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their several views with a rigid obstinacy, which often engenders most unchristian strife. This diversity of belief and interpretation is an inevitable incident of free inquiry; but the evils of diversity were early felt, and strong efforts were made, by the adoption of creeds, platforms, confessions of faith, catechisms, and other devices, to secure that unity of opinion which appeared to be wanting to the reformers. These efforts, whatever success may be due to them, did not put an end to sectarian controversies. From the era of the Reformation until the present time, the question has still been, What is the true doctrine? what shall we believe? and if the disputants have been sects and not merely individuals, it has rendered the various sects only more watchful in maintaining their special tenets, and in keeping their several followers to the line of their various creeds. The eyes of Protestants have been long and intently fixed upon these sectarian lines of demarcation. They are jealous

of their infringement in proportion to the heat of controversy, rather than in proportion to their importance. They have become far less zealous of the great substantial truths in which they agree, than in those matters of interpretation and speculation in which they differ. A large region is given them to cultivate, and they quarrel about their several boundaries, while the land on each side runs to waste. It is clear that opinions have, by these contests, been magnified into undue importance, and these disputes have absorbed time and attention which belonged to other subjects. They have given a harshness and severity of outline to sectarian differences, at once forbidding and unchristian. So long as the Word of God is taken as the rule of life, and so long as men are permitted to think for themselves, so long there must be diversities of opinion; but if the love of God and the love of our fellow-men, about which there can be no dispute, be allowed to exercise their due sway, all these differences will fade into

insignificance, compared with the duties to God and man which invoke to active effort on every side. It is no more the province of any Protestant denomination to claim infallibility for its opinions, than for the Bishop of Rome; and Protestants will no more yield this claim to each other than to the papal chair. If we examine the articles, confessions of faith, creeds and catechisms of Protestants; if we look into their controversies, if we attend their convocations, conferences, conventions, and. assemblies, we find that the burden of the whole has been doctrines, theology, and church government. In aid of these discussions, the Scriptures are searched unceasingly; every book, chapter, verse, and word* have been put to the test of severe examination: and no bounds are placed to the industry with which they are read and taught, but with results far beneath what such efforts should seem to promise. May not this study

* Some have even counted the letters in all the words of the Bible.

of the Scriptures have been made too subservient to sectarian opinions, and too little conducive to the active duties of Christian love? It should be matter of inquiry how far the instructions of Christ have been made the basis of reformed theology and religious teaching. His precepts do not enter largely into creeds nor confessions, catechisms nor articles, nor are they prominent in theology or religious literature. There may be reasons for this, which we do not perceive; but the main reasons we take to be, those already indicated in the abuses of charity and its institutions, by the Romish Church, and in the controversies growing out of the Reformation, which naturally took the form of disputes about what we should believe, rather than what we should practise as Christians. Besides the abuses which led to the Reformation, the disruption itself, the wars which followed, and the disputes among the reformers were all unsuitable soil for the growth of that

96 PROTESTANT ERRORS AND OMISSIONS.

mutual love and forbearance inculcated by our Saviour as the manner of life which characterizes his disciples.

PROTESTANT ERRORS AND OMISSIONS.

We shall not attempt further to vindicate the omissions of Protestant religious instruction it is a subject too vast for us to conceive, much less to execute. That there are great omissions, it would be claiming too much for human imperfection to doubt; that they are of vital consequence to the progress of true religion, the present state of Christendom and of the world demonstrates. We cannot attempt this great task, although we lament deeply that Christianity is suffering for want of a vindication which shall clearly separate the divine from the human. All the errors of Romanism were not left behind by those who came out of that church. The idea of a

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