words, seriously believes that the former certainly bestows, and the latter truly receives the peculiar gifts and qualifications of the Holy Ghost during that ceremony, and at that precise moment, I refer to their own decision, and that of their "brotherhood." All I know of the matter is this; it is so declared in the book of common prayer, and in the doctrines and discipline of the Methodist church;" but there is not one hint in the New Testament, that any mortals possess the prerogative to impart, or the power to obtain, by "imposition of hands," that match less boon. Therefore, what ordination is among those who maintain ministerial parity, and who utterly discard all pretensions to confer either capacity or grace, is entirely beyond my short-sighted ken. Nevertheless, Rabbis talk, and the unthinking multitude believe, that there is something inscrutable in the ceremonial which is prescribed-and thus churchcraft is exalted. "Instal."-Then succeeds the installation, and a sonorous Babylonish word it is. Among papists with their cathedrals and convents, and English and Irish Episcopalians with the same edifices and appendages as "in the olden time" of jolly abbots, and their "sisters" and "nieces," frisky nuns, and even among the Scotchmen of the established "kirk," it has a definite meaning on account of its similitude; for it comprises the fastening of a man in a "stall" like a horse, and giving him clothing of "purple and fine linen," with sumptuous fare every day for fattening, until he "waxes wanton." But what it implies in the United States, unless by a high-sounding appellative to sugar over the wormwood and venom of churchcraft, and thus to deceive the unwary, is altogether inexplicable. At all events, neither Jesus, the "Head of the Church and Lord of all," nor his apostles, nor the original evangelists, nor the primitive Christians during the first three centuries after the gracious Redeemer's resurrection, either taught or practised what in the modern technology of churchcraft is denominated "licensure, or ordination, or installation," with their antichristian consociates, "inaugural sermons, and ecclesiastical judicatures." All of which combined are graphically depicted in the poet Virgil's unparalleled and marvellous biped, a huge, deformed, and blind monster;" which doubtless is cousin german to the "Beast that has two horns like a lamb, and speaks as a dragon." Rev. xiii. 11. 66 66 The evil is indigenous in the system; and for it there is no other cure, than that which "the testimony of Jesus. as the spirit of prophecy" announced of its execrable parents, the Beast of blasphemy, and the Mother of Harlots, its remediless overthrow, and utter extermination. To cite Martin Luther's quaint but forcible truism,-as long as every man carries a pope in his own belly," only give them an eligible opportunity, unrestricted by divine grace, and if the concurrent history of fifteen hundred years can furnish ample evidence of the fact, they will manifest, especially in assembled multitudes of ambitious church-rulers, the truth of the Apostle John's vision: that the Beast, in the " power, and the seat, and great authority" of the dragon, is still alive and rampant,-"like unto a leopard, with the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion, speaking blasphemies."-Rev. xiii. 1—9, III.-OPERATIONS OF CHURCH COURTS. RABBI DEMETRIUS, A. M., WITH HIS CRAFTSMEN, FALSE ACCUSATIONS. PROBABLY in no assemblies which are now formed, is there less Christian independence and moral courage and mental enlargement, than in Ecclesiastical Judicatures or Church Courts. "The fear of man that bringeth a snare" is the great instigating and governing principle of those anomalous bodies. There is more of the "esprit du corps" among those craftsmen, than amid any other classes of society; and when combined, as it often is, with an almost profound ignorance of every thing which is extra-official, it is not surprising that such preposterous displays of injustice, and even of fatuity, are common at their discordant convocations. To persons who never reflect at all it appears very imposing, that every congregation within the bounds" should be admitted to have a voice and a vote in an "inferior judicatory," and that there should be as many lay officers as there are preachers entitled to a seat in the Conference, Association, Synod, Convention, or General Assembly. The Methodist Episcopal Conferences, however, acting more consistently, omit that incumbrance upon the hie rarchical machinery. As the business now is arranged, laymen are mostly for show and effect. Watch those Church Courts whenever they assemble, and it will generally be discovered that all laymen vote with the preacher of his own congregation; or if a vacant society is represented, the delegate seldom opposes the notorious sentiments of the ruling Rabbis. The lay members of ecclesiastical judicatures are usually selected, because they are men of influence in the church and the world through their wealth; and who therefore are supporters of the aristocratical Church Court, on account of their being emphatically "of the earth, earthy." The attendance of laymen in all ordinary cases is disproportioned to the number of preachers; and while the "doctors" are confederated to execute their schemes, the laymen are without plan. Often they are total strangers to each other, "alike unknowing and unknown ;" and confiding in "the simplicity and godly sincerity" of Diotrephes and Demetrius, they whisper forth their aye, when they ought to roar out their NO. In nine cases out of ten, a majority of the laymen, upon all the complex themes, could neither make an accurate statement of the cause which had been decided, nor adduce a rational argument for the vote which they had given. Their chief, if not their only plea would be this-" I have done as Bishop ed, or as Doctor advised, or as Mr. Such ecclesiastical assemblies, especially in almost all cases where individual reputation, or personal right, or Christian liberty is concerned, are worse than insulting mockery. orderwished." JESUITS. It is not a little marvellous, that the papal legate, with his subordinate priests of Babylon in this republic, did not set in regular motion their own appropriate contrivance of "the mystery of iniquity" until the year 1829, when their first metropolitan convention was held in Baltimore. The wily arch-prelatical disciple of Ignatius Loyola must long have envied the operations of that "protestant Jesuitism." Perceiving at last with his watchful scrutiny, that some "men slept," and that many were giving "heed to fables and endless genealogies," and that others were making "their voices to be heard on high," and that the rest were inefficient watchmen in Zion, so far as "that Wicked's" machinations are concerned, "whose coming is after the working of satan, with all deceivableness of unrighteousness and strong delusion"-2 Thess. ii. 3—12—that "enemy" resolved to "sow his tares." Thirty years ago an American popish council would have alarmed all our country. The crafty Jesuits well knew that fact. They therefore permitted the citizens to be drilled into their system under other names, and to exercise implicit faith and unreserved obedience towards assemblages of fallible men with the title of "Courts of Jesus Christ," and "Courts of Christ's house!" For they well know that the difference between believing in a protestant ecclesiastical judicature who cannot err, and a popish infallible council, is so metaphysical a distinction, that ninety-nine persons out of a hundred cannot comprehend it. Thus give them the countless majority |