out it? Take, again, the awful duty as enjoined by the Saviour in the forgiveness of injuries, and the reparation of wrongs. Do these things press upon the heart and mind of Dissent, with anything like the anxiousness which we find in the recorded experience of all true Saintly men? Take, once more, the wicked law of retaliation. Does Sectarian Religion, as a System, encourage its people to use great carefulness at this point?-never to return evil for evil, railing for railing, and to seek, earnestly, the blessedness of the peace-maker? Is not the tendency of the System, as a part of its general subjectivity, and ever dangerous individualism, to lead its people to say to their hearts, "as he has done thus and so to me, thus and so will I do to him ?"

If Sectarianism is in the state we have spoken of, as respects the lack of a constraining Object of moral control over the collective and personal will of its people, the thing will show itself somewhere, in an actual deficiency of moral selfcontrol. How is it then? Is there that calmness upon attack, that meekness under opprobrium, that generosity under defeat, in a word, that peculiar repose of character, which marks the man of deep moral education? We need only ask the question. We must believe that Sectarian Religion and piety show best when least tried; true and thorough Religion shows bestwhen most tried. We have never seen the signs of much magnanimity in the mass of Dissent. We dare affirm, that when difficulties occur between Churchmen and Dissenters, the result of the ordeal will almost universally show under which System the spirit and temper of the man have been most educated to moral submissiveness, obedience, and self-quietness.

"But how do you account for the fact, that so many good gifts have been given to men outside the Church, in the way of learning-such as good comments on the Scriptures ?" There are no comments on Scripture by unchurchly writers, which are entirely good; such a work is not possible to be done by a man who does not love the Fathers. What there is of good, and there is much specially so, a Churchman may use to his profit, even as Moses used to the profit of the former Church the advice of a law-giver who appertained not to

Israel. "But how explain the fact, that their Systems are acknowledged of the Spirit in the conversion of souls ?" So were the men, found by the Seventy, acknowledged, but they certainly were not authorized, in the work of casting out Satan. "Still, not only here and there, do we find one good man in the midst of Dissent, but we see large numbers of Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist Christians, who certainly have the appearance of being pious people." This is very true, and they equally have that appearance; and there is no doubt that many, having this appearance, are good and pious people—but this "appearance" is no proof of it. If this be the experimentum crucis of true Religion, then the Denominationalist is as much bound to explain the phenomenon, as is the Churchman. A Presbyterian, unless he have come to be a Nothingarian, is bound to hold that Presbyterian Religion is the best kind of Religion, and that, at some important point. This, if it mean anything, must mean that Presbyterian Religion makes a better Christian than Baptist or Methodist Religion does—and yet he finds the Baptist and the Methodist having that same "appearance" of being good and pious which he claims for himself.

As matter of fact, this whole thing of "appearing to be good and pious," is nothing more nor less than, at best, an unconscious habit of claiming to be good and pious, and is a part and parcel of that universal selfism of Dissent, which is the direct consequence of its having torn the individual man out of the collective Body of Christ. The Sectarian Christian, inasmuch as he has attained the inheritance of that perfect individual freedom, which he thinks is so essential to personal holiness and Spiritual Religion, has acquired, therewith, the qualities which legitimately appertain to such isolated possessions. Among the worst of these is self-consciousness. Sectarian Religion, as such, is obliged to authenticate itself in the individual, by means of examination as to the conscious feeling of the possession-hence the individual is driven to say, “do I feel pious? Have I the conscious possession of this or that Grace ? All which is right, proper, and most important, according to its place, degre, and function; but, when this examination of the states and feelings of the subject becomes, 56*

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as it certainly has become, in the case of American Dissent, the almost universal test of the true possession, then has it become a most corrupting and endangering principle; then has it begun to find sanctity in sanctimoniousness, and to see nothing but the world in that which abstains from the pietistic fashion, that which does not seem to bear the "appearance." Church Religion also insists upon self-examination; but Church Religion is taught to examine itself, as to the question of its acts, as well of its feelings; and of its acts and feelings towards men also; and we cannot conceive of a true Churchman, such a man as Herbert, for instance, finding himself in any state or condition of wrong towards his fellow-man, and still allowing a supposed possession of feeling, that he was good and pious, to warrant him in going on with this pietistic look and tone, as if he were good. Even if he had that fashion-but he had not and could not have, for the Churchman's habit of Religion is so much that of looking out of himself to the Lord Jesus, that he is in comparatively little danger of falling back to that Religious selfism which lies at the root of all sanctimoniousness.

Far be it from our intention to say, that all this pious seeming, this pietistic "appearance" appertaining to Denominational Religion, is conscious sanctimoniousness. We mean to say, that a certain pietistic assumption and manner is the legitimate product of Sectarian subjectivism, and that it is no proper sign of the degree of sincere goodness, which the subject possesses. One single statement will show how perfectly worthless a judgment, based upon such "appearance," whether among ourselves or others, really is. The records of Religion show, as matter of fact, that an individual may have all these signs of goodness, the pious look, the pious tone, nay, the pious prayer, and, at that very moment, be an impure, and most wicked man. Let us not, then, because a man looks and talks like a pious man, judge either that he is or is not such as he seems— but let us rather leave all judgment, as to that question, where it belongs. The pietistic "appearance," which is so characteristic of English and American Puritanism, more so, a great deal, than that of the Continent, is valuable, prin

cipally, as revealing, in one of its most striking forms, the metaphysical phenomena of Dissent. We shall never forget the expression of bewildered surprise we once saw upon the face of a foreign Presbyterian, when he first heard of our American way of counting up the number of Christians, according to the criterion of a manifested experience. Here in our land, the System of Dissent has had full play, and, to us, it is only astonishing, that its plain results have not led all the good people in the System to retrace their steps to the Church. What is there now in the System to preserve it from the way it has ever gone in the past? Let the thoughtful Puritan ask himself, "what amount of Religion would I and my children now have, had my ancestors, when they left the Church, left all which, in strict consistency, they should have done, and that is, all the Church had given them-the Bible, the preaching of the Gospel, the custom of assembling for instruction and worship?" This will show the proper legitimacy and issue of the essential element of Sectarianism.

ART. V.-BISHOP PROVOOST AND BISHOP SEABURY.

AN HISTORICAL FRAGMENT.

THE animosity cherished by the first Bishop of New York towards his Episcopal brother of Connecticut, had a marked effect upon the fortunes of the American Church. Springing from political differences, the influence of which, though we fail at this day fully to appreciate their strength, must then have been very great, this unkindness of feeling and wanton disregard of courtesy on the part of Bishop Provoost, tended for a time to an open rupture and schism in the feeble Church then struggling for existence. To trace briefly, and, in the main, from hitherto unpublished documents, the growth and decline of this untoward disagreement; to bring to light from private correspondence the hidden springs of action, and lay bare the secret machinations of one who used his high position in the Church of God, for party purposes and the gratification of personal spleen and caprice; and to place in strong contrast with this excuseless course the noble forbearance and exemplary endurance of Seabury, first of American Bishops and one of the best of men, is our task. Save in the last feature, it is far from being a pleasant one; but it is the duty of the annalist and historian to lay bare the follies and even the sins of a forgotten age, the better to warn and advise the men of his own and succeeding times.

When, in a little gathering of the half a score of Connecticut Clergymen remnant of a band of worthy confessors, and martyrs too, for loyalty to Church and State,-choice was made of the faithful Seabury for their Bishop, and instructions given him to seek for Consecration either in England or Scotland, as the case might be, Provoost, an ardent Whig, was at his country-seat on the Hudson, sharing none of the discomforts of his loyalist brethren, and, in fact, exercising none of the functions of his ministry. He had left New York and his post at Old Trinity, in consequence of a disagreement with Clergy and people on the absorbing subject of politics. But,