Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/182



then we have arrived at a point where we part company with Mr. Erskine, and join Mr. Abbott, who advances further in a most perilous career. The principle with which Mr. E. began has been above discovered to issue in a view of the Gospel, which may be contemplated apart from that principle. That the human mind may criticise and systematise the divine revelation, that it may identify it with the Dispensation, that it may limit the uses of the latter to its workings through our own reason and affections, and such workings as we can ascertain and comprehend, in a word, that the Gospel is a Manifestation, this is the fundamental principle of Mr. Erskine's Essay. Mr. Jacob Abbott seems so fully to take this principle for granted, that it would be idle to do more than notice his doing so; it will be more to the purpose to direct attention to his treatment of the theory, in which Mr. Erskine's principle seems to issue, viz. that the Gospel is a collection of facts. I am now referring to Mr. Abbott's work called "the Corner Stone," which I do not hesitate to say approaches within a hair's breadth of Socinianism; a change which I would by no means urge against Mr. E., whatever be the tendency of his speculations.

In the work in question Mr. Abbott disclaims entering into theological questions, properly so called (Preface, p. vi.); nor is there any necessity for his entering into them, so that the line of discussion which he does take, does not intrude upon them or provoke them.

"I have made this exhibition of the Gospel," he says, "with reference to its