was celebrated, Quitman, again by order of the New York Ministerium, published several sermons bearing on this event. Here he says: "Reason and Revelation are the only sources from which religious knowledge can be drawn, and the norms according to which all religious questions ought to be decided. . . . Are not both, Reason and Revelation, from heaven, always in agreement and the one supporting the other?" Again: "The true sense which the Reformers connected with the term 'faith' is still more apparent from the XX. Article of the Augsburg Confession, where they explicitly declare that faith 'which is productive of good works justifies man before God.'" (653.) This rank Socinianism and Rationalism of Quitman and the Ministerium became firmly intrenched and was protected from attack by the constitution of 1816, which contained the paragraph: "And we establish it as a fundamental rule of this association that the person to be ordained shall not be required to make any other engagement than this, that he will faithfully teach, as well as perform all other ministerial duties, and regulate his walk and conversation, according to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ as contained in Holy Scriptures, and that he will observe this constitution while he remains a member of this Ministerium." (655.) Within the New York Ministerium, therefore, ministers could no longer be required by their congregations to pledge themselves on the Lutheran Confessions. According to the constitution doctrinal discussions were permitted on the floor of Synod, but only with the express proviso "that the fundamental principle of Protestantism, the right of free research, be not infringed upon, and that no endeavor be made to elevate the Ministerium to an inquisitorial tribunal." (679.) Thus the entire heritage of the Reformation, together with its Scriptural principle and cardinal doctrine of justification by faith, had gone by the board, the unionism and indifferentism of the Halle pastors having served as the first entering wedge--just as in Halle Pietism and subjectivism, an essentially Reformed growth, foreign to sound objective Lutheranism, had given birth to the ugly child, afterwards, when grown up, named _Rationalismus Vulgaris_. JOHN CHRISTOPHER HARTWICK.