We are constrained to ask that payments due for the last, Enclosed will be found a Circular, which is commended to Subscribers wishing to discontinue, must give notice previ- All letters should be directed to the "Editor of the Church ART. I.—The Mercersburg Review. Vol. III, No. 5. P. 487. THERE are certain subjects in Theology, which, like the spheres floating about us in the heavens, appear to have their periodical cycles-their perigee and their apogee-their times to wax and wane. In reference to our own locality in the Christian fold, Episcopacy is one of the most prominent of these topics. We must, every now and then, expect to have it questioned and disputed, and formally re-argued and established, against (as the Dedication to King James' Bible calls them) "self-conceited brethren, who run their own ways, and give liking to nothing but what is framed by themselves, and hammered on their anvil." Another of these topics is the special character and value of the Christian Fathers, as a standard of appeal in conducting the Episcopal, and many other controversies; to which we are always exposed by our peculiar position, between "Popish persons" (as this same Dedication styles them) on the one hand, and those "self-conceited brethren" on the other, who, exalting their own judgment into a pope, talk as oracularly and dogmatically, as he who vaticinates from the throne of the double sword. This latter topic we had hoped indeed had lately completed one of its cycles, amid the convolutions of Puseyism; and that the Oxford Tracts on the one side, and Mr. Isaac Taylor on the other, had so displayed the supposed merits and demerits of the Fathers, that their venerable names might sleep awhile, without being bandied amid the dust and din of polemic disputation. " But, it seems, this may not be. The Mercersburg Review, which has gained a prominence before the eye of the religious public, that makes its dicta like the beacons of a city set upon a hill, has determined that the Fathers (Samuel-like) shall be bewitched from their comfortable repose, and again hear the clarion of war. We had dreamed better things of the name of Nevin, than that it should find Early Christian Antiquity reeking with the fumes of Popery. This of course, is the old rancid cant of the self-conceited brethren," who prefer the popery of their individual judgments, and are resolved that it shall be inflicted upon all dissenters from themselves, at the formidable peril of having no reputation for a change of heart." But of Dr. Nevin we had entertained fairer opinions, and more cheering hopes, than to suppose he would become a victim to the old pitfall, and plunge as deep in prejudice, as those who, aware that Antiquity is no friend to ministerial parity, deride it with a hate so scornful, as to remind one of an observation of the delinquent in Shakspeare, who could not tolerate a man of virtue. Iago envied Cassio, and exclaimed, in view of his luminous and upright conduct, He hath a daily beauty in his life, So these people seem to quarrel with Episcopacy, because of the painful contrast its embodiment of order and fitness presents to their own (so-called) platform; which, being without a head, and indeed without a body, appears to be a sort of ecclesiastical impersonality, that no one has any proclivity whatever to revere. To honor it, would be like taking one's hat off before the subtle Dr. Emmons' definition of the human soul-a string of onions without a string.* We are somewhat afraid that Dr. Nevin, after being an "almost" churchman, is falling back into former tastes and habits, and verifying the adage of Horace about the difficulty of eradicating innate predilections: Naturam expellas furcâ, tamen usque recurret. For only see, with what a genuine schismatic zeal and twang he hurls condemnation at the Fathers, as if little better at *The Doctor esteemed the soul a succession of ideas and essences, which he thus graphically identified. Dr. Dwight wrote against him. |