holy atmosphere appears to produce upon the judgments and hearts of most of the ministers."

The very terms, "Church Court, Ecclesiastical Judicature, Court of Jesus Christ, and Court of the Lord's House," are branded with "the mark of the Beast," and the stench and "smoke of the bottomless pit" surrounds them. Circumstances render the inscription of satan upon them more or less visible. The noisome exhalations from them differ in degrees of venom and putrescence; but they all embody a deleterious portion of that churchcraft, which they have clandestinely pilfered from "the mystery of iniquity" in the vatican. As they were unknown in that early period of the church when "great grace was upon them all," so they will be equally banished from the millennial kingdom of Christ, for they all will be consumed in the same burning with the popish procession of Corpus Christi, and the Jesuit-holds of every foul spirit, and the Ursuline nunnery cages of unclean and hateful birds, and "the Beast, and the False Prophet."

In the New Testament, councils of priests and scribes, and "Sanhedrims," with all similar consociated craftsmen, are never mentioned without condemnation, either clearly implied or expressed. They are always represented as the incurable "enemies of the cross of Christ," and tormentors of his people-as obdurate, incorrigible, and fiend-like persecutors, who "make war with the Lamb.” The Lord Jesus Christ, with the strongest emphasis, in a great diversity of forms, and by very affecting examples, derived from tyrannical rulers and little children, and

especially by his own illustrative act,-Immanuel washing the feet of his disciples,—has most authoritatively condemned all priestly haughtiness, and the arrogance and wickedness of "Church Courts," with their Babylonian spirit and practices.

The history of all those impious excrescences, which through the mystery of iniquity, have been engrafted upon the primitive churches, demonstrates that any good to be derived from them is visionary; while their curse is certain and perennial. Ecclesiastical records, and the civil annals of the European nations, during one thousand years, are scarcely nothing more than details of the abominations elicited by Church Courts.

In those assemblies, if we may judge according to the Lord's rule," by their fruits ye shall know them," there is a steadfast determination on the part of the Rabbis to impel every measure, if possible, according to the course which will most efficiently consolidate their own power.

The forms are very imposing. There are singing and prayer, and a sermon, at the commencement. So there were at popish councils! The cardinal legate, in pontificalibus, with his deputies, mumbled over the Litany of the Mass, and of their Lady, the Queen of Heaven and Mother of God." They chaunted the Veni Spiritus. Amid purple and scarlet, like their transcripts, some of our modern pulpits, a pompously adorned Babylonian mummer pronounced a magniloquent harangue, and then the idolaters rose up to eat, and drink, and play." To the looker-on, the external was fascinating. But if one sincere perspicacious Christian saw the interior, to him the

whole head must have appeared sick, and the whole heart faint. "From the sole of the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores." Devotional forms at "Church Courts," it is to be feared, sometimes, are little superior to a Laodicean ceremonial, which is divested of those cardinal attributes that render prayer, praise, and preaching beneficial to man and acceptable to God.

Unholy tempers and malignant dispositions are inherent in Ecclesiastical Judicatures." Preachers are so used to talk in the pulpit without contradiction, that some of them deem themselves almost oracles; and are therefore disconcerted when they enter an assembly of an hundred dogmatists, who, it is manifest, instead of listening and learning, like the Jewish "chief priests and the scribes," prefer to cavil and thunder.

Church Courts seldom discuss directly those evangelical concerns which include the prosperity of the Lord's household, or the most efficient methods to obtain the answer to those sublime petitions-"Thy kingdom come! Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven!" When those holy topics are introduced, they are merely themes through which the churchcraft can be sustained. The education of youth for ministerial usefulness, and institutions formed to disseminate the gospel, dwindle into schemes of personal aggrandizement, and the prolonged extension of executive power. That eloquence which might melt obduracy, and arouse them who are "dead in trespasses and sins," and urge onward the slothful, is wasted in heart-rending squabbles, and "strife among the

workmen of like occupation, which of them shall be accounted the greatest."

The Apostle John, in his visions at Patmos, saw the "Beast rise up out of the sea;" so churchcraft and its mischiefs flow from the contentions and commotions of "Ecclesiastical Judicatures." Bring into discussion the dogmas of the Old School, or of the New School, or of the abolitionists, or of the pro-slavery men, or of the gobetweens, or of the everything-arians, and nothing-arians, or of the Christian school; and haughtiness, malignity, ambition and " cunning craftiness" are soon unfolded. You may hear Diotrephes "prating his malicious words." You can see Demetrius contriving the machinery to enlarge and strengthen the selfish craft. You will be stunned with the noise and fictions of some Turtullus; for whose impostures, that fox-like imp of the Beast of blasphemy and the Mother of Harlots, called Common Fame, which is the cherished myrmidon of all inquisitors, always stands ready with his perjuries to vouch. You may also behold Alexander, in his Babylonish smithery, working away, and doing much evil. The intelligent, humble, and upright members are ashamed and brow-beaten by the hypocritical confederates, who care not how the mischief is wrought, provided they obtain and secure the ascendency. Thus honest and conscientious Christians, who truly desire to act in "the fear of God," are cast down; while they who "speak loftily, in great power spread themselves like a green bay-tree."

Nothing is more extraordinay to a single-hearted Christian than to watch the complex movements of Ecclesiasti

cal Judicatures. To them it is truly surprising, that the controvertists in those assemblies do not appeal to the Old and New Testaments for a sanction to their "judicial procedures," except to pervert their meaning into an authority for that corruption which they plainly condemn. It is not uncommon for four, seven, or ten litigants to take up their own Constitution, and for every one of them to give it a different sense, and all of them a meaning contrary to its obvious design. If there were no other cause, the banishment from Church Courts of the Bible as the only authoritative standard and directory, is fully sufficient to insure that Ichabod will be written on the canopy over their heads, in their halls of discord and malevolence.

If a minister sincerely addresses a Church Court in the spirit and style of the gospel, he will probably receive a retort after the example of that Christian-killing prelate, Gardiner.

A lowly disciple named Ralph Hare, was taken before that sanguinary persecutor, and was charged with heresy. Hare denied the allegation, and meekly answered-"I seek and daily pray to God, that I may know the truth, and I trust the Lord will preserve me from error."

Gardiner, who was a Rabbi of the genuine breed, replied: "I perceive thou art a naughty fellow."

"Alas!" said Hare-" what evil did I speak ???

66

By Saint Mary," answered the profane popish inquisitor, "you said the Lord, the Lord; and to speak of the Lord, is symbolum hereticorum: the sign of heretics! Thou must turn or burn, thou naughty fellow!"

In the same manner, if "a follower of Paul the aged"