FOR THE CHRISTIAN'S MAGAZINE.

CHURCH OF GOD.

N°. XIV.

Officers, &e.

WE have stated the first requisite in a Christian

minister to be piety; i. e. according to the large theological sense of the term, a principle of true religion, or devotedness of heart and life to the love and service of God in Christ.

We have stated his next qualification to be aptness to teach. This we have shown to contain,

(1.) A good natural capacity, or such a degree of native talent as is susceptible of the proper cultivation.

Some who have accompanied us thus far, will stop short here, and discover a willingness to dispense with acquisitions which were formerly considered as essential to a well-ordered ministry." Piety," they say, "will keep a man straight upon the main arti"cles of truth; and strength of mind, though rough "and unpolished, will enable him to impart them to "others in a plain but impressive manner. This," they will add," is vastly superiour to the drowsy "discourse of hundreds who have been through college, have studied divinity, and pass for great "scholars."

We protest, once for all, against learned dulness. Little as we delight in solecisms and uncouthness, we

will pardon the maulings of Priscian's head by the club of untutored power; we shall esteem ourselves repaid for an injury to syntax, or for a rugged illustration, by nature's pathos and vigour; when we should lose our patience with solemn insipidity, or doze under the influences of a leaden diploma; nor deem it any recompense for the loss of our time, that we were put learnedly to sleep. Yet, bad as this is, it is still worse to suffer the insipidity without the pour consolation of some literature to qualify it-an affliction of much more frequent occurrence than the other.

But by what sort of artifice do men cozen their understanding into such argumentation as this?" Ta"lent without education is better than stupidity with "it; therefore, talent ought not to be educated!!” Here is a colt of excellent points and mettle; He is worth a score of you dull, blundering jades, that have been in harness ever since they were able to draw; therefore, he will do very well without breaking! It is surprising that so many, otherwise discreet persons, will maintain that to be wise and good in the Church of God, which they know to be absurd and mischievous in every thing else. In fact, talent, instead of being exempted from the necessity of cultivation, is alone worth the trouble, and needs cultivation in proportion to its strength. Talents are born, knowledge and skill are acquired. God creates the one; he has left the other to be obtained by experience and industry. No talent can coin facts; and without facts it will run to waste.Without information it has no materials to work upon; and without discipline it will work wrong. The

* PRISCIAN, a famous old grammarian. Hence one who violates the rules of grammar, is said to break Priscian's head.

power of doing evil is in exact proportion to the power of doing good. Petty minds produce petty harms and petty benefits. The errours of great minds are great errours, and draw after them deep, wide, and lasting consequences. It is of unutterable moment that they be set right in the beginning. This, in so far as depends upon human exertion, is the province of cultivation, which, of course, makes the (2.) Part, of "aptness to teach.

What ought it to embrace in a minister of Jesus Christ? We may distribute it into two branches; the first consisting in literary acquirement; the second, in intellectual and moral discipline.

When we consider, that the Scriptures are written in languages which have not been spoken for agesthat they contain a succinct epitome of human history, in reference to the plan of grace, from the beginning to the end of time: going backward to the origin of nations, and forward to their extinction: marking, by the sure word of prophecy, the various fates of various people, as well as the principal dispensations of providence toward the Church-that they relate events which cannot be vindicated against plausible objection, without painful research into the phenomena of our globe-that they are full of allusions to the works of God and of man-that they exhibit human character under all its varieties, intellectual and moral; individual and social-that their illustrations of truth, and formulas of speech are borrowed from objects equally strange to our habits and conceptions; from the face of the country; from the soil; from the climate; from the governments; from the idolatry; from the literature; from the state of domestic society; from the manners of the East-that the language of prophecy is wholly peculiar; being a system of symbols, which, though as certain in themselves, and as reducible to fixed laws of interpretation as any alphabetical language

whatever, are perfectly unintelligible without the study of those laws- When we consider these things, it is impossible not to perceive that the study of the Bible allows of the widest range of learning; and that without a respectable portion of it no man can "rightly divide the word of truth."

Acquaintance with the original tongues is indispen

sible.

God has delivered his word to us in Hebrew and Greek, which being now, as they are commonly called, dead languages, are not liable to the fluctuations of a living one. These are the ultimate and the unalterable standard of truth, by which every doctrine must eventually be tried. Excellent versions the Churches have; versions, from which all that is to make us "wise unto salvation," may be learned by the humblest peasant or labourer, as certainly as by the accomplished scholar; versions, undoubtedly susceptible of improvement; but which the licentious spirit of the times gives us very dubious promise of replacing with better. Timeo Danaos-We invariably suspect these amended Bibles, which the Iscariotbands of professed Christianity are labouring, on both sides of the Atlantic, to thrust into the hands of the unlettered and the simple*.

* There is a late most audacious attempt to explain away the whole gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; absolutely stripping it, with the single exception of the doctrine of the resurrection, of every principle which makes it "glad tidings" to a sinner; substituting, in the room of "redemption by the blood of Christ," a barren morality, little, if any better than that of the Pagans, who were "without Christ, without hope, and without God in the world† ;” and straining into the " cup of salvation" the distilled venom of Socinian blasphemy. This fatal draught is handed about with incessant assiduity, and put to the lips of the unthink† Eph. ii. 12.

But the excellence of versions does not supersede the necessity of studying the originals. The very fact, that God has preserved them by a care hardly short of miraculous, would, of itself, establish our position. Why were they committed to dead languages at all? Why thus carefully preserved amidst the ruined literature of the world, and the moral midnight of the "dark ages?" To be thrown, neglected, into a corner? To be kept as a curiosity to feed the worms, and amuse the antiquary? To be decried by gabbling impertinence; or give the ministers of religion an opportunity of displaying their sense and spirit, by treating as unworthy of their study, and as beneath their notice, those original volumes which their God has not thought it beneath him to consign, for their use, to the safeguard of his wonder-working providence? For ourselves, we doubt not that his chief design in permitting the Hebrew and Greek tongues to die away; in protecting the remnants of classical literature, and causing it to revive, was that his blessed book might be read in the original; and that his Church might be able to assert and maintain his truth inviolate, by having direct access to the fountains themselves. And as little do we doubt that the cry which modern times, and especially modern infidels have raised against classical literature, and in which some Christians and Christian ministers have unwittingly joined, is a deep, though to many an unsuspected stratagem of hell, to bring the original Scriptures into gradual disuse; and, then, by dis

ing, that they may "sleep the sleep of death." All this under the modest and respectful guise of," an improved version of the New Testament.". The precedent of such treachery was set long ago. Its author is " gone to his own place." But the "improved version," with its accompaniments, show that his treason has not perished with him. "Betray ye the Son of man with a kiss?”