word, and he will not find me an antagonist. That a particular promise may be connected with statements which regard others besides those to whom that promise was primarily directed, appears from Matt. x. 18, 19, 20. Our Lord here teaches his apostles that they should be brought into difficulties on account of their preaching the truth, and grounds on this fact the promise, "But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak, for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. v. 19, 20. Will D. E. F. say, agreeably with his principles, that ministers, on similar occasions, are not to consider how to defend themselves, but are to trust to immediate inspiration? Or will he say, as he asserts in another place, that, on my principles, ministers are not liable to be brought into similar difficulties? To claim the promise here given, would be to claim the highest kind of inspiration. Thus D. E. F. may see that his dilemma is most easily answered he might have answered it himself if he had thought fit.

D. E. F. says, in the conclusion of his next paragraph, "Apply the same line of argument (that disproving the supposed presence) to the case of Christians in general, and it will go to prove that there is no longer any promise of salvation." It is really grievous that D. E. F. should venture to utter such unsound expressions under the name of argument. Does he not remember that the promise of the salvation of believers occurs under every possible form of expression in the New Testament, and that, therefore, if the controverted passage and all its parallels were lost from the volume of holy writ, the promise of the salvation of believers would yet remain? Or, because that promise is in one text of Scripture connected with the gift of supernatural powers to some particular individuals, and, through them, to some others who believed by their immediate ministry when obvious reasons may be brought to show the necessity of such powers, does he suppose, that where such extraordinary powers are neither given nor enjoyed, there is no promise of the salvation of believers generally? When D. E. F. asserts that there are numbers who can say, in their strict grammatical sense," "The Lord stood with me and supported me," &c. he is saying what I do not comprehend, or, if I do comprehend him, permit me to say his words are wholly irrelevant. For, if he mean by strict grammatical sense, that the Lord is really with them, what is this assertion but what I have pleaded for in the case of all Christians, and not exclusively of ministers? If he mean by strict grammatical sense, that the Lord is equally and in the same sense with those gentlemen as he was with the Apostle Paul who primarily used the words, then I venture to pronounce this assertion rash, as equalling their ministerial character with that of an inspired apostle. I am astonished that men of piety, or even of sense, can dare to speak of their fallible and often incorrect ministerial instruction in the same terms as characterise the labours of those who were the subjects of direct inspiration. And yet this is the true assumption of those who claim the promise of Matt. xxviii. 20, and is another proof of the danger of holding confused and mystical views of the meaning of the word of God. If they content themselves with

claiming the gracious presence of the Lord, that I have abundantly granted; but, at the same time, I assert that they must be contented to enjoy this blessing in common with their people, with all the saints of God; and I further assert, that they must lay no claim to the promise of Matt. xxviii. 20, as that promise was intended for some particular ministers, that is, for the apostles, and for them alone. To answer D. E. F.'s query, I confess we are in possession of a blessing, of a blessing promised in many places, but not in that place of Matthew so often referred to, and still less are we in possession of any promise implying what that text assuredly does, the power of working miracles.

When D. E. F. affirms, in his next paragraph, that he could not, on my principles, perceive that any Christian in the present day can accurately prove his title to a single promise in the whole word of God, I can see nothing but an additional exemplification of a fact very observable in the intellectual phenomena of mankind, namely, that a too easy credulity in some points, is often accompanied by an irrational scepticism in others, and that it is no unusual fact in the history of mind, to remove from a belief without evidence, to an incredulity against reason. The mind often atones for a too confident belief by an equally irrational doubt, or rather, believes in one case and disbelieves in the other, from the same inattention to sound reason.

The easy manner in which my annotator dismisses his next paragraph, is admirably descriptive of the state of mind to which reference is made above. He sees no difficulty in limiting the promise! Well then, let him explain how Christ is present with his ministers. He must intelligibly point out some presence of Christ higher than that common to all believers, and lower than that which confers miraculous powers. If D. E. F. does really see no difficulty, it will be easy for him to explain the nature of this presence.

As for my opponent's last argument, that, on the ground maintained by me, the Jewish church had much the advantage of the Christian, I really can see no force in it, nor would my opponent, I suspect, if he had remembered that I gave to the christian church as real a presence short of something miraculous, as any believer in revelation would claim for her predecessor, the spiritual presence of the Lord with all her members. Let my opponent again remember that we are not disputing about the Lord's presence with his church generally, but with his ministers in particular, and let him observe not again to make the word church, and the words ministers of Christ, convertible. Let him also observe, that I am not opposing God's blessing on his preached word, but simply the application of the promise in Matt. xxviii. 20. to ministers generally, on the ground that the promise in that text confers miraculous powers. My argument goes to prove that the promise in Matt. xxviii. 20, confers no especial presence of Christ on ministers; my opponent answers me by saying, that I take from the church of brighter times the presence of her Great Head. This I have never done, nor thought of doing. That presence is, indeed, one of my main principles, and I could almost dare to say my opponent must have known that I plainly assert it. If he do not

know it, he is certainly not prepared to answer me, as I believe it is indispensable to a disputant that he understand the principles, the avowed principles, of his antagonist.

Allow me, Mr. Editor, to say that D. E. F. has not deigned to touch, much less to answer, any of the arguments I have adduced in favour of my view, but has contented himself by raising a few objections from the supposed consequences of admitting this view. I have shown, I think clearly, that these objections are not at all to the point, as they are grounded on conclusions not deducible from my theory by sound reasoning. I might here conclude, but, as I cannot but think that my opponent has not fully understood my arguments, I shall add a few more observations to clear away, as much as possible, the obscurity in which, to some minds, the subject is involved.

I shall begin first with a few texts of Scripture, in which the very phrase under debate is used to denote a limited time, a dispensation. “ τί τὸ σεμεῖον τῆς συντελέιας τε αιῶνος.” Matt. xxiv. 3. In this instance the words must imply the end of the Jewish dispensation, as they are part of a question of the disciples inquiring when those things should happen of which Jesus had been speaking. But of what had Jesus been speaking? Truly of the destruction of the Jewish temple. "There shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." ver. 2. But the temple was destroyed on the destruction of Jerusalem, at the end of the Jewish age: most assuredly that temple is not now in existence, and therefore cannot be destroyed at the end of the world.

In Heb. ix. 26. we read νῦν δὲ ἅπαξ ἐπὶ συντελέια τῶν αἰώνων-πεpavéporaι: but our Lord did not appear at the end of the world, but at the end of the Jewish age. His appearance at the time here spoken of was "to put away sin," but that will not be the reason of his appearance at the end of the world.

We also have in 1 Cor. x. 11. a very similar phrase huv, eiç és τὰ τελη τῶν ἀιωνῶν κατήντησεν.” But since the time in which this was written, eighteen centuries have expired, and we have no appearance now of the impending end of the world. The apostle's sense is, that he and those to whom he wrote lived at the end of that dispensation in the beginning of which lived the individuals whose evil example he warned them not to follow, intimating that as the rebels of the early period of that dispensation perished on account of sin, so with a still greater reason would they, who sinned in the latter period of Judaism when the nature of that dispensation appeared so much clearer, perish on account of apostacy. Let it be remembered, that in the first two of these cited texts the words are precisely the same as in the text of Matt. xxviii. 20, and that though there be a slight omission in the principal noun, namely, of the conjunction ovy in the latter instance, yet it is such as causes no difference in the sense, and scarcely any in the form.

By these texts, in addition to those adduced before, it is clear that the words ouvreλéia re alwvoc may, and do often mean the age, the dispensation, or some defined period in the history of the world. I have yet many more instances to be produced in evidence of such a

meaning of the words, but I refrain, not willing to occupy your pages unnecessarily.

I proceed in the next place to prove from the language of scripture, that the apostles did receive the power of working miracles from this promise. It is a principle of biblical criticism, universally received, that a parallel passage is the best comment on a difficult text of God's word. Such parallels, always authoritative so far as the general bearings of the compared passages agree, become, in a case where two evangelists relate the same event, or convey the same command of their Lord to the same persons and at the same time, a mutual interpretation of each other, one explaining or paraphrasing what the other relates in a more succinct manner. Now of this nature precisely are the parallel passages in Matt. xxviii. 19, 20, and Mark xvi. 15-18. This is so evident, that two opinions cannot possibly be entertained. The words therefore, "Lo I am with you alway, even to the end of the world," Matt. xxviii. 20. are to be understood in connection with Mark xvi. "And these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Now if these things are to follow in the case of all believers, in the case of those who believe through the instrumentality of ministers in the present day, then, to borrow an argument from D. E. F. himself, there is not a believer in the world. But D. E. F. would abhor such an assertion; let him therefore beware of the principle from which it is deduced. That this promise was absolutely fulfilled in the apostles' case, Mark gives you his own authority, by a comment on these words which immediately follows, "And they went forth-the Lord working with them, and confirming the work with signs following," 20.-and Paul, in his epistle to the Hebrews, connecting the apostolical ministry with that of our Lord, says, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God always bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and with gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?" Heb. ii. 3, 4 and to render this proof complete, the apostle subjoins some words which exactly describe the nature of that miraculous agency which Christ himself employed, and which he enabled his apostles to employ in establishing his dispensation. "For unto the angels he hath not put into subjection the world to come." 5. Now this assertion of Paul, Heb. ii. 3, 4, illustrates the history of the apostles from the moment they first received this promise. This promise, conveying infallibility and divine power to the apostles, accounts for the extraordinary fact, that though on the very same day, and in the very moment before the promise was delivered, their Master "upbraided their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not" (i. e. his resurrection), Mark xvi. 14, yet from that moment we behold them proceeding in their work with a confidence and boldness altogether supernatural. What can account for this amazing difference but the fact that this promise

conveyed to them some miraculous power? I have already mentioned the apostle's language, 1 Cor. i. 5, 6. as a proof that miraculous powers are conveyed by this promise, and I wonder how my antagonist could omit this argument, and not even attempt to show any other testimony of Christ but that promise in Matt. xxviii. 20, which was confirmed by the reception, in the case of the Corinthian brethren, of the gifts of all utterance and all knowledge. I have also referred to the fact, that even after the believers in Samaria had been baptized, the apostles Peter and John journeyed to that city purposely to impart to the baptized those miraculous gifts which they alone could give. Acts viii, 14-19.

I suppose then, and am borne out in my supposition by what I have heard from many with whom I have disputed on this subject, that the apostles did receive this particular power in virtue of this promise. But my opponents proceed to say, that ministers in the present day do not claim or expect any such power, though this promise belongs to them. Let such gentlemen observe, that this verse, according to their views, imparts some promise, whatever that promise may mean, unto ministers to the end of the world. If the promise respected miraculous powers, these ministers have such a power. Will D. E. F. then argue, "that this promise of the gospel has failed?" or will he not more modestly say, "the promise was intended for the apostles alone."

If D. E. F. will yet claim this promise, I shall ask him what does it confer? It is confessed that it does not enable ministers to perform miracles-that it does not insure infallibility. It is manifest that the individuals for whom it is claimed vary much from each other on points of doctrine. Those ministers in their pulpit labours do not always agree with truth, with each other, or with themselves. I apprehend these gentlemen are painfully aware that they have, in the course of their ministry, advanced many propositions inconsistent with the real meaning of God's word. Were they then equally in the enjoyment of this promise of Christ as at the present time? The view of this promise entertained by my opponent forbids any increase of knowledge or religious truth, any more enlarged or more rational and scriptural views of doctrine than those enjoyed at the first period of any individual's ministry. It can only be a correlate with infallibility.

It appears to me an unspeakable evil that good men will claim a promise to which they attach no clear intelligible ideas, a promise which, in their sense, imparts nothing, effects nothing, which cannot be explained, and respecting which no two persons agree. Verily some men appear to love mystery so much, that except the glorious principles of the gospel be invested with it, those principles lose much of their interest. D. E. F. asserts that he should shrink from the work of the gospel ministry if he could be induced to believe my views on this subject. Am I to understand that the belief of the truth, the ability of preaching it, the adaptation of truth to the moral capabilities of our fellow men, and above all, the power which God has given to his truth to influence the soul, afford not abundant encouragement to animate the ministers of the gospel in their great