find in themselves some thing in unison with the few suggesstions I have to offer on the subject of Christian sanctification.

What then is it? It is the religion of the Son of God enthroned within the human breast and ruling the whole man. It is the presence and operation of divine truth in the mind, throwing a pure and bright illumination through all the chambers of the soul; exciting every dormant power and putting it to its appropriate work; taking off the imagination from unhallowed reveries, for the nobler employment of multiplying and combining images of all possible excellence; tasking the reasoning faculty in those processes of induction by which divine perfections and human duties are inferred from the developements of nature, from the events of providence, and from the disclosures of revelation; bending the will into accordance with God's purposes and man's interests; quickening the sensibilities of conscience, enlarging its vision, and clothing its judgments with paramount authority. It is, too, the presence and operation of divine love in the heart, expelling all impurities of feeling and sentiment; chastening down and directing the passions in their legitimate channels; drawing the soul into the closest intimacy with God; increasing the number and strength of the ties that bind man to his brother man; creating the strongest dread of whatever is mean and vicious; and awakening the most intense desire of every thing that is pure, honorable, generous, and worthy of immortal beings. It is, moreover, the presence and operation of a practical principle of holiness in the soul, that will not allow the christian to rest satisfied with any thing short

of the best attainments in virtue, that gives his views a lofty aim, leads him to try himself by a high standard of excellence, and prompts him every day to make some new accessions of moral strength and worth to his character.

Such, as I understand it, is christian sanctification. And now what are the doctrines chiefly influential in producing so great and glorious results? Is it those about which the sects are perpetually contending? I think not. It is rather such as the few, simple, sublime, and generally received truths taught by Jesus Christ concerning God's unchangeable paternity, and man's eternal accountableness. It is such as these, which, after all that polemics say about the surpassing worth of their own peculiarities, do actually, under Providence, constitute the principal means of sanctification. Would any see and feel how true this remark is? Let them study themselves; let them study others; they will then learn how little most of the disputable and disputed dogmas have to do in producing the character and satisfactions of christian holiness, and how much, in these respects, is owing to those great and obvious principles of the gospel, which are common to all classes of its professors. Strike from men's minds every thing they have been accustomed to believe of native and total depravity, of three equal and distinct persons in the Godhead, of unconditional election, reprobation, and the like, and in what would their piety, and virtue, and happiness, in the least degree suffer? In nothing. But so no one will deem of the simple and universally acknowledged truths, taught by Jesus, respecting God's purposes and paternal character, and man's duties and

immortal nature. I fear not for any one's sanctification, who yields to the sway of a religion containing these. Why should I? How often have I witnessed its power to enoble the mind, to purify the heart, to prompt to high attainments; and this, too, not only in one class of individuals, but in every grade of life. Yes, I have seen how this religion, disparaged as it sometimes is for its reasonableness and simplicity, can lift from the dust the sons of penury and oppression, and breathe into them the spirit of a high minded virtue that will hope and will toil for better things; how, too, it can keep down the ambitious aspirations of those upon whom fortune smiles, and save them from the horrid excesses to which unlimited power, unbounded wealth, and exalted rank so often give occasion. And when I have asked myself what it was which produced such effects, I have always been forced to the conclusion that it was chiefly the few, obvious, and great truths of the gospel respecting the Divine character and will, and respecting the future destination of mankind, which occur on almost every page of the New Covenant, and are professed by nearly every christian denomination. And so with regard to all the beneficial results of Christianity. Does it incite any one to generous deeds for his associates, his country, the world? it is by reminding him that there are eyes, not only on earth, but in heaven, anxiously bent upon him to see how he shall act his part, and that the recollections of all he does nobly here will live in his memory to bless him forever. Does it endue any soul with a zeal that nothing can quench, and with a strength that nothing can prostrate in the pursuit of moral and intellectual good? it is by the revelations it makes of the Father's will, and by

the assurance it gives, that all the habits of thought and feeling, and all the acquisitions of mind and heart which the good man makes on earth, will accompany him beyond the grave, and shed their influences on his condition through endless ages.

Z.

ANDOVER

AND NEW HAVEN CONTROVERSY. THE

CHRISTIAN SPECTATOR'S OPINION OF DR WOOD'S LETTERS TO DR TAYLOR. SEPTEMBER, 1830.

Our last number contained some extracts from Dr Woods' Letters, in which Dr Taylor was charged with holding and teaching doctrines that were not in accordance either with the letter or the spirit of revelation, and would have an unpropitious influence upon the characters of men, upon revivals of religion, and upon all the interests of the church.' We have no wish, at present, to discuss the merits of this controversy between the Abbot Professor of Theology at Andover, and the Dwight Professor of Theology in Yale College; but it seems to us due in justice to the latter gentleman, that, as we have admitted the accusation into our pages, we should also put our readers in possession of the reply, which his friends have furnished in the Christian Spectator for September. They say, then, among other things not very creditable to Dr Woods, that

'His statement of the question at issue, is palpably incorrect; that, without a shadow of reason, he has changed the fundamental

position of Dr Taylor, on which the whole discussion turns, into another and a different one, which he has never maintained; that Dr Woods has, in the fullest terms, conceded the great principle maintained by Dr Taylor;' that Dr Woods' scheme is encumbered with great and palpable inconsistences; that' Dr Woods constantly confounds things which are essentially different;' that he is guilty in at least thirteen instances of evasions of Dr Taylor's reasoning ;’that he has indulged himself in many cases, in fallacious reasonings;' that the Letters abound in remarks which are not only irrelevant to the point at issue, but personal and invidious in a high degree;' that he has held out to view two opposing parties, Dr Taylor and his friends on the one side, and the Orthodox on the other-a charge utterly UNFOUNDED IN FACT;' that not content with calling in question the orthodoxy of Dr Taylor, he has actually held him forth as identified, no one knows to what extent, with the UNITARIAN PARTY; and addresses the man whom he has thus arraigned before the churches, as an affectionate brother, and a respected and beloved brother;' that he has called on Dr Taylor to say whether he is not in fact a Pelagian in respect to the natural state of man, conversion, and free will;' that he has, without the shadow of a reason, struck a direct blow at every thing that is valuable in the character of Dr Taylor as a man, a minister of the gospel, and an instructer of youth;' that he has extended the same system of attack, by surmise and insinuation, to the whole body of Dr Taylor's pupils, and to all who may agree with him in his theological opinions;' that he prefers 'a direct charge against Dr Taylor and his friends, that their sentiments are likely to result in the utter abandonment of the peculiar doctrines of the gospel, and at last to infidelity;' that the hue and cry is thus to be raised throughout the whole country, against men, who have devoted themselves to the service of Christ, and the salvation of a lost world,' so that 'wherever they go, jealousy and suspicion are to go before them, to blast their characters, and to defeat their efforts; and all this is done not by proof, but by surmise and insinuation;' that, whatever be the consequence, Dr Woods, we say, must answer for it to the great head of the church, when he places a barrier in the way of men, whose lives and labors are consecrated to the service of God;' that finally, we had intended to comment on the personal incivility which pervades these letters; but much as we regret their style in this respect, which we believe to be without a parallel in our churches during the last thirty years, it is after all a matter which