quire us to make their prejudices the law of orthodoxy in the German Reformed Church. We are not called upon to issue a Biblical Commentary or a text book of Church History under the imprimatur of the Synod, nor to endorse in detail the published views of our Professors; but we see no reason for requiring them to abandon their view of the Bible and of the past history of the Church, in favor of this anti-popery tradition. Nay, we wish them not to do so, but to adhere rather to their own general plan and method, as being in our estimation altogether better than any such narrow mechanical scheme. Should their teaching run counter to the Heidelberg Catechism, or to the Apostles' Creed, we are prepared of course to call them to account. But it will be time enough to do this, when the fact is charged and proved in some properly responsible way."

Such was the position taken by the Synod two years ago. It defined nothing ecclesiastically, and settled nothing, as to the positive force of any text in the Bible or any fact in Church History. It was simply a refusal to do this in favor of a particular theological interest; which, not content with being tolerated in its own exegetical and historical notions, was fanatically set on making them of obligation also, on pain of heresy, for the whole Protestant world. This, however, amounted in fact to a serious matter, over against the actual position of those religious bodies, which had already surrendered themselves, either in whole or in part, to the power of that other intolerant scheme; and it has much to do now, as is plain enough to be seen, with the crusade and would-be crisis, which

very much out of character and good taste; but who dreamed of taking the author of it to task for his freedom, or who felt that it showed any real bravery whatever, to exercise it in this bravado way? How very indulgent the Church has always shown itself towards Dr. Berg, not simply enduring his unhistorical radicalism as a private hobby, but allowing him to do all he could besides to inoculate others with the same virus, and even bearing in him for years a license which set at defiance the authority of the Church itself, and openly tended towards its dissolution-all this is something too fresh in memory still, to need any special mention in this place. The same general observation may be applied also to the case of the Rev. Jacob Helffenstein. The relation betwen these would-be martyrs and the Synod of the German Reformed Church, has been one throughout of insulting persecution on their part, and of most patient forbearance only on the part of the Church.

some among them have been trying to get up for our special benefit at the present time. The spirit which actuates the movement, whether in the Dutch Church or in the PseudoLutheran, could be easily enough propitiated, if only our Synod would vote Roman Catholic baptism invalid, ring a few changes lustily on the familiar nick-names of Popery, take up the ribald song piped for it by such men as Brownlee and Berg, adopt the anti-popery key of the prophecies, fall in with the "grand apostacy" scheme of Church History, or stultify itself in any other way by turning Catholicism into a wholesale lie, for the purpose of making Protestantism, nay, modern Puritanism rather in its most unchurchly and unsacramental form, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, of all that real Christianity has ever been in the world. With this preliminary bond of fellowship, which might seem to be for many of our sects the only conception they have of the "communion of saints," it is wonderful indeed how latitudinarian they can afford to be with their liberality, when occasion may require, at other points. These are the main terms of their charity and favor. Are we ready to purchase the boon at any such price?

ARTICLES ON EARLY CHRISTIANITY.

Much umbrage has been taken especially with the historical articles of the "Mercersburg Review," which have been charged with countenancing directly the worst superstitions, as they are commonly considered, of the Church of Rome, and making concessions to it that must prove fatal to the cause of Protestantism altogether.

In these articles the ground is taken, that the Christianity of the first centuries, leaving out of question the age of the Apostles, was not of one form with modern Protestantism, but carried in it rather from the start the germs at least of the same system which was known afterwards as the Catholic, from the sixth century down to the sixteenth. The same general view we meet with in Isaac Taylor's work, entitled, "Ancient Christianity," the object of which is particularly to discredit the use made of the Nicene Period by the Tractarian party in

the Church of England, by showing that this period was itself fully involved in what are considered the worst errors of Romanism as established in later times. So much indeed is commonly admitted as regards the fourth and fifth centuries, by all Puritan controversialists, when their business is to fight Prelacy and Popery; however they may not hesitate, at times again, with strange inconsistency, to praise and quote the learned and pious fathers of the same period, as though they really supposed them to be somehow after all of one mind theologically with themselves. Little difficulty moreover has been made generally in the same quarter with the credit even of the third century, when it has appeared necessary to give it up for the sake of a favorite preconception. The age of Cyprian, we are then told, was already deep in the same system, which swamped the whole Christian world so completely in the next period. With this concession, Puritanism would fain be allowed to stop. But the case itself knows no such limit. By examining the documents of the second century, we find the system of the third again early at work in its controlling aims and principles at least, if not in all its details, away back to the days of Polycarp and Ignatius. This has been faithfully brought into view by the "Mercersburg Review," in the articles entitled Early Christianity and Cyprian. The object of the discussion was partly, the mere historical representation for its own sake, as having to do with facts of more than usual interest not generally well understood; and partly to show the necessity of adopting and openly professing some construction of Protestantism, that may be in real harmony with these facts. In what has consisted then the offence of the articles? It is not easy to say precisely; for it would appear to float between two occasions of dissatisfaction, which by no means agree well logically with one another. Sometimes a show is made of disputing the historical facts, as though the credit of Puritanism. needed antiquity on its side, and must be wounded by any representation showing that this is not the case; and then again, almost it may be in the next breath, the displeasure is simply that the facts, let them be what they may, should be treated as

of any sort of account, in a case which this same Puritanism has already settled in favor of itself, by appealing from all other antiquity to the age of the Apostles as construed to its own modern taste out of the Holy Scriptures. Had the Review pandered to either of these presumptions, by hiding or twisting facts so as to make history what the case needs, or else by denouncing them heartily as palpable corruptions of Bible truth; or better still, perhaps, had it played sycophant to both presumptions at once, distorting in one direction and denouncing in another; all would have been well, and the investigation might have proceeded with as much freedom as it pleased. The offence lay in this, that facts were allowed to speak for themselves, without being presented at every point through the refracting and discoloring medium of a theory created for the very purpose of placing them in an unfavorable light, and that a disposition was shown to treat them with respect rather than reproach in their own proper shape and form.

The whole case is plain enough. The Christianity of the second, third, and fourth centuries, we say, was progressively of the same general order, throughout the entire Christian world, and in this character it differed altogether from modern Protestantism, and led fairly and directly towards the Roman Catholic system of the Middle Ages. In proof of this simply historical assertion, we point to facts. It is purely a question of history in the first place, to be either granted or denied as the truth of facts may seem to require. Is the general proposition true as a historical fact, or is it not? If not, let this be shown by proper evidence. But if it be true, what then? Must it be ignored or overlooked? No honest Protestant certainly will say that. We are bound to look it firmly in the face; and when the question is then asked, How is this fact to be construed over against the claims of Protestantism? It should be felt to be one that is entitled to some open and manly answer. There are now but two general ways, in which to dispose of the matter consistently with these claims. We may treat the Church of the first ages, after the time of the Apos

tles, as a wholesale falsification of Christianity in its proper Apostolical form, and so make the truth of Protestantism to consist in its being a new edition altogether of what was then so short-lived in the beginning; or we may allow a true continuation of the primitive life of Christianity in the early Church, according to the article in the Creed, and make Protestantism then to agree with it in some way of historical derivation, answerable to the law of growth in the natural world, by which all differences shall be resolved into outward accident and form merely, whilst the inward substance is taken to be always the same. One or the other of these methods we must adopt for the solution of the question in hand, or else fall into down right obscurantism of the most pitiful sort. The first method, however, is only another name for infidelity, denying as it does practically, the existence of the Church and the authority of the Creed. The case then shuts the cause of Protestantism up to the other view, as the only one by which its pretensions can be consistently maintained without treason to Christianity. This is the general conclusion of our argument, in the articles of the "Mercersburg Review" on the Early Church. The argument itself proposes no particular theory or scheme, for the construction of such a historical genesis as the case is shown to demand. It merely urges the necessity of some scheme of the sort, if Protestantism is to be upheld at all. That, however, is at once much. It implies, in the first place, a true succession of Christianity in the Catholic Church, in spite of all corruptions, not only from the first century to the sixth, but from the sixth century also to the sixteenth. This makes the Church an object of respect through all ages. And in the second place, it requires, that Protestantism shall not be taken to be such a rupture with the Catholic Church, as excludes the idea of a strictly historical continuity of being between what Christianity is now in the one form and what it was before in the other. When it comes to such wholesale negation and contradiction, the true idea of Protestantism is gone, and we have only unhistorical radicalism in its place. Protestantism must be historical, to be true. Το say that it is not