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was as incapable of understanding the former gentlemen as they would be a dissertation in Russian or Chinese. The downright and undeniable heresy of the General Assembly, on the humanity of our Lord, is placed beyond the shadow of doubt or question in the following passage: "that in Mr. Maclean's opinion our Lord was kept from sinning only by the hypostatical union, and that his nature IN ITSELF was not more holy than that of other men; and that this opinion is inconsistent with the representations of Scripture and the standards of the Church of Scotland." Away then, for the future, with all quibbles and subterfuges of the Record, and Marcus Dodds; here is a holy humanity per se; creature holiness; a nature wholly dissimilar in essence and in every part from the nature of man; a distinct and unequivocal denial that Christ was man of the substance of his mother." evidence were still further wanting, it is to be found in the bill of indictment found against Mr. Maclean, wherein the charges specified are," That you, Mr. H. B. Maclean, used expressions of the import and tendency, that Christ had taken our fallen nature upon him; that he had taken a body formed of the sinful flesh of the Virgin.' "Has the General Assembly taken leave of its wits? does it mean to hold itself up to the universal ridicule of mankind? Of what, in the name of common sense, and meaning of words, could a child's body be formed, but of the flesh of its mother?-Another count is, that he alleged "that the nature of Christ was the fallen nature of man, and his body was a body of fallen flesh, formed of the substance of the Virgin, who was not more pure than the rest of our sinful race." Well! was she? was the virgin formed of impeccable flesh too? Is the General Assembly going to preach Popery altogether? We wish our readers to attend to those expressions in Italics, because we know that some men, of honest hearts but weak minds, have been puzzled by persons calling themselves great theologians, but who seem to have no faculty for expressing accurate ideas, and who rail at the word fallen, as if its use constituted a mortal offence in Mr. Irving and Mr. Maclean, although they themselves are sound on the true humanity of the substance of the Virgin. To quibble about a mere term is contemptible: no one has used the term fallen in any other sense than as the substance of the Virgin: those who have attacked the term have really and bond fide intended to deny that Christ took substance of the Virgin Mary this we have ever shewn, and of this we have here irrefragable proof: the heretics assert that Christ's body was not formed of the substance of the Virgin, but was a new creature. This is the doctrine of Marcus Dodds, the Record, and hoc genus omne.

Again and again we will reiterate, that this heresy against

the true humanity of Jesus of Nazareth, by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, is without a parallel in the history of the church, except the heresy against the Divinity of the Son of God by the Arians and Socinians. The Arian heresy brought down the Saracenic judgment upon the Eastern church, and this new heresy will also bring a judgment of destruction upon the Northern church. It is more needful to send missionaries into Scotland than into Papal countries, and we trust that effectual steps will forthwith be taken to endeavour to deliver the people out of the hand of the pastors who are making havock of the church of God north of the Tweed. We scarcely know whether the heresies in the church or the infidelity in the savans is the most appalling characteristic of Edinburgh at the present moment; but we have greater hope and expectation of repentance and conversion amongst the latter than amongst the former.

So far as the decision of the General Assembly affects Mr. Campbell, Scott, or Maclean, personally, there is nothing to produce the slightest unpleasant impression upon their mind, body, or estate: their expulsion is as perfectly an innocuous proceeding as could have been imagined: no human being will esteem them less or more than they did previously. The result of the decision, therefore, is of consequence to the General Assembly alone. All who are clear-sighted and honest in Scotland will array themselves against this heretical body; but as this body will retain the mass of the people with it, so will it be indifferent whether it retain truth or not. In like manner the Church of Rome laughs at the power of Protestantism to overthrow it; and in like manner the men who have got the money in Earl Street, together with all the Socinians, Neologists, and schismatic Dissenters, laugh at the Protesters in Sackville Street, although truth and justice are clearly on the side of the latter. Never will bodies of men be otherwise than on the wrong side, and never will they learn that the flock of Jesus is a "little flock;" and that, wherever there are two parties on any religious question, the most numerous wants one characteristic of the true party of Christ-namely, that it is a "little flock."

For the truth's sake, we hope that many will be stirred up to preach against these Scotch heresies, of the limitation of God's love to man, and the denial of the true humanity of Christ; and when they are cast out of the synagogue, we trust they will betake themselves, like their forefathers, to the common people, preaching to them on the moors and on the mountaintop, delivering them from the locusts that are devouring the land, the wolves in sheep's clothing, who are usurping the office of shepherds in the fold of Jesus Christ.

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THE ATTACK OF THE EDINBURGH REVIEW ON THE

MORNING WATCH.

THE Edinburgh Review has been long celebrated as the leader of the infidel party in Great Britain. Taylor and Carlile have, indeed, exceeded it in open impiety; but the former has been purveyor for the chosen few who explore the higher branches of literature, while the latter have pandered to the taste of the lowest rabble. The last number of the Edinburgh Review has commenced, and closed, an elaborate article on the Morning Watch, by apologizing to its readers for taking notice of a publication so little known in the circles where its own blue cover is the constant inmate. We ought, in like manner, to apologize to the readers of the Morning Watch for noticing a publication. which, having been long classed with the writings of Tom Paine, is scarcely known, but by name, in the more serious parties of the religious world. But whilst we have felt it right from time to time to meet and refute the Pharisees of the present day, we would not shew ourselves remiss in encountering the modern Sadducees also. Would, however, that our antagonist on this occasion were worthy of his type! Nothing is more striking than the apparent candour with which the Sadducees of old opposed the doctrines of our Lord, while the Pharisees as constantly "tempted him, that they might accuse him." For, although in the camp, and covered with the panoply of the infidels, his speech bewrayeth him to be Pharisee in disguise, an apostate from a faith in which he has been taught, as Rabshekah appeared of old in the army of Sennacherib.

We intend to meet him on all his points-his philosophy; his logic; his theology, if such it can be termed; and his spirit, since on that too he erects himself into the office of our judge. He observes, that "the principle of religious variances, so infinite in the case of individuals, extends to the great moral improvements in society, where the strata of human opinion rise, one above another, in distinct masses of successive growth. There are, consequently, philosophical systems of Christianity, which suppose that the Reformation will not only want, but must gradually go on, reforming; since dogmas depend for their real character on the nature of the times, as much as fruits on the quality of the soil in which they grow." These remarks could only proceed from the pen of a man who had made his religion conform to his philosophy, instead of making his philosophy bend to his religion. He looks on Christianity with the eyes of the Vicaire Savoyard, and utterly despises every part of it, as we shall see hereafter, but its moral precepts, and which, separated from its dogmas, belong not more exclusively to the Founder of Christianity, than to Confucius. Christian "dogmas depend

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for their real character," not "on the nature of the times," but on the nature of Him who promulgated them : and when the Reviewer says of us, that we seem to treat with utter scorn all general reasoning, and particular consequences, and to be at the same time equally careless and suspicious of authority, for which they apparently substitute some private illumination of their own," we tell him that his assertion is notoriously false; that we neither do, nor ever did, substitute private illumination for any thing; and that we have entered into closer and more accurate reasoning, on all the branches of divinity that have been discussed in these pages, than any other religious journal now extant.

There is no error more fatal, although by no means rare in well-bred circles, than for a man who is naturally amiable, benevolent, and free from outward acts of immorality, to admire the poetry and philosophy of certain parts of the life and doctrines of our Lord, and thence to conclude of himself, and be ranked by others, as a truly Christian man, who has sanctified abilities and learning by devoting them to the service of religion. It is from persons of this class, chiefly, that we hear of the blessed results that are to happen to the world from the spread of education, the circulation of Bibles, the abolition of slavery, and the conversion of the heathen. But the plain truth is, that they are nothing more than gentle and kind-hearted persons, whose good-nature has adopted a Christian phraseology, without one particle of that which is distinctive of Christianity being found in them. There are good-natured Turks, and there have been good-natured Pagans: the outward expression of their good-nature did not take the words of "Do as you would be done by," or "Love your enemies;" but there is nothing in these, and a thousand other such sentences, that is peculiar to the essence of Christianity, although it should be granted that Christ were the only teacher of religion who uttered them; since moral precepts, however refined, are not the essence, but the accessaries, of the Gospel. The boldness with which this doctrine, of the progressive improvement of the human race, is here brought forward, may be of service to the majority of the Evangelical world, by shewing them, in glaring colours, the real nature of their principles, when they fondly dream of, and inculcate, a millennium prior to the destruction of all that now occupies the surface of this globe. We have often told them that their millennium was based, not on the Bible, but on Infidelity; the Edinburgh Review now tells them the same: fas est ab hoste doceri.

Since the Reviewer is one of those polemists who "would rather lose a soul than a sneer," we presume it is to this account we must set down the assertion, that on politics our "reasoning and conclusions are just what might be expected from writers who seem to consider that a course of lectures on Prophecy is

the best preparatory study for young diplomatists; and that the only infallible guide, in doubtful cases of external and internal policy, is to be found in the numerals of Daniel, and the visions of the Apocalypse." The introduction of the word "diplomatists" makes nonsense of the passage; but if he had written 66 statesmen," we would have avowed the fact, and entered into the proofs on any fitting occasion. We do believe that the rise and fall of nations has been foretold by God, in order that they may be warned to flee from those sins which bring down ruin upon them from Him; and that if statesmen do neglect those warnings they will inevitably fall into those errors, and produce the ruin of their country. This will no doubt sound very fierce and uncharitable" to the political worshippers of Horne Tooke, Charles Fox, and Lord Brougham; and to this uncharitableness will be added the harsher attribute of bigotry, when we say that no one who understood "the numerals of Daniel, or the visions of the Apocalypse," would have conceded the Popish claims, or thought it possible that peace and happiness should accrue to the country from the plunder of the church, the downfall of thrones, and the refusal to invoke the protection of God in the apprehension of foreign and domestic calamity.

Since, however, our Christian politics are not the principal object of attack, but the existence of miraculous powers in the church, we come at once to this part of it, passing by, for the sake of brevity, the futile attempts to draw distinctions in healing between functionary and organic derangement; and to separate excitement in modern cases, from that of Peter's mother-in-law, and the man born blind; the fallacy of which we have already shewn in former numbers. But let it not be supposed that we deny the controul of mind over bodily ailments, or that very remarkable cures have taken place by its operation. There is no doubt that plethoric gentlemen, confined to their beds by gout, have suddenly risen up on a cry of "fire" being made, pedibus timor addidit alas, and have betaken themselves to their heels with surprising alacrity. An obstinate tooth-ache has been found to vanish at the sound of the first rap on the dentist's door. Many a young practitioner in his teens has scared away the hiccough from a patient of a similarly susceptible age, by feigning an announcement from the pedagogue of a threatened flagellation. A man has been known to die on the table of the operating room, at the mere inspection of the sleeves and basins and sponges of the operators, long before the knife had approached his hide. The annals of magnetism shew the power of some unknown cause upon every variety of disease, at all ages between conception and caducity. Many cases supposed to be alarming must, no doubt, be set down to the account of a morbid imagination, and have yielded to the restored strength

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