them. The Presbyterian churches of the United States adopted the opposite prohibition policy. The Congregational churches of New England were at first tolerant of Unitarian views, till, considerable defections having occurred, the subject came up, in 1816, for general discussion, when this toleration was abandoned, and the opposite policy adopted. This was a revolution in the policy of Congregationalism, against which many protested at the time, and concerning which some are doubtful still. Since this time, the Supreme Divinity of Christ has not only been generally held by Congregationalists, as it is by church of Englandists and Episcopalians, but has been insisted upon as necessary to membership in the church. The correctness of this, either in respect to principle or policy, admits of being seriously questioned. LEICESTER A. SAWYER: Organic Christianity, pp. 405–8.

This testimony on behalf of the most enlarged views of Christian communion is extremely valuable and instructive; proceeding, as it does, from the pen of one who regards "the denial of the Divinity of Christ," his essential Divinity, as "undoubtedly a great error;" and on whom therefore cannot rest any suspicion of his being favorable to Unitarianism. Though assured that "the toleration of error seldom prejudices the truth," he acknowledges, as an honest man and a candid historian, that, by admitting the principle of toleration, the English, Swiss, and French Presbyterian churches became, on the whole, Unitarian; and that, by adopting an opposite policy,—that of exclusion from the membership of their church, — the Congregationalists have, in general, remained Trinitarian; admissions which seem to imply that the tendency of religious freedom and Christian charity, modelled on the usages and the spirit of apostolic times, is to produce a state of things leading to the reception of Unitarian doctrine.

Schismatics, stickling for church purity, and laying down laws to promote it, which have not been laid down by Christ, have, like others who have pretended to be wiser than God, done grievous injury to the purity of church communion. They have, unwittingly, laid a snare for their own deception. In prescribing terms of communion which are not to be found in the Bible, they have flattered their own vanity, and are in the greatest danger of preferring their own sectarian features to the broad outlines of Christian character laid down in the word of God. Party men are in the utmost jeopardy of extending a culpable degree of charity to party men. Chiming in with their peculiarities is apt to cover a multitude of sins. Hence it is, that a strict-communion church has the gross inconsistency connected with it of having excluded from its pale the most excellent ones of the earth, whilst it has taken in those of its own denomination, who, in a spirit

of candor, are little better than Samaritans. Truly, the practice is revolting, which is followed in many sectarian churches, of excommunicating, at every dispensation of the Lord's Supper, every Christian save those of their own section. Men such as Leighton and Owen and Fuller are cast out without any compunction, because they agree not with them in church order or government; and yet party men, of very suspicious character, find admission. Alas! sectarianism too often takes the bad, and casts the good away. It fills the Lord's table with nominal Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, or Covenanters, rather than with real Christians, bearing all these designations. Were Christ on earth, would he not say to all such churches, "By what authority did you refuse to hold communion with my servants ? and who gave you that authority?"—DR. GAVIN STRUTHERS: Party Spirit; in Essays on Christian Union, pp. 423-4.

Wherever the catholic spirit exists in its genuine character and legitimate amplitude and strength, it will display itself in admitting and courting the society of fellow-believers, without distinction of outward denomination; the intercourse of personal companionship and friendship, and fireside association, along with the exercises of Christian converse and social communion with God; and the intercourse, too, still private, though somewhat more enlarged, of those spiritual coteries, to which our forefathers gave the appropriate designation of fellowship-meetings. It will display itself still further in combination for purposes of Christian benevolence, and in co-operation for promoting their accomplishment, in every accessible way that does not trench upon conscientiousness, or demand any sacrifice of principle. And can any satisfactory reason be assigned why it should not display itself in the more extended "communion of saints," as exemplified in the more public ordinances of divine appointment and Christian celebration; and, above all, in the simple but delightful feast of love, the Lord's Supper? In what capacity is it that we take our places there? Is it as fellow-presbyterians, or fellow-congregationalists, or fellow-baptists, or fellow-pedobaptists? Is it not rather as fellowbelievers, fellow-disciples, fellow-christians? If a Presbyterian and a Congregationalist, or a Baptist and a Pedobaptist, object to sitting down with each other at the table of the Lord, one of two inferences must follow: either they must, on account of their difference of sentiment as to the government or rites of the church, question each other's Christianity; or it must be, not as believers, disciples, Christians, but as Presbyterians or Congregationalists, Baptists or

Pedobaptists, that they respectively consider themselves as entitled to a seat at the feast. And is there any one bearing the name of Jesus, now to be found, who holds and will defend so antiscriptural and narrow-minded a position? Let it be remembered, reader, it is not our table, it is the Lord's table; and shall we, then, consider ourselves as entitled to shut the door of admission to it against any whom, there is every reason to believe, the divine Master of the feast would himself receive? Is there no presumption in this? It is not a Presbyterian table, or an Independent table: it is a Christian table. And ought not all, then, who are "of one heart and one soul" in regard to the essential articles of evangelical truth, and who give evidence of their attachment to these blessed truths by "a conversation as it becometh the gospel of Christ," to welcome one another to a joint participation of the symbols of the same broken body and the same shed blood, which are the objects of their common faith, the ground of their common hope, the charter of their common freedom, and the spring of their common holiness and their common joy?... If I see a fellow-believer who happens to be a Presbyterian manifesting in his life a larger amount of the exalted moral excellences and the lovely beauties of the Christian character than another fellow-believer who is an Independent, I must, if my sentiments and feelings are in any thing like harmony with the dictates of the word of God, experience a correspondingly larger amount of the love of complacency towards the one than towards the other. The character must stand higher in my estimation, and lie closer to my heart. And of what kind, then, must that principle be, how am I to characterize, how am I to designate it, — according to which I am to be precluded from giving a place beside me at the Christian feast to the more worthy, while I am bound to give it to the less worthy, of my brotherly affection? - bound to receive him who is less a Christian because he is an Independent, and bound to exclude him who is more a Christian because he is a Presbyterian! DR. RALPH WARDLAW: A Catholic Spirit; in Essays on Christian Union, pp. 338-40.

Of a character similar to those quoted from Drs. Wardlaw and Struthers are the sentiments of Dr. BALMER on the same subject, and in the same work, pp. 52–76; but, excellent as they are alike in spirit and in style, they would occupy too much room if inserted here, and a short extract would not do them justice.

Few Trinitarians of the present day imagine that the Twelve who accompanied Jesus during his ministry on earth, — who walked and drank

and ate with him, who heard him utter his message of mercy in the name of his God and Father, and address the same great Being in the language of praise and supplication, and who, though they loved and revered him with the simplicity and tenderness of little children, sometimes forgot their own inferiority; some of them speaking to him in terms of familiarity, some rebuking him, others contending in his presence for earthly power, one of them denying and another betraying him, and all at last forsaking him; - few Trinitarians, we say, are now disposed to think that the apostles, who never, during the time of their personal intercourse with their Lord, had any conception of the spiritual nature of his office, had, or could have, the faintest idea of his being the unchangeable and ever-blessed God. To these men, however, who, like the Unitarians of modern times, believed, not that their Master was Almighty God, but merely his great Messenger and Anointed One, but whose views of his kingdom were confessedly much inferior to theirs, did Jesus address the words, "By this shall all men know that ye" who fully believe in my divine mission-"are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

*

To this fact, and to the just inference to be drawn from Christ's beautiful and comprehensive precept, some of the good men from whom we have quoted do not seem to have adverted. With much kindness and liberality of feeling, but with a proper indignation against the conduct of such sectaries as would debar from Christian communion persons of a high moral and religious character, because, though adopting their general conceptions of the Trinity and the Atonement, they differ from them as to church government and forms, these writers stop short in the application of their great principle, and unhesitatingly refuse to hold communion with a "Socinian" or Unitarian daughter of Christ's church, who though, like her reputedly orthodox sisters, she may have failed to do all that might have been justly expected has yet been in some degree distinguished for her works of love and benevolence, for her devotion to the principles of religious freedom, and for her defences of our common Christianity against the attacks of unbelievers; and who, while she claims for her own the philanthropic Firmin, the nobleminded Milton, the godlike Newton, the pious Lardner, and the frank and fearless Priestley, would associate their names, not merely with a section of the church, but with the church itself and with general humanity, and would, in a spirit of catholic love, invite to her communion, without one question as to the peculiarities of their creed, all who profess, and desire to practise, the religion of the once-despised but now-exalted Christ.

*Even the truly excellent and high-minded BAXTER says that a "church fallen to Arianism is unmeet for Christian communion and to be owned as a church of Christ;" and that, when the Arian or Socinian "venteth his heresy, he may be by the magistrate punished for his crime, and by the churches be branded as none of their communion." (See Practical Works, vol. v. pp. 443-4; and vol. xv. p. 442.) But living, as Baxter did, in an age of rampant bigotry, it is not surprising that he could not wholly escape from the deleterious influences of sectarianism.

How much is the face of religion altered from what it was in the days of the apostles! The ancient simplicity of doctrine is turned into abundance of new or private opinions, introduced as necessary articles of religion; and, alas! how many of them false! So that Christians, being too proud to accept of the ancient test of Christianity, cannot now agree among themselves what a Christian is, and who is to be esteemed a Christian; and so they deny one another to be Christians, and destroy their charity to each other, and divide the church, and make themselves a scorn, by their divisions, to the infidel world. . . . . . Take heed of engaging yourselves in a sect or faction. For, when once you depart from catholic charity, there groweth up, instead of it, a partial respect to the interest of that sect to which you join; and you will think that whatsoever doth promote that sect doth promote Christianity, and whatever is against that sect is against the church or cause of God. A narrow, sectarian, separating mind will make all the truths of God give place to the opinions of his party; and will measure the prosperity of the gospel in the world by the prosperity of his party, as if he had forgot that there are any more men on the face of the earth, or thought God regarded none but them. He will not stick to persecute all the rest of the church of Christ, if the interest of his sect require it. When once men incorporate themselves into a party, it possesseth them with another spirit, even with a strange uncharitableness, injustice, cruelty, and partiality. What hath the Christian world suffered by one sect's persecuting another, and faction rising up in fury to maintain its own interest, as if it had been to maintain the being of all religion! — RICHARD BAXTER: Christian Directory; in Practical Works, vol. ii. pp. 159–60; and vol. vi. p. 184.

Party spirit is a disposition that cannot be easily defined, and it would be difficult to include in a definition of it even its genus and species. It is a monstrous composition of all bad genuses and of all bad species. It is a hydra that reproduces while it seems to destroy itself, and which, when one head hath been cut off, instantly produces