the common defamer. It manifests a spirit, which, if exercised in a way not very dissimilar against an individual, instead of a great number of individuals, the humanity of our laws would in. deed punish only with imprisonment and hard labour, but which in other countries less merciful, might lead its possessor to make his next public exhibition in the pillory instead of the pulpit.

Addison, in one of his Spectators, tells of a country clergyman, who having a quarrel with the squire of his parish, threatened to pray for him by name before the whole congregation. We believe that we have sometimes been prayed for in a similar spirit. But if the accounts which we have heard be correct, some of the clergy of New-York have used language and manifested feelings in their addresses to the Deity, in relation to the Unitarians of that city, which exceed in brutal profaneness any thing of the sort of which we recollect to have heard. The clergy of a city have, we believe, no small influence not merely upon the religious and moral character of its inhabitants, but upon the state of intellectual improvement, of taste, and of ge nuine refinement of feeling and manners. By their weekly services, they determine in a great degree the manner in which religion shall be presented to the minds of men; whether in its true character, or as something repulsive and odious. The opinions which they inculcate may either enlighten and improve, or debase and confound the understandings of their hearers. They may do much to give them a taste for correct reasoning and genuine eloquence; or they may accustom them to extravagant and unmeaning declamation, and call upon them to give up the exercise of their own judgments, and rest satisfied with the confident assertions of their teachers, who are dogmatical in proportion to their incapacity to gain credit for their doctrines in any other way.. They may do much to produce true liberality of feeling; or they may excite a vulgar, intemperate bigotry, which frequently exists, when the zealots who are actuated by it, neither know for what they are contending, nor what they are opposing. By inculcating religion in its true character as bearing directly upon the social duties, and demanding from us constant exertions to promote the moral and physical good of our fellowcreatures, they may indirectly do much to lessen the mass of vice and misery which is constantly accumulating in great cities. And on the other hand, by a kind of teaching, the tendency of which is to make men narrow-minded and violent in believing their doctrines, or profligate in despising them, they may contribute no inconsiderable aid to the prevalence of irreligion and immorality. We do think that the condition of that city is not a little to be lamented, in which any considerable proportion of

the clergy are distinguished by the spirit, which we have now felt it our duty to expose.

We should do injustice to our own feelings, if we forbore to mention the admirable answer to Dr. Spring by a member of the Unitarian Society at New York. We should give some extracts from it, but one of considerable length has already appeared in the number of the Daily Advertiser before referred to, and the pamphlet itself is for sale in our bookstores. While there are men among the Unitarians of New York who think and write like the author of this pamphlet; and we know of more than one of their number of whom any city might be proud; we think they have little to apprehend from any fair opposition which they are likely to encounter.

State of Religion in Holland.-[We think our readers will be interested by the following account of the state of religion in Holland, with which we have been favoured by a gentleman of the highest respectability, a native of that country. It was addressed in a private letter to one of the conductors of the Christian Disciple, and leave has been subsequently obtained for its publication.]

I have received from Holland various Reviews and Journals, published since I left that country in 1817, and observe in them, that religious opinions have undergone, and are undergoing a great change, from what they formerly were.

It appears, that a Synod of the Protestant Church for the kingdom of the Netherlands, was convened in 1817, and that among other enactments for the government of that church, it has been decreed: That at the examinations of the candidates for the ministry, no mention is to be made of the five points wherein the Arminians or Remonstrants disagree with the Calvinists; and that the subscription of ministers to the confession of faith, is to be made with this new and cautious condition, that they will teach and preach according to it, so far as they judge it to agree with the word of God.

The same Synod invited all the Protestant dissenters, 1. e. the Anticalvinists, to partake with their churches of the Lord's Supper.

One Review, formerly characterized as ultra-orthodox, disclaims for the present clergy of Holland, any attachment to the Canons of the Synod of Dort of the year 1618, and asserts in several places, that it considers all the different doctrines among the Protestants, as speculative opinions, having no connexion with the positive doctrines of Christianity.

A Sermon has been published, pronounced by a Professor of Theology at Leyden, in which the doctrine of predestination is described as a frightful doctrine,-dishonourable to God,-and absurd, representing the Deity as practising a contemptible deception upon his creatures, inviting and calling them to repentance and salvation, after having predetermined the everlasting misery of the greatest part of them. The reviewers, astonished at this open attack on a doctrine preached formerly by themselves, pronounce the terms here used to be too harsh, and insulting to a doctrine which during two centuries has made an interesting part of the popular belief. They agree, however, that the word Election is to be understood, as used concerning that which is chosen or preferred on account of some better quality and disposition, as Paul is named a chosen vessel, &c. They propose to explain the word in this sense, without mentioning or reproaching the former doctrine, and trust, that in so doing, the former erroneous explication will be forgotten, and the truth insensibly prevail.

Here we see in the church of Holland, another proof of the inexpediency and injurious tendency of human forms of belief, forced under the name of Creeds on Christian ministers. It is certainly not by a suddenly received light, that the clergy in Holland have discovered, that, as far as regards the doctrine of predestination at least, the Creed till of late unconditionally subscribed by them, and forced upon others, is not in accordance with the Bible. The growing disbelief in the doctrine has at length encouraged, perhaps forced them, to make this confession; they dare not however now do this from the pulpit, where they, as their brethren the Calvinists in this country, were formerly always insisting upon it. Their now determined silence on this point cannot however fail to be observed by a people, who like that of Scotland, have always put a high value on the articles of their Creed, and make them a subject for the exercise of their ingenuity; the fanatical Calvinists will cry out against them, and they are thus in danger of losing their influence and usefulness with their congregations. And when these congregations reflect, that their ministers have preached to them at least one doctrine, which they did not themselves believe; that the Creed and the Catechism remain the same, and their children are still obliged to learn and taught to believe them; is there not danger that this may lead the half informed, the great majority in all communities, to become sceptics, and entertain doubts on the essential parts of the christian religion? I do not blame the present clergy of Holland. Those who have gone before them have done the mischief. Creeds and Catechisms cannot be altered

in any country in Europe without convulsion, and unsettling the minds of the great bulk of the people, because they have been accustomed and taught to look on them as no less sacred than the bible. The safest way then certainly is, that now adopted by necessity. It is safest to introduce, as is now attempted to be done, not by authority of the synod or the churches, but by other means, different catechisms to take insensibly the place of the present one.

What the former orthodox party consider now as positive doctrines of christianity, appear to me to be few In the great number of sermons published the last three years and mentioned in the reviews, there seems not even to have been an allusion to the doctrine of the Trinity, but in one instance, and the reviewers observe on it: "that many will be surprised, that the author has made use of the word Trinity." Professor Van der Palm, the celebrated Dutch biblical critic, and a most eloquent preacher, has published six volumes of sermons, which I have received. On the subject of the atonement he is positive; he does not however explain it as an infinite satisfaction to enable the Deity to be merciful towards his creatures, but for some reasons inexplicable to us, as a means by God ordained, and necessary to our salvation. He appears to me to have adopted, what Dr. Price calls the middle-scheme, and which the latter thinks the nearest the truth in the Gospel account. Professor Van der Palm speaks of Christ always in the language of the bible, and as the image of God's glory revealed on earth. That in him we see the Father; that his wisdom, power and love, are those of the Father, and that thus exalted, perfected and glorified by the Father, we must love and obey Christ as we do the Father. He represents Christ's present exaltation, "not because he was from eternity with the Father, but because he has been made perfect by obedience and suffering, and has obtained the delivery of men by his blood." Of the Holy Spirit he always speaks as of the power of God.

All the reviewers speak of these sermons, with unqualified praise, and recommend them as models. It seems to me obvious, therefore, that the doctrine of the Trinity is abandoned by the greater part and the most learned of the Dutch clergy, not less than the doctrine of Predestination. It is not long ago, however, that the slightest departure from the Creed established in 1618, was followed a formal dismissal of a minister from any of the established churches. The Synods and classes were particularly watchful for the preservation of the only true doctrines and the purity of the faith, as settled and declared by the Fathers of the Council of Dort.

New Series-vol. III.

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One of the reviews, which has always, but with great caution, recommended a system of liberal christianity, comes now boldly forward and defends the perfect unity of God, on the ground of the plain and obvious declarations of the bible. It rejects and reprobates the imposition of human Creeds and systems of divinity. No professed Unitarians are more explicit on this point, than the writers in this review.

All this proves to me an amazing change in the religious opinions of my native country, which not many years ago was considered as the great bulwark of the orthodox and calvinistic system on the continent of Europe, and where that system has formerly found its most able and learned defenders. That this great change should be general, cannot be expected. But we may suppose the national general Synod of 1817, to have represented the opinions of the great majority of the Dutch Theologians, at least of the most learned and esteemed among them, and of the heads of the Universities. The perfect freedom allowed by this Synod to the ministers of religion, to take the bible as their standard of faith and doctrine, amounts to a virtual abandonment of any system of Orthodoxy. This, with the now open avowal and defence of the perfect unity of the Godhead, formerly branded and abhorred under the frightful name of Socinjanism, must in time bring christianity back to its first purity and simplicity.

I see also in a work on theological subjects, that, in an introductory discourse, lately published by Professor Schulz of Breslau, the doubts about the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews are considered as finally settled, by what proofs or arguments is not mentioned, against the opinion that the Apostle Paul was the author of it. This was also the decision of the great Professor Valckenaer of Leyden, as appears by a recent posthumous publication from his writings, Selecta e Scholis.

Statements respecting Intemperance.-We have just seen the fourth annual Report of the Society for prevention of Pauperism in the city of New-York. The labours of this society are valuable, and we doubt not our readers will be interested in some quotations respecting intemperance--an important subject to which we have often called their attention. After stating "the sources of pauperism which attracted notice the last year, to be Intemperance, Ignorance, Criminal Prosecutions, Condition of Prisons, Gambling-Houses, Pardons, Lotteries, Want of Cleanliness, Emigration, Idleness and Want of Employment," the Managers proceed as follows:

"During the last year, the evils of intemperance have not di