that derived from the redeemed church. Angels who never fell will praise their Creator for the vast blessings they enjoy; but the spirits of the just made perfect will have a theme of gratitude peculiar to themselves. For "I heard," said the Apostle John, "as it were a new song before the Throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders and no man could learn that song, but the hundred and forty and four thousand which were redeemed from earth." Thus the church will add a new song of glory to God. The church also will doubtless be loudest in the general song of praise, on account of the contrast with their former state. When they view the height to which they are raised, they will look back, we may imagine, to the depth of misery into which they had fallen: when they feel conscious of unutterable felicity, they will doubtless remember that they were those who came out of great tribulation; they will en joy the greater delight in unspotted holiness, by calling to mind how long they carried with them a body of sin; and will triumph more loudly in their victory, while they reflect upon the perils of the con test.. These claims of the Almighty on our gratitude and praise apply exclusively to the redeemed church, and a lively consciousness of them will be a most effectual incitement to holiness; for we must not imagine, that the glory of God in the church is confined to the church triumphant. The church, even while "militant here on earth," may and must contribute to his glory. We were created and redeemed for this very end, that we might shew forth his praise, not only in heaven, but even in the present world; and the way to evince it is by consistency and holiness of conduct. We should be willing to spend and be spent in his service. If we are real disciples of Christ, it is our privilege to exhibit his glory: every prayer offered in humility and faith, every action performed from Christian motives, every trouble sustained for the cause of God, contributes to his glory. And how great is the privilege thus to join with angels and archangels, and the church universal, in so ennobling a service; especially as our own happiness is inseparably connected with the performance of the duty! Let us, then, earnestly pray to that Spirit by whose sanctifying influences alone we can do unto God true and laudable service, that in every thought, word, and work, we may be enabled to shew forth the glory of our Redeemer. 2. The second circumstance mentioned by the Apostle respecting this glory is, the Source from which it is derived-Christ Jesus.—This, being in some measure included in the former circumstance, needs not be again proved. We may, however, learn from this, a practical distinction between a true and a false church. The members of the former attribute the glory of their redemption to Christ; while those of the latter, however variously distinguished in name or doc trine, assume the whole or part of it to themselves. He who imagines that his own works will procure his salvation, deprives God of his honour; for the glory which he receives for the salvation of man is only through Christ. But the humble penitent, trusting implicitly to the merits of his Saviour, will join with sincerity in singing those songs of praise which St. John repeatedly assures us are sung by the church triumphant above. They are completely in unison with the feelings and sentiments of such a man, since they attribute glory to God, through Him who alone hath redeemed us by his blood. In this, as in other things, the Church of England evidences itself to be a branch of the church of God. Every supplication for mercy, every acknowledgment of past blessings, and every song of praise, is addressed to the Divine Majesty only in the name and through the merits of our Saviour Christ. That church whose errors we profess to renounce, still continues to supplicate God, not exclusively through Christ, but through the medium of saints, and angels, and martyrs ;-but He who giveth not his honour to another, receives no ascription of glory, or petition for favour, but through the intercession of his dearly beloved Son. 3.The last circumstance mentioned by the Apostle respecting this glory is its perpetuity: "To him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end."-This perpetuity of the Divine glory, when taken in connexion with what had gone before, is a most consolatory truth. It is a decisive argument for the eternity of the church's happiness; for the dead cannot praise God. While, therefore, God himself shall exist, the church shall endure, to contribute to his glory. The song of praise, now so often interrupted, shall then be uniform; now so short, shall then be eternal; now so feeble, shall then be "loud as the voice of many waters." If we look forward into endless duration as far as the human mind can stretch, this glory will be still new and still beginning. The song of adoration shall never tire the lip of the happy spirit, or weary the ear of his beneficent Redeemer; and eternity itself, far from being tedious, will not suffice to utter all the praises of Him who loved us, and gave himself for us. But while we contemplate the eternity of God's glory in the church, with what force does the important question recur, Are we true members of that church? Are we shewing forth the glory of God on earth? For if not, what ground have we for supposing we shall be permitted, with the church triumphant, to celebrate it in heaven? Thousands "who profess and call themselves Christians," do not in reality belong to this church. One denies the Divinity of the Redeemer; another depends, in whole or in part, upon his own righteousness for salvation; another seems to begin well, but turns back to the world, and crucifies the Savi our afresh; and still a larger number are wholly thoughtless and indifferent to the subject. Now none of these can add, as far as their conduct is a test of their real views, that solemn Amen with which the Apostle concludes and confirms his ascription of praise. Their life is in perpetual variance with such a sentiment; and their eternal exclusion from the privileges of that church, of which they were members only in name and not in reality, will prove how awful a thing it is to have heard of the blessings of the Gospel, and to have rejected them till the space for repentance is for ever passed. MISCELLANEOUS. To the Editor of the Christian Observer. A CLERICAL friend has just put into my hand, I regret to say, with apparent commendation, the last Number of "The Bible Magazine." I know nothing of the present conductors of that publication, or of the extent of its circulation; but I cannot, however, forbear expressing to you how much I am shocked at the contents of the Number before me. I first open upon a sermon on the text, "Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption;" and, under the head sanctification, natural repentance, without a connection with any spiritual and evangelical religion of the heart." (p. 575.) I no more think of troubling a reader, accustomed to his Bible, with the processes (falsely called reasoning) by which such conclusions are supported, than I should think of troubling him with the arguments, by which a certain ancient philosopher demonstrated that snow was black! I read; "The believer is possessed of a sanctification which no pollution can tarnish, which no defilement can do away. He learns from the holy Scripture, that according to the appointment of God in the Covenant of Grace, Christ is made the Sanctification of his people by the imputation of the holi ness of his nature." (p. 587.) This may be paralleled with the extracts from Dr. Crisp, in your Number for September. Again, (p. 588); "Believers are of God in Christ Jesus.' There never was a time in which they were not so." I next turn to a communication on "the kingdom of God," and there read (p. 572), "Let it not be supposed that it is here intended to refer the believer to his own works for evidence of his accept ance with God-far otherwise." It must be needless to remind your readers, that the language of Scripture is, "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren." "Hereby do we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.” "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit," &c. &c. The next passage of Scripture is John xvi. 8, 9 ; When he [the Holy Ghost] is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; of sin, because they believe not on me." Here the remark is; "The original of because is not to be understood in a causal sense. As special faith in Christ is only and purely of heavenly origin, the want, or non-possession of it, CANNOT be the cause of condemnation.” (p. 577.) With this compare the following note, in the Socinian Improved Version" of the New Testament, on Rom. i. 4: "The Apostle COULD NOT mean to assert or countenance the strange and unintelligible notion of two natures in Christ," &c.-Acts iii. 19; " Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord;" the same writer interprets only of "their regicidal sins" being so far blotted out, as to have preserved their temple, their city, and their nation." (pp. 578, 579.) I proceed to a paper on Exhortations;" the object of which is stated to be," not to establish any particular system, or to serve any favoured party, but merely to shew the impropriety of universal exhortations to faith in Christ!"—In pursuance of this design the writer comments on various passages of Scripture. First on John vi. 29; "This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent:" -John xii. 36; "While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light:"-pressed into the unworthy service Acts viii. 22; "Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thy heart may be forgiven thee." "All these (he remarks) have been, and still may be explained, of a merely Finally, on 2 Cor. v. 20; "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God;" he ob serves, "This glorious text is often of that Arminian doctrine, which addresses Christian exhortations to unchristian, that is, to unconverted persons!" (Qu. Did this writer, who talks of " Arminian doctrine," ever read Calvin's writings?) He goes on to remark, that "the exhortation is directed to the church of God at Corinth, and to all the saints in Achaia,'" instead of "all the sinners in the world." (p. 579.) Another communication (and the last I shall advert to), is intitled a Critique on Heb. vi." in which it is maintained, that, in speaking of persons whom, when "fallen away," it is "impossible to renew to repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame," and who are accordingly compared to ground which, "bearing thorns and briars, is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing, whose end is to be burned;"- the Apostle speaks not of any final or total falling away, even of persons who had only seemed to be believers, but merely of" falling from steadfastness in Christ:" "a fact, of which every Christian man's experience teaches him hourly not only the possibility, but absolute certainty!" (p. 580.) The "impossibility of renewing them to repentance," he seems to confine to the period of their continuing "under the power of unbelief," during which they cannot enjoy the benefits of the repentance in which they walked, while faith, the fruit of this repentance, laid hold on the hope set before them in Christ Jesus." The "being nigh unto cursing," is the mind's "hearing nothing but the terrors of the law:" and "its end being to be burned," refers "not to the popish purgatory, nor the fire of hell, as the simple dream in their terrified imaginations, but to tribulations and manifold temptations"-the "purging" of the branches of the vine spoken of, John xv. 2, severe discipline (apostolicé caustics, from xavots, burning) through which they mostly pass." Such is the spirit of system, which is perpetually placing the sacred Scriptures as on the bed of Procrustes; stretching and distorting, contracting and maiming them, to render them commensurate with human wisdom! I do trust, indeed, that there is sufficient sobriety of mind, and scriptural simplicity left amongst us, to render the religious world proof against such unchristian per versions of the word of God. Let us hope, that " their folly shall be manifest unto all men," and "shall proceed no further." But surely when "such erroneous and strange doctrines, contrary to God's word,” are sedulously disseminated amongst the people, it behoves the watchmen of our Israel to be "ready with all faithful diligence to banish and drive them away*.” The good seed is now widely sown: we must expect that the enemy will not be wanting in exertions "to sow tares among the wheat;" and I must consider such a distorted perverted Gospel as this (whatever be the intentions of those who publish it) to be one great means by which he is endeavouring, at this day, to counteract the great good which is otherwise doing amongst us. But I beg leave to subjoin a few remarks on the mode by which such a system is supported, and on the principles upon which it rests. The abettors of it have, I know, a just horror of Socinianism, and suppose themselves the very antipodes of that heresy; and so, in the detail of doctrine, they may be. Yet no one, I think, can se riously contemplate their mode of proceeding, without being struck with its resemblance to that in use among Socinians. The impugners of the Divinity and Atonement of our Saviour, embrace and give prominence to one part of Scripture, to the neglect or disparagement of others. Now do not these persons fall into the same practice? One principal employment of the former class is, to bend or break down a multitude of texts to conformity with the sentiments which * Office for the Ordering of Priests. they are determined to support; and that by processes which Bishop Stillingfleet has happily exposed, by shewing that, if skilfully applied to the first chapter of Genesis, they might prove, that it contains not a word about the creation of the world. And what else is one principal employment of the writers in the Bible Magazine, if the Number for October, 1817, may be taken for a specimen? What greater distortion of Scripture can the sturdiest maintainer of the mere humanity of our blessed Lord ever need to employ, than that which finds in the words, "he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God," no proof, that the want of faith in Christ is a" cause of condemnation?" Nay, which asserts, in defiance of this and all other passages upon the subject, that such a want CANNOT be the cause of condemnation?" The reasonings which prove that there is no exhortation to repentance, faith, and prayer, addressed to unconverted sinners, in the texts, "Repent, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out;" "Repent of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thy heart may be forgiven thee;"-what will they not prove, that a capricious systematist may desire to find true? Your readers will easily apply similar remarks to the pernicious and anti-scriptural positions concerning works considered as the evidences of faith and acceptance with God, and other subjects, which have just passed in review. But having seen by what similar means Socinianism and the erroneous system of the Bible Magazine, apparently so opposite to it, are supported, it may be worth while to trace the cause of this phenomenon; which, I contend, is no other than this, that the two systems, however repugnant in the detail of their dogmas, rest upon one com. mon error as their foundation. That error is, the setting up of human human reason in opposition to Scripture; a want of submission to the authority of the word of God: a refusal to take Scripture as they find it, to let it speak for itself, and to bow implicitly to its decisions. Such a charge will be readily admitted against one of the systems in question: but its supposed extravagance will, I doubt not, provoke a smile in the abettors of the other, when it is preferred against them. Yet I verily believe it to be strictly applicable to them, however little they may intend, or may suspect themselves, to be guilty of the proceeding which it imputes to them. Why does the Socinian deny that Christ is God as well as man? Is it because the Scripture forbids us to think so, or, at least, is silent upon the subject? It is scarcely possible to set up such a pretence. No: but it would be "a strange and unintelligible doctrine:" the inspired writers, therefore," COULD NOT mean to assert it," however plainly they may have done so. And why does the hyper-Calvinist deny that the want of special faith in Christ is a cause of condemnation? Is it because Scripture gives no countenance to such a sentiment? On the contrary, Scripture appears to lay it down repeatedly, and as plainly as words can express it. But it "CANNOT" he so. Wherefore? Because such a faith is "purely of heavenly origin," and it would be "strange and unreasonable," to make the want of that which must be "the gift of God," a cause of condemnation! Why, again, is the doctrine of Atonement to be rejected? Prins cipally, likewise, because it is a "strange and unreasonable" doctrine, irreconcileable (so the Socinian thinks) with the notions of the Divine attributes, which we derive either from reason or |