and one grand scheme of creation, providence and redemption, displayed before us in all that we can see, learn, or know of the things that are. But it is all-sufficient to our purpose that the Bible proposes moral and spiritual ordinances and laws: nay, that it represents the Divinity itself as manifesting its adorable attributes of knowledge, wisdom, power, and goodness-of justice, truth, and holiness-of mercy, condescension, and love, under the personal forms of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and even to each of these manifestations of himself is assigned a province of operations peculiar, and incommunicable to another. Hence, although there is a unity of design, and a co-operation of GOD, his WORD, and SPIRIT-of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in creation, providence, and redemption; still to each of these almighty agents there is a province never invaded by another. The Father becomes not incarnate, suffers, and dies; the Spirit becomes not incarnate, suffers, and dies; but the Divine WORD does. The Son assumes not the office of the Spirit any more than he does not assume the form of a dove, or breathe like the North or the South winds upon our souls and our spirits. Nor does the Son send the Father to be the Saviour of the world, and to mediate the reconciliation of man to the throne and sovereign of the universe.

Evident, then, it is, that in the unity of Jehovah, and in the personal manifestations of plurality and society in that mysterious and sublime unity, there is a distribution of offices and works as peculiar to each, as the name which indicates his personal position in the divine enterprize of redeeming man, and confirming the universe in holiness and happiness immutable as God, and as enduring as all the years of eternity. What the Father does as Father, the Son as Son, the Spirit as Spirit, no other one of the sacred designations ever assumes to do, while yet in design and object there is but one mind and one volition. My Father and I are one, and my Father works in this, and I work with him, said the Oracle of the Divinity, the Incarnate Word, our Emanuel. Now I argue, that as the work and office of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are separate and distinct; and as one of them is not, in any case, substituted for the other, we may advance with all assurance, into all the political or economical arrangements in the various dispensations of religion, in the gradual advances and developments of remedial mercy, without the detection of a single departure from the philosophy of laws and ordinances in physical nature.

Talk we of the ordinances of the altar, the victim, and the priest; of the confirmatory rite of the fleshly circumcision on the eighth day after the nativity; of the passover on the memorable night of the 14th of Nisan; of the pentecost; the feast of trumpets or of tabernacles, and we shall find but one invariable rule, viz.-That each of these ordinances had one specific meaning and design, peculiar and inalienable; and that a special moral power was inseparably connected with it, when observed under all the requisitions of the laws of its observance. Thus in forming the Jewish character, in perfecting its grand distinguishing outlines, internal and external, there was a peculiar, separate, and distinct influence in each institution intransferable, inalienable, and immutable as any of the laws which govern the organic creations of the material masses around us.

"God does nothing in vain," is an axiom as true in religious and moral ordinances, as in those of creation and providence. Nothing is found superfluous in all the laws that govern mind or matter, animal or spirit, understanding or affections. What is achieved by sight, cannot be secured by hearing; and as we cannot substitute the eye for the ear, taste for smell, one organ of the brain, or one faculty of the mind, for another; so we cannot substitute one of the laws or ordinances of nature or of religion for another, or dispense with any of them but at the sacrifice and loss of all the goodness and mercy intended to be communicated by that mode of benevolent operation. In one word, as in the intellectual and moral faculties of our nature, there is an individuality and an independence, a function and an operation peculiar to each; so is there in all the laws and ordinances designed and enjoined by high Heaven for their full development and pleasurable enjoyment. It shall be the object of our next paper to apply these views and reasonings to the Christian institution, as the perfection of all systems of adaptation in achieving the most admirable of all divine results-the redemption of man from sin and misery, and the perfect transformation of his mind and manners after the image and likeness of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. A. C.

MERLE DE AUBIGNE, THE HISTORIAN.
(Continued from page 14.)

I WILL proceed more particularly to specify the chief deficiencies of the protestant reformation.

First.-Infant baptism was retained by the reformers, yet it certainly is one of the most deadly weeds which arose in rankness out of the pontine marshes. In apostolic days, immersion, according to the great law of the commission, and the invariable practice of the disciples, was an institution for rational beings. All who believed the facts of the glorious gospel, and under the influence of that faith, were pricked in their hearts, and repented of their past lives, were solemnly called upon to reform, and be immersed for the remission of their sins. Life was begun by faith and repentance. They were quickened by the word of truth, which is the incorruptible seed of the Spirit; but through immersion into Christ, they were born into a new state, and thus life was consummated. They received at that time the assurance of God's pardoning love, and were adopted into the family of his grace; the earnest of their justification being wisely connected with the remembrance of a solemn and expressive rite, that no doubts might mingle with the fulness. of their joy, peace, and hope. But in course of time, as men's minds became darkened and perverted by human traditions, a doctrine was broached, and gained acceptance in the church, which still is named original sin; a phrase of Gothic barbarianism, which conveys a sense still more repulsive. Neither the phrase nor its import could have been perpetuated, save by scholastic metaphysics. That Adam sinned, is true; that sin separated him from the life of God, is true; that the consequences of his transgressión have fallen upon his posterity in temporal death and ignorance of God, is true; that there is no way of restoration, save through the blood of Him who is not only the way of return, but the life itself, is also true; and the most glorious truth which can be uttered by the lips of men is swept over the lyre of angels. But that infants are sinners in any sense, or liable to any future danger; that they have any guilt imputed to them, or any of the consequences of guilt beyond time, is revolting to common sense, and libellous both towards God and human nature.

Sin is the transgression of law. It is moral voluntary pollution, and not a physical disease which can be transmitted in the courses of the blood, through hereditary channels, like scrofula, the gout, or king's evil. I am the more particular in remarking on this subject, because infant sprinkling had its origin here. This is the antique and barbaric fountain from whence that deadly stream gushed

forth, which has dashed on so freely, steaming every where with noxious exhalations, a very river of death, the shores and scenery of which are blasted with sterility, exhibiting no evidence of the green bloom of spiritual life. If I be required to state how one originated the other, I reply, that the fathers, who elaborated this doctrine of original sin, knew that baptism was in some way or other intimately connected with the absolution of guilt--with the 'plenary remission of sins. Indeed, this is written as with a sunbeam in every allusion to the ordinances; and they argued, that if their infants were guilty of original sin, they would perish without redemption, unless this original sin was washed away in the water of baptism. Thus one false doctrine issued in another: thus a distorted monster, which should have been exposed as soon as it was born, was suffered to live, and became prolific in generating a connatural brood. To write their history, would be endless; suffice it to observe, that they have gone rampantly through the earth, accompanied every where with moral blight and spiritual desolation.

The grand design of Christianity is the purification of human nature. Its facts and promises have such immense moral power, that they awaken human hearts, and bring men into new relations with God and each other. A church or congregation of Christ should be composed of regenerated men, walking in all the ordinances blameless, the fire of devotion kindled in each heart, for ever burning upward to the heaven of heavens. The adoption of infant baptism destroyed this blessed condition of things. It was a flood which the Dragon poured out of his mouth, by which the dykes were overthrown, the wall of partition between the church and the world broken down, the lines of demarcation obliterated, and the church completely secularised. Infant baptism was the very life-blood of that great Pedobaptist society which formed the Roman apostacy, and (to change the figure) is now the main pillar on which all state churches are built; and though the dissenting Pedobaptists may scoff at the established temples, it comes from them with an ill grace; for they are merely quarreling about dill, anise, and cumin, whilst substantially agreed in the leading principles of organization; hence Pedobaptist sects have become state churches wherever they could. Nor do I incline to think that there is one in existence which would reject the infamous alliance, if the courtship were carried on with the proper formalities of spiritual politeness. After the church and the

world had been blended by this sweeping change, the lechers, adulterers, and Sodomites, all the covetous, malicious, bloodthirsty, profane mass belonged to the church, though only born of the flesh, and manifestly belonging to the devil; they were treated as if born of the Spirit, by admission to the privileges and immunities of the sanctuary; and, alas! what was the result? Though their every day conduct hurled defiance against God, and blotted the page of human nature with fearful stains, yet under the leadership of ungodly priests, created by the same system, they could work themselves up into a frenzy against heresy and heretics, lighting up the temple of nature with the fires of fanaticism, and causing the once limpid rivers to run and murmur in crimson tides, swollen with the blood of martyrs. The reformers then, by retaining this master evil of infant baptism, retained an element sufficient to leaven the whole of their work with necessary corruption.

Second.-Human priesthood: this great heresy of early origin and rapid growth was still fostered by the reformers. That any body of men should be called clergymen and reverends, to distinguish them from laymen, or priests to demark and separate them from the people; that such a class should be furnished with scholastic and classic erudition, delivered from the business of society, clothed in peculiar garbs, and allowed to destroy the church's time by weekly prayers and orations, to the exclusion of their brethren in the same community, is one of the vilest delusions which Satan has covered with the garb of reality. And, truly, it has brought forth fruit according to its nature! The primitive brethren were all alive in the cause of God. It was expected that each brother would edify the church according to his gift; for all were spiritual priests, with equal access to the throne of the holiest, and common liberty to proclaim truth and administer ordinances. But now one scholastic is elevated and salaried to deliver weekly orations, whilst the great body of laymen is stagnated in worldly admiration. But let me not misrepresent the reformers. Many of them, and Luther especially, demolished in word the fiction of human clergy, and taught plainly the priesthood of all believers; only they went no further; they made no practical effort to root it out of the church: they continued to nourish it, by exemplifying it in the formation of their own churches. In consequence, then, of the reformers not bringing out the truth of this subject into fact, but allowing it to