OR, THE WAY OF GOD: A PLEA FOR THE RELIGION OF SCRIPTURE. BY A. CLEVELAND COXE, BISHOP OF WESTERN NEW YORK. "There will come a time when three words uttered with OXFORD and LONDON: JAMES PARKER AND CO. 1874. 141. M. 223 PODL PREFACE. THE 'HE following pages have been written for popular use, in England as well as in America: and more especially with a view to the state of religion in Ireland, in Scotland, and in most of the British colonies. The writer is familiar with the state of things encountered by our missionary bishops in Canada and in the West Indies, and has been a close observer of the NonConformist movements in England, and of those which now distract the disestablished Churches of the sister kingdoms. Let it not be imagined, then, that a work based on the religious condition of his own beloved country is, on that account, less fitted for usefulness in other English-speaking lands. On the contrary, as America is the Utopia to which Non-Conformity always makes its appeal, let them see from the evils with which Truth has to contend in America, how grave a thing it is to unsettle the religious faith of a nation, by giving encouragement to Sectarianism. Philosophy teaches best by example. In this book, the writer has set before his readers the example of inorganic Christianity in America. He has dealt tenderly with its better forms, and fairly with its worst: and he is prepared to substantiate, from unimpeachable testimony, all that he had said on this subject, with much more that might have been said. Here, then, we see precisely what must have been the religious condition of England, had its Apostolic Church been finally destroyed by Cromwell; and here we see to what those theorists would reduce the social as well as the religious condition of England, who are now assailing that glorious Church with the outcry, "Down with it to the ground." An eminent living prelate of the Church of England once remarked to the writer, that "in explaining the Apostolic organization of the Church of Christ, and in the practical application of Holy Scripture to the refutation of Dissent, he had noted a special excellence in the American divines with whom he had met." Indeed, a similar commendation has been expressed in his hearing by several learned ecclesiastics of the English and Colonial Churches. And whatever the deficiencies of the American Clergy in other respects, the writer is satisfied that such is their just praise. The American Church has fought her way to her present degree of development and of power, inch by inch, against a learned and able popular Christianity, controlled from Colonial times by the eminently respectable Congregationalism of New-England, and the strong and selfsufficient Presbyterianism of the Middle States. In the conflict of Truth with such specious and truly honest forms of error, the American Churchman has learned the use of his weapons, and has found out alike his own strongest points, and the more vulnerable positions of his antagonists. And it may be affirmed, confidently, that in every important discussion that has arisen in America, between Churchmen and their opponents, the latter have retired from the field defeated, while large accessions to the Church have followed. A memorable instance, in point, was the high-toned discussion of "Episcopacy" between the amiable and candid Mr. Barnes, of Philadelphia, and Dr. Onderdonk, then Bishop of Pennsylvania. The day of such controversies seems past: but, in these pages, the writer has invited attention to the nobler and broader field of Scriptural Catholicity. In a spirit, the reverse of polemical, he has called attention to the rootprinciples of Christian Unity. He has exposed the unscriptural character of modern "Evangelicalism," while doing justice to its zeal and piety; and he has exhibited, somewhat at length, the wealth of Holy Scripture which it discards, or even gainsays and rejects. It would have been easy to digest these materials into a treatise designed for the schools; but, for obvious reasons, the writer has preferred to popularize his Essays, and to throw them into the form of Table-Talk. He trusts that it may be found that, while he speaks for the many, he has thought with the few; and that while he has avoided the parade of study and research, the results of labour may be recognised combined with the fresh handling of some very dry subjects. It has been his design to afford information on matters generally misunderstood, in such a form that he who runs may read. It will do good to a certain School of Theology which exists in England, and predominates in Ireland, to learn, from these pages, to what their pious and kindly disposition tends, when it concedes to Evangelical Non-Conformity the essential principles of its existence. And the |