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2. Speaking of the Lord's Supper, I asked, by what authority you made subscription to human creeds the condition of church membership? You answer my inquiry with some weak and sophistical reasoning. Sir, this is not a question for "carnal reason" to decide. I admit that you have a perfect right to make as many creeds as you please for your own use. You may fill your house with them, and every morning and evening swear fidelity to their misty terms, and thus proclaim to the world that you have determined to be no wiser on religious subjects to-morrow than you have been to-day. But you have no right to make a creed for another person, or a Christian church. One of two things must be true; either Jesus Christ is the head of the church, or he is not. If you say he is not the head, please to inform me whom he has commissioned to execute this office. If you say he is the head, please to show me the passages in which he has given you liberty to place a human creed before his Table, and exclude from his feast all who will not bow to your idol. I boldly assert, that you can produce no such text from the Scriptures, and consequently I must believe that your authority is usurped. I shall not notice your attempt to show that it is proper to excommunicate from your churches those who renounce their belief in your human confessions; for until you can show your commission from Christ to make your interpretations of Scripture terms of Christian communion, you certainly cannot prove that you have any right to exclude those who renounce those human conditions of church membership. But since you incline to reason on this question, I present you the following arguments from the orthodox Baxter.

"Addition to Christ's terms are very perilous, as well as diminution, when men will deny either church entrance or communion to any that Christ would have received, because they come not up to certain terms which they, or such as they, desire. And though they think that Christ giveth them power to do this, or that reason or necessity justifieth them, their error will not make them guiltless. Imputing their error unto Christ untruly, is no small aggravation of the sin. - Nor is it a small fault to usurp a power proper to Christ; to make themselves lawgivers to his church without any authority given by him; their ministry is another work. And it is dangerous pride to think themselves great enough, wise enough, and good enough, to come after Christ, and to amend his work, and do it better than he hath done.— Much less when they hereby imply an accusation against him and his institutions, as if he had not done it well, but they must amend it, or all will be intolerable. - And the merciful Lord and Saviour of the church, that came to take off heavy burdens and intolerable yokes, will not take it well to have men come after him, and as by his authority, to make his easy yoke more strict, and his light burden more heavy, and to cast or keep out those that he hath redeemed, and doth re

ceive, and to deal cruelly with those that he hath so dearly bought, and tenderly loveth. And indeed it is oftener for men's own interest and dominion, to keep up their power and honor of superiority, that men thus use the servants of Christ, than truly to keep clear the church, and keep out the polluters." Vol. IV. p. 653.

3. Speaking of creeds, I asserted that the leaders of the orthodox denomination made a human confession, and not the Bible, their standard of religious truth. In proof of this assertion, I presented a great mass of evidence, a multitude of undeniable facts. You deny the truth of my charge, and offer a few words of explanation. All you say on the subject amounts to nothing more than this; that no orthodox Christian means to make the human creed the infallible standard. So it might be said, that the persecuting, conscientious Paul did not mean to do any thing contrary to the will of God. I shall not, therefore, reason about your motives. I will merely present you some extracts from the orthodox Dr. Stiles, former President of Yale College, which are peculiarly applicable to this question. These are his precious words.

"It is indeed a little unhappy, that like others in the Christian world, some of us are fond of substituting human interpretations given by authority of councils and learned men, exacting that the sacred Scriptures be understood according to senses fitted and defined in human tests, which all acknowledge to be fallible. But it is to be hoped, that we shall stand fast in the liberty wherewith the gospel has made us free. There ought to be no restrictions on the conscience of an honest and sober believer of revelation. The right of conscience and private judgment is unalienable. And it is truly the interest of all mankind to unite themselves into one body, for the liberty, free exercise, and unmolested enjoyment of this right, especially in religion. Not all the difference of sentiment, not all the erroneous opinions that have yet been started, afford just umbrage for its extinction, abridgment, or embarrassment. Have the Protestant formularies subserved the defence of the truth as it is in Jesus? Rather, have they not in event proved new sources of religious dispute and undeterminable controversy? The churches of Geneva have long since had the wisdom to drop this article of consensus, as the great disturbance of the Christian harmony. And the clergy have found themselves obliged to interpret the Helvetic, and all other Protestant confessions, in the Scripture sense, with a Divinis veritatibus in hoc libro contentis subscribo. I am satisfied we shall err less if we make the Scriptures the only rule of faith, than if we depart from this, and substitute another; or as many do, who say they believe the Scriptures the only rule, and yet in all their judgments on Scripture, measure that only rule by another rule. Nor do substituted rules answer the purpose of detecting heretics at all better than the primary rule, since on ex

perience it is found none more freely subscribe and swear to human tests than deists, skeptics, and the most debauched. If God's inclosure will not keep out the erroneous, can it be expected that ours will? The universal pretext is a preservation against heresy. But it is to be remarked, that human tests make more heretics than the word of God; all that one determines to be heresy, is not heresy by the Scriptures. A man may be a very great heretic according to the one, and an excellent Christian according to the other, at the same time. St. Paul was one of the greatest heretics, and even gloried in his heresy, and yet was one of the best of Christians." - Convention Sermon, pp. 35, 36.

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And now, Sir, what have you done under this section to weaken or destroy my logical conclusions? I will conclude my remarks under this head, with some extracts in relation to the origin and injury of human creeds from the pious and orthodox Richard Baxter. He probably understood this subject as well, or better than any other man. He assures us that creeds originated with the Devil, that they are his engine for the destruction of religion, and have made all the divisions in the church. I hope the following most important sentiments will be read not only with satisfaction and pleasure, but with such practical self-improvement, as to induce all to renounce the devil and all his works. Here you have his most valuable thoughts.

"The Lord Jesus, in wisdom and tender mercy, established a law of grace, and rule of life, pure and perfect, but simple and plain; laying the condition of man's salvation more in the honesty of the believing heart, than in the strength of wit, and subtilty of a knowing head. He comprised the truths which were of necessity to salvation in a narrow room; so that the Christian faith was a matter of great plainness and simplicity. As long as Christians were such and held to this, the gospel rode in triumph through the world, and an omnipotency of the Spirit accompanied it, bearing down all before it. The SERPENT, envying this happiness of the church, hath no way to undo us, but by drawing us from our Christian simplicity. By the occasion of heretics' quarrels and errors, the Serpent steps in, and will needs be a Spirit of zeal in the church; and he will so overdo against heretics, that he persuades them they must enlarge their creed, and add this clause against one, and that against another, and all was but for the perfecting and preserving of the Christian faith. And so he brings it to be a matter of so much wit to be a Christian, as Erasmus complains, that ordinary heads were not able to reach it. He hath got them, with a religious zealous cruelty to their own and others' souls, to lay all their salvation, and the peace of the church, upon some unsearchable mysteries about the Trinity, which God either never revealed, or never clearly revealed, or never laid so great stress upon; yet be persuades them, that there was Scripture proof enough for these; only

the Scripture spoke it but in promises, or in darker terms, and they must but gather into their creed the consequences, and put it into plainer expressions, which heretics might not so easily corrupt, pervert, or evade. Was not this reverend zeal? And was not the Devil seemingly now a Christian of the most judicious and forward sort? But what got he at this one game?

"1. He necessitated implicit faith even in fundamentals, when he had got points beyond a vulgar reach among fundamentals. 2. He necessitated some living judge for the determining of fundamentals — that is, what it is in sense that the people must take for fundamentals. 3. He got a standing verdict against the perfection and sufficiency of Scripture, and consequently against Christ, his Spirit, his Apostles, and the Christian faith; that it will not afford us so much as a creed or system of fundamentals, or points absolutely necessary to salvation and brotherly communion, in fit or tolerable phrases, but we must mend the language at least. 4. He opened a gap for human additions, at which he might afterwards bring in more at his pleasure. 5. He framed an engine for an infallible division, and to tear in pieces the church, casting out all as heretics that would not subscribe to his additions, and necessitating separation by all dissenters, to the world's end, till the Devil's engine be overthrown. 6. And hereby he lays a ground upon the division of Christians, to bring men into doubt of all religion, as not knowing which is right. 7. And he lays the ground of certain heart-burnings, and mutual hatred, contentions, revilings, and enmity. Is not here enough got at one cast? Did not the Devil get more in his gown in a day, than he could get by his sword in three hundred years?

"This plot the Serpent hath found so successful, that he bath followed it on to this day. Yea, and where modesty restrains men from putting all such inventions and explications in their creed, the Devil persuades men, that, they being the judgments of godly reverend divines, it is almost as inuch as if it were in the creed; and therefore whoever dissenteth must be noted with a black coal, and you must disgrace him, and avoid communion with him as an heretic. Hence lately is your union, communion, and the churches' peace, laid upon certain unsearchable mysteries about predestination, the order and objects of God's decrees, the manner of the Spirit's secretest operations on the soul, the nature of the will's essential liberty, and its power of self-determining the divine concourse, determination, or predestination of man's and all other creatures' actions, that he is scarcely to be accounted a fit member for our fraternal communion that differs from us herein. Had it not been for this one plot, the Christian faith had been kept pure; religion had been one; the church had been one; and the hearts of Christians had been more one than they are. Had not the Devil turned orthodox, he had not made so many true Christians

heretics, as Epiphanius and Austin have enrolled in the black list. Had not the enemy of truth and peace got into the chair, and made so pathetic an oration as to influence the minds of the lovers of truth to be over zealous for it, and to do too much, we might have had truth and peace to this day. Yea, still, if he see any man of experience and moderation stand up to reduce men to the ancient simplicity, he presently seems the most zealous for Christ, and tells the unexperienced leaders of the flocks, that it is in favor of some heresy that such a man speaks;- he is tainted with Popery, or Socinianism, or Arminianism, or Calvinism, or whatsoever may make him odious with those he speaks to. O what the Devil hath got by over-doing!" Vol. 11. pp. 896, 897.

Thus far the pious and orthodox Richard Baxter. Perhaps your leaders may feel convinced, while perusing these extracts, that they have not yet reached the "Saint's Everlasting Rest."

II. MINISTERIAL INTERCOURSE.

Five of your attacks upon my statements under this division require notice.

1. The Rev. Ebenezer Hubbard. You have made a most desperate attempt to invalidate my positions concerning your cruel and unhallowed persecutions of this gentleman. Your success has not been commensurate with your exertions. Your defeat must therefore be humbling ; for, in this case, truth will have a most glorious triumph. As you have thrown out weighty charges against Mr. Hubbard, and accused him of furnishing me with the documents in this affair, I feel it my duty to clear him from such unjust suspicions. The facts are briefly these. I had heard, as well as many others in this region, of the efforts which had been made by orthodox leaders to ruin his character and prospects. A letter was addressed to him, requesting accurate information on the subject. He returned an answer, and stated explicitly, that if any one wished to become acquainted with the whole truth, he must visit Lunenburg, and converse with the leading people of his society; for he was not disposed to participate in the business. An individual went, at my expense, and at length obtained from Mr. Hubbard the original confessions, and the minutes which he had taken after his interviews with Payson and Braman. At these interviews a witness was always present, because Mr. Hubbard expected to refer the case to the civil court. From the information obtained in that region, and from these several documents, I made out the notice which was published. So that if there is any blame on this account, it rests wholly on my shoulders. I am now prepared to substantiate every important fact in my statement. I asserted that Payson went into Lunenburg, communicated the misrepresentations to an influential family, requested them to put them in circulation, and conceal the name of their in

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