In order, therefore, that the Congregational churches may escape the evils incident to the great Protestant right of private judgment, and the freedom of speculation which always goes along with it, and may derive only the advantages flowing from it, they need, as a denomination, to state their own judgment, in the most exact and distinct manner, with respect to the meaning and doctrinal contents of the Bible. For in this way alone can they prevent the private judgment of other Protestant parties and denominations from being imposed upon them for their own. As this is a point of some importance, we will dwell upon it for a moThere is little danger that a denomination like our own should be much affected, in the outset, by those forms of Protestantism which reject the essential doctrines of Christianity. The difference between Rationalism and Supernaturalism is too great for influences to pass directly from one to the other. The chasm between these parties is so wide that they cannot hear each other's voices across it. The latitudinarian influences (latitudinarian as we must regard them from our denominational position) will first come in upon us from those evangelical divisions in Protestantism who hold the doctrines of grace, but who, according to our denominational judgment, do not hold them with sufficient self-consistence and comprehensiveness, to render their creed, and their theologizing, as accurate as our own. The nice point, and therefore the point of most danger, for Congregationalism, and for all other denominations that occupy the same doctrinal position with it, is the right adjustment of its relations, not to downright heresy, but to a looser and less defined form of orthodoxy than Congregationalism thinks itself can stand upon. We may illustrate our meaning by reference to the great controversy which has gone on from the very first ages to the present time, between the two grand divisions of evangelical Christendom. We refer to that standing difference of opinchanging circumstances of the day. It may and must, therefore, be administered by the day, - that is, whenever the occasion arises, and by the local body alone, because the local body alone is concerned in the speciality of the case.

ion among believers in the general doctrines of grace, which, in the Patristic church, showed itself in the Augustinian and Semi-Pelagian divisions, and, in the Protestant church, in the Calvinistic and Arminian controversies. In these two great divisions of ancient and modern evangelical Christendom, we find a difference of sentiment, not with regard to the general facts and truths of New Testament Christianity, but with respect to the more specific and exact definitions of them. And it is with reference to this specific enunciation of the general doctrines of grace that the principal controversy has gone on, and is still going on, within the evangelical world. For it is a great mistake to suppose that the Patristic church was very much convulsed by the controversy with mere and sheer Pelagianism; or that the Protestant church has been very much excited or tasked by mere and sheer Socinianism. Both of these schemes are so totally different from the plain teachings of the entire and unmutilated Scripture, that there was no opportunity for a profound argument, and a permanent debate; and hence both schemes alike dropped back into their own private and local circles, while the great mass of the Patristic, as of the Protestant church, retained, and defended the evangelical theology. But upon this basis of general evangelism, there was an opportunity for an argument, and an honest difference of sentiment, among believers in Christ. The Ancient Semi-Pelagian,

"That man is no longer in his pure and primitive moral condition, and that the mere cultivation of his present natural powers and susceptibilities cannot possibly suffice for the attainment of the true end of his creation; that, on the contrary, his original divinely-created nature has become corrupted and ruined by the dominion within him of the principle of self-will, and that in order to live conformably with his own original constitution, and to practise holiness from a holy disposition, he needs an inward change through a divine power, — all this, in a general form of statement, had been the doctrine of the church from the first. It was only when still more strict definitions and statements were attempted, and particularly when such questions as these arose: Is there in the fallen soul any power of self-restoration? if so, to what degree? and what is its relation to the renewing power of the Holy Spirit? - that the church of the first four cen turies found itself not fully agreed. There was constantly a difference, in this respect, between the Oriental and Occidental churches, and to some extent also within the Occidental church itself." - Guericke's Church History, § 91.

like the Modern Arminian, while confessing his sin, and trusting in the blood of Christ, could sincerely urge what he believed to be a strong argument against the doctrines of predestination and irresistible grace, and that particular statement of the doctrine of sin out of which the doctrines of predestination and irresistible grace issue as necessary corollaries. And his opponent showed his respect for that belief, by entering into the debate, and defending what he believed to be the more exact, and self-consistent, and allcomprehending statement of that same evangelical system. Not with reference, then, to the tenets of Pelagius and Socinus, but to those of Chrysostom and Arminius, as distinguished from those of Augustine and Calvin, do the Congregational churches need a strong symbolical feeling that will identify them yet more thoroughly with the stricter of those two great systems of theology, whose fraternal (and may it ever be fraternal) conflict and debate constitutes the sum and substance of evangelical doctrinal history.

For Congregationalism, it is agreed upon all sides, does not adopt the Arminian system as its doctrinal basis. The early history of the denomination has shown that the fathers. and founders were strictly Calvinistic, in reference to the points at issue between Geneva and Leyden. Says the respected secretary of this Library Association, at the close of a most instructive historical sketch of the Congregational churches in Massachusetts: "Calvinism as a system of religious faith, and Puritanism as a code of morals (the two toughest things that ever entered into the composition of human character) were the original soul and body of these Congregational churches." And this Calvinism, he adds, was "that unadulterated Calvinism which had been filtered of every Arminian particle by the Synod of Dort, whose ablest defender was John Robinson." 2 And no one

166 Irresistible," it is needless to remark, not in the sense of never being resisted by the enmity of the carnal mind (Rom. 8: 7), but in the sense of being able to overcome, and actually overcoming, the utmost energy and intensity of that resistance.

These valuable sketches have recently

can follow the tremendous cogency of that logic by which the great head of New England theology crushes to its minutest fibre the Arminian theory of indetermination, and the Arminian statement of the doctrine of Original Sin, without perceiving that there was a most profound harmony and agreement between the mind at Northampton, and the minds at Dort and Westminster. The successors of Edwards, New England divines of all varieties, alike repel the charge of Arminianizing proclivities; and, though there may be a difference of opinion respecting the success with which the several schools that have arisen among us have untied the knots, and unravelled the intricacies of the Calvinistic system, there can be no doubt that all of our leading thinkers have intended, and done their utmost, to be true to the historical faith of their denomination.

The influence of the symbol is required to strengthen and perpetuate in Congregationalism this same primitive energy and decision in favor of the stricter of the two systems of evangelical theology. For the creed-statement evinces that there is no logical middle position between Calvinism and Arminianism, and that the choice of an individual or a denomination, consequently, lies between the one or the other. Semi-Pelagianism was a real mid-point between the tenets of Augustine and those of Pelagius; but there is no true intermediate between the system of Arminius and that of Calvin. In the history of doctrine there are sometimes semi-quavers, but demi-semi-quavers never. In marking off the true scientific difference in this way,-in making up the exact issue, between the two great theological systems of Christendom, that are kindred but not equivalents, the historical creed is an educating force of the highest value to a denomination. It imparts frankness and clearness to all minds within it, and frankness and clearness are twin sisters to generosity and catholicity.

4. Fourthly, a stronger symbolical feeling, operating in Congregationalism, would tend to harmonize its own theo

been collected, and published with additions, by the Congregational Board of Publication.

logians among themselves. It is the genius and tendency of our highly republican system to call out vigorous and independent thinking. As a consequence, our denomination more than others, has from the beginning been stimulated, and sometimes startled, by the uprising of those salient minds who become the nuclei of parties, and the heads of schools. Minor and somewhat local systems, each in its own time and place, have thus radiated their influence through the denomination, have come more or less into collision with each other, and have thereby imparted to Congregationalism that varied and somewhat parti-colored aspect which it wears when compared with ecclesiastical bodies in which there is less boldness of speculation. This is the genius of Congregationalism, and we would not transform it if we could. This desire to evince the reasonableness of Christianity, this inquisitive and enterprising temper, this scholasticism of the nineteenth century, is the vitality by which theological science in every age has been built up. But vital force must always have materials to work upon, and ideas to work by. And these we would find, for the theologian, in the denominational symbol. For it is not enough to refer him to the Bible without note or comment. Were he a convicted sinner only, and were it his object to seek his own personal salvation, this direction would be sufficient. But he is a theologian, and as such it is his purpose to construct a great comprehensive system that shall do justice to the entire word of God, that shall not omit a single truth, and shall place every doctrine in its right relations and proportions, and therefore he, in the capacity, and exercising the function, of a theologian, must be assisted in this collection and combination of the contents of Revelation by the labor of all his predecessors. To shut up a single individual with the mere text of the Scriptures, and demand that, by his own unassisted studies and meditations upon it, he should during his own life-time build up a statement of the doctrine of the Trinity like that of Nice, of the doctrine of the Person of Christ like that of Chalcedon, of the doctrine of the Atonement like that of the Augsburg and Helvetic