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vades and inspires all her forms of devotion. Baron Swedenborg's doctrine teaches that the Redemption effected by our Saviour "consisted not in the vicarious sacrifice of one God, as some conceive, to satisfy the justice, or, as others express it, to appease the wrath of another God; but in the real subjugation of the powers of darkness, and their removal from man, by continual combats and victories over them, during his abode in the world; and in the consequent descent to man of Divine power and life, which were brought near to him, in the thus glorified humanity of this combating God.”—P. p. 400, 401.

The doctrines of the Resurrection of the Body, and of the general Judgment, are fundamental articles of the Christian Religion; they are doctrines which the Church adopts in her Creeds, and to which, in her burial service, she has given distinguished prominence. Both these doctrines are exploded by Swedenborg, who teaches" that man immediately after his death rises again in a spiritual body, which was inclosed in his natural body, and that in this spiritual body he exists, either in heaven or in hell, according to the nature of his past life."

If a man may, consistently with ingenuity, embrace Articles of Faith, and subscribe to others which are at open war with them; if he may act as a minister of Religion, when the spirit and the language of the devotions at which he presides are at variance with his sentiments, why may not a Mohammedan Iman subscribe her Articles, and officiate as a Clergyman of the Church? The only reason why he may not, must be, that such men are generally too honest to commit so deliberate an act of wickedness. Of the Articles of the Church just mentioned, a Mohammedan disbelieves only the first two.

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fully believes in the doctrine of a general resurrection, and of a general judgment. The Swedenborgian denies them all. The anonymous gentleman formerly pointed to, was, it is to be hoped, too sanguine in calculating the numbers of those Clergymen in the Church, who have adopted the system of Baron Swedenborg. Whatever their numbers be, they certainly have it in their power to add much to their respectability (for an honest man is always entitled to respect), by leaving a body with which they can never cordially co-operate, but must always be in a state of counteraction. As to the Baron's visions of the eternal world, and his converse with its inhabitants, they are entitled at least to as much credit as Mohammed's account of his marvellous adventures in the seven heavens. The Arabian prophet, indeed, seems to have contrived his plans with a still more daring ambition, and to have executed them with a bolder flight. They who can receive the account of such prodigies, cannot justly be accused of wanting faith. But many who will not give their assent to the doctrines of Christianity, can give it to almost every thing besides.

We have now to turn our attention to a party in the Church, whose rapid increase, within these last thirty years, has awakened as many alarms in the minds of some for the safety of the Church, as it has excited, in the breasts of others, hopes of her future triumphs and glory. The voice of several of her Prelates has been heard, loudly calling her Ministers from the cold systems of morality, rising out of the mere philosophy of the world, to a lively faith in the Son of God, and to a morality grafted on the principles of the Gospel. Some Right Reverend members of the Episcopal bench, have, it must be allowed, probably from misinformation, expressed a

jealousy of the scope and aims of the Evangelical party. The wide diffusion of the doctrines they embrace, and the powerful influence they are supposed to have in forming the religious character of those who embrace them; the force with which they often operate in producing con. viction on the minds of those whose attention is roused to examine them; the new direction they are observed to give to the actions of those who adopt them; have all contributed to bespeak for them a more than ordinary degree of attention. This party have been blamed for the assumption of the name Evangelical, as arrogating to themselves an exclusive title to be the only preachers of the Gospel. This objection they generally repel by denying the assumption, and saying that it is imposed upon, not assumed by them. So far as the name alone is concerned, the question is of no great importance. If there be really a distinction in the strain of those discourses, which the Clergy deliver from the pulpit, or issue from the press, men will be sure to mark it; and ingenuity will never be wanting to find a name for those sentiments which bear the stamp of peculiarity.

The unhappy disputes with respect to Ecclesiastical discipline and ceremonies, and with respect to the powers of Princes, and the privileges of Parliaments, which so mightily agitated the minds of men during the first two reigns of the Stuart family, and which divided the nation into the Court and Country parties, (the most distinguished Ministers of the hierarchy engaging in the maxims and political system of the Court, and the country party entering not only into all the religious scruples of the Puritans, but adopting also their principles of liberty,) unhappily dispose the disputants to recede as far as possible from each other. The doctrines of religion which they

held in common, before their tempers were inflamed by acrimonious controversy, were strictly Evangelical. The consequences of violent dissension, whether religious rites or politics be the subjects, are always found to be a disposition in the parties to remove as far as possible from each other; and when discordant ideas of both civil and Ecclesiastical polity combine their influence, the habits they form must be peculiarly repulsive. Many of the Puritans, when their minds became heated with controversy, diverged towards Antinomianism; and, in Cromwell's time, this doctrine seems to have ripened into fruit of the most deleterious kind. Nor were these animosities without their influence on the minds of Archbishop Laud and many other dignitaries of the Church. The bias of their sentiments took an opposite direction, and carried them with a strong current towards SemiPelagianism. The system, indeed, was sheltered under the name of Arminius; but it was one to which Arminius was decidedly hostile, The consequences of the Fall, as they are forcibly represented in the Ninth Article, were forgotten, or overlooked. The necessity of Preventing Grace, which the Tenth Article so fully states, was treated as the illusion of fanaticism: and the doctrine of Justification by Faith alone, so strongly asserted in the Eleventh Article, was denounced as the doctrine of Antinomianism. Even the doctrine of the Atonement, though generally admitted, was seldom brought forth into that conspicuous view, or represented as occupying that distinguished place, which it holds in the Christian system. Even when the doctrine of General Redemption was taught, it was seldom traced to its only legitimate foundation, the doctrine of universal depravity. Nor were its bearings on the mode of Pardon and Acceptance that the Gospel

teaches, pursued to their proper consequences.

Its influence in shedding abroad the love of God in the hearts of men, and in diffusing through all their faculties and principles, holy energies to form them to the love and to the practice of every good work, was not often illustrated with that precision and force of which the writings of the Apostles exhibit so striking an example. Much was done, and often with great power and beauty, to display the evidences that Christianity is true, but too little to show what Christianity, as the Gospel of Reconciliation, really was. The consequence was, that on the former subject, many were well instructed, who were extremely ignorant of the latter. Moral essays, formed on the cold and calculating principles of general expediency, often presented splendid images to attract the attention of those who frequented the Christian Temple, but which only cast a damp on the devotion the Liturgy had kindled: like those incrustations which, in northern regions, the palaces of ice exhibit, to dazzle with their brilliancy the eyes of the spectator, while by their touch they send the torpor to his heart. But though this revolution in the religious sentiments of the Church, had partially taken place before the commencement of the Civil war, and had advanced with rapidity during its progress, it was at the Restoration that it may be said to have been completed. When the waters of a rivulet are poisoned in its source, it can carry only death and disease wherever it flows. The court of Charles the Second was the fountain from which infidelity and profligacy of every kind were diffused; and these waters disembogued their pestilential streams through the nation. When the Church had to seek supplies of men who were to wear her mitres, and minister at her altars, from sources so corrupted, it is no

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