nor do I know that he has seen my card. My understanding is that he left Louisville, and removed into one of the seceded States, about the time that Virginia, of which State he is, I believe, a native, took up arms against the nation. So far as he is concerned, it is obvious, I could mean no more than I asserted; namely, that whatever else might concur in inducing him to withdraw from our Review Association, that act-in which he virtually united with Mr. Robinson and Mr. Hoyt was an expression of his political sympathies: he was a secessionist. Perhaps mankind will accept his fidelity to his convictions, as being a more reputable course than the one adopted by Mr. Hoyt, even according to his own explanation of his; and certainly any course that has the smallest element of truth or manhood, is wronged by being compared with that of Mr. Robinson.

The tribuual of public opinion is the one to which all matters of the sort involved in these discussions, must come at last. But in all cases of much extent or importance, there are points which are susceptible of decision by other tribunals and these collateral decisions of other tribunals, sometimes important of themselves, become elements of the final judgment of society. Among my various and heavy responsibilities in the present case, one is to a tribunal singularly illustrious. I hold my office of Professor in the Theological Seminary at Danville, during the pleasure of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. I was elected to it, by that august Court of the Church of the living God, nine years ago, come May next. I am publicly accused with abusing that high office, in what I have done to maintain the integrity of the nation, the sovreignty and loyalty of my native State, and the decrees of the General Assembly of my Church, and of the particular Synod and Presbytery to which I am amenable. That is, in my endeavors to uphold every civil and every ecclesiastical authority to which I am accountable, I am publicly and insultingly upbraided by Mr. Robinson and Mr. Hoyt, Presbyterian ministers in regular standing, with having abused and degraded the pulpit and the professor's chair. To this Mr. Hoyt has

added the direct charge-and Mr. Robinson seems to imply it, that the substance, the manner, and the form of what I have done in the premises, amounts to such use of the sacred funds of the School of Theology in which I occupy a chair, as to be a wicked perversion of them, for wicked ends-destructive of the peace of the Churches that contributed those funds, for a noble and perpetual charity: funds, that is, which, with great and completely gratuitous labors, through many years, I have, in connection with a few friends, been one of the chief instruments in so founding, collecting, and enlarging-that they now exceed, by many thousands of dollars, the aggregate of all that was ever bestowed on the institution. These are charges which I can not allow to pass by, without a more serious notice, than any that can be taken of them through the public press. No matter what gloss may be put on them, they are charges, the bare colorable suspicion of whose propriety, ought to deprive me of my office of teacher of the teacher's of God's people; and in the absence of even any colorable suspicion of their justice or propriety-he who basely and cruelly utters them, ought to be held to be a ruf fian and a barbarian.

Upon this issue I shall put myself at the bar of the great tribunal of my whole Church, which of its own motion called me to my office, and whose good pleasure is the tenure by which I hold it. And I shall ask that illustrious Court, convened in the name, and by the authority of the Lord of lords, to do unto me, and unto my accusers, as they will answer to God in the great day. And that no obstacle I can remove, may stand in the way either of a full ability or a clear necessity, to meet the issue and decide it; I shall place the resignation of my office, with a brief memorial to the effect of this statement, in the hands of the Moderator of the Assembly, as soon as may be proper after it shall be constituted, at its immediately approaching sessions. Let my accusers take heed to this notice. And let God's people discern, by this case, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. R. J. B.

DANVILLE, KY., March 22, 1862.

ART. VI.-Jurisprudence, Sacred and Civil.-The published Criticisms on some of the Principles heretofore discussed in the Danville Quarterly Review.

In the September number of this Review for last year, appeared an article on the action of the General Assembly on the famous Spring resolutions; the probable consequences in general of that action; and the use made of it to divide the Church. The article attracted the attention of the weekly religious press, and extracts from it, accompanied by editorial comments more or less extended, were made by all the Old School papers which the United States' mail brought to our hand, with one exception. In several instances these extracts were quite copious. The interests and principles involved, are of such magnitude and importance as to justify, in our judgment, a notice of some of these editorial comments, and a restatement of the views maintained in that article. The same would have been submitted to the public in the December No., had it not been for difficulties connected with the publication of the Review, and of which its readers have been advised.

The exception referred to above, is the Presbyterian Herald. That paper, in a brief announcement of the contents of the Review for September, took occasion simply to express its judgment, characterizing the review of the action of the Assembly as wanting in ability, false in its conclusions, and as "giving up the whole point in dispute." As the remarks of the Herald were intended, of course, to do good, it will not be disagreeable to their author to have them repeated on these pages.

"The one (article) on the General Assembly, we think, will disappoint the expectations of the readers of the Review generally. It was expected that an able and searching review of the action of the Assembly would emanate from Danville, going to the bottom of the questions at issue and showing that the Spring resolutions were based upon wrong views of the province of the Church. This the Reviewer has not done. He gives up the whole point in dispute, admits that the Assembly not only had the right to act in the premises, but was bound.

to do so. He contends that they did not come to a correct decision, it is true, but asserts that they should have acted in a way quite as objectionable to the mass of those who opposed their action as the action which they did take. The true point of complaint against their action was not in the nature of it, but that they acted at all on such a subject."

Alas! we are doomed to disappointment. A child of sin must needs be a child of sorrow. The Herald was looking for "an able and searching review of the action of the Assembly," but looked in vain. It is amusing to observe what the Herald would have considered "able and searching ""going to the bottom of the questions at issue." Had the article attempted to show "that the Spring resolutions were based upon wrong views of the province of the Church," i. e., according to the standard adopted by the Herald-all would have been well; but because, forsooth, it places the unconstitutionality of the Assembly's action upon a different ground from that taken by Dr. Hodge and the other protestors at Philadelphia, it is shallow, and "gives up the whole point in dispute." Profound logic! "able and searching," "going to the bottom." Assume the unquestionable truth of a proposition, make that the infallible standard of judgment, and then decry every counter-proposition as weak and giving up the point! There may, indeed, be no great depth in our September article. It may present a sorry contrast by the side. of the masterly disquisitions and the brilliant illustrations of great truths, which, from time to time, grace the columns of our cotemporary; still, we think it was not fairly dealt. by. A contemptuous sneer and a begging of the question may impose upon the prejudiced and unthinking, but will hardly pass either for decent manners or sound reasoning with sensible persons.

But really if the said article is the weakling the Herald pretends, why did it not expose its weaknesses? Why did it not point out its follies and fallacies? Surely the subject is an important one, and the discussion of it timely. The position taken in the Danville Review, upon which the unconstitutionality of the resolution of the Assembly is predicated, has been presented, so far as we are informed, in no other

periodical; and however weak in itself, the Review might naturally be supposed to impart currency, if not credit, to it. The Presbyterian Herald, therefore, might well have condescended to notice what some few at least have the temerity to dignify with the name of argument. An ounce of proof is worth a whole cart-load of authoritative dicta. All the more was the Herald bound, as a reputable Kentucky journal, to point out the insufficiency of our constitutional objection to the action of the Assembly, inasmuch as just about the time the September number of the Danville Review was published, the Presbytery of West Lexington, implicitly discarding the doctrine, asserted by the protesters and endorsed by the Herald, did, by a unanimous vote, declare the Assembly to be in error as to the fundamental principles upon which the objectionable parts of their deliverance rested, upon the very ground maintained by "the Reviewer." In proof of this assertion, and for the informatiou and satisfaction of the reader, the second of the series of resolutions passed by the Presbytery is transcribed.

"2. But more than this; it is our deliberate judgment that the General Assembly was in error, as to the fundamental principles upon which the objectionable parts of the deliverance alluded to above rested for their support. It is undoubtedly certain, that the Assembly had no authority, either from Christ or from the Constitution of the Church, to require, or even advise, the tens of thousands of Presbyterians who are citizens of the States which had seceded from the United States, and are at war with them, to revolt against the actual governments under which they live; nor should it, under the pretext of a general fast, have required them to perform acts, which the Assembly could not fail to know, would subject them to criminal prosecutions, and in the present condition of things, probably destroy the Presbyterian Church throughout considerable portions of at least ten States. This aspect of the matter seems to us perfectly conclusive, even upon the admission that the subject matter of the minute of the Assembly was clearly within the jurisdiction of the court, and even upon the further admission that it was wise and proper for the Assembly to take action upon it at that time. The objection we make is that the particular view taken, and the general order given, and the fundamental principles on which all rested, were