a character, to acquire property, are the equal rights of all. To defend life, reputation, and property, is the common and inherent right of all.

Infants have rights as well as adults. These rights are to be regarded. Society owes them certain duties. But if society owes them any thing, it is because of natural rights which they possess. For where a person has no right there is no duty to be performed towards him. Where there is no debt there can be no payment. Sustenance, protection, and education, are the claims of children. Parents owe them all these, or rather society owes them. The reason is, society were once infants, received this sustenance, protection, and education from previous society, and can only pay those debts by recognizing and attending to those rights in others, circumstanced as they once

were.

But the first society were adults, all equally free, independent, and happy; and the rights of infants descending from this first society, were suggested by natural relation and by the law of the Creator. The passions and the feelings of the first parents were the natural and unbribed advocates of the rights of infants. From this general view of the natural, inherent, and unalienable rights of man, and of infants, we wish to argue the necessity of political society providing for the education of every infant born within its precincts. But this only by the way.

Christian

Religious society is the object of our present concern. society is composed of infants, or minors, and adults. These, when admitted into the kingdom or commonwealth over which Jesus Christ presides, have certain natural, inherent, and inalienable rights.-Amongst these are the preservation and enjoyment of christian life, the acquisition and enjoyment of christian reputation, and the pursuit and application of christian wealth. These are the inalienable rights of christians. They are all born equally free and equally independ ent of foreign agency. They are equally the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, have an equal and undivided share in the eternal inheritance, and are mutually dependent on each other for christian health and prosperity. They are under all the same reciprocal duties and obligations. No citizen of this kingdom is under more obligation than another to seek its good and promote its prosperity. They may have different talents and opportunities, but the obligation is equal upon all to make the same efforts, and contribute to the same extent, according to their means. There is no principle in the kingdom which obliges one citizen to spend 365 day's in one year, and another to spend only ten days in promoting the interest of the kingdom. In the kingdoms of this world men are taxed according to their property. The law does not take all from one, and a little or a part from another. The proportion is equal, and the obligation to payment is equal. So in the empire of truth and life: the demands upon each citizen are the same. If a tenth be required from one, a tenth is required from all: if nothing be required from one, nothing is required from all. Men may volunteer in any cause beyond the requisitions of government; but never beyond the wants of society. Volunteers have their own rewards. But if it be my duty or my privilege to spend aught, time, learning, or money, in the service of the Great

1*

King, it is the duty and privilege of every one proportionately to spend time, learning, or money.

No law, but that of love, suggests the principle; and no rule but that of the first disciples, regulates the practice of christians in these particulars. But the rights of christians are just as clear and as inferrable as the rights of man from the same stock of common sense, entightened by religion; and he that is blind to the rights of christians, is so from choice, and not from necessity.

I now commence a volume which I hope will bring this work to a natural close. I wish to close it, not because it is irksome to me to continue it-not because its readers are decreasing-not because there is less need for the press than formerly--not because my opponents have gained any advantage over me-not because I have run short of matter. No: it is with pleasure I write; and my readers have> increased with every volume. have got a new reader or subscriber for every day since I commenced this publication, now six years. All my readers see that my opponents have dwindled to nothing. Numbers of them are converted to the very sentiments which they opposed before they understood them. But there is need for much yet to be said and written, both on the present, past, and future order of things, and we have much to say. But of this again.

Because of the hurry and despatch necessary to complete the Debate now in press, I cannot issue this volume in the same regular proportions I contemplated, namely, two numbers per month. I intend still, however, to furnish it in six months, and soon to issue the plan and conditions of that work in contemplation. I have devoted my energies to this cause, and will, God willing, prosecute it with perseverance. The prospects of emancipating myriads from the deminion of prejudice and tradition-of restoring a pure speech to the people of God-af expediting their progress from Babylon to JeruSalem-of contributing efficiently to the arrival of the Millenniumhave brightened with every volume of this work. To the King eternal, immortal, and invisible, the only wise God our Saviour, we live and die. To him we consecrate the talents, information, means, and every influence he has given us, and, we trust, the day will come, when all shall see, acknowledge, and confess that our labors in the Lord are not vain. EDITOR. ( July 4, 1829.

RELIGIOUS BEQUESTS, &c.

"THE love of money is the root of all evil." So said an infallible teacher. I believe it in the fullest sense of the word. The day of judgment will, I think, disclose a secret which will astonish milTions. It is this-that all sectarianism and sectarian zeal spring from the love of money. I am not now about to show how this can be. But I will say that legacies for ecclesiastical purposes are very ill devised expedients for promoting peace on earth and good will among men. They are often roots of bitterness, springing up as pestilential as the deadly nightshade, and frequently more deleterious than the open assaults of the foes to the christian faith. I doubt not by the well-intended legacy of Mr. Paulding, of Ken

tucky, has already done more harm, and been productive of more rancor, strife, and ill will, than the wisest appropriation of it will efface in a hundred years. And if it could be the means of making a hundred preachers of particular sectarianism, how much would mankind be the better of it? If each one of its beneficiaries should inherit the spirit of our good brother, who would shut the doors of his synagogue against every one who advocates the all-sufficiency and alone-sufficiency of the sacred writings of the Apostles and Prophets for the teaching, discipline, and edification of the church, what would Kentucky and the world gain from such appropriations of money. If it must operate to rivet men in the antiquated prejudices of dark ages, to secure the rising generation from the liberal spirit of christianity-I say, it had better be tied up in a bag and attached to an upper millstone, and cast into the sea.

Some of the terms in the following communication I object to, particularly the term predestination. I object to this appropriation of it. Although I cannot find in the holy oracles any countenance for the dogma of Calvinian predestination, yet I am taught that God predestinated the Gentiles unto the adoption of sons through Jesus Christ and all the saints unto everlasting life. Words, then, which are in scripture appropriated to express the mind and will of God, I do not like to see abused to any sectarian purpose, or treated with disrespect, because others have misapplied them. We should discriminate between the terms and their appropriation of them, lest when opposing a peculiar and an appropriated sense of them, we may be suspected as opposing them in their legitimate acceptation. The same may be said on this much talked of, and very imperfectly understood subject, called "the operations of the Holy Spirit."

But is it so, that any congregation in Kentucky has decreed that no person except he be just five feet ten inches high, and wears green spectacles shall preach within their brick walls!!! Tell it not in Spain! publish it not in Rome! lest the Inquisitors rejoice, lest the Cardinals of the Holy See triumph! I will not believe that the congregation in Frankfort will decree that neither myself nor any one who proclaims the ancient gospel, or advocates the ancient order of things, shall enter their pavilion. No, I will not believe until I see the decree signed in the proper handwriting of the Bishop and all the members. I must see the autograph itself. I proclaimed in the Bishop's own house, at his own fireside, to a congregation, and repeatedly to the private circle of his friends and neighbors my most obnoxious principles. And I doubt not were 1 in Frankfort again the gates of the new church would open unto me of their own accord. And if they did not, who would gain or lose by holding the keys!!! I hope yet to proclaim the ancient gospel even in Frankfort.

This singular intimation concerning the proscription of the brethren Craiths, (I will name them out in full, for they are men whose talents, reformation, zeal, and piety, and actual services to the saints and to the public indiscriminately, are of the highest order of which Kentucky can boast,) I must think is some way or othe

exaggerated. If it be not, it is as ridiculous as a motion that was made some few days ago by a foster child of a celebrated Rake respecting myself: "I move," said he, "that this congregation declare non-fellowship with Alexander Campbell." And the poignancy of the wit was, that Alexander Campbell rarely travels to the mountains of Pennsylvania, and never asked the mover for any sort of fellowship or hospitality, civil, political, or religious. I view such a motion pretty much in the same light as I would the motion of a musselman who would have it decreed in a mosque that I should never be the Dey of Algiers. For the honor of the fraternity in which this motion was made, I must state that the mover was laughed out of his motion.

Mr. Editor,

EDITOR.

SEEING you request that information should be unceremoniously communicated to you from the different sections of the country, I have determined on making the following communication, and leaving it discretionary with you to publish it or not.

The matters involved in it I consider important to this vicinity, however unimportant they may appear to others. I will first premise a few things: it will be remembered by your readers that you have assailed human creeds, which are nothing more than religious poli tics-the strong fortification of clerical power, tyranny, and domination-the rallying and central point of all who prefer the traditions of the fathers to the traditions of the twelve Apostles. You have also done much towards the dethronement of the clergy, and much towards the enthronement of the twelve ambassadors: and, as you stated in your letter to Bishop Semple, this constitutes the front of your offend ing. This is the sum and substance of your heresies: you have de nied the operations of the kingdom of clergy, and therefore they are unwearied in their efforts to prove that you deny the operation of God's Spirit. This charge is preferred against you because you maintain that the Apostles first exhibited the gospel testimony: they heard and believed it-then were immersed for the remission of their sins-then were sealed, cheered, and blessed with the gift of the Holy Spirit. In support of this position I refer your readers to the apostolic congregations themselves. First, the Jerusalem congregation-Acts ii. 38. 39. 2. The Samarian congregation-Acts viii. 15 17. 3. The Corinthian congregation-Acts xviii. 8. Many of the Corinthians hearing, believed and were immersed. 4. The Ephesian congregation-Acts xix. 6. Eph. i. 13. Not to mention the many thousands who believed before the Spirit was given, when they saw our Saviour's miracles, these instances are sufficient to show that the Spirit was given to the apostolic churches after faith and immersion. Let him that saith to the contrary produce the proof. All who preach as the apostles did are charged with denying the operation of the Spirit. If the apostles were now upon earth, and were to preach as they formerly did, would they not be charged with denying the operations of the Spirit. They never preached the Spirit to the idolatrous Gentiles, nor mentioned him until after faith and immersion; see Acts xix. 6. Paul preached to the Jews and Gentiles that Christ ought to have suffered, and to have risen from the dead. This was

preaching Christ and him crucified, and was saying nothing but what Moses and the prophets had said before him.

We have become so accustomed to the slanders of the clergy, that when we hear you and your friends charged with denying the oper ations of the Spirit, we understand that you deny their operations; that the Spirit is in them, and through them, and that they have the keys to open and to shut. All who continue stedfast in the apostles' doctrine (among whom are some of our ablest men) are subject to the same slanders, and to worse treatment than you were when through this country, without having the same means of defending themselves; for I do not recollect that any Baptist congregation shut their doors against you when in this country; yet our good brother Noel (as he is styled by the Baptist Recorder) and his church in Frankfort, contrived to shut their doors against the Messrs. C's. who went to fill up Mr. Morton's appointments, who was hindered by in disposition; and it appears that neither this good brother, nor the church, nor any individual of it, is willing to have the honor of this noble deed; for they now skulk off by saying, "The church" (the wood or stone house I suppose) "passed a resolution three years ago, that neither Mr. Campbell nor any of his friends should preach in their house." Thus it seems that they are good predestinarians, as. they ordained this act before it came to pass. This is their story; but the current belief is, that after you proved too hard for our good Doctor on the creed question, that he then decreed you should not preach in his house; and last winter, when it was rumored that Mr. Morton was expected in Frankfort, a second decree was passed in his favor; and when he heard last May that the two Messrs. C's. were to accompany Mr. Morton, that he and his secretary of state, and some of the ruling spirits in secret conclave, passed a third decree in their favor. He predestinated in his own mind that the Great Crossing Church should shut their doors against the Messrs. C's. but the Johnsons and other principal members proved themselves not to be predestinarians in this case, and consequently the decree did not pass Our "good brother" decreed that the donation of Mr. Paulding for the education of indigent and religious young men, should be fixed upon the Philadelphia confession of opinions, as the Will is said to have been in his handwriting. But this decree was not like that of the Medes and Persians, unalterable.

The indefatigable diligence and the luminous and eloquent orations of Doctor William Richardson, and the determined opposition of others, frustrated this wise purpose. There was also a decree passed by this and other good particular predestinarian brethren, that the first donation of said Paulding, made to our good brother Noel, amounting to four thousand five or seven hundred dollars, should be appropriated exclusively to the benefit of the particulars or predestinarian Baptists, after they heard that said Paulding determined that the donation should be built upon the terms of general union between the Elkhorn and Licking associations, one article of which says, that preaching that Christ tasted death for every man, shall be no bar to communion. This Particular or Licking association grew out of an individual dispute, and when one of the parties was defeated they