CHAP. II. ingenuity; but for our advancement in the school DISS. III. of Christian wisdom, of that wisdom from above which unites and perfects all the higher capacities of our nature, moral, intellectual, or spiritualthat wisdom which, (far removed from the jealousies and the wranglings, and the violences of factious controversy,) is anxious only for the interests of truth and virtue-that wisdom which is "first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated; full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy '." In this course of wise and holy discipline, according to our diligence, will be our progress; and proportioned to our progress, will be our reward. Our anxieties, discouragements, and despondencies will be left behind us. We shall go on our way rejoicing. We shall feel a personal interest in the glorious system of Christian redemption. We shall enter daily more and more with satisfaction upon the duty of examining ourselves, "whether we be in the faith 2 :" and the result of that examination will more and more enable us to see distinctly within our hearts the lineaments of the Christian character. All the tests from Scripture of such a progress will have a clearer application to our spiritual state. Love to God, charity to mankind, preference of divine to merely human objects, fervency in prayer, frequency in meditation, attachment to religious ordinances, self-control in the 1 1 James iii. 17. 2 2 Cor. xiii. 5. CHAP. II. DISS. III. subjugation of our appetites and passions; and in one word, likeness to Christ, increasing from day to day-will assure us that to reach the gate of salvation we have only to preserve the path which we have chosen. And although, in this advanced state, enjoying "a full assurance of faith and hope '," we relax nothing of our efforts, and, like St. Paul," count not ourselves to have apprehended the price of our high calling "," yet we exclaim triumphantly with the same Apostle: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? In all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord 3.' 3 1 Heb. vi. 11. x. 22. 2 Phil. iii. 13. 3 Rom. viii. 35—39. DISSERTATION IV. ON MEDIATION. "I believe that the appointment of a Mediator is the great mystery and perfect centre of all God's ways with his creatures; and unto which all his other works and wonders do but serve and refer." "That Jesus the Lord became in the flesh a sacrificer and a sacrifice for sin; a satisfaction and price to the justice of God; a meriter of glory and the kingdom; a pattern of all righteousness; a preacher of the word which himself was; a finisher of the ceremony; a corner-stone to remove the separation between Jew and Gentile ; an intercessor for the Church; a Lord of nature in his miracles; a conqueror of death and the power of darkness in his resurrection; and that he fulfilled the whole counsel of God, performing all his sacred offices; and anointing on earth, accomplished the whole work of the redemption and restitution of man, to a state superior to the angels, (whereas the state of man by creation was inferior,) and reconciled and established all things according to the eternal will of the Father."-Lord Bacon's Works, fol. vol. iv. pp. 115, 116. "Man must have remained obnoxious to eternal punishment, if there had not been distinct persons in the Godhead; one of whom, in transcendant love to mankind, being pleased to take our nature upon him, might make atonement and satisfaction to the other, for the injury done to Divine justice."-Tucker's Light of Nature, ch. 17. "So far as our attention is directed to the standard of exact propriety and perfection, the wisest and best of us, all can in his own character and conduct, see nothing but weakness and imperfection; can discover no ground for arrogance and presumption, but a great deal for humility, regret, and repentance." -Adam Smith's Moral Sentiments, part vi. sect. 3. State of re PREVIOUS to the great era of the Reformation, the DISS. IV. discussion of many questions on the subject of religion was prevented or kept down, and outward uniformity in some measure maintained throughout all the western churches of Christendom, by the strong superincumbent pressure of a supposed infallible authority. On the removal of this confining nion at the ligious opi Reform ation. DISS. IV. force, there arose, as might naturally be expected, a sudden and universal burst of multifarious opinions, which dispersed themselves in innumerable fragments over Europe. While the efforts of wise and pious men were, by the good providence of God, successful in their great work of reconstruction and consolidation, and in regulating the movements of emancipated reason by rules of Scripture :-there would necessarily remain much in these elements of the reformed system, that was perverse, licentious, and untractable. Among these wayward parties, none seem to have been more conspicuously opposed to the truth, or to one another, than two descriptions of them who have received the general name of Socinians and Antinomians.-A slight historical introduction respecting these two sects will show their intimate connexion with the important subject of the present dissertation. Origin of ism. Historical view. The individuals who have supplied a name to what is called Socinianism were LELIUS SOCINUS, and his nephew FAUSTUS, descendants of an illustrious family, the Sozzini, of Sienna, in Tuscany. The uncle left Italy in 1547, possessed with the general hatred then prevailing against the tyranny of Rome, and desirous, by visiting France, England, Holland, and Germany, to examine the religious sentiments of the reformed Churches. He adopted at one time the Helvetic confession, and became a member of the Church of Switzerland. But beginning to indulge his speculative fancy in dangerous conjectures (respecting the Divinity of Christ, the docrine of Atonement, and the personality of the DISS. IV. Holy Spirit) he found it necessary to seek a final asylum in Poland, at that time the only country which had practically embraced the principles of toleration. He committed his peculiarities to writing; but never made them public through the press. On his death in 1562, these papers came into the possession of Faustus. The latter, adopting the speculations of his uncle, propagated them with so much zeal and talent, as to unite into one society various scattered sectaries, who, like himself, had taken refuge under the shelter of Polish liberty. These several parties, opposed on various grounds to the doctrine of the Trinity, first received from this leader an organized and apparently consistent form. They acquired further importance from the patronage of Jo. Siennienius, Palatine of Podolia, who, becoming a convert to their tenets, presented them with a settlement in a city which he had recently built under the name of Racow. They published a revised translation of the Bible, accommodated as far as it was practicable, with their miscellaneous views. They afterwards compiled their celebrated Racovian catechism, which, (though differing essentially from the secret principles of its professors and framers,) was received as their confession of faith, and being expressed in terms as little obnoxious to protestant Christendom as could be devised, it was circulated throughout Europe'. 'A Latin translation of the Racovian Catechism was presented |