in their Saviour, and those who rejected him, but only that thus far—in the rejection of the plain teaching of Scripture on the doctrine of the Sacraments, and the mode and method and principles of that rejection,—they did even verbally coincide. I do it solely because I am convinced that it is of much moment to the Church of Christ in this land, that we should look more heedfully whither we are going. No comparison is intended between the two schools, beyond the point for which they are compared. In the very context, wherein the passages are found, the writers will frequently part asunder as widely as possible: the Reformed School, speaking warmly of the blessings of the death of Christ, and of our unutterable union with Him; the Socinian,—as their school is wont. Yet on this very account the comparison is the more important; for if the deadly heresy of Socinus had sprung out of a dead and lifeless school, this had been the less to be wondered at, and had had far less solemnity of warning: but now to see it, starting out of the Reformed School, almost at its very birth, and amid its first freshness and life; this is indeed awful, and speaks most truly as to the delicacy, as well as the preciousness, of the treasure committed to our keeping by God; how rigorously he "requires of our hands" any tampering with it; that amazing as this His gift is, yet He is not careful to retain it in our knowledge or our use, when man in any way neglects or abuses it: that He is more jealous of His own honour in vindicating presently all misemployment or defilement of this inestimable gift, than in preventing it from being, as seems to us, altogether lost. Why God has made His revealed truth so frail and so tender, so easy to be lost, so difficult to be regained, we can of course but in a very little measure guess; and if we involuntarily guess, must needs confess that we assuredly guess much amiss; but it is so different from what human speculation would have supposed beforehand, yea, so different from what our own pride and self-importance, would persuade us yet that it is; we again and again so build our hopes on the supposed importance of our Church or nation in God's designs, or the zeal displayed upon certain enterprises to His honour; and this, in despite of the history of His dealings in His whole Church, that
