mysteries in his creed :-except that he should need any revealed help from heaven, seeing he can teach and reform it when it comes! With him Jesus Christ is only a creature; his death a mere sentimental display of suffering virtue, or conscious truth, or sublime martyrdom; and at all events no atonement for our sins: Satan is a mere personification of evil; and hell a nonentity. With him experimental religion is not revealed in the Bible; eternal punishment is a pure impossibility, which no evidence can prove; regeneration is an absurdity; serious religion the effect of ignorance; and the Holy Ghost himself no person, no being; but a mere attribute, energy, relation, quality, virtue, influence. Thus he evades the whole power of the gospel, and is a gentleman.

The deist comes to the same result by extravagantly magnifying the light of nature. So great is this light, that the Bible is unnecessary. He can demonstrate that God is not prodigal of his gifts; and when "the heavens declare his glory and the firmanent showeth his handy work," as there is no necessity, so neither is there any reality in a revelation of another sort. And we must admit, he says, his conclusions, if we grant his premises: for God is a wise economist, as well as a most munificent king; and what is altogether unnecessary, he will assuredly not communicate: and of what is necessary, the deist is a competent judge.

Safe in the hands of one disposing power,

Or in the natal or the mortal hour.

The sceptical philosopher is the disciple of the lights of science. He is above the need of celestial guidance. The Bible will do for the herd, but he is elevated above the necessity of such antiquated rules. He is as well assured as if his geography had mapped the interior of the eternal world. He understands the wonderful facts of natural, and the sublime discoveries of contemplative and experimental science. He has learned to doubt where others are sufficiently gross to believe; having ascertained that the philosophy of the Bible is radically wrong. It may be a good book to awe the world and aid the magistracy. But if all men were as enlightened by philosophy as some are, the Bible would be utterly exploded. In the times of Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton, philosophers were not "renewed up" to these heliocentric discoveries.

The mere man of the world finds pleasure, and wants no more. This divinity is with him a succedaneum for God and goodness. The Bible is good for the squalid and the unfortunate;

As beads and prayer-books are the toys of age;

But if all could be as happy without it, as he is, its room would be better than its company. What a pity that such voluptuaries should ever get sick and die; and possibly come to judgment in a future state! But every now and then it happens that one drops off.

The Friend gets rid of the Bible as effectually

as any one of the foregoing, and much more speciously. And why not, since he has something better within? why not, when the inward light is paramount? They have the spirit, that teaches them to disparage the words of the Spirit! They drink at the fountain, and what need of the streams? They walk by the Lawgiver, and not by the law! Their preachers are just as really inspired as was Paul; and why go to his antiquated writings, when they have fresh inspirations at hand? Beside, Friends doubt sometimes whether Paul was inspired in all that he wrote. There are some things in his epistles that look rather carnal; as if he was not then "delivered from the letter," or as if he had strayed away from his guide; as they often do!

That Friends do, ALL OF THEM, in London, NewYork, and Philadelphia, and of all ages since their rise, unite in denying the PARAMOUNT authority of scripture, is infallibly a fact. That they do this with much subtlety of argumentation, I believe ;as I also believe that their argumentation is in its process pure sophistry, and in its result pure heresy.

Their grand sophism may be detected by distinguishing the personal dignity of the Spirit, compared with all his influences. It is a more general truth that the Agent is greater than the action. The Holy Ghost is greater than the scriptures, and greater than a miracle, and greater than creation. He is greater than any or all of his influences, miraculous or ordinary. Why are Friends so elaborate, with Fox and Barclay at their head, to prove what no christian ever denied? The Holy

Ghost is God, and God is greater than all his works. The inspiration of the scriptures, for the use of men, proceeded from the Holy Ghost. Now, what is the position of a consistent protestant here? It is this-the Bible is a code of laws which I am obligated, in reverence for its DIVINE Author, heartily to obey as my PARAMOUNT rule of faith and action. What the position of a Friend? As the Spirit that inspired the Bible is greater than the Bible, I am determined by the light within to walk by the greater and not by the less. That is—the Friend makes a rule of the Ruler, a law of the Lawgiver; and a practical nonentity of the volume legislated by rightful authority on purpose to regulate all his actions! This I call THEIR GRAND ERROR-the monstrous and mortal sophism of the Quakers. Hear their champion. Though the scriptures are all true, "nevertheless, because they are only a declaration of the fountain, and not the fountain itself, therefore they are not to be esteemed the principal ground of all truth and knowledge, nor yet the adequate primary rule of faith and manners.-Therefore also the Spirit is more originally and principally the rule, according to that received maxim in the schools, Propter quod unumquodque est tale, illud ipsum est magis tale. Englished thus: That for which a thing is such, that thing itself is more such."

Let us see how this reasoning, applied to the legislature of the nation, would evince the superior patriotism of its disciples. Ordinary people think it right to honor "the powers that be" in a way of

peaceably obeying the laws. But suppose a political sect should arise to reform us all in that gross conception; and should assume to know a better way, a far more excellent style of patriotism. We listen to their wisdom; and this is its sum: "These laws, fellow citizens, can never make you patriots. They are all indeed very good, and ye are in the habit-we hear-of having every family in the country provided with a copy of them. For this you have large societies and levy a fearful tax upon the coffers of the poor. We are afraid that ye are all trusting to the dead letter of ordinances; and much concerned that ye should be brought off from these outward things to hunt for patriotism in the secret of your own hearts. There after all is the place for it. Types and paper and law phrases never yet made a patriot. It is all within that the true virtue is to be found. Beside, if ye would be wise, remember that this dotage of yours, in obeying the laws of your country, is a great affront to the legislature. Are the laws greater than the lawmakers? Is it not plain that if you respect them for the sake of these, these are themselves worthy of much more respect! That on account of which any thing is such, the thing itself is more such. If therefore you respect the laws, for the sake of the legislature, how plain is it that you are continually offending the legislature by such astonishing reverence for the laws! But we have risen above all these vulgar influences. Our minds are all full of the light of patriotism, and so we can do just as we please. But because our patriotism is all one