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difficulty, and without obstruction, have been able to apply yourselves to the study of religious truth, and to detect the errors with which it had been amalgamated; every one of you enjoyed the liberty of expressing his opinions, and no one had any interest in the propa gation of any opinions; you searched the scriptures, you reasoned, you disputed with each other-every claim was determined by argument, every doctrine inquired into, and retained or rejected according to the evidence on which it rested; and now Christianity appears to you simple and rational, consis tent with every thing that the most enlightened phi, losophy could seek for or require-calculated to en courage large and liberal views of the divine character, and to improve us in every quality which can ennoble human nature, and fit us for the enjoyment of future felicity.

The former copy of your Laws, containing, as it does, opinions which you held at the time it was sent into the world, and giving its sanction to practices which now you have abandoned as contrary to Christianity, has long fallen into disuse; and on this account your Committee were appointed to select, from the writings of the New Testament, those instructions which were given by the apostles of Jesus to the primitive church; and to exhibit from that source what were the laws. and principles by which it was governed.-Such, after mature deliberation, appears to your Committee to be the system of laws they have now presented to you, which has been approved by your choice, and on which, indeed, you have so long acted with improvement and advantage to yourselves.

Your Committee cannot forbear mentioning, that

the more closely they have applied themselves to the New Testament, in the prosecution of this their labour, the more fully have they felt and been convinced, that the principles on which you have acted, as a church of God, are those alone which can entitle you to that honorable appellation-that your government, your laws, and your discipline, are in reality such as were practised by the followers of Jesus, before their princi ples were corrupted and debased by the ignorance or wickedness of man. And indeed it must be astonishing and gratifying, that from a book like the New Testa ment, not written with the view of perpetuating Christianity, the laws of the church of God can be so faithfully delineated, and so clearly defined, that nothing is left to conjecture or doubt-that on every subject there is, either directly or inferentially, a fullness and sufficiency of information to guide us in all things that concern us as a Christian church.

To these Laws, brethren, as to the laws of God, your Committee would recommend a sincere and earnest attention they are founded on the liberty and equa lity of man, and competent to secure to you the highest and most invaluable privileges; and considering the beauty and excellence of the principles by which you are united together, as the family of God, you have cause for gratitude in having been accounted worthy of the distinguished situation to which you have been called. Remember, brethren, your former weakness-how small were your numbers, how numerous the obstacles by which you were surrounded! To the professing world in general you were unknown -those who knew you desired your fall-you yourselves feared it!-but you have been brought from

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weakness into strength-the hopes and the oppositions of your enemies have proved unavailing—and even the machinations of corrupt men from among yourselves have failed to destroy the purity and integrity of your principles. Your light has shone abroad-your views of Christian truth have been dif fused among men, and recorded so variously and extensively, that the knowledge of them must remain when all of us are numbered among the dead and our memories forgotten.-In all these things have we not seen the guidance of the great Disposer of Events ? May then our cause, if it is of God, continue to prosper! --may all men be brought to see its excellence and its truth!-and above all, may the superiority of our principles be manifest to all in our conduct and actions through life! and, (concluding in the beautiful exhortation of the apostle), "We beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the tender mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice-boly--acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service!"

THE COMMITTEE,

Nov. 20, 1814.

THE church of God is an assembly of persons believing in the revealed will of God, as made known by Jesus and his apostles, and uniting together under his sanction, and agreeably to his commands, to direct their actions and conduct through life, in a manner consistent with such revealed will. The idea is briefly and beautifully expressed by Paul-" For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." (Ephes. ii. 10). "Now therefore (says the same writer) ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God, and are built upon the foun. dation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone, in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord." (Ephes. ii. 19, 22).

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