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the flesh in its weakness, and that the glory of natural eloquence may be stained; but according as the church ceaseth from carnality, and is able to bear it, the more excellent forms of speech follow, and the putting forth of powers of understanding to which the natural man is entirely incompetent. Paul among the Corinthians could not at first use excellency of speech for fear of exciting their carnal taste and admiration, and so strengthening the enemy whom he wished to overcome; but among them that were perfect he spake wisdom in words which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual (or "explaining spiritual things to spiritual men"). So believe I, that the Spirit coming into the church at this time hath taken the form of stammering lips and another tongue, and will continue to do so until we can bear more excellent discourse. The answer to all those who say, How puerile and childish are the forms which the Spirit expresseth himself by! is this, He is speaking to spiritual children, and he is speaking through spiritual children. But I have heard discoursing in the Spirit of another and loftier kind, more like to that written in the Prophets than to any thing else. Besides that form of speaking in the Spirit which we have discoursed of in our former papers, there is another beginning to manifest itself in the church, which exhibiteth truth through the understanding, wherein the understanding is not unfruitful but most fruitful, and which hath also been shewn in connection with the speaking with tongues. Of this I would say a few words before closing these observations, the more as it exhibits speaking with tongues in another light.

5. Whether or not the Apostles employed tongues in the way of preaching, that is to say, whether the Spirit at one and the same time filled their understanding with the light of truth, and used their tongue for the utterance of it, is a question which I cannot answer from any distinct information contained in the Scripture, although I think it both reasonable to believe so, and have heard it so declared by one speaking in the Spirit ; who said that we had received the sign of the tongue in the church, but the Pentecostal gift of tongues we had not yet received. That same gifted servant of the Lord has been made to speak in different languages, whereof some are known and some unknown. This is a view of the subject which I have not meditated enough to write on it with certainty. Only observe, that as it was God's work to divide the tongues of men, so it is his work to unite them; and all manner of language institutions for accomplishing the preacher is but an attempt to do that which were better done by trusting in God. I think the missionary sinneth in not believing that the Lord would open his mouth in the languages of the people he proceedeth to.

Also, if as I believe the day be just at hand for sending the

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angel with the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and the two witnesses who "shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days clothed in sackcloth,' just upon the eve of judgment and the rising up of the man of sin, the beast from the bottomless pit, to preach the gospel unto all nations, and gather the church and separate the wicked, and ripen all for the judgment, then they must manifestly have the endowment of tongues; that is, the Spirit must use them to speak the languages of the people whom they are sent to warn. This view of the subject I have not room to enter into; I may return to it again, if the Lord calls me not to other work; making me to cease from the instruments of the scribe, with which I have sought to serve him in this and other works. I am at his bidding to do whatever in his church he appointeth me unto, so that I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.

THEOLOGICAL DEPARTMENT.

A JUDGMENT-AS TO WHAT COURSE THE MINISTERS AND THE PEOPLE OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND SHOULD TAKE IN CONSEQUENCE OF THE DECISIONS OF THE LAST GENERAL ASSEMBLY.

"For the divisions of Reuben there were great searchings of heart" (Judges vi. 16). "The children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the the times, to know what Israel ought to do” (1 Chron. xii. 32).

THE General Assembly, in May last, did depose the Rev. John Campbell, Minister of Row, from the office of the holy ministry; and deprive the Rev. Hugh Baillie Maclean, presentee to the parish of Dreghorn, of his licence to preach the Gospel. The former was declared unfit to be a minister of the Church of Christ, because he held that God loves all men, and out of this love gave his Son to die for all men, whereby all the sins of every man are freely and fully pardoned; and that the faith of this truth doth beget assurance in the soul of God's forgiveness and favour. The mouth of the other was shut from preaching, because he maintained that the Son of God took our nature in its fallen, and not in its unfallen, state; and that its holiness was not necessary and essential, and inherent in his creature part, but derived from his union to it; and the unction of it by the Holy Ghost. There was also a decision depriving Mr. Alexander Scott of his office as a preacher of the Gospel, because he disagreed with the Westminster Confession of Faith in three points—namely, (1) its view of

redemption, which he interpreted as limiting Christ's atonement to the elect only; (2) of the Sabbath, which he interpreted as confounding the Christian institution of the Lord's-day with the Jewish ordinance of the Sabbath; and (3) of the powers given into the hands of church officers, which he thought larger than God had given into man's hands; and which, in point of fact, he argued that no Presbytery did believe they did by ordination confer. On these points he asked a trial of his opinions by the Holy Scriptures, which was refused to him, and his licence to preach was taken from him upon the simple ground that he could not renew his subscription to the said Westminster Confession of faith. And, finally, there was a decision, finding my book, entitled "The Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine of our Lord's Humanity," chargeable with Bourignionism, upon the mere report of a committee, without any propositions exhibited or argued, or any hearing of the author, delay, or dealing of any kind whatsoever; and branding me the author of that book, as a broacher of heresies; and warning all the ministers of the church against me accordingly.

Ever since these decisions of the General Assembly in May last, I have been solicited, from divers quarters of the Church of Scotland, by parties acting independently the one of the other, to draw up a judgment upon the subject: and after several months' consideration, I have resolved to comply with the wishes of God's people; and with all prayer for the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and might, of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, I do now undertake this service for the sake of thy church, O thou my Saviour, and Redeemer, and Holy One!

And because the decisions of the General Assembly have given occasion to the heart-searchings, stumblings, and offences of the godly people for the resolution of whose conscience this labour of love is undertaken, it will be necessary to consider the amount of these decisions in the eye of truth; and, the authority of them in the eye of the great Head of the church. In respect of the truth, then, they involve nothing less than the denial of the WHOLE TRUTH, as it is in Jesus Christ, the truth of the Father's name, of the Son's incarnation, and of the work of the Holy Ghost. The name of the Father standeth in his love to all the creatures whom he hath made; and the proof of it is in his sending his Son to redeem all mankind. Love is the abiding and unchangeable principle; the gift of his Son for the world, is the manifestation of the greatness and strength thereof. His love to every man is of such a magnitude and fervour, that he spared not the Son of his bosom, but gave him up to the death to redeem that man from sin and death, and the wrath to come, and the Gospel is nothing but the publishing abroad of

this standing instance of an abiding and unchangeable love in God's heart to all men, and to every man. This the General Assembly unanimously denied, and judged it an error of such magnitude as to cast their brother out for having preached, and still professing it. And therewith they denied the great name of the eternal Father, which is Love. GOD IS LOVE.-Next, they denied the name and work of the Son of God; which standeth in this, that being very God of very God, He became poor as we are, left all his glory in his Father's hand, and was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone; one with the brethren in every thing, save sin, and tried with all our temptations of devil, world, and flesh; all which he overcame through his faith in his Father, who supplied his faith with the Holy Ghost, which he used to resist the devil, the world, and the flesh, and to present himself at all times, and in all ways, holiness unto the Lord. This the General Assembly unanimously denied, maintaining that he did not take our nature in the fallen state; and that his flesh was essentially holy in itself; and that he was not tempted in all points like as we are; and that, except in sinless infirmities, he was in all points different from us; and that his righteousness was not righteousness of the same kind with the righteousness of his members, together with many other grievous absurdities and heresies, which were neither checked nor gainsaid, but hailed and applauded as the truth of God, while the very truth of God, with him who held it, was cast out, and the preaching of it perverted, so far as their decision goes. Now, because there is no other work of the Son in flesh but this, that he took our nature in its fallen, mortal, and corruptible state, and redeemed it into the immortal, incorruptible, and glorious state in which it is in the heavens; the General Assembly have with one voice made void Christ's name as the Son of Man, and denied his coming in flesh, and his work therein.-Thirdly, they denied the name and work of the Holy Ghost in two ways: first, in that they ascribed the spotless holiness of Christ's flesh, not to Him, but to itself; not to the third Person of the blessed Trinity, but to the innate power of the creature. And though they might seem to themselves to escape this conclusion, by alleging that they give the work of purifying the flesh of the virgin to the Holy Ghost in the act of generation, they do the same thing by another method, forasmuch as they make the creature-part of Christ, ever afterwards a self-supporter, selfsufficient to uphold itself; while they destroy the subordination of the Spirit to Christ, as the Son of Man; and make God to repair his own work as God by a Divine operation, instead of making God to do it as man, by an operation in the human will itself; so preserving human responsibility, justifying God's crea

tion of man, and making man the redeemer of man.-But because we are now performing the function of the judge, and not the advocate, we go on to observe, that they annihilated the work of the Holy Ghost in denying that he invariably brings the assurance of God's love to the soul; maintaining that there might be faith which is a work of the Holy Ghost, without the knowledge in the soul that God hath forgiven us. Now, if the Holy Ghost work faith in God and Christ, without bringing the knowledge that God and Christ do love us, and have brought us deliverance from sin and guilt, then he worketh faith in a false God, and à false Christ; for the true God and the true Christ do love us. They do either, therefore, affirm the Holy Ghost to work faith of a falsehood, or deny that he worketh the faith of the truth; and in either case they blaspheme him: ignorantly it may be, but still openly and verily they blaspheme him. Now, because assurance of God's love and favour is the fountain head of all graces and gifts of the Spirit, which cannot come till this have first come, their doctrine of a doubtsome faith, doth in very deed sist, prevent, and annihilate the work of the Holy Ghost, and they are found fighting against the very principle, and consequently against all the fruits of holiness. Their decisions in the cases of the Rev. John Campbell, and the Rev. Hugh B. Maclean, do therefore subvert the whole truth of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and being unanimous are of a very fearful, of a very terrible, of a very horrible amount; which man may palliate, which God will reckon for, if not confessed and repented of in dust and ashes.

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With respect to the case of Mr. Alexander Scott, it involves all for which the church contended against the Papacy; the right of appeal to the law and to the testimony, without stopping short at the word of man. He had certain scruples, or convictions against three out of the many heads of doctrine contained in the Confession of Faith. On this account a Presbytery of the church chose to take away his licence. From this sentence he appealed on the ground that they had no power to do this unless they should first grant him a trial by the Scriptures. The General Assembly overruled this objection, and confirmed the sentence of the Presbytery; and so he was deprived of his office as a preacher, because he could not in every point accord with the Westminster Confession of Faith. Whereby that book, the work of man, is made the decider of all questions which arise in the church, and accordance with it, the condition upon which ministers and preachers and elders and deacons hold their offices. Now what is this but to make that book to be instead of the holy Scriptures, and the office-bearers of the church to be administra tors to that book, instead of being the ministers of the great Head of the church. The Papists asked no more for the decisions of

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