rupting that direct intercourse of the contrite sinner with the Redeemer and Creator to which the Gospel would invite him. The divine mercy has been declared to be ineffectual, unless conveyed to us in earthly vessels. Accordingly, an irrespective power of absolution, dependent solely upon the will of the priesthood, has been claimed by the Church of Rome, and most impiously has it been assumed that the Divine judgments may be arbitrarily launched or withheld, according to the dictations of human caprice. Thus, it was made one of the charges against John Huss, at the council of Constance, that he had denied the position, that "spiritual censures still have their effect even when unjustly pronounced "." When such proofs are before

1 It is a striking proof of the effect of party zeal over our better judgments, that a late pious and learned member of this University should have been led to advocate this very doctrine. "I am sorry to see Jeremy Taylor so heretical about excommunication. He says, that when unjust it is no evil." Froude's Remains, vol. i. p. 322.

When he hears such a sentiment as the one above, de

us of the strange lengths to which the perversions of the best institutions of Scripture may be carried, surely it is time for us to pause before we assert an authority thus liable to abuse, beyond the strict letter of what we find clearly written. Spiritual ambition and spiritual timidity, though opposite principles, are both in their turns the besetting weaknesses of our nature, nor can we be too much on our guard against them. Whilst then we admit that Scripture has given its sanction to the practice of mutual confession, and, within certain limits and in a sober sense, may even be alleged in favour of the doctrine of absolution; still, I think, we cannot watch with too suspicious a jealousy, or deprecate too strongly the extension of a claim which, if once allowed to pass the due bounds, will convert the holiest office of Christian charity into tyranny, and a solemn trust, intended for the comfort and edification of our afflicted brethren, into

clared to be heretical, a Protestant will be reminded of the expression of St. Paul: "After the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers."

a blasphemous usurpation of the incommunicable attributes of the Almighty.

OF ORDINANCES.

THE Christian scheme is uniformly designated in Scripture as a system of spiritual worship, a religion of liberty, free from the cumbrous and vexatious yoke of mere ritual observances. The means of salvation and justification which it affords, are the expansion of one single fundamental principle, namely, faith in the redeeming merits of Christ, with its necessary accompaniment, holiness of life. The development of this one great primary truth appears to constitute nearly the sole object of St. Paul's teaching. Righteousness by faith, the putting off the old, and putting on the new man, by assimilating ourselves, so far as human nature will allow, to our Redeemer's character; the cancelling of the ineffectual law of works, and the establishment in its place of the covenant of mercy, are the points which he discusses again and again, and recommends to

ment.

our adoption by every possible variety of arguNow it is obvious that nothing can be more opposed to the genius of a religion such as that now described, as the setting up again that very system of slavery, and of timid subjection to formal ordinances, from which it was its great object to deliver us. Accordingly we find that if there is one species of error more than another (acts of positive sin alone excepted) against which St. Paul takes every opportunity of entering his solemn protest, it is this one, so attractive to the natural timidity and superstition of the human heart. The whole tenour of his Epistle to the Galatians is the enforcement of this one great doctrine. The Galatians, like many other members of the Christian Church in all ages, were actually incredulous that the mercies of God could be such as they had heard them described. They could not comprehend how He should be willing to dispense with those onerous rites which constituted the substance of every other existing mode of worship, Jewish or Pagan, and they thought to make their assurance of

salvation still more sure by asserting the necessity of circumcision, and of other cancelled rites of the Levitical law. Observe now how the Apostle deals with these views of what might at first sight appear innocent and supererogatory piety. He does not reason with them as merely having adopted a harmless and well-meaning error. He does not, as in charity he might be expected to do, praise the rectitude of their intention, and content himself by merely showing that the Gospel covenant does not really require these servile and formal modes of worship: but he tells them at once that they are setting up for themselves a scheme of justification opposed to and incompatible with that of the Gospel. That if they look for salvation through the presumed righteousness of ritual observances, they are in fact disclaiming that which is of fered through the covenant by faith. “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another Gospel......O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey