solemnly assured will not be," What have you believed?" but "What have you done?" We are also told, that those who were so forward in boasting of their orthodoxy and missions, saying, "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name done many wonderful works?"-received for answer, "Depart from me, I know ye not."

The Pastors of Geneva, during the three last generations, are said by Dr. Smith to have been given up to spiritual indolence and deadly indifference. "They are dumb (dogs*) sleeping, lying down, and loving to slumber." How little does he know of the people he thus undertakes to describe! During the period to which Dr. Smith alludes, that is, from the year 1700 to the beginning of the French Revolution, when I repeat it) the English Calvinist ministers were principally engaged" in dosing over their pipes," the "dumb dogs," the Pastors of Geneva, were performing the most ardu-ous and painful duties that could be imposed on the ministers of the gospel of peace. The Republic of Geneva was a democracy, in which the different powers of the Government and the citizens were ill-defined and little understood, and the attempt of certain families to establish an aristocratic dominion, led to the fiercest political dissensions, which sometimes broke out into open civil war. These dissensions were heightened and embittered by the unavoidable mixture of personal feeling with political animosity, in a densely crowded city, where every man was well known to his neighbour. This state of affairs lasted about eighty years, with short periods of apparent tranquillity, and the Pastors had often to witness the painful spectacle of members of one common family, educated at the same schools, and brethren of the same church, ranged in arms against each other, or breathing rage and resentment in their political assemblies.

The zealous labours of the Pastors

* In the quotation Dr. Smith turns the dogs" out of the text, but he well knew that the memory of the reader would recall them; this is a refinement on the Roman casuistry that could divide an improper word into syllables, and utter it in parts by two speakers.

to calm the minds of the contending parties, and their exhortations and endeavours to repress personal violence were, I believe, very influential in preventing the citizens from destroying each other.

Amidst the fierceness of political contention the sense of religion was not obliterated, as was particularly shewn on one occasion, when some regula tions made by the magistrates respecting corn, had greatly irritated the lower orders, and they had broken into a baker's shop to plunder the contents, one of their pastors appeared among them, and walking through the crowd, he kneeled down upon the threshold of the house, and prayed aloud that the people might be preserved from the great wickedness of plundering their neighbours. The mob, in the height of its fury, instantly became calm and retired home quietly, and brought back the loaves which had been taken away from the shop. This occurred fifty years after the faith of Calvin had been abandoned." The Pastors of Geneva, whom Dr. Smith so contemptuously calls "dumb [dogs] sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber," were assuredly better employed in preaching peace at home, than they would have been if engaged in missions among their Catholic neighbours, had this been possible, which it was not.

The Genevese Pastors are reproached by Dr. Smith for preaching moral sermons, but he omits to inform us that they almost always enforce their exhortations to a life of virtue and holiness, by an appeal to the great doctrine of Christianity-a resurrection from the dead to a future state of rewards and punishment. It was thus the good old-fashioned Christians of the apostolic age taught mankind "to live soberly, righteously and piously in the present world, looking for the happy end of their hope;" and this was considered sound doctrine long before the pure stream of gospel truth became soured and embittered by an admixture with the gall and vinegar of Calvinisın. Your readers, who have not visited Geneva, would

It was to this instance I referred in my second letter. I believe it is stated in Picot's "Histoire de Genève," from which it is taken by M. Simond.

imperiously obliged to expel him." On this paragraph I submit three remarks.

1. There is abundant reason to believe that M. M. did not violate the Regulation referred to; and to which undoubtedly, absurd, insidious, and oppressive as it was, he had bound himself to conform. I have read several of his sermons, and I must say that they are extremely far from wearing the character which Mr. B. draws of them. They are, indeed, plainly and honestly evangelical, but they are highly practical, and deal much in powerful addresses to the heart and conscience. I have found in none of them any kind or form of disrespectful or depreciating allusion to other ministers, or any reference to them whatsoever, unless their own consciences might make a self-application of the addresses to irreligious and worldly characters, which are, indeed, very frequent and very pungent, but never (so far as I have found) descend to personalities, never depart from Christian tenderness of feeling and propriety of language. I did understand, but I cannot pledge myself for the accuracy of the impression, that the two sermons which were either the last preached by him in any of the churches at Geneva, or were regarded as the most offensive, were, the one from Luke xix. 10, "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost;" and the other from James ii. 20, "Art thou willing to know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?" The latter of these sermons I read about six years ago. Its purport was what might be expected from the text-an exhibition of the nullity of all pretensions to religion which are not substantiated by the sincere, universal and constant practice of holiness. I have no recollection of any passage that could reasonably be deemed offensive by the most captious mind; and, had there been such, I think its impression would have remained with me. But the former sermon I have before me; and, after careful examination, I can discover no paragraph or sentence to which Mr. B.'s censure could attach, except upon that most unfair principle which would destroy all the fidelity of the pulpit, that persons should be offended by addresses to classes

and characters of men. Allow me to extract one of its strongest passages.

Call to your recollection the Easter solemnities of the past year. Retrace the impressions which the law of God then made upon you, the confessions of unworthiness which it drew from you, the resolutions of amendment which you then formed. Drawn by the Lord himself, you entered into his temple. The sacred table was prepared. Grace was offered to you there. Your conscience pressed you with secret remonstrances; and, at that solemn moment, your heart was touched. Then, opening your eyes upon your past life, you felt yourselves pierced with bitter and deep regret: groans burst from your soul; your agitated conscience was sensible of the loss of its peace; the thought of God's justice struck you with terror; and the most determined resolution, the most positive engagement to turn to Christ, appeared to you the only means of avoiding dreadful miseries. That resolution you formed; for the word of truth had made you feel its first impressions. That engagement you took; in the temple, before the altar. Have you fulfilled it? Say, have you been faithful? The habits, the inclinations, the worldliness, which you had then been led to detest, did they not soon lose in your esteem their deformity and danger? The voice of God which you had heard,→ did you not soon despise it? Say, O sinners, did not the very sins whose turpitude you acknowledged, again defile your body, degrade your heart, and blot your soul? Does no reproach, on this point, rise within you? Is there no sad remembrance that makes you blush? And if, at this very moment, that mysterious hand which, amidst the riot of an impious feast, wrote in silence upon the wall the death-warrant of a wicked king; if that hand should now advance, and trace upon these walls the history of the months and days and hours of your life, since you engaged to make it pure; if the truth-telling lines revealed in this place your deeds, your thoughts, when far from human notice, in the secrecy of your heart;

say, who is the man among you that would dare to direct his eyes to the awful inscription? Does, not the

mere supposition make you shudder? Do you not feel it necessary to banish it from your thoughts? And is that necessity any thing else than the cry of conscience, reproaching you, yes, you with having courted again the same impurities; you, the same guilty passions; you, the same avarice; you, the same acts of injustice, the same arts of deceit, the same in temperance, the same pride, the same sins of the tongue, which you had taken the oath to renounce?"

- I do not wonder that this kind of speaking was unpleasant to some whose ears were accustomed to the smooth and soft words of flattering unction; but I do maintain that such addresses fall by no means within the range of Mr. B.'s representation.

2. The terms of the iniquitous Regulation itself left M. Malan all the liberty that he took. The prohibition to "discuss," in the only proper sense of the word, could extend to nothing but the polemical examination of arguments and objections. Practical applications of the doctrines which (however differently understood by the individual pastors, each putting his own meaning upon terms left designedly short, or ambiguous) were already professed to be believed in a general sense, are most certainly not discussions of those doctrines. For example: the Regulation commands "to abstain from discussing the manner in which the Divine Nature is united to the person of Jesus Christ." Now, surely, a prohibition to discuss the manner of a given fact or position implies the admission of the reality of that fact or position. When, therefore, M. Malan founded upon that admission his earnest exhortations to submit to the authority and grace of Christ, and his solemn warnings against treating the Divine Redeemer with disobedience or indifference, he was acting within the fair meaning of the restriction. In like manner, if the other articles under prohibition were interpreted by the rules of reason and equity, I believe it would be found that M. M. was not chargeable with transgressing them.

3. The case which Mr. B. has imagined does not possess a sufficient analogy to justify his conclusions. If an English Dissenting minister alters his religious sentiments, he finds a

class of persons congenial to his new views, and, separating from his old connexion, he joins himself to them: and, if his congregation participate in the change, they have the right and the power to retain him as their pastor and teacher. The separation may be painful, but it is easily effected, and neither party can give laws to the other. But the Church of Geneva cannot be justly represented as Unitarian. It has taken the ground of NEUTRALITY OF INDIFFERENCE, with regard to the great points at issue between the chief denominations of Protestants. Its two Catechisms and its Liturgy are, I conceive, the only documents that can be considered as declaratory of its faith: and they are of that kind that persons of very different sentiments may build their own doctrines upon them. Its clergy also are very far from being united in sentiment. While some are Arminians of the school of Episcopius and Limborch, others are Arians, and some go near to the verge of the German disguised Deism; there is a number not inconsiderable, who still hold the doctrines of the Reformation, and who adorn their Christian profession by the fidelity of their preaching and the purity of their conduct. From this class I apprehend that M. Malan does not differ in any material respect: and had he been advanced to the pastorate previously to the change in his religious convictions, it is probable that he would have met with no more than the petty harassments which they have to endure. At the same time it must be confessed that their situation is full of snares and difficul ties, from their ecclesiastical connexion with persons so opposed to their most important views and feelings. From these infelicities M. Malan's ejection has happily freed him.

II. Mr. B. appears to me entirely to misunderstand the nature of tolerance and intolerance. He affirms that M. Malan" has evinced more of a persecuting spirit than his opponents;" and he endeavours to prove this position by the following arguInent: "I hold that man to be a persecutor in the worst sense of the word who depreciates the character of his neighbour, because he does not adopt the same creed as his own, who, on this account, represents him in his public