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the Apostle, in reference to the sufferings of the Jewish martyrs, "had trial of cruel mockings." To some persons, this trial may seem scarcely entitled to be classed with those bodily tortures with which it is in this passage associated; yet has this mode of persecution, which acts more immediately upon the spirit, been often found not less powerful than the fire and the sword, to shake the constancy of the Christian. It is easy to the hardened culprit to brave contumely; but to a mind keenly alive to reproach, and jealous of a good name, to be shunned by one's townsmen, to be followed by the grin of malignant slander, to be treated as the off-scouring of all things, to be made the music of the fool, the butt of scorn and ridicule, and this when poverty is linked with disgrace, and the comfort of social existence is at stake, whatever support and consolation the individual may derive from conscious fidelity to the cause of Truth, the trial must be such as only that Faith which overcometh the world, can enable him to sustain with unshaken fortitude. The world's 'dread laugh' is no unmeaning phrase; but when the laugh of scorn proceeds from the men of power, its import cannot be mistaken, and its effects are soon made palpable. They have replied to Drummond by epigrams and songs,' by profaneness and ribaldry, the arguments of the libertine and the infidel. These were the very weapons with which Voltaire and his confederates made war against Christianity, and still the evil spirit of Ferney seems to conduct the contest. These ultra-ortho'dox,' these exagerés,' these' têtes exaltées,' are treated just as he exulted that those gredins who persisted in the doctrines of Calvin, were treated in his time; they are bien bafoués, well abused.

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Allowing, however, that there are circumstances which may considerably neutralize the effect of this species of persecution, and that, as respects the men against whom it is directed, it may prove, as the infidel of course represents it as being in all cases, harmless, for we have no disposition to inscribe the names of its victims in the Protestant Martyrology'-still, this sarcasm avails nothing in extenuation of the malignity of character displayed by the persecutor. The man who attacks another with scorn and ridicule, on account of his religion, exhibits not less really the temper of intolerance, than the man who dooms the heretic to the stake. In raising the laugh against the puritan or the exageré, he is, in the only way perhaps which the enlightened spirit of the times allows, acting the part of the persecutor; that is, inflicting suffering on another on account of his religious opinions. A regard to his own character, the absence of temptation, or the want of power, may operate to restrain him from more disreputable sorts or degrees of cruelty; but let those restraints be removed, and the character be suffered to act un

disguised, it is easy to conjecture in what tragic scenes the farce might terminate.

In spite of the ludicrous declaration which accompanied the regulation of the 3rd of May, the design of the Venerable Company was unquestionably this, to put down by authority the preaching of the Cross, and by this means to secure the uniformity of the Church of Geneva. In a spirited appeal which this Resolution drew forth, addressed by M. Mejanel, late one of the Pastors of Montauban, to the Protestant ministers of 'Geneva,' the pious writer thus conducts his expostulation.

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"It is written: "Ye have but one master, who is Christ." Who is it then that shall establish himself as judge in the church of Christ? Shall it be an individual minister or several? Jesus Christ declares: "Whosoever will be first among you, let him be your servant: but all "ye are brethren." It does not then appear, that he has appointed Peter to rule over Paul, nor Paul to rule over Peter, nor a privileged body to govern the rest of his disciples. Shall the rulers of the earth be invested with the prerogative to protect one opinion, and to exile or punish the preachers of another? Do we then perceive that Jesus Christ bestowed this right upon any of the Cæsars, upon Pilate, or upon Herod? Far from this, he told his disciples: "Ye know that "the princes of the nations domineer over them, and that their nobles "exercise authority, but it shall not be so among you." We must then return to this principle, that the kingdom of the Saviour is not of this world, and, that one is our master, even Christ.

Will certain persons of your body say to you, my brethren, We have the power in our hands: let those of the opposite opinion keep silence, or else we will banish or overwhelm them? Will they, in the first place, dare hold this language? Does the mere superiority of power over other men give you the right of usurping the sceptre of Jesus Christ, and of seating yourselves in the temple of God, as God?

Is not the right of private judgement and of preaching according to the dictates of conscience, the fundamental principle of the Reformation? Do not the reformed clergy whom I am addressing, justify by this very principle their separation from the church of Rome, and do they not oppose it to every species of oppression? Shall they who are unwilling to suffer persecution, themselves become persecutors? If this be the case, they do unto others as they would not that others should do to them. If this be the case, while they protest against popery, they declare themselves to be popes, and they would exercise the same power."

Although this appeal produced no impression upon the Venerable body, it should seem not to have been wholly without effect. A congregational church has been formed in the face of all opposition, having this general principle for its basis, that the Church of Christ ought to have no other head than Himself, no other laws than his word, nor have recourse to any "other power to enforce those laws than the power of his Spirit. This church already consisted, in October last, of five

and twenty members, and the number of hearers was increasing every Lord's day, but the comparative privacy which, for want of a suitable place for conducting the public worship, had hitherto characterized their assemblies, had prevented them from being so numerous as it is confidently expected they will become, when a proper edifice shall be erected. With the particular constitution of this church, as to its order and discipline, we are unacquainted, but we would hope that no predilection for the Sandemanian hypothesis has displayed itself, because we are persuaded no circumstance would be more likely to prove fatal to its prosperity. It remains to be seen whether the Protestant Government will tolerate this bold experiment. It is looked upon by many of the pious pastors as an unadvisable separation, and some of the young men who have been involved in the persecution raised against the ultra-orthodox, yet hesitate to leave the Genevese establishment; so strong is the prejudice every where against Dissenterism! For our own parts, although we consider it as a circumstance of no small importance, that the standard of religious liberty should have been thus raised in Geneva, inasmuch as the existence of evangelical religion in that city seems to depend upon the defeat of the Anti-Christian party; we must reserve the unqualified expression of our satisfaction with the particular measures adopted, till we see further into their issue.

With regard to Mr. Drummond, the English gentleman whose name has been made so free with, our information does not extend beyond the two following circumstances; that he has reprinted, at his own expense, Calvin's Institutes, and that he has been abused as one of the strongest supporters of THE 'BIBLE SOCIETY.' He has, we believe, since left Geneva for Italy.

Our readers are now in possession of all the leading facts connected with the present publication, and the recent measures by which it has been followed up by the pastors of Geneva. Although the inquiry is one of peculiar delicacy, we cannot forbear adverting, in conclusion, to the question which the retrospect of the progressive deterioration of the Protestant churches naturally suggests: What are the probable causes in which that deterioration has originated?'

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With regard to the Church of Geneva, we have seen, that so far back as the middle of the last century, the Company of Pastors were explicitly charged by D'Alembert, in the French Encyclopedia, with having abjured a belief in all the mysterious doctrines of Christianity, and embraced Socnianism. accusation was grave and formal,' says M. Dopaytaz; the 'means of rebutting it, if false, were simple and easy. When persons have well made up their minds as to what they be

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lieve,' remarked a contemporary Journalist, a confession of 'faith ought to require no time to be decided upon.' Instead of this, on the 10th of February, 1758, came forth a vague and ambiguous declaration, which convinced nobody that D'Alembert had overstepped the truth. In 1778, Monsieur Vernet openly avowed Arianism, or something worse. Yet, like some among ourselves, Vernet wrote in defence of the truth of Christianity; convinced, as it should seem, by the force of external evidence, of its Divine origin, yet with a heart unreconciled to its requirements. Thus it is, that men whom the strength of their reason preserves from embracing the conclusions of the Deist, are by the pride of reason prevented from becoming Christians.

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Long previously to this period, however, there had existed in the Church of Geneva, a sort of combination, which had for its object, to accommodate the language of the pulpit to the polished wisdom of the philosopher, and the prejudices of men of learning and taste. John Alphonsus Turrettini, the learned son of the still more celebrated Francis Turrettini, may be regarded as having been the principal instrument, in connexion with Osterwald, and another Swiss divine of superior talents, Werenfels, in bringing about that change in the style of preaching, and in the phrase ology of Christian doctrine, which paved the way for the eventual dereliction of all the peculiarities of the religion of Christ. The rock upon which these men split, was evidently this. They had a deep conviction, imbibed from education, and strengthened by research, of the truth of Christianity. They had also, as ministers of a Protestant establishment, a professional interest in its being acknowledged as true, and they were anxious, on all accounts, to defend it from the assaults of the infidel. In arguing from its external evidence, they spoke of what they knew, they kept within the common ground of reason, and here felt themselves triumphant; but when they in their turn were assailed on points of faith beyond the province of reason, unable with the same weapons to combat the objections of the infidel, they had recourse to the desperate attempt to get rid of them, and thus deliver Christianity from the supposed predicament, by reducing Revelation itself to the standard of human wisdom. With the essence of Christianity itself, as a system of Divine recovery adapted to the condition of sinners, and with the peculiar character of its doctrines, as the power of God unto salvation to those who believe, their experimental acquaintance was, it may be feared, at the best, very defective, or they would never have entertained so wild a project as that of converting the hearts of men to the obedience of faith, by shewing that Revelation is rational. The mistake originated in their own feelings. They carried into the study of religion, the curiosity and the pretensions of a haughty intellect, instead of VOL. IX. N. S. C

the meekness of contrition and the simplicity of faith; and thus, not being "rooted in Christ," as the Apostle expresses it, they became "spoiled through that philosophy and vain deceit which "is after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, " and not after Christ." When, therefore, they came forth to encounter the infidel with "wisdom of words," they grew impatient of the doctrines which he could defy them to divest of mystery; in fact, they were ashamed of the Gospel of the Cross.

This, it is even charitable to conclude, was the occasion of that mistaken policy, which appears to have been among the earliest causes of a defection from evangelical piety in this Protestant church. The deification of human reason, is the fatal extreme into which the human mind is prone to be repelled, on its first escaping from the trammels of a superstition which has enslaved and debased it; and this supplies the explanation of the fact, which lies as the heaviest charge against Protestantism, that it has so extensively proved the path from superstition to infidelity. But our inquiry does not terminate here. How came these individuals to have it in their power, from the station which they cupied, to effect by their combined efforts and example, the change which we regard as mainly attributable to their confederacy?

Upon this part of our subject we wish to speak with peculiar caution, but we must speak with plainness. To us it appears, that to nothing is this circumstance, in the first place, more distinctly referrible, than to the dangerous practice exemplified in the instance of Turrettini, of constituting the Christian ministry, in effect, though not in hypothesis, an hereditary profession, by appointing the sen to succeed to the ecclesiastical station occupied by the father. In the Romish Church such a practice might seem consistent enough with the notions entertained of a sacerdotal succession and of rites of inherent efficacy; but for Protestant Presbyterians, who reject those fallacies, no such excuse can be made. The Christian ministry is not a Levitical order, nor is it, (what there is perhaps equal danger in its being regarded,) a profession, to the functions of which professional character is the sufficient requisite. Invaluable as are the auxiliary accomplishments of human learning and critical skill, a man may be a scholar and a critic, and yet be destitute of theological knowledge; and he may be learned even in theology, and yet be a novice in the school of Christ, and utterly disqualified to sustain the sacred office, the chief business of which is the preaching of the Gospel of reconciliation. Most of the heresies which have infected the Christian Church, have originated with a learned ministry, destitute of the genuine spirit of piety; have been 'the product of perverted ingenuity and unsanctified talent;' and similar results may always be

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