your faults, one to another, and pray for one another, that ye may be healed." I observe also, that St. Paul speaks of a power which the Lord had given him for edification, and not for destruction, and that he calls on the Corinthian church to use the power of the Lord Jesus. With such passages before us, it seems to be clear that there may be some little show of authority in the ancient forms of our church, and that it is not necessary to conclude that it flows from a corrupt source.

I would next wish to look for a moment at the source of this power, to which I think the apostle alludes, as to a thing then well understood; we shall find it, I believe, in the 18th chapter of St. Matthew, from the 15th verse: "If thy brother shall trespass against thee." In these words we have the object for which it was given. Our blessed Lord, leaving his people in the midst of an evil world, hating him, and them for his sake, and knowing their infirmities, places a certain power in the hands of his assembled servants, for regulating the differences that would arise between individuals, from interest, temper, or misapprehension. "If he shall neglect to hear the church," that is the assembled congregation, "let him be as a heathen ;" and we know that even in this world public opinion is a powerful restraining motive. We know that the Church of Rome has greatly abused this passage, that it has plainly no relation to doctrine whatever, and gives no power to the clergy exclusively; but let not her abuse of the word of God, be our excuse for the neglect of it; perhaps it may be numbered fairly amongst the crimes of that corrupt church, that by her straining all authority she has brought it into disrepute amongst Protestants, and thus caused in part the differences she objects against us. We find our Lord promise his divine sanction to the decisions of his servants. "Whatsoever (not whomsoever) ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven." We find also to whom the power is committedan assembled church, however small. " Where two or three are gathered together in my name"- «The visible church is a company of

faithful men."

The next thing I wish to show is, that the early churches acted on these powers in arranging individual differences. Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints?" We may well suppose that Christians had little to expect from heathen rulers, and that prudence alone ought to have kept them from such tribunals. St. Paul was beaten unheard at Philippi, and confined uncondemned two years at Rome. We can, therefore, see the wise foresight of our Lord in thus making them in some respect a separate community, and granting such powers for their own benefit; and if their jurisdiction extended to cases of property, as we learn from an expression of St Paul, "Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?" how much more to such conduct as would have brought a reproach upon the community itself.

It seems to me that some of the sins of the believer may be justly considered under a two-fold sense. As they are committed

against God, and against the credit of his word, and against the interests of his people. Perhaps we have an example in the case of David: "And Nathan said unto David, the Lord also hath put away thy sin: thou shalt not die. Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die." Here is the open scandal of a sin visited heavily; the humiliation of David could not procure a remission of this part of the punishment, yet the sin itself was put away.

Many of the sins of one who makes an open profession of Christianity, may be, and sometimes are, considered as offences against the community to which he belongs; and accordingly such communities often claim and exercise the power of excluding such offenders; how much more that of pardoning and restoring the penitent, or as the apostle says, "confirming their love towards him ?"

I observe in the absolution for the sick, a division. The former part is simply a prayer for the sick person: "our Lord Jesus Christ of his great mercy forgive thee!" The latter clause, “I absolye thee," &c. is the good-will of the communion to which the penitent belongs, thus expressed by a public officer, in the spirit of the direction given by St. James above referred to, and in the prayer which follows on these petitions-" continue this sick member in the unity of the church, consider his contrition, accept his tears, assuage his pain"-for the connection between sin and sickness, repentance and recovery is kept in view throughout this impressive

service.

As many dissenting congregations use what is called close communion, or in other words take to themselves the authority of excluding whom they think fit; they cannot consistently blame the Established Church for a much lower exercise, or rather a mere show of authority; not shown in the way of shutting out, but in admitting persons to her ordinances. For if their way be not an undue stretch of authority, the church's stirring up her members to confession of sin before they approach her solemn ordinances must be more than needful. In fact our church acknowledges in her formulary for Ash Wednesday, that she has departed from the strictness of the primitive church; she does not, therefore, cast any reproach on their greater strictness; let them not call her mildness Popery, as in church authority they are liker to Popery themselves.

When persons mistake the meaning of some portions of our liturgy, and therefore speak against them, they are to be excused, because there are difficulties and depths in these fine and scriptural compositions; but these only prove their excellence, and our comparative ignorance and negligence in the word and ways of God. We are apt, when we have got a smattering of divine things, (it may be the best and the most important part, but not the whole of divine truth) to set up for ourselves with a very slight stock of sound divinity, and to sit in judgment upon men, at whose feet it would better

become us to sit and learn; but this is only human pride and self-sufficiency acting in us as they usually do. The difference between the church of England and other Protestant communions, will, perhaps, on examination, be found chiefly this: they make little distinction except believer and unbeliever; she excludes the unbeliever, and makes a higher and nicer distinction, continually 'calling on her members to walk worthy of their vocation in their covenant relationship to God, through Jesus Christ their Lord. In doing this she is often misunderstood, even by enlightened Christians, from a kind of natural Popery, indwelling in the human heart.

When such persons express their mistaken notions of the church services in a public manner, a few inconveniencies seem likely to follow, by endeavouring to point out which, I shall conclude.

Members of the church, who enjoy the blessing of a faithful ministry, but have not as yet learned to value it, are liable to be led away from it to any or to none; gentlemen who occasionally favour us with dispensing a portion of their light amongst us, do not, like the lights of nature, always return at stated periods; sometimes they are then just on the point of leaving public ministrations altogether; sometimes they show by continual changing that they have no fixed principles of their own as yet, and that if they call 'us to any thing, it is to a like wandering uncertainty.

Members of the Established Church, who enjoy but an indif ferent help in their stated minister, are liable to be led to confound Christianity with dissent, or to disrelish and suspect the public forms of prayer, which really contain the greater part of the divine truth which perhaps they have opportunity to hear. It is in some cases a waste of precious time and opportunity, as making a dissenter is a different work from making a Christian. If a man can be led to a knowledge of the Lord, he will of himself leave any communion which he ought to leave. In one particular instance 'some remarks of this kind, seem to have led a Protestant highly informed, except on religious subjects, to conclude not that the Church of England was wrong, but that the Church of Rome must be right.

Lastly, to enquiring Romanists it may be a severe trial, to exhibit the Protestant Church so divided against herself, and her members biting and devouring one another, that if they (the Romanists, shall venture to leave their own Church, they must expect, like Noah's dove, to find no rest for the sole of their foot.

C. M.

BIBLICAL CRITICISM-ROM, ix. 3.

TO THE EDItor of the christian examiner.

SIR-In your Number for May, an ingenious Correspondent under the signature of F. O. has in my opinion advanced satisfactory reasons for considering the present English reading of this verse

erroneous. The alteration of tense made by our translators seems unwarranted; and the sentiment conveyed by their rendering of the passage such as it is difficult to reconcile with the just and natural feelings of the apostle. St. Paul's anxious solicitude for the salvation of his Jewish brethren is indeed frequently expressed with great force and energy, though not to the length of wishing, or rather praying-for that is the import of the verb evxoμa-that he may be accursed for their sake. This has been so well enforced by your correspondent as to render any enlargement on that point unnecessary. I do therefore concur with his opinion that the sentence to which he refers should be parenthetical; and St. Paul's very frequent use of parentheses lends additional strength to the supposition. It is a mode of speech into which all ardent writers, whose minds are full of the subject, and whose ideas crowd upon them for utterance, can hardly avoid falling; and I believe obscurity may often be removed from others as well as St. Paul, by similar correction. On a careful perusal of F. O's critical remarks, it struck me that the word Ηυχόμην instead of belonging to ευχομαι, might come from the verb auxew to boast--imp. m. vna. In which case the meaning assigned by him would be established with additional probability and strength. The construction of the passage would run thus: "I have great heaviness and incessant sorrow in my heart, (for I used myself (once) to boast, or take a pride in being accursed from Christ) on account of my kinsmen in the flesh" &c. It may be a further justification of this rendering, that it agrees so well with the real state of things; for he did much more than wish or pray-he did actually boast of, or take a pride in the activity with which he had denounced the Saviour, and persecuted his followers. It will not be amiss also to observe that the proposition uπεp, concerning, or on account of, suits much better with the new than the old construction. Did he desire to be accursed it would be evɛka for their sake-his heaviness and sorrow are væɛp, for, or on, their account.

Whether these observations be of any value, must be left to the learned conductors of your distinguished periodical: I have but one thing to say in their favour they are short.

SENEX.

BIBLICAL CRITICISM-MATT. XX. 23.

ἐκ' εσιν ἐμὸν δῆναι

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

SIR-Allow me to call your attention to the above passage, which I have selected from Matt. xx. 23, the meaning of which, I conceive, was misunderstood by the excellent translators of our Bible-"To sit on my right hand and on my left, is not mine to give, but (it shall be given) to those for whom it is prepared of my Father." By the addition of this italic supplement it actually con

tradicts the whole scheme of the redemption of sinners! it makes our Lord deny His power to save. How far this is accordant with the style of Scripture, may be easily seen in almost every page of divine truth*"All things that the Father hath are mine." Leaving out the supplement, may we not render the words thus, keeping close to the original Greek: "To sit on my right hand and on my left, is not mine to give, but (unless) to those for whom it is prepared by my Father." The words thus rendered, contain not a denial of His power, but merely an exception or restriction. That the word (aλa,) which, in our version, is translated but, will admit of being rendered except, may be sufficiently proved by a reference to Mark ix. 8,—εκέτι ἐδένα είδον, ἀλλά τὸν Ιησῶν μόνον μεθ' Eavrov They saw no man any more, save Jesus only with themselves. It frequently occurs in other places. A critict of no mean note, observes, that the conjunction allá, when followed by a noun or pronoun (as in this case) ought to be translated as sμn, except.

Your

very humble Servant,

ALEXANDER.

BIBLICAL CRITICISM-1 THES. iv. 16.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

THE primary and most important circumstance after death, which awaits the human being, is the resurrection of the body; an event which is to seal its eternal doom: to the saint, triumphant indeed, but to the sinner, awful beyond conception!

The resurrection is a doctrine not only unknown to, but unimagined by human reason; the wise Athenians mocked when St. Paul preached it: we have therefore no knowledge of the subject, but from revelation; and every portion of God's word which sheds light thereon, is of a most interesting character.

In the first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 15, St. Paul enters more fully on the subject of the resurrection than any other inspired writer. And in his first epistle to the Thessalonians, chapter iv. to whom he had previously written on the same subject, (more briefly, indeed, but not less explicitly,) he expressly informs them, "That the dead in Christ shall rise first." This must therefore be the first resurrection spoken of in the book of Revelations xx. 6.

In the former epistle, the apostle arguing the certainty of the resurrection of the dead from the evidence of Christ's resurrection, deduces the important truth, thus beautifully delineated, “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept; for since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead: for as in Adam all die, so in Christ

* Matt. xix. 28; Luke xxii. 29; John xvii. 24; &c. &c.

† Dr. Campbell.