—a teacher, not of the letter which killeth, but of the Spirit which giveth life.'"*

We have not now space for exposing, as it deserves, this remarkable and significant passage. We can only suggest a few hints as to its import and bearing.

1. Dr Tulloch makes the statement absolutely and without qualification, that heresy is not a "moral obliquity,"—that it is “a dark delusion that intellectual error is a subject of moral offence and punishment." Is this anything different from what Warburton, a century ago, denounced as "the master sophism of this infidel age, the innocence of error?"

2. When Dr Tulloch intimates his approbation of "the idea of a free faith, holding to very different dogmatic views, and yet equally Christian," we presume he just means, in plain English, to tell us, that Calvinism, Arminianism, and Socinianism, are all equally Christian.

3. In this passage he seems to confound or mix up together all interference with heresy or "intellectual error" in religious matters, whether by the civil or the ecclesiastical authorities, as if all exercise of ecclesiastical discipline on such grounds, were just as unwarrantable and offensive as persecution, in the shape of the infliction of civil pains and penalties on the ground of error in religion. This confounding of things that differ, was one of the leading artifices of the infidels and semi-infidels, who discussed these subjects in the early part of last century, the Tindals and Collinses, the Hoadleys and Sykeses.

4. Dr Tulloch seems here to employ another sophism derived from the same not very respectable source, when, upon the grounds, that creeds and confessions are human productions, and of course exhibit indications of human imperfections, and that they are not fitted to serve all the purposes to which they have been sometimes applied, he would intimate that they are of no worth or value whatever, and are not fitted to serve any good or useful purpose. His views upon this point are certainly not brought out clearly and explicitly, but what has now been stated, seems, so far as we can judge, to be the substance of what he intended to indicate, especially in the last sentence of the quotation. There is a notion which seems to be pretty prevalent in

* Pp. 87-8.

the present day, though as yet in a somewhat latent aud undeveloped form, and which produces some sympathy in the minds of many with what is said in disparagement of creeds and confessions. It is a doubt, at least, whether creeds and confessions, which are to be made terms of ministerial communion, and, of course, grounds of division among churches, should be so long and so minute as some of them are. We have noticed of late some indications of this feeling in men who are far superior to the vulgar aversion to creeds, and whom there is no reason to suspect of unfaithfulness to their own confession. We admit that this is a fair and reasonable topic for discussion, and we are not aware that, as distinguished from some of the other branches of the controversy about confessions, it has ever yet been subjected to so thorough, deliberate, and comprehensive an investigation as its importance deserves. We have no wish to encourage the raising of a discussion upon this subject. But we see symptoms which seem to indicate, that it is likely to be pressed upon the attention of the churches, and it may be well that men should be turning their thoughts to it.

5. Men who are familiar with the common cant of latitudinarians, will easily see that some of the statements contained in this passage, especially those which speak of the influence of Augustine, and of an "Augustinian commentary of Scripture," are intended to convey such notions as these-that the Reformers derived their leading theological views, not from the word of God but from the writings of Augustine; that they adopted Augustine's views, not because they had satisfied themselves of their accordance with Scripture, but from deference to his authority, or from some other adventitious, or accidental, or, it may be, unworthy, cause; that having adopted Augustinian views for some other reason than their accordance with Scripture, they then did what they could to bend and twist Scripture to the support of Augustinianism, and that in this way they brought out of Scripture what is not to be found there, what it does not sanction. All this Dr Tulloch's statements seem to us to imply. It would have been more creditable to him to have openly and explicitly asserted it. But as he has produced no evidence in support of these notions, we could only meet even an assertion of them, by a denial of their truth. We assert, that the notions which Dr Tulloch here indicates with regard to the theological views of the

Reformers are not true, and in flat contradiction to them we assert, that the Reformers adopted Augustine's views because satisfied, as the result of careful and deliberate investigation, that they were in accordance with the teaching of Scripture; that they were right in entertaining this conviction; that they brought out the evidence of the scriptural authority of the doctrines of Augustine much more fully and satisfactorily than he himself had done; in short, that they proved conclusively and unanswerably, that Augustinianism or Calvinism is revealed to us by God in His word.

The substance of what he seems to allege here against the Reformers, we have no doubt he would direct equally against those benighted men who in this nineteenth century are willing to acknowledge themselves Calvinists. He perhaps thinks that we too have been led to profess Augustinian or Calvinistic doctrines, not from an intelligent and honest study of the sacred Scriptures, but from some adventitious, irrelevant, inadequate, perhaps unworthy, motive or influence, and that we are perverting, or in some way or other misapplying, the materials furnished by Scripture, in order to procure support to our opinions. Dr Tulloch has no right to expect that any mere assertion of his on such a subject will carry much weight or excite much feeling. But since he has not hesitated to set aside the theology of the Reformation, the theology which has generally been professed in Scotland from the Reformation to the present day, and to do this in circumstances which did not admit of theological discussion, we think it probable that he is willing and ready to bring forward the grounds on which his views upon this subject are based. We must presume after what he has said, that he is prepare-l to give to the world a detailed exposure of the theology of the Reformation, a new "Refutation of Calvinism." He can scarcely avoid attempting something of this sort, and we venture to assure him, beforehand, that he will not succeed.

LUTHER.*

It is admitted by all Christians that the church is, in some sense, the organ and the representative of Christ upon earth. This principle, true in itself, is very liable to be abused and perverted. It is perverted grossly in the hands of Romanists, when it is represented as implying that the church, as a visible society, has virtually the same power and authority, the same rights and prerogatives, as its Master in heaven. The general principle about the church, understood in this sense, and combined with the assumption that the church of Christ upon earth is the church which acknowledges the authority of the Bishop of Rome as Christ's vicar, is the foundation of the papal claims to supremacy and infallibility. The same principle is also employed largely to defend or palliate some of the more offensive consequences of these claims, and some of the more offensive modes of enforcing them. On the ground of this identification of Christ and the church, the opponents of the church come to be regarded as the enemies of Christ, and His vicar is held to be entitled to deal with them, so far as he can, just as Christ may deal with those who continue finally obstinate and impenitent enemies to His cause. In this way papists come to subordinate everything, in the mode in which they regard and deal with their fellow-men, to the fancied honour and interests of the church, and to look upon the opponents of the church not as their fellow-men, whom they are bound to love, but simply as the enemies of Christ, whom they are entitled to injure. It is deeply engrained on the minds of Romanists, that those who are beyond the pale of the true church forfeit the

British and Foreign Evangelical Review, April 1856.

1. Vindication of Luther against his recent English Assailants, by JULIUS CHARLES HARE. 1855.

2. Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education and University Reform, chiefly from the Edinburgh Review, by Sir WILLIAM HAMILTON, Bart. 1853.

ordinary rights of men and members of society; and that, especially when they take an active and prominent part in opposing and injuring the church, they ought to be treated as outlaws or as wild beasts.

It is this identification of the church and its visible head, the pope, with Christ Himself, that produces and accounts for that extraordinary subordination of everything to the interests of the church which is so remarkable a feature of popery; and that explains the persecutions which Romanists have at all times been quite willing to perpetrate. All this may be regarded as exhibiting the natural and appropriate result of popish principles, and as, in some sense, rather helping, when viewed in connection with certain tendencies of human nature, to palliate the cruelties which have disgraced the history of the Church of Rome. But there is an abuse of the principle which has been often acted upon by papists, though not often openly avowed, and which is altogether destitute of any appearance of excuse; it is that of acting as if it were held that men who oppose and resist the Church of Rome not only forfeit thereby the ordinary rights and privileges of men, of neighbours, and of relatives, but lose all right even to claim that the ordinary rules of integrity and veracity should be observed in regard to them. It has been no uncommon thing for papists to act as if not only the social and domestic affections, and the duties connected with them, but even the laws of immutable morality were to be subordinated to the interests of the church. This is the principle involved in the decision of the Council of Constance, and often acted upon in the Church of Rome, about keeping faith with heretics. That decision was intended to sanction the doctrine that heretics, the open enemies of the church, have no right to demand the fulfilment of engagements and promises, and that no pledges given to such persons should ever be allowed to stand in the way of any scheme for promoting the church's objects. These notions exert a constant and abiding influence upon the minds of most Romanists, even of many who would shrink from embodying them in formal propositions. The consummation of what is most discreditable in this matter is to be found in the fact, that some Jesuit writers have openly proclaimed the lawfulness of putting forth deliberate and intentional slanders for the purpose of injuring their enemies, a fact established by Pascal in the fifteenth of his "Provincial Letters," and one that

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