cilable, the orthodoxy of New England is found to be only a very plain and palpable heresy. Would it not be well to inquire (which is a matter, in my estimation, of much greater consequence) whether it is not also as palpably false?

One thing more, in conclusion, I think it is my duty to suggest, and yours very seriously to consider, viz., that, however my doctrine of trinity may stand with the formulas, no difference will be observed between the practical ordinary language of preaching under it and that which is used by you all; and this I should suppose to be a matter of a good deal more importance than a mere abstractive coincidence in a few words and syllables of theory. The only diversity that could ever appear, in preaching, would be, when a theoretic scheme, or objections to a theoretic scheme of the trinity are under immediate discussion. Suppose, then, I were held up by you as unsound in the faith, or excluded from fellowship on this account; it would be simply and only because I would not profess some kind of belief touching the interior economy and structure of God. It would not be that I am any the less truly a lover of the doctrine of trinity as related to the life of religion and the working of Christian experience; but only that I would not venture some opinion regarding the psychological nature and history of the persons of the Trinity. You would declare, in that manner, to the world, that it is not enough to preach, pray, worship, climb up unto God through an experience shaped in the molds of Trinity, but that the principal matter is to receive it as a theorem.

THE WORK OF CHRIST.

It is no disappointment to me, however deeply I regret the disturbance suffered by my brethren, that the doctrine of Christ and his work, maintained in my discourse at Cambridge, has encountered so many and severe censures. I could only have been disappointed if the censures had shown a better appearance of agreement among themselves. Contrary to this, they are such for the most part in their form, and such in their mutual disagreement, as I expected, and they come in the manner I expected them to come; viz., by seizing on single turns of expression, or single parts of the argument, and subjecting them to the same logical method of inference and construction, which, heretofore, has been so hard a practice on the terms of scripture themselves. The principal source of difficulty has been that no sufficient pains have been taken, to reproduce and conceive the view presented as a whole; adjusting the import, in part, of single members and clauses in the argument, by their relation to that whole. Perhaps it is impossible for me to repair the defect; but I wish my brethren could believe me when I say that, while their inferences are so abundantly true and necessary to them, I admit scarcely one of them, in the sense which makes it an offense, or a dangerous error to themselves. On the contrary, I seem, in almost every case, to hold, as earnestly as they, though under a

different form or a different resolution of the subject, all which they suppose me to deny. The matter of their gospel, separated from their logical or theological system, is the matter of mine; and the only reason why they do not see it to be so themselves is that they have reduced the matter to the tiny measures of their system; so that when it is set forth, apart from the measures,-not as expiation only, but as the Eternal Life that was with the Father and was manifested unto us; Christ the Wisdom of God and the Power; God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself,—the quantities are so large and the riches so various that the matter of their system appears to be lost, they can not find it. And what, then, shall they infer but heresy? Much as if some child, or oversimple person, were to judge that immense piles of coin, at the mint, must be counterfeit, because he can not find his particular dollar among them.

Perhaps it may soften a little the apprehensions that some have suffered, if, before I enter on the new exposition I design to offer, I notice briefly a few of the misconceptions that have been advanced as objections against the doctrine of my discourse.

One very fruitful cause of alarm has been that the negative and destructive part of my argument has been supposed, in the view of others, to mean more and really to destroy more, than it does in my own. Accustomed to see the whole truth of the subject in the logical form or points of formula against which I was reasoning, (pp. 192–202,) they were not able, finding these all swept away, to imagine that any thing was left. Whereas, in

my own view, I was only sweeping away the logical matter of these representations, to assert again, with greater force, all which constitutes the inmost and properly evangelic substance of their beliefs, in the use of them. When this negative part of my argument was ended, the whole subject to them was ended; while to me it was only begun. Accordingly, you will find that these negative reasonings are constantly set forth by them, as being words spoken against the temple,—conclusive heresies, which even make it a virtue to stop their ears to all that may be said afterward. Meantime, I am going on myself, as just having come to the subject, to "reclaim and restore" (p. 203) every thing that has been cast away; that is every thing but the points of theory rejected. But I go alone; they do not follow me. Or if they seem to follow, it is simply to find the offense justified, and not to see it removed. Thus, where most I required patience and, if I had needlessly offended, forbearance and a gratuitous extension of candor, to apprehend the real meaning of my doctrine; or to discover what it is that makes it true to myself, (true in the sense of containing all they suppose to be rejected,) I seem to have failed of a proper hearing altogether. Endeavoring to set forth a view of Christ and his work that has its reality and value in forms that carry effect through the imagination and the heart, I have only wounded logic for an auditor, and that not hearing, it would seem, but only asking for redress. Accordingly, of all the numerous articles which I have seen complaining of my. heresies in regard to this subject, I recollect not one that has attempted any real and proper discussion of just

those twenty pages of my book, (pp. 218-238,) on which I most relied to quiet the fears and satisfy the convictions of my brethren. More generally they are not even noticed or alluded to, and it might even be supposed that, by some accident of the press, they had been omitted. It is not that these pages have not been read, if by reading is meant seeing the letters and syllables; but it is that they have been read in a way to see no meaning in them. Or, if it be said that they have no meaning, it is not because they do not recognize, in the fullest manner, the necessity of a ground of justification, and show as fully what that ground of justification is,-Christ our righteousness, Christ sanctifying, by his death and sacrifice, the violated law, and preparing, thus, a way of pardon that makes it, not an act of license, but of justification. If this had been allowed and only some fault found with the manner in which he is represented to have executed his design, the ill fortune of these twenty pages would have been less remarkable.

I know not whether it can now be of any use to add that, in my course of argument, discarding first the logical matter of so many confused theories, and then restoring the whole subject in the simpler forms of practical and scriptural expression, I seem only to have done, more fully, what others have seen as truly the necessity of doing, if we are to escape an innumerable brood of logical perversities. Thus Dr. Griffin says, in his work on the Atonement:

"There are certain figurative expressions in common use in the church, partly derived from the scriptures and partly of human invention, which are calculated to pre