Persecution, however, rarely accomplishes its object, for it mostly exerts a conservative influence in favour of the system intended to be repressed. Such was the effect of high-church malignity in the present instance. The people pitied the suffering Nonconformists, admired their holy, self-denying lives, and were thankful for their constant devotedness to genuine Protestantism; so that they, at length, formed the strength of that party who narrowly watched the popish tendencies and priestly intrigues of the restored Stuarts, and had their full share in consummating that work of England's freedom at the glorious Revolution, which they or their fathers commenced in what Clarendon calls "the great rebellion."

But it is now time that we should speak of the Nonconformists of our own age.

As those of the seventeenth century were divided into several classes, so their descendants continue to retain their denominational distinctions. There exists at present, however, a far greater uniformity of sentiment on questions of church polity than obtained amongst the fathers of nonconformity.

The Baptist and Congregational denominations maintain nearly the same principles of ecclesiastical government; and many of the English Presbyterian body, who have unhappily departed from orthodox opinions, are much more like Independents than the kirk of Scotland, in the administration of their affairs. The evangelical Nonconformists alone have now a much larger body of ministers than were ejected on Bartholomew's day; while the principles of virtual nonconformity have been spread and acted upon by a large and influential body, once in close relationship with the Church of England, but now declaring its separate and independent church existence; whilst the numerous offshoots of Wesleyan Methodism have become still more decidedly dissenting in their principles and practices. Thus within a century and a half there have grown up separate communities of evangelical nonconforming Christians, who in the aggregate number of their congregations, it is probable are fully equal to that of the Episcopal church itself, and are constantly extending their influence throughout the land. Our remarks, however, must be restricted to those who avow this nonconformity, and will apply to modern dissenting ministers and churches, excepting that inconsiderable portion of the whole body who profess Unitarian opinions.

The theological sentiments of the living, working portion of modern Nonconformists, are decidedly influenced by the doctrinal views which were maintained by their Puritan forefathers. The fall and ruin of man; the deity and incarnation of the Son of God; the priestly office and atoning sacrifice of the Saviour; justification by faith, and salvation by free and sovereign grace; the work, power, and grace of the Holy Spirit; the regeneration of the human heart, and the vital, experimental

nature of true godliness,-these and their associated and subordinate truths, continue not only to be the creed, but the consolation of the churches. In these principles the candidates for the pastoral office in the various dissenting colleges are trained; and their acceptance amongst the churches greatly depends on the prominency they give to those great doctrines of the Reformation. In the public worship of modern Nonconformists, hymns are sung in accordance with those of the first Christians, "carmenque Christo quasi Deo dicere ;" and their free prayers are characterised by frequent invocations on the name of the Lord Jesus. Within a few years new editions of the voluminous works of Owen, Baxter, Howe, Bates, Charnock, Flavel, Heywood, and other Bartholomew confessors, have been published; while the smaller treatises of these illustrious men, and of their contemporaries, are continually issuing from the press in every variety of form, to meet the increasing demand for their doctrinal, experimental, and practical writings. These, with similar facts, are sufficient to put to shame the oft-repeated and designing slander, that our churches are corrupted by the Socinian heresy.

Their opinions on church polity, as we have said, are far more settled and uniform than were those of the early Nonconformists. It is now almost universally agreed amongst at least the older nonconforming bodies, "that the power of the Christian church is purely spiritual, and should in no way be corrupted with temporal or civil power." "That Christ is the only head of the church, and the officers of each church under him are ordained to administer his laws impartially to all; and that their only appeal in all questions touching their religious faith and practice is to the Holy Scriptures;"* that the ministers of religion should be supported, not by the imposts of civil governments, but by the free-will offerings of the people, who enjoy their services— that consequently national establishments of Christianity are calculated to deteriorate and impede the religion they propose to extend.

It is for the maintenance of these opinions that we are reproached with having fallen from the sentiments of our forefathers, and adopted "the various novelties and fancies which arose about the time of the French revolution." It was indeed about that time that there appeared from the pen of the venerable William Graham, of Newcastle, "A Review of Ecclesiastical Establishments in Europe," fraught with these sentiments; deduced however, not from the writings of French Encyclopædists, but from the pages of inspired Scripture.

But the illustrious John Locke recognised the truth and justice of these opinions, when he prepared the draught of a constitution for the State of South Carolina, in 1682; and where he learned them may be

*Declaration of Faith and Order, &c., of Congregational Churches.

fairly gathered from the testimony of a late distinguished statesman and philosopher, Sir James Mackintosh.-" Educated, then, amongst the English dissenters, during the short period of their political ascendency, Mr. Locke early imbibed that deep piety and ardent love of liberty, which actuated that body of men; and he probably imbibed also in their schools the disposition to metaphysical inquiries, which has every where accompanied the Calvinistic theology. Sects founded on the right of private judgment, naturally tend to purify themselves from intolerance, and in time learn to respect in others the freedom of thought, to the exercise of which they owe their own existence. By the Independent divines who were his instructors, our philosopher was taught those principles of religious liberty, which they were the first to disclose to the world." Let those who doubt the existence of these opinions in the time of the Commonwealth, read Milton's treatise "On the Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church," and they will find it contains a noble argument for the full application of the voluntary principle. But admit these to be novel opinions-are they therefore necessarily erroneous? The progress of our views on ecclesiastical freedom is not equal to the advance which our countrymen have made towards political and commercial liberty. The expulsion of the Stuarts, the accession of William and Mary, the Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement, and the long series of concessions to popular claims which have followed those great events, have necessarily resulted from great principles, which, by the good providence of God, were embodied in the constitutional maxims and ancient usages of our Saxon ancestors. The germs of our liberties were there—though it required the experience and the sufferings of ages to develope and mature them. So we believe our church principles were prescribed and practised by the apostles of Jesus, though it has required the labours and sufferings of sixteen centuries to demonstrate the wisdom and the rectitude of acting upon them.

It is also alleged that modern Nonconformists have deteriorated in domestic and personal religion. In comparing their habits with those of their ancestors, there are shades of difference to be seen sufficient to justify this remark, and yet the present generation may not have retrograded. The fact is, that various causes combined to produce a frightful declension in the seriousness of the Nonconformists a century ago. Job Orton, in one of his letters, says, "It grieves me to hear of a growing spirit of levity and dissipation amongst the people, which is very unfavourable to the interest of religion and the comfort of ministers, and which every good minister should exert all his powers to restrain; though unhappily some of our divines have set themselves to plead for such a compliance with fashionable amusements, as tends to the utter ruin of our interest, and, I fear, will be greatly injurious to the best interests of particular persons. Strange that all our learned and wise fathers should be so wretchedly mistaken, in labouring to

keep their people from the course of this world,' and the love of pleasure and dissipation. But we foolishly throw off our fathers' real excellences with their old fashions and peculiar sentiments, and have not either judgment to see the difference between them, or not resolution enough to withstand the customs and fashions of the age."

The blessed revival of religion, which commenced with the labours of the Methodists, and which the writings of Watts and Doddridge so greatly promoted, quickened the languid piety of the old Independent and Baptist churches; and thus, at the present time, they are found in a greatly revived state, as compared with that of the eve of Methodism, although they may not be equal to the spirituality and devotedness of

their eminent forefathers.

Beneficence towards mankind will supply a test of our piety towards God; and the Nonconformists of the present day have been amongst the earliest and most steady advocates of all those noble efforts by which the sufferings of humanity are ameliorated, and the ignorance of mankind dispelled. For the abolition of the slave trade and slavery in the West, and for the suppression of infanticide, sutteeism, and other cruelties of the Hindoos in the East, they have pleaded in common with spiritual Christians of other communities with successful importunity. When the education of the people had been entirely neglected, and the Sunday-school system, projected by a benevolent Episcopalian, languished in the hands of worthless hirelings, the Nonconformist churches supplied that voluntary agency which rescued the project from extinction, and carried its blessings through every district of the nation. In the associations for the diffusion of Bibles and other religious books, modern Nonconformists have felt themselves happy to unite with great and good men of other communions, and have borne their full share in the labours of the study and the platform, in pecuniary contributions, and personal agency for the translation and circulation of the Holy Scriptures and religious tracts at home and abroad. The duty of missions to the heathen has been extensively recognised by the Nonconformist churches during the last half century; and the claims of our countrymen in neglected districts at home, and in the British colonies, have not been neglected.

These diversified schemes of Christian philanthropy could not be permanently sustained but by a large substratum of real religion. Excitement may do much for a temporary object; but a work that is to be continued through long years of patient and apparently unproductive labour, can alone be upheld by principles that rule the conscience and regulate the life. Still we have need to be on our guard as to the out-door habits which religion has assumed. It was the devotional retirement of our forefathers that gave firmness to their convictions, and nerved their souls to deeds of moral heroism. In the light of the eternal throne they beheld the utter vanity of all earthly things,

and saw that to "win Christ and to be found in him" would far transcend the concentrated honours and enjoyments of time.

Let us emulate their deep piety, and seek that the hidden life of God in our souls may be invigorated by fervent, persevering prayer. Let the devotional writings of our eminently holy ancestors be the chosen companions of our closet hours, and, above all, the sacred Scriptures be consulted as the only "oracle" to which we can implicitly give heed. Then we shall be fitted for the work to which the providence of God may call us, and act as becometh those "on whom the ends of the world are come."

THE ALLEGED "BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD."

AN ESSAY TOWARDS A GRAMMATICAL EXAMINATION AND INTERPRETATION

OF 1 COR. xv. 29.

Most readers of the Congregational Magazine will doubtless be able to call to mind a whimsical anecdote of King Charles, (not the martyr but the wit,) who at one of the earliest meetings of the Royal Society proposed as a grave question, "Why a pail of water weighed no heavier when a fish was put into it than before?" After much learned controversy on the subject, the difficulty was dispelled at once by simply denying the assumed fact. The monarch's sophism, explains Mr. Isaac Taylor, consisted in covertly taking for granted what ought to have been the real question at issue.

Now, bold as it may seem, the object of this paper is to show that something very similar has taken place, in the case of those who have hitherto written on that obscure and harassing passage, 1 Cor. xv. 29; in fact, that the inquiry should not have been, "How is the phrase, oi BaπTICóμevoi vπèρ тâν veкρŵv, to be understood?" but rather, "Whether the apostle ever intended his words to be thus connected?"

Dr. Henry Tittmann, in his "Essay on the Grammatical Accuracy of the Writers of the New Testament," has the following excellent remarks : "A principal reason why the science of interpreting the New Testament is not yet firmly settled on its proper foundations, seems to lie in the fact, that many regard the interpreter of the New Testament as having nothing to do with the niceties of grammar. Hence it happens, that even those who have best understood the genius of the Greek language, have, in explaining the sacred books, paid no proper regard to the laws of grammar, or to the analogy of language; and the same thing has therefore happened to them, that has usually deterred mere philologians from treating of the Scriptures. They have taken it for granted, that the sacred writers were far removed from that grammatical accuracy, the laws of which are founded in the nature of language and the use of the best writers; and, therefore, in explaining their writings, they