the doctors, it is inferred—that it is preferable and more evangelical, to transfer the management of the funds and the direction of affairs to the subordinates of a "Church Court," than to intrust the same concerns to the guidance of the Christians themselves, by their own elective agents. Now, it would puzzle Solomon, himself, to point out how an executive committee, nominated by a "Church Court," can be more obligated for the faithful discharge of their duties, than a similar body elected immediately by the members of a society. The accountableness in voluntary consociations is direct; but the management under the jurisdiction of an "Ecclesiastical Judicature" is totally exempt from efficient control. The committee transfer any merited censure to the "Church Court," whose mandates they obey; and they are a nonentity when they have dissolved. As expressed by the fiat of the majority, the doings of the "Supreme Head of the Church" are infallible; and there is no power to redress their wrongs, or to punish their flagitiousness.

All the wrangling to induce Christians to transfer their donations to institutions superintended by their own "Church Courts," is only an artful contrivance to augment and perpetuate antichristian authority. By appealing to sectarian prejudices, it binds burdens upon the members; and fetters them, while they are unconscious of the process, and of their own debasement. "Ecclesiastical Judicatures" are the least responsible assemblages upon earth. They act with perfect impunity; and for the errors which they maintain, and the calumny which they disseminate, and the injustice which they approve or commit,

they fear no consequences. Each member claims to be innocent, although the whole confederacy are transgressors. The act is done by the majority; and yet every individual may protest against the unexpected results of his own iniquitous vote. True was the remark of a Pennsylvania judge, twenty-three years ago-"I highly esteem the ministers and officers of the churches whom I know, in all their relations of life; but when they are combined in a Church Court, they perpetrate acts of iniquity which few other persons would have the hardihood to attempt."

The transfer of money for Christian benevolence to the management of "Church Courts," as they at present are constituted, is almost as repugnant to common sense and piety, as it is to aid in the erection of a masshouse, or convent, or theatre. It is supplying the means to prolong strife between the professed followers of the Lamb; and to extend "that spirit of antichrist, which is in the world."

For years past, the power to impel the Presbyterian ecclesiastical machinery has been vacillating. But by an extraordinary concentration of effort, a headstrong majority in their General Assembly of 1837, resolved, per fas aut nefas, to seize the only opportunity which they conceived they should ever possess, to eject their opponents, and to seize the "Lord's heritage." Whether the denunciations which the majority of that Church Court made against their fellow servants are true or false-whether the alleged mischievous effects of the Home Missionary Society's operations be fact or fiction-and whether the proscribed churches and ministers in the states of New York and Ohio are deserving of the contemptible ana

thema which was fulminated against them, can easily be decided by the ensuing criterion.

That man who is charged with a crime, and can only be punished without an impartial trial, and by the utter abrogation of all the laws of equity and the gospel, is either innocent, or cannot be found guilty. Persons who thus denounce Christians, and condemn their antago`nists, who are not proved to be offenders, unless by "common fame," that is, by the calumny of their accusers, whatever may be their pretexts, may read their own character in Psalm xciv. 5, 20, 21:-"6 They break in pieces thy people, O Lord, and afflict thine heritage. They frame mischief by a law. They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent"—and then impiously promulge, that their "throne of iniquity" has fellowship with God.

Their own boastful declarations are ample evidence upon this melancholy topic. Having the power then to crush the defenceless, as they said, they would exercise it; lest when their next grand "Church Court" shall be held, they should be a minority. That avowal is the insolence of triumphant despotism; but whether it is Christian humility, righteousness, and brotherly love, those Rabbis may decide.

George A. Baxter, a Virginian preaching slave-driver, whose portrait Mr. Keys, an elder and member of that Assembly, of 1837, has so accurately delineated, candidly explained that" mystery of iniquity." The Presbyterians of Virginia, for thirty years past, have been very harmonious in their theological opinions. If there be a line of

demarcation half-way between the Old School ultras, and the New School men, the Virginians were stationed within the boundaries of the latter division. There must be a powerfully exciting cause, which could so suddenly have driven them from exemplary moderation, to take the van, as champions of the "high church" party. Mr. Baxter attested, that one grand motive was to insure the continuance of slavery among the Presbyterians. Thus they make their resolute determination to persist in the highest crime against God and man, the plea to extenuate their arrogance and malignity towards their brethren. It is manstealing churchcraft in all its rottenness and criminality.

Some recent transactions of ecclesiastical assemblies, with their extraordinary decretals, recal to remembrance a fact narrated by John Fox, in his martyrology.

Of the " bloody six articles" which were enacted by Henry VIII., king of England, that primitive puritan declared: it might be supposed that they had been "written with the blood of the dragon, and by the claws of the devil!" If there are not some anathemas in the United States, of which the same judgment may truly be pronounced, then their own clerks have falsified their records.

That immortal historian relates that, on one occasion three protestants were condemned for disbelieving those bloody articles, or as the act was called, "the whip with six strings ;" and three papists were sentenced to death for denying the regal supremacy. They were ordered to be publicly executed at the same time-the three protest

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ants to be burned as heretics; and the three papists to be "hanged, drawn, and quartered” as traitors. They were dragged from the prison through the streets in pairs, on three hurdles, to Smithfield. A protestant and a papist were chained togethed upon each hurdle. The papists reviled their Christian companions with the utmost malice and anger; and avowed, that "to be carried to execution with the gospellers, was more bitter to them than death itself."

While the three protestants were burning, and the three papists were undergoing their butchery, a foreigner, who was watching that almost unparalleled monstrosity, thus expressed his surprise :-" Deus bone! quomodo hic vivunt gentes? hic suspenduntur papistæ, illic comburuntur anti-papistæ." Gracious God! how can people live in this country? Here they hang papists, and they burn antipapists.

The analogy between that popish tragedy, and the scene exhibited by the majority of the last Presbyterian General Assembly, is very impressive. By the same fierce "act," they attempted to decapitate New School stern Presbyterians, and Old School half Congregationalists, old Calvinist anti-slavery men, and pro-slavery new lights. They tried to impale believers in the "Act and Testimony" to please "stealers of men," and exonerated their inflexible opponents to preserve the churchcraft. In that marvellous position now stands the Presbyterian "church militant!” They are the wonder of persons ignorant of "Ecclesiastical Judicatures," the stumbling block of weak brethren,