UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA INTRODUCTORY NOTE. THE article which follows has not been republished since its first appearance, nearly forty years ago. It was written in a state of things very different from what now exists around us. Since that time the progress of this country in general literature, in the physical and exact sciences, and in religious liberality, has been very great; not, perhaps, falling behind its advance in material prosperity. But, during the last forty years, there has not been in this country, nor in England, nor, I think, in any European country, (for I certainly do not regard Germany as an exception,) a correspondent progress in correct modes of thinking and rea soning upon the highest subjects of human thought, or in establishing and clearly exhibiting those facts on which all rational conclusions concerning religion must rest. If the propositions concerning religion maintained in the following article are true, they are truths of equal importance at all times. But the mode of presenting them may vary according to the errors to be opposed. The errors which I had in view in writing it are still the professed errors of a very large portion of Christians, professed in their creeds, and insisted upon by many as their individual conviction. They have been called the distinguishing doctrines of Christianity; and whatever disposition there may be to shrink from assenting to their literal statement, yet, in some disguised and mitigated form at least, they enter into most men's conceptions of our religion. But in what, I fear, may be called the general suspension of rational thought and feeling concerning religious truth, they are at the present moment lying comparatively dormant; and their ill influence is most felt in their repelling the minds of men, by the view of Christianity which they present, from any desire to know what Christianity really is. It was not so at the time when this article was written. Of the state of things then existing in the community in which I lived, I some time since gave an account in a letter to my friend, Mr. George Ticknor, in reply to a request for "information on the origin and progress of liberal views of Christianity in New England, and on Mr. Buckminster's relations to them." It was printed in the "Christian Examiner" for September, 1849, and, with some unimportant omissions, is here subjoined. "As you know, there has been from an early period, I cannot say how early, a resistance to the rigid Calvinism of our forefathers, and to their false conceptions of religion. The authority of their system was broken in upon by the publication of Roger Williams's Bloudy Tenent,' in 1644. I cannot from memory trace the history of this resistance. Perhaps I place no confidence in my recollections — the most important work against the peculiar doctrines of Calvinism, which subsequently appeared, was one published just a century later, in 1744, entitled, Grace Defended,' by Experience Mayhew, the missionary to the Indians, and the father of Dr. Jonathan Mayhew. But, from the middle. of the last century, there was a considerable and increasing body, both of the clergy and the laity, who rejected with more or less explicitness the doctrines of Calvinism, and modified the doctrine of the Trinity into what has been called 'high Arianism,' that is, into the proper, ancient, Arian doctrine. The name Arminian soon began to be familiarly used to denote such heretics, often with some epithet of disrespect. The tendency to separation between the two parties had, indeed, commenced before the middle of the last century, and was increased by the preaching of Whitefield in this country, who arrived for the first time in 1740, and whose extravagances and denunciations gave offence, and tended to weaken the credit of his doctrines. "This controversy, as men did not reason in those days from their spiritual intuitions, implied learning, and a critical knowledge of the Scriptures, after the fashion of those times. These studies extended even to the laity, some of whom were interested in settling their faith for themselves. One of the earliest books which I read relating to the exposition of the Scriptures, many years ago, when quite a young man, was a copy of the original edition of Taylor on the Romans, borrowed from the family of an old gentleman who had formerly recommended and lent it to my father. "Besides the main controversy between the Orthodox' and liberal Christians,' there were other controversies, which kept alive a spirit of inquiry, and attention to theological learning generally, and particularly to the critical study of the Scriptures; such as those respecting Episcopacy, and the doctrine of the final salvation of all men, in both of which Dr. Chauncy particularly distinguished himself. "But, if my recollection serves me correctly, there was in the last twenty years of the last century a suspension of controversy between our two great religious parties, a lull in |