and the tendency of their instructions and devotions to make Faith a matter of feeling rather than a strict relative duty towards the persons of the Holy Trinity: these and other causes are, I suspect, not very gradually preparing the way for lamentable results among them also. And it is most evident that all such causes act more strongly for the want of that check which a controling Episcopacy supplies; such an Episcopacy I mean as may confidently make a continual appeal to the very Apostolical age.
But we are not left quite to conjecture on the doctrinal tendency of Congregational views of Church government. The experiment has been tried on a large scale in America; and in one part of it (New England) with something of that advantage which endowments may be supposed to yield towards stability of Orthodox doctrine. The result may be given in the words of a Socinian writer. "In the United States, where there are no obstructions to the progress of knowledge and truth, the spread of liberal doctrines has exceeded our most sanguine expectations." An account which is confirmed by the testimony of all parties. Now, it is allowed, that in the same United States the Independents and Baptists put together greatly exceed all other denominations of Christians. The only country, therefore, of Christendom where congregational principles of government entirely prevail is likewise the only country which witnesses the rapid and unmitigated growth of Unitarian principles of doctrine. In other countries, generally speaking, the "God-denying apostacy" finds more or less acceptance, in proportion as less or more remains of primitive order and respect for the Apostolical commission.
"But," it will be said, "what then becomes of the opposite case of the Church of Rome? She, too, has her grave doctrinal errors, deeply trenching on scriptural truth, awfully dangerous to the souls of men; and yet she is generally considered as the great champion of the Apostolical commission." The answer to this lies in the fact, well-known, however little considered, that in the same degree as the Romish Church swerved as a church from Christian verity, she laboured also to induce her subject Bishops to part with their claim to a succession properly Apostolical.
