Earlier text: The Gospel Preached to the GentilesSpeech in the Vatican Council.
The dogma of papal infallibility was not adopted in the Council of 1870 without dissent. In a vote taken July 13, of 601 members 451 voted favorably. The others either voted against, or abstained from voting. On the 17th, fifty-six bishops sent a protest to Pius, but signified their unwillingness to vote against his expressed wishes, and determination to return to their homes before the final vote was taken. They did so, and sixty others followed their example. Thus 116 dissenting bishops left; two voted against it in the final vote, July 18. One of the most important opposition speeches was that of Strossmayer, bishop of Bosnia and Sirmium. The following is from a translation of an Italian version of his speech printed in Florence. Its historical statements are both interesting and valuable:— Finding no trace of the papacy in the days of the apostles, I said to myself, I shall find what I am in search of in the annals of the church. Well, I say it frankly—I have sought for a pope in the first four centuries, and I have not found him. None of you, I hope, will doubt the great authority of the holy bishop of Hippo, the great and blessed St. Augustine. This pious doctor, the honor and glory of the Catholic church, was secretary in the Council of Melvie. In the decrees of this venerable assembly are to be found these significant words: "Whoever wills to appeal to those beyond the sea shall not be received by any one in Africa to the communion." The bishops of Africa acknowledged the bishop of Rome so little that they smote with excommunication those who would have recourse to an appeal. These same bishops, in the sixth Council of Carthage, held under Aurelius, bishop of that city, wrote to Celustirius, bishop of Rome, to warn him not to receive appeals from the bishops, priests or clerics of Africa, and that he should send no more legates or commissaries; and that he should not introduce human pride into the church. That the patriarch of Rome had from the earliest times tried to draw to himself all the authority, is an evident fact; but it is an equally evident fact that he had not the supremacy which the ultramontanes attribute to him. Had he possessed it, would the bishops of Africa—St. Augustine first among them—have dared to prohibit the appeals of their decrees to his supreme tribunal? I confess without difficulty that the patriarch of Rome held the first place. One of Justinian's laws says: "Let us order, after the definition of the four Councils, that the holy pope of ancient Rome shall be the first of the bishops, and that the most high archbishop of Constantinople, which is the new Rome, shall be the second." "Bow down, then, to the supremacy of the pope," you will say to me. Do not run so fast to this conclusion, my venerable brethren, inasmuch as the law of Justinian has written on the face of it, "Of the order of the Patriarchal Sees." Precedence is one thing—the power of jurisdiction is another. For example, suppose that in Florence there was an assembly of all the bishops of the kingdom, the precedence would be given to the primate of Florence, as among the Easterns it would be accorded to the patriarch of Constantinople, and in England to the archbishop of Canterbury. But neither the first, nor the second, nor the third, could deduce from the position assigned to him a jurisdiction over his colleagues. The importance of the bishops of Rome proceeded not from a Divine power, but from the importance of the city in which they had their seat. Monsignor Darboy is not superior in dignity to the archbishop of Avignon; but in spite of that, Paris gives him a consideration which he would not have, if, instead of having his palace on the bank of the Seine, he had it on that of the Rhone. That which is true in the religious order is the same in civil and political matters. The prefect of Rome is not more a prefect than he of Pisa; but civilly and politically he has a greater importance. I have said that from the very first centuries the patriarch of Rome aspired to the universal government of the church. Unfortunately, he very nearly reached it; but he had not succeeded assuredly in his pretensions, for the Emperor Theodosius II. made a law which he established, that the patriarch of Constantinople should have the same authority as he of Rome.—(Leg. cod. de. sacr., &c.) The Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon put the bishops of the new and the old Rome in the same order on all things, even ecclesiastical. (Can. 28.) The Sixth Council of Carthage forbade all the bishops to take the title of prince of the bishops or sovereign bishop. As for this title of universal bishop, which the popes took later, St. Gregory I., believing that his successors would never think of adorning themselves with it, wrote these remarkable words: "None of my predecessors have consented to take this profane name; for when a patriarch gives himself the name of Universal the title of patriarch suffers discredit. Far be it, then, from Christians to desire to give themselves a title which brings discredit on their brethren." The words of St. Gregory are directed to his colleagues of Constantinople, who pretended to the primacy of the church. Pope Pelagio II. calls John, bishop of Constantinople, who aspired to the high priesthood, "impious and profane." "Do not care," he said, "for the title of Universal, which John has usurped illegally; let none of the patriarchs take this profane name; for what misfortunes may we not expect, if among the priests such elements arise? They would get what has been foretold for them—he is the king of the sons of pride." (Pelagio II. Lett. 13.) These authorities, and I might add a hundred more of equal value, do not they prove, with a clearness equal to the splendor of the sun at midday, that the first of the bishops were not till much later recognized as universal bishops and heads of the church? And, on the other hand, does who does not know, that from the year 325, in which the First Council of Nice was held, down to 580, the year of the second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, among more than 1,109 bishops who assisted at the Six First General Councils there were not more than nineteen Western bishops? Who does not know that the Councils were convoked by the emperors without informing, and sometimes against the wish of, the bishop of Rome? That Hosius, bishop of Cordova, presided at the first Council of Nice, and edited the canons of it? The same Hosius presided afterwards at the Council of Sardica, excluding the legates of Julius, bishop of Rome. I say no more, my venerable brethren, and I come now to speak of the great argument which you mentioned before—to establish the Primacy of the bishop of Rome, by the rock (pietra). If this were true, the dispute would be at an end; but our forefathers—and they certainly know something—did not think of it as we do. St. Cyril, in his fourth book on the Trinity, says—"I believe that by the rock you must understand the unshaken faith of the apostles." St. Hilary, bishop of Poictiers, in his second book on the Trinity, says—"The rock (pietra) is the blessed and only rock of the faith confessed by the mouth of St. Peter;" and in the sixth book of the Trinity, he says, "it is on this rock of the confession of faith that the Church is built." "God," says St. Jerome, in the sixth book of St. Matthew, "has founded His Church on this rock, and it is from this rock that the apostle Peter and it has been named." After him, St. Chrysostom says in his fifty-third homily on St. Matthew—"On this rock I will build my Church—that is, on the faith of confession." Now, what was the confession of the apostle? Here it is—"Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Ambrose, the holy archbishop of Milan (on the 2d chapter of the Ephesians), St. Basil of Seleucia, and the Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon, teach exactly the same thing. Of all the doctors of Christian antiquity, St. Augustine occupies one of the first places for knowledge and holiness. Listen, then, to what he writes in his second treatise on the first epistle of St. John—"What do the words mean, I will build my church on this rock? On this faith, on that which said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." In his 124th treatise on St. John, we find this most significant phrase—"On this rock which thou hast confessed I will build My Church, since Christ was the rock." The great bishop believed so little that the Church was built on St. Peter that he said to his people in his thirteenth sermon—"Thou art Peter, and on this rock (pietra) which thou hast confessed, on this rock which thou hast known, saying, Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God, I will build my Church above myself, who am the Son of the living God. I will build it on me, and not me on thee." That which St. Augustine thought upon this celebrated passage was the opinion of all Christendom in his time. Therefore, I establish—- That Jesus has given to his apostles the same power that he gave to St. Peter.
- That the apostles never recognized in St. Peter the Vicar of Jesus Christ and the infallible doctrine of the Church.
- That St. Peter never thought of being pope, and never acted as if he were pope.
- That the Councils of the first four centuries, while they recognized the high position which the bishop of Rome occupied in the Church on account of Rome, only accorded to him a pre-eminence of honor—never of power or jurisdiction.
- That the holy fathers, in the famous message, "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I build my church;" never understood that the church was built on Peter (super petrum), but on the rock (super petram), that is, on the confession of the faith of the apostle.
I conclude victoriously with history, with reason, with logic, with good sense, and with a Christian conscience, that Jesus Christ did not confer any supremacy on St. Peter, and that the bishops of Rome did not become sovereigns of the church, but only by confiscating one by one all the rights of the Episcopate. [Voices—Silence, impudent Protestant! silence!] No, I am not an impudent Protestant! History is neither Catholic, nor Anglican, nor Calvinistic, nor Lutheran, nor Arminian, nor schimastic Greek, nor Ultramontane. She is what she is—that something stronger than all confessions of faith of the canons of Ecumenical Councils. Write against it, if you dare! but you cannot destroy it, no more than taking a brick out of the Coliseum would make it fall. If I have said anything which history proves to be false, show it to me by history, and without a moment's hesitation I will make an honorable apology; but be patient, and you will see that I have not said all that I would or could; and even were the funeral pile waiting for me in the place of St. Peter's, I should not lie silent, and I am obliged to go on. The Brahmin on the Bible.
By Dr. Jacob Chamberlain
WHAT do our enemies say of the Bible? Those keen-witted Brahmins, who know their own Vedas, with all their beauties, are capable of judging of what they read. What do those our enemies say of this book? I will tell you what they say; I will give you the testimony of one of their Brahmins, not a Christian. I had been delivering a series of lectures to the educated men in my region on their Vedas and the Christian Scriptures, compared and contrasted. I had shown them by quotations from their Vedas and Shastras that their Scriptures pointed out one God, pure and holy and good; the creator, preserver, and controller of all things; that their Scriptures pointed out man in a state of sin and rebellion against that holy God. I had shown them that their Vedas pointed out the fact that sinful man could not be at peace with holy God until that sin was in some way expurgated. I had shown them that their Scriptures brought man up to the edge of the gulf that yawned between sinful man and sinless God, and left him there yearning on the brink, anxious to get over but with no means of crossing; that the Christian Scriptures pointing out God as a God of purity and holiness, and man in a state of sin, had brought man to the edge of the same chasm, but that they, in and through Jesus Christ, the God-man, had bridged that gulf; that Jesus Christ in his human nature resting on man's side, in his divine nature on God's side, bridged the gulf, and that we could all pass over, dropping our sins into the chasm as we went, and be at peace with holy God. There had been in that concluding lecture a most profound silence. The room was packed, and the windows, all open, reaching down low, were filled with the heads of those standing outside who were anxious to hear. There were no Christians present except my singing band; they were all heathen. When I had finished, offering a short prayer to the God of truth to bring us all to understand the truth, whatever it might be, and rose; taking my book to leave, a Brahmin in the audience asked permission to say a few words. I said to myself: "Now there will be a tough discussion, for that man is the most learned man in the audience and the best reasoner in all this region." But I had determined to stand my ground, for I had reserve ammunition that I had not yet used. I xpected him to attack the ground I had taken, for I had taken strong ground that night as to the insufficiency of their Vedas; ut instead of that he gave one of the most beautiful addresses that I ever listened to in any language. It was so graphic, so beautiful, that I went home and wrote it out in the English language, part of it, preserving his phraseology and idiom as far as I could, and I wish to quote a few sentences to show you what he thought of the Christian Scriptures. He said:— "Behold that mango tree on yonder roadside! Its fruit is approaching to ripeness. Bears it that fruit for itself or for its own profit? From the moment the first ripe fruits turn their yellow sides towards the morning sun until the last mango is pelted off, it is assailed with showers of sticks and stones from boys and men, and every passerby, until it stands bereft of leaves, with branches knocked off, bleeding from many a broken twig; and piles of stone underneath, and clubs and sticks lodged in its boughs, are the only trophies of its joyous crop of fruit. Is it discouraged? Does it cease to bear fruit? Does it say, 'If I am barren no one will pelt me, and I shall live in peace?' Not at all. The next season the budding leaves, the beauteous flowers, the tender fruit, again appear. Again it is pelted, and broken and wounded, but goes on bearing, and children's children pelt its branches and enjoy its fruit." "That is a type of these missionaries. I have watched them well, and have seen what they are. What do they come to this country for? What tempts them to leave their parents, friends, and country, and come to this, to them unhealthy, climate? Is it for gain or for profit that they come? Some of us country clerks in government offices receive more salary than they. Is it for the sake of an easy life? See how they work, and then tell me. No; they seek, like the mango tree, to bear fruit for the benefit of others, and that, too, though treated with contumely and abuse from those they are benefiting." "Now, what is it makes them do all this for us? It is their Bible. I have looked into it a good deal at one time and another, in the different languages I chance to know. It is just the same in all languages. The Bible—there is nothing to compare with it in all our sacred books for goodness, and purity, and holiness, and love, and for motives of action." "Where did the English-speaking people get all their intelligence, and energy, and cleverness, and power? It is their Bible that gives it to them. And now they bring it to us and say, 'This is what raised us; take it and raise yourselves!' They do not force it upon us, as the Mohammedans did with their Koran, but they bring it in love, and translate it into our languages and lay it before us, and say: 'Look at it; read it; examine it, and see if it is not good.' Of one thing I am convinced: do what we will, oppose it as we may, it is the Christian's Bible that will, sooner or later, work the regeneration of this land." Verily, "their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges."
—Dr. Jacob Chamberlain. BLINDFODED and alone I stand.
With unknown threshold on each hand;
The darkness deepens as I grope,
Afraid to fear, afraid to hope,
Yet this one thing I learned to know
Each day more surely as I go;
That doors are opened, ways are made,
Burdens are lifted or are laid,
By some great law unseen, and still
Unfathomed purpose to fulfill—
"Not as I will." Blindfolded and alone I wait;
Loss seems too bitter, gain too late;
Too heavy burdens in the load:
And too few helpers in the road;
And joy is weak and grief is strong,
And years and days so long, so long:
Yet this one thing I learn to know.
Each day more surely as I go;
That I am glad the good and ill,
By changeless law, are ordered still—
"Not as I will." "Not as I will!" the sound grows sweet
Each time my lips the words repeat.
"Not as I will!" the darkness feels
More safe than light when this thought steals,
Like whispered voice, to calm and bless
Our unrest and our loneliness.
"Not as I will!" because the One
Who loved us first and best, has gone
Before us on the road, and still
For us must all his love fulfill—
"Not as I will."
—Sel. Judge Bagg, who is one of the soundest men on the bench in Iowa, in the road case in the Grundy Circuit Court, said that it is the privilege of one who desires to drive faster than another to do so, and he may legally pass the other by turning out to the right-hand side of the other party, and the other party has no right to prevent him from so doing, and any act which would tend to hinder or delay him would be a technical trespass for which he would be liable. A party will not be justified when one desires to pass him in driving up a little way and then stopping or slacking up, and as soon as the other party again attempts to pass, to once more start up to run, and the party so doing will be liable to answer for damages.—Des Moines (Iowa) Register. "The proud and covetous are never easy." Salvation From--not In--Sin.
By Editor
A MORAL duty, whether it be called law or gospel, cannot justify a sinner. That law which points out sin, which is therefore the rule of right, will not justify. This is the teaching of Rom. 3:20, 21. It is singular indeed, that those who teach the abrogation of the original law, and its insufficiency to justify, and who hold that all that is binding in the law is incorporated in the gospel, really teach justification by law—by the same system that points out sin, which Paul calls "the law." This is contrary to reason, and to the apostle's words in Rom. 3:20. The truth is evidently this: The gospel upholds the law, and enforces it upon the conscience, and incorporates it into the life of the believer. But it does not abrogate law, nor release the believer from obedience to it; nor does it incorporate law into itself so as to have a blending of the two in one. The difference between the law and the gospel is as distinct now as it was in the days when the gospel was preached to the sinners in the wilderness. Heb. 4:1. The law is moral; sin is immorality; the gospel is the remedy. Medicine may restore health, but health is not medicine. This matter may be tested by the following plain statement: The blood of Christ, the blood of the covenant, is that whereby we have remission of sin. See Heb. 9:22; Rom. 3:25. And this is freely and exclusively by faith or grace. Hence, baptism may be a gospel condition of justification, because it is not any part of the original obligation or moral duty. If it were moral duty it could not be performed for remission of sin, simply because as such it would be required on its own account. So the commandment, which says, "Thou shalt not steal," cannot be incorporated into the same system and take part in the work of remission, being itself a moral duty. How reasonable is the conditional plan which says, "Repent, and be baptized for the remission of sin." And how absurd it would be to read, "Thou shalt not kill for the remission of sin; or, Honor thy father and mother for the remission of sin. It appears absurd, whether these be called law or gospel, to claim justification or remission through them. But they who teach the abrogation of the law, and the incorporation of these commandments into the gospel, are responsible for this absurdity. It belongs to their system. In speaking of justification by faith, or of the exercise of grace through the blood of Christ for the remission of sins past, the apostle clearly divides between faith and works, and excludes works entirely. It is faith only—works not at all. But when he speaks of the future life of the justified, he speaks in a different manner. Then he teaches to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." Phil. 2:12. This is evangelical truth as well as the other; but it is an order which could not be given or obeyed relative to justification for past offenses, of which he is speaking in Rom. 3; for no one could work out a justification for a past offense. There is, then, this distinction to be regarded: the gospel is a remedy for sin; obedience is a preventive of sin. Now we cannot believe that God regards future sin with any more favor than he does past sin. And if he does not, it would be reasonable to expect that his plan of salvation contemplated prevention as well as cure; and so we find it. Jesus saves from sin; puts away sin by the sacrifice of himself; says to the justified one, Go, sin no more; he is not a minister of sin, but of righteousness; therefore we shall not continue in sin that grace may abound. Both are in the gospel plan. Thus, man is under condemnation for sin; he also has a carnal mind, which is enmity against God, and not subject to the law of God; Rom. 8:7; by position, a sinner—in disposition, sinful. It would not be sufficient to forgive past transgression and leave the sinful disposition, as we should become involved again in sin and condemnation. Nor would it be sufficient to remove the sinful disposition and leave the burden of past sin upon us, for that would condemn us in the Judgment. Therefore Christ becomes a Saviour to us in both respects. He freely forgives our past sins, so that we stand free and justified; and he takes away the carnal mind, which is enmity against God, and not subject to his law, and makes us at peace with God—subject to his law; he writes it in our hearts so that we may delight in it. Then "the righteousness of the law" is "fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh," the carnal mind, "but after the Spirit." Rom. 8:4. The following remarks by Andrew Fuller are pointed, and worthy of careful consideration:— "An atonement has respect to justice, and justice to the law or rule which man has violated. If this be worthy of being traduced by a servant of Christ, it was worthy of the same treatment from his Lord and Master; and then, instead of being honored by his life and death, it ought to have been annulled, both in respect of him and of us. The doctrine of the cross, according to this view of things, was so far from being a display of divine glory, that it must have been a most shocking exhibition of injustice." "If the doctrine of the Atonement leads us to entertain degrading notions of the law of God, or to plead an exemption from its preceptive authority, we may be sure it is not the Scripture doctrine of reconciliation. Atonement has respect to justice, and justice to the law, or the revealed will of the Sovereign, which has been violated; and the very design of the Atonement is to repair the honor of the law. If the law which has been transgressed were unjust, instead of an Atonement being required for the breach of it, it ought to have been repealed, and the lawgiver have taken upon himself the disgrace of having enacted it. Every instance of punishment among men is a sort of atonement to the justice of the country, the design of which is to restore the authority of good government, but if the law itself is bad, or the penalty too severe, every sacrifice made to it must be an instance of cruelty. And should a prince of the blood royal, in compassion to the offenders, offer to suffer in their stead, for the purpose of atonement, whatever love it might discover on his part, it were still greater cruelty to accept the offer, even though he might survive his sufferings. The public voice would be, There is no need of any atonement; it will do no honor, but dishonor, to the legislature; and to call the liberation of the convicts an act of grace, is to add insult to injury. The law ought to have been enacted, and now it is enacted, ought immediately to be repealed. It is easy to see from hence, that in proportion as the law is depreciated, the gospel is undermined, and both grace and atonement rendered void. It is the law as abused, or as turned into a way of life, in opposition to the gospel, for which it was never given to a fallen creature, that the sacred Scriptures depreciate it; and not as the revealed will of God, the immutable standard of right and wrong. In this view the apostles delighted in it; and if we are Christians we shall delight in it too; and shall not object to be under it as a rule of duty, for no one objects to be governed by laws which he loves."—Atonement of Christ, from the Works of Andrew Fuller, pub. by Am. Tract Society, pp. 124, 160, 161. They who object to this as tending to salvation by works, cannot have looked deeply into the divine word. If Jesus takes away the sinful disposition, renews us or gives us a new heart, and brings us into subjection to the law of God, all our obedience to that law is by virtue of that change of heart effected by him; therefore, while he grants to us all the virtue of his blood for the remission of past sin, he is entitled to all the glory of our obedience in the future. So it is all of grace, and we have nothing of which to boast in any respect, nor anything to claim on our own account, for all that we do is by strength imparted by him. Here we have a system which is all grace, and no license to sin; a gospel worthy of Heaven, imparting mercy freely, and maintaining law and justice strictly. Here we see that without him we can do nothing; though we shall work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, "it is God that worketh in us to will and to do of his good pleasure." We are justified by faith, yet we must add to our faith virtue; patiently continue in well doing; keep the commandments of God; fulfill the righteousness of the law, etc. Some have been troubled to harmonize Paul with James on justification; but we apprehend the difficulty grows out of a disregard of the distinction here noticed. Paul, in Rom. 3, is treating on justification by faith for past offenses only; while James is speaking of the obedience of faith. "By faith, Abraham obeyed." Paul also speaks of faith which works by love. Gal. 5:6. But neither Paul nor James say that works will procure the remission of past offenses, or that faith will save without works. There is no difference in this respect in their teachings. "Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law." Rom. 3:31. And as we do not make void the law through faith, so we do not supersede faith by obedience to the law; for that is through faith. The blood of Christ is our only refuge; his death opens to us the way of life through the obedience of faith. Facts Worthy of Consideration.
By Editor
THE editor of the Bible Banner speaks as follows of a lecture to which he listened, in New Bedford, Mass. All who are tinctured with "Age-to-Come" views, and who think the Jews must be restored to their national pre-eminence to have an equal chance in the gospel, are invited to consider this statement. The "logic of facts" is inexorable. God does not withhold from the Jews any right or privilege which belongs to them. Their privileges under the old covenant they forfeited; therefore that covenant was abolished, never to be restored. And under the new covenant there are no national distinctions recognized—no special favors given. See Eph. 2:11-19; 3:4-6; Gal. 3:7, 28, 29. "According to our lecturer's figures—and he assured us that he had taken much pains to have them correct—there are now in the world about 10,000,000 Jews. Of these, 243,000 are worshipers of Christ, and 395 are ministers of the gospel. In other words, in proportion to the whole number of Jews and Gentiles, there are to-day more Christian Jews than Christian Gentiles. What is the significance and moral force of this fact? Does it not prove that the gospel is not an exclusive system, offering its benefactions to the Gentiles but refusing them to the Jews? Does it not show that the Jews can be saved, and are saved, during the present dispensation, upon the same conditions as the Gentiles? And if this be so, is it necessary that the Jews should have another age of mercy in order to put them in a salvable state, and place them upon a par with the Gentiles? These queries are not made in the spirit of dogmatism, or with any desire to oppose God's redemptive scheme. But the facts are very suggestive, whatever may be the philosophy to which they lead." Sunday Not the True Seventh Day.
By John Nevins Andrews
ONE thing which makes Dr. Akers very certain that he is right in this count of the days from creation, is the fact that reversing, as he terms it, the weeks for this whole period, he finds the first day of time to have been Monday, and, of course, the first seventh day would in that case be Sunday. But that all may place a proper estimate upon this reversing process, it is only necessary to remark that Dr. A. constructs a system of chronology which assumes that Monday was the first day of the week, and which is everywhere reckoned in accordance with that idea. Now a reversing of his weeks, i. e., a reckoning of them backward to the day from which he first started, will indeed show that starting point to have been Monday, but will not prove that that was the day on which God created the heavens and the earth. And it is remarkable that Dr. Akers not only claims to establish Sunday as the seventh day by his own peculiar system of chronology which makes the world to have been created Sept. 15, and to have been 3899 years old at the exodus, but he also takes the Rabbinical era of the world, which makes the age of the world 2114 at the exodus, instead of 3899, as represented by his chronology, and by this system he also shows that Sunday was the original seventh day. He holds, indeed, that the Rabbinical system of reckoning time by lunar months was wrong, but he says: "There is nothing more certain in chronology, than, according to the established number and measure of Rabbinical years, in common use, that the first day in the whole series began on Monday, the 7th of October, A. J. P. 953. Let the days, both of Julian and Rabbinical years, be counted from that beginning, till 771,945 are told; and the last one in the Julian line will be the said Saturday, the 27th of March, A. J. P. 3067; and in the Rabbinical line it will be the said 15th of Abib, Rab. A. M. 2114, making just 110,277 weeks and 6 days, thereby demonstrating, according to their own calendar, that Sunday, the 16th of said Abib, correspond to the original Sabbath."—Biblical Chronology, pp. 32, 33.189 But Dr. Akers gives us too much proof. It is certain that if Dr. A. is right in fixing the creation upon Sept. 15, then the Rabbins are wrong, who fix it upon Oct. 7. For though we leave out of the account the immense difference of the two chronologies from creation to the exodus, one making it 3899, and the other only 2114, and confine ourselves solely to the day on which each asserts the creation to have taken place, we shall have the most convincing proof that this system of counting days from the creation, which can show Sunday to be the seventh day of the week, is certainly unreliable and deceptive. Only look at the case. If creation was upon Sept. 15, then Oct. 7 was not the day of creation. Twenty-two days intervene between these two dates. But if the world was created B. C. 5545, on the fifteenth day of September, as exactly defined in Akers' book, or, if it was created Oct. 7, 1785 years later, as the Rabbinical era indicates, it is all alike to Dr. A. In either case he can prove positively that Sunday is the true seventh day. It is not at all likely that either of these years, or either of the precise points in the year, is the exact date of the creation. But if we grant one of them to be the true date, we must hold the other to be false. Yet Dr. Akers can prove that Sunday is the true seventh day, no matter which of these conflicting eras we adopt. One of them is certainly false. And neither can be proved to be right. But if we grant one of them to be right, and thereby declare the other to be false, which follows as a matter of necessity, then we have the singular spectacle of a venerable Doctor of Divinity counting the exact number of days from creation from a false starting point, and thereby proving Sunday the true seventh day! and at the same time counting the exact number of days from another starting point, which may also be a false date, and proving from this date also that the original seventh day was Sunday! What shall we say to these things? Is not every word established by the mouth of two or three witnesses? Has not Dr. A. produced two witnesses (as good at least as the two produced when Christ was upon trial) to prove that Sunday is the true seventh day? And how will the four evangelists be able to meet these witnesses of such undoubted veracity? But if Sunday can be shown to be the seventh day from a starting point which is false, what evidence have we that Dr. Akers' wonderful exactness in counting amounts to anything? He starts with Monday in each case as the first day of the week, and comes out at the close of his computation with Sunday as the seventh day, and indeed with Sunday as the Sabbath every week through the whole period. And when, to use his own expression, he reverses those weeks, i. e., reckons the time backward to his starting point, he finds Sunday to be the seventh day each time, and the first day of the entire series to be Monday. Is not this sufficient proof that he is right? Rather, what does it amount to, after all? He reverses a series which his own ingenuity has constructed. And unquestionably, in tracing back weeks of his own construction, he will come out just as he started. But he has this grand difficulty to overcome: that when he reaches the resurrection, which event stands at the very termination of his chain, he finds Sunday, as himself acknowledges, called by the four evangelists "first day of the week." At the commencement of his chain, Sunday was the "seventh day;" he keeps the reckoning exact to a day, and at the end of his chain, behold, the Scriptures mark the day as "first day of the week." And, instead of allowing their testimony to stand, and confessing that he must have started wrong when he fixed Monday as the day of creation, Dr. A. is sure that the day called "first day of the week" by the evangelists is the true "seventh day" after all; and he is nothing daunted by the fact that at the close of his long chain of reckoning, the day which he asserts was the veritable "seventh day" on which God rested, by inspiration called "first day of the week." And yet what a surprising spectacle this presents! Dr. Akers, having reckoned back to the beginning, and forward from the beginning, and the one reckoning happily agreeing exactly with the other, he is so convinced of its truthfulness that he confidently asserts that the "seventh day" mentioned at the beginning of his long reckoning is Sunday, notwithstanding four inspired men who write at the very close of the chain, do, as he confesses, call this very day the "first day of the week!" His confidence in his reckoning is greatly confirmed by the fact that he can take the Rabbinical computation of time, and show from that that the creation was upon Monday, and the first Sabbath upon Sunday; so that whether the creation of the world was Sept. 15, or Oct. 7, it makes no difference, as an exact count of the days from either date makes Sunday to be the original Sabbath! This is worse than Mr. Fuller's act of proving that the original Sabbath was upon the first day of the week, by the use of Dr. Akers' figures which make Sunday to be the seventh day. For the two can be in a certain sense reconciled by the following statement:— Mr. Fuller's weeks begin one day earlier than those of Dr. Akers. But Dr. Akers has one more week than has Mr. F., who refuses to count the first six days of Gen. 1. But when Dr. A. proves Sunday to be the true seventh day with equal facility whether the creation occurred Sept. 15, or Oct. 7, it is not very easy to set limits to his skill in this kind of computation. But it is proper that we should now consider that feature of Dr. Akers' theory by which he reconciles his computation of the weeks with the fact that the evangelists call Sunday the first day. As already stated, the doctor's theory is framed to meet this very difficulty. Indeed, that part of it which we are about to state is something absolutely indispensable to the vindication of that which we have been considering. His doctrine may be stated in two propositions: 1. That the sixteenth of Abib is the seventh day of the original week, as proved by the exact count of days which we have been examining. 2. God commanded the Hebrews at the exodus to hallow the fifteenth as their weekly Sabbath. And thus Dr. Akers reconciles the truthfulness of his theory and the veracity of the evangelists. Dr. Akers' attempt to count the exact number of days from creation from the sixteenth of Abib at the exodus, and his Biblical argument to show that God gave Israel a new Sabbath by ordaining the fifteenth day of the month, or sixth day of the previously-existing week, for that purpose, are two propositions neither of which amount to anything for his purpose unless he can prove the other. For if he cannot prove by his counting of days that the sixteenth of Abib was the original Sabbath from the creation of the world, then his subsequent argument to prove that the fifteenth of Abib was so regulated as to come each year upon the seventh day of the Jewish week, even if it be sustained, does not prove that the seventh day of this Jewish week was not identical with the seventh day reckoned from creation. And again, if he fails to prove that the fifteenth day of Abib must necessarily come upon the seventh day of the Jewish week, even though we could find conclusive evidence that he had reckoned time so exactly as to be certain that the sixteenth of Abib was the seventh day from creation, we should then have no evidence that the seventh day of the Jewish week was not the seventh day from creation. The establishment of one of the propositions amounts to nothing unless he can establish the other.