sleeping drones of the hive, who eat the honey of other men's labors; who lay heavy burdens upon other men's backs that they would not touch with one of their little fingers. The very same question precisely arose in the formation of our government. Christ has commanded all men to submit to the regularly constituted authorities of the land. The patriots of our revolution were many of them sworn officers of the British government, all of them were regular members of that government, bound by a divine authority to submit to its laws. If a command of Jesus Christ cannot be violated, we are yet members of the British government. The members of the Protestant Episcopal church in the United States are placed by their doctrine in circumstances of extreme embarrassment. If we enquire whether the invasion of personal rights is a just ground for revolution in civil government, they are under a necessity to answer that it is not, because it is not proper under any circumstances to violate an express command of Jesus Christ, who has enjoined submission. Whenever they answer otherwise, they destroy their own beloved doctrine. Now, what is the conduct of the officers of this church? They do not believe that men have a right to violate a command of Jesus Christ. Christ commanded men to submit to civil authority. Our government is a practical disregard of a divine command. If they countenance the government, their salvation is utterly impossible under their doctrine, because they contend that men cannot be saved who disobey Christ. Now, if they are consistent, it is a duty they owe to God and man to leave no stone unturned to restore the

righteous supremacy of British rule. We put the question to them, is it proper and right, under any circumstances, to disobey a command of Jesus Christ? If they are good subjects of the United States government, and submit to its authority, they will have to answer yes. We then ask them, is not a religious right, or a right of conscience, that affects the salvation of the immortal soul, a much dearer and more precious right than mere personal rights? This question they will answer in the affirmative. Then we will ask them the question

involved in the doctrine of the apostolical succession, have men not the right, had Luther and Wesley not the right, to disregard a law of ordination; a law of Jesus Christ, in order to protect their rights of conscience, and to protect the gospel itself in its purity? Will she not be struck dumb? We begin at the head, and we end at the foot, and she has not one member in her entire fold who can extricate her from her logical embarrassment with a consistent philosophy.

But the most objectionable view that can be taken of the doctrine, arises from the relation that it causes to subsist between the author of the gospel and that gospel itself. It places him in the extreme unwise attitude of jeopardising that interest, the only one in which he can be concerned to feel any primary solicitude, by making it dependent upon the wisdom and goodness of his human agents, employed by him to preach it, and around whom he has thrown confessedly no protection of infallibility, in the due and regular performance, upon their part, of a mere initiatory service of a priestly character; a public investiture of an agent with ministerial authority, a mere matter of form. The doctrine makes the gospel and the success of the gospel, that cost Christ his life and beggared heaven, dependent upon the regularity observed in a ceremony wholly formal, with respect to the public designation of ministerial agents, that so belittles the importance of this salvation scheme, and so perils the sagacity of Jesus Christ, as to throw a shade of doubt almost amounting to a sense of the ridiculous, not to say the preposterous, around the whole thing. Such conduct would, to ordinary comprehension, dishonor a man of medium intelligence. It is a blunder that has characterised the conduct of no originator of any scheme, whose object was to benefit mankind, from the founder of the order of masons to that of the founders of a society to cleanse the public streets. We are aware that these are strong sentiments, and are utterly unjustifiable, if they be untrue. If they be true, and we defy their successful refutation, then no one has a right to complain. If Christ has granted a salvation scheme to the human family, freely to be enjoyed by them, in com

mon, by the performance of a common condition, and has employed a human agency to preach this scheme and to organise a church of his followers, which they are to rule in accordance with his laws, then it is an instance of folly and contradiction without a parallel in the wide world; a folly that may well stagger the greediest credulity to credit, to suppose that he would make this scheme, so costly to himself personally, and so fraught with consequences, linked with the eternal happiness or damnation of untold myriads of human beings, dependent upon the proper conduct of men without learning, without virtue, without discretion, corrupt, base, prostituted, and steeped in vice to the very dregs, with respect to certain ordination laws, quite numerous, affecting the authentic investiture of a mere human agency, in the affair of human salvation. It proceeds to the unprecedented folly of placing God, and Christ, and the Holy Ghost, and the plan of human salvation, and the salvation of the whole human family, upon the discretion of bishops, often without either religion or sense. In fact, the whole theory is too preposterous for serious debate.

ART. V.

ECCLESIASTICAL PENALTIES IN REFERENCE TO CLASS MEETINGS.

By Rev. R. ABBEY, of Mississippi.

It has been oftentimes stated, and as often assented to, and acknowledged, that no particular or specific form of church government or of ecclesiastical jurisprudence is given to us in the New Testament. (In the Old Testament things of this kind are not to be looked for beyond the boundaries of the VOL. VII.-27

Decalogue.) And yet it is abundantly true, that the principles, both of ecclesiastical government and jurisprudence, are clearly set forth in the law of Christ. So that, although we

have not the particular forms of proceeding, in each and all the details of our government, by which our laws are established, or of our legal proceedings, by which these laws are executed, we have the way-side marks and boundaries, by the due observance of which, we may keep within the prescribed limits, or upon the platform principles laid down by the King of the church. Perhaps we may, most of us, have erred, oftentimes, for the lack of properly distinguishing between the abstract principles of action, laid down in the law of Christ, and the specific manner in which those principles are to be applied. The former are clearly spread out upon the pages of truth; the latter, in the nature of the case, is properly left to the discretion and judgment of men in the various circumstances in which men find themselves placed.

The church is the church of Christ. By this expression is meant, that the church is not a mere human association for the promotion of religion, piety, or morality. Still a church is a human association. When men associate themselves together for the lawful and laudable purposes of establishing or promoting good order, morals, religion or piety, they may establish any rules not contrary to the rules of morals laid down in the scriptures, which, in their best judgment, they believe will best secure the objects of their association.

For instance, an association may be formed for the promotion of industry; and it may, if it is believed best, enact, that any one of its members who shall fail, in the absence of physical infirmity, to labor eight hours on any week day, shall be fined one dollar, or shall be expelled from the association. A temperance society may establish, that if a member taste a drop of ardent spirits he shall be expelled. A female school may establish, that if a pupil ride to church with a young gentleman, without permission, she shall be expelled. And so of all merely human associations. But not so with the church.

It is not attempted to be said what particular penalties the church may affix to the doing of any particular acts; but it is said, the church may not act upon the principles which govern human societies as above illustrated. The church may not fall back upon its discretion, and enquire of itself whether it is best, in case a member shall do this or that particular thing, that he shall be expelled from the church, and apply the axe of excommunication accordingly. For the church's laws must keep within the scope of the constitution which authorises them; which constitution is the platform of principles found in the word of God.

The very important question arises then, when, where, for what acts may the church exercise the power of excommunication? It will not do to say, that because no particular acts are declared in the Bible to be worthy of excommunication, that, therefore, each particular church may do as it thinks best. For in this case, one church, rather that portion of the church which is found in some particular place, would excommunicate for this act, when another would not. And so, there would be great lack of uniformity in the administration of church discipline; which is manifestly wrong; for there can be no inequality or lack of uniformity in the head of the church. Men are the inferior officers in the church, of which Christ is the king.

The Bible, if it be as complete a rule of life, as all Christians say it is, must contain the principles that ought to govern in all these cases. If one church has a right to expel a member for doing, or for failing to do, any particular act, then all other churches are bound to expel any one of their members for doing a like thing in like circumstances. Because no church has a right, either in the making or execution of its laws, to contravene the principles of the fundamental law that is common to all the churches.

But the question is still unanswered, and it is acknowledged to be much easier asked than answered, for what may a church expel its members? This question, to be practical, and to admit of an answer, cannot mean, for what particular acts may