obligation to fulfill to the best of his ability the duties of a good citizen; and if he voluntarily fails, he is guilty of a breach of contract. On this ground, it is a breach of contract to defraud the customs, to evade the usury laws, or to break any other law of the land, which is not itself opposed to a higher law, the law of God. An exception may be admitted, where a law by general consent has gone into desuetude; for in this case it may be presumed that society relinquishes her claim to obedience.

3. It should be observed, that contracts are not disannulled by a failure of either party to do all that becomes him in the relation, provided no essential element of the contract is broken. Thus, an insult on the part of one nation will not justify the other in refusing to fulfill her treaties. For, if this were so, I should, on the same principles, be released from obligation to pay a just debt to any man, who had spoken disrespectfully of me. So likewise, a man may not be divorced from his wife, simply because she is extravagant, slovenly, intemperate or fretful; for though, in these respects, she is not what she contracted to be, she has not committed an absolute breach of covenant. In this, human and divine law may not harmonize. The laws of man may allow a rupture of the marriage contract, for reasons which may indeed justify a temporary separation of the parties, but which the Bible does not acknowledge to be a sufficient cause for divorce. Whenever, therefore, this contract is formed, the implied condition is, that it shall not be dissolved, by either party, unless the other shall first be guilty of the crime, which our Lord pronounces the only sufficient reason for its abrogation. In the event of a separation for other reasons, neither party can be innocently married to another person.

It is, however, to be remarked, as Paul teaches, 1 Cor. 7: 15, that this

sin is virtually committed, or a party to the marriage contract is presumed guilty of an absolute breach of contract, when he separates himself from his partner, with no intention of returning, and with an entire neglect of conjugal duties. This is recognized in the civil law of most countries, and is made the ground of divorce, not only from a support, but from the marriage relation itself.

4. We can not be too cautious in making promises, or too faithful in keeping them. They who hastily say that they will do whatever is requested, without carefully consider. ing whether they shall be able to meet their engagements, are apt to break their word, and to acquire a reputation very far from being desirable or honorable. This is the rea son why certain classes of artisans are proverbially false to their promises. They are daily obliged to inform their customers when their work will be finished, which expo ses them peculiarly to the habit of making promises without due consideration. It becomes them to put a double guard on their lips. In all cases, we should avoid making a promise which we shall be liable to break. No promise should be giv en without a good reason; and then it should be accompanied with proper conditions, plainly expressed, so that there may be no well founded disappointment. We should be more particularly on our guard against promises which are difficult to keep, and which are of great importance to the happiness of others. This remark applies to very early and hasty promises of marriage, which are apt to be broken by one party or the other, to the great unhappiness of both.

It is a serious reflection, that a breach of promise is a criminal falsehood-a sin against God, which in addition to the most afflictive consequences in this world, is liable to to severe retributions in eternity. While therefore we endeavor to

avoid the danger, by making no hasty and needless engagements, we should be exact and scrupulous in keeping them, when once made. No fear of loss or suffering, no plea of expediency, no pretense of duty, should deter us from fulfilling engagements, the obligation of which has in no way been vacated. In short, we should cultivate an ardent, devoted love of truth, and shrink from the moral pollution of a breach of promise, rather than from the temporary inconveniences of strict veracity.

5. Whoever is ignorant of the spirit of the law, and understands the letter only, having no sound principles of interpretation to apply to the moral precepts of the Bible, and to the civil codes of men, has no safeguard against the most absurd and extravagant conduct, and can have no intelligent peace of conscience. He will make himself an object of contempt to bad men, and of pity to the good. He will close against himself every avenue to honor and usefulness. For example, if he imagines that promises are based on no conditions, and subject to no other limitations than are expressly specified, he will, if an honest man, be drawn into a vortex of fooleries, utterly destructive of his reputation as a man of sense. A letter recently appeared in the papers, which perfectly confirms these views. It is addressed to Gov. Briggs of Massachusetts, by a distinguished gentleman of that state. In this letter, he resigns the office of justice of the peace, and renounces and recalls the oath to support the constitution of the United States, which he made at the time he received his commission. But whence arise these strange proceedings? Does he not know that an oath made to God can not be recalled? Is he ignorant that an express oath to support the government of a country has no more force than the tacit promise to that effect which every

citizen makes by consenting to reside in a country and claiming the protection of its laws? Whence then this farce-this vain attempt to throw off the obligation to support the constitution of his country? From his want of information. He has never studied ethics as a science. The subject is too dry and theological for one whose mind is absorbed in the wisdom of this world. He does not know that promissory oaths are always made under conditions, by the failure of which the promise may be in part or wholly vacated. He is ignorant that an oath to support the constitution of a country, does not include those parts of the constitution which are opposed to the divine law. So far as any promise embraces in literal terms the doing of wrong acts, it is null and void. No promise can be made without this expressed or tacit understanding as respects this necessary limitation. Yet he, a man of conscience, feeling himself bound by his oath to support our national constitution even to the article that requires the delivery of a fugitive slave to his master, is driven by a sense of duty to decline serving his country as a magistrate, and to renounce his oath to sustain the best national constitution in the world, even in those respects in which it comports with the divine will. What an absurd waste of talent! What a sacrifice of personal advantages, of reputation, influence, office and income! All this he can endure and rejoice over as parts of his duty. He prefers this bondage to error, to the liberty enjoyed by a thorough ethical student. He can not spend time to investigate such dry themes. Thus he ignorantly makes himself the scorn and pity of the world.

This is only one illustration of the liability of men who are ignorant how to interpret the moral law, to rush headlong into the grossest absurdities, a warning to all their imitators.

WE welcome this volume from the pen of Dr. Stone. It is a valuable addition to theological literature. We should welcome such a work coming from any quarter, on account of its intrinsic worth. We welcome it especially, as coming from an eminent Episcopalian. The rarity of such works from Episcopal sources render them exceed ingly valuable. We commend its doctrines on the vitally important topics of which it treats. We commend them without qualification. The book in its main features is right, just right. It is good, very good.

We are not surprised at such a work from Dr. Stone. It is what we had a right to expect from his well known ability, evangelical principles, and manly Christian character. Having held the pastoral office for many years successively, in Litchfield, New Haven, Boston, and Brooklyn, Dr. S. is widely known and highly respected and admired (more generally we think out of his own denomination than within it) for his evangelical, plain, pungent, and eloquent preaching. There has been therefore, an extensive feeling of late, that Dr. S. would not be long silent; that he would lift up a standard against the errors subversive of the gospelyea, constituting another gospelwhich have become so rife in prelatic charges, in Episcopal pulpits and papers, and in Episcopal theological schools. That expectation has not been disappointed. Dr. S. in the volume before us, the substance

The Mysteries Opened; or Scriptural Views of Preaching and the Sacraments, as distinguished from Certain Theories concerning Baptismal Regeneration and the Real Presence. By the Rev. John S. Stone, D. D., Rector of Christ Church, Brooklyn. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1844.

of which, he has, we presume, delivered in another form to his people, has spoken faithfully, manfully, powerfully. He has given a refu tation of prevalent Episcopal errors, respecting baptism and the Lord's Supper, and the comparative value of preaching and the sacra. ments, and a statement and defense of the truth on these subjects, which can not be overthrown, which will stand as long as the Scriptures, on which they are firmly based.

The work is truly Protestant and truly Catholic. Catholic we mean in the true and best sense of that term. It is able, thorough, and just, in the statement and defense of the truth, and impartial, able, thorough and unanswerable in the statement and refutation of error. We will give briefly our views of the work, by illustrating from its pages these several positions.

It is truly Protestant. He brings his cause for trial before the sole tribunal of the Scriptures. His appeal is ever to the law and to the testimony. He occasionally endeavors indeed, to show the harmo ny between his views and the ecclesiastical standards of his church. But this is an object by the way, and entirely subordinate. He evinces plainly and practically his opinion, that we are to go individually and directly to the Scriptures for our religious creed, and that all human exposition and interpretation, wheth er that of the church or of individ uals, is valuable, only as it assists us in judging of the true sense of the Bible. He sustains his own views and refutes those of his op ponents, by arguments from the gen eral scope of the Scriptures, and by a thorough, critical, and sensible exposition of numerous texts. One reason which has influenced him in taking this course, he says, is

"The increasing prevalence of views which, to his apprehension, threaten the dislodgment of the Bible from its true place of importance in the settlement of all questions involving the purity and the vital interests of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

"We see coming into distinct shape among us the notions that Christ has left himself perpetually incarnate, through the sacraments, in the living body of the visible church; and that he now dispenses the gifts of the Holy Spirit, not by imparting them directly to the individual, who privately studies or publicly hears the truths of the word, or who, independently of all outward ordinances, seeks those gifts in secret and believing prayer, but by having, once for all, deposited those gifts in the hands of his apostles alone, to be by them handed down through successors, and by successors, through sacraments, to the body of the church. Now these are notions which can never be plausibly sustained but by aids extraneous to the Scriptures them selves; in other words, by later tradition. It is impossible to find adequate support for such views in the word of God. They are in conflict with that divine standard. They must virtually appeal from it to another rule. It is evident, therefore, that just so far as such notions prevail, the Scriptures must be sinking in the practical esteem both of clergy and laity; while tradition simultaneously rises to the rank of virtually supreme judge and arbiter in all the most important questions which can affect the purity of the church and the Gospel, or the destinies of Christ's kingdom on earth. On the theory which the above notions involve, the ministry of the church holds a prerogative, which, as our nature is constituted, can never be safe in human bands; which has ever proved the means of the most crushing spiritual despotism, and which must always force its upholders into greater and greater departures from the simplicity of the Gospel, into the corruptions of error." -Preface, pp. 5, 6.

Speaking of the argument, "that such is the meaning (that which teaches baptismal regeneration) put on the passage (John 3: 5) by a long catalogue of ancient writers and liturgies," he says,

"If, therefore, the meaning 'assumed' for this expression, and 'seen' in it, though not proved' of it, be a wrong meaning, then it matters not how many writers or how many liturgies have been concerned in thus assuming and seeing what they attempt not to prove.' There have been ages, not very modern, when both individVol. II. 65

One more passage in illustration of this point, we will quote. After an attempt to reconcile his denial of baptismal regeneration, with the language of the baptismal service in the Prayer-book--an attempt wholly unsuccessful, as we think— he says,

"But whether or not this be, to all minds, a perfectly satisfying explanation of the language of our church, as it has been quoted, in one thing we may be well settled: the justness and necessity of that great law of interpretation, so vitally important to us as Protestant Episcopalians, which I find in the writings of the late venerable Bishop Griswold, that, in cases of apparent conflict, the Prayerbook must be explained into an agreement with the Bible, and not the Bible into an agreement with the Prayer-book.' If the two appear to differ, much more, if they really do differ, the human must bow to the divine. It were impious to force the divine to do obeisance to the human. And that the theory of baptismal regeneration, as I have exhibited it from the writings of its now most popular, if not its actually greatest masters, does, not only apparently, but actually and irreconcilably, differ from the true sense of Scripture, is a position which has, I humbly conceive, been sufficiently demonstrated."-pp. 245, 246.

Now we are aware that it may seem to our readers no great praise, to say of a work in this Protestant country, that it is truly Protestant; and we assure them, that had such a work been written by a Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Methodist, or Baptist, we should not have thought of awarding to it praise on this account. Our readers may think also that in a church calling itself Protestant Episcopal, it ought to be no distinction, to have written a work truly Protestant. But things are not always as they ought to be, nor as they profess to be. It is a distinction in this Protestant country, for a Protestant Episcopal minister

to be a true and thorough Protestant. It is extraordinary praise of an Episcopal work in this country, to say that it is thoroughly Protestant. We hear so much more of, "To the Prayer-book and to the Liturgy," than of, "To the law and to the testimony," so much of the denial of the Protestant principle, as in Bishop Brownell's late charge, and the assertion that the Holy Scriptures are authority, not directly to individuals, but only as they are read through the interpretation of the church during the two first centuries, which interpretation is contained in the Prayer-book. We

witness so much of alienation from, and opposition to a Bible Society which circulates the Bible alone without note or comment; so much fear of the distribution of the Bible, unless accompanied by the Prayerbook as an expositor; so much more exaltation of "our excellent liturgy" than of the Scriptures of truth; so much desire that the Prayer-book rather than the Bible, should have free course and be glorified; so much more of church-interpretation, than of individual study of God's word; so much more of "How can I understand except the church teach me," than of "Search the Scriptures," that when an Episcopal writer swings clear of the interpretation of church, liturgy and fathers, as decisive authority-declares that these are mere human helps by which it is "impious" to be bound contrary to our judgment of the true meaning of the word of God, manfully appealing directly and individually to that word, as the sole and sufficient rule of faith and practice, and glorifying it as the great instrument of God the Spirit in regenerating and saving a sinful and lost world, we rejoice in it as an extraordinary phenomenon, and deem it worthy therefore of marked praise.

The work is also truly catholic. We find in it no claim that the

Episcopal branch of the church of Christ is the only true church, no claim that hers are the only valid ministry and ordinances, no contemptible talk about "dissenters," no monopoly of covenanted mercy and titles to the heavenly inherit ance. Dr. S. when speaking of the Episcopal church, unlike his high church brethren, and, we are sorry to add, unlike most of those who are called low church, uses not the exclusive and arrogant phrase, "the church," but generally the just and appropriate one, our church." Throughout his whole book, his doctrine is, that all who have " repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ," are included in the covenant of grace. Moreover, he refers to the unchar. itable and insolent dogma, that those out of the pale of the Episcopal church have no promise of salvation, and if saved at all, must be saved by uncovenanted and unknown mercy, and thus explicitly and eloquently contradicts it.

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examining, although the atoning sacrifice "But, says the theory which we are of Christ be the only meritorious cause of the remission of sins, yet the sacraments of the church are the truly instrumental cause of this remission. The pardon which Christ purchased on the cross, he conveys through the sacraments.

"Here, however, starts up the question, What, then, becomes of those myriads who have the word of God, and hear

the Gospel preached, and believe in Christ 'with all the heart,' and yet have not ac cess to the sacraments of the church in

the only sense in which this theory understands the sacraments? a question to which the theorists have nothing to reply but this: that if such are saved, it is not by promise, not by guarantee, not by cov enant; but in some way of which God hath been pleased to tell us nothing; perhaps by those superaboundings of grace, of which the church, as a vessel of mercy,' is so unconfinably full that they over

flow, and reach even to those hapless believers who are providentially left (if not left too far) beyond the limits of corenanted favor. This reply, however, brings out the thoroughly unscriptural character cording to the Bible, all to whom the Gosof the theory to which it belongs. Acpel comes, and who truly believe in