A HISTORICAL VINDICATION OF THE ABROGATION OF THE PLAN OF UNION BY THE Presbyterian Church IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. BY THE REV. ISAAC V. BROWN, A. M. AM I THEREFORE BECOME YOUR ENEMY, BECAUSE I TELL YOU THE TRUTH?-Gal. iv. 16. PHILADELPHIA: WM. S. & ALFRED MARTIEN, 144 CHESTNUT STREET, 1855. Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by ISAAC V. BROWN, In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States for the District of New Jersey. PREFACE. THIS volume aims to vindicate the reform system adopted in the Presbyterian church, May, 1837, from the disingenuous statements and inferences by which its opposers have endeavored, and still strive, to screen themselves from just censure, and to injure the good name of those who stood foremost in the decisive hour, to save the church by dispossessing her adversaries. No true church can exist which has not the uncorrupted word of God for her basis, and the cardinal doctrines of grace for her chief corner stones, her pedestals, her porches, her columns, and her imperishable wall of defence. It cannot be denied, that the palpable perversions of religious. truth and moral obligation, the distorted views of man's native powers and responsibilities, which pervade the whole mass of New School speculation and romance, if not speedily checked and effectually remedied must prove the programme to an age of infidelity, and introduce upon the American stage the shocking theological panorama of universal derangement and confusion in the elements of the moral world; as a parallel to which we may point only to the reign of terror and triumph of ungodliness in the French Revolution, at the close of the last century. Considering the excitability and elasticity of the American mind, its love of novelty and the readiness with which it catches at theories most untried and extravagant, this is a fearful idea. Cases of wild fanaticism, sufficient to warrant these unwelcome anticipations, may be gleaned, not only from the history of New School innovations within the last thirty years, but from the recollections and records of kindred associations of visionary and dangerous errorists. If the infatuated men who led the New School defection, in their attempt to subjugate the vast and growing numbers of the Presbyterian community to their power and influence, had succeeded in their efforts, none can tell what would have been the direful result. It is justly said, that "truth is powerful and will prevail." But it is equally true, that error is powerful, and if furnished with loose rein among the masses, like a wild war-horse, will exhibit tremendous power and havoc. The contest with this unbroken and gigantic foe is difficult and eventful. Let us candidly record the steps by which he achieved his somewhat successful campaign, and trace the movements observed by the friends of truth in checking his disastrous march. Considering cotemporary documents published by individuals, by ecclesiastical bodies, religious conventions, associations, and periodicals, better adapted than any thing that could be written, de novo, to furnish reliable data, to explain and confirm every thing which it is important to know and to preserve upon this agitating subject, the writer does not purpose to introduce more new matter than appears requisite to keep up the chain of evidence and illustration, and to sustain a due degree of connexion and unity throughout the work. From the great mass of documentary publications which the friends of truth and order, at that period, had time and zeal enough to oppose to the rushing tide of error and distraction which was flooding the church, we shall select a few specimens of such as appeared best calculated to save her from the triumphant usurpation of her invaders, by exposing the iniquity of their strides and the desolation of their successes. These documents, it may be fairly presumed, will, if any thing can, exhibit the tempers, motives, and aims of the actors in this great ecclesiastical drama, much better than the capricious assumptions, special pleadings, or unwarrantable surmises of any writers of the present day. It is a consideration of importance, too, in this connexion, that although most of these documents were widely dispersed at the time of their first publication, probably at least four-fifths of those now living and who are to judge of these papers, never had an opportunity to give them a deliberate reading, if they ever saw or heard of them at all. |