Its range shall be extended; it shall roam, And beauty, by the hand Divine Shall thus roll on with ever fresh delight; .Y* Keview. ART. XV. A Plea for Ministerial Liberty; a Discourse delivered by appointment, to the Directors and Students of the Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church at Princeton, May 17, 1824. By JOHN M. DUNCAN, Pastor of the Presbyterian Church, Tammany Street, Baltimore. Cushing and Jewett. 2. The Utility and Importance of Creeds and Confessions; an Introductory Lecture, delivered at the opening of the Summer Session of the Theological Seminary, at Princeton, July 2, 1824. By SAMUEL MILLER D. D. Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Church Government in the said Seminary. D. A. Borrenstein. 3. Remarks on the Rise, Use, and Unlawfulness of Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Church of God. In two Parts. By JOHN M. DUNCAN, Pastor of the Presbyterian Church, Tammany Street, Baltimore. Cushing and Jewett. 1825. pp. 287. A CONTROVERSY on the authority of Creeds, in the very bosom of that creed-loving, creed-making, and creed-enforcing church-the Presbyterian,-is truly a new thing under the sun. It would hardly have surprised us more, to have heard that Papal Infallibility had been oppugned in a college of cardinals, or the divine right of kings called in question by a member of the Holy Alliance. But this is an age sadly given to innovation. Men are everywhere beginning to imagine that they are as wise, in some things, as their forefathers were, and have as much right as they had, and are as well qualified as they were, to look into the Scriptures for themselves,-to see for themselves what is taught there,--and to follow their own unfettered convictions, in matters of faith and practice. The great orthodox plea, 'it hath been said by them of old time,' is now generally met by the protestant question, 'what is written -how readest thou?" Indeed the true principles of Protestantism were never better understood or more boldly asserted, than they are at present. The age is evidently fast outgrowing those barbarous systems of scholastic divinity, which have so long tyrannised over the human conscience; and Christians are coming back to the simplicity of the Gospel, and to the dictates of common sense. In almost every denomination, we can discern some symptoms of impatience under the spiritual domination, which is exercised over them; and a growing disposition, especially among the best and most enlightened members, to break away from the fetters of human authority... A spirit of liberality is gaining ground. Men are beginning to see the absurdity, as well as the wickedness, of attempting to force their interpretations of Scripture upon the consciences of others, or of hating and denouncing those, who choose to follow their own sincere convictions, in regard to what the Gospel teaches, rather than any prescribed formulary of human invention; and there are bold and independent minds, who dare speak out on this subject, and expose, with an earnest and honest zeal, the iniquity of those who seek to lord it over God's heritage.' To do this, however, under certain circumstances, requires a rare union of courage and integrity. It is no trifling matter, we find, even at this day, to expose one's self to the resentment of the ecclesiastical body with which he is connected, by attacking their favourite errors and long established abuses. We cannot, therefore, but admire the individual, who has mental independence and moral principle enough to shake off the strong prejudices of education, and to resist the stronger temptations of interest, and stand forth in the midst of artful churchmen and honest bigots,-the bold and zealous advocate of Christian freedom and biblical simplicity. It was in this attitude, that Mr Duncan stood, when called upon to deliver the sermon, before the Directors and Students of the Theological Seminary at Princeton, which we have placed, with the other works to which it has given rise, at the head of this article. In the introduction to his 'Remarks,' Mr Duncan assures his readers, that nothing but a strong sense of duty could have thus brought him into contention with that powerful body, to which he belongs. He had been astonished, he tells us, 'to hear Christian ministers talk so untenderly about the Bible, and speak so affectionately and feelingly about their own standards.' He had seen too, a power exercised in the church of Christ, which Christ had never delegated to any of his ministers ;'a bold and domineering power,' to use his own words, 'enough to frighten and discourage any youthful spirit, that seeks the spiritual weal of mankind.' He felt it his duty, he says, under these circumstances, to improve the opportunity which Providence had placed in his hands, by proclaiming a plea for ministerial liberty,' and by exposing the tyranny,' and oppression,' which is exercised by the judicatures of his church, in requiring a solemn assent to their sectarian articles, as a term of communion in the ordinances of the Gospel;— that the whole Christian Church (might) know,' we quote his own words, how far subscription to creeds and confessions is desolating our moral feelings; that if her sons have any magnanimity left, they may rise in their majesty, and put those polluting things out of God's holy sanctuary.' Mr Duncan's sermon has been called by his brethren, a strange discourse.' It must have sounded, we doubt not, as strange to them in point of doctrine, as it does to us in style and diction. After all, we do not see why this sermon should have occasioned so much alarm and excitement among our presbyterian brethren. For ourselves, we honestly confess, that, so far as we can penetrate its misty verbiage, we can discern nothing in it, but simple and consistent Protestantism. It is true, in arguing out the great principle, that the Bible is the only rule of faith and practice, the preacher is almost necessarily led to speak somewhat untenderly about human creeds; and this, we suppose, is the greatest offence that can be committed against orthodoxy; for, abolish human creeds, and you undermine, at once, all those doctrines, which cannot stand on the foundation of the Prophets and the Apostles,-which can not be expressed, in short, in the form of sound words,' which the Scriptures supply. Hence it is, that we find the most zealous and noisy asserters of the 'utility and importance of creeds,' among those churches, that have departed the farthest from the simplicity that is in it;' while on the other hand, those Christians, who feel confident that their opinions are sustained by the plain, obvious, unembarrassed language of the New Testament, are generally opposed to these formulas, when used as tests of orthodoxy. Our author's discourse before the Princeton Theological Seminary, appears to have given such a shock to their whole ecclesiastical fabric, that Professor Miller, at the opening of the next session, thought it necessary to deliver a Lecture on the necessity and importance of creeds and confessions,'--which is the second work prefixed to our review. manner. This is certainly one of the ablest productions of its author, and will add, we think, to a reputation already high on the lists of polemical chivalry. It is most admirably adapted to effect the object, which the writer had in view, viz. to clench down those old prejudices, which had been a little started, and to reestablish that confidence in the decisions of councils and synods, which had been a little shaken, by Mr Duncan's 'strange sermon.' It is written in a very smooth, specious, insinuating The subject is handled with exquisite art and ingenuity. There is great plausibility and show of argument in the statements, and the usual objections are answered or evaded with consummate adroitness. In short, we do not know where we could refer to another instance, in which so bad a cause is so ably defended. There is no part of logic, which the Doctor understands so well, and urges, on all occasions, with so much effect, as the argumentum ab invidia. To stir up vulgar prejudices against those who differ from him, to fix suspicion on their opinions, motives, and characters, seems to be quite as much his object, as to fix conviction on their minds, by fair and candid reasoning; and anathemas, and charges of heresy are dealt about by him, as remorselessly, as if they were mere rhetorical flourishes. If it had been revealed to the Professor, that his interpretations of the Gospel, were most certainly right, and that all who differed from him were the enemies of God; and if he had received withal, an especial commission from heaven to anathematise heretics, we should not so much wonder at his conduct. We should still think however, that he had been wonderfully successful in eradicating certain kindly feelings of our corrupt nature, to be able to deliver his message with so much zeal and apparent good relish. But since he lays no claim to inspiration, as we understand, we think he ought to be reminded, that there is no heresy so bad as an unsanctified temper, and that the worst troubler of the church is the self complacent, denouncing bigot. In the lecture before us, Dr Miller undertakes to prove by a number of assertions, for they cannot be called arguments, that creeds are indispensably necessary, to maintain the unity and purity of the visible church. No church,' he says, can hope to maintain a homogeneous character; no church can be secure either of purity or peace, for a single year,' without them. As to what constitutes the purity of a church, and how far human creeds have been the means of preserving this purity, these are subjects, upon which it cannot be expected that we should hold much in common with Dr Miller. We will simply observe, however, that he seems himself to make some concessions, which go far to show that subscription to creeds has entirely failed of producing the benefits contemplated by their framers. The church of England,' he says, for nearly three centuries, has had a set of articles decidedly Calvinistic, to which all her candidates for the ministry are required to subscribe; but we know that more than a hundred and fifty years have passed away, since Pelagian and semipelagian tenets began to pollute that important branch of the reformed church, and that within the last seventy five or eighty years, almost every form of heresy has lurked under subscription to her orthodox articles. And even the church of Scotland, which has had, for nearly two centuries, the most rigidly and minutely orthodox confession on earth, is generally supposed, at this hour, to have a ministry, far from being unanimous in loving and honouring her public standards.' The case is not much better, if we may credit Mr Duncan, in the Presbyterian church in the United States. Even her 'excellent standards,' guarded and enforced as they are by oaths and subscriptions, with all the awful and inquisitorial power of church courts, synods, and assemblies, have not been able altogether to repress the searching and inquisitive spirit of the present times. There are many, Mr Duncan tells us, who are beginning to look upon the whole system as a mere piece of human legislation;' and some it seems, from calling in question |