what they receive as the fundamental doctrines of the word of God necessary to be believed by all Christians; we, desiring to conform to the simplicity of the faith of the churches of Christ in the first ages, and thus to return as nearly as possible to the apostolic standard, agree to adopt as our Confession of Faith that form of words which is found in the writings of Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, who is supposed to have suffered death for Christ about the year 202, with the omission only of the following words near the end of it, Some from the beginning, and some through repentance.'

"Of this Creed Irenæus testifies that it was substantially received without addition or diminution, by all the churches of Christ in his time; and it is as follows:

**** I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and sea, and all that are in them; and in one Jesus Christ the Son of God, incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Ghost, who preached by the prophets the dispensations of God, and the coming, and the birth from a virgin, and passion, and resurrection from the dead of our beloved Lord Jesus Christ, and his ascension into heaven in the flesh, and his advent from heavea in the glory of the Father, to gather together into one all things, and to raise the bodies of all men, that unto Christ our Lord, and Saviour, and King, according to the good pleasure of God the invisible Father, every knee may bow, of things in heaven, and in earth, and under the earth; and every tongue confess to him, and that he may execute righteous judgment upon all; that he may send into eternal fire the spiritual things of wickedness, even the angels which transgressed and rebelled, and the ungodly, and unjust, and wicked, and blasphemers of mankind, and having given life to the just and righteous, and keepers of his commandments, and those who have persevered in his love; that he may bestow upon them incorruption, and bring them to eternal glory.'

"In adopting the above as our standard of faith, it is the desire of our hearts to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, with all who hold the Head, Christ Jesus, without reference to those subordinate points which have unhappily divided the professing churches of Christ, and erected middle walls of partition be

tween those who ought to love as bre

thren.

"But in the particular circumstances which have led to our exclusion from the National Establishment, we deem it to be our duty, as a testimony to what we believe to be important truths of the Scriptures, to declare also our agreement in the following points of doctrine, though we do not consider them as being of the na

ture of fundamentals,* and therefore do not impose them upon the consciences of any of our future members who may differ from us in their views upon these points.

**I. We believe that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ gave himself a ransom on the cross for all men; or, as he in his own discourse with the Jews expresses it, he gave his flesh for the life of the world, and thus that he is, according to the words of St. John, the propitiation for the sins of the whole world.

"We understand by the Scripture doctrine of predestination unto life, simply God's unchangeable and everlasting purpose to save all who repent and believe in the Son of God.

III. We believe that as Christ's spotless obedience unto death, and perfect sacrifice for sin, are the only meritorious foundation of our acceptance with God and the purchase prise of our redemption, the one righteousness mentioned by St. Paul in Romans v. 18. so the way in which God in his sovereign wisdom is pleased to impart to believers the benefits purchased by Christ, and particularly that of the free remission of sin, is by counting to them their faith for righteousness."

"We also agree to the two following articles of an administrative nature.

If,

"I. We believe that the baptism of infants is agreeable to the word of God and practice of the church, from the age of the apostles. But we think that difference of opinion upon this point, ought not to interrupt the communion of saints. therefore, any of our brethren should adopt different views from us upon the ordinance and administration of baptism, we shall desire still to give them the right hand of fellowship, leaving them on this point to follow their own views of scriptural truth.

II. Without entering into the controversies which have prevailed respecting church government and order, we agree that this church shall be organized and conducted on the principles called Congregational or Independent, for which the authority of writers, intimately acquainted with ecclesiastical antiquity, may be produced.'"

"What has been offered will, I hope, convince every unpre judiced person that no alternative was left for us but that of separation.-It remains that I should

* It will be easily understood that this expression refers not to the doctrines themselves of the atonement and justification by faith, which are manifestly fundamental, but to our particular views of them. Our meaning is not to exclude pious and spiritual Calvinists, if any such wish to join us.

state the reasons for our having adopted the Congregational or Independent form of Church order and Government, rather than any other. On this point I observe therefore, that when we found ourselves, by an act of the Established Church, placed without the pale of Christian ordinances, seeing that all the regular Dissenting bodies to which we might have had access, professed the like principles, and received the same Confession of Faith with the Church of Scotland, it did not seem congruous that we should seek union with them, and the more especially, because while we freely own that we do not view the points of doctrine wherein we dissent from the Calvinistic churches as being fundamental, we yet conceive them to be very important, and that the free preaching of a free and universal Gospel to every creature, is closely associated with the glad tidings that Christ our Saviour gave himself a ransom on the cross for every man. To a connection with the Protestant Episcopal Churches I found there were also insurmountable obstacles. "It only remained, therefore, that we should form a distinct body, united on those principles of church order which approach nearest to the primitive standard -and that the apostolic churches were independent, is maintained both by Lord King in his work on the Constitution and Discipline of the Primitive Church, and by Mosheim in his learned work De Rebus Christianorum ante Constantinum Magnum. Lastly, with regard to the step of administering the ordinances of the Gospel in the absence of a regularly ordained ministry, I would observe, that in Scotland this is no new occurrence, having been exemplified in the congregation of the late Mr. Dale, of Glasgow, and in various other bodies of Congregational Dissenters. I haye,

myself, no doubt of its lawfulness in cases of such urgent necessity as cannot but frequently occur in the present state of the church of Christ. But for the purpose of more fully vindicating it, particularly in the eyes of my friends in the Church of England, I shall bring forward some passages from one of the standard, and most accredited writers of that church, Bishop Burnet, on the XXXIX Articles, upon which I am willing to ground the justification of my own conduct in this respect, even if it could not be done upon that higher scriptural principle, that all who partake of Christ himself by faith, must in the nature of things have a right to his sacraments, and that should those who act in his name in the visible church by the exercise of illegal and lordly power over his heritage, refuse to them the participation of his ordinances, they have an inherent right in the covenant of grace to take these ordinances for themselves.

ARTICLE XXIII.

OF MINISTERING IN THE CONGREGATION.

"It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of public preaching or ministering the sacraments in the congregation, before he be lawfully called and sent to execute the same. And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work by men, who have public authority given unto them, in the congregation, to call and send ministers into the Lord's vineyard.

"We have two particulars fixed in this article; the first is against any that shall assume to themselves, without a lawful occasion, the authority of dispensing the things of God: the second is, the defining, in very general words, what it is that makes a lawful call. As to the first, it will bear no great difficulty; we see in the old dispensation, that the family,

the age, and the qualifications of those that might serve in the priesthood, are very particularly set forth. In the New Testament our Lord called the twelve apostles, and sent them out; he also sent out, upon another occasion, seventy disciples: and before he left his apostles, he told them, that as his Father had sent him, so sent he them: which seems to import, that as he was sent into the world with this, among other powers, that he might send others in his name; so he likewise empowered them to do the same: and when they went planting churches, as they took some to be companions of labour with themselves, so they appointed others over the particular churches in which they fixed them. Such were Epaphras or Epaphroditus at Colosse, Timothy at Ephesus, and Titus in Crete. To them the apostles gave authority; otherwise it was a needless thing to write so many directions to them, in order to their conduct.'

"I come in the next place to consider the second part of this article, which is the definition here given of those that are lawfully called and sent. This is put in very general words, far from that magisterial stiffness in which some have taken upon them to dictate in this matter. The article does not resolve this into any particular constitution, but leaves the matter open and at large for such accidents as had happened, and such as might still happen. They who drew it had the state of the several churches before their eyes, that had been differently reformed; and although their own had been less forced to go out of the beaten path than any other, yet they knew that all things among themselves had not gone according to those rules that ought to be sacred in regular times: necessity has no law, and is a law to itself.

"This is the difference between those things that are the means of

salvation, and the precepts that are only necessary, because they are commanded. Those things which are the means, such as faith, repentance, and new obedience, are indispensable, they oblige all men, and at all times, alike; because they have a natural influence on us, to make us fit and capable subjects of the mercy of God. But such things as are necessary only by virtue of a command of God, and not by virtue of any real efficiency which they have to reform our natures, do indeed oblige us to seek for them, and to use all our endeavours to have them. But as they of themselves are not necessary in the same order with the first, so much less are all those methods necessary in which we may come at the regular use of them. This distinction shall be more fully enlarged on when the sacraments are treated of. But to the matter in hand-That which is simply necessary as a mean to preserve the order and union of the body of Christians, and to maintain the reverence due to holy things, is, that no man enter upon any part of the holy ministry, without he be chosen and called to it by such as have an authority so to do; that, I say, is fixed by the article: but men are left more at liberty as to their thoughts concerning the subject of this lawful authority.

"That which we believe to be lawful authority, is that rule which the body of the pastors, or bishops and clergy of a church, shall settle, being met in a body under the due respect to the powers that God shall set over them: rules thus made, being in nothing contrary to the word of God, and duly executed by the particular persons to whom that care belongs, are certainly the lawful authority."

66 6

Finally, if a company of Christians find the public worship where they live to be so defiled that they cannot with a good conscience

join in it, and if they do not know of any place to which they can conveniently go where they may worship God purely, and in a regular way; if, I say, such a body, finding some that have been ordained, though to the lower functions, should submit itself entirely to their conduct, or finding none of those, should by a common consent desire some of their own number to minister to them in holy things, and should upon that beginning grow up to a regulated constitution, though we are very sure that this is quite out of all rule, and could not be done without a very great sin, unless the necessity were great and apparent; yet if the necessity is real and not feigned, this is not condemned or annulled by the article; for when this grows to a constitution, and when it was begun by the consent of a body, who are supposed to have an authority in such an extraordinary case, whatever some hotter spirits have thought of this since that time; yet we are very sure, that not only those who penned the articles, but the body of this church for above half an age after, did, notwithstanding those irregularities, acknowledge the foreign

"The reasoning of Bishop Burnet in the foregoing passage of his work on the articles is so clear and satisfactory, that little remains for me to add, but that conceiving I have, in the preceding part of this tract, established a case of undoubted necessity with regard to dissent from the Established Church of Scotland, I leave it to the candid reader to apply the principles of Bishop Burnet to the circumstances in which I and those who have accompanied me were placed.We found ourselves as it were driven back into the first elements of Christian society, and in beginning to construct the new edifice of a Christian church, we have humbly endeavoured to take for our guides the Scriptures of truth and the example of the churches. in the apostolic ages."

ON THE OCCASIONAL OBSERVANCE OF CHURCH FASTS.

(To the Editors.)

GENTLEMEN,-I wish to address you upon an interesting occurrence connected with the church over which it is my happiness to preside; but feel at the same time a reluctance to attempt it, lest I should appear to symbolize with the ancient Pharisees, or be suspected of possessing that foolish disposition, which seeks its own mean recompense in the transient N. S. No. 36.

commendation of our fellow-men. Doubtless nothing can be more opposed to the genius and precepts of the Gospel, than an ostentatious display of ministerial usefulness, or extraordinary devotion, and therefore I adopt, in this communication, an anonymous form, which, with your readers in general, will screen me from the imputation of unworthy motives, and should any of my brethren discover me, though in that disguise, they will, I trust, accept my solemn assurance, that whilst 4 M