proofs on which they are based, with the author's modes of experimental illustration are given, and every chemical fact of importance, although its precise bearing upon chemical theory or its reduction to system may not yet have been discovered, is still recorded. Thus, the work not only supplies the wants of the learner, whose business is with the general principles of the science, but becomes a guide to teachers of less experience than its author, by at once putting them in possession of the results of his observation. In addition also to what may be called the philosophy of the science, the work contains a great variety of information relating to collateral subjects; such as the history of chemical discovery, familiar explanations in natural philosophy, frequent natural historical details, and notices of all those arts with which chemistry is in any way connected and the whole is so digested and arranged under larger divisions distinguished by numerals and under subordinate ones with letters prefixed, that the different kinds of information are capable of being referred to, with convenience. And though the author has evidently aimed at great brevity and condensation in his performance, it is nevertheless pleasing to observe throughout the work, that same animation and vigor which has characterized his other writings, and rendered them so generally interesting to the public.

But we cannot take leave of Professor Silliman's Elements, without acknowledging one trait which they possess not usually to be found in chemical systems; we mean repeated allusions made to second causes, and to the Great Efficient Cause of all things. These views are too apt to be excluded from elementary works on natural science; their authors seem willing to trace up phenomena to secondary laws, and there to leave them. Would they vindicate this most unnatural procedure upon the ground, that it occasions an inconvenient commingling of different kinds of knowledge? But these same writers deluge their sciences with details from every other department; and why exclude natural theology? Not so in the work before us; in which, at the conclusion of the subject of attraction, it is distinctly propounded, that

"GOD IS THE FIRST CAUSE OF EVERY THING.

"All our observations, experiments and reasonings, make us acquainted only with second causes.

"The proximate cause of all effects is the one immediately antecedent to the event, or which is principally operative in producing it.

"To every proximate cause, there may be another proximate cause, and to that cause another; but the series will end at last in the power of the Creator, in immediate agency; and this still will be the fact if we discover ever so many proximate causes, constituting a series or chain apparently endless." (Vol. I. p. 173.)

We are glad to witness in a teacher of natural science this connection of physical with moral truth; because we believe the affiliation to be both real, and of the utmost consequence to be understood by every student to whom it is presented. If we were only intellectual beings, destitute of moral feelings and responsibility, to stop in our researches into the reason of things at secondary causes, would even then be to leave knowledge but half explored. What if we have arrived at the laws which bind together the system of the universe? What if we have explored the secret constitution of matter? What if we have discovered the mysteries of life, or penetrated the sources of thought? We have yet, in order to carry out our investigation, to inquire under the direction of that same analogy which has guided us in our first discoveries, whether a general unity does not claim for them all, one divine Author and Original. But we are moral beings; and constituted to take delight not only in physical, but in moral truths; between which, the Creator has established such bonds of union, that we cannot long follow the one, without acquiring the other. How delightful is this reflection to the pious mind, that the pursuit of physical truths for which it feels so strong a thirst, should thus terminate in moral knowledge! This gives a new zest to intellectual attainments, identifies them with our truest happiness, and proves that they are destined to be the element of the soul forever.

ART. IX.-REMARKS OF PROTESTANT ON THE BIBLICAL REPERTORY.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHRISTIAN SPECTATOR.

SIR: I HAVE hesitated, whether it was my duty to reply to the remarks in the Biblical Repertory for July 1830, on some inquiries which I proposed in your June number respecting several things, and particularly the nature of sin. The writer in the Repertory has chosen his own ground; and passing over all my main points, and at least nine tenths of all I had said, has selected the topic of imputation, which was only a very subordinate one with me, and occupied no less than forty-eight pages in descanting on this. He accuses me of haste, of want of discrimination, of making unmerited attacks on the writers in the Repertory, and implies more than once, that I have undertaken to write on a subject, about which I know little or nothing. With all this I shall bear very patiently; for I may say, without any design to recriminate, that after reading the piece on Pelagius, I was not much disappointed in finding a continuation of the like spirit. I will state very frankly to the author of the remarks now in question, that I was greatly

dissatisfied with the spirit and manner of the piece which he defends; that I thought it was produced for the purpose of gratifying feelings which sober christian reflection cannot approve; and that my main object, in all that I said, was to lead the writer of the piece to see and feel, that one who undertook the office of a corrector with severity, should weigh well whether he had any faux pas of his own to correct. I am as far, at least, from Pelagianism as the writer of that article, or the author of the remarks; and my questions were put, in order to show, that some matters and things, about which the first writer speaks as though they were just as certain as the intuitive perceptions of the human mind, which need and can receive no demonstration, are, after all, not to be represented with such an air of positiveness, and contempt of others who may differ from one's own views. If I am criminal for indulging a feeling of this nature, then let me be reproved. I certainly did not seek for such impressions. They were the spontaneous result of reading the history of Pelagianism; and I know that my case is not a singular one.

The writers just mentioned may be assured, that they have now before them my whole heart in this business, as to my principal object or intention. As for the rest, I have not thought it my duty to lanch into the dispute itself about imputation. However, I shall take the liberty to make a few brief observations.

The author of the remarks inveighs strongly against me for traducing the writer of the Pelagian history to the public, as maintaining, that Christ has redeemed us only from original sin. I have to remark in reply to this, that I never thought so; that I merely took the historian at his word, to show him how unguarded his statements were. I did think, that one who criticised so severely on others, (by implication,) should weigh well his own words. There they stand as quoted by the remarker, p. 431; and if they do not fairly and properly mean what I have intimated that they mean, then I receive the chastisement without a word of complaint. I appeal to every theologian of our country, whether the language in question can bear any other construction. The author of the remarks says, I am aware, that I must have known that the editors of the Biblical Repertory did not believe so. I did know it; but my design was to show the writer of the Pelagian history, that it was possible for other folks, besides those whom he was reproving, to make some pretty large mistakes in their mode of stating difficult matters. This was all my design; and the remarker has not helped the matter or relieved the difficulty in the least, by any of the remarks which he has made. It is a most extraordinary argument to which he resorts, in order to justify the assertion, that if imputation be set aside, a Redeemer is not needed. God,'

says he, could preserve pure and unfallen children from sinning. Indeed! could he not have prevented holy Adam from sinning? Did he? Then, when he had sinned, did he not need a Redeemer? And do not children need one for the same reason? God could have created beings who never would sin; has he done so? But I do not see how principles in theology are to be settled, by asserting what God could have done, which he has not done. The egregious mistake, then, of the Pelagian historian, remains without any other apology, than what other people sometimes have, at whom he designs to aim a prostrating blow.

But leaving this, and all other matters of the like nature, on which it were easy to dwell, but that no good could come from it, I proceed to make a few remarks on the subject of imputation. The reviewer, (so I shall name the writer of the remarks in question,) tells us, that "he denies, first, that the act of Adam was personally and properly our act; and secondly, that the moral turpitude of that act was transferred from him to us," p. 436. He affirms, that his views are those of the old Calvinists, and that the statement of the doctrine by President Edwards and Stapfer, are

not correct.

In proof of this, he appeals to Turretin, to Owen, to the French Synod in 1544-45, to the Professors of Leyden, and to the Augsburg Confession, p. 450. The sum of which he gathers from all this is, that the condemnation of men in consequence of Adam's sin, is not because they participate in the sin; they only participate in the punishment of it. He even labors to show from Turretin and others, that the very idea of imputation excludes the idea of our own personal criminality; as if a man's own sins could not be imputed to him; a thing which Turretin himself expressly declares, and which the scripture most abundantly confirms.

He repeats abundantly the old criticism on the word guilt, viz. that it means, being obnoxious to punishment merely, and does not necessarily imply the having committed any crime. I have heard and read this a thousand times; and as many times said, and say now, that the writers who maintain it contradict themselves. I bring the very example of the reviewer from Owen, p. 440, which he adduces in order to fortify his own opinion. Owen says; "Guilt, in scripture, is the respect of sin unto the sanction of the law, whereby THE SINNER BECOMES OBNOXIOUS TO PUNISHMENT." Do manus it is altogether a definition to the purpose. Who then is it that is obnoxious to punishment? Ans. The sinner. But no, says the reviewer; imputation excludes the idea of personal sin. Indeed? How then can there be guilt? For guilt is defined to be, the respect of sin unto the sanction of the law, whereby the sinner becomes obnoxious to punishment; i. e. the same person who is

to be punished is the sinner. But with the reviewer, he is no real sinner; he is one only by imputation, or putatively. Well then, the guilt of course must correspond with the sin; and consequently the guilt must be putative also, not real. The two things are inseparably connected. As is the sin, so is the guilt; as is the guilt, so is the punishment. If the first is merely putative, then the second must be so; and the third, by the eternal laws of justice, which proportion guilt and punishment, must necessarily be of the same nature; i. e. it cannot be punishment in the proper sense of the term. What then is meant when we are told in one paragraph, that our whole race lie merely under putative sin, not really their own, but under real guilt, and real punishment? What can this mean, but that an unreal sin makes real guilt and real punishment? Be it Turretin, Owen, or who it may, that teaches this and says that it is orthodoxy, I must class myself among the doubters. It is a contradiction, upon the very face of it, to the definition of guilt which Owen himself gives.

So much for the nature of the thing. A word on the authorities adduced, viz. Turretin, Owen, the French Synod, Tuckney, and the Augsburg Confession. I confess this mode of establishing the reviewer's opinions, struck me with not a little surprise. What? A presbyterian, and leave the Westminster Confession out of view? Why this? was the spontaneous question. For a reason plain enough. The reviewer recollected the answer he used to give when a child, to a catechetical question, viz. sinned IN him and fell WITH him in his first transgression." Indeed? Sinned IN him? Then there is something more than putative sin; for here Adam's sin is our sin, and his guilt our guilt. Both stand or fall together. So say the standards of the reviewer's own church: sinned IN him, and fell WITH him. Here we have distinct things; first the sin, then the guilt or obnoxiousness to punishment. Both belong to us. The reviewer makes only the latter. It is for him to ask, how he can vindicate his own sentiments to the judicatories of his own church.

But why did he not go to the standards of the Calvinistic churches, instead of Turretin and Owen. As he has not done it, I must do it for him. The Helvetic Confession (1651) says that "all who are descended from Adam are, by his lapse, peccato et morti obnoxii; just the same idea that is contained in the Westminster catechism, Cap. viii., for as I understand it, this is designed to say, that we sinned in Adam. If not, then it says what disagrees with the reviewer's sentiments, and agrees with what are called New England views, viz. that men are condemned for their own sins, and not for a merely putative one.

As the reviewer appeals to the French Synod, I appeal to the