exclude his own case - not to amuse an audience with spirited sketches and caricatures, and to join in the laugh at his own success, but to call sinners to repentance! This is his offence. Yes, let the guilty deny it as they can, they hate the teacher who tells them what they are, in order to their salvation. They invite the satirist and the buffoon, in their own. language, to 'shoot folly as it flies ;' but, on the intelligible condition, that the children of folly shall be let alone, and even encouraged to pursue their course, without being disturbed by the warning, Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish!

If this statement be not unfaithful, it will more than justify all which is subsequently advanced on the spiritual desolation of this country. If inaccurate, the writer will be too happy to be taught better, by any person so conversant with the passing world as to be capable of assuring him that Antichrist has not yet gained that ascendancy over the public mind which it is one object of this treatise to describe. But we can expect no such herald of glad tidings.—And here, we border upon what appears, to such as seriously contemplate the signs of the times, the most portentous aspect of our religious discords,-the union of nominal Protestants with Papists in one Antichrist, in

a coalition against the pure doctrines of Christ crucified. The ambitious and intolerant Churchman, the intriguing and caustic Dissenter- both of them verbally attached to the Reformation -what would hinder characters such as these from joining the army of faith already gathering under the standard of the Vatican? They have all the same object; and that is, the repulsion of the hated Gospel from themselves, the release of an unquiet conscience from its spirituality and practical demands. They are

the Antinomians crowded into every division of the Christian church. None are more opposed than these to the modes of living faith, where Luther and Calvin, Pascal and Melancthon, Cranmer and Knox, Leighton and Doddridge meet each other, as upon the neutral ground of the common salvation; leaving, on either border, every point of secondary importance in possession of such as aspire after nothing better.

Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ; whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things."

Yet, of these, how many are there, who shout to each other, throughout all the regions of Christendom, THE TEMPLE OF THE LORD

ARE WE!

CHAPTER I.

THE IDENTITY OF THE WORLD'S OPPOSITION

TO RELIGION, IN ALL AGES.

All faiths beside, or did by arms ascend,

Or, sense indulged, have made mankind their friend;
This only doctrine does our lusts oppose,

Unfed by nature's soil, in which it grows ;—
Cross to our interests; curbing sense and sin;
Oppressed without, and undermined within,

It thrives through pain; its own tormentors tires,
And with a stubborn patience still aspires.

DRYDEN.

As this attempt offers itself chiefly, though not exclusively, to the consideration of the members of our two national communions-constituting, as these do, the majority of persons most nearly implicated in its discussions-I am anxious, at the outset, to explain the fact, as a kind of key to my general theory, that the religion of Jesus Christ does not become, in the least degree, more acceptable to the human mind, when discovered to be interwoven with the creed

"The

and ritual of an established church. natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him,"- -no matter where he finds them.

If we are disgusted by any doctrine originally taught in the Scriptures, the mere circumstance of its having been adopted into a public confession, cannot possibly make it palatable. There is nothing to alter it in the process. If it retains not its primary tendency to offend, the shame of the Cross has so far ceased. But this will not, cannot be !

The Gospel, at its first appearance, made an open attack upon the opinions and ways of the world, and was resisted by the whole strength of the enemy. If the contest has ever since been maintained, it will not be denied, that what excited the hatred of mankind in the days of Jesus of Nazareth, must inevitably awaken the same feeling in the passing generation. Christianity has not lowered its terms; neither have its opponents been brought to submission.

By what art then, it may be asked, do men reconcile themselves to such doctrines and rules of life as are to be found in the books of any church not excepting the Missal and the

Breviary of the Latin communion, neither the

accredited writings of the Unitarians *,—while the very same doctrines and rules, if immediately drawn from the Bible, stir up their scorn and indignation? The shortest and most obvious answer to this inquiry is, that nothing is so easy as to substitute an ignorant and mercenary assent for belief and obedience. This is no new thing in ecclesiastical history.-The story of the Jewish Theocracy, with regard both to priests and people, is a perpetual illustration of the fact in question. The hierarchy, creed, ritual, and temple of Israel were established, according to direct inspiration. The church of the Holy Land was as the garden of the Lord, fertile and fragrant,—planted by his own right

*As, for example, those of Priestley, Belsham, and others of the same school; including the late Improved Version of the New Testament.' These books certainly inculcate higher lessons of morality and contempt of the world, than either their writers or readers are at all willing to practise; judging both parties by the general assumption, that men quarrel with the Decalogue rather than with the Creed. With regard to the Unitarian translation of the Christian Scripture, no artifice on the part of its interpreters has availed to confute the fact, that whatever be the doctrine of the Gospel, its practical system calls upon men to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts; and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world; a requisition quite as repulsive to such as disown the Divinity and Atonement of Jesus Christ, as to the Romanist, who virtually robs the Son of Man of his Godhead and propitiatory character, at the very moment when he professes to adore him, and to acknowledge the efficacy of his sacrifice.

C