clear testimony against the doctrine and the flagitious practices of polytheism, yet merged itself in the boundless superstition of the times, as a system of fear, spiritual servitude, formality, scrupulosity, visible magnificence of worship, mystery, artifice, and juggle. Such were the antagonist principles, in contending with each of which the holy religion of Christ triumphed in each instance, and in each was trampled upon; conquered and was conquered;-diffused light and health, and admitted darkness and corruption.

Nevertheless its utter extinction was prevented:-the external means of its regeneration were preserved, and the times of regeneration actually came. Forgetting the things that were behind, and returning once again to the long buried scriptures, the church has regained its vitality; and, amid a thousand errors, lives, and prepares herself to occupy the world, for her Lord.

But if there be only the most general verisimilitude in the representations above given, in what light are we to view the incredibly strange endeavour to bring back, upon the modern and revived church, the very notions and practices that were the consequences of the struggles of the ancient church with its antagonists? Shall we then indeed be led to reverence and imitate the very articles that are to be pointed out to as marking the admixture of Christianity with Judaism-with Greek philosophy-with pagan corruption-and with polytheistic superstition? Shall we part from our religion, as we find it fixed in the scriptures, and madly follow it, in its first fearful plunge into the bottomless gulf of spiritual darkness and moral pollution? If the phrase-Christian antiquity, can be allowed to convey no idea of pre-eminence beyond what the strict rules of historical logic may,

under all the circumstances, allow to it, then, manifestly, the inexperienced and convulsive struggles of the infant religion with its formidable foes, how well soever they may merit our admiration, are less likely than almost any other cycle of religious events, to secure our cool approval, or to command our submission, as if then a pattern of wisdom and order were to be given to the church of all ages.

A religious mind, after having contemplated the changing scene of human error and folly, from age to age, and after admitting, for awhile, some painful sentiments of reprehension, in thinking of the authors and promoters of such errors, gladly turns, first, to those many circumstances of extenuation which may be advanced in behalf of these mistaken men, and which shall allow us, notwithstanding, to think of many of them as brethren in Christ. But then, such a mind seeks a farther solace, in tracing, dimly perhaps, the apparent purposes of Him who, even when most he allows evil to have its course, yet sways the general movement, and urges forward still the development of his mighty scheme of universal government. A religious mind holds to the belief that He who worketh, in all things, according to the counsel of his own will, has, in every age, been evolving a settled plan; whether or not it may be intelligible to the human mind.

Now, in this belief, we are led at once to look, if not with more complacency, at least with less distress, upon particular forms of what we must still regard as capital error, and to think of them as, in some way, temporary adaptations of truth to the circumstances of mankind at such or such a period: in this light considered, the sharpness of our displeasure is a little broken down, and our stern condemnation tempered. There is a real,

and, as I think, a legitimate consolation to be derived from considerations of this sort. But then the very principle whence it is derived, namely, that the Lord has been giving place to accommodations, or appliances of this sort, from age to age, thereby effecting a slow, and often retarded progression, in advancing the religious condition of mankind, this principle, I say, implies an unutterable absurdity in the endeavour, made at any advanced period of the great scheme, to revert to a position long ago passed by and obsolete.

If we comfort ourselves with the thought that a vast scheme has been, from the first, in movement, the end of which shall be the universal triumph of truth and peace, then must we be thinking of any thing rather than of a turning back upon the great road of the church's progress, and of forfeiting the toils of centuries; or, in other words, of rendering ourselves, by imitation, such as that which, when it actually existed, was but a low alloy of truth, permitted or winked at for awhile. And if, in any sense, we allow ourselves to be called protestants, our profession must imply the acknowledgment that the great scheme of religious development has, during the last three centuries, made a conspicuous demonstration, and has set us forward far, very far, in advance of the position occupied by our predecessors of the fourteenth century. Who must not acknowledge this? What impiety to deny it!

And what have been the characteristics of this alleged modern advancement? Not the devising of novelties in religion, as something that might be added to the apostolic model; not the boldly taking the scriptures in hand, with the endeavour to cut them down to our liking, or to cast them in the mould of our modern philosophy. This has not been the course we have taken; but the

very reverse, namely, an intent reference to the apos tolic authority, in all things, and an almost overwrought anxiety to know and to imbody the very form of apos tolic Christianity. Whereas now, such being the character and specific quality of the course of events in the church, in modern times, the character and the quality of the course of events in the ancient church was the very contrary; namely, a perpetual superposition of materials upon the apostolic foundation, at the capricious bidding of superstition, enthusiasm, fanaticism, spiritual tyranny, craft, and hypocrisy: such, I say, being, when the two periods are broadly regarded, the distinctive and contrasted features of each, no powers of language come to one's aid when one would fain express the sense one has of the folly of the endeavour, to say nothing of its audacity, to induce the church to relinquish its own hopeful characteristic, and to put on that of the long gone-by period of ignorance, decay, delusion! The Lord himself disappoint any such mad attempt!

NOTE.

Lest it should be thought that in affirming pp. 31 and 184, the Nicene church to have been the mark at which our English reformers aimed, and the model of our church polity, I subjoin an extract from Brett, who is adduced by the Oxford Tract writers among their witnesses to the soundness of their principles, and as speaking the sense of the English church.

"As the church never was so strictly and firmly united as in the primitive times, and particularly about the time when the Council of Nice was celebrated; so, if ever the church be as firmly united again, it must be upon the same principles and practices. The church never was united but upon the principles and usages which obtained at the time of the Nicene Council; and we have, therefore, good reason to believe that it never can be united but upon those principles and usages."

INTRODUCTORY STATEMENTS.

THE course of argument open before us, in the present instance, is straightforward, and the inference it involves is clear and conclusive. I have undertaken to show, by numerous and varied citations, not merely that the doctrine and practice of religious celibacy occupied a prominent place in the theological and ecclesiastical system of the Nicene church, a fact hardly needing to be proved, but that the institute was intimately and inseparably connected with, and that it powerfully affected, every other element of ancient Christianity, whether dogmatic, ethical, ritual, or hierarchical. If, then, such a connexion can be proved to have existed, we must either adopt its notions and usages in this essential particular, or must surrender very much of our veneration for ancient Christianity.

The fact of the intimate connexion here affirmed is really not less obvious or easily established than that of the mere existence of the institute itself. Modern church writers may, indeed, have thrown the unpleasing subject into the back-ground, and so it may have attracted much less attention than its importance deserves; but we no sooner open the patristic folios than we find it confronting us, on almost every page; and if either the general averment were questioned, or the bearing of the celibate upon every part of ancient Christianity were denied, volumes might be filled with the proofs that attest the one as well as the other. Both these facts must be admitted