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To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

AFTER despairing, Mr. Editor, of witnessing any substantial agree ment between yourself and the Christian Remembrancer on the subject of original sin, I was glad to find from your respective Numbers published this day (June 1st), that in one point at least you perfectly coincide in sentiment. "The subject," says the Christian Remembrancer (p. 332)," is at the bottom of all the disputes between modern churchmen." In like manner, speaking of the late controversy on baptism, your reviewer remarks (p. 311), "We are persuaded that the subject is of prime and vital importance; that it is not a mere verbal dispute respecting the construction of our formularies, but a stand for principles, and that the real point at issue is this, Whether or not the nature and character of mankind are such that they absolutely and in every case need a radical transformation in the spirit of their minds before they can be qualified for the kingdom of heaven."

Had not these statements been published on the same day, I might have suspected that the ones had been borrowed from the other: as it is, I am the more clearly convinced that both of you are right; and since it is always something gained in the cause of truth to know the real question at issue, I would hope that by keeping this turning point steadily in mind, both you, Mr. Editor, and your brother critic, with your respective correspondents, will be able to arrive at a better understanding than at present subsists among you. I quite agree with you both that the subject is" at the bottom of all the disputes between modern churchmen;" and I am anxious therefore to see in your pages-and should be much obliged, in common with many other of your readers, to your self or any of your correspondents who would furnish-a wellweighed paper, or series of papers,

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on the actual condition of mankind by nature, taking up the subject not in a controversial but a scriptural and practical view, and with undeviating reference to spiritual edification. Your own recent remarks on original sin, and the doctrines connected with it, have been almost necessarily of a somewhat polemical cast; but I could wish to see the subject treated with a practical and devotional adaptation to the understanding and the heart of the reader. Your brother critic has lately suffered one of his correspondents to intrude on his pages with a series of papers on the subject, of which I will only say that they will be an indelible stain to every volume with which they are bound up. I had indeed prepared some weeks since to reply to them either in the Christian Remembrancer's pages yours; but as the Editor has admitted, though in words quite inadequate to the occasion, that "the expressions" (not it seems the doctrines) in his correspondent's papers were unusual, and not the best that could have been selected," (which I beg permission to construe, were palpably unscriptural and heterodox,) and has promised to review the whole controversy, I forbear, at least for the present, to intrude my thoughts either upon him or you. In the mean time, laying aside debate, it might be eminently profitable to consider this fundamental doctrine in a humble, practical, temperate, and scriptural manner; and such a discussion will shew, better perhaps than reams of controversy, what are the sentiments of the Bible and the Church of England on the subject.-1 beg leave, sir, to subscribe myself, I hope without arrogance, your faithful servant,

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AN ORTHODOX CHURCHMAN.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer,

YOUR correspondent CLEMENS, who has offered his sentiments to

the public in your March Number, confirmed by many good authorities, in a paper which he terms "Thoughts on Angry Preaching," has very faithfully delineated the cause why the sermons of some of our most able and pious men have so little apparent efficacy.

Your correspondent has quoted some excellent remarks of the late Mr. Newton on the importance of sympathy and Christian tenderness in a preacher. The first sermon which Mr. Newton preached in the parish of St. Mary Woolnoth, and which will be found in volume V. of his works, p. 129, was from Eph. iv. 15. "Speaking the truth in love." And why should the truth be ever spoken in any other way? If, as St. Paul assures the Corinthians, "the love of Christ constraineth us" to be faithful and zealous and obedient, the man who most strongly feels, and is enabled the most fully to display, that love must be the most efficient preacher of the Gospel.

A Christian minister, when appointed to his particular station in the church, stands as the father of a large and necessitous family. Amongst his children in this new relation, he will meet with various tempers and dispositions, and will find it requisite to apply correction, reproof, excitement, and consolation, according to the circumstauces of each particular case; but the all-pervading topic of his preaching will be the love of Christ to sinful man. If au untoward, rebellious, undutiful son, resists the authority, and despises the reproof of a father, it has often happened that the continued love of that parent, evidenced by repeated acts of forbearance, meeting unkindness with tenderness, and returning good for evil, has at length subdued that heart which was hardened against correction. So in other relations of life, steady perseverance in the path of duty, accompanied by kindness towards those who may not think with us on reli

gious subjects, exerts an influence which is often invincible.

A minister may further be considered as the friend of his parish; and in this relation Christian affection is equally powerful. We see a friend, dear to us as our own soul, giving way to some evil habit, cherishing some wrong principle, indulging in some pernicious amusement, which we consider as injurious to his character, and as likely to disturb his peace of mind. We affectionately make his situation the subject of fervent diligent prayer. Thus emboldened, we converse with him, we tenderly expostulate with him, we gently press upon bim that line of conduct which we are confident both from Scripture and experience will tend to his ultimate happiness. Is it not more than probable that affection thus exerted will in the end triumph over prejudice?

In other relations of life which are less intimate, the same principle is still very powerful. The sick man values more highly and listens more confidently to his physician when he seems not only to understand his case but to feel for his affliction, and to be personally anxious for his recovery. The experienced general has the hearts of all his army with him, because he shares every hardship and danger, and really loves, or appears to love, his men. A disinterested affection for the welfare of those over whom we preside is irresistible in its effects. Thus, when the Christian preacher is seen to sacrifice in private life his moments of ease and leisure; when he liberally dispenses a considerable portion of the temporal possessions which God has given to him; when he enters into all the wants of his congregation, and would rather submit to great personal inconvenience, than break a promise made to the poorest member of his flock; then it is that the sheep are satisfied their shepherd cares for them. Such pastors live but to practise

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their own sermons; and, as love forms the prominent feature in those sermons, love guides them in the discharge of all the relative duties of life. "They rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep." They are kindly affectioned one towards another with brotherly love." I do not say that all equally pious ministers can equally gain upon the affections of their people; but every Christian pastor who believes that Christ has loved him, should prove that he tenderly loves his flock. It is the criterion by which it is to be known that we have passed from death unto life, that we love the brethren. It is an imitation of the example of Jesus Christ: it is to walk as he walked. Every faithful preacher of the Gospel has probably known some instances in which the simple statenient of the love of Christ has been productive of the greatest good; and has found the Lord to be "not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, but in the still small voice." "God is love." In preaching then, and in practice, "let us love one another; for love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God."

R. P. B.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer. WHEN the writer of this paper was preparing for holy orders, he was strongly recommended, on very high authority-authority which the Bishop of Peterborough will not feel inclined to dispute-to make himself master of Bishop Burnet's Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles; which work, it was added, was the more to be relied on, as the writer was notoriously free from Calvinistic predilections.

Such, I believe, is still a very general sentiment; but it may be necessary, in the present day, to inform those candidates for orders who are to be examined in the dio

cese of Peterborough, that Bishop Burnet is by no means a safe guide in answering the celebrated Eightyseven Questions; and that he would inevitably have been rejected for such replies as I am about to transcribe. I shall only take two or three short specimens, in reference to the Eleventh and Seventeenth Articles, leaving those readers who wish for more to the same effect to examine his Exposition at large.

The Bishop of Peterborough asks, "Is not our justification our admission to the Christian covenant?" And, "Do we not enter into covenant with God, through Christ, at our baptism?" We are therefore justified in the sacrament of baptism. Let us see how the Anticalvinistic Bishop Burnet would have answered these queries :—

"It is a tenet in the Church of Rome, that the use of the sacraments, if men do not put a bar to them, and if they have only imperfect acts of sorrow accompanying them, does so far complete those weak acts as to justify us. This we do utterly deny, as a doctrine that tends to enervate all religion; and to make the sacraments, that were appointed to be the solemn acts of religion, for quickening and exciting our piety, and for conveying grace to us, upon our coming devoutly to them, become means to flatten and deaden us; as if they were of the nature of charms, which, if they could be come at, though with ever so slight a preparation, would make up all defects. The doctrine of sacramental justification is justly to be reckoned among the most mischievous of all those practical errors that are in the Church of Rome. Since, therefore, this is no where mentioned in all these large discourses that are in the New Testament concerning justification, we have just reason to reject it. Since also the natural consequence of this doctrine is to make men rest contented in low imperfect acts, when they can be so easily made up by a sacra

ment, we have just reason to detest it, as one of the depths of Satan; the tendency of it being to make those ordinances of the Gospel, which were given us as means to raise and heighten our faith and repentance, become engines to encourage sloth and impenitence." Oxford Ed. 1805, p. 172.

Let us further see how Bishop Burnet would answer those Questions which refer our justification to a dead and barren faith; or, as the Bishop of Peterborough styles it, "a faith not always productive of good works."

"A man is then only justified," says Burnet, still speaking of the Eleventh Article, when he is freed from wrath, and is at peace with God: and though this is freely offered to us in the Gospel through Jesus Christ, yet it is applied to none but to such as come within those qualifications and conditions set before us in the Gospel. That God pardons sin, and receives us into favour only through the death of Christ, is so fully expressed in the Gospel, as was already made out upon the Second Article, that it is not possible to doubt of it, if one does firmly believe, and attentively read, the New Testament. Nor is it less evident, that it is not offered to us absolutely, and without conditions and limitations, These conditions are,-Repentance, with which remission of sins is often joined; and Faith, but a faith that worketh by love, that purifies the heart, and that keeps the commandments of God; such a faith as shews itself to be alive by good works, by acts of charity, and every act of obedience; by which we demonstrate, that we truly and firmly believe the Divine authority of our Saviour and his doctrine. Such a faith as this justifics." (p. 174.)

I do not mean to say that Bishop Burnet is quite scriptural in his exposition of this Article; I think otherwise; but it will instantly be evident that even his exposition, though very defective, is far above

that of the new exposition contained in the Eighty-seven Questions; nay, that it differs from it so decisively that the writer must assuredly have been rejected from the diocese of Peterborough for daring to denominate as Popery what is considered by the Margaret Professor of divinity at Cambridge, the orthodox doctrine of our Protestant church.

On the other Article to which I have alluded, the Seventeenth, the two expositors, though both Anti-predestinarian are equally at variance. The Bishop of Peterborough asks, Whether it is not a contradiction to the Seventeenth Article to assert, that the decrees of God are absolute; or that election on the part of God has no reference to foreseen good conduct on the part of man." Of the doctrine itself I say nothing; but, in reply to this question, I shall cite the words of Bishop Burnet, who, speaking of this Article, says: "That in which the knot of the whole difficulty lies is not defined [in this Article]; that is, whether God's eternal purpose or decree was made according to what he foresaw his creatures would do, or purely upon an absolute will, in order to his own glory. It is very probable that those who penned it meant that the decree was absolute." After shewing that notwithstanding this probability there is nothing in the Article to prevent those signing it who think otherwise, he adds, " But the Calvinists have less occasion for scruple, since the Article does seem more plainly to favour them;" and again, "It is not to be denied but that the Article seems to be framed according to St. Austin's doctrine;" and again, "In England the first reformers were generally in the Sublapsarian hypothesis," with much more to the same effect. I therefore quite agree with your reviewer, that it is little less," he might have said nothing less, "than tam pering with a young man's integrity," to make him solemnly assert that the doctrine in question, be it

right or wrong, is " a contradiction he cannot give a coherent account to the Seventeenth Article," when even Bishop Burnet himself admits that it is far the more natural and "probable", meaning; though he asserts, and I agree with him, that persons who are not Predestinarians may also subscribe the Article with a little necessary explanation.

Burnet is equally explicit in contradicting those parts of the Peterborough Questions which attempt to fix ou this tenet, and on some others which are not in any just sense Calvinistic, a vicious tendency, as if the believers in them must be necessarily indifferent to the moral qualities of actions, and could have no principle" beyond the dread of temporal punishment to deter them from the commission of crime." Bishop Burnet however allows that "each opinion has some practical advantages on its side;" and candidly adds, "A Calvinist is taught by his opinions to think meanly of himself, and to ascribe the honour of all to God; which lays in him a deep foundation for humility: he is also much inclined to secret prayer, and to a fixed dependence upon God, which naturally both brings his mind to a good state, and fixes it in it; and so, though perhaps

of the grounds of his watchfulness and care of himself, yet that temper arises out of his bumility and his earnestness in prayer." As I am not defending the Calvinistic hypothesis, but merely shewing how completely at variance are the sentiments of the Bishop of Peterborough, not with those of Calvinists only, as his lordship's defenders affect to maintain, but with those of every standard church expositor of the most moderate and even Arminian class, I shall not intrude upon your pages with any controversial remarks, but shall conclude with reminding my readers of the observation of Bishop Burnet, that on the question of election and predestination "there are the clearest grounds imaginable for a mutual forbearance; for not judging men imperiously, nor censuring them severely upon either side. And those who have at different times of their lives been of both opinions, and who, upon the evidence of reason, as it appeared to them, have changed their persuasions, can speak more affirmatively here; for they know that in great sincerity of heart they have thought both ways."

MODERATOR,

MISCELLANEOUS.

We cannot find space to insert all the papers which have been sent us in reply to the inquiry of A LOVER OF MUSIC, in our Number for April; but the following contain the principal arguments of our correspondents on both sides of the question.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer. One who can really sign himself a "Lover of Music," is induced to offer a few thoughts on the subject of musical entertainments, in reply to some queries in your Number

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for April. And first, "Is it lawful for Christians-those who are such in deed and in truth-to attend the concerts of miscellaneous music performed at Hanover Square, &c. ?" It was judicious of your correspondent to request a reply from a Lover of Music," as he is the only person properly qualified to report on the subject. Many very excellent persons, not having been blessed with the gift of a musical ear, have condemned the lawfulness of a Christian's frequenting musical entertainments.

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