The position, that the standards of Presbyterial societies confine all covenanted possibility of sal

If it were so said, the only consequence would be, that your religious standards would be inconsistent. The passages, from the catechism, which I have quoted, are as precise as language can make them. Produce opposite passages equally precise, and it will certainly be impossible to tell what your religious standards mean. But such passages you cannot produce. Any expressions that may ascribe great importance to faith, representing it as uniting the soul to Christ, and giving an interest in his favour, must be so construed as to be made consistent with the other parts of your religious articles, which speak a language, relative to the visible Church, so express as to admit of no qualification whatever. You will recollect, also, that your society acknowledges no faith to be true and saving unless it contain within itself a principle of obedience. It must be supposed, therefore, to lead men to unite themselves with that visible society where God has deposited his covenant; and, by receiving the seals of such covenant, to acquire a legitimate title to its promises.

In page 62 of the Continuation of your Letters, you represent sincere piety as giving to all its possessors a covenanted title to heaven; and this you declare to be the universally received Calvinistic opinion. Now, Sir, was there ever a pious heathen? To answer this question in the negative, is to consign the heathen world to indiscriminate perdition; for, surely, without piety, no man can see God.

Piety, you say, gives a covenanted title to heaven as a matter of course.* As then the heathens, according to you,t are without such covenanted title, it follows, that heathen piety is a thing impossible: and heathen piety being impossible, heathen salvation must be equally $0. If, to escape from this monstrous doctrine, you admit that there may be piety among the heathen, you will be directly at war with yourself; for you represent the heathen as destitute of all covenanted title to salvation; whereas, to have sincere piety, and to have a covenanted title to salvation, you make to be precisely the same thing.

Sincere piety gives the Christian a covenanted title to heaven-Since piety gives the heathen a covenanted title to heaven-Then the Christian and the heathen, as to covenanted title to heaven, are precisely on a footing. The question of such title has nothing to do with signs and

"The sincere piety, and, of course, the covenant title to heaven." Continuation of Letters, p. 62.

"On the same principles as to the heathen; that is, not in virtue of any covenant engagement, or explicit promise, but on the footing of general un pledged merey." Ibid. p. 37.

vation within the pale of the visible Church, is thus completely established; the passages cited

seals. Piety is its sole criterion. This is one alternative. If you do not like this, take the other. The heathen have no covenanted title to heaven; which, by the way, is your express doctrine. Then there can be no such thing as sincere piety in the heathen world; and, of course, the heathen world must indiscriminately perish.

On one side of the dilemma lies the total destruction of the visible Church, and of the covenant of grace as a solemn transaction, distinguished by appropriate seals; on the other lies the terrific sentence"none can be saved who have never heard of Christ, however diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature."†

Again-Can any thing be more absurd than to represent piety as placing a man, of itself, within the covenant of grace? The covenant of grace is a solemn transaction, distinguished by characteristic signs and seals. To be within these signs and seals, is to be within the covenant; to be without them, is to be without the covenant. Was any person within the Abrahamic dispensation of the covenant without circumcision? Surely not. "This is my covenant-Every man child among you shall be circumcised. And the uncircumcised man child shall be cut off from his people." To be circumcised was to be put within the Abrahamic dispensation of the covenant of grace. Baptism having succeeded circumcision as the visible seal of the covenant of grace, it is by baptism that we are placed within the pale of the Gospel dispensation of that covenant. On all this subject, your religious standards hold the exact language which I have just been using. What, then, becomes of your assertion, that every person of sincere piety is, simply by virtue of his piety, within the pale of the covenant of grace. It is as inconsistent with your religious standards as one thing can be with another; and it is not more inconsistent with your religious standards than with common sense.

You remark, that "the seals of the covenant do not form the covenant itself; the seal on a bond not being itself the contract, but only the evidence of it." The true question is, whether a person can be said to be within the covenant until he is within its seals. The very purpose of seals is to discriminate a covenant transaction from that which is not a covenant transaction; to determine who are within the

* Continuation of Letters, p. 37.

Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. Larger Catechism, question 60.

Genesis xvii. 10, 14.

Continuation of Letters, p. 59

being of so very marked a character as to leave no room for evasion.

covenant, and who are not. If this be not the purpose of seals, what is their purpose? And if persons may be completely within a covenant, independently of the appropriate seals of that covenant, what end are seals to answer?

"The seal on a bond is not itself the contract, but only the evidence of it." True-But what is it that converts an unmeaning piece of writing into a covenant binding upon the parties? It is the signing and sealing. The signing and sealing are essential to the very existence of the covenant. Until signed and sealed, the paper has no obligatory force.

The covenant you represent as a mere act of the mind. But publication is essential to the very idea of a covenant. It is an abuse of language to talk of a covenant that is confined to the mind of the party. If this language is ever used, it can only be in the way of figurative allusion. Covenant, it is true, supposes an act of the mind: such act is one essential part; but of itself it can never amount to a covenant, And although the covenanting transaction, with its signs and seals, is not the act of the mind, abstractedly considered; yet it is the act of the mind embodied, and rendered visible. Nothing, indeed, but an assent of the mind, made known by the appropriate solemnities of publication, is ever entitled to the name of a covenant.

Here, Sir, lies the source of all the error into which you run on this subject. Faith you make every thing. The moment a man has faith, he is ascertained to be of the elect; and once an elect person, always an elect person, is the Calvinistic rule. Well, if we are within the decree of election, we must have the highest title to heaven that God can possibly bestow. Thus the absurd doctrine of unconditional election and irresistible grace leads the Calvinist to talk in a most contradictory manner; undervaluing all visible institutions, and providing some secret method of entering into covenant with God.

The only way, Sir, in which you can be reconciled, on this point, with your standards, is by supposing it to be your opinion that Church membership is essential to faith; in other words, that a man cannot have faith without arriving at it through the gate of external order. You say that faith gives a covenanted title to salvation-Your standards say that none but the members of the Church have such covenanted title. Unless, therefore, you suppose there can be no faith without Church membership, you contradict your religious articles. But this doctrine would involve you in another difficulty; for, to make faith necessarily dependent on outward institutions, is to represent those insti

Let me now remind you of the language which is held by Presbyterian authors on this subject.

My first quotation shall be from the Christian's Magazine. Speaking of the visible Church, Dr. Mason says, "all the ordinances are given to itall the promises are made to it."*

The next authority to which I would refer you is that of the late learned President of the college of New-Jersey. In his Discourse on Baptism, Dr. Smith constantly represents the visible Church as that household of God to which is committed the covenant of grace, with all its promises and blessings. Take a single passage-" Between the baptized and unbaptized infant, dying in infancy, there is this difference, that, to the one, the inheritance of eternal life is conveyed by covenant from God, under his appointed seal; the other is left to his free, indeed, but uncovenanted mercy."

Let me now call your attention to the language repeatedly used in your own Letters.

The visible Church is "that household of God to which his gracious promises and his life-giving spirit are vouchsafed." Here, Sir, you represent the promises of the Gospel as confined to the visible Church. Such is, unquestionably, the fair

tutions as constituting the completion of the Christian character. It is, too, to run directly against the cardinal principles of Calvinism. Besides, your religious articles suppose a man to have faith before he is admitted into the Church; for they make such faith the very groundof his admission.

* Vol. i. p. 156.

† See Discourse on Baptism throughout.

Letters, p. 342.

+ Ibid. p. 34.

construction; especially as the conclusion which you draw, from the fact of the gracious promises of God and his life-giving spirit being vouchsafed to the Church, is, that more virtue and holiness will ever be found within than without her pale. If the promises of the Gospel are not particularly given to the visible Church, your mode of expression is very strange, and your reasoning altogether unintelligible.

Again-You represent the existence of unaffected piety out of the visible Church as a difficulty of no easy solution;* and you expressly declare, that if mercy is extended to any who are not members of that Church, it must be in some extraordinary and unknown way.† Now, the covenanted way is surely the ordinary way in which God dispenses mercy. To say, then, that if mercy is extended to persons out of the visible Church, it must be in some extraordinary mode, is to say that none but the members of that Church have a covenanted title to salvation.

Let this subject be presented in another point of view.

It is the express doctrine of Presbyterial authors, and of Presbyterial standards, that remission of sin is to be obtained only by communion with the visible Church.

Mark the strong language of Calvin: "Forgiveness of sins is a benefit so proper to the Church,

*Letters, p. 344.

Continuation of Letters, p. 44.