people, your own people, may know how much they pay to priests, and how the priests expend their money; that the poorest who is taxed from his hard-earned wages for church dues, and the richest who gives his gold to support your extravagant ceremonies, may equally know that their contributions are not misapplied. Come out and declare your opinion on the liberty of the press, on liberty of conscience, and liberty of opinion. Americans demand it. They are waking up. They have their eyes upon you. Think not the American eagle is asleep. Americans are not Austrians, to be hood-winked by popish tricks. This is a call upon you, you will be obliged soon to regard. Nor will they be content wth partial, obscure avowals, of republican sentiments in your journals, by insulated priests or even bishops. The American people will require a more serious testimonial of your opinions on these fundamental political points. You have had convocations of bishops at Baltimore. Let us have, at their next assembling, their sentiments on these vital points. Let us have a document, full and explicit, signed by their names; a document that may circulate as well in Austria and Italy, as in America. Ay, a document that may be published 'con permissione,' in the Diario di Roma, and be circulated to instruct the faithful in the united church, the church of but one mind, in the sentiments of American democratic bishops on these American principles. Let us see how they will accord with those of his holiness, pope Gregory XVI, in his late encyclical letter! Will popish bishops dare to put forth such a manifesto? We shall see." CHAPTER V. THE LIBERALITY OF PRESBYTERY. SECTION I. True liberality, as distinguished from bigotry and latitudinarianism, explained. CLOSELY Connected with the question of republicanism, is that of liberality. The two things have become, from their inseparable connection, almost identified and synonymous. Republicanism is based upon the exercise of liberality. It follows necessarily, that any ecclesiastical system which lays claim to the character of republicanism, must be able also to establish its liberality. No charges have been more confidently made against presbyterianism, than those of illiberality, bigotry, and exclusiveness, while the most lofty pretensions to charity, liberality, and comprehensiveness, are continually set forth by other denominations. It may, therefore, be of service to examine this matter, and to offer such observations as our brief limits will admit, in vindication of our most abused and misrepresented church. We are at once willing to admit, that that system of church polity and of doctrine must be most scriptural, which most strongly and most directly tends to foster the holy and heavenly temper of christian charity and true liberality; and that the most unscriptural and corrupt, which generates the greatest amount of illiberality and bigoted exclusiveness. 'By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one towards another, for love is the fulfilling of the law.' By their fruits, therefore, ye shall know them. But there is, perhaps, no subject, except that of liberty, on which more confused and erroneous views prevail, than the subject of liberality. For just as liberty is confounded by many with licentiousness, so is liberality, by many others, confounded with indifference; and just as in the one case we are conducted to anarchy and the perpetration of every evil work, so are we in the other case brought to the verge of universal skepticism. True liberality stands equally distinguished from licentiousness or skepticism, and from implicit faith in the teaching of **See of late Dr. How's Vind. of the Prot. Ep. Ch. Newman's Lect. on Roman, p. 195. The Charleston Gospel Messenger, Feb. 1840, p. 368. another; just as true liberty is equally distinct from passive obedience to despotic authority, and from that unbridled independence, which, submitting to no just government or laws, leads necessarily to anarchy and confusion; or as true liberty of thought, the right and duty of private judgment, is widely separated from that fatalism, which would render the mind a mere machine, under the direction of necessary laws, over which it has no control. Liberality is also to be distinguished from what is improperly termed free thinking, by which the mind is thrown loose upon its own vagrant notions, without the government of any rules, or the direction of any method or order. And as true liberty is found in the just administration of wise and impartial laws, and in the subjection of every member of the body politic to those laws;-as our natural liberty is only properly exercised in furtherance of its true end and use, when determined by wise motives; and as, further, true freedom of thought consists in thinking justly, in conformity to the real nature of things, and the evidence before us, and in not yielding to the impulse of mere feeling, passion, or prejudice ;—so in like manner true liberality lies, not in the confounding of all distinction between right and wrong, or in giving equal approbation to truth and error, but in making essential only that which is truly fundamental; in allowing free difference of opinion in things not clearly essential; in candidly interpreting the views and professions of those who differ from us; and in the ratification of the great fundamental principle of all liberty-that in matters of opinion, which do not interfere with the personal or relative rights of men, as members of civil society, men are amenable only to God, and not punishable by one another. In short, true liberality is most comprehensively expressed by the elegant declaration of Augustine, 'that in things essential there should be unity; in things not essential, liberty; and in all things, charity." But it is important more carefully to analyse the nature and bearings of true liberality. All virtue has been represented as a course of action midway between two extremes or vices, which are the perversions of the truth for contradictory ends. Liberality is thus found to be the safe and middle passage between the Scylla and Charybdis of bigotry and latitudinarianism. Let us then ascertain the bearings and danger of these respectively. Bigotry is an attachment to certain doctrines, forms, or party, for other reasons than their intrinsic excellence; and in other measures than is warranted by their importance. It is, therefore, undiscriminating, and generally malicious. Such doc *See Dr. Jibot's Disc. of Free Thinking, falsely so called, in Boyle Lect. Fol. vol. ii. p. 740, &c. trines, forms, or party, may or may not be in themselves worthy of approbation; but when they are adhered to without proper regard to the evidence on which they rest, or under the influence of improper motives, the individual so adhering, is a bigot, and his conduct bigotry. Bigotry therefore implies an obstinate and blind attachment to some particular system; unreasonable zeal and warmth in its defence, and in favor of those who maintain it; and excessive prejudice and illiberality towards those who differ. It gives to such doctrines or forms an undue and extravagant importance, without taking into account other facts and considerations, which ought to be viewed in connection with them. Such doctrines, practices, or forms, may be in themselves correct, or even scriptural, but an importance is attached to them disproportioned to their true value; and consequences deduced from them, and a course of action founded upon them, which are not warranted by a sound understanding, or by any thing in the word of God.* Bigotry, therefore, is so far forth a mental aberration, a species of religious insanity. It possesses its victims with some one subject, and with the advantages and benefits supposed to flow from it, so exclusively, as to prevent the mind from regarding other facts and considerations, which are adapted to remove such erroneous impressions. Like the insane person, the bigot may either form correct data, and then reason incorrectly upon them, or from unsound premises may deduce the most distorted and extravagant inferences. Like him, too, the bigot is blind to all objections, insensible to all difficulties, deaf to all persuasion, and with concentrated energy rushes towards his conclusions, as in themselves certain and inevitable. Like him, too, the bigot reasons plausibly and ingeniously, catching rapidly incidental and partial relations, and making the worse appear the better reason. In short, certain ideas fix themselves in his mind, to the entire exclusion of all others, or at least from that degree of influence with which they should affect his mind, in his estimate of the true nature of the subject, and of its relation to other truths. Such is bigotry. But there is a not less dangerous extreme on the other side; we mean latitudinarianism, or indifference; and which is the ordinary article found in the market of the world, under the name of liberality. To escape from bigotry, men rush to the opposite extreme, and instead of over-valuing any truths, un *Illiberality of mind,' say the Oxford Tractators, (Oxf. Tr. vol. i. pp. 427, 428,) in religious matters, bigotry, intolerance, and the like, is the disposition to make unimportant points important, to make them terms of communion, watchwords of parties, and so on.' 'Now the church catholic acts on the principle of insisting on no points but such as are of importance, of judging of opinions variously, according to their respective importance, of acknowledging no parties, and of protesting and witnessing against all party spirit and party dogmas.' dervalue all; put truth and error upon the same footing; make essential and unessential truths of equal importance; and thus proclaim the absolute indifference of all opinions, and the equal correctness of all creeds, practices, and sects. Hence has been begotten that monster of modern philosophy-the innocence of error. This boasting pyrrhonism, Will knit and break religions; bless the accursed; This is the 'great truth' of modern liberality; or as Junius |