adequate to her exigences, the greatest efficacy was attributed to the indulgences of the Pope, and to the good works of Christian professors. Good works were pronounced to have merit in the sight of God. These would avail the individual who performed them, at the day of judgment, and insure his salvation. The merit of good works might be transferred from one individual to another, and was considered as an atonement for his sins, and by it he received a title to divine favour. What were the good works with which the Romish Church associated all this merit? Were they genuine expressions of a mind, meek, humble and resigned, under the dispensations of Divine Providence? Were they works of righteousness, benevolence, and mercy to mankind? Were men directed to commute for their sins, and to acquire a title to the favour of their Maker by living soberly, righteously, and piously? Were they exhorted to amass a stock of transferable merit by doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with their God? No. The meritorious works of the Romish Church bore no resemblance to the moral virtues inculcated in the gospel. Men were taught confidently to expect for themselves pardon and salvation, and by their imputed merit to save the souls of others, as a reward for bestowing their worldly substance to found monasteries, to endow religious houses, to pay for prayers offered by priests to obtain the delivery of souls suffering in purgatory: in a word, to give their property to purposes of Papal aggrandizement. Luther clearly saw the delusion and danger to which men were exposed by

the Romish doctrine of merit, and in the endeavour to guard Christian disciples against them, he was carried to the opposite extreme. His statement of justification by faith alone, seems to imply, that, on the plan of the gospel, an observance of moral precepts is of no importance. Not satisfied that man can merit nothing of his Maker, and that on the merciful promise of God, the Christian founds his hopes of acceptance, as the reward of a sincere endeavour to do the divine will, Luther's remarks, in their obvious meaning, import that obedience to the moral laws of the gospel is neither the condition of salvation, nor a preparation for the society of heaven. He expressly asserts, "that not only were good works not necessary to salvation; but how good soever they might appear, they were imortal sins." And one of his followers, of the greatest celebrity, as expressly declares, "that good works are an impediment to salvation." The language of many orthodox divines, on the subject of good works, from the period of the reformation, to our day, has been such, as would lead an uninformed hearer to suppose, that by yielding obedience to the divine commands, he should endanger his salvation. If the disciples of the reformers had, in a literal sense, received their comments on the demerit of the moral virtues, and adopted them as practical principles, they might consistently have sinned, that grace may abound.

The Lutherans soon purified the articles of their Church from some of the more exceptionable parts

of their founder's creed; but at Geneva, the system, for ages, was retained in its original features, and therefore it has borne Calvin's name as its author. But, from authentick information, we learn, that, almost without exception, the present divines of Geneva have discarded the peculiarities of Calvinism, and have introduced purer articles of faith, and more liberal principles of ministerial and Christian intercourse and communion.

In New England, a large class of divines, who choose to bear the epithet, orthodox, deny the doctrine of imputation, and on several other points, differ materially from the system of Calvin; yet, however they modify their faith, they style themselves Calvinists, and confidently maintain that they hold the peculiar doctrines of the reformation.

The reformers, as men, partook of the weakness of human nature they received their religious education under the most corrupt establishment : all their early prejudices bound them to slavish submission to the decrees of a bishop, who was generally acknowledged as the vicegerent of Christ; and the interest and power of Christendom were in a great measure combined to oppose every scheme of reforming the mother Church; yet they possessed force of mind to break their thraldom, and resolution to oppose the corruptions and spiritual despotism by which Christian professors were debased and oppressed. While knowledge and truth, liberty and religion are regarded, the memory of the reformers will be venerated.

SERMON XIII.

THE DUTY OF PROTESTANTS.

COLOSSIANS i. 9, 10.

For this cause, we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God,

IT is unnecessary to mention that a very general subject has for weeks been under our consideration. The following propositions show the manner in which it has been treated.

1. The primitive state of the Christian community.

2. The manner in which ecclesiastical power and dominion were assumed by the Christian priesthood.

3. The rise and extent of the usurpation of the bishop of Rome; and the corruptions and abuses of the Papal Hierarchy.

4. The causes which produced the separation of protestants from the Romish Church; and the nature and extent of the reformation in the sixteenth century.

5. The duty of protestants to act in consistency with their avowed principles, and to make progressive improvements in religious knowledge and moral life, corresponding with the light and the means of the age in which they live.

The last proposition I am this morning to consider, viz :

5. The duty of protestants to act in consistency with their avowed principles, and to make progressive improvements in religious knowledge and moral life, corresponding with the light and the means of the age in which they live.

A man of a discriminating and unprejudiced mind, must feel some surprise in reviewing the present state of Christendom. Since the sixteenth century, the highest improvements have been made in all the exact sciences and in general literature. A comparison between that age and this, shows that the progress of the human mind, in the knowledge of personal rights, in the principles of civil government, and in every branch of science and philosophy, has been constant and rapid; and in consequence, society is every where improved and refined. But the systems of school divinity of that period have been handed down through successive generations, to the present time, with a sanction which is due only to the oracles of truth. The great cause is, that those systems are supposed to contain the peculiar doctrines of the reformation;