CHAPTER XXXIII. AND here these pages may be closed. They have brought us from a high and abstract axiom to a practical duty, by stages which would seem to admit no pause or deviation of argument. He who believes that in the nature of the Almighty Creator there is enshrined the awful and inscrutable mystery of a Trinity in Unity, made known to the world through Christ, and communicated to us by Christ through His Church, may well expect to find a similar mystery in the perfection of any Divine work. He may expect to find it in political society; and when he sees before his eyes society almost in a state of ruin human reason bereft of truth — human will let loose from rule- human belief reduced to fancy and human association held together only by the conflicts of selfishness he may pause to examine if the cause of such an evil lies not in some departure from the great model of all good. And when he finds a Church without a State, as in Popery, or a State without a Church, as in England at the present day; and either exclusive unity made the law of society, or exclusive plurality; he will be little surprised that evil should be the end; and he will know no other remedy but a return, under God, to the one great model, and the restoration either of the Civil Power to its functions, as at the Reformation, or of the Spiritual, as now. And when the defects of either are to be supplied, still he will recur to the same model; and where the Church, in its organisation, presents the element of unity without the element of plurality, as the English Church at present presents, that is, episcopacy, and the parochial system, but no national synod, and no active incorporation of its officers, there he would seek to restore the element of plurality first-and would sum up the grand want, and the medicine of medicines for the evils of the nation in one wordthe Incorporation of the Church. And if the theory be true, the practice must follow; and instead of sitting idly with folded arms and drooping sinews, exclaiming against the apostacy of our civil rulers, or the coldness and weakness of the Church; instead of insulting the mother who bore us by sarcasms on the sins of her sons transferred to herself, or of treasonably plotting to subject her once more to a foreign communion, which bears the outward show of better things only to an eye which never pierced beyond, and which we cannot rejoin without sacrificing the foundations of truth and goodness full as much as by the follies which we fly from,—if we really feel as we profess, and desire what we imagine, the work, even now, may be accomplished of resuscitating the Church and of saving the empire. And it must be commenced by individuals. The movement must proceed from below. It must seek from the State little but kind favour, and due superintendence, and the extension of privileges, which cost nothing. It must begin in the Christian zeal of some few individuals associating themselves for any one of the great works of charity which are now needed - placing themselves under rule-submitting themselves implicitly to their bishop-not extending their operations beyond his diocese carefully guarding against offences towards weak brethren, yet shrinking from nothing, however elevated, or however strange to the present generation, which is sanctioned by that external authority to which, as members of the Church, they are subjected-above all, not indulging any dream of an ecclesiastical supremacy and power, which would violate the Divine prerogative of the State, or be unlike the followers of Him who came not to be ministered to, but to minister, and to give Himself a ransom for the world. As Christ Himself appeared before men, so must His Church appear. He walked in company with His disciples; and He breathed the Spirit upon the College of the Apostles; and His Apostles went forth into the world, not alone, but incorporated each with a body of followers; and this is the word of His own Spirit—"one body and many members;" and "ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. And God hath set some in the Church, first Apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues... But all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every one severally as He will.” 1 .... INDEX. ARISTOCRACY, hereditary, an elementary division of the state, Army, might be made a school and nursery for the lower or- Balance of power, its result inaction, 96. Baptism, infant, its analogy to hereditary rank, 216. Bishops, appointment of, 379; multiplication of, 383; their Bribery, how encouraged by the modern theory of popular re- Castes, the chief viciousness of slavery consists in them, 223; Civil power, incapable of performing its functions with a latitu- Change, not to be excluded from a state, 41; exhibited in the Charters, not revocable capriciously, 245; of incorporation, Children, to be trained to a fitting independence, 225; their diminishes, 61; to be gradually entrusted with power, 63; Choice, sanctioned by Scripture, 251; operations of distin- Christianity has its philosophy as well as its faith, 46. Citizen, his character similar to that of the Christian, 129, |