the aid of metaphor to escape from the plain meaning of terms) depends upon visible characteristics. That it is, in the nature of the thing, an institution furnished with outward badges and rites, and that no mere community of opinions can make an institution, though such a community may induce men to form one. And whenever men do attempt to embody the idea of a Church, the attempt assumes a form of visibility. Quakerism itself, which has been more consistent than any other system in following out the idea of the invisible Church, cannot exist without external signs, without some marks and bonds of association palpable to sense and to general experience, and it has found them in the conventional unities of dress. If, therefore, it be admitted (and who can deny it ?) that the Apostles founded a Church, those who admit it are bound, in logical consequence, to admit its visibility. 38. And lastly, what objection so obvious or so popular as that which argues from the mixed character of the visible Church, composed as it is partly of conscientious and partly of unfaithful members, and with a great ostensible preponderance of the latter-that no body containing within itself so much pollution can be entitled to those lofty prerogatives which are given in scripture to the spouse of Christ? This is the plausible though most unscriptural argument, which has produced the greatest amount of delusion. And in accordance with this persuasion that the true Church cannot be recognised in the visible body, men proceed to seek for it elsewhere. I 39. To this objection I would reply: first that we must put out of view such increase of scandal and ungodliness in the Church as has arisen from the relaxation of discipline, or from any local or temporary circumstances. But supposing discipline in the best state to which it has ever attained, it is clear, even one may say from the cases historically recorded in the New Testament, that the composition of the Church must ever be not only mixed, but so mixed that she does not even contemplate effecting on earth any thing like that final separation which must one day be made. Therefore, in the second place, we may, fairly, be called upon to justify this mixed condition from Scripture, and to shew that it answers to the idea there given of the Church. Which may easily be done. Why does our Lord refer to the day of judgment* as the period of separation, if that separation generally were to be made here? By the branches which are in Him and yet which bear not fruit, and by those ministers of His power and gifts who have wrought wonders in His name and yet shall be finally cast out, and by the participation of Judas Iscariot in the ministrations of His Apostles, He shews us that a continual indwelling of unholy members was contemplated in the Providential view of the Church. The parable of the net having good fish and bad:§ of the tares mixed with the wheat in the field, indicate yet more determinately the same state of things. The Church (xxλnoía) is of * Matt. xxv. 32. + Joh. xv. 2. the called (xanol); and they are many: but few are chosen. "The Lord knoweth them that are His." From all which, it is fairly to be inferred that the discipline of the Church was not designed to aim at anything like an effectual and entire separation corresponding with the final one. 40. Now if this representation should shock the preconceptions and stagger the faith of any man in the promises of Christ respecting the Church, I would appeal to every one of humble heart and thoughtful mind, and ask him whether the paradox be not as evidently striking in the case of the individual-or his own experience can have taught him nothing-as it is in the case of the body. If the contrast be wide between the high privileges and destinies of the Church on the one hand, and that inward state where evil continually contends for and at times seems well nigh to obtain the mastery is there not in miniature precisely the same conflict, and a discrepancy as horrible and appalling, between the state of grace into which the individual is adopted, the hopes of which he is made heir, nay and the gifts of which he is put actually in possession, and that subtle and deep energy of his fallen nature, which still abides in him, and lives and struggles in a thousand forms and with desperate tenacity? But if he has notwithstanding good hope for himself in God's love, and in the sure mercies of His covenant, may he not have equal faith for the Church that she too may be as Matt. xx. 16. a Church the adopted of God, and that in her He shall one day absolutely and finally triumph? 41. The Scriptures then, it is henceforth to be assumed, hold out to our view the actual, historical Church as the great object of the love and regard of Christ, as the medium whereby was conferred that title under which His favour is conveyed to His individual members: and as intended to have unity in the body and the spirit, with universality, authority, visibility, permanency, sympathy: as the casket and treasure-house of God's immortal gifts: as destined to a present warfare, and a final glorification. Why have we lapsed from this magnificent conception of a power incorporated upon earth, capable of resistance to all the enemies of Divine Truth with the certainty of ultimate victory, this conception which comprehends alike all space and all time, concentrating to tenfold efficacy the power of every noble motive, and realising and bringing home to our gross and feeble minds the sublime doctrine of supernatural grace? Why have we substituted for the idea, of which this is but a sketch, attesting by its very defects the losses we deplore, that misty, formless, lifeless, anomalous, negative, chaotic shape, If shape it might be called that shape had none which is the only counterpart, in many minds, to the name of the scripture-honoured Church? How far must we have departed from that condition in which Saint Augustine could write, credamus, fratres, quantum quisque amat Ecclesiam Christi, tantum habet Spiritum Sanctum.* 42. It is not difficult to perceive a part at least of the cause to which we are to ascribe this evil. It has been the policy of the Romish church, and her practice, instead of leading her members more immediately near to their Head through the grand idea of incorporation, rather to interpose herself as an organ of communication distinct from them, and represented only in the persons of the hierarchy, between them and the Redeemer. She took into her own hands the powers that belong to Deity alone, and thus acquiring an absolute command over the souls of men, she confined their spiritual free agency within the narrowest possible limits that she might have the larger scope for her own discretionary power; and thus she reduced the greater portion of her children, more nearly than could have been anticipated, to the condition, so far as respected the religious action of the understanding, of machines. The Reformation generally took vengeance upon this excess by establishing its opposite. Not indeed in the deliberate intention of its great authors, but in its ulterior tendency, it went, instead of retaining the true conception of a visible and universal Church, and restoring and attaching it to the mass of Christians who had been deprived as it were of their part and lot in it, to erase that idea altogether and to substitute others much more narrow and partial. The idea of its first movers was, to restore * Exp. in Ev. Joan. Tr. xxxii. |