standard? Shall our young men who deviate from this be rejected as missionaries, prevented from receiving calls where Congregations are disposed to call them, and turned away from places where they are already settled? Shall the resources of the General Assembly be called forth to found a Divinity College, to promote this plan of instruction? Shall dollar societies, cent societies, mite societies, be organized? Shall contributions, donations, and every mode of voluntary taxation be resorted to, in all parts of this extensive country, to erect edifices, institute professorships, scholarships, and all other kinds of ships, to promote this distorted, halting, debasing, scheme of error? Can the blessing of God be expected to follow this obvious retrogradation? For it is impossible not to perceive a driving backward in the strain of doctrine and discipline in many who, by their forwardness and imposing attitude, in all. our judicatories, would feign not only be thought leaders, but be such in the most absolute sense of the word.

They loudly scoff at all idea or notion of any improvement in doctrine or discipline, as made in this country. Though, doubtless, if religious knowledge and doctrine ever made any progress in any country, it has been in New-England, that land which is scarcely named in connexion with religion without a sneer. And if the spirit of God has ever been poured out in religious revivals, it is there; yet, at those revivals, the finger of scorn is pointed, and the sneers of contempt are not wanting. I do not say that the seminary will support, exclusively, that scheme of doctrine and those intolerant and destructive measures. I can only judge from what I have seen and heard, and perhaps a full experiment has not been made; but I say if they do, they will prove a scourge and not a blessing to the church— will draw down the wrath, and not the smiles of heaven upon the whole denomination.

An unknown weight of responsibility lies on the founders, directors, and instructors of that Institution. It commits the interests of a rising, and hitherto prosperous church, to few handsI fear too few. The training of a ministry shall exert an influence not only immediate and perceptible, but remote, extended, progressive, and without end:-it has the power to purify

or corrupt the doctrinal and moral sentiments of a nation, and to all future generations. A corrupt teacher may certainly proceed from a very pure and correct institution; as also may a very correct teacher from a polluted fountain of instruction. But, generally speaking, the scholar will be like his master, and a variation from this rule is generally on the unfavourable side. But I ask, in thesi, i. e. merely as a case supposable, what if the master be a non liquet? What if, after having preached twenty years the doctrines of general atonement, moral inability, universal offers of salvation, and man's probationary state, nobody knows it? What if, after having deeply bewailed the lax practice of the church, for years, he performs prodigies in converting young men to that practice; nay, and performs journeys to administer it, and keep its adherents in countenance, lest they should be discouraged; thus supporting the practice which he bewails, and defeating the practice in which he believes? This might be a great stretch of benevolence. But, Gentlemen, if you make the pillars of your building of the willow, the superincumbent arches must be light and buoyant, or they cannot be sustained.

Gentlemen, I perceive a current, in these times, whose drift is rapid, broad, and strong. I have stated my apprehensions freely; nor have I a doubt that they are just. As to the furious censures that many will hurl at these suggestions, I regard them as chaff; and the neglect, which others will consider as a better revenge, I shall not feel. I have as much at stake, in these concerns, as any person living, and no more:-the eternal approbation of God is to be gained or lost by us all, and the solemn hour when that great and unalterable decision is to be made, is near and approaching. Neither the reflections contained in this or the preceding numbers, or series, are the offspring of haste or passion; they have resulted from long observation, and deliberate conviction. The drift I see is from light to darknessthe movement is retrograde; and if the golden calf, which is to lead back to Egypt, is not already cast, and shown to the camp, I shall be glad.

Your talents, your long experience, your conspicuous stations, your standing in the public confidence, and your correct senti

ments, are pledges which the church holds, that your exertions in the cause of truth will be equally distinguished and decided. I am, Gentlemen, with great respect,

your obedt. Servant,

INVESTIGATOR.

No. V.

Ir is done. The extraordinary scene which has agitated the public mind for some time, is closed, and closed in a manner which ought to fill every pious mind with alarm--every independent mind with new circumspection and resolution-every generous mind with indignation. The young men's Missionary Society, in this city, by a majority of 160 to 90, have condemned Mr. Cas holding heretical doctrine, on the sole ground of his being a Hopkinsian. Thus, a young man of most unblemished moral character, of ardent piety, and uncommon talents, is laid under the odium of public censure; is rejected by the missionary board, and overwhelmed with all the disgrace which the ultimate censure of that society can carry with it.to every extremity of the Union.

But do the people of this city consider what this censure implies, and how far it extends? Are they aware that it extends to a very great proportion of professing Christians in the city? It reaches every man who does not come fully up to the horrible and loathsome restrictions of the triangle; to every man who does not believe the whole human race deserving of eternal damnation for Adam's first act; that Christ made propitiation for none but the elect; that all men were not only condemned for Adam's first act, but utterly incapacitated thereby, in a way which has no connexion with their disinclination, to obey God; or, in other words, that their inability, caused by Adam's sin, does not consist in want of will to obey God.

Citizens, is every man in this city and country to be con

demned and disgraced as an heretic, who does not come up to these monstrous opinions? Imagination can scarcely reach to the atrocity and insolence of this whole business. The men who have condemned an innocent and worthy young man, claim to be Calvinists. They claim to be what they are not. Calvin never disgraced religion so much as to teach the doctrines they teach. I have told you, in the Preface of the First Series, what Calvin thought of original sin. It was at the same distance from their views of it, that I am; and as to a general atonement, these men have been called upon, in vain, to show that Calvin denied it. They cannot show it; and there is much reason to believe that this young man, whom they have condemned, does not differ from Calvin in his views of the atonement.

The doctrine of a general atonement has been the great doctrine of the Church in all ages, and almost all its sections. It has been denied as rarely as the divinity of Christ; and if the whole Christian Church be considered, and the whole period of its duration, it will be found that as many have denied the divinity of Christ, as the doctrine of universal propitiation for sin.

But, citizens, you are told that the Socinians of Boston, and that region, are sprung from Hopkinsianism. You are told this by men who are ready to assert any thing that will answer their present purposes. Never was a more obvious or infamous falsehood asserted. The Socinians of those parts are descended from such men as opposed and ridiculed the reformations under Whitefield; such men as drove Jonathan Edwards from Northampton; such men as have ever opposed Edwards, West, Bellamy, and Hopkins, for the last fifty years, on the same grounds, and for the same reasons, that they are opposed in this city-the Antinomian ground..

And I here repeat the observation made in the first number of the first series of this work, that the strain of doctrine predominant in this city, or, at least, in many churches of it, will present no barrier to vice or error, but will ultimately prepare the way for both.

Yet dangerous and fatal as this scheme of doctrine is, could

truth and error have been left to a fair and open conflict, I would have preferred to have descended to my grave in silence, assured that, wherever that conflict is carried on, on equal ground, victory must crown the advocates of truth. But here it has been far otherwise. While truth was hushed, and hissed, and terrified into total silence-while no man presumed to lift his voice against a torrent of opinion and prejudice, which rolled on broad and deep as the Ganges-while pulpits thundered, presses groaned, and conversation murmured with execrations and anathemas, against a strain of doctrine of which the people were kept in perfect ignorance, it was time that a record of facts was published:-" and after the manner which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers." INVESTIGATOR.