even then signify the inward and not the outward word! He alleges, that affirming it to signify the latter is a begging of the question! It is surely marvellous, that any man, with the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and still more with those of the New, in his hand, should be bold enough even to throw out the surmise of such an interpretation; should venture even to hint, that "the law and the testimony" may mean any thing else than the revelation then existing, as communicated to Moses and the prophets. It is such an outrage on all the candour of criticism, as to render a refutation of it an insult to the reader's understanding. It were every whit as reasonable to allege, that, when our Lord said to the lawyer who tempted him, "What is written in the law? how readest thou?"—he meant the inward, not the outward, law, the law in the heart, not the law in the Book! Or that, when the Psalmist says-" He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children;"—he might perhaps mean, not the external, but the internal word!-2. Apparently sensible that such an explanation would not itself bear the test of "the law and the testimony," whether outward or inward, he proceeds to institute a contrast between the outward law of the Jews and the inward law of Christians :"it may be confessed, without any prejudice to our

cause, that the outward law was more particularly "to the Jews a rule, and more principally than to

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us; seeing their law was outward and literal, but 66 ours, under the new covenant, is expressly affirmed "to be inward and spiritual; so that this Scripture "is so far from making against us, that it makes for *-But this is miserable confusion. First of all, Barclay seems altogether to forget, that the same law may be both outward and inward,—in the book and in the heart. It was as much the duty of the Jews to have the law in their hearts, as it is of Christians. It was the express command of Jehovah that they should:- "And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children." The words of divine instruction and precept were externally given by Moses; but it was, at the same time, the duty of every Israelite to believe, and love, and obey them.—And this leads me to notice further, that the promise "I will put my laws in their inward parts, and will write them in their hearts," has no reference whatever to any such fancied privilege as individual and immediate revelation of truth or of duty. The promise relates to laws already existing,—and signifies the imparting, not merely of a speculative acquaintance with these laws to the understanding, but

Apol., page 87.

of a right disposition towards them in the heart,-or, in one word, the implanting there of that love which is "the fulfilling of the law,”—the primary and the secondary love, love to God, and love to men.-To interpret it, as if it meant, that, whereas outward revelation was the standard of truth and duty to the Israelites, inward personal immediate revelation is the standard to us, is not only to assign to Christians a test less fixed and certain,-proved so by all experience, than that which was enjoyed by God's people under the old economy, but to render the full and clear discoveries of the New Testament Scriptures of less real use to us than the comparatively dark and limited discoveries of the Old were to them.-3. If "the law and the testimony" are not now to be understood of the outward word,-if under the new dispensation, we are to "try all things, in the first place," by the "word of faith in the heart," then is the outward word, as a test, entirely superseded. If the inward word, or immediate revelation, is the distinguishing privilege of believers under the gospel economy; then, to make use of the outward is to act inconsistently with the divine intention, and to go back to the "beggarly elements" and stinted privileges of Judaism. If we have fulfilled the duty of " trying all things in the first place" by the primary and higher test, what use can there be for the lower and secondary? It can be nothing better than mockery,

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after deciding by the first test (which of course, as being the first, must be the more infallible criterion of the two) to talk of applying the second. So that all he had said about the Scriptures as "the only fit outward judge of controversies among Christians" comes to nothing. I can see consistency and propriety in ascending, in the way of appeal, from an inferior to a superior tribunal; but what consistency or propriety can there be, in obtaining, "in the first place," the decision of the superior court, and then coming down to the inferior? Would not such a process imply an impeachment of the former's competency? And is there not, in all that Barclay says about the Scriptures as the standard of doctrine and duty, a reflexion involved against the competency of the very test to which he gives the primary place and authority?—Nor is this all.-4. When the Scriptures (however inconsistently) are admitted as a test; then the question occurs— Of what are they the test? what is it we are to try by them? Is it not the very dictates of inward revelation (so called) themselves? What else is there to be tried? But if so, how strange the anomalies to which this gives rise!— When inward or immediate revelation is represented as the test by which, "in the first place," we are to "try all things," then it becomes the test of itself ;the rule, and the chief rule, by which the authority of its own intimations is to be ascertained! And

then, when the Scriptures are spoken of as the standard, we have the inferior constituted the test of the superior; the secondary test the test of the primary test! the outward standard the standard of the inward standard! the dictates of the Spirit placed above the external word, and high things said about the unreasonableness of subjecting the spiritual people of God, under the spiritual dispensation of the new covenant, to any merely external rule, or bounding and binding them by a "filled canon;"—and yet the canon, such as it is, though denied to be a filled or complete one, admitted to be an adequate criterion of every thing pretending to be a dictate of the Spirit now, and the "external rule" ruling the spiritual rule, and determining the legitimacy of all its prescriptions! Such are the inconsistencies resulting from a fallacious principle. The truth is, a "filled canon" is one of the blessed privileges of the New Testament church; the chief of those "better things" which "God had prepared for us, that the Old Testament saints without us should not be made perfect;" -and-(pardon me, my friends, I speak in zeal for God's word, not in disrespect for you)-all the magniloquence of Quakerism about a higher standard is no better than "great swelling words of vanity."5. What Barclay says about "the word of faith which is preached unto us, which the apostle saith is in the heart," is most extraordinary. When Paul