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of divine institution, whenever Providence has favoured them with the opportunity so to do, than to preserve the purity of those doctrines which characterize their profession. What that ecclesiastical polity really is, the most diligent inquiry has left me without a doubt. I thank God for having placed me in a country where that polity is established. On the condition of those to whom Providence has not been pleased to vouchsafe the same blessing, it is not necessary that an opinion should be hazarded. It is sufficient, and it is satisfactory to think, that they are in God's hands: for God, we know, may dispense with his own institutions under whatever circumstances he sees fit: though it must be at man's peril that he at any time assumes to himself the same privilege.

Did I stand in need of additional confirmation on the subject of the Apostolic government of the Church, a late publication could not fail to furnish me with it.

When a writer of distinguished abilities and established character takes a professional subject in hand, we have to expect that the whole strength of the argument

will be brought forth. In Dr. Campbell's Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, it may therefore be fairly concluded, that every thing has been said in favor of the Presbyterian Establishment, that could be said on the occasion. With submission however to the judgement of the Doctor's surviving friends, I am clearly of opinion, that no addition of credit will be derived to Dr. Campbell's name, by the publication in question. It may, indeed, and it probably will, satisfy those who are prepared to be satisfied with what a Professor in the Scotch Kirk, of great literary reputation, may think fit to say on such a subject; but it will not, I am inclined to think, bring conviction to any one, duly acquainted with the sources from whence knowledge in ecclesiastical matters is to be derived.

In the Doctor's ardent zeal against Episcopacy, which we must take leave to call, in some respects, zeal without adequate knowledge; he has given a picture of the Apostolic Church, which bears as little. resemblance to the established Kirk of Scotland, as it does to the primitive Church of Christ. Whilst with an inconsistency, not

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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.

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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

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determine. But because the circumstantials 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

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