I.

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH, A WITNESS

AGAINST FALSE PHILOSOPHIZING.

FROM THE EPISTLE.*. "They have not all obeyed the Gospel; for "Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?"-Roм. x. 16.

UNLESS we affix a definite meaning to any given statement, an intelligent belief of it must be quite impossible. Nevertheless, there is ground to suspect that some very important articles of our faith receive a spurious kind of technical belief from a large proportion of professing Christians; who inertly admit what has been taught them, without caring to enquire what it means, or whether it has any meaning.

Observe, as an example, that part of the creed of the Universal Church, which it is the object of these

*The Feast of St. Andrew.

B

Lectures to bring especially under your notice. We are all taught from our earliest years to say, “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," and, "I believe in one Catholic and Apostolic Church;" but if any number of us were taken and separately questioned as to what we really mean when we make this profession, it is to be feared that very few would be found to agree; and still fewer perhaps would have any meaning, or see any practical utility in the Article at all.

The most ignorant will commonly find it convenient to settle such a point at once, by intimating that it is a probable "relic of Popery" of no great consequence, which "the Reformers" forgot to destroy. But even men of better information, and more reflection, will be greatly at a loss to explain that Article of the faith which still they constantly profess. One will consider it to contain a recognition of the existence of "an Invisible Church," that is, I conceive, a large number of true Christians scattered throughout the world;-though it must seem rather strange to make a fact of this kind an "Article of Faith." Another will regard it as an acknowledgment of the necessity of some kind of Visible church-membership. While others will strangely suppose it to convey some qualified ad

mission, at least, of the authority of the Church of Rome. Now without enumerating more opinions, -it is plain that there is something unsatisfactory, to say no more, in all these vague or trivial explanations. The Article in question was evidently considered a most important one, both by those who originally framed the Creed, and by the Churches which have preserved it. Brief as this Summary of the Christian Faith is, confining itself almost to the bare outline of the Christian facts--it would seem that this Article must needs be inserted among the most solemn and important of all the truths enumerated the "belief in the Holy Ghost" preceding it—and that in the "communion of saints" and "forgiveness of sins" immediately following it. It can be no unimportant point, which the Church of Christ, in every age, has thought right thus to incorporate into its concisest confession of necessary Christian truth.

And the frequency with which it is enforced is also very remarkable. When we are first of all baptized into Christ this is part of the confession, or, as St. Peter calls it, "the answer of a good conscience," made in our name.. made in our name.. "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church: "—or, if we were baptized in adult years, we made that profession for

ourselves. In the Catechism, short as it is, drawn up for the most elementary instruction of our childhood-the same creed, the same article, appear; and to this same creed, express reference is made in the renewal of our baptismal vows, which is required by the bishop at Confirmation. In the daily prayers of the Church it is constantly repeated; and on Saints' days and on Sundays we confess twice over in the morning, and once in the evening," I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." It cannot surely be any frivolous point which is thus insisted on; and an enquiry concerning which is even to be carried to the chamber of the dying, according to the Church's direction, in the service for the Visitation of the Sick. It can be no common matter—no mere acknowledgment that there is such an institution, either spiritual or visible, as a Christian Church. If this were all, we surely could not so strictly require it of an unbaptized man; we could not put it to a dying man as an essential portion of a saving creed-without the admission of which, both the sacraments of the Church might--nay, must be withheld. It must mean more-much more-than this; and I beseech you seriously to follow me while I attempt to elicit the real meaning of this important Article.