gentiles, win glory and immortality, {135c} if, having not the law, he be a law unto himself. I would not receive Christ’s ordinances from the hands of any but an ordained priest, myself, because if a doubt exist in my mind, I sin in doing the doubtful thing; but herein I speak only for myself; let every man do as he is “persuaded in his mind” {136} in matters of secondary import, as all ceremonial matters must be. You will now be prepared for my opinion with regard to the late movement made in the church by the Anglo-Catholics, as they term themselves; Puseyites, or Newmanites, as they have been termed by others. They have been thought to have introduced innovations—they have not:—there is not one of the ceremonies or practices which they have recommended, which was not very early practised in the church; but it was from the undue importance attached to these ceremonies, which came to be regarded with reverence from having been instituted by apostles and martyrs, that the after growth of Roman superstition sprang up so rankly. I believe the first promoters of this movement were as remote from actual Romanism as I am, when they first began it; but when once reason is submitted to any human dictum, in matters of religion, there is no resting place till we arrive at the “infallible” guide which the Romish church claims to be. There alone can the soul which will not think for itself, find a ready and confident director. Accordingly, we find that some of those very men who but a few years back exposed the errors of Romanism, have now yielded themselves blindfold to the guidance of that very church, which, as long as they allowed themselves to reason, they acknowledged to have departed from the truth. Yet it is perhaps fortunate for the people generally, that this declension of its pastors has been as rapid and complete as it has been:—they were going back towards the sin of Aaron—they were insisting on ceremonies as necessary to salvation, thus rendering religion gross and tangible, and the people thus taught would soon have forgotten what those ceremonies were intended to represent, and have depended for salvation on what could not avail them in the hour of need: for the repetition of prayer is not necessarily praying, nor is the reception of the eucharist necessarily sanctification, though these may be the outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual grace which is working in the heart. Once teach a man that _any_ ceremony is _requisite_ to salvation, and he will soon go a step further by himself, and think the outward ceremony sufficient without the inward grace. This indeed is but a necessary corollary; for if the ceremony be requisite to salvation, then the inward grace working purity of life, avails not without the ceremony; and thus purity of life is no longer a substantive virtue; it cannot stand alone; and the prop which it requires being so very strong, why should not the prop itself be all in all? This will be