Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1852, by

H. W. DERBY & CO.

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Ohio.

CINCINNATI:
C. A. MORGAN & CO., STEREOTYPERS,

HAMMOND ST.

ΤΟ

ALL THE PEOPLE OF CHRIST,

AND ESPECIALLY

TO MY BRETHREN OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH,

This humble Contributior

TO THE

MANIFESTATION OF THE TRUTH AS IT IS IN JESUS,

IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.

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VITAL TRUTH AND DEADLY ERROR.

SECTION I.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

Ir man be indeed a depraved being, it might be anticipated that nothing could pass through his hands without risk of perversion. This expectation has been confirmed by experience. The history of the Church is as much occupied with the relation of heresies within, as of persecutions without. And the past history and present aspect of Christendom alike declare that the "name" of heresy is "Legion," and that there is no one doctrine in the whole circumference of Christianity which may not be the point of departure at a tangent from the system of revelation. All such perversions, however, like the doctrines themselves, may be embraced Religious error in two classes, those relating to God and two-fold. those relating to man. Error in doctrines of the former class produces a change in the body of the Scripture system, and is at once apparent as a different system. Error in those of the latter is a departure from its vital spirit, and may lie hid under the same body and substance, an unseen and unexpected decay; and hence is the more dangerous of the two. Yet such is their mutual connection, that what begins with error respecting man and the application to him of what is recorded

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of God, tends ever on to a perversion also of the doctrine concerning God. The violation of the spirit of the Gospel leads on to a change in its substance; and secret error, if uncounteracted, becomes at last open heresy. It is against these inward diseases that the Church of God needs to be most diligently warned; not only because of their dangerous secrecy, but because it is here that the innate corruption of the human heart has its spontaneous development. Left to itself, it breeds error here as surely as dead flesh breeds corruption. Heresies respecting God are of a different origin. When not the ultimate result of these inward decays sloughing off some of the outward members, they arise from some impulse given to the intellect by outward circumstances, such as the force of a heathen education or the mutual repulsion of theological controversy.

typed.

Error stereo- As these errors respecting the doctrine of man and his relation to God are the spontaneous growth of the human heart, it is natural to expect, and we actually discover, a fundamental identity in the errors of successive generations. Indeed, we find just two species of error perpetually recurring, under aspects somewhat modified, it is true, by the circumstances of their birth, but always recognizable. Both originate in the self-righteousness of the heart; but one takes the form of unbelief, the other the form of superstition. Under the Jewish dispensation they were represented in the Sadducees and Pharisees. Paul opposed them under the names of "Greeks" and "Jews." And so, through various names and stages of development, we may trace them down to the present time. They often exist when least suspected. We may ourselves be running into them unawares.