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Reference to Mr Abbott's Editor.
New England States, there is a body, large and respectable if considered absolutely, but far from large when viewed in comparison with the numbers of other professed Christians. It consists of those who disbelieve the doctrines held, as to their essential principles, by all other Christian denominations, with respect to the way in which sinful, guilty, degraded mankind may regain the favour of God and the pure felicity of the world to come;—the doctrines of a divine Saviour, His assumption of our nature, His propitiation and righteousness, and the restoration of holiness and happiness by His all-gracious Spirit. This class of persons is treated, by some public men, and in some influential writings, chiefly periodical, with scorn and contumely, and are held up to hatred, not to say persecution; they are continually represented as blasphemers and infidels, alike dangerous to the state, and inimical to all vital religion. Hence, thousands of excellent persons, deriving their only knowledge from the source to which I have alluded, regard this portion of their neighbours with horror, never think of treating them with tenderness, never attempt to obtain a lodgment for truth and holy affections in their hearts. Ah, little think these well meaning persons, &c...... The circumstances of my life have put me into a condition of more correctly knowing this class of our fellow professors of Christianity; I know that there are among them serious, thoughtful, amiable persons, whose minds are prepossessed with prejudices against us and our system, much to the same extent as we are against them and theirs. I know, not merely how they reason, but how they feel. They in general have extremely erroneous conceptions of the orthodox system of faith. They have imbibed those misconceptions in early years; and subsequent circumstances have contributed to strengthen them. For some of those circumstances, of no trivial power to confirm prejudice, we have to blame ourselves. This is a state of things full of mischief and danger. Surely it is a pressing duty, to do all that we can for clearing away the clouds of ignorance and misrepresentation which, with so dire effect, discolour and distort the objects seen through them. For this purpose, it is to me an heartfelt pleasure to say that Mr. Abbott's "Corner Stone" is admirably adapted. Notions producing feelings, and these feelings of deep and wide activity in the formation of religious sentiments, have been derived from Pelagius, Socinus, and Episcopius, from Clarke, Law, and Watson, from Lardner, Priestley, and Channing; and it is the thoroughly pervading influence on the mind of those mutually acting feelings and sentiments, which produces all that is formidable in the theoretical objections, and much of that which is effective in the practical repugnance, which are entertained by many against the doctrines of grace and holiness, through the Atonement and the Spirit of Christ. How desirable to meet those feelings in their germinating principle; to anticipate those sentiments, by the dissolution of the causes which would form them. This is what our author has done. His reasonings and illustrations upon the personal and official attributes of our Lord and Saviour, are such as may be compared to the correctness of anatomical know-
