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nized which took their rise in some of the worst errors of Rome, it was, doubtless, felt that the supremacy of the word of God, and the wholesome doctrine of justification by faith only, having been unreservedly declared, language, in itself unsound, was not only neutralized, but forced to bear a good sense, and forms, once superstitious, rendered not only harmless, but edifying. When, again, a reaction has taken place, and attempts have been made to lead us back to Rome, it has not been thought necessary to deny formally the great doctrines of the protestant faith, or to call for changes in adverse articles. Policy has suggested another course: every word, every form which once implied medieval ideas, has been brought into prominence; and this has sufficed, where the mind was before seduced, to keep out of sight, or to justify the erasion of, all the formal statements deliberately inserted in our standards of doctrine, for the express purpose of securing the objects for which we separated from Rome, and of denying the very notions which some would again have brought into favour. The Holy Spirit in its wisdom and prudence, then, tolerated the continuance of much that was to be done away, that the gospel might find access at the first. It was his purpose that, when once men had tasted how gracious the Lord is, the gospel should, of itself, wean them from the food adapted only for spiritual infancy; and that Jewish customs, if retained at all, should be regarded merely in the same light as a national garb, or local usages, are regarded by other men, that is, as things in themselves indifferent, and which do not make men either better or worse.

now.

We may, perhaps, feel surprised that the attempt to bring the Gentiles converted by St. Paul, and endued with the Holy Spirit, under the yoke of law should ever have offered any probability of success. None but a madman would think such a scheme feasible But, succeed it did then to a wonderful extent. It bewitched the Galatians, divided the church of Corinth, struck deep roots in Rome; and, if St. Paul exults that his Ephesians escaped contamination, the greatness of his joy manifests the greatness of his fears. We, however, who have seen what Romanism could effect in this age, and in such a place as this, may feel less surprise than our fathers would have felt on reflecting on the same facts if they could have foreseen them. Judaism really possessed all that Rome claims. It was divine in its origin, it was of venerable antiquity (though not primitive, as we know, since the gospel was preached before to Abraham), it was once the only true faith, and it had been sanctioned by

the practice of the Saviour and his apostles. But what rendered it more attractive still, as developed by the Scribes and Pharisees, it had a routine of observances for the formal bodily mortifications for the austere, counsels of perfection for the self-righteous, authority to give peace to those who could not bear doubt or find rest in moral evidence; skilful casuistry for that large class which would combine the advantages of wrong with the answer of a good conscience; sacrifices which might allay remorse after every sin; a stately ritual to please the senses; yes, and broad phylacteries for the hypocrite, and amulets for the vulgar; in short, every thing by which man succeeds in appeasing the instinctive cravings for religion, while he escapes-what they find who serve God in spirit and in truththe pangs of daily death unto sin, and of the daily birth unto righteousness; the heavy sense of personal responsibility the jealous and incessant scrutiny of the heart, which is, above all things, intolerable to the natural man. All St. Paul's writings show how great he deemed the danger. The Christianity of the Gentile converts and of the Jewish believers alike could be saved only by proclaiming, at the risk of much strife and many apostacies, the whole gospel with all its consequences. St. Paul taught, therefore, that he who believes in Christ is righteous in the sight of God, as Abraham, the friend of God, was; and what more could the seed of Abraham desire or obtain? For it follows, from the very force of the word, that, if a man be accounted righteous by God, he stands before the judgment as if he had not only refrained from any violation of the law, and were wholly pure in thought, word, and deed, but as if he had actually done the whole will of his Father as it is done in heaven. Can any addition be made to such blessedness? Can the sacrifices of bulls and of goats avail him who is clean every whit? Can the observance of months and days and years, yea, or of the weightier matters of the law, add to the price which was paid on the cross? What remains, then, for man but thankfully to receive God's unspeakable gift, to walk after the Spirit, to crucify the flesh, to give proof of adoption, and to lay up a good foundation for the time to come, that he may lay hold on eternal life?

The doctrine of justification by faith without the works of the law (for this is the formula which embodies the gospel of St. Paul) ought, when fully understood, to have led men to make a final and decisive choice between the old faith and the new. Accordingly, nobler spirits became altogether such as Paul, when, especially, the will of God had been finally manifested by the over

throw of the Jewish polity and the temple on Sion; and the party which triumphed for a moment at Antioche ended in the miserable sect of Ebionites, which, without professedly forsaking Christ, fell into lower and lower views of his offices and nature, till at length it represented him as a mere man. Paul prevailed; but the contest was not finally decided at Antioch. His life was one long martyrdom in behalf of Gentile liberty and the truth of the gospel. It was for us that he endured his daily death. It was because he gloried in the cross of Christ that he suffered his persecutions. The main object of his personal ministry was, doubtless, to propagate his gospel, as he speaks emphatically, where it was unknown; but his epistles were chiefly written to defend it, where it had been received, against his inveterate antagonists; and these writings are, therefore, chiefly controversial treatises.

But it would be a capital error to regard his epistles as affecting us only indirectly, or as supplying our times with little else than analogies more or less remote. Rather should we hold that Paul is even now "the teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity;" and that in these epistles, which form so large a portion of the book of the new covenant, is set forth Christian truth in its deepest principles, and in its full practical consequences; and that so they are profitable alike for reproof and for correction and instruction in righteousness to all generations of Christians. Judaism disappeared never to return; but man has remained the same; and, in process of time, a system of external observances, of bodily austerities, and of servile fear, again superseded the free and spiritual religion of Christ: sacraments were magnified to the disparagement of the quickening Spirit, a human priesthood once more offered sacrifices for sin, and the cross was again rendered of none effect by Pharisaic righteousness. And, when it pleased God once more to visit his people, Paul was once more the restorer of the gospel. Paul spake by the mouth of Luther. The disease was the same, and the same remedy was applied. The epistle to the Romans seemed to have been written for their descendants; and that to the Galatians was as pointed against modern as against ancient Pharisaism. St. Paul having asserted the completeness of the salvation wrought by Christ, and the sufficiency of faith on man's part to apprehend that salvation, it was evident that, if his principles excluded observance of the divine ordinances of Moses from a share in man's justification, and overthrew the altar in the court of the temple, and annulled the commission of

Aaron's sons, and made the righteousness of the law to be counted as dung, much more did they put to flight the foolish traditions of superstitious ages, and the idolatrous mass, and the blasphemous pretensions of a sinforgiving priesthood, and the good works, as they were then called, by which men then thought to earn grace and glory, or to buy off the penalties of crime. If indeed we are "complete in Christ," as Paul asserts, regarded as righteous in him by that God whose eyes are too pure to behold iniquity, assured of his paternal chastisements, and bidden to ask for his Holy Spirit as confidently as a child asks for bread, what need we more than a Saviour who died for our sins in our stead, and who ever liveth to make intercession for us? Even when our wants are greatest, whether it be when we cast ourselves at the foot of the throne in the anguish of remorse, or when temptation is strong and the flesh is weak, or when the king of terrors is at hand, who shall presume to add his miserable devices to that which is "the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, whether it be Jew or Gentile"? Of a truth the gospel of Paul is the everlasting gospel; and, though he "or an angel from heaven should preach any other besides, let him be accursed."

II. That there is no salvation out of the

church is a proposition which the scriptural believer cannot well deny, if the church be the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, the company of his faithful and elect people. But the proposition assumes a very different character when the church is defined to be some one visible and external communion adhering to some one earthly centre of unity, and, what follows as a consequence, when all who are in a state of separation from it, whether they be grievous heretics or men driven by pride into schism, or whether they be honest Lolievers, who, having detected corruptions, are forced by their own conscience, or compelled by an abuse of power to forsake that communion, are represented as cut off from Christ, as having no valid ministry, no sacraments, as being without grace, and without interest in the promises, whatever be their love of the Lord Jesus Christ, or the extent of their orthodoxy, or the fruits of their faith. Such was the theory embraced by Cyprian and the churches of Africa, when they insisted that all who left a sect for their com munion should be re-baptized; but the theory was too repugnant to the traditions and feelings of the church at large at that time to prevail. Augustine, though he, too, limited the church within one visible body, felt too much horror at the thought of consigning

to perdition millions of infants baptized in the name of the blessed Trinity, and all the simple and virtuous adults who honestly adhered to that sect in which they had been reared, started the strange idea that out of the church of Christ there may be valid sacraments and a legitimate ministry, and salvation by virtue of those sacraments and through that ministry; as if living children could be conceived in the womb of a

corpse.

Such is still the theory of Rome, though, as she baptizes protestants under a small pretence, she appears, and perhaps seeks to appear, to the vulgar to follow the error of Cyprian. It would be well, however, before men embrace systems which lead them to deny, without further inquiry, the hope of many who profess to love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, to bear in mind that once on a time there were two bodies of believers on Christ, separated by differences so wide that the one held to be necessary, and pressed as such on the other, doctrines which that other rightly regarded as a perversion of the gospel; that those two bodies ceased to partake together of that one bread which unites Christians in one fellowship; that the members of one of those bodies joined in worship with men who hated the Lord Jesus Christ rather than with the soundest Christians, and held things, in themselves useless and indifferent at the best, to be of spiritual efficacy and essential to salvation. Yet all must confess that these two bodies were alike part of the church of Christ, and that the body which was in error was in communion with one who is said to have been the head of the church on earth, while he himself withdrew from that which was orthodox. The schism of which I speak was not that which divided the east and the west when Victor excommunicated those who kept Easter after the manner of St. John, nor that which rent Africa from Rome through the arrogance of Stephen and the errors of Cyprian. It was an earlier division; for it took place in the apostolic church. The differences were far greater; for the Holy Ghost has adjudged them to be of vital moment. It was Peer the apostle who separated himself from the church which Paul defended, and who would have compelled the Gentiles to live as did the Jews, thus frustrating the grace of God. Who will venture to say that at, the very moment when the evil was at its height, either those who held with Paul, or that party to which Peter yielded, and Peter himself, were not in the church of Christ? Who will venture to say that the church of Christ was then to be found in one only of the two

external communions? And, if not so then, why must it be so now?

Such facts may well lead men to pause before they rush into the creed of the Donatists, and regard as no longer Christians all who do not adhere to some society, large or small, which they are pleased to call the church, and to suspect that their theories might not have found much favour in the eyes of the holy apostles. Would not St. Paul have taught that he is in the body who holds the head, and that he is in the church who has spiritual life, though, like the eunuch of Candace, he may have to go rejoicing on his way to heaven for a while alone, or though Peter may withdraw himself from him, or Diotrephes cast him out? May he not say, Simon Magus, who had not life before he was admitted to the company of the faithful, was not, though baptized and in communion with Philip, grafted into Christ, nor one of his elect people? Would it not appear that, where there is truth and faith and charity, there is life, there is grace, and therefore union with Christ? that the union is most intimate where these most abound, and that societies and individuals, not cut off by damnable heresies or deadly sin, are in the church of Christ? As we cannot give assurance of salvation to the members of any one church as such, because the Lord alone knoweth those who are his, so neither dare we presume to condemn as dead branches all who follow not with us, because he alone can judge when errors become fatal, and when union with him has ceased.

That prelate who has been pleased to take the great orb of day for the emblem of his position in the spiritual firmament, and who boldly claims to be the centre of light and life and unity to the church, and some of the smaller bodies in our land, which have a separate existence, like those diminutive planets, fragments of a larger globe, whose presence and whose orbits have been detected by modern science, may alike, if they will, speak of our church, and of all other communions but their own, as "wandering stars,” to use the figure of St. Jude, "which are reserved for the blackness of darkness for ever-those eccentric and portentous masses, which, after disturbing the atmosphere, and alarming nature, shoot into the dismal depths of space, where neither light nor heat can penetrate, doomed perhaps never to return; wisdom and charity require us to think that they, like ourselves, may be revolving round the Sun of Righteousness, and deriving healing from his wings, though at distances more or less remote from his blessed influences.

Our church does not deny the name or

being of a church to her enemy of Rome, and, while we cannot but applaud as candid which yet she declares to have erred in faith and just the sentiment of Augustine, who held and in life, to teach blasphemous fables and that many simple souls among the Arians dangerous deceits, to have destroyed the na- were in a state of grace; while we need not ture of one sacrament, and thus to contra- deny that there may be some who, like the vene in every point our definition of a church apostles, can drink deadly things, and receive as a congregation of faithful men, in which no hurt, we cannot but entertain horrible the pure word of God is preached, and the fears for all who directly or by consequence sacraments duly administered; much less reject any vital truths. And, as it is not does she regard as cut off from the body of difficult to learn from the Koran what are Christ those religious societies abroad, which, the doctrines of Mahomet, however violent approximating closely in doctrine, differ in may be the disputes and perplexing the diffigovernment from ourselves, or even those culties of the rival bodies of his followers, or which in our land, having lost more or less to ascertain from authoritative documents of the truth, have cast off, and now assail what is the state of theology in the church her; for she once freely admitted those or- of Rome, so surely it is not difficult for men dained in the reformed churches of the con- of meek heart and pure affection, by the aptinent to her ministry: she has seen, and yet plication of their reason, to ascertain the intent may see in her highest places, prelates baptized of the oracles of God, to comprehend what in schism: she would visit with penalties her the. Lord and his apostles taught, and thereministers, if their zeal should lead them to re-fore what is essential to, or what is destrucfuse to commit to the grave as brethren many who never worshipped to her courts; and she admits to communion all whose orthodoxy is proved by their willingness to join in her services. All our brethren may perhaps not agree with the church. The natural resentment which fierce opposition and uncharitable accusations arouse, the necessities of some particular theories have led many to feel, some to think, others to speak as if a great national establishment in our own country, and the foreign churches, which once we loved so well, and all who separate from our communion here, were not part of the body of Christ, but aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, whom charity herself must leave to the uncovenanted mercies of God, to some kind of exceptional provision, some salvation other than that wrought by Christ, of which scripture says nothing.

But, though there may be no" via præscriptionis," no short method for disposing at once of all sects of Christians, no external and visible mark, like that of adherence to some one ecclesiastic, or some one order of ecclesiastics, to denote, without need of further inquiry, those who are in the church of Christ, it does not follow that all who profess themselves Christians are really such, or that it is impossible, at any rate, to prove that they are not. There are fundamental truths, as Protestants speak, doctrines necessary to be held as means to an end, to use the language of the schools: there are errors which defeat one or all the ends of religion -the glory of God, the sanctification of man, and his final salvation. Such bodies as forsake the one, or resemble the other, separate themselves from him who is the truth and the life, and have no part or lot in his church;

tive of, their system. The harmony of Pro-
testant confessions shows how nearly inde-
pendent inquirers may agree in the truth of
God's holy word, when they have no object
but to ascertain its meaning. Neither are we
to suppose that-although, as we think, the
church of Christ is not confined to one merely
of the various sections of the Christian world,
and although we do not admit separation to
be at once conclusive of the guilt of those
who separate, but hold, on the contrary, that
it may become an imperative duty-we
regard the present state of those who_call
themselves Christians to be such as the Lord
can view with approbation. Our first duty
is to contend for the truth at all cost, as St.
Paul did: our next duty, which is like unto
it, is to retain or restore unity and peace.
And, as we must not, to gain the latter end,
suppress one essential article of faith, or
confess or palliate one falsehood, or endea-
vour to combine antagonist creeds, as well-
meaning men sometimes do, thinking that
they have attained the just mean when they
have only neutralized truth and recommended
falsehood, so neither must we oppose unne-
cessary obstacles, doubtful disputations, vain
strife of words, to the attainment of the for-
mer. Love and candour will enable a man
to distinguish between what is essential and
what is not; between what is verbal and
what is real. Where love and candour are
not, union in one society is not desirable.
Formal separation is less fatal to our souls
and to religion than strife in the bosom of one
church. In all this let us be followers of
Paul; and, if we do "what we learn and
hear in him, the God of peace will be with
us," as the blessed apostle himself writes.
}

Surely he was zealous for truth, since he

perilled for it that fellowship with Peter
which he once so anxiously sought, "lest he
should run (or have run) in vain," and union
with the church of Jerusalem, which was so
necessary to his happiness: not one concession
would he make which could give opponents
the slightest advantage; but mark how com-
plying he was with every prejudice, when
compliance was not surrender of truth; how
strongly he imposes on us the duty of re-
specting conscience even when erring, and of
acknowledging the piety and holy motives of
our brethren, though in doing what we con-
demn. "He that regardeth the day re-
gardeth it unto the Lord: he that regardeth
it not, to the Lord he doth not regard it
is his golden rule; a rule which should

never be absent from Christian hearts.

ends; such the honest acts which he used in controversy. Thus it is that we too may hope most effectually to labour "in edifying the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man ;"" that we be henceforth no more children, tossed about with every wind of doctrine, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ."

The Cabinet.

in two sorts to be considered, universally and particularly. Universally, according to thy power where

"LET THY KINGDOM COME."-Thy kingdom is

very keeper that keepeth and guideth thy people.

with thou governest all things every where, in earth, And, again, if we believe that truth is of it- heaven, hell, devils, angels, men, beasts, fowls, fishes, self plain, and capable of being discerned, like and all creatures, animate and inanimate, sensible and the light when the sun shines, unless there insensible. Of this kingdom spake David, when he said "Thy kingdom ruleth over all." Particularly be scales over a man's eyes, if we believe thy kingdom is to be considered according to thy that the reception or rejection of it is due, grace wherewith thou reignest only in thy church an in a great measure, to men's affections, elect people, ruling and governing all and every memwe must not thence be so ready to infer their ber of thy church to thy glory and their eternal comfort. Not that out of this church I exclude thy moral guilt as to regard this as an encoupower; for as therewith thou defendest thy people, ragement in our endeavours, by meekness and so thou punishest thine enemies; but because thy every proof of evident love, to remove pre-grace is specially considered, being, as it were, the judices, and even to enlist the feelings in the right cause. What St. Paul expected from a course of benefits conferred on those of the contrary part, prejudiced men, may be seen in his anxiety to obtain contributions from his Gentile converts for the poor saints at Jerusalem; but it is not so much the fact of his being desirous of relieving their great wants, which enables us to enter into his feelings, as the urgency with which he presses the Romans: "For the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, to strive with him in prayers to God for him, that his service which he has for Jerusalem may be accepted of the saints." If I mistake not, he feared that their aversion to the donors and to the bearer of the gift might lead them, however destitute, to reject it, and that so his efforts might only embitter their animosity to the Gentiles and the truths of the gospel. But, if, on the other hand, God should dispose their hearts to accept it with thankfulness, it must follow that they would recognize as brethren in Christ those whom grace bad filled with such love, and perceive that, after all, the differences between them could not be essential, that the Gentiles must therefore be "complete in Christ," that circumcision and the law availed nothing, and so glorify Christ by holding him to be all in all. So would they believe the Gentiles to be Christians, and become Christians in the highest sense themselves. Such were his

The time will be when this kingdom of grace and power, now being as distinct, shall be united and made one kingdom of glory; which will be when Christ shall give up his kingdom into thine hands; that is, in the resurrection when "death, the last all." In the mean season this kingdom of grace is enemy shall be subdued," and thou shalt be "all in miraculously and mightily propagated, enlarged, and governed by the true ministry of thy word and sacraments, through the working of thy Holy Spirit. And first plant, so dost thou enlarge, amplify, and this is the mean and way whereby as thou didst preserve the same. This kingdom of grace begun, continued, and enlarged by the true preaching of thy gospel and ministration of thy sacraments, is the thing which Christ teacheth here thy children to pray for, that it might come; that is to say, that thy gospel might so mightily, purely, and plenteously be preached, maugre the head of all thine enemies, that the number of thine elect might be brought in, and so the kingdom of thy glory might appear. So that as I see thy childreu desire, pray, and labour, that thy gospel might be truly preached, heard, and lived in themselves, and in others; so they lament the not preaching and refusing, the not the lingering of the coming of thy Christ; for in his living and unbelieving thy gospel. Yea, they lament coming they know they shall be "like unto him," and "having this hope, they purify themselves as he is pure."-Bradford on the Lord's Prayer.

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