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 teach that He has predestinated or foreordained a portion of the human race to final salvation, and passed by the rest—it does not teach that the Lord punishes or casts into hell by His own positive act, but simply that men cast themselves thither as the normal and inevitable result of the violation of the laws of order—it does not teach that the body cast off at death and mouldered into dust is ever again resuscitated and reunited to the spirit—it does not teach that men are at once assigned to heaven or hell as soon as their breath leaves the body, and are thence called forth to be tried and sentenced thousands of years afterwards at what is called the Judgment of the Last Day—it does not teach that there are three Persons in one God, though it does announce a threefold distinction of essential principles in the Deity termed Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—it does not teach that the innocent Son of God died to make a vicarious atonement to the Father as a distinct person in behalf of the guilty race of men, and only of a chosen part of that—it does not teach that the short-comings in our own righteousness are eked out by the imputed merits of the Saviour, although at the same time, it denies the least particle of merit to man.

Now these are among the fundamental tenets of the old creeds. They are among the points, and the principal points, which occasion the difficulties and dissatisfactions above alluded to,—difficulties and dissatisfactions which are happily avoided in the system of the New Church. The precise manner in which this avoidance occurs, on the ground of these doctrines, it is not our present purpose to state, but we appeal to the whole tenor of the writings on which we build, for evidence on this head, and our grand object is to attract attention to these documents of our faith. But several counter-presentations will occur in the sequel of our remarks.

2. The New Church system has the merit of establishing a substantial uniformity of doctrinal belief among its espousers. Upon the grand and radical tenets of the Christian faith it utterly and absolutely precludes that endless diversity of creed which has split up the body of Christendom into conflicting and belligerent sects. All this gives place in the church of the New Jerusalem to a beautiful prevailing unity of doctrine founded upon a fundamental unity of principle in the interpretation of the sacred oracles. Having one and the same key to the meaning of the Word, they come to the same result. The law of correspondence, according to which its language is constructed, is universally accepted by the men of the church upon evidence that is perfectly conclusive to their minds, and this can lead but to one mode of interpretation. It needs but a moment's reflection to see what an immense gain to the cause of Christianity is secured by this unanimity—what a mountain load of reproach is rolled from the profession of a religion of love and charity by the harmonious faith of its disciples. We do not of course affirm that on minor points there may not be shades of difference of opinion, for an absolute identity of understanding or will, of charity or faith, of operation or form, does not exist in the universe. But on the distinguishing doctrines of the church it is impossible that there should be any material diversity of views, and if any particular text of the Scriptures be submitted for interpretation to four individuals of the church from the four quarters of the globe, they would assign to it the same sense. And as to doctrine, even granting that slightly varying shades of opinion exist, yet they occasion no