en it recently asserted by some of the Oxford school that
there is as much reason for rejecting the most essential doctrines of
Christianity--nay Christianity itself--as for rejecting their "church
principles." That, in short, we have as much reason for being infidels
as for rejecting the doctrine of Apostolical succession! What other
effect such reasoning can have than that of compelling men to believe
that there is nothing between infidelity and popery, and of urging them
to make a selection between the two, we know not .... Indeed, we fully
expect that, as a reaction of the present extravagancies, of the revival
of obsolete superstition, we shall have ere long to fight over again the
battle with a modified form of infidelity, as now with a modified form
of popery. Thus, probably, for some time to come, will the human
mind continue to oscillate between the extremes of error; but with a
diminished are at each vibration; until truth shall at last prevail, and
compel it to repose in the centre."*

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* Oxford Tract School, Ed. Rev., April, 1843. ____

The offensive displays of self-sufficiency and flippancy, of ignorance
and presumption, found in the productions of the apostles of the
new infidelity of Oxford, (of which we shall have a few words to say
by-and-by) are the natural and instructive, though most painful, result
of attempting to give predominance to one principle of our nature, where
two or more are designed reciprocally to guard and check each other; and
such results must ever follow such attempts. The excellence of man--so
complexly constituted is his nature--must consist in the harmonious
action and proper balance of all the constituents of that nature; the
equilibrium he sighs for must be the result of the combined action of
forces operating in different directions; of his reason, his faith, his
appetites, his affections, his emotions; when these operate each in
due proportion, then, and then only, can he be at rest. It may, indeed,
transcend any calculus of man to estimate exactly the several elements
in this complicated polygon of forces; but we are at least sure that,
if any one principle be so developed as to supersede another, no safe
equipoise will be attained. We all know familiarly enough that this is
the case when the affections or the appetites are more powerful than the
reason and the conscience, instead of being in subjection to them: but
it is not less the case, though the result is not