honor which cometh from above, and verily I HAVE MY reward.' Having uttered these expressions, he hastily disappeared, and was seen no more. The Minister awaking shortly afterwards, with the contents of this dream deeply engraven upon his memory, proceeded, overwhelmed with serious reflection, towards his Chapel in order to conduct the evening service. On his way thither he was accosted by a friend, who enquired whether he had heard of the severe loss the Church had sustained in the death of that able Minister. replied, 'No' but being much affected at this singular intelligence, he inquired of him the day, and the time of the day, when his departure took place. To this his friend replied, This afternoon, at twenty-five minutes after three o'clock !'

He

THE DOCTRINE OF THE VISIBLE CHURCH. Continued from page 223.

FOR, supposing it impossible that there should be a Church where there is not integrity and purity of life and conversation, their abhorrence of iniquity leads them to separate from the true Church, while they imagine themselves to be merely leaving a herd of the ungodly. They alledge the Church of Christ is holy. We admit it. But let them attend to the parable, in which the Lord himself compares his Church to a net in which all kinds of fish were collected, while the selection was not made till they were laid out upon the shore, and they will see that the Church of Christ consists of a mixture of good and bad. Let them observe the comparison of the Church to a field which was sown with good seed, but which an enemy sowed

afterwards with tares, of which it was not cleared till the arrival of harvest. Let them observe, lastly, that the Church is a threshing-floor, on which the wheat lies hid under the chaff till, after being threshed and winnowed, it is gathered at last into the garner. Now if the Lord himself declares that till the period of the day of Judgment the Church will not be free from the evil which we are considering, it must surely be in vain to look during the present dispensation for a Church which is without spot. But they are loud in asserting it to be intolerable that moral evils of such an extent as we every day witness should have an existence in the Church. What, however, if we have Apostolical authority also on this point! Among the members of the Church of Corinth it was not a few only who had gone astray, the evil had infected nearly the whole Church. Nor was it a single class of criminality of which they had been guilty, but on the contrary of a very great variety. Nor were theirs light errors, on the contrary they were serious sins. Nor did they exhibit a corruption of morals only, but of doctrine. What was it then that the holy Apostle, the organ of the Holy Spirit, by whose testimony a Church must stand or fall, what was it that he did in this case. Did he order a separation from those who had been thus guilty? Did he shut them out of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus? Did he fulminate against them the sentence of final excommunication? We not only find him doing nothing of the kind, but expressly acknowledging and proclaiming then a Church of Christ, and a communion of saints. And thus there was a Church at Corinth, in which contention, rivalry, and party-spirit raged; in which law suits and dis

putes, arising out of the love of money, were of continual occurrence; in which wickedness was openly sanctioned which the Gentiles themselves would have held in abomination; in which the character of Paul himself, whom they ought to have regarded as a Father, was disparaged and insulted; in which there were those who ridiculed the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, a doctrine the overthrow of which would involve the overthrow of the whole Gospel; in which the gifts of God were made to minister to personal ambition, instead of Christian charity; and things done without regard to propriety and decency; and which continued a Church, however, notwithstanding, because it had not abandoned the administration of the word and Sacraments. And will any person then venture to deny the title of a Church to be due to communions which are not responsible for the tenth part of these criminalities. What, I should like to know, would those who are so furious against the Churches of our day have said to the Galatians who had all but fallen from grace, and among whom the same Apostle recognized Churches as existing notwithstanding. They object also that Paul severely censures the Corinthians on account of their allowing a flagitious character to continue in communion with them; and at the same time gives it as a general principle, that it is inadmissible even to eat bread with a person of reproachful life. And on this they cry out if we are not to eat our ordinary meal how can it be allowable to partake of the Lord's Supper with a person of this class. And, indeed, I acknowledge it a shame for sensualists and profane persons to be allowed a place among the children of God; and much more for the holy Communion.

of the body of Christ to be profaned by their participation in it. Nor (were our Churches regulated as they ought to be) would they allow wicked men to remain within their pale, nor admit promiscuously fit and unfit persons to the table of the Lord. It does indeed, however, come to pass, sometimes from a want of vigilance in Ministers, sometimes from their being more indulgent than they ought to be, and sometimes from their being prevented from exercising a discipline as vigorous as they would wish themselves, that even openly wicked persons are not in all cases precluded from admission to the communion of the saints. I acknowledge this to be a fault; nor do I wish to excuse a conduct on which St. Paul animadverts with severity in the case of the Corinthians. But even supposing that the Church fails in her duty, it does not follow that a private individual is to assume to himself the right of leaving it. I do not deny the right of every pious man to withdraw from all private intercourse with wicked ones, and every kind of voluntary association and connection with them. But then it is one thing to avoid the society of the ungodly, and another out of dislike to them to renounce communion with the Church.

In thinking moreover that these are guilty of a profanation of the Sacrament in consenting to partake of it in such company, they are stricter than St. Paul. For when this Apostle exhorts to a worthy partaking of the Lord's Supper, he does not require us to examine one another, or every individual to examine the whole Church, but that every man should prove his own self. Had it been that we were forbidden to communicate with the unworthy, St. Paul would undoubt

edly have desired us to look around, and see whether there were any in the number to contaminate us by their impurity. But when the Apostle merely requires individuals to examine themselves, he shews that we are not likely to be hurt by the intrusion of unworthy persons into the number of the communicants. It is a similar inference which is furnished by another passage of the same Apostle, "He that eateth unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself." He does not say to others, but to himself. And properly, for it ought not to be left to the judgment of private individuals to determine who are to be received into communion, and who are to be excluded from it. It is the whole Church by which alone questions of this kind ought to be determined, and which it can only do in a solemn and judicial way, (as I shall shew more at large hereafter.) There would be therefore no justice in allowing one communicant to be contaminated by the unworthiness of another, whom he neither has nor ought to have the opportunity of excluding from communion. But though the temptation in question is one to which even good men are exposed when it arises out of an ill-regulated zeal for the interests of holiness; we shall notwithstanding find that an excessive strictness proceeds more usually from pride and haughtiness, and a vain conceit of superior holiness, than out of any genuine holiness of character, or any real anxiety respecting it. So that those who are most forward, and as it were, lead the van in promoting separation from the Church, do so merely in consequence of trusting in themselves that they are righteous, and despising others. Augustine says, very well, and with much good sense, 'while the Church, by the manifest reasonableness