ferent modes of reasoning, and different results of interpretation, are no doubt to be found among our several authors. We all make our appeal to the records of Christianity: but we have voted no particular commentator into the seat of authority. And is not this equally true of our opponents' church? Their articles and creeds furnish no textual expositions of Scripture, but only results and deductions from its study. And so variously have these results been elicited from the sacred writings, that scarcely a text can be adduced in defence of the Trinitarian scheme, which some witness unexceptionably orthodox may not be summoned to prove inapplicable. In fine, we have no greater variety of critical and exegetical opinion than the divines from whom we dissent: while the system of Christianity in which our Scriptural labours have issued, has its leading characteristics better determined and more apprehensible, than the scheme which the articles and creeds have vainly laboured to define.

The refusal to embody our sentiments in any authoritative formula appears to strike observers as a whimsical exception to the general practice of churches. The peculiarity has had its origin in hereditary and historical associations: but it has its defence in the noblest principles of religious freedom and Christian communion. At present, it must suffice to say, that our Societies are dedicated, not to theological opinions, but to religious worship: that they have maintained the unity of the spirit, without insisting on any unity of doctrine: that Christian liberty, love, and piety are their essentials in perpetuity, but their Unitarianism an accident of a few or many generations;-which has arisen, and might vanish, without the loss of their identity. We believe in the mutability of religious systems, but the imperishable charac ter of the religious affections;-in the progressiveness opinion within, as well as without, the limits of Christianity. Our forefathers cherished the same conviction: and having been born intellectual bondsmen, we desire to leave

So,

of

not

our successors free. Convinced that uniformity of doctrine can never prevail, we seek to attain its only good,-peace on earth and communion with heaven,—without it. We aim to make a true Christendom,-a commonwealth of the faithful,— by the binding force, not of ecclesiastical creeds, but of spiritual wants, and Christian sympathies: and indulge the vision of a Church that "in the latter days shall arise,” like "the mountain of the Lord," bearing on its ascent the blossoms of thought proper to every intellectual clime, and withal massively rooted in the deep places of our humanity, and gladly rising to meet the sunshine from on high.

And now, friends and brethren, let us say a glad farewell to the fretfulness of controversy, and retreat again, with thanksgiving, into the interior of our own venerated truth. Having come forth, at the severer call of duty, to do battle for it, with such force as God vouchsafes to the sincere, let us go in to live and worship beneath its shelter. They tell you, it is not the true faith. Perhaps not: but then, you think it so; and that is enough to make your duty clear, and to draw from it, as from nothing else, the very peace of God. May be, we are on our way to something better, unexistent and unseen as yet; which may penetrate our souls with nobler affection, and give a fresh spontaneity of love to God and all immortal things. Perhaps there cannot be the truest life of faith, except in scattered individuals, till this age of conflicting doubt and dogmatism shall have passed away. Dark and leaden clouds of materialism hide the heaven from us: red gleams of fanaticism pierce through, vainly striving to reveal it; and not till the weight is heaved from off the air, and the thunders roll down the horizon, will the serene light of God flow upon us, and the blue infinite embrace us again. Meanwhile, we must reverently love the faith we have: to quit it for one that we have not, were to lose the breath of life, and die.

NOTE.

The Jewish Passover not a proper Sacrifice.

66

In an essay on "the one great end of the life and death of Christ,” Dr. Priestley makes the following observations on the words (occurring in 1 Cor. v. 7,) Christ, our passover, is sacrificed for us:" "This allusion to the paschal lamb makes it also probable, that the death of Christ is called a sacrifice only by way of figure, because these two (viz., sacrifice and the paschal lamb) are quite different and inconsistent ideas. The paschal lamb is never so much as termed a sacrifice in the Old Testament, except once, Exodus xii. 27, where it is called "the sacrifice of the Lord's passover." However, it could only be called a sacrifice in this place, in some secondary and partial sense, and not in the proper and primary sense of the word; for there was no priest employed upon the occasion, no altar made use of, no burning, nor any part offered to the Lord; all which circumstances were essential to every proper sacrifice. The blood indeed was sprinkled upon the door-posts, but this was originally nothing more than a token to the destroying angel to pass by that house; for there is no propitiation or atonement said to be made by it: and the paschal lamb is very far from having been ever called a sin-offering, or said to be killed on account of sin."*

Every reader, I apprehend, understands this description of the manner of celebrating the passover, to refer to the particular OCcasion' spoken of " in this place" (Exod. xii. 27). The writer of this verse,' argues Dr. Priestley, could not use the word sacrifice in its strictest sense; for his own narrative of the very celebration to which it is applied, describes it as destitute of all the essentials of a proper sacrifice.' The allusion to the blood sprinkled upon the

Theological Repository, vol. i. p. 215, and Priestley's Works, by Rutt, vol vii. pp. 243, 244.

of.

door-posts, as a token to the destroying angel to pass by that house," immediately connects Dr. Priestley's assertions with the Egyptian passover. By cutting out this allusion, and otherwise breaking up the passage in quotation, Archbishop Magee has contrived to conceal its character as an historical description of a single occasion, and to give it the air of a general account of the Jewish paschal ceremony in all ages. Having accomplished this, and obtained for himself the liberty of travelling for a reply over the whole Hebrew history and traditions, he says; "Now in answer to these several assertions, I am obliged to state the direct contradiction of each; for, 1st, the passage in Exodus xii. 27, is not the only one, in which the paschal lamb is termed, a sacrifice, it being expressly so called in no less than four passages in Deuteronomy (xvi. 2, 4, 5, 6), and also in Exodus xxxiv. 25, and its parallel passage xxiii. 18.-2. A priest was employed.—3. An altar was made use -4. There was a burning, and a part offered to the Lord: the inwards being burnt upon the altar, and the blood poured out at the foot thereof." * The last three of these" direct contradictions" establish nothing but this Prelate's habit (not adopted, we may presume, without urgent necessity) of misrepresenting his opponents order to confute them: for it is quite needless to observe that, in the Egyptian passover, of which alone Dr. Priestley speaks, there was neither priest, altar, nor burning: and though the Archbishop should be able to detect all these elements in a festival of King Josiah's time, he will have proved no error against the passage which he criticises. In his first contradiction, he would have gained advantage over his opponent, had not his eagerness induced him to strain his evidence too far. A more modest disputant would have thought it sufficient to reckon three successive verses (Deut. xvi. 4, 5, 6) in which the same phrase is simply repeated, as a single instead of a triple authority: the other citation from the same passage is not the point, as will presently be shown: and in one of the verses from Exodus (xxiii. 18) the word does not occur at all in relation to the passover. So that Dr. Priestley having discovered two passages too few, the Prelate makes compensation by discovering two passages too many.

in

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Having said thus much in reference to Archbishop Magee's fairness to his opponent, I will add a few strictures on the reasonings by which he supports his general position, that the passover was a

*

Magee on the Atonement, vol. i. pp. 291, 292, 5th edit.