body, ceased to be catholic everywhere when Rome attempted to make it Roman Catholic. It was split into two great camps, the Roman and the Greek; the Roman, indeed, the larger; but, after all, dependent on the rulers of the West, as the Greek on the rulers of the East'; and now, unable to boast of any superiority of numbers even; for the Protestant secession has made the numbers of professing Christians, outside the Roman pale, greater than those within it. Rome has one thing exclusivelythe apostate pretension to power; setting aside the one headship of Christ, and opposing and falsifying His word; but that is all.

But our concern is with doctrine; and here mark another thing. The blessed unfolding of the truth of the Church was thought of by none. Some used the idea, attributing its privileges to the outward body - the house (yet thereby denying them; for wicked members of Christ is nonsense); and quoted some scriptural passages as to it, but merely as a means of confounding their adversaries. None, that I am aware, ever laid hold on its blessings to unfold them; they walked by sight; that which had been founded on earth was before their eyes. It was, indeed, the important thing; the great fact of God's sovereign intervention in the world; what belonged to Him in the earth, His husbandry, His building: but, as they did not distinguish the body froin the house, this latter only, which was the visible thing, was before their eyes. The consequence was, first, the allowance of the possibility of evil in the body of Christ, which bound men to the continued walking with evil; practically sanctioning it, or forcing them to break with the body: and next, the attributing the title of divine and spiritual power to the evil itself; all under the claim, that the Church was the body of Christ; that if you were not member, you could not have the head. Salvation was there alone. This was true; but it is not true that they are that body, or that Christ has dead members. Further, baptism was held to be, as the introduction into Christ's assembly, which it is; that by which we become members of Christ, and children of God. So the Romanist; so the orthodox Protestant; so,

in general, even the Baptist. But baptism has nothing to do with the unity of, and admission into, the body; even in figure. It goes, even in figure, no further than death and resurrection; the individual passage into new life, and death to Adam existence. But the unity of the body depends on the exaltation of the Head into heaven; who, when exalted, and not till then (as He himself said, "if I go not away, the Comforter will not come"), sent down the Holy Ghost, and by one spirit we are all baptized into one body. As Peter declares to his hearers in the Acts: "He, being exalted by the right hand of God, and having received of the Father, the promise of the Holy Ghost, has shed forth this which ye now see and hear.” This was the baptism of the Spirit as we see (Acts i. 5); and it is thus, by one Spirit, we are all baptized into one body. In this body there are members in which the energy of the Spirit displays itself in various gifts (1 Cor. xiv. 11-14). The Spirit does not dwell in the body, but in the house; "builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit." The stones are not as such members of Him who dwells in the building. This was all confounded by the fathers.

The result is, the claims of Popery and the confusion of Protestants, as to baptismal regeneration and membership of Christ, with which baptism has nothing to do.

We have noticed another terrible result-the allowance of evil, connected with Christ. The Church is the ark; no salvation out of it. The unclean beasts are at the bottom story; Christ, like Noah, at the top: this is the Origen and Clement doctrine. In a great house, there are vessels to dishonour, wooden and earthen; but, with a rare confusion of thought and Scripture doctrine, Christ will burn or break them when He comes: this is Cyprian. The tares are mixed with the wheat in the Church this is Jerome and Protestantism. Till, at last, the corruption was so great, that, as Augustine expresses it, they were groaning at seeing crowds of wicked persons surround the Church's altar: there they are to leave them. The resource of His Spirit, is the predes

tinating prescience of God, and an invisible Church; many better outside the church, than those in; but God will settle it. They are invisibly united in the bond of charity; while those outwardly within, have no real bond; such is often now the resource of high Calvinism, acquiescing in the establishment; acquiescing in evil, because God will have it all right. Conscience makes men schismatic in form when corruption and evil characterise what is called the body of Christ; and separation from the general mass of Christianity endangers the soul's stability, and its faith in any unity; and often produces, by not seeing the house, an opposition to it, which exposes to wild doctrine and heretical associations.

Such is, alas! the history of the Church, and the process of dogmatical creed, as to it, under the exercises which the state of things produced in connection with the current theory. If the outward assembly was, in fact, the body of Christ, separation from it was schism; and, as far as man's act went-ruin; but true union of the members with the head was really not known. If the outward assembly was nothing, then the whole corporate responsibility was destroyed; and the judgment of the evil servant had no place. There was no corporate responsibility of Christendom, in virtue of the Holy Ghost, having been given to the assembly on the earth. No spiritual conscience could recognise the corruption as the true body of Christ. Some would reform, some separate; and the very idea of the Church in unity, was either lost on the one side, or made perfectly compatible with_the grossest corruption, and Satan's power, on the other; and what was so corrupt, called His body, and the claim of Divine authority attached to the administration of that corruption. The notion of an invisible body was invented to conciliate spiritual conscience with such a state of things. Scripture foretells failure; yea, recounts it; and foretells its becoming yet worse; it tells of corruption and perilous times; it tells, finally, of apostasy. But it never speaks of a corrupt body of Christ. It does not deny a corrupt general state of things, which it compares to a great house, and enjoins a man's purifying

It

himself from the vessels of dishonour, and walking with those who call upon the Lord out of a pure heart. tells of a building of God in His purposes; and, in fact, at the commencement, and at the close; but it speaks with equal clearness of man's responsible building. The existing confusion is no difficulty for one who has Scripture in his hand and heart; who owns its authority. The word of God makes all clear-the body united to its heavenly Head in sure and richest blessing-the corruption clearly described and judged; and, in the mixture which is to be expected in a great house, the path for uprightness, and obedience, and purity of walk, clear and distinct. The house, as it should be, well ordered; the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. iii.): when it is filled with vessels to dishonour, as the great house, the distinct command of separation from evil and from them (2 Tim. ii). And the reader will remark, that it is in this last epistle, when the house is thus spoken of, that the Word of God, the Scriptures, are insisted on as the sure and effectual refuge of the soul in the perilous times of corrupted Christendom.

I add, as a sad but useful appendix, some facts as to the boasted primitive Church. First, as to doctrine. The statements which I have given from Hermas, whose book was read in many churches-quoted by Irenæus, and believed by Origen to be inspired-is the plainest possible proof of the gross ignorance of the primitive Church, and utter incompetency to judge of doctrine.

But, further; the doctrine of the Ante-Nicene fathers is anything but satisfactory as to the divinity of Christ. Justin peremptorily denies that the one supreme God the Creator, can appear as a man in this world; and the doctrine of Christ's not being distinct, as a person, till creation was about to take place, though not without an exception, no one acquainted with them can deny to be general, as expressed by ενδιαθετος and προφορικός. From their desire to meet the heathen's ideas, and the influence of Platonic philosophy, their teaching on the Xoyos, or word, and what is expressed by the word Trinity is extremely loose and objectionable, to say the least. But if loose and unsound on so fundamental a

point-on that which is the very truth itself, and foundation of all truth-the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, on what can we trust them? The final judgment is treated by one as a means of purifying the imperfect. And Augustine speaks of the Lord's Supper as thanksgiving for the good; propitiation for the bad; and; though it cannot help the wicked dead, a comfort to the living (i.e. by deceiving them). Elsewhere he says, it may allay their pains in hell. As to the grace of God, it was hardly known amongst them.

The reader will remember, I am not speaking of souls and their personal faith, but of doctors. None are more untrustworthy on every fundamental subject, than the mass of primitive fathers.

Now, as to practice, Cyprian, in his treatise “De Lapsis," gives the following account of Christian morals, about two hundred years after Christ, while the empire was yet heathen. He says, "that they were treated mercifully in the persecution; so that it was an investigation or trial of them (exploratio), not a persecution; and that they must not be blind to the causes. Whereupon he then describes the state of the Church.Individuals were applying themselves to increase their patrimony; and forgetful what believers either had done under the Apostles-or ought always to do-they were bent, with an insatiable ardour of avarice, on increasing their fortunes. No devout religion in priests; no uncorrupted fidelity in ministers (deacons); no compassion in works; no order in morals. The beard plucked awayk among men; the face painted among women; the eyes adulterated, after God had made them (post Dei manus); the hair coloured with falsehood; cunning frauds to deceive the hearts of the simple; a deceitful will in circumventing brethren. The bonds of matrimony joined with unbelievers; the members of Christ prostituted to heathens. Not only rash swearing, but, besides even perjury, despising those set over them with proud haughtiness; speaking evil with poisoned lip; mutual

I say plucked away, because in Ad. Quir. iii. 84 (Textimoniorum); he gives it as vellendam, which in the text in Lev. xix. 27, is corrumpantur, as here.