ledge, the delicacy of touch, and the astonishing preciseness of applying the probe and the knife, which we admire in the first surgeons of the age."
A correct and memorable witness indeed, to the kind of treatment offered by these religionists to Him, whom, after His exposure on the cross, His true disciples reverently "took down," and "wrapped in fine linen," and "laid in a sepulchre wherein never man before was laid."
I will conclude by summing up in one sentence, which must be pardoned me, if in appearance harsh, what the foregoing discussion is intended to show. There is a widely spread, though variously admitted School of doctrine among us, within and without the Church, which intends and professes peculiar piety, as directing its attention to the heart itself, not to any thing external to us, whether creed, actions, or ritual. I do not hesitate to assert that this doctrine is based upon error, that it is really a specious form of trusting man rather than God, that it is in its nature Rationalistic, and that it tends to Socinianism. How the individual supporters of it will act as time goes on is another matter,—the good will be separated from the bad; but the School, as such, will pass through Sabellianism, to that "god-denying Apostasy," to use the ancient phrase, to which in the beginning of its career it professed to be especially opposed.
OXFORD.
The Feast of the Purification.
N. B. For reasons, not necessary here to explain, it may be proper to observe, that this Tract was written before the commencement of 1836.
