easy to be accounted for, he maintains at one time the necessity of what, for the sake of supporting his favorite democratic system, it is his object at other times to disprove; the disproval of which must in its consequences, affect the established order of the Kirk, and that of the Church of England, in an equal degree.

"Nothing, (says the Doctor) can be conceived more absurd in itself, or more contradictory to the declarations of Scripture, than to say that a man's belief and obedience of the Gospel, however genuine the one, and however sincere the other, are of no significancy, unless he has received his information of the Gospel, or been initiated into the Church by a proper Minister. Yet into this absurdity those manifestly run, who make the truth of God's promises depend on circumstantials, in point of order no where referred to, or mentioned in these promises."-P. 86.

It is no uncommon thing for writers to make out a bill of indictment against their supposed opponents, and to proceed to pass judgement upon it, before the charge has been fairly made to bear on the party accused.

accused. How far this may be the case in the present instance, we stop not to enquire; but proceed to observe what from the general tenor of Scripture we are given to understand; that man acquires the ability to believe and obey the Gospel, by the faithful use of certain appointed means of Grace; for in his natural condition he is

indisposed for either. "How (says the Apostle) shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a Preacher? and how shall they preach, except they be sent?" Rom. x. 4. From whence the conclusion is, that some appointed Institution was originally set on foot, and certain Ministers vested with a divine Commission for the purpose of carrying on the design of the Christian Church in the world. Without such an Institution and such a Commission, we have no conception how the affairs of Christ's kingdom, in their ordinary course, could be managed with any probability of success.

How far the promises of God may have been made to depend on the circumstantials of Religion, instituted for the above gracious purpose, it is presumption in us to

deter

determine. But because the circumstan tials of Religion are no where precisely marked down in Scripture; to build an argument on that ground which tends to generate a total indifference about them, however it may accord with the unsettled principles of the present day, is certainly totally irreconcileable with that idea, which the general language of Scripture teaches us to form on this important subject.

"Not but that a certain model of Government (continues the Doctor) must have been originally adopted for the more effectual preservation of the Evangelical Institution in its native purity; and for the careful transmission of it to after ages."-To this position we readily subscribe; and such being the reason for the original adoption of a certain model of government, it is to be presumed, that the Apostles, allowing them to have possessed only the common judgement of uninspired Governors of the Church, could not fail to take some steps for the future establishment of what they deemed so necessary to be adopted.

But in a subsequent page of the Doctor's History, by a conclusion drawn from some unguarded

unguarded expressions of the learned Dodwell; the reader is given to understand, "that nothing was further from the view of the inspired Writers, than to prescribe any rule to us on the subject, or to give us any information which could lead us to imagine, that a particular form of polity was necessary, or even more acceptable to God, than another."- P. 99.

But to say, because no regular system of ecclesiastical government is totidem verbis to be found on record in the Apostolic Writings, that therefore the Apostles never meant to prescribe any rule, or give any information on the subject, is surely, if not to argue weakly, at least to beg the question. The presumption in this case is certainly against any such conclusion. The Apostles might not think it necessary at the time to lay down any regular system of ecclesiatical government. Their thoughts were principally engaged, it may be supposed, in establishing the essentials of Christianity. The circumstantials of it they might leave to be regulated by the example of their own ministry. The government of the Church was in their hands; and their office in it was carried

carried on under the immediate direction of the Holy Spirit. Their practice under such circumstances, they might therefore consider, would prove sufficient prescription in this case. And on this head sufficient information is to be met with in their writings, for the direction of all those who are disposed to be directed by it.

That the Apostles were not mistaken in their judgement on this occasion, the settled constitution of the Christian Church, which has preserved a general conformity to the Apostolic model down to the present time, furnishes the most convincing proof.

In page 160, the Professor appears to differ in opinion from the learned Vitringa, who has displayed much erudition to prove, that the government of the Christian Church was formed on the model of the Jewish synagogue. "It is not even probable," says Professor Campbell, "that this was the case their different uses and purposes, suggesting the propriety of many differences in their structure and procedure." At the same time the Professor fails not to leave on the minds of his Disciples, on this subject, an impression more favourable to the

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