ian
controversy that he leaped to the battlements of Zion, sounded the alarm
through the land, and took his place henceforth as leader of the hosts
of the elect. "I had watched the whole progress," he says, "and read
with eagerness everything that came out on the subject. My mind had been
heating, heating, heating. Now I had a chance to strike." And strike he
did, blows rapid and vigorous, whose echoes ring even through these
silent pages. It was to him a real warfare. His speech ran naturally to
military phrase. He saw the foe coming in like a flood. "The enemy,
driven from the field by the immortal Edwards, have returned to the
charge, and now the battle is to be fought over again." "The time has at
length fully come to take hold of the Unitarian controversy by the
horns." "The enemies ... are collecting their energies and meditating a
comprehensive system of attack, which demands on our part a
corresponding concert of action." "Let the stand taken be had in
universal and everlasting remembrance, and we shall soon get the enemy
out of the camp." "Wake up, ministers, form conspiracies against error,
and scatter firebrands in the enemy's camp." "A schism in our ranks,
with the enemy before and behind us, would indeed be confusion in the
camp." "It is the moment to charge as Wellington did at Waterloo." "Will
Walker and his friends feel as if my gun was loaded deep enough for the
first shot, and will the Orthodox think I have done so far sufficient
execution?... As the game is out of sight, I must depend on those who
are near to tell me what are the effects of the first fire." "My sermons
on Depravity ... are point-blank shot."

Nor was the fight between Unitarian and Orthodox alone. Even within the
ranks of the faithful dissensions arose, and many a time and oft had Dr.
Beecher to defend himself against the charges, the insinuations, and the
suspicions of his brethren. To the eyes of the more cautious or the more
inert his adventurous feet seemed ever approaching the verge of heresy.
Just where original sin ceases to be original and becomes
acquired,--just where innate ill-desert meets voluntary
transgression,--just where moral government raises the standard of
rebellion against Absolutism,--just where New Haven theology branches
off from ultra Orthodoxy on the debatable ground, the border-land of
metaphysics and religion, Dr. Beecher and his brethren were engaged in
perpetual skirmishing.

It is not our province to d