Thus, on John iii. 5. our author writes in this dangerous manner: "We have all received this new and heavenly birth, wherein God himself, by the virtue of his Holy Spirit, is to us as a father; and the church, represented by the water, receives us into her bosom as our mother. Baptism gives us a right to the kingdom of God, provided we live like children of God and members of Christ, in being obedient to his Spirit."

But this language is not pushed; it is not made prominent;- the moment an occasion is given, the language relapses into the most holy and scriptural strain; which shows, that it is a confusion of ideas, not any fundamental error which pervades his divinity. In the very verse but one after that on which the preceding expressions occur, he writes thus beautifully:-"Adam being a sinner could beget only sinners, and propagate no other inclinations but such as tend to sin. It belongs to thee, O holy Jesus, as the principle of our new life, to give us thy Spirit, and to inspire into us thy spiritual and holy inclinations. He who is tho-. roughly sensible of the corruption of the heart of man, is far from wondering that it is necessary for him to be changed into a new man, and that he must receive a new spirit, a new heart, and a new principle of life and action."

Another point where the want of a right division of the word of truth is apparent, relates to heretics and schismatics, and what he considers the unity of the church. His mind is so possessed with the Roman Catholic exposition of the doctrine of the church, the keys, the power of absolution, the primacy of Peter, the limits of grace and non-salvation out of the church, that much confusion appears. That he held the freedom and efficacy of divine grace, the spiritual union of all the elect, the invisible body of Christ, consisting of believers of all ages and all parts of the world, is perfectly certain. Yet at times he speaks confusedly, and, if strictly interpreted, in a contradictory manner. So on Luke vii. 35. "Wisdom is justified of all her children," he writes: The Catholic church alone is that wherein all the different ways

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of God are found. These different paths of religious orders, some more austere, some less, show plainly that the Catholic church is the sole spouse of wisdom, that her children are the children of wisdom, and that they alone are capable of justifying her."

But let us proceed to notice the faults of our author's work, as they spring,

2. From the ACTUAL INSERTION OF UNSCRIPTURAL DOCTRINES AND TENETS.

These peep out, as it were, from under the large and heavenly furniture of divine knowledge and grace with which he is blessed. The primary error of implicit subjection of faith to the church, casts an obscurity over the operations of his understanding, against which the grace of God victoriously struggled for the most part, but which occasionally appeared.Thus, on Luke i. 1-4. he says: "Scripture and tradition are the two fountains of Christian truths, very consistent with each other; but tradition preceded Scripture."

So on Luke i. 20. on Zacharias being struck dumb, "Let us learn by this example, that God frequently pardons faults without remitting the whole punishment due to them."

Again, in the same chapter, "Christ gives himself still to every one of us a victim, by the communion, which is an extension of the incarnation."

Once more," Mary comes to us when she assists us in our wants: Jesus, who is always in her heart, makes her the instrument of his operations, the channel of his graces, and the minister of his

mercies."

Again, "The intercession of saints is authorized by the example of the Centurion ;- -we honour the great ones of the earth, when we apply ourselves to those about them, whom they honour with their favour; and we honour God, when we make use of the mediation of saints with him, who are his favourites and his friends."

Once more, on Luke xi. "Vouchsafe, O, holy Virgin, to teach us to praise thee in such a manner as may honour thy Son. Obtain for us strength to oppose the enemies of that worship which the church

pays thee, and to avoid therein whatever is not according to thy spirit.'

So, as to relics, Luke xxiii. "It was just and reasonable, that the honour which we pay to the relics of the saints, should begin with the adorable relics of the Saint of saints." Hear again what he says on the primacy:-"Does not Jesus Christ seem to suppose here a primacy in the apostolical college, and to establish it by the very same words which heretics abuse to subvert it. The primacy of St. Peter is a prerogative of divine right." Matth. xx. Mark iii.

So as to images, John xix. "It is a double ingratitude in heretics to reject the images of Christ crucified-which serve to open the eyes of our faith, to awaken our memory, and to excite our gratitude. These images are an abridgment of the Gospel, both for the learned and the ignorant; and the history of our blessed Saviour's passion for those who cannot read."

Such is the darkness, the gross darkness of this holy man's mind in many important respects,—and if these dreadful errors were dwelt upon, and occupied any considerable space in the whole body of the Reflections, they would totally destroy its vital excellency and alter its whole character. But these traits of his corrupt church appear but rarely; are qualified by important concessions; seem the mere effects of education and habit, contrary to the prevailing tenor of his sentiments are the fragments and remaining links of that chain of darkness in which the grace of God found him, and from which it released his soul.

These false doctrines are gross, and some of them idolatrous-but there are other slighter, though not unimportant errors, which spring from the confusion of truth in his mind, to which we have already adverted, and which are less fundamental in their nature. They may be chiefly traced to the sources we have pointed out the defects on justification, baptism and the church.

We bring out these things that the darkness may be seen and felt. We hide nothing. We apologize for nothing. The full exhibition of the real case is essential

Let the extraor

to our whole purpose. dinary phenomena be considered. Here is a man full of the Holy Ghost, full of the deepest humility of soul, full of the purest and most spiritual love to the Saviour-born of God, and following God in a new and holy obedience, -a man who drew upon himself the persecution of the corrupt church of which he is a member, by his bold avowal of the doctrines of grace. ―a man whose writings have been a blessing to thousands upon thousands; and yet this same man believes, in a certain way, these gross errors, is infected with these extraordinary superstitions, remains a member of this apostate church.

What shall we say to such a commixture of light and darkness, but that it forms an additional confirmation of that doctrine of the corruption of man, which laid the foundation, in this very Quesnel's mind, of all the humility which adorned him? What shall we say, but that where the heart is right, the head may be in many important respects wrong? What shall we say, but that where the capital points of contrition and penitence for sin

-an humble faith in the merits and sacrifice of Christ, and an entire dependence on the operations of the Spirit possess the soul, much defect in knowledge and theological furniture of mind may exist? If these are the real facts of the caseand I apprehend they are so then it is no use arguing against them; the point is to draw the proper instruction from such phenomena.

And when we see the eminent, the almost unparalleled attainments in the spiritual life, of such men as Pascal, Nicole, Quesnel-when we see their love to God, their separation from the vanities of the world, their holy communion of prayer, their sense of the unutterable evil of sin

their apprehension of divine grace, as the source of all good-their simple, fervent, self-denying love to Christ-their compassion and zeal for the souls of their fellow-creatures; we must acknowledge that intellectual errors are less valid to overthrow, than moral and affectionate emotions of the soul are powerful to sustain, the spiritual life. The Christian

lives by love, not by doctrine. If there be light enough in the understanding to lead to an acquaintance with ourselves and with Jesus Christ, our attainments will go on in proportion to our holy affections, our fervent prayers, our measure of the Holy Spirit, our self-abasement and our union with Christ, the head of all influence and grace.

3. But we shall be reminded of a third source of the defects in Quesnel's Reflections-A DEFECTIVE SYSTEM OF INTERPRETATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES,we mean not a totally false system; but one materially erroneous, defective in its principles, necessarily leaving the interpreter in uncertainty and darkness continually. The false principle in the system is, the interpreting according to human authorities and tradition, and not according to the real meaning of the Holy Spirit in the word, gathered by a sound judgment and a careful examination of the Scriptures themselves. To interpret by the fathers, is to make the New Testament a nose of wax. To impose a certain meaning upon Scripture, instead of drawing all our opinions from that sacred book, is fundamentally erroneous. Language is the mere instrument of communicating ideas. In using human language, the inspiring Spirit employs ideas which already form part of the stock of human knowledge. This is the point from which we must set out. Human language must be interpreted by the ordinary laws of human language: otherwise, we have no revelation of God's will intelligible to

man.

All Quesnel's errors spring from the trammels and bonds which the Church of Rome imposes on her members. He interprets as he is bidden, not as the truth of things demands. An enlightened understanding, as to the main truths of Christianity, and a holy heart, led him, indeed, into substantial truth; but his fathers, and councils, and decrees, and bulls, perverted the operations of his fine powers on many important occasions.

This appears in two principal respects. He applies, without authority, every expression and incident he can, to establish the doctrines or tenets of his church;

instead of bringing these doctrines and tenets to the standard of the Bible itself.

The other mischief is--he gives scope to a fruitful imagination; and, instead of interpreting the meaning of the Scriptures soberly, he flies off upon glosses, accommodations, pretty thoughts, secondary uses of the passages before him. The attentive reader will perceive this immediately; and these remarks have extended to such a length, that we cannot stop to make citations.

To occasional playfulness of fancy we have no objection; to the strong and hyperbolical language of the emotions we have no objection; to the flights of devotional poetry we have no objection; to parable, allegory, metaphor, we have no objection; to the accommodation of historical incidents to the illustration of spiritual things we have no objection.All these methods' we find used in the sacred Scriptures. The established laws of interpretation apply to them as they do to the plainest parts of the Bible.Men know how to interpret an act of Parliament, when that is before them; as they know how to interpret an heroic poem or an ode. If there be true faith in the heart, which seeks honestly to learn and to do the will of God, this faith will set to work all that. common sense, all that integrity, all that spirit of prayer, all that application of the powers of the mind to the language of the Scriptures, all that entire submission of the understanding to the matter of revelation, on which a true interpretation depends.

What we object to in Quesnel, is the dangerous system, the defective and erroneous principles, or rather want of principles, in his interpretation, whereby his mind, at sea without a rudder or pilot, is tossed hither and thither. Fancy is the staple commodity, not the ornament and appendage. He proceeds continually as the church directs, as the fathers happen to dictate, as his imagination suggests; and not as the real import of the passage before him requires.

The consequence is, the errors in doctrine which we have been pointing out. Against this whole system we enter our solemn protest. In the case of Quesnel,

the evils were neutralized by the high guidance of spiritual affections, and the blessed influences of the Holy Spirit. But the evils are not the less real in themselves. If a sound system of interpretation be once relinquished, all is thrown into uncertainty; the Scriptures may be made to prove any thing; and the very first end of a divine revelation may be defeated. But we hasten to relieve the reader from a great source of anxiety. He would naturally ask how he could safely intrust a work debased with such gross and dangerous errors, to the hands of ministers; or in fact how he could venture to read such a book himself? We inform him, then, that these errors are all omitted in the Glasgow edition. Every one of the passages cited in pages 33 and 34 of this Essay, is left out in this translation. We quoted them in order to give the true view of our author's character, and to show what errors may possibly consist with a very high measure of the divine grace.

The translation was made about a century since; but we have not been able to learn any thing important concerning the author of it. He prefixes to his work the 101 propositions which the court of Rome condemned; he intimates that, in his day, there were many among Protestants more in the dark as to the doctrines of the grace of God in salvation, than Quesnel and other divines of the Roman Catholic Church-and, alas! the case is, we fear, the same now.

And this was one principal motive for the republication. We have no work of the same kind-we have nothing in practical divinity so sweet, so spiritual, so interior as to the real life of grace-so rich, so copious, so original. We have nothing that treats the whole New Testament as the manual of the minister of religion. We have nothing that extols the grace of God, and abases and lowers man so entirely. We lessen not the value of our various admirable comments on the New Testament-they have each their particular excellencies. But none of them supersedes Quesnel; none can supply that thorough insight into the world, the evil of sin, the life of faith and prayer, which he possesses.

And this is what we want in the present day. We have learned comments enough we have light, and doctrine, and systems of divinity enough. But devotional feelings, communion with God, the life of grace, the separation of heart from the vanities of the world, is what we need.

And we doubt whether all the gross errors and defects of Quesnel are so injurious to the mind of a young Protestant student as those plausible comments which sap the foundations of grace and truth; which elevate the natural power of man; which place justification on the footing of human works, conjointly with the obedience and death of Christ; which explain away most of the passages concerning the new and divine birth of the soul; which weaken or deny the experience of religion in the heart; which teach conformity to the world, and insist not on the life of faith and grace.

We conceive we are in danger of no mistake, in warmly recommending Quesnel for the particular purposes for which his work is designed. his work is designed. We would place. him with Calvin, and Hall, and Henry, and Doddridge, and Guyse, and Scott.We would place him far above another series of commentators, whom it would be invidious to name. At the same time, more caution is necessary in reading Quesnel than in reading many other authors. We would not put him into the hands of young and inexperienced Christians, whose principles are not fixed, and who want the first" sincere milk of the Word." After all the omissions made in this edition, the defective theology of our author could not, of course, be changed; the confusion in his own mind could not be wholly cleared up; the integrity of the work could not be violated; the occasional tinge of error could not be obliterated.

The

The doctrine of justification by faith. only, if thoroughly known, will be a barrier against most of these evils. operations of grace, not only by the sacraments, but in all the other means of instruction and especially by the meditation of the holy Scriptures, if duly apprehended, will protect the heart against many remaining errors of the work.

EXTRACTS FROM THE CONSTITUTION UNIGENITUS, or the Decree of Pope Clement XI. condemning "Quesnel's Reflections on the New Testament."

Being forewarned, to the great grief of our heart, that a certain book, under the title of The New Testament, in French, with Moral Reflections, &c., already condemned by us, and containing the falsehood of corrupt doctrine, is still looked upon by many as free from error,...... we have resolved to make use of some more effectual remedy in order to put a stop to this spreading disease, which might otherwise in time break out in all manner of bad consequences. [The Constitution proceeds then to enumerate the "most grievous errors" of Quesnel, in 101 propositions maintained in his book, of which we have room to copy but a portion, which follow.]

The grace of Jesus Christ, the efficacious principle of every kind of good, is necessary to every good action: without it, not only nothing is done, but likewise nothing can be done. John xv. 5.

Nothing but the grace of Christ renders man fit for the sacrifice of faith: without this sacrifice, there is nothing but impurity, nothing but unworthiness. Acts xi. 9.

There are but two sorts of love, from whence the motions of the will and all our actions proceed the love of God, which does all things for God's sake, and which is rewarded by him; and the love of ourselves and of the world, which does not ultimately refer that to God which ought to be referred to him, and which for this very reason becomes bad. John v. 29.

All other means of salvation are contained in faith, as in their seed and bud; but this faith is not without love and confidence. Acts x. 48.

Every thing is wanting to a sinner, when hope is wanting; and there is no hope in God, where there is no love of God. Matt. xxvii. 5.

If nothing but the fear of punishment excite to repentance, the more vehement this is, the more it leads to despair. Matt. xxvii. 5.

He who would draw near to God, must neither come to him with brutal passions, nor be led, as beasts are, by natural instinct, or by fear; but by faith and by love, as children. Heb. xii. 20.

One mark of the Christian church is, that it is catholic, comprehending all the angels of heaven, all the elect and just of the earth, and of all ages. Heb. xii. 22-24.

What is the church but the congregation of the children of God, continuing in his bosom, adopt ed in Christ, subsisting in his person, redeemed with his blood, living by his Spirit, acting by his grace, and expecting the grace of the world to come. 2 Thess. i. 1, 2.

The church, or Christ entire, has the incarnate Word for its head, and all the saints for members. 1 Tim. iii. 16.

He who does not lead a life becoming a child of God, and a member of Christ, ceases to have inwardly God for his Father, and Christ for his Head.

1 John ii. 22.

It is useful and necessary at all times, in all places, and for all sorts of persons, to study and

know the spirit, piety and mysteries of the Holy Scripture. 1 Cor. xiv. 5.

To wrest the New Testament out of the hands of Christians, or to keep it closed up, by taking from them the means of understanding it, is no other than to shut or close up the mouth of Christ in respect of them. Matt. v. 2.

To forbid Christians the reading of the holy Scripture, especially of the Gospel, is to forbid the use of light to the children of light, and to make them suffer a sort of excommunication. Luke xi. 33.

To deprive the unlearned people of this com fort of joining their voice with the voice of the whole church, is a custom contrary to apostolical practice, and to the design of God." 1 Cor. xiv. 16.

The fear of an unjust excommunication ought never to hinder us from performing our duty. We never go without the pale of the church, even when we seem to be driven out of it by the wickedness of men, so long as we continue united to God, to Jesus Christ, and to the church itself by charity. John ix. 22, 23.

To suffer peaceably an unjust excommunication and anathema, rather than betray the truth, is to imitate St. Paul; so far is it from rising up against authority, or breaking unity. Rom. ix. 3.

Nothing gives the enemies of the church a worse opinion concerning the church, than to see therein an absolute dominion exercised over the faith of believers, and divisions fomented on the account of such things as are prejudicial neither to the faith nor to manners, Rom. xiv. 16.

We do, by this our constitution, which shall be of perpetual force and obligation, declare, condemn and reject, respectively, all and every one of the propositions before recited, as false, captious, shocking, offensive to pious ears, scandalous, pernicious, rash, injurious to the church and her practice, contumelious not only against the church, but likewise against the secular powers, seditious, impious, blasphemous, suspected of heresy and plainly savouring thereof, and likewise favouring heretics, heresies and schism,

erroneous.

We require, moreover, our venerable brethren, the patriarchs, archbishops, bishops and other ordinaries of places, and also the inquisitors of heresy, that they restrain and coerce all those who shall contradict and rebel against this constitution, by the censures and penalties aforesaid, and the other remedies of law and fact, and even the secular power. by calling to their assistance, if there he occasion,

Let no one, therefore, infringe or audaciously oppose this our declaration, condemnation, mandate, prohibition, and interdiet. And if any one presume to attempt this, let him know, that he will incur the indignation of Almighty God, and of his blessed apostles Peter and Paul. Given at Rome at St. Mary Major's, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and thirteen, on the sixth of the Ides of September, and in the thirteenth year of our pontificate. Registered in the office of the Secretary of Briefs, L. MARTINETTO.