1

judication to the mixed courts above mentioned, something more seems necessary to be done by those nations, to render their subjects and vessels engaged in the traffic, amenable to the general law of nations.

The Quarterly Review for December, 1821, contains the following remarks upon this subject. We think then, that, as six years and a half have passed since the combined sovereigns made this public declaration (of their intention to abolish the trade) the success of which instead of being "complete" has been entirely "negative," they are bound in honour and conscience to take some further steps: and we know of none so likely to be efficient as the one we have suggested;' (to declare the slave trade piracy.) It was our intention to have remarked upon the calumnies against this country contained in the article from which the above passage is extracted: but we have already far exceeded our intended limits, and will not trespass further upon the patience of our readers. We have been desirous to attract attention to this subject by the above statements, because there is at present none upon which a christian community ought to feel more deeply and zealously interested: because in this country the sentiments and feelings of the people have a direct and immediate influence upon the proceedings of the government; and because it is high time that the energy of the nation should be exerted, in exterminating this atrocious, remorseless commerce; in comparison with which, 'All other injustice, all other modes of desolating nature, of blasting the happiness of man, and defeating the purposes of God, lose their very name and character of evil.'

ARTICLE IV.

The right of private judgment in religion, vindicated against the claims of the Romish Church and all kindred usurpations, in a Dudleian Lecture, delivered before the University in Cambridge, October 24, 1821. By JOHN PIERCE, A. M. Minister of Brookline. pp. 24.

THIS sermon is sensible, manly, and candid; and does honour to its author, a man universally respected and loved. The subject is distinctly announced in the title, and the right of private judgment is maintained on just and sufficient grounds. First, from the reason of the case. God has given man the power of discrimination between truth and falsehood, right and wrong; and, in the forcible language of Tucker, the gift of a power is the call of God for the exertion of that power. Besides, religion from its nature is a matter of voluntary choice; otherwise it could not be called a reasonable service, or the worship of God with the spirit and the understanding. No arbitrary or compulsory measures can produce it. Christian faith is far different from a merely mechanical and unintelligent assent to any doctrines, however well founded; no man can be said to believe a proposition, the terms of which he does not understand. Christian piety absolutely implies the deepest and purest exercises of the heart. No external authority therefore can make men christians. The right of private judgment is maintained, in the next place, from the evils, which we may expect to follow, and which experience shows have followed, an implicit reliance on human authority. All motives to the investigation of truth are taken away, where either we are compelled to acknowledge an infallible authority, and are made to believe that no more truth remains to be discovered; or where we are forbidden to follow the results, to which, in such investigation, we may be led.

'Implicit dependence on human authority, we give it in the words of the sermon, ' is very apt to make men place the essence of religion in something, which deserves not that distinction; and subjects men to receive, without examination and without gainsaying, the most grievous impositions upon the understanding.'

That these consequences have followed from the assumptions and claims to infallibility made by the Romish church, is then shown by decisive evidence; by the decrees of the Council of Trent; by the remarks of some of the most distinguished ministers of that church on the inutility and impropriety of allowing to the laity the free use of the sacred scriptures; by the worship, which has been paid in that church to saints and images; and by the compulsion, which has been used, to bring men to receive the doctrines of infallibility and transubstantiation.

Many of the remarks connected with these topics have great force; and we shall indulge ourselves with some quotations.

'In the Council of Trent the Bishop of St. Mark said,* The Canons determine that the laicks ought humbly to receive the doctrine of faith, which is given them by the church, without disputing or thinking farther on it.

One cannot but observe, how different is the language of rational and consistent protestants. As they maintain that the Scriptures

alone contain the words of everlasting life, and are the only perfect rule of faith and practice, they exhort all to peruse them with fidelity, not doubting, but with the honest use of their faculties, and the means of information within their reach, they will be guided into all necessary truth. They ask not for entire uniformity of faith; for they believe it impracticable in the present state of imperfect views. The free adoption and expression of conflicting opinions, they consider to be not only innocent, but indispensable to the eviction of truth. Hence that different readers of Scripture should affix different meanings to many of their contents, they consider no better an argument against the expediency of allowing men to understand them for themselves, than abuses of reason prove that men must not be allowed to use their reason in the common affairs of life.'-p. 10.

Again speaking on the subject of infallibility the preacher asks,

• What, for example, can be more incredible, than the doctrine of infallibility maintained by the Romish church! They are not agreed where it resides; but that it is the property of their church, they have not the smallest doubt. Many of them allow that every individual, even the pope, taken by himself, is fallible; but then the decisions of their general councils are infallible. This is as evident an absurdity in religion, as it would be in arithmetical calculations, to assert, that though every single cypher is of no amount; yet a certain combination of cyphers would produce a sum of unspeakable value.'-p. 11.

He proceeds afterwards to make a powerful appeal.

'Consider, for a moment, what must have been the result of implicit faith and denial of the right of private judgment, if applied to the arts and sciences. Assume, for example, the period, when the church of Rome had risen to the zenith of her power, and held the civilized world under her imperious control; and suppose, she had then, in the common affairs of life, as in religion, precisely defined, what must be believed and practised by all succeeding generations. It is demonstrable, that the sciences would have continued in the same degraded condition, to which they were reduced, during the dark ages. The arts would also have remained in the same rude state. The invention of printing would have been stifled in its infancy as the effect of magic. The mariner's compass would have been unknown. Most of those improvements, which now adorn the face of society, and contribute most effectually to the comfort and convenience of life, would have been prevented. The land in which we live, would have been, through every successive age, the exclusive abode of savages; and instead of this growing community of enlightened freemen, the arts of civilized life, which are advancing with rapid strides, our temples of religion, and our seats of literature and science, the tenants of the wilderness might still have been practising, even on this consecrated spot, their barbarous rites.'pp. 12, 13.

He goes on to show how imperfectly the right of private judgment has been understood even by Protestants themselves; what abuses of this right have existed in the Church of England, and among the Protestant Dissenters from that church; and then dilates upon the great evils, which have always arisen, and must continue to arise, from the attempts of one sect of christians to impose a creed upon any other. All the remarks on these subjects are rational, candid, and of great weight. The sermon is concluded with the affecting words of Baxter; 'While we wrangle here in the dark, we are dying and passing to the world, that will decide all our controversies; and the safest passage thither is by peaceable holiness."

It may appear to some, that an attack upon Popery at this late period, is like the kick of the ass at the dead lion. We are not of the same opinion. Sufficient apology, if any were needed, for the choice of this subject on this occasion, may be found in the statutes of the foundation, on which this lecture was delivered; the errors of popery being prescribed as one of the subjects to be alternately treated. But to us no apology seems requisite for bringing the corruptions and presumption of this church occasionally before the public view; and so also the corruptions and presumption of any other church. It is a part of history of which no intelligent christian ought ever to lose sight. Were it not an incontrovertible matter of history, few of us could bring ourselves to believe that any man, presuming to call himself a christian, could ever utter a sentiment so revolting to good sense and good feelings, as that, quoted in the eleventh page of this discourse from Bellarmine, a distinguished defender of the Romish Church. The Catholic faith,' says he, ' teaches, that every virtue is good, and every ery vice evil. But if the Pope should err by enjoining vices, or by prohibiting virtues, the church would be bound to believe, that vices are good and virtues bad, unless it would sin against conscience. Yet if men have been found, who were capable of promulgating and defending such sentiments, we are compelled to infer, that no conceivable error is so palpable and offensive, but that it may be sincerely embraced by men, who may have strong claims to the reputation of wisdom and goodness. The history of the Church of Rome is a history of the grossest enormities practised under the name of religion; and of the most unwarrantable usurpations and outrages of the rights of man, and of the most atrocious persecutions under the plea of conscience. This we say, with

out derogating in the smallest degree from the high respect and confidence, with which we regard many of the ministers and members of that church. God be praised, that such a man as Luther had the courage to throw open the doors, and begin the labour of cleansing this Augean stable. But, if such things have been, such things may be again. The history of the Church of Rome is not the only black and polluted chapter in the history of Christendom. Others as painful and disgusting have disgraced the records of churches calling themselves reformed. Men can never be trusted with the smallest power over the consciences of their fellow men. The history of the great reformers and of our puritanic forefathers, referred to in this discourse, men who were themselves exiles and fugitives from their own homes and their dear country, that they might escape the chains of spiritual oppression, and the fires of persecution, and enjoy liberty of conscience, shows, in a mortifying and afflictive manner, how weak and frail our nature is. Vanity and intolerance are diseases to which the human constitution seems peculiarly susceptible, and which most of us have the natural way.' Man, as soon as he finds himself possessed of power, becomes, where he is unrestrained, outrageous in its exercise; and, like some noble domestic animals, whom we call inferior, he no sooner comes into the presence of his fellow creatures, especially if he finds them so fenced in that escape is difficult, than he is for showing them the strength of his horns.

The right of private judgment and liberty of conscience, notwithstanding all that has been written on the subject, and the advances, which have been made towards securing religious liberty, are still but partially understood and maintained. Many have learnt to think for themselves; yet few have proceeded so far as to have learnt, much the most difficult lesson of the two, that others are at liberty to think for themselves. It is not a rare case to find men, who display a singular originality in thinking, and independence in judging, for themselves, extremely bigotted, censorious, and intolerant towards those, who do not agree with them in opinion, who yet are separated only by the slightest shades of difference. It is not perhaps difficult to account for this inconsistency in human nature. Success in the pursuit of truth inspires confidence in our own powers. That strength of mind, which gives success to our inquiries, and of which men soon become conscious, produces very naturally a strong reliance on our own judgment, and a correspondent distrust of the judgment of others, when it differs from our own. Every difference from our views wounds our vanity, which in men of distinguished powers is commonly the most vulnerable