Without this cement, the whole structure of christian churches falls to pieces. "They have a name to live, but they are dead." In fact they are not christian churches. They may contain christian individuals, but they are not societies of Christians. "He that loveth not his brother abideth in death." 1 John iii. 14. I wish any person who reads this letter would peruse the entire epistle from which this quotation is made, and judge for himself whether that is a right system of christian organization, which brings a large number of neighbours together, and places a clergyman over them, without the slightest reference to the mutual affection of the parties.

But I have digressed from the question of property. Where a perpetual fund is concerned, there must be some definite, legal system by which the enjoyment of the income from generation to generation is to be provided for. Hence patronage; which must always exist so long as the fund exists, whether the nomination be vested in one or in many. This right in both kingdoms is vested in individuals. In Scotland, it is proposed to take away the absolute nomination of the patrons, and to vest the virtual nomination in the persons whose names are entered by the clergy on the roll of communicants, take away the halo of sacredness and the scripture phraseology which surrounds the question, and the bare truth is this;-here are some nine hundred or a thousand appointments, averaging about three hundred a-year each, in the gift of a large number of noblemen and gentlemen. It is proposed that they shall be, in future, in the gift, not direct, but virtual, of a body of persons, the list of whom is to be drawn up by the clergy; and that if these persons do not obtain appointments to their satisfaction in six months, the clergy are themselves to appoint. Giving the clergy the utmost credit for disinterestedness, and believing, as I do most firmly, that they think themselves to be seeking the glory of God, I ask, is it to be supposed that Parliament will sanction such an alteration of the law?

But there is another constitutional aspect of the question, which is this; when the Test and Corporation Acts were repealed, it was the intention of Parliament that religious acts should cease to be stepping-stones to civil benefits. Participation in the Lord's Supper, as administered in the Established Church, then ceased to be a condition for holding municipal offices. But it is now proposed to the House of Commons to retrace its steps. It is asked, that to be a communicant in Scotland shall give the person a share in ecclesiastical patronage. If a person can persuade the clergyman of his parish to receive him at the Lord's Supper, he is to be entitled to a voice in the nomination of his successor! At Daviot, the other day, there were ten communicants, the majority of whom were determined to reject the presentee of the Crown; in other places the number is even smaller. Is it not clear, that such a system of nomination would lead to perpetual jobbing? Can it be supposed that Parliament will acquiesce in such a proposal?

It may be said, that this question does not affect England, because the constitution of the Church of Scotland differs from the constitution of the Church of England. But it does affect England,

inasmuch as Parliament is invited to affirm a principle, which, if it be a right principle, is as applicable to England as to Scotland. If the legal constitution of the kirk sanctioned the veto, application would not have been made to Parliament, and it is because the veto is not yet legal, that the House of Commons is asked to legalise it. The proposal is for a new law. Some persons may think that the desired legislation would be in harmony with the code of unauthorized regulations drawn up by John Knox or his successors; but those regulations are not the legal constitution of the Established Church of Scotland, except in so far as Parliament has made them * so. That a proposal harmonizes, or is supposed to harmonize, with the "first book of discipline," or the "second book of discipline," will not justify Parliament in adopting it merely for Scotland. If John Knox's principle is good, it is good because it is scriptural, and if it is scriptural, it is equally applicable to both sides of the Tweed.

And it is scriptural. It is applicable to the empire. The clergy of Scotland are holding up to the world a grand principle of the christian religion, which, while it will and must destroy the connection of the church with the state, will tend more than any thing else which could have been devised, to purify Christianity. "This is God's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes."

I here leave the question-at all events for the present. I deeply regret the necessity of taking so prominent a part in the discussion. I know that my doing so has been, and will be, imputed to all sorts of unworthy motives. I cannot help it. I can only, as in God's presence, declare that as far as I know my own heart, the imputation is unfounded. If any other gentleman of independent property would have taken the lead, I would have cheerfully and unostentatiously followed him. But this was not the case. Ministers of voluntary churches, being supposed to have a strong personal interest in the question, and being regarded by a large proportion of the higher classes as individuals who have a right, indeed, to their opinions, but whose opinions do not merit examination,-such persons could not from their very position raise the discussion upon the principle of establishments. The prejudice against them is most unjust,-for every person who has mixed with both classes must know, that while the established clergy are generally better classical scholars and have received a more refined education, voluntary ministers are, on the average, superior theologians. The prejudice however exists, and debars them from taking the lead, with any prospect of obtaining an attentive hearing from the public. Being deeply impressed with the truth of the principles which have now been brought before the country, and believing them to be part and parcel of the religion of the Bible, I considered my conviction of their soundness to be a talent wherewith God had entrusted me, and which I dared not refuse to improve.

And after all,-let those who differ with us, and whose motives we respect, say what they please,-after all, what have we done? We have put forth what we believe to be truth. If it is not truth, it can be contradicted. Hertfordshire is full of clergy and educated

laity. If we are in error, let them answer us. We are liable to error, as they are liable to error. We believe that the advocates of establishments are under an awful delusion. They believe the same of us. One party must be grievously deceived. What is the course for all parties to pursue? Let each humbly and kindly declare to the world the grounds of their own conviction. We have done so. If we are not answered, we shall be justified in concluding that as far as Hertfordshire is concerned, our principles are unanswerable.* I say not this with the remotest supposition that there are not many arguments that may be employed on the other side. But I say it with a view to drawing the attention of the pious and learned members of the established church to the fact, that we have submitted to the christian public two propositions, one religious, the other constitutional, the necessary conclusion from which is fatal to the principle of all establishments, Papal or Protestant, Episcopalian or Presbyterian. Unless these propositions be contradicted, and that not with mere personalities but with sound arguments, they will be believed and they will be acted upon. They are these:

I. The will of Christ requires that local bodies of Christians, who celebrate the Lord's Supper together, should consist of persons who entertain real affection for one another; and should be presided over by pastors who harmonize with their feelings.

II. That the established churches of the three kingdoms are instituted upon the principle, that every liege subject shall have a right to communion at his parish church, unless any delinquency can be proved against him; that clergymen, duly and legally presented to livings, shall, if not guilty of tangible offences, enjoy their offices, whether they are acceptable to the people or not; and that this state of things is unalterable, consistently with the constitution.

It is manifest, that if the principle, embodied in the first proposi tion be true, the system embodied in the second is at variance with the word of God. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, CULLING EARDLEY SMITH.

Bedwell Park, Jan. 10, 1840.

INQUIRIES RELATING TO THE PERPETUAL OBLIGATION OF

THE JEWISH CIVIL CODE.

MR. EDITOR,-The following observations occur in an unfinished work, of miscellaneous character. Their insertion in your Magazine is solicited, with the hope that such replies may be called forth as may minister to the incompetence of the writer.

NEMO.

It is not a little remarkable, that in this, the nineteenth century of revealed Christianity, the christian church should be without an opinion as to the perpetual or universal obligation of the Mosaic civil law. This law has, by Christians, been accepted in toto, re

This paper, like the preceding one, was first published in the Herts Reformer.

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jected in toto, and adopted in part only. Burrowe, an early congregationalist," declared, as an item of his religious creed, "I cannot see it lawful for any prince to alter the least part of the judicial law of Moses, without doing injury to the moral law, and opposing the will of God:" and in this he did but express a sentiment which afterwards became popular; for we find the first Parliament of Oliver Cromwell projecting the repeal of the English statute law, and the substitution of the municipal code of Moses.

The most learned of our divines have evidently, to use a common, but significant phrase, been posed by the question. Even the practical Scott, though stating in his Essays, that "the christian dispensation contains no municipal law," and that the ritual law and the legal dispensation "were both superseded and antiquated by the coming of Christ," is yet taken aback when he comes, in his Commentary, to speak of separate Hebrew enactments.

Those who contend against "over-legislation" and "capital punishment," feel themselves, of course, under the necessity of either rejecting the statutes of the Jewish theocracy, or of being beaten back at the very threshold of their subject.

Wardlaw-a host in himself-would seem to favour a partial reception of the code in question: witness the following paragraph from his Introductory Recommendation" to the Scottish edition of an American work, entitled "The Hebrew Wife." "I was delighted with it (the Hebrew Wife) in another view. I had long been convinced, that, on the topics here discussed, as well as on several others, (those, for example, of the laws of retaliation and veracity,) the generally prevailing opinion of a difference between the morality of the Old Testament and that of the New, was held with a vague and inconsiderate laxity, of which the tendency was exceedingly prejudicial to the immutable principles of sound ethics, as well as to the evidence of the authority and inspiration of the Bible; and that the opinion itself, originating partly in a well-intentioned but morbidly excessive solicitude to vindicate from blame. the characters of certain good men of the patriarchal and Mosaic periods, had led some writers, in maintaining it, to adopt, or seem to adopt, principles of Biblical exposition the most unwarrantable and hazardous, and to involve themselves in a labyrinth of moral metaphysics, from which their attempts at extrication only augmented their perplexity. I was more than pleased to find my previous convictions so clearly and ably confirmed, in regard to the particular points argued; and, at the same time, in the conduct of the argument, certain general principles established, by which other points might be placed in the same satisfactory light; and thus to see one of the sarcastic reproaches of infidelity so successfully, by a process of reasoning so clear, straight-forward, and manly, repelled from the blessed Book of God."

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The author of The Hebrew Wife" discards some portion of the Jewish civil law, as having been but temporary and local, and contends for the perpetual and universal obligatoriness of the other, even beyond the letter.

Michaelis, in his "Mosaisches Recht," frankly contends, that "for the people of Israel the laws of Moses might be the

best possible, while yet among ns they would prove very pernicious, and therefore by no means to be imitated."" Nay, he deems it a doubtful inquiry, whether these laws were intended to be absolutely unalterable, even during the continuance of the Old Testament dispensation; observing, in justification of the doubt, not only that the reign of Solomon and the Book of Ezekiel exhibit differences from the Mosaic code, but that Moses himself altered his own laws. He also argues, in opposition to those people who contend for the perpetuity of the portion of the code in question, which they think of general character, that some seemingly-general Israelitish laws were caused, or balanced, by manifestly national ones; and that to insist upon such seemingly-general laws, without insisting also upon their associated national ones, is illogical.

In these days of prize essay writing, it were "devoutly to be wished," that some wealthy Christian would offer "a tempting sum" for "the best essay" on the christian obligatoriness of the Jewish civil code: and, assuming for a moment the realization of such a wish, I take the liberty of suggesting to the candidates whom it might enlist, a few particulars for their consideration:

Firstly; Did the Mosaic civil code ever exist at all in respect of Gentiles?

Secondly; If it did, was it ever repealed?

Thirdly; If ever repealed, is it virtually restored by the hypothesis, that a law which came from God is entitled to our respect? and if so, to what end was the repeal?

Fourthly; Do the two positions-assuming both to be established -of an actual repeal and a virtual restoration, legitimately beget an eclectic licence in the observance of the law? and, if so, who is sufficient for the task of discrimination thus entailed? who is sufficient for the infinitely delicate (I write with reverence,) and stupendously awful office, of arbiter between himself and his Maker, between himself and his final Judge?

HISTORICAL NOTICES OF THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH AT PROVIDENCE NEW CHAPEL, GEORGE TOWN, BRITISH GUIANA.

(Continued from page 11.)

AMONGST the interesting attendants on Sabbath ordinances at Provideuce Chapel, were about fifteen free black and coloured people from Fort Island, which I have said is about fiftty miles from George Town.

They were chiefly indebted for the knowledge of the truth to the labours of my predecessor Mr. Davies, who frequently visited that spot and the parts adjacent to preach the gospel of salvation. Amongst these converts was an excellent individual named Peter,

* Smith's translation.