creatures. Of this kind was the law, given to our first parents, forbidding them to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Such also were the ritual institutions of the Mosaic dispensation; and such also are baptism and the Lord's supper, the great positive institutions of the New Testament dispensation.

Although moral and positive laws are thus distinguished from each other, yet their obligation and authority are the same. The reason is evident; they are equally the laws of God, and enjoined by his supreme authority. It is impossible that the obligation of one part of the Divine law should be greater than that of another; or that the obligation of any particular precept should be increased or diminished. As every rule of duty is prescribed by the authority of God, our obligation to obedience must, in every instance, be perfect and complete, and different degrees of obligation appear utterly incomprehensible. Different acts of obedience may have different degrees of excellence, and different acts of transgression different degrees of demerit. This, however, arises from their peculiar nature, and from the different circumstances in which they are performed, but by no means from the different obligation of the rules which are obeyed or violated.

As the precepts of the moral law proceed necessarily from the unchangeable perfection of the Divine nature, they must continue to be binding upon man, in every state of existence in which he enjoys the exercise of his rational powers, and sustains those relations which they suppose. The case is different in regard to positive precepts. As their appointment and authority depend upon the sovereign will of the Law-giver alone, they are continued, suspended, or annulled according to his pleasure.

From what has been said it may

be inferred, that if at any time the observance of a positive institution is incompatible with the performance of some moral duty, we are not bound to the observance of the positive institution. In this instance, we do not give the preference to one of two rules, which are both binding. The mere impossibility of observing both, shows that the moral rule alone is of any obligation, in such a conjuncture. It deserves, however, to be remarked, that the due and acceptable observance of positive institutions, requires the exercise of those affections which are of moral and indispensable obligation; and that the want of a regard to the Divine authority is implied in the neglect of these institutions, as really as in the violation of the moral commands of the law of God.

In the foregoing remarks I have endeavoured to guard against an objection, which has sometimes been urged in opposition to the doctrines which I have advanced. If the obligation of the laws of God, (it has been said,) depend solely upon his authority, will it not follow that all moral distinctions are in their nature arbitrary and mutable; and that in a different state of things, what are to us rules of right and wrong might have been essentially changed, or even completely reversed? That these conclusions are unwarranted and illogical, will be evident from the slightest attention to the subject. Although the laws of God are our only rule of righteousness, and his authority the sole ground of their obligation; yet the moral rules which they include are not of arbitrary and sovereign appointment. They result necessarily from the absolute and immutable holiness of his nature, and are perfectly adapted to the nature, faculties and relations of those upon whom they are enjoined. Positive precepts may indeed be arbitrary; and the actions they prescribe may, previously to the

command, be indifferent or even wrong. But it is far otherwise with the great precepts which embrace the essential duties we owe to God, and to our fellow creatures. They are perfectly agreeable to the infinite purity and perfection of the Divine nature; they result necessarily from his unchangeable holiness; and indeed they are plainly revealed in the very order and structure of nature. A different state of things, therefore, in which these precepts might be changed or reversed, is inconceivable and impossible. Being the necessary result of the absolute perfection of the Divine nature, their permanence and immutability are effectually secured. Justice, veracity and fidelity are commanded, because they are agreeable to his holy nature; injustice, fraud and falsehood are forbidden, because they are disagreeable to his holy nature. This is the true origin of moral distinctions. And from the immutable perfection of God, we infer with confidence the perpetuity and uniformity of those moral rules which essentially proceed from it.

These considerations are, I hope, sufficient to obviate the imputation to which we have been attending. They do so, if I mistake not, as completely as it can be done, by any hypothesis which the ingenuity of man is able to devise. What indeed can be farther removed from mere arbitrary appointments, than those fundamental laws of

thor of our being has not left us to form our opinions of right and wrong from general views of expediency, or from fanciful speculations about the supposed nature and fitness of things. Were this the case, we may confidently assert that there would not be virtuous principles found among mankind, sufficient to preserve the human race in existence. Instead of leaving this important matter in a state so precarious, he has taught us by the original principles of our constitution, by the spontaneous emotions and judgments of the human mind, and still more clearly and fully by his word, the laws which he requires us to obey; that they are of sacred and indispensable obligation, and that they cannot be violated without incurring remorse, condemnation and punishment.

According to the preceding view of the subject, the reality of moral distinctions is most clearly evinced; inasmuch as they are not made to depend ultimately upon any thing arbitrary or factitious, but upon the unchangeable perfection of God;— the original fountain and the ultimate standard of all excellence and perfection in the universe. Can any other account be given of their origin, which will more satisfactorily show their reality and permanent authority?

THE INQUISITION IN OUR DAY.

It is happy for us that the Au

It is maintained by some gentlemen, that Popery has changed its ferocious and cruel disposition, and is now become mild and gentle; but if the following statement be accurate, it will appear that the Inquisition retains its former horrors, and can yet punish men with diabolical cruelty:

"When the Inquisition was thrown open, in 1820, by the or

ders of the Cortes of Madrid, twenty-one prisoners were found in it, not one of whom knew the name of the city in which he was. Some had been confined three years, some a longer period, and not one knew perfectly the nature of the crime of which he was accused. One of these prisoners had been condemned, and was to have suffered on the following day. His punishment was to be death by the Pendulum. The condemned is fastened in a groove upon a table, on his back. Suspended above him is a pendulum, the edge of which is sharp, and it is so constructed as to become longer with every movement. The wretch sees this implement of destruction swinging to and fro above him, and every moment the keen edge approaching nearer and nearer; at length it cuts the skin of his nose, and gradually cuts on, until life is extinct. It may be doubted if the holy office in its mercy ever invented a more humane and rapid method of exterminating heresy, or insuring confisca tion. This, let it be remembered, was a punishment of the secret tribunal, A. D. 1820!!!"-Leorente's History of the Inquisition.

"If we calculate that the average attendance at each place is 500 persons, which is certainly the greatest extent we can allow, and add 250 more for the fluctuating hearers at the several services of each Sabbath, it will give a result of 300,000 persons. Now the population of this wide-spread metropolis is estimated, by the last census, at 1,274,800 souls; from which subtract the feeble minority above, and we find NINE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY

FOUR THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED

persons neglecting the publick worship of God. And though considerable deductions are to be made for young children, sick persons, and the aged and infirm, yet, after all, the multitude, without even the forms of religion, around us, is most appalling. The following statement will illustrate the occupations of the Sabbath:-It appears that of the papers at present published in London on the Sunday, there are circulated, on the lowest estimate, 45,000 copies, and that, upon the most moderate computation, between 2 and 300,000 readers of these papers are to be found in the metropolis alone, while the great number of pressmen, distributors, master-venders, hawkers, and subordinate agents of both sexes, and of all ages, who are necessarily employed on the Sabbath, all tend to the most flagrant breach of the day of rest.'

"In such a state we cannot won

der at the report of Mr. Wontner,

the excellent Governor of Newgate, by which it appears, that during the year 1826 there were committed to that gaol

Being an increase of 547 commitments in the past year!!

"Must we not adopt the energetick language of a Clergyman of the Established church, and say, Such a mine of heathenism, and consequent profligacy and danger, under the very meridian, as it is supposed, of Christian illumination, and accumulated around the very centre and heart of British prosperity, liberty, and civilization, cannot be contemplated without terror by any real and rational friend of our established government; and is surely sufficient to awaken the anxious attention of every true patriot, every enlightened statesman, every sincere advocate of suffering humanity, every intelligent and faithful Christian!" "

HYMN FOR SABBATH-SCHOOL

SCHOLARS.

By Mrs. Gilbert, late Ann Taylor.

AFTER SERMON.

ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S NEW TESTAMENT.

(Continued from page 265.)

As my opponent promised always to translate, so his incomparable makes extraordinary pretensions to uniformity in its translations. His three guides have rendered the same word sometimes one way and sometimes another. This he seems determined to avoid as an error. He says "wherever the word church is found in the common version, congregation will be found in this. We shall let Drs. Campbell and Doddridge defend the preference. For although they have not always so considered it, they give the best of reasons why it should be always so translated." Here the arguments of Doddridge and Campbell VOL V.-Ch. Adv.

are given for a uniformity which they did not approve nor practise. But on this subject, my opponent is a professed disciple of Horne Tooke, who was a great enemy to allowing a diversity of significations to the same word. After informing you that Dr. Johnson assigned forty-six meanings to an English monosyllable, he says, "But the celebrated Horne Tooke demonstrates that it has but one meaning, and that all the pretended meanings of Dr. S. Johnson are resolvable into it." He then goes on to apply the remark to the Greek prepositions in opposition to Parkhurst, who allowed sixteen meanings to one, and eighteen to another. Let it be remembered that Horne Tooke, in ascertaining his one meaning of a word, is governed by its etymology.

2 R

Here also my opponent follows him; and he gives this as a reason for banishing the word church from his New Testament. He says, "the term church or kirk, is an abbreviation of the word xvgiov oixos, the house of the Lord, and does not translate the term exxλnoia, [a calling out]." Here the mere fact of two words being differently derived, is given as a reason why they cannot have the same signification, and why one of them cannot properly translate the other. If church cannot render ecclesia, merely because it is_etymologically the house of the Lord, and not a calling out, then surely his favourite congregation cannot render it, for this is, by derivation, a gathering together, and not a call ing out. This places ecclesia in the same predicament in which he says that hades is, without a corresponding word in our language. To be consistent, then, he should either transcribe it, or form some new word, like evocation, of a similar derivation. So completely has my opponent entangled himself by this position, that if it can be maintained, then he has destroyed his whole new version. If the mere want of coincidence in etymology is sufficient to disqualify church from rendering ecclesia, then his incomparable has not translated one verse of the New Testament correctly. If he were tried by his own test, he would fall infinitely below our own translators. This he knows very well, and, therefore, in direct defiance of his own principles, he condemns them for paying too much attention to the literal and etymological meaning of words. He says, "The king's translators have frequently erred in attempting to be, what some would call, literally correct. They have not given the -meaning in some passages where they have given a literal translation." More directly still to the point, he says, "that what a classical scholar, or a critical etymologist (such as Horne Tooke or his disci

ple] might approve, as a literal version of some passages, is by no means the meaning of the writer." These sentiments, he informs us, are the fruit of his "better acquaintance with the idiomatic style of the Apostolick writings, and of the Septuagint Greek," while he stigmatizes as "smatterers in the original Greek," those who lean to the closer and stricter rendering of our translators. He would have come nearer the truth if he had told you that instead of obtaining those sentiments from his own better acquaintance with the Greek Scriptures, he took them, secondhanded, from Dr. George Campbell, who published them, as an apology for his extremely loose version of the four Gospels, which might more correctly be called a paraphrase than a translation.* In avoiding the literal extreme of Arias Montanus, he went so completely into the liberal extreme, that he saw himself in danger of being accused of licentiousness. In relation to my opponent's views of the words ecclesia and church, on account of their want of etymological coincidence, permit me to give you a little more from Dr. Campbell. In showing how unsafe it sometimes is to trust to the etymology of a word for its meaning, he says, "There are many cases wherein, though its descent may be clearly traced, we should err egregiously, if we were to fix its meaning from that of the primitive or root." "Thus the three words xarxes in Greek, paganus in Latin, and villain in English, though evidently so conformable in etymology, that they ought all to denote the same thing, namely vil

• Without intending to express an untranslation of the four Gospels, since we qualified approbation of Dr. Campbell's certainly think it erroneous or imperfect in a few instances, we must widely dissent from the opinion of it here expressed. We think it good in general, and in some lation; yet not a little inferior to that places more happy than the vulgar transtranslation taken as a whole.-EDITOR.