcopacy was, to me, " the sepul- 
 chre, beautiful indeed, without, but full within," if not of 
 Death's corruption, at least of Death's cold chill, and stif- 
 fened form; when lip-service and Episcopacy were as 
 much convertible terms as Presbyter and Bishop were, in 
 the New Testament. But this was at a time when I set a 
 less relative value upon the worship of the sanctuary, ihan 
 I have been led by God's blessing, since to do ; at a time 
 when I knew less of Episcopalians than I came, by God's 
 Providence, afterward to know; at a time when I had not 
 carefully observed the workings of the human mind with 
 reference to liturgical worship, nor the influences of litur- 
 gical v/orship upon the human mind. If I found myself, 
 or if I found others unprofited, or often pained and injured, 
 by the crudities and defects of extemporaneous worship, 
 to have sought relief in the Episcopal Liturgy, would, to 
 me, have seemed like stepping from the regions of an oc- 
 casional north wind, upon a zone of everlasting ice. Let 
 me, then, conduct the reader along the line of reflection 
 which brought me to the conclusion, '.hat, agreeably to 
 the analogies of the faith, as grace comes down to man, 
 robed in the Sacraments and the Word in an external 
 Ministry, and Christianity itself in the written Scriptures, 
 so a permanent devotion will inevitably clothe itself in an 
 abiding Liturgy. 
 
 I might here, at the outset, entrench myself behind a 
 host of mighty names, that, having used a Liturgy through 
 »11 their lives had every opportunity to know its value, and 
 
 I! 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
LITURGIISS. 
 
 109 
 
 have left a testimony which the Rev. Mr. Staunton hrs 
 thus condensed : •' Blame us not, then, if we value our Li- 
 turgy; it embodies the anthems of saints; it thrills the 
 heart with the dying songs of the faithful ; it is hallowed 
 with the blood of the martyrs ; it glows with sacred fire." 
 1 prefer to throw into the fore-ground of my argument the 
 testimony of Presbyterians themselves. 
 
 Even Mr. Barnes, in a candid moment, and before his 
 eulogium (of which we quote but a small part) had led any 
 of his flock to seek our green pastures and our still waters, 
 permitted himself to say, "We have always thought tliat 
 there are Christian minds and hearts, that would find more 
 edification in the forms of worship in that Church than in 
 any other. We have never doubted that many of ♦he 
 purest flames of devotion that rise from the earth, ascend 
 from the altars of the Episcopal Church, and that many 
 of the purest spirits that the earth contains, minister at 
 those altars, or breathe forth their prayers and praises in 
 language consecrated by the use of piety for centuries." 
 
 The New-York Christian Observer, the representative 
 of the Dutch Reformed Church in this country, says of the 
 Episcopal Church, " Her spirit-stirring Liturgy, and a 
 scrupulous adherence to it, have under God, preserved her 
 integrity beyond any denomination of Christians since the 
 Reformation." 
 
 Says a Scottish Presbyterian, the Rev. John Cummings, 
 " I shall never forget how thrilling I felt one clause in the 
 English Liturgy, on my first entering an Episcopal Church. 
 It is perhaps the finest sentence and the sweetest prayer 
 in the language :— •♦ In all time of our tribulation ; in all time 
 of our prosperity ; in the hour of death and in the Day of 
 Judement, Good Lord, deliver us,' " 
 
 I 
 
110 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 Dr. Doddridge, an English Presbyterian and Expositor, 
 says, '< The language is so plain as to be level to the ca- 
 pacity of the meanest, and yet the sense is so noble, as to 
 raise the capacity of the highest." 
 
 Dr. Clarke, the distinguished Commentator of the Me- 
 thodists, declares it " superior to every thing of the kind 
 produced either by ancient or modern times; several of 
 the prayers and services of which were in use from the 
 first ages of Christianity." " The Liturgy," he says again, 
 " is almost universally esteemed by the devout- and pious 
 of every denomination, and, next to the translation of the 
 Scriptures into the English language, is the greatest effort 
 of the Reformation. As a form of devotion, it has no equal 
 in any part of the universal Church of God. Next to the 
 Bible, it is the Book of my understanding and my heart." 
 
 Robert Hall, the brightest light that ever shone among 
 the Baptists, and one that would have been bright in any 
 firmament, confesses, that '' the evangelical purity of its 
 sentiments, the chastened fervour of its devotions, and the 
 majestic simplicity of its language, have combined to place it 
 in the very first rank of uninspired compositions." 
 
 The heavenly-minded Baxter, another non-conformist, 
 whose writings have prepared hundreds for that ** saint's 
 everlasting rest" which gave title to one of his choice pro". 
 ductions, says, " The constant disuse of forms is apt to 
 breed giddiness in religion, and to make men hypocrites, 
 who shall delude themselves with conceits that they de- 
 light in God, when it is but in those novelties and varieties 
 of expression that they are delighted ; and therefore I ad- 
 vise forms, to fix Christians, and to make them sound," 
 As Mr. Wesley for the Methodist, so Baxter prepared a 
 Liturgy for the Non-conformists; and, like Wesley, he 
 sought the consolations of the Church's Liturgy in the hour 
 
 IP: 
 
 ijl 
 
I 
 
 LITURGIES. 
 
 Ill 
 
 of death. And Watson, a Methodist divine, as great as 
 either of these, said, just as his soul took wing for Paradise, 
 '' Read the Te Deum ; it seems to unite one in spirit, with 
 the whole Catholic Church on earth and in heaven. 
 
 Let these suffice, after the addition of one testimony more. 
 The Princeton Review, in a notice of Mr. Barnes's '' Posi- 
 tion of the Evangelical Party in the Episcopal Church," — 
 a work written, I am informed, after some members of his 
 congregation had gone over to that Church, as the eulogium 
 above quoted was written some months before, holds the 
 following language :— " It is well for the Church of Eng- 
 land that she has a Liturgy, which brings out so clearly the 
 doctrines of depravity, atonement, justification, Divine in- 
 fluence, and a future judgment. What would have become 
 of these doctrines in the lips of worldly Ministers, kcA 
 Facts," it goes on to say '' are against this favourite posi- 
 tion of Mr. Barnes, (viz., that the observance of forms is 
 incompatible with the preservation of evangelical piety.") 
 And, after reminding Mr. Barnes that God was himself the 
 author of the forms in the Jewish Church, the Reviewer 
 adds—" But to say, that a form of prayer, merely as a form 
 however evangelical, is destructive of piety, is to assert that 
 the Gospel is not the Gospel, if it be read instead of being 
 spoken." " Not that we object," said the Princeton Re- 
 view of the year preceding, " to devotional composition, 
 when happily exerted and wisely employed ; on the con- 
 trary, we would wish that it were more common than it is." 
 
 With this amount of testimony, which could easily be 
 multiplied into a volume, I am asked the question, Why is 
 the Liturgy of the Episcopal Church so little esteemed, out 
 of its own palel I answer, simply because it is not known. 
 The Wesleyans of England know it, and. to this day they 
 
 use it, at least once 
 
 
 Oi tiiSir lives, vytuer 
 
I 
 
 i 
 
 ;f 
 
 ^i fi 
 
 iii 
 
 112 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 Dissenters there know it- and they use it in many of their 
 chape's at this hour. It requires one, two, perhaps three 
 generations to become insensible to the fascirations of a 
 Liturgy. Calvin left for his disciples a Liturgy. Luther 
 composed fcr his followers a Liturgy. Knox prepared a 
 Liturgy for the people of Scotland. Baxter compiled a 
 Liturgy for the Noncomformists. Wesley enjoined a Liturgy 
 upon his followers. Twice, in the Scottish Kirk, did the 
 Presbyterians adopt a Liturgy. Nothing but time and 
 habit, or violent convulsion, can tear a Christian from his 
 Liturgy. The separation once effected, a Prayer-Book be- 
 comes, to a Presbyterian, what the Bible is to the Papist 
 
 —an unknown book; uncared for, unadmired, unread. 
 
 Such was the Prayer-Book to me ; and I probably regarded 
 it with much the same aversion or indifference that the 
 Romanist entertains towards the Bible, and for very nearly 
 the same reason. Let the Bible be thrown into the way of 
 the Romanist, as the Prayer-book came into mine, and if 
 he do not learn to admire, and venerate, and love and 
 cherish it as I did the Prayer-book, it will not be owing to 
 any want in the sacred volume, either of intellectual sub- 
 limity or of moral loveliness. There must be, in ordinary 
 circumstances, not only a taste, but an educated and culti- 
 vated taste, to oppreciate beauty in a landscape, grace in a 
 statue, refinement in mauners, elegance in literature, force 
 in eloquence, melody in music, purity in morals, and, to come 
 to the point in hand, perfection in worship. Time, or dppor- 
 tunity at least, must be allowed, to correct and adapt the taste. 
 It is impossible to rise, at a bound, from the impression 
 that the sermon is the summum bonum for which we turn 
 our feet towards the sanctuary, into the feeling— not new 
 I apprehend, to the heart of the veriest worldling among 
 the Episcopalians— that, when we go within thy gates, O 
 Ziorj, it is to worship God. It is not possible, from the heavy 
 
LITURGIES. 
 
 lis 
 
 .1 
 
 dull common-places of an extemporaneous prayer, which 
 it is enough to have heard once, to rise by a single effort, 
 to the dignity of a Liturgy, which, to be adequately ad- 
 mired must be heard a thousand times. It is impossible to 
 settle down, from the fitful, feverish and momentary flights 
 of the revival and the camp-ground, into the chastened and 
 Jife-long fervour of the incomparable Liturgy. My own 
 case may show. 
 
 Owing to the distance of any other place of worship, I 
 was sent, in my boyhood, once a fortnight, to the Episcopal 
 Church. But I went without the necessary guide to my 
 devotions, and from a home, at which, among a thousand 
 pious volumes, I do not recollect that I ever saw the Book 
 of Conmion Prayer. I did not therefore learn, in child- 
 hood, so much as to " find the places," or to take part in 
 the responses, or even to perceive that sacred amusement, 
 if I may so call it, by which the varied service, as I 
 have often since remarked, engages so easily the atten- 
 tion of the child of the Church* For, while an extempo- 
 raneous prayer from a pulpit, often as elevated as the 
 ceiling will well permit, fails, and must fail to give em- 
 ployment to the mind of a child, there is something in 
 Liturgical worship, when properly performed, strikingly 
 adapted,as experience teaches, to occupy the mind and hands 
 and lips, and through all these, the heart ot the little ones 
 of Christ, and thus, to form, from the age of infancy, the 
 great habit of devotion. We accept, therefore most thank- 
 fully, the tribute sometimes paid to tiie Church, that her 
 worship is well enough for the childish and illiterate. Like 
 the Bible, it is a study for the learned, and yet giveth wis- 
 dom to the- simple. Its language js, in part, literally the lan- 
 guage of angels, and is yet within the comprehension of 
 infants. It is a sun that wUl blind the gaze of the philoso- 
 H 
 
n I 
 
 i. 
 
 nil, 
 
 M4 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 i' 
 
 H 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 M 
 
 pher, but yet giveth light to the greatest and the lea«t in the 
 kingdom of heaven. It is as an atmosphere, full of wonders 
 to the spiritual chemist, but feeding alike the life of the 
 wise and of the unwise. Its alleluiahs of the Cherubim 
 and Seraphim ; its hosannas, the hosannas in which babes 
 and sucklings perfect and echo back the praise. We think 
 with Robert Hall, that its simplicity is its maje&ty. All 
 this we should not dare to say of a mere human composi- 
 tion. But the Prayer-Book is not a human composition ; 
 mneteen-twentieths of its language are taken, line by line, 
 and word for word, from that volume which has the mys- 
 terious power to chain the understanding of a patriarch, and 
 to charm the heart of a child. A Gabriel may desire to 
 look into its pages ; a Timothy may lisp them at his mo- 
 ther's knee. 
 
 For the want of teaching in childhood, I was in after- 
 life, entirely at a loss when to stand, or when to sit, or 
 when to kneel, or where to " find the places." The same 
 is the general complaint of Presbyterians, and is the reason 
 in most cases, w^hy they find the service not only uncdi- 
 fy-ing, but em'barrasing and painful, and why they leave 
 the sanctuary with a growing prejudice against our Liturgy. 
 Jeing myself seldom able to catch the responses of the 
 people, as they were so often mouthed and mumbled, I had 
 half the time unfinished sentences to dwell upon, more 
 likely to distract attention, than to fix devotion. And as 
 the Pres])ytr!rian goes to an Episcopal Church from the 
 same motive with which he fiequents his own, not so much 
 to be heard in the outpourings of his own heart, as to hear 
 the declamation of the p-eacher— of course, the whole ser- 
 vice before tne sermon is unedifying and irksome. I was 
 myself nearly thirty years of age before I could find the 
 Psalms tor the d£>y, or tne Epistle and Gospel, or codd lay 
 
 M 
 
LITUBQI£fl. 
 
 115 
 
 ■t 
 
 1 
 ■fit 
 
 'i 
 
 my finger on the Te Deum, the Gloria in Excelsis, or the 
 
 Litany. 
 
 Notwithstanding that I heard the Episcopal service un- 
 der these disadvantages, I could not but notice, that the 
 oftener I frequented itfthe more it gained upon my heart, 
 I could see nothing irreverent, to offend the eye. I could 
 hear nothing, beneath the dignity of worship, to offend the 
 ear. I heard large portions of Scripture, and the low con- 
 cert of many voices, indicating that they were concerned 
 in what was going on, and that they felt they had an indi- 
 vidual part and right in the exalted service— that it was 
 not sectarian eloquence which they had come as dumb 
 Christians to hear, nor a mass-house pageant which they 
 had come as speechless spectators to see. 
 
 As a Presbyterian, I felt certainly a little flattered by a 
 tradition— I cannot now remember where I met vvith it— 
 that, at the Reformation, the Presbyterians occupied so en- 
 tirely every square inch witli their serried hosts, that there 
 was, in fact, not room to kneol, and that thence had arisen 
 the custom of standing in prayer. But now that oui* ranks 
 were not so crowded, I fell back into the instinctive feel- 
 ing, that a sinner's place, before the Malcer of the universe, 
 is on his knees. 
 
 If kneeling be an aid to devotion in the closet, why may 
 not its aid be permitted in the sanctuary i If kneeling be 
 proper in our families, why is it not desirable where meet 
 the visible and invisible ot the one family in earth and 
 heaven J If kneeling be thought indicative of life in the 
 social meeting, why should it be abolished in the great 
 congiegation ? The Saviour of the world lay low on the 
 chili earth in prayer ; why should I not bend the knee 
 upon the cusliioned floor 1 Such an one as Paul knelt on the 
 bare ground at the water-side ; why should not such an 
 
 I 
 
m 
 
 ii< 
 
 I 
 
 bj ; 
 
 I 
 
 ^ ^ % ■ 
 
 m 
 
 liii 
 
 116 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 one as I kneel down within the warm and pleasant sanctu- 
 ary 1 Even Solomon in his glory " arose from before the 
 altar of the Lord, from kneeling on his knees;" why 
 should not I with all my miseries, fall down as low as he 1 
 I have seen this instinct frequently betray itself in a 
 Presbyterian congregation. In time of a revival, when 
 there is indication certainly of deep impressions of the 
 Divine presence ; when the creature sinks into nothingness 
 before Him ; I have seen (and the same has been seen in 
 a thousand places) the preacher kneeling in the pulpit ; 
 the suppliant kneeling in the pew ; the " anxious seat" 
 thronged with kneeling companies in presence of a kneel- 
 ing minister ; crowded prayer-meetings morning and night, 
 where all could find " room to kneel ;" and the most palpable 
 proof, in vast assemblies prostrate on the floor, that hneel- 
 ing or prostration is the posture indicated by the earnest 
 mind in the presence of its God. Heathens, Mahomedans, 
 Papists, Jews, all stand around Him while they praise, 
 and fall down before Him while they pray. Presbyterians 
 
 and they alone in earth or heaven— sit down to praise, 
 
 sit down to pray! Long will they search in the Scriptures for 
 a license to this strange familiarity and— let me say the word 
 —this positive indecency. They will there find, perhaps 
 some standing, many they will find kneeling, others they will 
 find prostrate in the dust, but none will they find sitting. 
 And so indissolubly is the true idea of worship at-sociated 
 with prostration, that Presbyterian poetry swells above 
 Presbyterian usage, — 
 
 " Satan trembles when he sees, 
 The weakest saint upon his knees." 
 
 St. John has lifted the veil from the upper sanctuary and 
 shows us four and twenty elders falling down before Him, 
 and the universe of angels casting their wings into the dust 
 
LITURGtES. 
 
 iir 
 
 
 k% 
 
 
 and falling on their face around Him, as they present the 
 vials with the prayer of the saints, or else /ill the high vault 
 above thorn with the song that is always new. How 
 ainazinjj the descent from ..uch a scene into the midst of 
 a company of mortals, separated at a distance measureless 
 and well-ni^'h returnless from the favor and patience of 
 God, against whom heaven's gates were once hopelessly 
 shut ; who are suspended by a hair over everlasting burn 
 ings, and who see the Son of God himself upon his knees 
 in awful vigils for their safety, yet cooly sitting down when 
 they praise, sitting or loding on their seats when they pray ! 
 I have a thought —an ehxjiiar, an sUeam—kt me say, I mean 
 by it no uncharitable judgment of my fellow-creatures, I 
 infer it miinly from the sarturian principi • on my own 
 mind— it is this : that the system is incapable .->/' prvducing 
 a degree of reverence which rnaij proper/]/ be said to amount 
 to WORSHIP. The whole theory of fiee-thinking reducing 
 everlasting and boundless truths within the span of human 
 reason, and in its extreme results refusing to acknowledge 
 the Inlinite because Hi is infinite, the unsearchable, because 
 He is unsearchable, God because He is God— the whole 
 theory, rnd the silent influence of the system are injurious 
 and in the end fatal :o all reverence, and make the awful 
 worship, which the Church Catholic has ever retained, a 
 simple impossibility. That worship based on conceptions of 
 the Divine nature, now almost lost among sectarians, is to be 
 reached only from some ditferent starting point. I feel cer- 
 tain that under the influences of that system, I never could 
 have risen to that awe with which I am now taught to fall 
 before Him, and from which, as from some " scale whose 
 lowest round is planted on the skies," I behold an immeasur- 
 able expanse between the creature and the Creator, which 
 ii but theop'jning of another and another, and yet another. 
 
 I 
 
1>.,t 
 
 118 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 which lie in interminable series between the frail child of dust 
 and Him from whose hand he came. It may be doubted 
 whether God, as conceived of under a sectarian, free-think- 
 ing system, and so irreverently regarded and approached, 
 be not a creation rather than the Creator of the creature. 
 God has been known many an age to the Church ; yet late 
 in the nineteenth century, as if the world still slept, we 
 see a w'riter in the columns of the New York Observer in- 
 troducing aw argu7nent{!) advocating the ^jropriety of AnecZ- 
 ing befoje Him, with this extraordinar)'- language : '< The 
 question as to the proper and appropriate posture to be as- 
 sumed in the solemn duty of prayer, is one that has begun 
 to awaken the attention of the Christian public.^^ 
 
 For many years, while yet a Presbyterian, I often 
 attended Episcopal worship on the week day festivals, and 
 often even on the Sunday have I gone " by night," when 
 the labors of a weary day were over ; and it was with me, 
 as it has been with many, that the oftencr I went, the 
 oftoner I was compelled to go, where '' honor and majesty 
 were before Him, and strength and beauty were in His 
 sanctuary." As yet I had not the remotest expectation of 
 ever bemg numbered among " the children of the elect 
 lady." Only I envied the sparrow her house, and the 
 swallow her nest, and although I might not stay there my- 
 self, I did lay my young at thine altars, Lord, my King, 
 and my God ! But back to the miserable, empty, ofl-hand 
 worshipof my sect, like St. Paul to the body, I was obliged 
 to ^o, less fitted to endure its husks and its inanity than 1 
 was before. Say, is it possible for the most gifted mind 
 extempore, in the presence of a promiscuous assembly to hit 
 upon thought and language adequate to all the high pur- 
 jxjses of worship 1 If I ask the question, it is because all 
 my recollections would compel me to doubt. 
 
 » -Si 
 
 I 
 
LITURGIES. 
 
 119 
 
 fm 
 
 As I know that, in better days in the Presbyterian 
 Church of Scotland, two books of public prayer were at 
 different times set forth, so I have observed that in the heart 
 of that Church, there is at this moment, a throbbing for 
 their re-adoption. I know it from their own lips, that 
 many of the Presbyterian clergy in this country admit, 
 feel and, among themselves, deplore the vacuum which the 
 loss of a Liturgy has left, and would gladly restore a writ- 
 ten form, if the downward tendencies of the system and of 
 the times allovired ; a form not indeed to be invariably 
 binding, this were incompatible with their ideas of liberty 
 and gifts and inspiration : but to be of discretionary use, 
 and of occasional obligation. But as experience has shown 
 that the very reading of the Scriptures, when left to the 
 discretion of the minister, has fallen into sad neglect, as has 
 been proven by historv? that Liturgies, when entrusted to 
 the same discretion, tall into disuse, and even into oblivion. 
 
 But having heard these unavailing regrets for the lost 
 forms of worship, from some of the most distinguished of 
 ray former brethren, and having heard the like sentiments 
 falling, even at Princeton, from " those that sit in Moses's 
 seat," it is not strange that gradually the suspicion grew 
 upon me, that, in this respect, also, namely, the great ends 
 and uses of all religious worship. Episcopacy had a most 
 enviable advantage. I was, too often for my peace and 
 comfort, disquieted and grieved by the so called devotions 
 to which I was compelled to listen ; their irreverent fami- 
 liarity ; their cold and wordy emptiness ; their forced 
 ejaculations ; their sluggish drawl; the thousand blemishes, 
 defects, redundancies, extravagancies of their off-hand hom- 
 age with which we were taught to approach a Being ia 
 whose sight the heavens are dark, and the angels chargeable 
 with folly. 
 
 fl 
 
li 
 
 Ml t 
 
 
 t 
 
 ! HH 
 
 120 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 But it is now so long since I was conversant with the 
 evils which it is desirable to forget, that I shall refresh my 
 memory by a method that will exempt me from all sus- 
 picion oi drawing on my own imagination. The Boston 
 Recorder has long been the organ of orthodoxy, in a com- 
 munity of great intellectual and moral elevation, and may 
 be supposed to be quite competent, from its a.nple furniture 
 of facts and from its own cultivated tastes, to express a 
 judgment in the premises. 1 he editor, whose language I 
 shall not materially alter, but shall be obliged in some 
 cases to abridge, puts forth the following as " some faults of 
 public pra.i/ers.'^ He does not notice, it will be observed, 
 the blemishes of social worship, where the brethren indis- 
 criminately try their " gifts.*' His remarks have exclusive 
 reference to the classic ground and higher dignities of the 
 pulpit and an educated ministry. 
 
 " Some of the faults of public prayers are the following : 
 
 1. Doctrinal prayers, or prayers designed to inculcate 
 certain doctrines, which are regarded by the speaker as es- 
 sential or important. Should a prayer be thus converted 
 into a sermon 1 
 
 2. Historical prayers, in which are comprised long nar- 
 ratives for the information of persons not acquainted with 
 the detail of the facts referred to. But is narrative the 
 business of prayer i 
 
 3. Hortatory prayers, intended to stir up the zeal of the 
 congregation, in regard to some particular subject or enter- 
 prise, which at the moment may be thought interesting. 
 
 4. Denunciatory prayers, designed to warn the audience 
 against certain errors or practices, to putdoAvn certain sen- 
 timents, or to awaken towards them indignant feelings, 
 being appeals to men, not addresses to God." Fire from 
 heaven is constantly invoked; temperance, abolition, ry* 
 
LITURGIES. 
 
 121 
 
 
 I 
 
 - « 
 
 rivals, missions, any thing will furnish fuel for the passion ; 
 and the lash of a ' local public opinion,* manufactured, per- 
 haps, in some miserable village, is mercilessly applied to 
 some penitent individual or class of individuals in prayer. 
 Innumerable instances tread one upon another in my me- 
 mory ; but it is needless to recite them. Now let the va- 
 riances, emulations, and strifes of Episcopalians be what 
 they may, we keep them out of our devotions ; hence, 
 when sectarians look on, expecting to see us the next mo- 
 ment separate in schism, ' we have an altar ' where Ktiife 
 cannot come ; we forget our ditferences at the throne uf 
 grace and prayer ; ' with one mouth ' still keeps us one. 
 
 *' 5. Personal prayer, which springs fj'om a desire to ad- 
 minister a secret rebuke, or to bestow commendation, some 
 individual being expressly in the mind of the person pray- 
 ing.'' How often have I heard the piaises of a dead 
 minister or deacon follow him, like the chanting of a 
 requiem, from the pulpit, proclaiming to the Alniighty the 
 dead man's title to canonization. How often liave I heard 
 a visiting clergyman eloquent in eulogiums upon the blush- 
 ing or unblushing pastor of a congregation, whose virtuts 
 and usefulness were represented to the Lord as reasons 
 why his invaluable life or health should be prolunged ! 
 How often have I heard the pastor himself ei;umerate the 
 merits of some elder or wealthy and generous individual 
 now dangerously ill ; and how often have I imagined that 
 the enumeration of the good qualities of some dying wo- 
 man I'eil upon her ears like the anointing of oil, and ac- 
 tually raised her up, or, if it failed in this result, had all 
 the virtue of an •' extreme uuttion" to soothe the pains of 
 her departure. Contrasted with all this, how grave, and 
 dignified, unexceptionable, and sufficient, are the varied 
 prayers of the Episcopal Liturgy for the sick, and the imprcs* 
 
m 
 
 Mil 
 
 11 ^ I 
 
 122 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 Kli 
 
 ;. ' I 
 
 sire service by which the dead are committed to the dust ; 
 for so the greatest tragedian of this age, when asked what 
 was the noblest composition in the English language, is 
 said to have replied, " the burial sertnce of the Church of 
 England.''^ But let our Reviewer proceed. 
 
 '' 6. Eloquent prayers, in which there is a display of a 
 brilliant fancy and of polished and elegant language, com- 
 pelling the hearer to say, ' what a fine prayer that was.' " 
 
 '■ 7. Familiar prayers, in which there is an evident ab- 
 sence of that sacred awe and reverence which should fill 
 the mind in every approach to God." This is a miserable 
 canker, but. strange to say, has been often interpreted as a 
 note of high spirituality, entitling the individual as the 
 phrase is, to '* draw very near." " What liberty," said 
 the man worshipping elder, "our pastor had in prrying 
 this morning." " Why yes," replied the Churchman, *^ I 
 rnus*- say I think he took very great liberties " 
 
 '' 8. SfCtarian prayers, indicating very clearly an at- 
 tachment to a particular sect among the multitude of Chris- 
 tian denominations." In contrast with this feature of pub- 
 lic prayer, which is capable of being made singularly of- 
 fensive, how chaste is the spirit of *.he Church's Liturgy, 
 which although it '' might have whereof to glory," yet 
 vaunteth not itself, but remembereth only in her prayers 
 " the holy Church throughout all the earth," and " all that 
 profess and call themselves Christians," and recjuireth of 
 her priests to bear all the tribes of Zion on their hearts be- 
 fore the Lord, as the Jewish high priest bore upon his 
 breast the names, in precious stones, of the twelve tribes of 
 Israel. 
 
 " 9. Lovg prayers, which weary and exhaust the 'spirit 
 of devotion.' " Whitfield is remembered to have said, 
 ^' Brother, you prayed me into a good llame, and you 
 
 little 
 
1^ 
 
 LITURGIKS. 
 
 123 
 
 
 prayed me out of it again." And we knov/ how quaint 
 has become the appellation, of '* the long prayer," or the 
 prayer before the sermon, in some portions of the country. 
 The Episcopal Liturgy is not, to one engaged in its wor- 
 ship, liable to this objection, although to a drmb spectator 
 it may be irksome. There is an animation and variety 
 about it; and there are intervals and rests provided, which 
 entirely preclude the fatigue incident to a long and con- 
 tinuous prayer. 
 
 Here endelh the editorial lesson. Ah me ! if these are 
 but " some of the faults," and such faults as these must be 
 endured in bright New England, and in her classic capital 
 and from an educated and accomplished ministry, what 
 must be the insufferable corruptions ol public worship 
 and of the very idea of Divine worship among the illiterate 
 and extravagant sects that swarm over the land. 
 
 As the catalogue mUonnec of the Eoston Recorder i.-; pro- 
 fessedly incomplete, we will tdke leave to continue it. 
 
 10. Self -laudatory prayers, heard chiefly from the agents 
 of societies, which enter regularly into the work of reci- 
 ting the merits of a particular society, or the s"lf-denying 
 labors of some devoted band of Sunday-school teachers, or 
 Tract-visitors, or Scripture-readers, or the noble sacrifices 
 about to be made by some embarking missionaries, or the 
 wonderful successes of some particular branch of opera- 
 tions in which it is understood the speaker has borne a 
 conspicuous Y^x\.—qnorum magna pars fui. 
 
 " Apclall.iii turn, e^say to paint 
 The rival merits of tln'ir sai it ; 
 — Vor. 1)1' it known, 
 That their saint's hnnour is tht-ir own." 
 
 11. Un-English prayers, in which uncouthness of ex- 
 pression, and carelessness of composition, offend the ear, 
 and unfit the mind for worship. 
 
I I': 
 
 124 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 I. 
 
 I'm 
 
 I 
 
 s;j 
 
 12. 5 W< prayers, abridged and hurried , to make room 
 for the sermon. 
 
 13. Biu/iderivg prayers, in which the recalling of words, 
 and tho remodelling of half-finished sentences and embar- 
 rassed pauses, constantly occur, so painful to the wor- 
 shipper, and so fatal to devotion, 
 
 14. Vs/buseov wordy prayers, remarkable for the quan- 
 tity of woj'ds and the paucity and meagreness of devotional 
 ideas. 
 
 1.3. Eccentric prayers, tainted with the sometimes in- 
 tolerable eccentricities of the individual who happens to 
 make them. 
 
 IG. Lfti/oryicing Y)niycrs\ for 1 have hoard the remark 
 from persons who have been half their lifetime attendants 
 on extemporaneous worship, that tney never heaid, in a 
 Calvinistic congregation, a prayer for the forgiveness of 
 their enemies, 
 
 17. Defe.ctice prayers, which not only exclude some par- 
 ticular petitions, but which omit some essential element of 
 devotion, such as the confession of sin, the act of faith, the 
 offering of thanks, the oblation of alm^;, the recognition of 
 the Holy Trinity, even the mention of the name of Jesus. 
 It is impossible, under the most urgent circumstances, that 
 all the elements of proper worship, can be combined by 
 an impromptu dash of the most gifted mind, hurrying oft 
 to the one great thing — the sermon. 
 
 18. Cornmort pldcc prayers, repeating, till they loose all 
 meaning, the same trite and tiresome thoughts in certain 
 worn -out phrases and matter of-course quotations; that 
 '' we deserve to be made as miserable as we have made 
 ourselves sinful ; " that " others were as good by nature 
 and better by practice than ourselves;" that '-sinners 
 
LITURGIES. 
 
 125 
 
 u 
 
 may be convicted and converted ; " that " multitudes may 
 be heard inquiring the way to Zion, with their faces 
 thitherward," that "Z!ion may lengthen her cords and 
 strengthen her stakes ; " and that, finally, the Lord would 
 bless all lor whom we are in duty bound to pray." 
 
 19. Intellectual prayGTs, by which the speaker seldom 
 fails to intimate that he is versed in all the metaphysical 
 logomachies and miserable subtleties of the hour. I re- 
 collect, that in presence of perhaps as large a congregation 
 as ever assembled in New York, a Presbyterian minister, 
 in his prayer, first entered fully into the nature of the 
 ability which he would not ask the Lord to grant the sin- 
 ners then present, and which it was alleged they possessed 
 sufficiently already ; and that he then defined, with logical 
 precision, the exact thing which he had it in his own mind 
 that the Lord should grant. 
 
 20. Theatrical prayers, accompanied by painful ges- 
 tures and grimaces, the latter resulting perhaps from the 
 (unscriptural) custom of shutting the eyes, and ot making 
 at the same time a mental eflfort, under the unpleasant con- 
 sciousness that the people are looking a'; the speaker. 
 
 21. 2?om6a.s^«c nrayers, which approach the Majesty of 
 Heaven with a solemn grandiloquence, familiar to an 
 oriental court. 
 
 22. Declamatory prayers, where the voice becomes ex- 
 cited to a fatiguing pitch, and often strung to a complete 
 falsetto. 
 
 23. Objurgatory prayers, in which the pastor imputes? 
 in an offensive manner, before the Lord, the low condition 
 of his parish, and the departure and absence of the Spirit, 
 and the cessation of conversions, to the unbelief and other 
 sins of the people. 
 
Lr 
 
 126 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 24. Inaccurate prayers— inaccurate in facts, quotations, 
 reasonings and the like. A prayer was once made in my 
 own congregation, giving the intelligence, that, " Thou 
 hast taught us in thy holy word, man wants but little here 
 below, nor wants that little long." I have shown, in 
 another place, that the ablest divine may make a mistake 
 of years in acquainting the Almighty with the ago of a 
 young clergyman. 
 
 25. Presumptuous prayers, petitioning for favors that it 
 would be miraculous to grant, or thanking the Lord ior 
 the ascertained conversion of such and such, or for the 
 undoubted translation cf some deceased individual into His 
 presence in Heaven, or for mercies that imply the prying 
 into <' those things that are not convenient." 
 
 26. PuUtical prayers, that, even if they do not give 
 offence to a party, yet are certain to put the pohtician on 
 the qui vive to discover tiic political opinions of the minister. 
 
 A little redection must make it obvious, that these evils 
 are unavoidable, under the system by which they are 
 generated. If a minister is to pray ex tempore— much 
 more, if lie is to pray ab imo pectore—unle^s he be en- 
 dowed with rare discretion, to distinguish the promptings 
 of passion and private feeling from the movings of a better 
 spirit, his prayers must inevitably take color fiom the 
 objects ajid iniluenccs around him. In times of agitation 
 and violence, he cannot touch them without being drawn un- 
 duly, albeit, imperceptibly, after them: in times of spiritual 
 declension and dearth, his prayers will move in the same 
 sluggish current: in times of fanaticism and inflated ztal, 
 his prayers must savor of the reigning extravagance : in 
 times of heresy and of dangerous and doubtful disputations, 
 his prayers will lie in the current of these subtleties and 
 
 
LITUKGIES. 
 
 127 
 
 i 
 
 li 
 
 novelties, or else be painfully directed against them : in 
 times of religious striie or of political convulsion, hia 
 prayers will be still infected by the prevailing leaven of 
 uncharitableness and party discord ; and party discord is 
 never consummated, until it has become identified with 
 ** conscience," and, in another cant phrase, has " been 
 made a subject of prayer." It is not in human nature to 
 fiscape this snare. I care not how dignified the pulpit, or 
 how good the man, the prayer will be graduated, as a 
 rising or falling thermometer, to the religious opinions 
 and the religious/eryor of the times. The great regulator 
 is wanting — a standing liturgy — to bind the clergyman, 
 and to protect the devotions of the people, to day, from 
 the strange tire that a heated imagination would bring to 
 the altar, and to-morrow, from the cold nothings which 
 would be offered up upon it. The Presbyterian, accus- 
 tomed to the flaying process of such sluggish, jejune, 
 drowsy prayers, as may be heard at any time, but especially 
 in a country parish, or on a summer's afternoon, can 
 hardly conceive with what amazing force the contract 
 strikes an Episcopalian ear, educated to the true harmonies 
 of devotion. It was Wordsworth or Coleridge, I believe, 
 who remarked, that he never so felt the sublimity and 
 sweetness of the Church's liturgy, as, on returning to his 
 parish Church, from a sojourn in a country place in Scot- 
 land, where he had been doomed to listen one or two Sun- 
 days to the extemporaneous effusions of a Scotlish minister. 
 
 Ft is certainly worthy ut remark, that not one of the 
 more than twenty faults that have been enumerated, nor 
 of as many more that might be named, can be alleged 
 against the Episcopal Liturgy. Yet, wilhin its compass, 
 not a perleotion of the Divine Being, but is becomingiy 
 adored ; not a doctrine of the Divine word, but is pro- 
 
 I 
 
■ J I' 
 
 I I 
 
 128 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 u 
 
 i 
 
 y ■ 
 
 > -i 
 
 
 ! if 
 
 
 claimed upon the housetops; not a bounty of Divine 
 
 Providence but is thankfully rehearsed ; not a want of 
 
 human nature but is affectingly spread out ; not a relation 
 
 m life, but has its turn to be considered ; not a class or 
 
 condition of society but is charitably remembered; not a 
 
 traveller in the wilderness, not a voyager upon the wave, 
 
 not a widow in her grief, not an orphan on her knee, not 
 
 an infant at the breast, not a prisoner or captive in his cell 
 
 is forgotten; all who are in any trouble, sorrow, need, 
 
 sickness or other adversity, are cared for and prayed for • 
 
 the absent and the distant, with all the Church visible, are' 
 
 remembered ; the cherished dead and the Church invisible 
 
 are not forgotten ; and angels, and archangels, and all the 
 
 company of Heaven are recognized and are admitted to the 
 
 worship. 
 
 On entering the sanctuary, after doinff silent reverence 
 before the symbol of the Divine Presence, we hear, first 
 ofall, some sentences from God's holy Word, inviting us 
 to prayer. The pastor then, not lifted high above us, "but 
 standing as a sinner in our midst, exhorts us earnestly to 
 join in the devotions. Then follows the deep-toned confession 
 of our sins, with the consoling absolution of the penitent, 
 which joyful message of forgiveness is immediately followed 
 by the voices of all present uttering that sweet prayer of 
 children taken back to lavor, " Our Faiher who art in Hea- 
 ven." Then follow the lauds and praises of the people, 
 not in the words of human rhymsters, but in the words 
 taat inspired the harp of David, and even in the manner in 
 which, on the banks of the Red Sea, in the temple at a 
 later day, and ir. the synagogue until this hour, the people 
 and the priests, or the people alone, answered and still 
 answer one another, " by course." Then follow the 
 Psalms, in such portions, that those delightful compositiong 
 
 M 
 
 
 me*- 
 
LITURGIES. 
 
 129 
 
 are gone entirely through, once a month. We then listen 
 to a well selected chapter from Moses and the Prophets» 
 which is followed by the noble Te Deum, which has earn- 
 ed the admiration, and swelled the devotions of the Church 
 lor more than a thousand years, or the rich Benedicite.— 
 When this is done, we hear a lesson from the New Testa- 
 ment, corresponding in its drift, with the one chosen from 
 the old. We then repeat our simple faith, as the Apostle's 
 creed has transmitted it from the earliest ages. After which 
 we join in the prayers, thanksgivings, and litanies of the oc- 
 casion. Then, after a psalm and special preparatory act 
 of invocation, we listen next upon our knees, to the Com- 
 mandments, each of which we accompany with prayer for 
 grace to " incline our hearts to keep this law." We then 
 sit down and hear a part of some Epistle in which an in- 
 spired Apostle inculcates some of the precepts of the 
 Christian life, and immediately afterward, in the attitude 
 ofservants standing to hear their Lord, M'e stand (for the 
 same reason that we bow at the name of Jesus,) and listen 
 to a portion of the holy Gospel, in whjjh the Saviour him- 
 self speaks personally, and is always prominent. The 
 (iospel and Epistle both are chosen in harmony with 
 the lessons from the Scriptures, and all have bearing gene- 
 rally on some high doctrine or important precept of revela- 
 tion, made prominent by the arrangements of the Church 
 for the particular day. '' In all which," we ask, with the 
 great Hooker, " what is there which the wit of man can 
 improve V 
 
 After such devotions, it is not to be wondered at, that 
 the preacher does not lapse into " endless genealogies," and 
 ''the oppositions of science, falsely so-called," or into 
 Gnostic and Neologic vagaries, and the subtleties of intel- 
 lectual learning, or into the contentions ot conflicting schools 
 
'I'll 'I I 
 
 130 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 M 
 
 and the heretical and startling novelties of some last 
 author he has read. Nor is it strange, that the laity, under 
 such tuition, become familiar with the notes of the ancient 
 faith, as th» y become inspired with the breathnigs of the 
 ancient worshij), and that, unlike the Athenian sects around 
 them " who spend their time in nothing else, but either to 
 tell ortohear some new thing," they are little swayed by the 
 dogmas and " private interpretations of the preacher," and 
 m all matters ot religion, look upon any thing " new" with 
 distrust, and deprecate ♦he fond conceit of "development" 
 in Christianity, whether it hatch its wretched brood in New 
 E.igland or in Rome. They may not become exact theo- 
 logians under the teachings of the ancient creeds and Litur-> 
 gies; but, with this milk from their mother's breasts, they 
 imbibe a certain instinct to know food from poison, and quod 
 novum, hoc non verum, which reduced to a simile of daily 
 life, is simply this, that " no man, having drunk old wine, 
 straightway desireth new; for he saith, the old is better." 
 
 With a growing feeling, which at that time I considered 
 Catholic, although it was, in fact, the very opposite, I al- 
 lowed myself, on several occasions, to receive, while yet a 
 Presbyterian clergyman, the Lord's Supper in the Episco- 
 pal Chu:ch, both because I would not turn my back upon a 
 table that the Lord had spread, and also because the form 
 of its administration in that Church commended itself so 
 entirely to my understanding and my heart. A Presby-^ 
 terian Communion, borrowing yet another unsightly fea- 
 ture from Congregationalism, is now generally celebrated 
 in the afternoon, when the flesh is full, the mind weary, 
 the eye heavy, arvd the heart asleep. Bui, as it is now no 
 longer a Sacrament, it can be thrust out of its place in the 
 freshness of the morning, to make room for the preacher 
 and his sermon ! To this dull» drowsy service, dictated by 
 
 
 4 
 
LITURGIES. 
 
 131 
 
 a single mind, poorly qualified, at best, to raise me from 
 the thinjjs ot earth, and presenting to my longing lips a hard 
 and chilling stone, for warm, nutritious bread, I came, in 
 the accidental way just mentioned, to prefer a celebration, 
 more commensurate with the dignity, and more congenial 
 with the sweetness of so august a Sacrament. TheEpis-. 
 copal Church forbids its depending upon one man whether 
 a whole congregation shall be edified or not, whether a 
 glorious Sacrament shall be marred or not, whether the 
 atonement shall ultimately be denied or not, and compels 
 the minister to speak in " the words of sound doctrine,"— 
 the words by which the martyrs passed away to their re- 
 ward, and sainted millions in the ages gone by, grew so 
 eminently ripe for Heaven. 
 
 The Communion office of the Episcopal Church is the. 
 resplendent gem in the girdle of devotions with which she 
 belts the days of her holy year, and the hours of her holy 
 days. In the immediate presence of Her Master, showing 
 His hands and His feet, she rises above herself, in the mag- 
 nitude of her conceptions, and the fervour of her strains.— 
 No <' thoughts" will suit her, but those that *' breathe " in 
 the bosoms of cherubim and seraphim ; no " words" will 
 answer her, but such as '' burn" with the martyrs as they 
 pass through the fires to God, Therefore, " with angels, 
 and archangels, and with all the company of Heaven," she 
 pours forth the stirring strains of tho Tersanctus, and 
 the boundless chorus of Gloria int Excelsis Deo. Per- 
 haps the Presbyterians who knows less of the Prayer-Book 
 than does the Papist of the Bible, will be surprised to hear 
 that these seraphic hymns, and other portions of our Eu- 
 charistic service, can be distinctly traced to the very days, 
 of the Apostles. Some hymns, some prayers the Apostles 
 must have used ; it is not likely that the early Church lost 
 
 I 
 
132 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 m 
 
 II! t 
 i ! 
 
 them all ; the first Fathers of the Church tell us that these 
 were some of them ; at the same time they have a sublimity 
 and sweetness that no human pen or voice can resemble. 
 "What then js the ^inference, but that ours is the Church, 
 instinctively preserved, of the Holy Apostles, and of their 
 glorious companions 1 But the rapt spirit of the Commu- 
 nion service, the Presbyterian can never know ; because 
 to know it, he must enter into it, and taste and feel that it 
 is his, as he falls down with an innumerable company, of 
 every age, about the altar, — that great symbol of worship 
 and of sacrifice. 
 
 When I had nearly resolved on entering the Church, 1 
 WHS conscious of a fear that I might become some day im- 
 patient, under the restraints imposed upon my ^' liberty," 
 forgetting that one very intention of a Liturgy is, to pre- 
 vent men's taking liberties in the presence and the wor- 
 ship of their God. And, although my experience since, 
 causes me lobe astonished at such fears, finding, as I do, 
 that I am not straitened in the Liturgy — an ocean, so to 
 speak, without a shore — but am only straitened in my 
 own heart, and in the earth-bound ties that prevent my 
 launching on its free and untrammelled bosom ; yet in those 
 days I went so far as to inquire of Episcopalians, and par- 
 ticularly of a clergyman, in whose candor I knevv^ I might 
 confide, whether they did not sometimes in their hearts 
 covet a larger liberty. But Low Church differed not from 
 High, nor the oldest from the youngest, in the universal 
 answer, that the oftener they used their delightful forms, 
 the more all other services appeared defective and unedify- 
 ing. Such, I remember, was the testimony particularly 
 of a venerable and excellent clergyman, now fallen asleep, 
 with whose friendship I was highly favored, and whom the 
 ** denominations " around delighted to honor. 
 
LITURGIES. 
 
 133 
 
 Besides these assurances, I came to find, that I had had 
 already an experience on this point, to which I had not 
 been sufficiently attentive. I began to notice that prayers 
 which I had learned in infancy, especially the prayer 
 *' Our Father, ^^ came, morning and evening to my mind, 
 so that it could never be forgotten nor omitted. Also the 
 little verse, which my mother taught me — 
 
 " And now I lay me down to sleep," 
 was observed to be the instinctive good-night with which 
 I closed my eyes upon the world, and must continue so to 
 be, until I shall have closed them on the world forever • 
 and even in what is called extemporaneous prayer, I noticed, 
 that my private devotions had all fallen into set stereotype 
 expressions, and that only an extemporaneous effort, in its 
 very nature injurious to devotion,, would secure any tolera- 
 ble variety in the pulpit itself. 
 
 There was, too, another thing that struck my attention 
 with considerable force. In those revivals, which, ac- 
 cording to modern Presbyterian ideas, are the true ther- 
 mometer of all that is kindling or spiritual in religion, 
 when all remnants of forms are avowedly delivered to the 
 winds, and a species of spiritual carnival or anarchy pre- 
 vails, the effect of lepetition is found to be what Episcopa- 
 lians assert, and the very reverse of what Presbyterians at 
 other times suppose. Not only is there, in time of a re- 
 vival, a recognition of one of the great principles of 
 Episcopal worship, in the increased proportion of praise 
 and prayer, but the praises and the prayers, like the cries 
 of Him in the garden, are constantly " in the same words." 
 In those critical moments, when the interest is most intense, 
 you do not find the minister announcing a psalm or a 
 hymn never heard before, nor a judicious chorister select- 
 in? even a new tune, for the purpose of varying the effect, 
 
.1 
 
 134 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 H' 
 
 1 
 i 
 
 or of heightening the devotion ; but the hymn and the 
 tune that were sung with such effect at the last meeting, 
 must be sung again at this, and, though they have been 
 repeated for weeks and months, yet no voice nor heart is 
 weary. A new tune or hymn daily resorted to for 
 variety/, would kill a revival in one week! And, for years, 
 and throughout life, those same enlivening tunes and kind- 
 ling hymns are echoed in the social meeting, and re-echoed 
 at the lire-side, and in the darkest and coldest seasons are 
 invoked, to warm and cheer by their lively associations, 
 the Presbyterian, in his less happy '' frames." How hal- 
 lowed, then, thought I, by sacred associations with the 
 past, and with all past ages, and how delightful, by a 
 repetition that enables us to appreciate the force of words, 
 and how sweet as the very language in which our dear de- 
 parted ones, day after day, poured out their hearts to God, 
 and how adapted to recover a lost or deteriorated spirit of 
 devotion, not to say, too, a lost or overshadowed faith, 
 must be sv.ch a Liturgy as is found among the treasures of 
 the Episcopal Church. 
 
 As a " revival," therefore by throwing the Presbyterian 
 off his guard, and betraying the religious instincts of a 
 pious mind, is a species of agitation, in which truth comes 
 accidentally to the service, we appeal to it as an authority 
 which certain minds can comprehend. And as a revival 
 restores simplicity to the style of preaching, and is fatal to 
 that metaphysical haranguing which degrades the pulpit 
 to a level with the schools ; and as a revival rouses the 
 worshippers from their cushioned seats, and brings them to 
 their knees; and as a revival suggests also the public recep- 
 tion to the Communion, after a mode corresponding evi- 
 dently to the rite of Confirmation ; and as a revival elicits, 
 moreover, the earnest amenf and the audible response, from 
 
 iL 
 
LITURGIES. 
 
 135 
 
 and the 
 meeling, 
 ave been 
 r heart is 
 d to for 
 or years, 
 nd kind- 
 e-echoed 
 isons are 
 iciations, 
 low hal- 
 A'ith the 
 111, by a 
 f words, 
 dear de- 
 ; to God, 
 spirit of 
 3d faith, 
 isures of 
 
 byterian 
 
 cts of a 
 
 h comes 
 
 uthority 
 
 revival 
 
 fatal to 
 
 e pulpit 
 
 ises the 
 
 [hem to 
 
 : recep* 
 
 ng evi- 
 
 elicits, 
 
 ;e, from 
 
 worshippers who feel that they have a right to join in, as 
 well as hear the prayer, and, in fact, makes the privilege 
 of prayer the privilege of all, so that even the women, 
 who are commanded to keep silence, have their conventi- 
 cles, where the full heart, denied its utterance in a Liturgy, 
 may assert its liberty, and speak out its pent up emotions — 
 so a revival does to Episcopacy a still further homage, by 
 discovering the fact, that our most earnest and delightful 
 devotions and '' frames " are invaiiably identified with set 
 psalms, and hymns, and forms, of which the ear, the lips 
 and the heart grow weary never. Even the Princeton 
 Review, cool, dignified, dispassionate as it is, acknowledges 
 this prhiciple in sound, even if it do not adopt it entirely in 
 sense : " The lovers of old tunes will not be disappointed 
 ni finding such as Old Hundred, Wells, Saint Martin's, 
 Mear, kc.,— glorious old tunes, which our lather's sang, 
 and handed down to us ; time-honored, full of power, and 
 deep religious influence, and which we are bound to use, 
 and send down, unchanged and pure, to those that are to 
 come after us." To me it is a perfect riddle, that the man 
 who would thus gravely reason for mere sounds— vox et 
 preterea nt7u7— should not feel the strength of his own 
 argument, when dealing with such a Liturgy as the Episco- 
 pal. For we wish no better words than his, to express 
 the same thought with reference to the Liturgy: "The 
 lovers of old [hi/mns'] will not be disappointed in finding 
 such as [the rich Benedicite, the noble Te Devm, the 
 heavenli/ T r Rs.KtiCTV's , and the thrilling Gloria in Elcel- 
 sis Deo] glorious old [hi/mns,'] which our fathers sang, and 
 handed down to us ; time-honored, full of power and deep 
 religious influence, and which we are bound to use, and 
 send down, unchanged and pure, to those that are to come 
 after us." We cannot see how the Princeton Reviewer has 
 
IP 
 
 :i 
 
 f! ' ;' 
 
 i , 
 
 1 : 
 
 . 
 
 1 
 
 ,' 
 
 
 h--- 
 
 ; : j 
 
 1' ' 
 
 i 
 
 
 ' ,' 'i 
 
 1 , 
 
 , ■ . 
 
 
 
 136 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 i^iv 
 
 escaped, the a fortiori in this matter. We are quite sure he 
 m'ist think well of Liturgies. The rrinciple, whether it 
 apply to devotion or to tune, cannot be disputed. Could 
 Napoleon ic -appear, to head his legions in the iield, he would 
 invoke the inspiration of the stirring Marseillaise ; and could 
 the martyrs and virgins and confessors return, nay, should 
 the King Himself, in his, beauty, come down, what strain 
 more full of majesty and sweetness could we find for all 
 earth's voices to go forth and greet Him, than the heavenly 
 Te Deum \ 
 
 The revivalist finds all his machinery ineffectual, until 
 he has drilled the congregation into set phrases and a fixed 
 routine of hymns and spiritual songs ; and nothing so elec- 
 trifies a Missionary meeting, or achieves so successfully 
 the difficult task of sustaining a high wrought Missionary 
 excitement on a great occasion, as the hymn of Bishop 
 Heber — 
 
 " From Greenland's icy mountains." 
 Does the Presbyterian grow weary of the strain— 
 
 " Salvation, O. Salvation ! 
 
 The joyful sound proclaim, 
 Till Earth's remotest nation 
 
 Shall learn Messiah's -anie." 
 
 Or does repetition lessen the thrill with which he sino-s 
 
 " Waft, waft, ye winds, the story, 
 
 And you, ye waters, roll, 
 Till, like a sea of glorv, 
 
 It spreads from pole to pole ; 
 Till o'er our ransomed nature. 
 
 The Lamb, for sinners slain, 
 Red^-emer, King, Creator, 
 
 In bliss return to reign ! " 
 
 It was, then, a mistake to have supposed that i harl made 
 no experiment in the principle of Liturgical repetitions.— 
 I found in myself, and observed in others, that the highest 
 and happiest strains of devotion flowed always in the fixed 
 
LITURGIES. 
 
 137 
 
 channels of precomposed hymns — written and familiar 
 words. And the Presbyterian may rest assured, that what 
 he has already found in the Missionary hymn, or in the re- 
 vival chorus, such will he find in the anthems and prayers 
 of a Liturgy kept bright by the use of ages. 
 
 The worship of the ancient temple was Liturgical, am} 
 was made so at the express command of God. The wor* 
 ship of the synagogue was Liturgical, and Jesus took part ir. 
 the same. The greatest prophet that was born of woman, 
 prepared a form for his disciples. Jesus himself gave a 
 brief form to his followers, as John the Baptist had done 
 before him. We find the apostles and brethren, when at 
 prayer, " lifting up their voice to God with one accord." — 
 St. Paul alludes to the familiar " amen "" at Corinth, the 
 '• exhorting one another with the Psalms ; " and tells us of 
 irregularities and confusion created at first, by the popular 
 participation in religions worship. To this, and much 
 more in the New Testament, I could only oppose the in-- 
 structions of Paul to Timothy, that prayers should be made 
 " for kings, and for all that are in authority," " which does 
 not look," says l>r. Miller, <• as ifthe prayers of the Church 
 at Ephesus, were cut and dried ; " to which we viight 
 answer, that Timothy was now on his way to that Chur *h 
 to *■' cut and dry then:>,." with instructions to include, among 
 the subjects of prayer, ••' kings and all in authority," how- 
 ever vile or violent— -a suggestion, we may add carefully, 
 regarded in Liturgical worship, and too often unattended to 
 in extemporaneous devotions. Even in heaven we hear 
 the responsive worship— ten thousand times ten thousand 
 \'oices, like the noise of many waters — the living creatures 
 now u{>on their knees, and now standing before Him, the 
 elders, the saints, and the angels, answering with voice and 
 harp by turns,, and proving, either that such, in St. John'a 
 
138 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 ■ 
 
 W 
 
 
 day, was the Church's worship upon earth,which he trans- 
 ferred in a figure, to the heavenly choirs ; or that such is 
 the gorgeous ce)enaonial of the heavenly sanctuary, which 
 it is right and meet to imitate on earth. If the Princeton 
 Review has found an argument for the adoption of instru- 
 ments in the music of the Church, "from repeated intima- 
 tions of their use in celestial ivorshipr let the argument be 
 pressed, until it shall unseal the lips of the worshippers, 
 as they are unsealed in heaven. How strange to see in 
 heaven the bright throngs all silently seated, and a single 
 saint, standing and praying or praising for the rest ! How 
 strange to see a whole congregation upon earth all silently 
 seated, and one man praying for the rest ! We do not see 
 why the preacher should not relieve the people of the sing- 
 ing, as he relieves them of their .praying. As we demand 
 therefore, of the Papist, to restore the cup to the laity, so 
 we once more demand of the Presbyterian to restore the 
 privilege of lay worship, which the preachers have usurped, 
 and to give back to the people, with their ancient Baptism, 
 their ancient responsive service. 
 
 Is priestcraft a stealthy assumption, increase, and mono- 
 poly of rights and privileges ? Right stealthily has Calvinism 
 withdrawn Baptism from the infant; right stealthily (for 
 Knox and Calvin allowed a Liturgy at first) has it usurped 
 the prayers, and devotions of the laity. Here are two pri- 
 vileges, that Rome, in her haughtiest moods, never 
 ventured to deny her laity. But, will say the Presbvterian, 
 our laity do participate in the worship ; they have a whole 
 volume of psalms and hymns, and are permitted to sing. 
 Very well ; a printed form of psalms and hymns is, so far 
 a Liturgy, all full of prayers and praises, and is an argu- 
 ment tor the use of forms. But let us hear once more the 
 Princeton Review : -•' It would seem as though the minis- 
 
LITURGIES. 
 
 189 
 
 'ter considered the interval of singing to be devised merely 
 to give him an opportunity to attend to certain little mat- 
 ters of personal convenience. He starts the congregation 
 upon a hymn, like an instrument wound vj- to go for a 
 given time, and then proceeds to remove an extra v^-rapper 
 from his neck, or to find the next hymn, or to arrange his 
 notes and his collar, or, if it is the last tune, to undo his 
 overshoes." Then follows the extraordinary intelligence, — 
 " The singing is as much a part of the service ci' tiie house 
 of God, as the prayer, or the sermon.^' 
 
 It is quite true, as writers on this subject have said, that, 
 strictly speaking, there is no such thmg as Congregational 
 extern poianeous prayers. A prayer may be extemporane- 
 ous to its composer, as it issues from a pastor's lips; but the 
 instant his petitions and words are adopted by the people, 
 it becomes to them a dictated prayer or form. The Rev. 
 Mr. Barnes himself makes weekly prayers for a thousand 
 people; the people have no choice, any more than have 
 the Episcopalians whom he commiserates; they must use 
 Mr, Barnes' prayers, or else use none. The only question, 
 then, for his parishioners to settle, is whether they will 
 adore and pray in the off-hand words that Mr. Barnes 
 teacheth, or wnll worship m a Liturgy that has gathered to 
 itself, in one glorious focus, the wisdom and the piety of 
 all ages, or, as the dissenting divines already quotes' have 
 expressed it, which is, " next to the translation of the 
 Bible into the English language, the greatest effort of the 
 Reformation, holds the very first rank of uninspired com- 
 positions, and has no equal in any part of the universal 
 Church of God." 
 
 I have not dwelt upon the Scriptural argument, because 
 it is of the same nature with that by which we maintain 
 the Baptism of infants, and the observance of the Lord's 
 
'.■ym 
 
 % 
 
 ! f: 
 
 ibM 
 
 140 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHL'RCH. 
 
 day. It IS the argument of allusion-rightly understood 
 the most unanswerable of all others. The temple and the' 
 synagogue services were those in which both the Master 
 and the disciples worshipped, and we know that those ser- 
 vices were rigidly Liturgical. But we do not need the 
 argument from Scripture. The New Testament nowhere 
 commands us to build Churches; but, throwing ourselves 
 o)i the authority of the Old, which did, we find it to edifi- 
 cation to build them still. So the New Testament may 
 not command us to use Liturgies ; but, falling back on the 
 autliority of the Old, which did, we find it unto edification 
 to use them still. The New Testament could not prescribe 
 a form tor the Church, in all the varietiesof place and con- 
 <ii^aon under which the Church must exist ; it could only 
 settle a principle ; and the example of both the master and 
 the household established the great principal of Litui-iral 
 worship. Accordingly, we travel through the earth, and 
 wherever we find the Christian name, even among the' 
 Cnnstians discovered by Buchanan, in the remotest East 
 and circled, since apostolic limes, by the night of heathen^' 
 ism. we find the Liturgy; the Liturgy, be it remarked, 
 always purer than the Church itself, and ever presenting 
 the basis of a healthy reformation. We go back into an- 
 tiquity, and find the fathers alluding continually to this 
 teature of divine worship, and telling us of nearly fifty dif- 
 ferent Liturgies in use, in the difl^^erent Churches throughout 
 the world ; m fact, they have left no record of a single Church 
 in which public extemporaneous prayer was customar y ' 
 they even tell us of Liturgies ascribed to the apostles ; and 
 fathers that lived within a hundred years of the apostles 
 speak familiarly of the Liturgy, for example, of St. James at 
 Jerusalem, and others, of that of St. Mark, at Alexandria 
 And, throughout the world, there was, and there is, sostrik^ 
 
.ITURGIES. 
 
 141 
 
 ing a resemblance of phraseology, and especially of the 
 leading poir)ts and their arrangement and relative position 
 in these Liturgies, that they lead us necessarily to suppose 
 some common origin of high and primitive authority. And 
 it is to this authority, that we trace the loftiest stjains of the 
 present Episcopal Liturgy. Our " Therefore, with angels 
 and archangels, and with all the company of heaven," we 
 find in all the Churches of antiquity, however widely se- 
 parated, both east and west; and it had become known 
 even in Africa to Tertullian, within seventy years of the 
 apostles. So the Glor ia in excclsis Deo, we trace to the 
 very infancy ol Christianity, substantially as our Church 
 hath used it in England, twelve hundred years. And, in 
 like manner, the creeds in our Prayer-Book, we can find in 
 the writings of an Irenoeus, who was taught by Polycarp, 
 the friend of St. John, and of a Tertullian, in more distant 
 Africa, who, within seventy years of the apostles, informs 
 us, theit they had been " the rule of faith in the Church from 
 the beginning of the Gospel." No marvel that the i.iturgy 
 commands the admiration of the world. Wesley for the 
 Methodists, and Baxter for the Nonconformists, both 
 adopted it in part. A hundred years ago, the Lutherans of 
 Denmark adopted it, although in a mutilated form. In 1712, 
 Prussia and Hanover came very near adopting it, together 
 with the Episcopacy, in the lifetime of Archbishop Sharp. 
 Perhaps, if Satan had not then hindered the labors of some 
 learned and excellent men on the continent, that dread- 
 ful moral right which now blackens the face of Central 
 Europe had not fallen upon Germany, whence its deadly 
 shadows are reflected over the greater portion of the Pro- 
 testant world. 
 
 Why should I say more 1 I went to the Jewish syna- 
 gogue ; the synagogue qn which the great, unreal argu- 
 
142 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 : ■« 
 
 J 
 
 '"' i 
 
 5 
 
 ; ; Jl: 
 
 : 1 
 
 I 
 
 ment for Presbytery is built ; and there I found the Jews 
 amidst their loss of country, home and temple, still perpetu- 
 atmg: the Liturgical and responsive worship, as it rang of 
 old through " the carved work of the sanctuary." 
 
 As to the objection, that it may become tiresome, the ob- 
 jection comes always from those who have not tried it. 
 The users of Liturgies do not complain. It therefore falls 
 to the ground. To hear the daily Liturgy, is to hear the 
 voice of a friend that has supported us in sorrow, and has 
 counselled us in danger, and has guided us in perplexity, 
 and has raised us up from sickness, and has commended our 
 dying into the hands of the Redeemer, and has. with pious 
 hand, dealt tenderly with the dead, as it committed '< earth 
 to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." To repeat it, is like 
 repeating those endearing household words, of which the 
 ear and th.^ heart of true affection can never grow weary 
 We can no more grow weary of it, than we can'grow weary 
 of the air we breathe, or of the light we see, or of the bread 
 we eat. The eye is diseased that grows weary of the light • 
 the appetite is morbid that nauseates the sameness of its 
 breath, its water, and its bread. And the heart is not ri-ht, 
 and the spiritual taste is depraved, that would loathe this' 
 spiritual manna. Give back, thou man of Rome, the cup 
 to a thirsting flock ; give back, thou man of Geneva, the 
 Liturgy to a congregation of dumb worshippers ! Let not 
 the cup of blessing be drunk by proxy; let not the great 
 duly of worship by proxy be performed ! 
 
 Again, What is the great business of the sanctuary ? 
 Worship. - My house shall be called the house of prayer 
 tor all people." How readeth the sectarian gloss i '' My 
 house shall be called the house oi preaching'.^' In former 
 years I often went to my Church under feelings indescrib- 
 able, of oppression and grief, that the pulpit-the pulpit— 
 
LITURGIES. 
 
 143 
 
 * 
 
 was the great central object around which my congregation 
 were assembling, and that, could I have asked them, one 
 by .one, "Friend, why comest thou in hither," probably 
 without exception, the answer would have been, " To hear 
 the sermon." 0, I have longed a thousand times, to come 
 down from the lofty pulpit, and lie low among my fellow- 
 sinners at the throne of grace. But, the sermon— the ser- 
 mon — the sermon ; preach— preach — preach — was the 
 everlasting cry. Even if our little ones could tell at night 
 the text — the text — the text — it was enough. Is he a good 
 preacher ? Are his sermons eloquent — rousing — interesting 
 — intellectual 1 Never was it asked on earth, in the selec- 
 tion of a pastor, are his prayers elevating 1 are they edify- 
 ing 1 are they meet for the high purposes of woiship 1 No ! 
 The preacher— the preacher— is the living-symbol, the 
 Grand Lama of Preshyterianism, around which the people 
 gather. In attempting, fruitlessly, in my humble sphere, 
 to resist the overbearing tide, and to restore devotion and 
 the Scriptures to their place in the worship of God, I en- 
 countered only the rebukes of my " most intelligent and 
 pious" elders, not only for tempering my prayers with 
 <' the chaste fervour of the Episcopal Liturgy," but even 
 for closing; at least one prayer on Sunday, with the prayer 
 which the Lord has commanded us to " say ;" and this, al- 
 though I conformed to the important order of Cromw^elPs 
 High Parliament, in saying it at the end, rather than, as did 
 the Church of England, at the beginning of my prayer. 
 One of my elders happening to make this complaint to the 
 late Dr. Milnor, the venerable divine replied, " Well, really, 
 
 Mr. S., it seems to me, brother has very good authority 
 
 for usnig that prayer." But Mr. S. had come from a land 
 that is said some years ago to lave resembled heaver, 
 chiefly in its color, and that in its palmier days, made it a 
 
144 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 l 
 
 Statutable ofFence to eat mince pies at Christmas— to salute 
 one's wife upon the Sabl.ath-to pray at a Christian man's 
 tiuieral— or to say the Lord's prayer in meeting. 
 
 I entered, now and then, an Episcopal Church ; nothiiiij 
 shocked at the Low-Churchman's mitre, which there I 
 might have seen— the symbol of her apostolic order; nor 
 at the High-Churchman's cross> which 1 sometimes saw— 
 the symbol of her evangelical faith. If I entered with my 
 hat on my head, or the world on my lips, the altar, the 
 glorious altar, looked me reprovingly in the lace, and said, 
 "The place where thou standest is holy ground.*' The 
 priest came in, in the white linen which the Lord com- 
 manded among a people whose salvation he had at heart, 
 and kneeling low among his flock, joined with them, and 
 they with him, in the great business of the sanctuary. He 
 then went into the pulpit-not, as I had elsewhere seen, to 
 gaze around complacently upon an audience-but, remem- 
 bering that he was dust himself, to fall again, upon the 
 ground beneath him, into the dust before God. A sermon, 
 not elaborate nor ostentatious, but generally Scriptural and 
 simple, ended with prayer ; and the whole was followed 
 by a reverential silence, and a pause for secret recollection 
 and petition among the worshippers ; contrasting much 
 with the hurried exit I had seen from a Presbyterian meet- 
 ing, where overshoes, hats, canes, gloves, shawls, bonnets, 
 overcoats, were adjusted, and the worshippers, or rather, 
 the - hearers," were equipped for the street, before the 
 benediction had been pronounced. ^Vhat ideas Presby- 
 terians may have of the benediction, it is needless to inquire ; 
 but the confusion in the congregadon, while the minister 
 IS pronouncing it, savors somewhat of the opus operantis of 
 a 1 opish priest, the bendiction accomplishing its full mis- 
 sion, irrespectively of the faith or attention of the recipient. 
 
 M 
 
 I'':! 
 
 :i. : 
 
LITURGinS. 
 
 145 
 
 -tosaliitu 
 an niaii't; 
 
 1 nothiiiij 
 ] there J 
 cler ; nor 
 es saw — 
 with my 
 iltar, the 
 and said, 
 1/' The 
 >rd corn- 
 et heart, 
 lem, and 
 iry. He 
 seen, to 
 remem- 
 ipon the 
 sermon, 
 uial and 
 bllowed 
 )lleclidn 
 g much 
 n meet- 
 jonnets, 
 ■ rather, 
 me the 
 Presby- 
 nquire ; 
 ninister 
 antis of 
 ilJ mis- 
 cipient. 
 
 It must be evident to my readers, that the whole atmos- 
 phere of sectarianism had now beoomt; to me uncongenial 
 and unwholesome. To be losing my time and patience, 
 and to be injuring my devotional lasieand temper with the 
 *' gifts " of tiie brethren in a stupid prayer-meeting, when 
 I miffht be wafted towards heaven in the sublime strains 
 of a holy Liturgy ; to be Imjucnting a more public service, 
 where prayer was curtailed, and the holy Scripture almost 
 excluded, and a few short verses ol' rhyme sung only as an 
 interlude or rest, and all this done systematically, to make 
 room for a labored sermon, often containing unawares, in 
 flowers of reasoning and rhetoric, the ^eeds of neology and 
 inlidelity ; to be advocating a Baptism that had lost its in- 
 ward and spiritual part, and was limited severely in its ap- 
 plication to a certain number; to be upholding a more aw- 
 ful Sacrament degenerated into an external and unessential 
 rite, and administered in a mode, and received after a man- 
 ner comporting well with the new ideas of its virtue ; in 
 short to be fruitlessly contending with continual hinder- 
 ances to my devotion and salvation, in the uncongenial and 
 unseemly things remarked in the foregoing chapters, and, 
 as a minister to be perpetuating a system thus tried and 
 found wanting; when, by a single step, I m.ght, (by pay- 
 ing a price, it is true,) enter the larger liberty of a Church 
 which breathes, and believes, and prays, and praises as she 
 did when Irenaeus, Ignatius and Polycarp beheld her glory, 
 and, the noble army of her martyrs died for her, as the pure 
 spouse of Christ— all this had now become a burden too 
 great for me to bear. 
 
 Yet, if a Presbyterianism, such as my fancy had many a 
 time imagined, could at this moment have been presented to 
 my mind; that should have made the Scriptures conspicuous, 
 and worship the great business of the sanctuary ; that should 
 
 K 
 
 ,^ 
 

 ■I 
 3 
 
 •fl Ifi 
 
 t ; 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 have met the wants of a longing heart with a rich and no- 
 ble, and wholesome Liturgy, all radient with the gems of 
 truth and holiness ; that should have placed the Sacraments 
 under guard of an inviolable form, as being Christianity 
 itself in epitome ; a Presbyterianism, in a word, with mo- 
 derate attachment to old paths and landmarks ; my in- 
 quiries might here have ended, and I have continued m the 
 traditions of my childhood. Again and again did the ques- 
 ion recur, Why can we not have a Presbyterian Church! 
 after the model that so many wish for 1 And again and 
 again, did the disheartening answer fall like lead upon my 
 ears—" These gifts are not for you." They are incompa- 
 tible with the genius and destiny of the Presbyterian sys- 
 tem. Its destiny is, u/w^flys to lose-^never to recover. Its 
 genius is, never to believe, always to reason ! Certain ideas 
 ofreligious'' liberty," enough to make one tremble as he 
 reads the predictions of St. Peter and St. Jude ; a new theory 
 of religious "progress" and "development;" a certain 
 vanity°of " private judgment ; " a preference of hebdoma- 
 dal religion and spasmodic piety ; a singular opinion of 
 spiritual "gifts;" and a more singular fancy, that every 
 man praying to be led by the Spirit, is actually so led, in 
 his interpretations for himself— not only prevail coexten- 
 sively with the system, but are so essential to its very tex- 
 ture, that they must be forever fatal, not merely to all en- 
 deavours to revive Liturgical and Scriptural worship, but, 
 as we shall presently see, to all movements toward the re- 
 covery of the primitive faith. 
 
 I 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DOWNWARD TENDENCIES. 
 
 Having discovered the tendency of Presbyterianism to 
 throw off, naore and more, the decent garments, ritual 
 aiid sacramental, in which the Reformation had so dis- 
 guised it at first, as to secure for it, for a time, the respect, 
 even of the Church of England, I had to pursue the facts 
 in the case but a litttle further, to perceive that the system 
 was quite incapable of long preserving, or of perpetuating 
 unimpaired, the great principles of a Christian man's he-* 
 lief. There does appear to be a something ever preying 
 on the vitals of thesytem, producing everywhere the same 
 phenomena — the feverish irritation, succeeded by the long 
 and languid ague — the high excitement, and its consequent 
 collapse— the spasmodic life, and the succeeding torpor; or 
 to drop this figure, it ever and anon gives birth to revivals 
 and revolutions, to fresh schemes and schisms, to strange 
 fancies and fanaticism, to new experiments, new sects, 
 new theories, new doctrines ; until the old landmarks which 
 the lathers set up are swept away, the reign of intellectual 
 anarchy sets in, and the developments go on to infidelity — 
 at first, in its more insidious pha8es-™.and, afterwards, in 
 its stouter and more hideous forms. 
 
 Dijpartures from unity, I shall consider hereafter, I api 
 to notice, now, departures from the faith. I shall be con- 
 taut to stand for the present, by those definitions of tbo 
 faith, which the Wittemburg, Geneva, Westminster, Auga^ 
 
 I 
 
I 
 
 H ''^' 
 
 
 148 
 
 LOOKING rOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 burg, Dort and Paris Presbyterians adopted at the Refor- 
 mation. The proposition, then, is this: — That Presbyte- 
 rianism is not conservative of things spiritual, nnore than it 
 is careful for things ritual ; and that, consequently, it could 
 never have been intended to be the Lord's almoner of grace 
 to men, or the steward of His mysteries to the household 
 of faith. 
 
 In theory, Presbyterianism promises much for the 
 Church's purity. The cords are dravi^n tight. The tests 
 are severe. The elect are numbered. The tares are sepa- 
 rated from the M'heat, before the harvest. The good fishes 
 are severed from the bad, v^'hile the net is yet in the deep. 
 The door is shut against the foolish virgins, before the 
 ■ bridegroom has come : even infants, in vast numbers, are 
 frowned away from the healing of its waters, and the por- 
 ches of Christ's Bethesda are converted into the dungeons 
 of man's Bethhoron, the house of mercy into ihe house of 
 judgment. There is an unceasing cutting off of unsound 
 members, and of unsound bodies, and a still more distress- 
 ing going off of sect after sect, with the view of setting up 
 a sounder faith and a purer worship. 
 
 With this rigor of discipline, was at first conjoined a se- 
 verity of creeds, too well defined, one might have supposed, 
 to be evaded ; too solemnly subscribed, one might have 
 thought, to be, by and by, denied ; too evangelical, their 
 abettors might have reasoned, to be ever undermined. 
 Every avenue to error was forseen and foreclosed. What 
 then are we to think 1 We find no fault with the system 
 on the score of consistency ; "elect angels," " elect in- 
 /an^A," "perseverance in grace," or the personal infalli- 
 bility in doctrine, and indefectibilily in grace, of each cf 
 the elect, and the " foreordination of all the non-elect to 
 everlasting death,"— so repeatedly avowed in the Presby- 
 
DOWNWARD TENDENCIES. 
 
 149 
 
 Refor- 
 
 esbyte- 
 J than it 
 it could 
 of grace 
 iiisehold 
 
 for the 
 he tests 
 re sepa- 
 3d fishes 
 he deep, 
 'fore the 
 lers, are 
 the por- 
 lungeons 
 house of 
 unsound 
 distress- 
 etting up 
 
 ned a se- 
 upposed, 
 ij:ht have 
 ;a], their 
 erniined. 
 I. What 
 le system 
 elect in- 
 al infalli- 
 f each cf 
 ii-elect to 
 i Presby- 
 
 terian Confession — are a bold but manly aiid consistent 
 carrying out of the great first error, the -rrpioroi' xl/evdog, 
 lying behind the whole theory, that "God from all 
 eternity, hath, foi his own glory, by the mere good plea- 
 sure of his will, fore-ordained ivhatsoever c^;mes to pass." 
 But it proves too much — more than the common sense of 
 mankind, and the common sympathies of humanity, and 
 the common and obvious first truths of Christianity, allow 
 us for one moment to believe. Hence we set the system 
 dovt^n, as tlie effort of a daring and gigantic spirit, seeking 
 new ground, instead of falling back upon the old, whereon 
 to raise a barrier against Popery. The terriffic features 
 of Calvinism, as they stand out from the canvass, under 
 the fearless pencils of Zuinglius, and Peler Martyr, and 
 Hopkins, and Emmons, that '• God is alike the Creator 
 of evil and of good, and i^ by the same right, the author 
 equally of sin and of holiness," are but the legitimate off- 
 spring of the Genevan stock. The " Gethsemane plan of 
 salvation," recently advocated by divines in Philadelphia, 
 computing the number of the elect with such commercial 
 accuracy, that, if another sou! had been intended to be 
 saved, our adorable Lord would have been condemned to 
 bear another pang, and to shod another drop of his most" 
 precious blood, is but another child of the same fruitful 
 mother. So the lechictlo ad ahsurdum, or, to speak our 
 mind freely, the reduction to inevitable blasphemy, is fatal 
 to the pretensions of the system. If it be true, that " God, 
 from all eternity, hath, lor his own glory, fore-ordained 
 whatsoever comes to pass ; " if it be true, that, for Adam's 
 sin, all mankind are born, *' under God's wrath and curse, 
 and are made liable to most grievous torments, in soul and 
 body, without intermission, in hell fire, for ever," as the 
 larger catechism teaches, (Ques. 27, 28, 29,) then is it 
 
150 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH, 
 
 i 
 
 :li. 
 
 ilV 
 
 I 
 
 reasonably true, as the same iUith asserts, that certain tw* 
 fants are " elect," and it is truth to say, 
 
 " T, by my dire decree, did seal 
 
 His fixed, unalterable doom. 
 
 Consigned his unborn soul to hell, 
 
 And damn'd hitn from his motlier's woicb." 
 
 Presbyterians, if this be so, do right to ascertain, if they 
 can, the deviding lioe, and to restrict their Baptism to such 
 infants as they may suppose to be ceremonially elect and 
 clean. But these results indicate that the whole theory is 
 human, and, notwithstanding the recent evasive distinction 
 of decrees, into decrees of compulsion, and decrees of per- 
 mission, or of peterition — the decree ofEw^oKijatc, and that 
 ofEvdkffTtjms—the decree sublapsarian, and the decree sup- 
 ralapsarian — how unlike all this, is the cheering voice of 
 the Apostles and the Church, recognizing, as God's elect, 
 in a sense high and full of comfort and hope, the favoured 
 communities and individuals to whom His kingdom had 
 come down, who had received the good word of God, and 
 had been enriched with the illumination of his Baptism, 
 raised, in a word, under the Gospel, to anew and bright 
 probation, in which salvation is made, not only possible to 
 all, but, to all who will, is made gloriously certain ; an 
 election comparative, not absolute ; an election to means and 
 not to their result; to intermediate privileges and facilities, 
 and not to abstract, and ultimate, and everlasting destinies ; 
 an election always to good, never to evil ! 
 
 These results, so repugnant to every feeling of hu- 
 manity ; so incompatible with the boundless grace of the 
 redemption that is in Christ Jesus ; so utterly at variance 
 with the true sovereignly of an independent and infinitely 
 happy Being; representing to a world, already disaffected, 
 its Happy Father as producing, by His own inexorable and 
 predetermined will, the blight and mourning that it suffers, 
 
DOWNWARD TENDENCIES. 
 
 151 
 
 :i 
 
 and yet, insultingly protesting, in His name, that He has 
 *' no pleasure in the sinner's death ;" these results, we say, 
 so entirely unlike the weeping God who stood on Olivet, 
 all bathed in grief over the destinies of wayward guilt ; so 
 amazingly unlike Him in the garden and Him on the cross, 
 and Him on high with the golden censor, and so unlike 
 His Image, as faintly reflected in the sympathies of Hu- 
 manity itself, produce after a while, a reaction in the mind; 
 demonstrate to the heart the rottenness of the imposture ; 
 and, at this point, too often leave the bewildered man upon 
 the sea of doubt and weariness, of scepticism and adventure. 
 In this, the Presbyterian and the Papist agree : the one 
 defining Christ's gracious presence in the holy Eucharist, 
 so as to violate our natural understanding ; the other de- 
 fining the divine sovereignty so as to shock our moral con- 
 stitution : the one contradicting our senses ; the other our 
 sensibilities. And as, in throwing off Romanism, so in re- 
 nouncing Presbyterianism, it is the natural tendency of the 
 human mind to run, first, into religious anarchy, and, af- 
 terwards, by sure and measured strides, into downright in- 
 fidelity. Hence the prevalence at this moment, of infi- 
 delity and blasphemy in France and Italy and Spain; and 
 the infidelity, at the same moment, of Germany, and ben- 
 mark, and Geneva. Popery has done, in the one case, 
 what Presbytery has done in the other. Side by side, is 
 England on the West, and the Greek Communion on the 
 East, and the Swedish religion on the North, under the in- 
 fluences of whose purer Episcopacy, and more or less pure 
 traditions, infidelity expires. As the spell-bound Papist, 
 awaking from his strange hallucination, and abjuring the 
 worship of the Virgin and her companions in glory, is 
 tempted by the same eff'ort to throw oft the worship of her 
 Son, Who was once a companion of .heir sufferings— so the 
 
f 
 
 •i 
 
 152 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 f 
 
 I 
 I 
 
 Presbyterian, in casting to the winds the baseless fabric of 
 a heartless system, rushes too often to the precipice, 
 and takes the blind leap into a sea of irretrievable 
 scepticism. 
 
 <' Bless the Lord, my soul, and all that is within me, 
 bless his holy name," that He had planted on the shores a 
 purer-branch of His holy Church, with its sacramental 
 signals wavinsi; high, inviting my sinking bark and failing 
 heart into a quiet haven, at a moment when, in the liberty 
 to which I knew not the proper check, I was tearing my- 
 self from a system uncongenial and unwholesome, and felt 
 that the wide world was belore me, and that all Churches, 
 past, present, and to come, were equally at my election, 
 and that none could say anathema, if, in the acknowledged 
 right of private judgment 1 should myself originate a 
 " Church," and call it after my own name, as others have 
 so often done, that the blasphemy has now ceased to shock 
 or even to surprise : or, if, in the large latitude conceded 
 me, I should glide more modestly into the existing confede- 
 racy of Socinians, Arians, Pantheists, Ncologists, Eclectics, 
 Deists, Infidels or Atheists I 
 
 For myself, however, I did not, at first throw off" the 
 Presbyterian creed, because I had discovered its defects or 
 crudities. True, both its crudities and cruelties have 
 caused me many a bitter hour. Perhaps 1 continued to 
 believe it, hecause it vvas unnatural, and might therefore 
 be divine. But the change I have undergone, in respect: 
 of creed, has been rather by the silent and supplanting in- 
 fluences of a more Scriptural and wholesome, a more ra- 
 tional and consistent theology, of which I must say that 
 1 caught its spirit before I understood its terms. As nearly 
 as I c<yj now trace the change, the first hint of a higher 
 and purer faith, I owe to the Westminister Confession, 
 
DOWNWARD TENDENCIES. 
 
 153 
 
 which has erected a fabric, pa.tly divine and partly 
 human ; an image, partly of gold, and partly of clay— 
 Desiriil in piscem mulier formosa siiperne—i^nd, in attempt- 
 inii to blend the old doctrine of the Sacrannents with the 
 new dogmas of a speculative eva— earthly philosophy with 
 celestial faith— has left a flaw, which reveals the weakness 
 of the whole structure, and thus h^s fortunately suggested 
 a starting-point, from which individual minds may fn-gin 
 to recover, as I was enabled to do myself, the ancient 
 consistencies and beauties of a purei- faith. 
 
 But that which, more than all other considerations, 
 loosened the hold of my former creed upon my confidence, 
 was the historical fact, that it had been found, after long 
 and fair experiment, in every possible variety of circum- 
 stance, insufficioit. iri avy one inslavce, to protect and pre- 
 serve inriolate the faith. And if the things I am about to 
 allege, be true. I do solemnly appeal to my former brethren, 
 to weigh well the matter, and to abjure a system, which 
 all history has shown to lack that vital force with which 
 every seed in Nature has been endowed by its Creator; to 
 propagate its like and to ])erpetuate itself. 
 
 To cite the condition of the Scottish Kirk, might seem 
 hardly in point ; as the eye of the Church of England is 
 upon her; and the legislation of an Episcopal Parliament 
 would not allow infidelity or heresy to supplant the faith 
 of the old realm. But, notwithstanding these safeguards, 
 how fares it with the Presbyteiian Church in Scotland I 
 Her disruption into eight or ten Communions, all stiictly 
 Presbyterian, and all owing their origin to alleged un- 
 soundness in each other's discipUne and faith, sha'l be con- 
 sidered, when we come to speak of schism ; and we allude 
 to it here, only as indicating a general restlessness undej- 
 the Westminster Confession, and a constant tendency to 
 
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 li >i 
 
 ^^iHl! 
 
 V, 
 
 154 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 remodel its provision!?. And what was the condition of 
 the Kirk itself at the beginning of this century ? Who 
 will ('^ny, that under the workings of an Arian, Arminian, 
 and Pelagian leaven, in different proportions, what is now- 
 regarded as distinctively the Evangelical doctrine, was al- 
 most universally lost 'J 
 
 And what has been the fate of the Presbyterian Churches 
 in England, where they have been sufficiently detached 
 from the Scottish Kirk, to evade the legislation of an 
 Episcopal Parliament 1 Of two hundred and sixty parishes 
 established in their glory in the days of Cromwell, two 
 hundred and forty are now Unitarian ! I was personally 
 intormed, a few years since, in London, by men who be- 
 wailed the fact, that up to a recent date, every Presby- 
 terian Church and Chapel in the metropolis had lapsed 
 into Socinianism, and that, so instinctive seemed the ten- 
 dency to this result, that the new and orthodox congrega- 
 tions had, for their safety, been compelled to adopt certain 
 principles of allegiance to the Kirk of Scotland. On this 
 account, I found myself advised and obliged, everywhere 
 in England, to drop the name of Presbyterian, or if I slili 
 bore it, uniformly to explain it. 
 
 And what at the time we speak of, was the state of de- 
 nomination in Ireland, the last of the Three Kingdoms ? 
 Where it was not Unitarian, it was Arian, from cen- 
 tre to circumference; and that wiinin a hundred years of 
 the most wonderful " awakening" or '' revival," that his- 
 tory has recorded. In that revival, •* multitudes swooned, 
 and numbers were carried out as dead, and whole days to- 
 gether were spent in fasting, and preaching, and prayer.— 
 I have known them," says an eye-witness, " to come se- 
 veral miles to Communions, and after the Saturday's ser- 
 mon, to spend the whole Saturday night in company, in 
 
 .M: 
 
DOWNWARD TENDENCIES. 
 
 155 
 
 conference and prayer. They have then waited on the 
 {.ublic ordinances the whole Sabbath, and spent the Sab- 
 bath night in the same way, and yet, at the Monday's ser- 
 mon, were not troubled with sleepiness, and so they slept 
 not, till they went home." Not long after this, as has been 
 commonly the case, under the operation of like causes, op- 
 position to creeds began to be made, and Pelagianism, 
 Arianism, and Socinianism, and especially the views of Dr. 
 Priestly, prevailed, and were current at the be«(innin^' of 
 this century. I have stated these facts thus particularly, 
 because the Presbyterian Church in the north of Ireland 
 is the immediate mother of the denomination in America. 
 It was from her, and not from the Kirk of Scotland, that 
 several ministers came over, into Pennsylvania, Delaware? 
 and Maryland, organized themselves into the tirst Ameri- 
 can Presbytery. The mother has since played the harlot, 
 and denied the Lord ; the daughter— but we shall speak oX 
 her afterward. 
 
 Let us first cross the channel that divides England from 
 the Continent. The glorious Church of the Huguenots 
 and the Vaudois— a Church planted in the learning and, 
 eloquence of Farel, and Viret, and Beza, and Du Moulin, 
 and Calvin ; dignified by the arms of its Corides and 
 Colignys; fed by such pastors as Merlin, and Suurin, and 
 Claude, and Daille, and Drelincourt; fostered by nursing 
 mothers, in a Margaret and a Catharine of Navarre— a 
 Church, that, for its influence, was dreaded by the .VJaza- 
 rines, and, for its virtues, was respected by the Fenelons 
 of France -a Church that bared so often-its intrepid bosom 
 to the dragoons of the bloody Louis, and the musketry of 
 the perfidious Charles, and that could spare, for a wedding 
 banquet, in a single night, a hundred thousand victims 
 from her fold, and the head of her noble Coligny, to giace, 
 
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 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 al Rome, rlie festivities of an execrable jubilee — where is 
 this Chuicii, after whicli, for its virtues, and its prowess, 
 the whole world wondered 's It is lallen ! It is fallen ! At 
 Passy , and at Paris, at Rouen, and at Charcnton, at Nismes, 
 and at Lyons, it is fallen, like a millstone in the sea. It 
 is a cage of unclean birds ; It is the hold of every foul 
 spirit; it is the worst of anti-Christs ; it '' (le/iicfh the 
 Father tvitl f/ic Sun.'^ The little flock of Moravians, no 
 p.3rsecution has been able to diminish : the remnant on the 
 mountains of Syria has &.urvived the ravai^es of Islumism : 
 but the Church of ihe Huguenots, only because it wanted 
 the Apostolic descent, in which the IVToravian and the 
 Syrian are entrenched, has not only lost her numbers, but 
 lias lost her faith. Of her six hundred Presbyterian clerj^y, 
 I was informed, a few years since, upon the spot, that 
 '• there v,as not found ten " who dared to aifirm that Jesus 
 Christ was " God manifested in the flesh." Who can 
 wonder that iniidelity has " hastened !o the prey," and 
 that Popery has '• divided the spoilt" I am aware that, 
 at this moment, there is a partial revival of orthodox 
 opinions in that country ; but I also know, that this revival, 
 limid as it is, is not the spontaneous awakening; of the 
 Huguenot lil'e, but is the effect of extraneous influences 
 brought to bear upon that Church, not fiom Presbytciian 
 Switzerland or Germany, but from Churchmen and Dis- 
 senters in Kpiscoj)al— Catholic I'^ngland. Its character, 
 too, is totally wanting in the manly features of the old 
 Huguenot religion; it is pale, sickly, emaciated, and emas- 
 culated, ])resenling, at best, the melancholy spectacle of a 
 distracted community, with here and there a solitary in- 
 dividual, sighing over its corruptions and its schisms. 
 
 Passing over to Switzerland, let us go through her 
 twenty-two republics, beginning at the home, the Church, 
 
 ^»*«i3B\ 
 
DOWNWARD TEtJDENCIES. 
 
 157 
 
 the pulpit, the grave of Calvin. I saw in the heart of 
 Geneva, a proud sepulchral monument to Rousseau ; but, 
 to forgotten Calvin, " they raised not a stone, they carved 
 not u line " The Confession of Faith continues, as it does 
 in France, to be subscribed ; but it is no longer believed. 
 The ashts of Servetus, to whose fiery deaih Calvin ^'ave 
 his voice, have been scattered over lake and hill, and have 
 broken forth in blains and boils, upon the whole Pres- 
 byterian body ; while the opinions for which Servetus 
 perished, are preached with trumpet-tongue, in the very 
 cathedral from which Calvin hurled his anathemas aganist 
 him. Of the whole venerable Synod of Geneva, but one 
 solitary pastor, as I was informed when on the ground, was 
 even suspected of believir.g in the divinity of Jesus. They 
 began by denouncing it a superstition to bow at His name : 
 they have ended by declaring it idolatry to bow to him at 
 all. When, a few years ago, the venerable Malan dared 
 to say, in his discourse, that Jesus '• is the true God and 
 eternallife," and that "there are Three that bear record 
 in heaven," he was driven from his pulpit, and hooted on 
 the streets, as profanely as if he had cast his pearls before 
 a Mussel man mob in Mecca or Bey rout. The same was 
 the state of things in the other republics. In short, the old 
 Church of Switzerland, the Church of Zuinglius and 
 Bucer,ol Farel and Beza, of Ecolampadius, and Calvin, 
 has become openly Socinian and infidel. Any child in 
 Geneva could have guided me to the bright islet, where the 
 statue of Rousseau looks proudly on the blue Rhone, as it 
 gushes out at his feet from the lake ; or to the house of Vol- 
 taire,which, from the French border, keeps sentinel over the 
 city ; but 1 could find no one in Geneva capable of point- 
 ing out to me the spot in the churchyard where the ashes 
 of^Calvin repose. Even the handful of " Evangelical " 
 
 I 
 
158 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 iPH 
 
 i ! 
 
 Christians in the place, I found, in 1833, divided, two 
 against three, and three against two : the veneral)le Maliin 
 living in schisnn from his brethren, and Brovvnism, and 
 Anabaptism creeping into the fold. Such has been the fate 
 of Presbyterianism in the place where it w as born, and 
 drew its first breath. Protected in its biith by a frowning 
 and gigantic creed, as the place where it was born was 
 hemmed in by scowling and terrific mountains, still it ha.s 
 obeyed the law of its existence, has run through the circle 
 of its destiny, and has ended in the denial of its Lord. 
 
 In my younger days, I had been greatly prejudiced 
 against P^piscopacy, by the fact, that public functionaries 
 under British law were formerly required to be Church 
 Communicants. The Church of England, though so '< little 
 among the thousands of Israel," is so truly " a city on a 
 hill," that all that happens in her is immediately noticed 
 and known, it would appear, over the whole earih. Ye^ 
 the same abuse existed wherever Presbytery was estab- 
 lished and existed within the memory of the living, in por- 
 tions of New England itself. But I never heard of sacra- 
 mental abuses so offensive as some that I have witnessed 
 in Geneva. I happened, on one of the chief days of Com- 
 munion, to be at the cathedral in which Calvin was the 
 chief pi tor in his lifetime. A large number of gentlemen 
 and men stood in the streets about tlie Church, waiting un- 
 til the sermon and preliminary services should end, that;^ 
 they might go in and receive the Sacrament. This, too, I 
 was informed, was the common practice ! With the views 
 which I held, even then, that the un worthiness of the 
 minister or of the congregation could not invalidate a Sa- 
 crament, and on the ground that the Creed yet remained as 
 the Reformation had left it, and therefore that the Church 
 was a Church of Christ, I remained in the cathedral, and 
 
 ( ! 
 
 'fi= li 
 
 X 
 
DOWNWARD TENDENCIKi. 
 
 159 
 
 endeavouring to feel my own unworthiness, rather than 
 that of the minister, I received the Communion without 
 the smallest scruple. But iiere I may tell the world a se- 
 cret. There was in our company that day, a Presbyterian 
 clergyman, who thought, to use his own expression, that 
 «' the Church in Geneva had exceeded the limits within 
 which a Church continues to be a Church of Christ," and 
 with a conscience, I doubt not, as clear as my own, in the 
 opiwsite direction, he would not and did not commune. It 
 remains only to be said, that the clergyman, who thus 
 turned his back on the altar at which Calvin ministered, 
 and who dealt thus with the Church of Geneva as " an 
 anti-Christ " in 1838, was the same who, in the controversy 
 of 1845, made the following ad captandum. 
 
 " When Dr. Wainright, a gentleman, a scholar, a Chris- 
 tian minister, (in each of which titles there seems to be 
 implied the idea of refined fediugs, as well as bland mail' 
 vers,) has taken so public, so extraordinary an occasion, for 
 the purpose oi aa Churching the whole of Protestant Chris- 
 tendom, the Churches ofGermany, Switzerland, France. 
 &;c., it is surely high time to demand that the public should 
 be put in possession of the evidence by which so bold and 
 unflinching an assertion is to be sustained ; or, if that evi- 
 dence is not forthcoming, it is equally high time that the 
 enormity of the assumption should be exposed. There are 
 hundreds who can perform the task better than myself, but 
 atill I believe it not a task which lequires the strength 
 of a giant." 
 
 Well said ! Now then, Doctor, to your -' task." If the 
 veriest Lilliput is equal to it, I am sure that you are. You 
 did not commune with the Church of Geneva, on the 
 •'round that it had " ceased to be a Church of Christ." I 
 believe jowdid not, and would not, commune, and for the 
 
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 '" » 
 
 
 I 
 
 160 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 same reason, with the large Churches of Germany and 
 France. It surely is high time to demand that the public 
 should he put in possession of the evidence hy which so 
 bold and offensive an edict of excommunication is to be 
 sustained; or, if that evidence is not forthcoming, it is 
 equally high time that the enormity of the assumption should 
 be exposed. Doctor Wainwright, in 1845, did only what 
 you had done before him, in 1838. He did it, on the 
 ground of Catholic and established law ; hvAyou have done 
 it on the ground of private and independent judgment. He 
 did it, with a thousand leagues of sea between ; you crossed 
 the sea, and did it at the chief altars of Geneva. He 
 charged them only with erecting another Church, which 
 is not another ; you have charged them with preaching 
 " another Gospel which is not another." Whether of the 
 two anathemas is most offensive '? Pray, put " the public" 
 in possession of •' the evidence; " for, ''if that evidence 
 be not forthcoming, it is high time that the enormity of 
 the oifence should be exposed." But we will not wait. 
 
 Leavmg Switzerland, let me ask the reader to go with 
 me down the Rhine, and see how fare our " separated 
 brethren," in Germany. It is well-known that the Pro- 
 testants of Germany, like those of France, Holland, Swit- 
 zerland, and, in fact, of the entire conti«ient, with the 
 single exception of Sweden, are Presbyterians. Many of 
 them, from motives of expediency, oi convenience— and it 
 is a concession of great importance lo Episcopacy— have 
 created a class or order of Ministers, at first called Super- 
 intendents, hut dignified, latterly, with the Babylonish 
 name of Bishops ; and, in this respect, resemble the Metho- 
 dists of America, who have this spurious Episcopacy. 
 But, in fact, the Protestants on the Continent, Sweden 
 only excepted, are Presbyterian. And what has been' the 
 
DOWNWARD TENDENCIES. 
 
 161 
 
 fate of the faith in Germany— the land of Jerome, and 
 Hus3, and Grotius and Melancthon — the land of 
 LUTHER'? "I could not find," says a recent American 
 and Presbyterian traveller, " a single individual in Germany 
 who believed in the eternity of future punishments." Even 
 the Evangelical and Excellent Neander, given up to what 
 is known in Germany as the theologia pectoris, or religion 
 ol the affections, thinks that *' the doctrine of universal 
 restitution does not stand in contradiction lo the doctrine 
 of eternal punishment as it appears in the C -^els ; for a 
 secret decree of the divine compassion is nc ccessarily 
 excluded, by virtue of which, through the wisdom of God, 
 in the discipline of free agents, they may be led to a free 
 appropriation of redemption." The fatherofthe new philoso- 
 phy of Germany has been deified as " Messiah the Second ;" 
 and our awful Baptism, I was informed, had, by some of 
 her clergy, been administered in the name of Liberty, 
 Equality, Fraternity, or of Reason, Humanity, and Love 
 of Country. It is taught by her pastors, tho.t there is no 
 other God than in the thing? we see, and that man himself 
 is the highest impersonation of Divinity, and, in such a 
 one as Christ, man may therefore be lawfully adored ! 
 As to the Bible, it has been justly said, that "if Luther 
 could return from the dead, he would find the Bible as 
 much banished from the communities professing his doc- 
 trine, as it was, in the worst times of the Papal policy." 
 And if the Bible has begun to reappear in those lands at 
 all, it has been in many an instance, if not in absolutely 
 all, by the direct or indirect agency of British residents, 
 or of a British and Foreign Society. 
 
 Nor would this be so terrific a result of Presbytery, if 
 the ''Evangelical" clergy of Germany, of whom one 
 here and there is to be found, gave hope of a brighter day. 
 
162 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 ' ' '■•* 
 
 But Luther himself bequeathed to them the dangerous 
 precedent of setting Scripture itself aside, when it stood in 
 the way of some favorite opinion. Epistolem Slramineam — 
 An Epistle of Straw— he did not hesitate to style the 
 Epislie of St. James, because it laid the axe effectively at 
 the root of his articulem ecclesics stantis vel cadentis. 
 Other bcoks of the Bible fared with him but little better. 
 The German Evangelical Clergy, still profiting by the 
 courage of the master, are able, by a dash of the pen to 
 settle, on the basis of " private judgment," the canon of 
 Scripture which the whole Catholic Church was cautiously 
 substantiating for three hundred years. *' Scarcely a book 
 of the New Testament," says a Presbyterian writer well 
 acquainted with his subject, "has escaped the obeliscus of 
 some Aristarchus ; and we know not that the Doctor's hat 
 could be duly conferred,, in Germany, on one who had not 
 singled out some book for elimination. . . . There are 
 in Germany scores of scholars «'hose tact enables them 
 to pick out a Pauline epistle as confidently as a bank- 
 cashier can detect a counterfeit note. . . . Several at- 
 tribute the Apocalypse to a disciplie of John. Eichhorn 
 pronounces it a drama on the fall of Judaism and Pa- 
 ganism. . . . Semler condemns it as a work of a fanatic. 
 Ammon thinks the author and the editor of John's Gospel 
 to be different person?. Vogel, Rettig, Ballenstedt, and 
 Bretschneider, deny its authenticity. Schliermacher re- 
 jects First Timothy: Eichhorn rejects all the Pastoral 
 Epistles, Schmidt throws doubt over both the Epistles to 
 the Thessalonians. Cludius treats those of Peter in the 
 same way. Baur and Schneckenburger consider Luke, in 
 the Actp,' not as giving a faithful narirative of events, but 
 aa apologetic statement, to vindicate favorite opinions. 
 Kern maintains that the Epistle of James was forged by 
 
 i!^ 
 
DOWNVTARD TENDENCIES. 
 
 163 
 
 a Jewish Christian, in the name of this Apostle, to contro- 
 vert the Pauline doctrinal views which prevailed in 
 the GentiFe Churches. Gfrorer iinds undeniable marks 
 of falsehood in the account given of Cornelius. And it is 
 significant, that even the sounder German writers, when 
 called upon to combat such views, rehearse them without 
 any approach to a shudder. . . . Neander himself re- 
 gards tiie Epistle to the Hebrews as the work of a Chris- 
 tian, a learned and eloquent Alexandrian, who stood to 
 Paul in the same relation as Melancthon to Luther. He 
 denies the genuineness of the First Epistle to Timothy, and 
 exceedmgly doubts that of Jude, and entirely gives up the 
 Second of Peter. As to the inspiration of the Scriptures 
 generally, Neander holds it, both in degree and in kind, far 
 below what is regarded aj orthodox among ourselves." — 
 Such are the fancies of German divines and universities, to 
 which the Stuarts, and Hodges, and Alexanders of Presby- 
 terianism, and her seminaries in America, are sent to learn 
 the Art of Exegesis. And these are the elaborated fancies 
 of Neander, " A venerable theologian," according to the 
 Princeton Review, from which I have jusi quoted, and am 
 now quoting again,—" A venerable theologian, and a no- 
 ble scholar— perhaps the most celebrated Profjssor in Ger- 
 many, and whose works we never open without instruc- 
 tion and delight."^;!] And such is the sea of doubt and 
 wild conjecture, in which even the "f'vangelicaP' remnant 
 in Germany are driven. And, unless the Churcli be in- 
 voked as the true Witness, to say, what were the books of 
 Scripture confided to her,//'o»i thehes,inning, who shall set- 
 tle, either for the German Presbyterian or American, the 
 canon of Scripture, and give them again the Bible, oi which 
 Presbyterians in this country yet unthinkingly boast, as the 
 rule of faith, but whosd claims they are consistently enough 
 
164 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 
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 beginning, like their more advanced brethren in Germany, 
 to re-investigate, in all the unbounded plenitude, and the 
 jure divino of untrammelled " privcte judgment."' 
 
 Thus has Socinianism, with her pestilential train, trod- 
 den, with giant step, the causeways of Irish Presbyteriijn- 
 ism ; planted her banners in the Presbyterian encampments 
 along the Thames and the Seine; written her insulting 
 creed on the tombs of the Vaudois and the Huguenots ; 
 reared her towering head above the Alps and the Ap- 
 penines ; dashed on, like the winter avalanche, into the 
 fair vallies of Switzerland ; and kept her insulting jubilee 
 in the cathedral of Geneva, and over the dust of Calvin. — 
 Rolling with the turbid torrents of the Rhine, she has scat- 
 tered its seeds of death into a congenial soil upon its right 
 bank and its left ; she has entered the seats of learning, and, 
 by her resistless spell, has won over to herself the renowned 
 universities of Germany. Leyden and Leipsic have fallen 
 down before her. Wittemburg and Heidelburg have kissed 
 her feet:. and Gottingen and Berlin have anointed them 
 with ointment. In a word, the lawful child of Presbytery 
 has succeeded to the Empire, wherever Presbyterianism 
 had reigned before her. She would fain have crossed the 
 stormy Baltic, and have planted her icy tabernacle in the 
 north, and, like the maelstrom on the coast of Norway, 
 have swallowed, in her capacious throat, the Churches of 
 those empires. It was not the stormy wave of the Baltic 
 that arrested her progvess ; for she had stridden a continent 
 and an ocean before. It was not the hills of Dofrefteld 
 that turned her back, for she had conquered the Jura and 
 the Alps. But, with the music of those v;aves, there were 
 borne to her ears the strains of a Catholic Liturgy, anvi 
 beautiful upon those mountains she beheld the feet of Apos- 
 tolic Bishops. *' It would be interesting," says a writer. 
 
 n 
 
DOWNWARD TENDENCIES. 
 
 165 
 
 on whose accuracy I must, for the present, rely, "to com- 
 pare the two kingdoms of Saxony and Sweden. Both are 
 almost exclusively Lutheran ; the people oi both are ge- 
 nerally well educated ; religion is one of the studies in 
 every grade of the public schools of both. One is univer- 
 sally Rationalistic; the other universally Orthodox. One 
 has not more than half a dozen Evangelical preachers, out 
 of six hundred clergy ; the other has not as many Rationa- 
 lists, out of three times that number! One is Episcopal 
 and has retained the Apostolic succession; the other is 
 Presbyterian, and without it." 
 
 I know of but one other spot 'in Europe, out of which 
 this spirit has departed "naked, and wounded and bleed- 
 ing." The Church ot England has, by the daily incense 
 of her wholesome Liturgy, enbalmed an atmosphere 
 around her, which Socinianism has never with any com- 
 fort, been able to breathe, and, by her Apostolic descent, 
 has inherited a blessing, which Socinianism, with her mesg 
 of red pottage, has never been able to supplant. So- 
 cinianism, like a local malaria, with her train of diseases, 
 has been invited from Geneva, into the ruins of a lew 
 Presbyterian and Baptist Congregations in England, but to 
 them has been rigidly confined ; not a congregation of the 
 Church of England, throughout an empire on which the 
 sun never sets, has ever daught the infection. Mr. Lefevre, 
 of New- York, on his return from a visit to England, com- 
 plains that " the system of American Universal ism has 
 not a single defender in England." In a single word, the 
 fact— enough to make one shudder at its contemplation- 
 must now be obvious, that, if Presbyterianism had re- 
 tted its footing in Great Britain, the whole Protestant 
 world would at this moment have been Socinian or Infidel ! 
 During foui years that it triumphed under Cromwell, one 
 
1G6 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 ' ■ > ,:, ' ■ 
 
 ;l 1 I 
 
 ill 
 
 11 
 
 I 
 
 
 hundred and seventy-six sects, or forms of heresy and blas- 
 phemy appeared ; and, as slated before, of two hundred 
 and sixty Presbyterian Congregations that survived the 
 Restoration, two hundred and forty have lapsed into Soci- 
 nianism. Well may the Church of England be called 
 '• The Bulwark of the Reformation : " and we mar- 
 vel not that all that touches her — since it touches the apple 
 of the world's eye— is at once felt at the Earths heart, and 
 in all Earth's extremities ; and the least speck upon her 
 face, like a spot on the great luminary in heaven, instantly 
 attracts the observation of the world. Still there is the 
 owl and the bat that would rejoice in her eclipse ! These 
 are the facts that drove me rapidly on toward the result 
 contemplated in this narrative. 
 
 But give Presbyterianism the opportunity of one more 
 experiment. Follow the ''May-Flower'* in her ocean- 
 path, and wonder to yourself, whether the flood from the 
 dragon's mouth shall pursue this woman and her child 
 into the wilderness,* Behold the Pilgrims disembark : a 
 noble race, a virtuous people, a godly congregation, who 
 fast, and give alms, and pray, and establish once more, 
 not unaided by sons of the Church of England, a Christian 
 empire, far from the contact and contamination of the old 
 leaven, and fortified in fence-work deeper, higher, broader, 
 than any that had been contrived before. And are we to 
 see this new empire of faith uprooted 1 Is the same 
 death-worm to gnaw at the root of the transplanted tree 1 
 Are we to behold the same mysterious plague-spot appear 
 in a new clime, upon a healthy and vigorous frame, until 
 from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, it shall 
 be " a leper white as snow 1 " 
 
 And tell us ye divines and ye diviners, when shall all 
 this be ? Shall it be soon ? Shall not generation after 
 
DOWNWARD TENDENCIES. 
 
 167 
 
 generation, washed in the Lamb's blood, be placed first 
 beyond the reach of sin and deuth 1 No ! we tell you, -o/ 
 Scarcely have the feet of the Pilgrims touched Plvmouth 
 Rock, before the empoisoned waters gush from its bosom. 
 Scarcely have the children that gambolled on the decics 
 of the May-Flower, grown up to manhood, ere Arminian- 
 ism, at once the offspring and the antagonist of Calvinism— 
 an Arminianism not grounded in Caaiolic truth, nor guarded 
 by Catholic restraint, but guarded and grounded in the vain 
 sanctions of human reasoning, and the simple reactions of 
 human instinct,-has overspread the land, and an Egyptian 
 darkness has stretched its curtain over the new empire. 
 
 Time rolls on. Reformers again rise, and again bare 
 their breasts to persecution. Whitefield, with his Epis- 
 copal orders, and a heart moulded in a Lituigical faith-a 
 man of fasts and vigils, who, at Oxford, spent whole nights 
 on the cold earth in prostration and prayer, but a man 
 whom the Church of England preferred to drive from her 
 communion, with the Wesleys and their companions, into 
 «chism, because she wanted the wisdom to employ them 
 in her own bosom-Whitelield, and a few individuals 
 like-minded, come, as another Moses and Aaron, to spread 
 their hands over the land, and dispel the unnatural dark- 
 ness and once more we see New England, through White- 
 field of the Church of England, recovering, to some ex- 
 tent, the faith and its practices, which, in the short space 
 of a' hundred years, it had unaccountably lost. 
 
 But again, men who sat entranced under the burning 
 eloquence of Whitefield, what have they seen at the be- 
 ginning of the present century 1 The Church of the Puri- 
 tans, after as fair an experiment as it was possible to 
 make— with the whole ground again to itself-eaten up, 
 to its very heart, with Socinianism ; and a Socinianisra 
 
168 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 1 . i 
 
 i 
 
 
 1 1 
 
 ■':r 
 
 i-^'ii 
 
 not imported, like the plague, by any intercourse with de- 
 generate Geneva, or Halle, or Berlin, or Belfast, or Mon- 
 tauban, but springing up by the natural law of generation 
 in the moral world, from the latent germ, that, in a free« 
 thinking theory, is at once the primordium vita and the 
 pnmordium mortis to the s)»stem. The Blighting angel 
 drops again the cursed dew from his wing, over bright 
 New England, and the pulpits of her capitals, and of her 
 quiet villages ; the pulpits of her Mathers, her Davenports, 
 her Hookers, her Robinsons, her Rutherfords, are occupied 
 by preachers who, confronted by no Liturgy of purer 
 times, preach fearlessly and blasphemously that Jesus is 
 not '^ the true God," and that the Son and the Father' are 
 not " One." " I am verily afraid," said Increase Mather, 
 in the heydey of Puritanism, " that, in process of time, 
 New England will be the wofulL-st place in all America." 
 " Yea, we are fain to that madness and folly," said Ed- 
 wards, '' that I am persuaded, if the Devil came visibly 
 among many, and held out independency and liberty of con- 
 science, and should preach that there were no devils, no 
 hell, no sin at all, but these were only men's imaginations 
 with several other doctrines, he would be cried up, fol- 
 lowed, admired." And the result has made good these 
 singular predictions. 
 
 The Universalists alone, teaching that '' there is no hell," 
 boasts of having come into possession of a thousand .u'l- 
 pits, among the sons of the Puritans, in this ill-fated land I 
 In 1840, they had but eighty-three preachers ; now they 
 have seven hundred preachers, and eleven hundred 
 congregations ; and claim, in point of numbers, to 
 be the fourth denomination in the country. Nearly all 
 New England was Socinian. Every old congregation in 
 Boston, except the " Old South," was Unitarian. The 
 
dovtnWard tendencies. 
 
 169 
 
 Church that looked down so long in pride on Plymouth 
 Rock itself, has yielded to the destroying heresy. I have 
 even heard that Emmons and Hopkins, the Calvinistic 
 leaders, of a later day, could they come back, would find 
 their Churches and flocks engulfed in the one gurgite vasto. 
 No wonder that we hear, in the middle of the nineteenth 
 century, that, in America, the lineal descendant of Mather 
 the Puritan has returned to the Episcopal Church ; that in 
 Germany the descendants of Luther the Reformer have 
 taken refuge in the Romish Communion ; and that, in 
 Great Britain, a descendant of Cromwell, the Protector, 
 ministers at the altars of the Church of England. 
 
 As to New England, we regard the last experiment of 
 Calvinism as made. "Ten years," says a sagacious 
 Presbyterian divine, " will place the [orthodox] Churches 
 of Massachusetts beyond redemption." Says the Editor of 
 <'The Presbyterian," "The ground they assume in the 
 contest with the Socinian is absurd and futile. The latter 
 may lie on his arms, without striking a blow, and con- 
 fidently av/ait the issue." "It has been long prepared in 
 itself," says a discerning Unitarian, "for a retorm in its 
 theology; but its allegiance to the public sentiment of 
 more sluggish communities has retarded it. It is laboring 
 along, liice an active steam-tug with a half-dozen logy 
 ships in tow. Andover, for example, could she have been 
 freed from her deference to Princeton, would long ago 
 have fallen into the arms of an essentially liberal Chris- 
 tianity." This is the tendency— downward and down- 
 ward—still everywhere downward. There is no remedy— 
 and so the people begin to understand — but in the time- 
 worn Church, to which a goodly multitude are coming 
 back, with the cry, as one has uttered it, " O my Ancient 
 Mother, take back a weary and heavy-lad«n wanderer to 
 
 ' -i 
 
f 
 
 I 
 
 170 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH* 
 
 M i 
 
 ' 
 
 1 !? 
 
 ' |: 
 
 '* 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 thy bosom ; give me thy yoke and 'hy burden, '.hat I may 
 find rest to my soul." " If the V^pisropal Church had 
 been known in New England," said one of her wisest 
 and most celebrated statesmen, to a Churchman, ** we 
 should never had been Unitarians ; we are Unitarians only 
 in the ignorance and the absence of something bv.t.ci," 
 And the late growth of the Church there appears to justify 
 the remark. In Connecticut, where the chanting of the 
 service when first introduced by Bishop Seabury, was 
 laughed at and hooted by the people on the street as an 
 *' Indian pow-wow," there are now one hundred congre- 
 gations that so worship God. And of Newburyport where 
 the bones of Whitefield are entombed, it has been said of 
 this man and that man in the list of the Episcopal clergy, 
 that he was born there. That single town, as if Whitefield 
 had repented in the dust, and had warned them from the 
 dead to return to the bosom of their ancient mother, has 
 given birth to at least twenty living pastors and divines of 
 the Episcopal Church.* Yet so it must be ; for thus it is 
 written, '' the sons also of them that afflicted these shall 
 come bending unto thee." 
 
 * Their names are as follows : — 
 The Rev 
 
 Wm. Rartlett, St. Luke's Chelsea. 
 Josiah M Bartlett. Pierpont Manor. W. N. Y. 
 Moses B. Chase, Chaplain U S. Navy. 
 Thomas M. Clark, Trinity Church, Boston, 
 George H. Clark, late of All Saints' Church, Worcester. 
 Samuel A. Clark, Church of the Advent, Philadelphia. 
 Samuel Cutler, St. Andrew's Hanover, and Trinitv. 
 
 Marshfield. 
 Benjamin Dorr, D. D., Christ Church, Philadelphia. 
 Samuel M. Emery, Trinity Church, Portlajid Conm 
 William Friend. St. Peter's and Grace Churches, Port 
 
 Royal, Virginia 
 Benjamin Hale, D. I).. President Geneva College, N.Y. 
 William Horton, St. Thomas's, Dover, N. H. 
 Jacob B, Morss, St. Thomas Parish, Baltimore Co., 
 
 Maryland. 
 Moses P. Slickney, St. Peter's Church, Cambridgeport. 
 
 vl 
 
DOWNWARD TENDENCIES. 
 
 171 
 
 When I first became acquainted with the facts narrated 
 in this chapter and in the one preceding, I was more start- 
 led than if seven thunders had uttered their voices, and as 
 much convinced es if seven angels had poured their plagues 
 before my eyes on the seat ot Presbytenanism. I conjure 
 the Presbyterian to account for ihese frightful phenomina, 
 by any explanation that shall not make it his riret duty to 
 abjure the system he has espoused. There is a sewper-^ 
 there is a ubique-ihere is an ab omnibus about it, that fills 
 me with amazement. Why is it, I inquired that, in diffe- 
 rent languages, and in distant lands ; sundered from each 
 other by oceans and untrodden hills ; se^arat^d even by 
 mutual jealousies and hates ; antipodes to one another in 
 education, and taste, and habits of life and modes of thought ; 
 and with mutual antipathies, in some instances wrought up 
 to the highest pitch by protracted and barbarous wars- 
 why is-it, that the religion, that has once divorced itselt 
 from its Bishops and its Liturgy, is downward and ever 
 downward in its tendency, bequeathing her sceptre m all 
 lands without a single exception yet, first to the Socmian, 
 and then to the infidel 1 Particularly I asked myself, and 
 now I ask the candid Presbyterian, to tell me, how it is, 
 that the system established by these pious men ; men of 
 fastin- and alms and prayer, of learning and untiring zeal, 
 ofintdlertual power and virtues sufficient to have given 
 them a control beyond their times; men "of whom the 
 world was not worthy''-has suffered in so short a time 
 this awful retrogression l^hjMS^ that a Chur ch, which 
 
 ~Fhe RcT-'charlesCrTaylor. St. Andrew's. Ann Arbor, Michigan. 
 ^ ' Stephen H. Tyng, V D., St. t e^rge's < »>urrh N. \ . 
 
 James H. Tyng, Jr, St. George's Church, N. Y. 
 Srici VVadlVich, St. James's Church. Arlington. Vt 
 George D Wilde, Grace Church, New Bedford. 
 Tohh VVoart. Chri&t Church. Boston 
 Charles Sams, St. Pauls Church, Key West.Flonda. 
 
 4« 
 
 
 «» 
 
 
 V* 
 
 
 it 
 
 
 1( 
 
 
 ib 
 
 
172 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 ti! 
 
 ,1' ' 
 
 I 
 
 they would joyfully have defended with their lives, and 
 which they guarded by an uncompromising creed and by a 
 vigorous discipline-a Church, that, less than a hundred 
 years ago, amid a universal re-awakening, returned for a 
 while to the manly faith of the earlier Puritans -should 
 now, again, while hearts are yet beating that kindled and 
 beat under the eloquence of Whitefield and Brainerd and 
 Edwards and the Tennants, have lapsed into Socinianism 
 —Universalism— Deism 1 One of iheir favorite divines 
 we find, in a New- York pulpit, associating, in a breath the 
 nanjes of " Socrates and Cato, of Howard and Lafayette, 
 of Jefferson and Jesus !» "Such is rlie era," says one of 
 their orators in the mesmeric trance— and not unendorsed 
 by a number of their clergy— "such is the era foreseen by 
 David, Isaiah, Zechariah and Daniel, and impressed upon 
 Confucius, Zoroaster, Brahma, Jesus, Mohammed, Fourier 
 —it was sung on the Orphic lyres of Egypt— preached and 
 anticipated by Paul-and described by John in the Apoca- 
 lypse ! " We hear Boston divines beginning at last to deny 
 the personal existence of their Maker j and the learning of 
 old Harvard University is at this moment employed in th^ 
 grave business of seeking to convince her sons, that, al- 
 though they be right in denying the " three that bear record 
 in heaven," yet their is sufficient reason to believe that 
 there is One ! Herself the plaything of a hundred schiBms 
 and sins, the old New England Church is now abandoning 
 her children to " the delirious wanderings of the transcend- 
 ental philosophy ; and some of her leading divines are 
 echoing the huge atrocity of Germany, that Jesus was but 
 one of a series of Messiahs, whom the world has a righ^ 
 to look for, until society shall be conducted by the paths of 
 liberty and progress to its longed for perfection. 
 Once more. That small portion of the Presbyterian 
 
DOWNWARD TENDENCIES. 
 
 173 
 
 Church, to which it has been my hapyiic r k»t to ye attached 
 — what, said I, cautiously, within m} ^elf, ij; i'.i condition 1 
 Is it always on the downward road l don]»t and dissolu- 
 tion *? Let me think. Uridei my ow' "^ /fs, and while 
 enjoying, as some have said, " the m-^^st re narkable revival 
 since the days of the Apostles," it hn , b; p rent into irre- 
 concilable parties, which have ended in the adoption of op- 
 posing creeds, and separate communions ; the same phi- 
 losophizing spirit is ^talking in its midst, which has, all 
 around it, entirely supplanted the old faith. On the prin- 
 ci]11e, "Nee Deus iiitersit, si Deo non dignus nodus," we 
 are told that natural causes may have dried up the Red Sea ; 
 that natural causes may have rained fire on the plain ; that 
 natural causes may have hung a meteor in the heavens over 
 Lethlehem; that natural causes may have produced all the 
 phenomena ascribed by our Lord to demoniacal agencies, in 
 ar '^ommodation to the prejudices of the Jews. Not very far, 
 all this, thougat T, from the German discoveries, that the As? 
 cension of Jesus was his disappearing in a mountain-fog, 
 and his stilling the tempest was his settling a dispute among 
 the sailors. 
 
 And, in doctrinal theology, almost afraid that my very 
 thoughts should be overheard, I yet thought within myself. 
 Where do we stand ? " Original sin is an original absur- 
 dity"— " Imputed righteousness is imputed nonsense," — 
 " Natural inribility makes sin a natural misfortune, but cer- 
 tainly not si;i" — " We must be willing to be damned, that 
 God may be glorified, or we cannot be saved" — "We are as 
 much indebted !o C jd for sin as for holiness"—*' God is as 
 much the Author of evil as of good"— *God was bound to 
 introduce sin, as producing, through grace, the greatest 
 possible amount of knowledge and of happiness" — " Re- 
 generation is simply a resolution of the will, in view of 
 
174 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 il 
 
 'i 
 
 ■■Ml 
 
 ii 
 
 motive, or is the result of moral suasion"—" Were I as elo- 
 quent as the Holy Ghost, I could by the presentation of mo- 
 tives, regenerate the worId"-^"When the laws of mind 
 shall be better understood, regeneration will universally 
 take place, as the natural result of the proper selection and 
 adaptation of motives"— " As God cannot govern the sun 
 by motives, nor the stars by the ten commandments, so 
 neither can He regenerate mind, and give it a new direc- 
 tion, by the direct and immediate power of His grace" 
 
 •' Spiritual Christianity is to be henceforth the standard ; 
 perish forms and creeds"—" The Church must be re-built 
 upon broader 6as2,9 of faith"— "Its discipline must be al- 
 tered, and other tests of communion, adapted to the times and 
 th*- societies around us to be instituted"—" The eternal 
 generation of the Son it is not absolutely necessary to be- 
 lieve" ~" In fact, wesubsciibe the Confession of Faith only 
 as indi' g the outline or substance of doctrine"— "And 
 the oh- uidding doctrine of the Atonement, an eye for an 
 eye, and a tooth for a tooth, must be abandoned for that of 
 an Atonement, by which man shall become morally at-one 
 with God"—" for, (to use the language of one of our emi- 
 nent divines, whose pen seems not to have understood the 
 first lesson of reverence,) no debt wa? due from us to God, 
 and consequently, none was paid by Christ; we had not 
 deprived God of His property ; we had not robbed the trea- 
 sury of Heaven ; God was possessed of as much riches after 
 the fall, as before ; the universe and the fullness thereof 
 still remained His ; we neither owed money to the Deity, 
 nor did Christ pay any on our behalf; His atonement, theie- 
 fore, is not a payment of our deht.^^ 
 
 These, and numberless like propositions, continued I to 
 myself, emanating fiom the Edwardses, the Beechers, the 
 Barneses, the Skinners, the Emmonses, the Hopkinses of 
 
 
DOWNWARD TENDENCIES. 
 
 175 
 
 Presbytery, Iiave, within my own brief recollection, become 
 the absorbing themes of our pulpits, our schools of theology^ 
 and, in the absence of a Liturgy, of our very prayers. The 
 Old School, or Orthodox Presbyterians, occupying them- 
 selves, for the most part, the doubtful and slippery ground 
 of the New Lights of the last generation, are awhile in 
 doubt whether they can rally in sufficient strength to " ex- 
 scind" their unsound brethren, or whether they shall be 
 driven to secession,as the only escape from evils under which 
 the body is groaning. The crisis comes. The Church is 
 rent. Heresies multiply. The Catechism, in a thousand 
 parishes, gives place to " Union questions," and to '' The 
 Child's Book on the Atonement," " The Child's Book on 
 the Soul and its Immortality," and perchance, <• The 
 Child's Book on the existence ot its God ! " The Cate- 
 chism once neglected, there is no possible way of com- 
 mending such a system to a ripened understanding, in after 
 life ; and the whole body, loosened in iis joints and bands, 
 is preparing for its dissolution. Even that portion of the 
 Presbyterian body, which, by setting adrift sixty thousand 
 communicants, aimed at becoming purer, is still entirely 
 below the requirements of its Crnfession. The Sacra- 
 ments, m the sense of that Confession, are almost lost; 
 the eternal generation of the Son not held to be at all 
 essential ; the distinction between moral and natural 
 inability, ultimately so fatal to the system, allowed ; salva- 
 bility of all, in a certain sense, assented to, at the necessary 
 expense of election and a limited redemption ; and Princeton 
 itself, becoming daily more remarkable for the patience, 
 respect, and "delight," with which the student and the 
 reader are conducted through its Rpviews and its Exegeti- 
 cal Chairs, to the laboratories of the German theologians. 
 la fact, the Old School Presbyterians, while boding that 
 
•■il 
 
 If 
 
 J 
 
 [^ 
 
 
 ■- tm 
 
 J:. 
 
 
 I. '" 
 
 1 \ 
 
 'i' 
 
 ■;:; 
 
 i' 
 
 1 
 
 176 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 " ten years will place the Churches in Massachusetts be- 
 yond redemption," are unconsciously far out on the ebbing 
 tide, toward the gulf of Continenlal Neology. 
 
 There is certainly a chain of hands from Calvinism 
 down to Atheism— Calvin reaching the hand to Luther, 
 Luther to Arminius, Arminius to Pelagius, Pelagius to 
 Arius, Arius to Socinus, Socinus to Messiah the Second, 
 and even Messiah the Second to another, and another still, 
 whom this theology teaches us to look for. At Calvin, 
 the uppermost link of the theological chain, retaining yet 
 much of its ancient Catholic consistency and polish, the 
 series stops ; and between Calvin and Cranmer, Presby- 
 terianism and Episcopacy, human philosophy and celestial 
 faith, private judgment and Catholic consent, there is an 
 interval, wide as the earth, high as the stars, and lasting 
 as the heaven. Why then should Episcopalians be blamed 
 for not wishing to bridge the gulf, or to break down the 
 dividing wall 1 Or why should they he derided for seek- 
 ing to restore that wall, where it may have been w^eakened'? 
 Is there not a hid treasure in its corner-stone ] Pray, 
 gentlemen, desist from calling names. Pray, for a trifling 
 temporary advantage, do not endeavour to stultily us to the 
 world, and expose us to its sneer, by creating the impres- 
 sion, that it is for forms and shadows that Episcopalians 
 contend ! We will not tell you you know better ; but we 
 do tell you it is high time that you knew better. The ad- 
 vantage this mode of warfare gives you, will not last you 
 long. We bide our time. When Presbyterianism, where 
 it is new, shall have run the course and reached the decay 
 that it has run and reached wherever it is old, the world 
 will see— alas, too late for many !— that it has not been 
 a war for forms. Tt is not an archangel contending with 
 Satan for the body of Moses. It is the Bride, the Lamb's 
 
 >\ 
 
DOWNWARD TENDENCIES. 
 
 177 
 
 Wife, contending with anti-Chiist for the divine perfec- 
 tions of her Lord. Has she ever — has she ever — since the 
 moment of the Reformation, sympathized with the heresi es 
 on very side of her, which not only deny that the Lord 
 hath '' bought us with his blood," but deny that He who 
 bought us is the Lord ? Wherever Apostolical Episcopacy 
 exists— and it now belts the earth— Jesus is worshipped 
 as " very God of very God ; " His blood, in all places, 
 the price of our redemption ; His cross, save where your 
 own hands have torn it down, the symbol of our hope; 
 and the Creeds of the earliest times, recited with a lowly 
 bowing at the name of JESUS. How different, where 
 Presbytery has fulfilled its course — in London or in Bel- 
 fast, in Paris or Geneva, in Berlin or in Boston — it mat- 
 ters not where — rvlierever it has run its course, there Jesus 
 is rejected, and his crown trodden in the dust. It is the 
 *' invariible antecedent and consequence" of the phi- 
 losopher — the plain *'' cause and effect " of common 
 sense — the scmpei' post hoc, ergo, propter hoc, of all human 
 experience. 
 
 After attentively considering the terrible experiment of 
 three hundred years, I sought in vain, to fly from the con- 
 clusion, that Presbyterianism embodies in it, by an inherent 
 and innate necessity, the elements of its own decay. 
 Certainly its undying worm is nurtured in the heart of its 
 unhealthy bud. The punctum saliens — the principle of the 
 system, is fatal to the system : the very condition of its 
 existence fatal to that existent • 'he freethinking on 
 which it is based, its own death-wuj . ant. Its leading, 
 hinging, fundamental raticle, "the right of private judg- 
 ment," is a cup of sorcerier., But it is a golden cup, and 
 •* the wine therein giveth us color, and it movoth itself 
 
 aright," 
 
 When once 
 M 
 
 **the right" to taste has been 
 
178 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 established, impossible it is to fling the intoxicating bowl 
 away. Deeper and deeper nnust the victim drink, until, in 
 a wild delirium, he will suck out its very dregs. The 
 •' right of private judgment " is the very key, by which 
 the intellectual sophistries of Calvinism are reached and 
 delected, and, unless the conservative principle of Catholic 
 consent intervene in time to give my mind a new and safe 
 direction, I am lost. Yes, I have been myself upon the 
 slippery descent. What held me back"? Calvinism as 
 history has shown, and as the operations of my own mind 
 would lead me to suspect, is the first step of a liberal in- 
 tellect towards honest infidelity. Presbyterianism, with 
 empires in her arms, has been commonly two hundred 
 years, in running its course. But the individual mind, 
 borrowing her impetus, can easily outrun \^v. A phi- 
 losophical mind, like Doctor Priestly's, or a mind formed 
 like Mr. Belsham's, m a physical and utilitarian mould, 
 or an active, imaginative mind, like Milton's, may, in a 
 single lifetime , run through this circle of opinions. Milton, 
 to take but one of those examples, whose fingers swept 
 with such inimitable grace and grandeur the strings of a 
 seraphic lyre, alas ! with a like facility, almost poetic, 
 swept over all these notes in the descending scale of theo- 
 logy. Leaving the Church of Rome, and from political 
 animosities, unwilling to stop at the Chuichof England, 
 he became a Presbyterian— then, an Independent— next, 
 Anabaptist— afterward, an Arian— and eventually a Soci- 
 cinian— although it is believed that later in life he returned 
 to a better mind. So the freethinking mind of Watts, the 
 great poet, whose words of praise form chiefly the present 
 liturgy of Presbyterians, labored, it is understood, anxiously 
 and painfully on the question of our Lord's divinity, while 
 the chair that he occupied at* a preceptor has in lutter 
 years, we are informed, been filled by a Socinian. 
 
DOWNWARD TENDENCIES. 
 
 179 
 
 Yes, I have stood myself upon the topmost round of this 
 slippery descent, and have seen the depth as it darkened 
 below me. And from my soul I bless the hand of Provi- 
 dence for interposing the faith of the earliest and purest 
 a2;es as an alternative to my distracted breast. I ascertained 
 that there was a clearer and steadier light than the sparks 
 of reason's kindling", in v/hich Christianity might be con- 
 sidered—not the light of a volcano, bursting in Germany, 
 and leaving the earth strewn with ashes and cinders — not 
 the light of a meteor, flashing on Geneva, and leaving the 
 heavens darker than in the nights of Popery— not the light 
 of a planet, reflecting for a while the bright rays of the 
 body from which it is broken, and then sinking into silence 
 and eclipse— but the steady, anliuctuating light of a primi- 
 tive age, all radient v.'ith ininirifcrable constellations^ that, 
 like the light of the natural firmament, has come down to 
 lis undimmed and unimpared. O it is refreshing beyond 
 all utterance, after following these human guides and 
 wandering stars— the Luthers, and the Calvins, and the 
 Wesleys, of yesterday— to see at last a Christianity shining 
 with that same full-orbed light in which Polycarp and Ig- 
 natius and Irenaeus beheld its glory, and to know as i\ his- 
 torical fact, that, it is as much the same, as the light of the 
 celestial bodies above us is the light thai shone upon their 
 natural eyes. 
 
 I may therefore repeat, that to my mind the inference 
 was irresistible and, may I not say, philosophical, that for 
 the uniform defection of Presbyterian communities from 
 the faith, or their continual tendency to that defection, there 
 must be a unilbrm cause ; and that this cause must be in- 
 herent in the system ; for the frightful phenomena are 
 everywhere the same ; in empires and nations and in nar- 
 rower localities, separated by sea andmountain, and diverse 
 from each other in language, government, education, taste. 
 

 180 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 >m 
 
 I 
 
 and all the habits of mind and modes of thou2;hl. And I 
 tlioui^jht I could perceive that, next to the self-sufficiency 
 of private judj^ment, and next to the principles on which 
 they depend, of exegesis and of argument, by which every 
 thing must be clearly dehned and proven, the chief secret 
 of this terrible deceiy is in the want of a liturgy to protect 
 the faith, and of the order of Apostles to whom the pro- 
 mise was given by our Lord, " Lo, I am with you alway, 
 even unto the end of the world." Though we say it in 
 sorrow, we must say it in candor, aye, in fidelity to the 
 Master, that, as a matter of historical fact, " the gates of 
 hell" bavc, to an extent that should inspire the most seri- 
 ous misgiving and dismay, " PREVAILED against" the 
 Presbyterian communion. Only two out-posts— one in 
 Scotland, and one in part of the United States, — and in both 
 a sad breach has been made in the walls,— remain to be 
 taken, and the work is done ! Li this country, Presbyterian- 
 ism, save in New England, has not fulfilled its course ; and 
 yet it is rent into conflicting schisms, and agitated with 
 wM "winds of doctrine," and is the unhappy playthhig of 
 what one of their own divines has called *' the eternal 
 Eurekas of some new divinity." But of Presbyterianism 
 in New England, in France, in Switzerland, in Derunark, 
 in Germany, in Holland, in Prussia, over nearly all which 
 countries it has had an uninterrupted run and reign of three 
 hundred yearo, we can speak now historically. Gather the 
 Presbyterians of all these lands into one vast assembly, and 
 you will find, that they have, almost to an individual, " de- 
 nied the Lord that bought them with his blood." Ask 
 them again if the Bible that we acknowledge contains the 
 inspired and infallible communications of God to men, and, 
 with scarcely a dissenting voice they will tell you NO ! — 
 More than three hundred years was Popery in laying her 
 
DOWNWARD TENDKNCIES. 
 
 181 
 
 hand upon the laity, and ivpelliui; thoin from the cup ; but 
 in less tluin three hundred, in all the countries we have 
 named, Presbyterianisni has laid her hand upon the crown 
 of JESUS, and lorn it Irom his brow, and declared Him to 
 be no God of hers. Again and again has she surrendered 
 the Divinity of her Lord, taken otf from His exalted Person 
 the purple robe, and suffered Him to be crowned with 
 shame and spitting. Rome, with all her abominations, 
 never did it. Which then is the Anti-christ of the present 
 day l 1 dare not answer — but one, whom the ^catholic faith 
 has always held to be inspired, has said, " He is anti-christ' 
 that denicth the Father and the Son ,•" and again he says, 
 ** Many deceivers are entered nito the world, who confess 
 not that Jksus Christ is come in thejiesh. This is a de- 
 ceiver and an anti-christ.''^ (I. John ii. 22, 23 : II. John 7.) 
 
 '^ Have you heard the dreadful news ?" said a very re- 
 markable lady, and active parishioner of mine, not many 
 years ago. — "another clergyman in England gone over to 
 Rome !" 
 
 " Indeed !" I replied; " it is really very sad ; but" (en- 
 deavouring to adapt my answer to onewho had been nearly 
 Swedenborgianized out of the doctrine of the resurrection, 
 and liberalized and spiritualized, as I had heard, into the 
 celebration of the communion with friend Gurney and his 
 companions,) " I think he might have done worse— better 
 believe too much than too little." But this did not damp* 
 in the least, the ardor or the satisfaction with which, some- 
 time afterw?«.i'd, she renewed the lamentation, '* 0, Mr. 
 
 , have you heard the dreadful nevi's— have you not 
 
 heard it 'I another of our clergy gone over to the Papists !" 
 
 "But why do they leave the Church," said I ; "do they 
 believe the Church of England to be Erastianized and Puri- 
 tanized beyond redemption 1 If so, I can only say that I 
 «]o not agree with them." Still, after a certain interval; 
 

 A^' 
 
 182 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH. 
 
 f: i 
 
 the oUl song camo back, " O Mr. ■ ', havf- you heard 
 
 the dreadlul news— have you seen the papers-have you 
 not heard— another clergyman apostatized V 
 
 " Is it possible," 1 replied, " apostatized to what V 
 " To Popery P' 
 
 " Ah, indeed !" I remarked ; " I did not know but you 
 meant, to the Independents or the Baptists, or possibly thrf 
 Unitarians ; however there is this consolation," said 1 to the 
 lady, who carried the Church of England as some better 
 employed ladies take their knitting, in her lap,'^ it is a con- 
 solation that not a speck nor mote can appear in the eye ot 
 the Church of England, but it seems instantly to give paui 
 to the extremities of the body social ; surely this is the 
 Church of God !" 
 
 But as this continual dropping began, in the course of 
 time, to wear a little on my powers of endurance, I said 
 
 one day to the good lady, " Oh, Miss , have you 
 
 heard the dreadful newsf 
 
 ♦' No ! pray dont tell me, if it is anything bad— I want to 
 
 hear something good-but I believe there is no more any 
 
 good-but do not tell me-any more apostacies to Rome I 
 
 " Worse than that," I answered very solemnly. 
 
 " Why, what do you mean % What can be worse than 
 
 that?" 
 
 " Indeed, Miss -, 1 ^'onder you should not have 
 
 heard it— very little is said about it however-a great many 
 people do not even know it- but still , I think it ought to be 
 known, and I hope you will do your part in letting our 
 parishioners know it. How singular it is, that three or 
 four men cannot leave the Church of England, for that of 
 Rome, without rocking the earth to its centre and turning 
 all faces black, when fifty thousand Presbyterians m Swit- 
 zerland may deny the Lord and reject his word, and no 
 one'sequanmutybe disturbed throughout all Christendom. 
 
DOWNWARD TENDENCIES. 
 
 183 
 
 ♦' But tell me," said the lady, " that neivs you had to tell 
 
 me. 
 
 j> 
 
 Well, Miss 
 
 I am endeavoring to break it to 
 
 you by degrees, as you thought you could not bear it very 
 well this evening; that is the news— not that lifty thousand, 
 but that more than thirty millions of Pre.sbytorians in Swit- 
 zerland; in Germany, in Ireland, in New England, in Old 
 England, and wherever Presbyterianism has held sway, 
 both pastors and parishes, in one terrific mass, have dis- 
 owned the Trinity, and denied the divinity of Jesus. Now:, 
 , let me beg you not to make yourself so un-- 
 
 Miss — 
 
 hay)py about half a dozen men, who imagining that our 
 Church bids fair to run the same course, are seeking refuge 
 in Rome; but, if you must be unhappy, take up your la- 
 mentation over the thirty millions of Protestants gomg 
 down this moment to the grave, and the fifty or one hun- 
 dred millions, who have already gone, with the open de- 
 nial on their lips of " Him who bought them with His 
 blood." This was, however, a sad experiment with my 
 parishioner. She never forgave me. 
 
 And if here and there amidst the general apostacy, the 
 continental mind is seen returning to some dim perceptions 
 of the truth, with what crudities of mysticism or fanaticism 
 is the effort marred, how partial is the acknowledgement of 
 ancient doctrine, how sceptical and mutilated the re-appro- 
 priation of the books of Scripture, how abandoned the mind 
 to the theologia pectoris, as it has been termed, or the the- 
 ology of sentiment, as phrase imports. As the famished 
 sailor, taken trom a wreck, has lost ^ne powe- of discerning 
 wholesome and appropriate food, -ad impelled by blind 
 hunger, seizes on the first nourishment that offers, so a Ger- 
 man or Continental mind, thus waking out of infidelity, 
 plunges at once, under his new impulses and new wants, 
 into all the revelry of a wild and liccKlious divinity; or 
 
( 
 
 
 1 4;- 
 
 !: 
 'f 
 
 I: 
 \ 
 
 J 
 
 f ! 
 1 • 
 
 1, 
 
 
 ^^^R 
 
 ■M 
 
 I 
 
 184 
 
 LOOKING FOR THE cHuncir. 
 
 else, as Popery is the only other religion within his reach, 
 flies to her hosom as a shelter from his own inlolerahle dis- 
 tractions ; and we therefore hear without surprise, that the 
 present family of Luther, for want of the purer Catholicity 
 which Cromwell's descendant has found in England, and 
 three hundred dissentin;^ ministers have found to their 
 heart's joy in America, have lied from the horrid and wild 
 developments of Preshyterian metaphysics to the more 
 genial bosom of the Papacy. 
 
 Having now seen that, as a Presbyterian, I was not in 
 '^^e Rock-founded Church, entitled, after the death of the 
 ^ Testator, to his gracious promise to be with her " until the 
 end of the world," and that the gates of hell should not pre- 
 vail against her, I felt a deep anxiety to quit the house thus 
 fallen already, or else its last timbers shaking on the sand ; 
 but believing that the part of it in which I dwelt might 
 «' last my time," I had only resolution enough to introduce 
 my children into a Church, already belting the earth, every 
 where acknowledging her Lord, and now, as eighteen cen- 
 turies ago, " continuing steadfastly in the Apostles' doc- 
 trine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in 
 prayers." Yet I was unconsciously beginning to move in 
 the middle path between Popery and Sectarianism— the too 
 much and the too little in Christianity— toward what was 
 now fast becoming the Church simultaneously of my af- 
 fections and my understanding. An influence invisible at- 
 tracted me on, a feeling unaccountable sustained me, that 
 to go on would be safe. I inhaled already the fragrapt air 
 of a morning that my eyes had not yet seen: I beheld, 
 though at a distance still, bright gleamings from the win- 
 dows of a temple that my feet had not yet trodden. 
 
 m 
 
 L 
 
V 
 
 »»""f» 
 
 is reach, 
 a})leclis- 
 
 that Ihe 
 lliolicity 
 and, and 
 
 1o their 
 and wild 
 he nnore 
 
 as not in 
 ith of the 
 until the 
 1 not pre- 
 ouse thus 
 the sand ; 
 sit might 
 introduce 
 :th, every 
 iteen cen- 
 tles' doc- 
 ,d, and in 
 3 move in 
 1 — the too 
 what was 
 jf my af- 
 visible at- 
 i me, that 
 agrapt air 
 I beheld, 
 1 the win- 
 'n. 
 
 «r 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 I