us, and whose "strength is made perfect in weakness," surely it is the place, above all others, to be desired; the place to which every humble, sorrowing, yet believing soul, should seek.

CHAPTER II.

PRINCIPLES OF TRUTH. ADDRESSED ESPECIALLY TO CHRISTIANS AMONGST THE INDEPENDENTS.

IN speaking to Independents, or Congregationalists, on the spiritual priesthood of believers; the unscripturalness of the distinction of " clergy and laity;" the perfect equality, in Christ, of all the children of God; liberty of ministry; the want of authority, in the New Testament, for man's ordination, or appointment to spiritual office in the Christian Church; and the entire voluntariness of the New Testament provision for the support of all recognised-ministry in the Church and to the world; I may use the more freedom, as I am, on these points, speaking merely of matters which are in accordance with their AVOWED principles, however much their practice, in some of these things, may contravene the principles they profess, or, at least, admit. In speaking to Christians, as Christians, without noticing any distinction of sects, the standard of appeal is, of course, simply the Word of God; but in addressing Christian brethren among the Independents, I feel myself at liberty to refer to their acknowledged principles, although, from them,

the appeal must, of course, ultimately be made to the written Word. The Reformers, it is well known, whom God raised up to awaken the Churches of Christendom from the deadly slumbers of the Romish superstition, came out upon points of doctrine, having especially to contend for the fundamental doctrine of justification by faith; and they did not understand the true principles of order in the Church, as presented in the Word of God. Nor, indeed, did they examine the Scriptures for the purpose of deducing from thence their principles of ecclesiastical polity; but they rather assumed the lawfulness of availing themselves of the aid of the secular power in the work of reformation, and in consolidating and ruling the church of God. Ecclesiastical polity, as unfolded in the New Testament, in opposition to the Judaising notions of the advocates of establishments, has been the peculiar study of the independents. And however much the loose principles of Erastianism are on the increase amongst the modern congregationalists, the earliest writers of the Independents maintained that the true principles of church-government are fully revealed in the New Testament. With this position I fully agree; and I confess, I would not contend a single moment, either by word or pen, for any principle, doctrine, or practice, however supported by the best antiquity, if its origin could not be deduced from this source. I have not the slightest faith in history or tradition in the things of God. I have the most unhesitating confidence in the word of God. Brown, however, the earliest of the Independents, held the liberty of ministry, the equality of Christian brethren, the Spirit's

teaching and competency (and not man's appointment or ordination), as the proper and only warrant for ministry in the present dispensation. Milton also, whose tractates are so often cited by dissenters against the supporters of establishments, maintains entirely the spiritual priesthood of all true believers, and utterly repudiates the idea of any order of men being allowed to come in as priests, whatever be their name, between God and his people, to be the medium of intercourse, and the link of their connexion with heaven. Maintaining, what the New Testament so emphatically enforces, the personal responsibility of every individual believer to God, and the impossibility of transacting by proxy those matters which relate to God and the soul, and can only be carried on by the aid of the Spirit, through the divine mediation of Jesus at the right hand of God. So far Milton's principles, as an Independent, accord with the principles of the New Testament: and many of his pungent remarks in the tractate entitled "The Likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church," deserve the grave and practical attention of the pastors and people of other sections of the professing church, besides that which is by law established. I just quote a brief passage from the close of it, commending the perusal of the whole to those who would see a clear and forcible exposition of the mischief which has been wrought in the Church, by the exhibition of lures of any kind, to induce men to take upon themselves a work which they should undertake willingly, and not by constraint, nor for filthy lucre's sake." "Heretofore, in the first evangelic times (and it were happy for Christendom were it so again), ministers

of the gospel were by nothing else distinguished from other Christians, but by their spiritual knowledge and sanctity of life, for which the Church elected them to be her teachers and overseers, though not thereby to separate them from whatever calling she then found them following besides; as the example of St. Paul declares, and the first times of Christianity. When once they affected to be called a clergy, and became, as it were, a distinct order in the commonwealth, bred up for divines in babbling schools, and fed at the public cost, good for nothing else but what was good for nothing, they soon grew idle; that idleness, with fulness of bread, begat pride and perpetual contention with their feeders, the despised laity, through all ages ever since; to the perverting of religion and the disturbance of all Christendom ;"-of which "Christendom might soon rid herself and be happy, if Christians would but know their own dignity, their liberty, their adoption; and let it not be wondered if I say, their spiritual priesthood, whereby they have all equally access to any ministerial function, whenever called by their own abilities and the Church, though they never came near commencement or university. But while Protestants, to avoid the due labour of understanding their own religion, are content to lodge it in the breast, or rather in the books of a clergyman, and to take it thence by scraps and mammocks, as he dispenses it in his Sunday's dole; they will be always learning, and never knowing; always infants; always his vassals, as lay-Papists are to their priests; or at odds with him, as reformed principles give them some light to be not wholly conformable." Having thus quoted from

Milton, I may here make a brief extract from the work of an ecclesiastical historian of most deserved reputation amongst all discerning Christians, and amongst none more than the Independents. Dr. Neander, the first volume of whose work was translated from the German in 1831, by Mr. Henry John Rose, B. D., Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, says, "The formation of the Christian Church being derived from the peculiarities of Christianity, must essentially differ from all other religious unions. A class of priests, who were to guide all other men, under an assumption of their incompetence in religious matters, whose business it was exclusively to provide for the satisfaction of the religious wants of the rest of mankind, and to form a link between them and God, and godly things; such a class of priests could find no place in Christianity. While the gospel put away that which separated man from God, by bringing all men into the same communion with God through Christ, it also removed that partition-wall which separated one man from his fellows, in regard to his more elevated interests: the same High Priest, and Mediator for all, by whom all being reconciled and united with God, become themselves a priestly and spiritual race! one heavenly King, Guide, and Teacher, through whom all are taught from God! one faith ! one hope ! one spirit, which must animate all ! one oracle in the hearts of all-the voice of the Spirit which proceeds from God! and all citizens of one heavenly kingdom, with whose heavenly powers they have already been sent forth, as strangers in the world! When the apostles introduced the notion of a priest, which is found in the Old Testament, into Christianity,

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