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zeal which usually characterizes associations organized for defending the exclusive views of any religious body; and most of all, the character of the tract itself, and the ground assumed by it, give it a title to our attention, which can be claimed by hardly any single tract of the kind ever published in our country. Our views of it may be expressed in one word. It is the best written, the most manly, elaborate, judicious, and candid discussion, in the form of a tract, which we have seen on this subject. Our Episcopalian friends regard it as unanswerable. They have provided amply for its circulation, and rely on its making converts wherever it is perused; and in a tone which cannot be misunderstood, they are exulting in the fact, that to this day it has been left entirely unnoticed by the opponents of prelacy.* And we wonder, too, that it has not been noticed. There are men among us who seem to consider the external defence of the church as intrusted to their peculiar care; who delight to be seen with the accoutrements of the ecclesiastical military order, patrolling the walls of Zion; who parade with much self-complacency, as sentinels in front of the temple of God; who are quick to detect the movements of external enemies; and who are admirably adapted to this species of warfare. They seem to have little heart for the interior operations of the church,

"Has the tract Episcopacy tested by Scripture,' been answered? This, we believe, is neither the first time of asking, nor the second, nor the third."-Protestant Episcopalian.

and seldom notice them, except to suggest doubts of the expediency of some new measure proposed, or to promote discord, and strife, by laying down rules for the conduct of those who are laboring in the direct work of saving souls. Much do we marvel that these men have suffered this tract to lie so long unnoticed.

We have never regarded the Episcopal controversy with any very special interest. Our feelings lead us to dwell on subjects more directly connected with the salvation of the soul. We have no taste for the species of warfare which is often waged in guarding the outposts of religion. Christianity, we have supposed, is designed to act directly on the hearts of men; and we regard it as a matter of very little moment, in what particular church the spirit is prepared for its eternal rest, provided the great object be accomplished, of bringing it fairly under the influence of the gospel.

But we propose, for the reasons already suggested, to examine the arguments of this tract. We do it with the highest respect for the author; with a full conviction that he has done ample justice to his cause; that he has urged on his side of the question, all that can be advanced; and we enter on the task with sincere pleasure, at meeting an argument conducted with entire candor, without misrepresentation, and with a manifest love of truth. Our wish is to reciprocate this candor; and our highest desire is to imitate the chastened spirit, the sober argumenta

tion, and the Christian temper evinced in this tract. It is firm in its principles, but not illiberal; decided in its views, but not censorious; settled in its aims, but not resorting to sophism, or ridicule, to carry its points. There is, evidently, in the author's mind, too clear a conviction of the truth of what he advances, to justify a resort to the mere art of the logician; too manifest a love of the cause in which he is engaged, to expose himself to the retort which might arise from lofty declamation, or the expression of angry passions towards his opponents.

One object which we have in view, in noticing this tract, is to express our gratification, that the controversy is at last put where it should have been at first, on an appeal to the Bible alone. Never have we been more disgusted, than at the mode in which the Episcopal controversy has usually been conducted. By common consent, almost, the writers on both sides have turned from the New Testament, where the controversy might have been brought to a speedy issue, to listen to the decisions of the fathers; and, as might have been expected,

have

"Found no end, in wandering mazes lost."

It was the policy of the friends of prelacy to do so; and it was the folly of their opponents to suffer them to choose the field of debate, and to weary them. selves in an effort to fix the meaning, to secure the consistency, and obtain the suffrages of the fathers. Full well was it known, we believe, by the friends

of Episcopacy in other times, that the New Testament could furnish a most slender support for their claims. In the times of the papacy, it had always been defended by an appeal to the fathers. The system had risen, sustained, not even professedly, by the authority of the Bible, but by the traditions of the elders. The ranks and orders of the papal priesthood could be defended only by the authority of a church which claimed infallibility, and which might dispense, therefore, with the New Testament. The Reformers came forth from the bosom of the papacy with much of this feeling. They approached this subject with high reverence for the opinions of past times; with a deference for the fathers, nourished by all the forms of their education, by all existing institutions, and by the reluctance of the human mind to break away from the established customs of ages. On the one hand, the advocates of Episcopacy found their proofs in the common law of the church, the institutions which had existed "time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary;" and on the other hand, the opponents of prelacy were equally anxious to show, that they had not departed from the customs of the fathers, and that the defence of their institutions might be found in times far remote, and in records which received the veneration, and commanded the confi. dence of the Christian world. Into this abyss both parties plunged. In this immense chaos of opinions and interpretations, into these moving, disorganized,

jostling elements, where, as in the first chaos, light struggled with darkness, and confusion reigned, they threw themselves, to endeavor severally to find the support of their opinions. "Whatsoever time, or the heedless hand of blind chance," says Milton, "hath drawn down from of old to this present, in her huge drag-net, whether fish or sea-weed, shells or shrubs, unpicked, unchosen, those are the fathers." With those who, according to Mosheim,* deemed it not only lawful, but commendable, to deceive and lie for the sake of truth and piety, it would be singular if any point could be settled that involved controversy. With men who held to every strange and ridiculous opinion; to every vagary that the human mind can conceive;† it would be strange if both sides in this controversy did not find enough that had the appearance of demonstration, to perplex and embarrass an opponent ad libitum. In examining this controversy, as it was conducted in former times, we have been often amused, and edified, at the perfect complacency with which a passage from one of the fathers is adduced in defence of either side of the question, and the perfect ease with which, by a new translation, or by introducing a few words of the context, or more frequently by an appeal to some other part of the same author, not studious himself of consistency, and probably having no settled principles, the passage is shown to mean just

* Murdock's Mosheim, vol. i., p. 159.

+ See Tillemont's Ecclesiastical History, passim.

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