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irrelevant to have attempted to show, not only the slavery and degradation which they impose upon those who are the subjects of their authority; but also that their foundations are laid on those inalienable and immutable principles whose exercise they subsequently found necessary to prescribe, to consolidate and secure their arrogant pretensions.

We proceed, in continuation, to offer a few thoughts tending to prove, that, sanctioned or condemned by establishments, private judgment is still a right, and the avowal of conviction an imperative duty. Their pristine example, which they cannot deny, proves the first; and as no mortal power can abrogate it, it still retains all its obligatory force. And to proclaim the results of inquiry, is an inseparable adjunct; they must stand or fall together. Is truth elicited by discussion?-then is the statement of opposing principles essentially requisite. Is private judgment a paramount duty?-it is materially aided by being put in possession of varying opinions, and being enabled to examine the statements of differing or adverse sentiments. It is thus that materials are collected, that evidence is furnished, that facts are weighed, reasons and arguments tested, fallacies detected, and error exposed. A profession of belief without the possession of clear and definite ideas, is indeed a common occurrence, but no assumed principles can be of real worth, or be in the least influential, unless founded on conviction. If actions proceed from motives, and motives are the result of mental decision, the consistency which the world expects to find existing between opinions and actions, is perfectly reasonable. The Volume of Inspiration, and the experience of mankind, refer to actions as the criteria of principles. By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles? The value of principles can be estimated simply, by a consideration of the actions which they originate: this is the only true test which we possess. An action cannot be praiseworthy, unless it is conscientious; the best intention is useless to the world, until reduced to action. (To be Continued.)

SIR,

To the Editor of the Christian Pioneer.

My hand happened to be rather full of other work, at the time when I received Mr. Yates's second communication in your January Number; and, having but a light impression of the necessity of answering it, I subsequently either forgot it, or allowed any thing else that required my attention to take the precedence. Some of your readers may probably have been attributing my delay to other causes. But, being conscious to myself of truth, any such surmises give me very little concern; nor will the concern be much greater, if, notwithstanding what I have now to say, they should still be retained.

I have already intimated, that I have no intention of entering into a renewed controversy in your pages, on the general merits of the great questions at issue between us. Some explanation of a personal nature was all that I ever intended; and I am happy that my antagonist` has, to a certain extent, expressed himself satisfied with the explanation given. I certainly would have gone further, could I have done it in sincerity. One observation I must still be allowed to make. Mr. Yates says "Now, although I cannot consider this admission as making full amends for the wrong which he has done me, and am at a loss to perceive the consistency of asserting that I may be a man of real integrity, and yet that I am capable of 'wilful and deliberate misrepresentation,' whenever a tempting occasion offers, or a sufficiently strong inducement allures me to the crime, I am nevertheless willing to accept Dr. Wardlaw's apology, and I hereby express my wish that every thing personal or offensive between us could be expunged from what we have written."-pages 159, 160. I should be under the influence of some very unchristian feeling, were I not disposed to affix my hearty Amen! to the wish thus expressed. But what I have to remark is, my surprise that Mr. Yates should be at any loss to perceive my consistency in charging him in the one instance in question with "wilful misrepresentation," and at the same time "not meaning to extend the charge to a general one against his moral reputation as an honest man." Is there no difference between alleging that a man has in one instance been betrayed into an evil, and affirming him capable of the evil, "whenever a tempting occasion offers?" Had I affirmed this, and yet admitted his "moral reputation as an

honest man,” I should, to be sure, have been inconsistent enough. But I have affirmed no such thing; and I will not suppose my opponent to have so high an opinion of his own steadfastness, as to think it an impossibility that he should even once be successfully tempted to what is wrong. No man that has even a moderate acquaintance with the deceitfulness of the heart, will venture to say so of himself; nor is the most liberal charity bound to think it of another.

I am not sensible of having used an inappropriate phrase when I represented Mr. Yates as, in the Advertisement to the 2d edition of his Sequel, giving me the lie. When one man tells another, "I am certain you do not believe what you say," what else should it be called? I am sorry that any "apparently polite and friendly behaviour" of mine, when I met him on the street, should have contributed to mislead his mind into a misconception of the state of mine. Meetings on the street, in the case of a stranger coming to town, are generally sudden and unexpected;-so that there is no time to bethink one's self of grievances or of any thing else: and on such occasions the impulse of the moment and the customs of politeness, do, I am aware, too frequently betray one into a behaviour that is hardly consonant with what due reflection might have dictated in the relative circumstances of the parties, and that is apt to be subsequently construed into simulation and hypocrisy. I thank Mr. Yates for the hint, and hope I shall profit by it.

My antagonist continues to vindicate himself from the charge I had brought against him, on the ground of his having first given a statement of the views of Trinitarians in their own words. He says (page 161) "I need only appeal to the common sense of your readers to perceive, that, if I first gave a full and clear statement of the doctrine, to which no objection has ever been made, and which was expressed partly in the very words of my op ponent, no implied statement which I might afterwards introduce in the course of my argument, could be a 'wilful and deliberate misrepresentation.' I could not be such a blockhead as to endeavour to blind my readers' by contradicting myself." I thought Mr. Yates had learned better logic than this at Glasgow. Is it, then, impossible for a man, after quoting the sentiments of an opponent in the opponent's own language, to introduce subsequently,

when he comes to reply, a statement in other terms, terms of his own, containing a misrepresentation of the known meaning of what he had previously cited? This is precisely the misdemeanour with which I conceived him chargeable. And to allege that a man could not possibly intend to misrepresent, merely because he had just before given the statement which he does misrepresent, does not appear to me to be very convincing logic. There are too few controversies in which it is not done.

With regard to the subject itself-of the union of the divine and human natures in the person of Christ-every reader must at once perceive, how easy it must always be, on a point of this kind, to start puzzles. Mr. Yates is

sufficiently aware how many topics there are, on which à child may ask questions such as neither he nor I, nor greater divines and philosophers than either of us, could answer. He is again doing what he can, to draw me beyond the line of Scripture,-to get me out from behind the entrenchments of the divine record into the open field of metaphysical discussion. Unitarians are generally fond of this; and Trinitarians have too often yielded to their enticements. But the question is one simply of fact; and can be determined in no other way than by a direct reference to Scripture testimony. If it be true, that the names, attributes, works, and worship of the true God are there ascribed to Jesus Christ,-it follows that Jesus Christ is the true God; and the conclusion is quite independent of our ability or inability to conceive of the manner in which divinity is in his person united with humanity. The sole questions are-Is this the testimony of the Bible? andIs the Bible which contains it the Word of God? To go beyond this is to go beyond our only source of information, and to "wander in counsels of our own."

As I do not acknowledge Mr. Yates in the capacity either of Grand Inquisitor, or even of Father Confessor, I take my own way of replying to his questions (questions which in the style of them are not without a spice of impertinence); which is, by very simply re-stating my belief, and then, with a single additional remark or two, leaving the subject to your readers; that, if they be in earnest, they may "search the Scriptures" for themselves, and, if they shall be so inclined, assist their researches by the controversy, long since closed, between my antagonist and myself.

By the human nature of Christ, then, I mean, (and Mr. Yates knows I mean) in the language of the Westminster Divinės, "a true body and a reasonable soul." When "the Word" which "was in the beginning with God," and which "was God,” “was made flesh,” he united his divine nature with the human, in a way admitted to be by us incomprehensible, so as to become God manifest in the flesh," one person in two distinct natures." We do not pretend to explain the mode of this union, and consider the fact alone as revealed, and as consequently the sole object of faith; and although in the fact we are sensible of mystery, we are not sensible of contradiction:-1, Because the two natures are unblended in their properties, -the attributes of each remaining peculiar to itself:-2. Because the human soul is sinless, in perfectly holy harmony with the nature of the indwelling Deity; so that there is no contrariety of moral principle, of desire, affection, or will; every purpose of Deity having the delighted concurrence of the human soul, and every volition of the human soul the perfect approbation of Deity:-3. Because, in regard to any alleged impossibility of the union of infinite with finite, there is in this respect nothing more incomprehensible in the case, than there is in the connexion of the infinite nature of Deity with any and with every limited portion of space; so that there is as great perplexity felt in answering the question with respect to any place where we happen to be, How is God here? as in answering the question, How is Deity united with humanity in the person of Jesus Christ? and if, in the former case, our inability to answer produces no hesitation in our faith, why should it in the latter?

I repeat, that the question is one of fact, and of simple appeal to the authority of Scripture; and to enter into it further, would be to re-commence the controversy. I have only therefore to add, that I consider Mr. Yates's attempt to confound the intellects of his readers by his metaphysical playing upon the word person, to be in the present instance unworthy of him. Does he really conceive it fair to substitute the word MIND for PERSON, and to frame his argument as if they were synonymous? The person of a man, and the mind of a man, are surely not phrases of the same amount. There is, in the person of a man, a union of mind and body; a union, which is itself a mystery, such as we can no more explain than we

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