are moral causes which have hitherto prevented the same general interest from being felt in religion as in other practical sciences. But we look forward with happy anticipations to a time, approaching in the probable course of events, when the intrepidity and earnestness which have characterized researches into other departments of knowledge, will be carried more extensively than now into the investigations of the sublimest of them all ;-when a due portion of the awakened intellect of men will be given to a curious inquisition into the sense of the lively oracles, a keen attention to learn that mind of the Lord which they disclose.

The present may perhaps be safely described as comparatively an age of exact thinking. A severer, if a less pretending logick has taken the place of that magnificent apparatus of self deception, which disputants of other times were used to wield. Men are not so apt as they have been to misapprehend the bearing of a known truth on a truth under discussion, or to permit the strength of their confidence to be widely out of proportion to the strength of their reasons. At any rate, whatever they may think of this, all will agree, that the age is of such a practical character as to be comparatively little prone to deviate from exactness on the side of mysticism; and herein we discern an omen of no small encouragement. There has been no enemy to the power of Christianity greater than the imputation, under which it has laboured, of being a faith of mysteries. Nothing could more completely confuse, nothing could more effectually discourage the study of it, than to represent it as to such a degree intricate, and so essentially different from other subjects of human knowledge, as to unsettle by its adoption the radical principles of belief. Nothing could be more sure to prejudice thinking men against it, than the idea of its attempting a violent divorce of that eternal union which God has instituted between the understanding and truth. Nothing could more directly tend to deaden that interest of the mind in it, without which the interest of the heart has only a most feeble

and precarious life. No other source of errour could be so endlessly prolifick. If we can assent to one proposition that seems self contradictory, we may assent on the same terms to another; and there is nothing to prevent us from believing, against all evidence, that Christianity is a fable, and the being of God a dream. In this age of wary thought the truth is less obscured than it has been, that the doctrines of revealed religion differ from other parts of our knowledge in the method of their communication and the importance of their uses, and not in the strange peculiarity of bearing a strong likeness to falsehood in its most distinguishing feature. In truths relating to religion, as well as others, we have begun to look for the appropriate signatures of truth. And there has appeared such a settled and growing dissatisfaction with arguments which assume that religion is a peculiarly unintelligible subject, that a corresponding change may already be observed in the conduct of controversies. We much less commonly than heretofore find doctrines, charged with involving contradiction, sheltered under the name of mysteries. They are now more frequently defended by attempts to show, that the alleged repugnancy to reason does not exist.

Besides these general principles of a reformation of religious opinion, there are particulars, in which a fatal inconsistency might be pointed out between single errours that have prevailed, and the habits of thinking that are gaining ground, such as in their natural tendency must needs operate to the subversion of the former. But it would lead us too far to attempt thus to particularize. If the almost obsolete doctrine of the saving power of ordinances is not the only popular tenet marked with the impress of an age that believed in charms and magick, rather than of an age accustomed to attend to a connexion between causes and effects, we may be sure that it is not to go alone into the tomb of once powerful delusions. If our belief is just, that the system improperly called orthodox has throughout a close congeniality with the infancy of the mind, the immature,

unformed, dependent stage of its progress,-our inference is safe that, as the latter is left behind, the former too will disappear. False doctrines in religion were scarcely more securely established, three centuries ago, than false doctrines in politicks. If they rested equally on that basis of implicit, incurious, bewildered faith, which has since been effectually shaken, it was to be expected that the religious errours would be the last to be thoroughly exposed, because, among other reasons, the investigation of these is approached with a greater awe. The best among the triumphs of the reanimated mind of man has been achieved among ourselves. May we not hope that a far better still awaits it here? Our native country has led the way in the rejection of political errours. Is it forbidden by the signs of the times to hope, that it is to be also the pioneer of a wide religious reformation? The oversight of such solemn interests as the interests of this people, at stake upon their own exercise of independent and cautious thought, may safely be assumed to be so far a salutary discipline of the mind to prepare it for all grave investigations; and in the next generation will be comprehended many, who, in receiving the truths of uncorrupt Christianity, will not have those prejudices of education to correct, which have been obstacles, hard and grievous to surmount, in the way of most of their predecessors of this age.

III. We draw a favourable augury from the improved and improving STATE OF INFORMATION. The system of orthodoxy had its birth in a very ignorant period of the world. Such a period is its proper element; and, tenacious as it is of life, it does not seem to be properly constituted to thrive in any other. The doctrine of the Trinity, in the complete form in which it has been transmitted to us, dates from the latter part of the fourth century. It is traced to that system of philosophy,--unjustly called the Platonick, for few of its vagaries are chargeable on the philosopher from whom it borrowed its name-which, in that age of visionary speculation, abused the minds of studious men. The introduc

tion into the church of total depravity and predestination, with their kindred errours, is referred to a period somewhat later; but these doctrines never obtained a paramount authority in the church of Rome, nor appeared, till the era of the reformation, in the prominence into which they have since been forced. Of that period in the history of the religious world, to which the name reformation is commonly limited, no more can be justly said, than that an almost total eclipse began then to pass away from the mind. It was by no means to be expected, that a complete revision and expurgation of religious doctrine should be made in the course of a few years; in the hurry and tumult of civil wars; while so many practical abuses were first to be redressed; while ancient prejudices were as yet only unsettled; while not only the opposition of the bigotted was to be encountered, but also the scruples of the timid; and while the art of thinking was yet to be learned. But what I am here particularly concerned to notice is, that the learning requisite for a successful criticism of the scriptures was very partially possessed by the leading reformers. They were but moderately acquainted with the original languages, and very imperfectly with those kindred dialects which have since thrown so much light upon scriptural phraseology.Their investigations into the composition and history of the Bible had not been sufficiently extensive to correct essentially those false rules of interpretation which had prevailed; and their comparisons of spiritual things with spiritual had been greatly incomplete. And let it be always remembered, that there was then no genuine good sense, as now, of a well informed common people, to correct the extravagancies of reasoning pride; but men, whose minds were prepossessed with idle systems,-scholars, such as they were in those days, studying and reasoning in the trammels of a vitious scholarship, were the instructors of Christians in Christian doctrine. It was not till a later period that the scriptures, to say nothing of adequate means of understanding them, could be said to be in the possession of the people

at large. Translations, it is true, were soon made; but, in the existing state of unacquaintance with the elements of knowledge, their circulation was of course extremely confined, and the perception of their meaning still more so; and the few, who could read and gather any opinions from them, were no match for the already organized ascendency of those, who were theorists by profession, and, as such, incompetent interpreters, as theories then were, of a book like the Bible. I repeat it, the Bible cannot be said to have been to any considerable extent subjected to the investigation of unprejudiced men till within a recent period; and I would particularly ask attention to this fact from those, who are fond of founding an argument on the opinions of the first settlers of this part of our country ;-men, worthy of all reverence for their virtues, but whose judgments on a question of scriptural research we can by no means prefer to our own. King James' version, the first which came into very extensive use, had scarcely been published when they landed in this country. How many copies is it probable they brought with them? Of those whose opinions are now quoted as authority to us, how many is it reasonable to assume that there were, who had read the Bible with a patient scrutiny? How many may be supposed to have had any definite information concerning its sense, distinct from what they had gathered from the expositions of systematick theologians? Even the more judicious and learned Christian expositors, of that time and long afterwards, laboured under an inconvenience arising from their being but partially possessed of the requisite learning. I suppose no one can consult the early Arminian writers without being struck by the fact, that, while their good sense and compre hensive views of the Christian system, as a whole, often guided them with remarkable precision to the sense of particular passages in scripture, they were not seldom embarrassed, in maintaining their interpretation, by arguments which a more intimate acquaintance with its phraseology would have enabled them readily to repel. This is a deficien