settlement in the church of his fathers, among the Dutch people, in whose manners and habits he had grown up, and among whom, for that reason, he had the right to look for comfort in his intercourse, and success in the ministry of the gospel. We have seen the General Synod, the highest judicatory in the church, refuse to wipe away the reproach so unjustly cast upon the young man by the Board, and at least appar entlysanctioning the proceedings of the Board at their first meeting, where the wrong and injustice commenced. By these measures a wound has been inflicted on his parents, under the anguish of which they may descend to their graves.

It is a very natural inquiry, what Mr. Van Dyck has done to deserve such treatment; what is his crime? The whole extent of it is this, that he has doubts whether the term Son of God is applied to the Saviour, as designating his nature, or his office of mediator. He admits Jesus Christ to be essentially God from all eternity, and if the term Son of God is applied to him in reference to his natural relation to the Father, then he admits the propriety of the expression in the 10th article of the Confession of Faith, that he was begotten from eternity. But if the term Son of God is used to denote his office of mediator, then the expression in the 10th article is unwarranted; and in as much as the Bible does not in his opinion decide this question, he could not say that he had sufficient evidence to enable him to form any opinion on the subject. He also doubts the propriety of the expression in the 11th article, that the Holy Spirit had from eternity proceeded from the Father and the Son. Not that he has any doubt that the Holy Spirit is essentially God, and has been from all eternity; but he is not convinced that the scriptures declare the manner of the Spirit's existence always to have been in a procession from the two other persons in the Trinity Let any intelligent man examine the passages of Scripture cited to prove these two abstruse doctrines, and he will be surprised after all the noise made, how little light the Scriptures cast on the subject. Now as these are questions relating to the nature and mode of existence of the incomprehensible God, we cannot have any further evidence, than what it has pleased him to reveal

in his own word. All conjectures and speculations of men are idle, and all inferences from texts not in point, are, to say the least, extremely unsafe. On the first doctrine much has been written; and men of the first standing for piety, talents, and usefulness, have advocated different sides of the question. I am not aware that much has been written on the doctrine of eternal procession; and it does appear to me that very little can be said, unless writers should indulge in the wildest and most presumptuous conjectures on a subject entirely dependent on Revelation, and on which that Revelation is almost wholly silent. Both points of doctrine have been raised by men, and in my view, are calculated to introduce "strife about words to no purpose," and "ministering questions, rather than godly edifying ;" and so condemned in 1 Tim. i. 4. vi. 20., 2 Tin. ii. 14. In Scott's Family Bible, a work which has been introduced into many Dutch families, through the recommendation and encouragement of the prominent ministers of our own church, there is a very sensible note to the 26th verse of the fifteenth chapter of John. In that verse, the Saviour promises to send unto his disciples, "from the Father, the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father." The following is an extract from the note of the Commentator :"The Holy Spirit is here said to proceed from the Father, and "many suppose this to refer not only to his being sent forth "from the Father and the Son, (as the Son was from the "Father,) a willing messenger to apply the salvation of Christ "to his chosen people; but to what is called his eternal pro"cession from the Father; by which is meant something "similar to the eternal generation of the Son. But these are "incomprehensible mysteries; and (though inserted in most "of the ancient creeds and formularies,) seem not to be expli "citly and evidently revealed." This extract from Scott, is not made, nor are the preceding remarks made, to prove that neither the doctrine of eternal generation, or eternal procession are founded in truth; but for the purpose of showing that they are not explicitly and evidently revealed, and that, therefore, it cannot be criminal or strange, that good men should entertain diverse opinions; and that, at all events, it ought to be

deemed neither criminal nor strange, that a student of divinity should be troubled with doubts respecting them.* But the student was also undecided whether the death of Christ was for all, or only a portion of the human family. This question has also long divided theologians, who are otherwise of the same sentiments; and never ought to be permitted to occasion a breach of christian fellowship, and which is at least left doubtful in our standards, as will be more fully shown hereafter. No objection, at all events, can be made to the student on this score, inasmuch as he avowed before the Board his willingness to subscribe the article of our church, on that point of doctrine. These are all the doctrines on which Mr. Van Dyck failed to come to the same conclusion with the members of the Board; and these are the "several important doctrines" on which they state that he was labouring, so that he could not subscribe the entire standards of the church, and for which they rejected him, as unfit to be admitted into the ministry of the church!

The Board say nothing in regard to the doubtfulness or plainness of these doctrines; but they allege them to be important. This topic has been so fully discussed and proved in Mr. Van Dyck's pamphlet, that I shall content myself in this place with reminding my readers, that these doctrines, (namely, eternal generation and procession, the other being out of question by Mr. Van Dyck's conformity to the standards on that point,) are scarcely ever discussed in our pulpits; the doctrine of eternal procession never to my knowledge. It is not contained in the Heidelberg Catechism; and this omis

It was with a very ill grace that Dr. Milledoler quarrelled with Mr. Van Dyck for embracing the sentiments expressed in the above extract from Scott's Family Bible, as he has himself recommended that book to all the friends of Christian knowledge, as an instructive, well digested, and purely evangelical work; as a treasure of religious instruction. A good recommendation, but very unfortunate for the Doctor's purpose in this instance; quite as much so as that of a certain professor who advised his student that had doubts on the doctrines of eternal generation and procession, to read Gill's Body of Divinity; and the student found the author arguing indeed for the eternal generation, but against the eternal procession. The Doctor might have done as well to abide by Mark's Medulla, and perhaps better to abide by the Bible without note or comment.

sion would hardly have been made, if the doctrine were an important one. Now then, there is but one important doctrine left, instead of several, on which the student's mind, as the Board alleged, was labouring, and that is the eternal generation. And will the Board and the Synod of the Reformed Dutch church maintain, that a doubt of this one doctrine is so criminal or so dangerous, as to require the rejection of the doubting man from the ministry of the gospel? Then let me assure you, that, twenty years hence, we will have few ministers in the church. The articles will not be taken for granted, as they have been. They will undergo discussion, and some of our best men will doubt. And who will send his son to our theological school, if his licensure shall depend on his believing such disputable and, in themselves, unimportant matters; rendered important only by church power or caprice ?

Yes, it is maintained that Van Dyck was justly rejected from the ministry of the gospel in our church, if he doubted any one of the articles in our standards: that he ought not to have entered the seminary, unless he intended to submit his judgment to his teachers, and other superiors in the church. Time has been when a father, sending his son to be educated for the ministry, never dreamed, that he had aught to do but to learn what was taught him by his instructer. As to the exercise of his own judgment independent of the teacher, this was not thought of by the father, the son, or the theological professor. If the pupil could not repeat the propositions laid down for him, in the same form they were given, no other reason for such a result could be devised, except that the pupil lacked genius, or a teachable disposition, or that he had not had sufficient time" to be made correct." The least disposition in a young man to reason for himself, differently from the reasoning of his teachers, would have been viewed by his family as a most grievous calamity. So it was in the case of a young Spaniard, educated for the priesthood in the Roman Catholic church. He had the imprudence to express, in the presence of his mother, some doubts whether all the doctrines of the church were true. She loved him; and mourned over his calamity, and her own hard condition. She shunned his company,

lest

the repetition of his doubts should constrain her conscience. to accuse him to the inquisition. He, learning her state of mind, left his home and country, took up his residence in England, and became established in the protestant religion. This man was a dangerous speculator in the eyes of his mother, as Mr. Van Dyck was in the apprehension of Dr. Milledoler, and the members of the board of superintendants. In their belief, Mr. Van Dyck had not the right to speculate on such abstruse points, as the eternity of the Sonship and of the procession; as he ought to have known, that these matters had long since undergone speculations, until they had become as firmly settled as any proposition in Euclid. They believe that by the speculations of St. Athanasius, about fifteen hundred years ago, it became, and is now certain, that Jesus Christ, as God, is of the substance of the father, begotten before the world; and as man, of the substanee of his mother, born in time; and that he is not one with the Father by mixture of substance, but by unity of person: and that all who do not believe this, (though the Bible no where declares any thing as to several of these propositions,) "shall, without doubt, perish everlastingly." (See constitution of the Reformed Dutch church, 145.) They also believe, that by the speculations of the authors of our Confession of Faith, and the Synod of Dort, two hundred years ago, it is now settled, that Jesus Christ was from eternity, begotten by the father, and that the Holy Spirit from all eternity proceeded from the Father and the Son. But they believe, moreover, that the age of speculation has passed by, as much as the age of miracles has; that what was very necessary and praiseworthy in the days of our ancestors, is now very heretical and presumptuous: and that all we have to do now, is simply to swallow down speculations made in the proper age of the world. There is, perhaps, little doubt that the offence taken by Professor Milledoler at Mr. Van Dyck, has been because of the trouble the former has met from what he deemed in the latter an inclination to speculation. The Professor is, mistaken. The term is misapplied to the student, but would be properly applicable to the Professor himself, had he originated all the notions he

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