66

"We

see in which of the two Yorks congress is next to meet, situated in the midst of her new federative republics with plain Mr. so and so, late premier, President. require no new discovery of the divine mind: the introduction of no new principle in the divine government; the employment of no new species of moral force to accomplish all that we expect," says Mr. Orme, p. 47; and then to shew you how desperate he is, and what a well-organised conspiracy he has got up: he says, on our side is a constantly increasing band of warriors, who scorn to be intimidated by danger, and who will always prefer death to disgrace and defeat," (p. 59); and then to let you see that it is not all talk, he concludes his oration with a bold appeal to his auditory, "ONWARD-ONWARD-ONWARD" says he, all in capital letters (p. 60). It is true, I have only given the cloven-foot of the oration, for it is otherwise in the highest state of "exclusive spirituality," being invested with a radiance of light, which is sometimes so dazzling as to be verily incapable of being looked at with any degree of critical acumen. Thus Mr. Orme talks (p. 30) of "the glorious advent of the rightful monarch of the earth, when he shall come the second time, in his garments of glory and of beauty to conduct his ransomed church into his Father's presence," as though the Father did not live nigher than some fifty systems off! And here lies the root of the two grand presumptions throughout his discourse:-1st, that the Father lives at some distance off from this terrestrial sphere, in a place called heaven; and 2ndly, that this heaven is a particular spot, to which the church, in its glorified state, is to be translated! That these vulgar errors should pervade the discourse of so sensible a man as Mr. Orme is really astonishing! and that his scheme should entirely rest on these baseless assumptions is still more surprising! That he should, after so much declamation against Judaising Christians, fall into the Judaical error that heaven was essentially a place in defiance of God's own assertion, that it was a state of joy (Isa. lxv. 17, 18),` and St. John's description of it, that it might be in the skies, or descend thence upon earth (Rev. xxi. 2, 10, compared with Isa.) confined to no particular spot, and of our Lord's direct correction of the vulgar creed, that it was an internal principle which was not to be sought for from without; and that after having insisted that we had already come to the heavenly Jerusalem (p. 31), he should still

maintain, that there was a new heaven and earth besides, for which believers were still taught to hope (p. 48), when Isaiah (lxv. 17, 18) explicitly identifies the one with the other, is to me a conclusive ground of belief that he has been led away by some blind attachment to party or system. The same partial views of scripture adhere to Mr. Örme's scheme as do to those of Mr. Jones and Mr. Morison. We therefore agree neither with Mr. Orme's views of the perpetuity, nor those of the spirituality, nor those of the universality of the present dispensation. Mr. Irving and Mr. Orme are the antipodes of each other, and consequently both wrong. "When we speak of the perpetuity of the dispensation," says Mr. Orme, (p. 39) "we do not mean that it is to last for ever, but that it is to last to the end of time, that it is to undergo no change in its principles or administration, till the heavens shall be no more." Now we maintain that the present dispensation is perpetual in its widest sense. We agree with Mr. Orme, against Mr. Irving, that we have received the New Covenant, mentioned Heb. viii. 8, but we deny that it is brought into full operation. We have bequeathed us the kingdom which cannot be moved, but we are not put in legal possession of it, though we act as if it already were our own. Our executor is gone into heaven, "to appear in the presence of God for us," " to make intercession for us"- -to get the will proved, and he will remain there as surety till the debts upon the estate are all payed. "For as it is appointed unto men once to die and after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall be appear the second time without sin unto salvation." Heb. ix. Therefore all our transactions in the mean while are upon credit. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." And though, Mr. Orme, we have the kingdom given us, yet we must still "have grace," still behave ourselves, lest the will become ineffectual, "for here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come," for though we are come to the city, yet the city has not yet come to us. The New Jerusalem has not yet descended from God out of heaven. And here Mr. Orme lies another difference. For though we may be come to the heavenly Jerusalem as individuals, yet we may not be come to it as a body. And these two things you have confounded. The former you have treated of, which has nothing to do with

prophecy; and the latter is solely prophetical. The former is the termination of every Christian's militant state, and the latter is the termination of the church's militant state. In the latter you have cast away a great guide, typical prophecy, because in your zeal against Judaism you have confounded two other things, that in which the law or Mosaic dispensation was "A SHADOW OF GOOD THINGS TO COME," but "NOT THE VERY IMAGE OF THE THINGS." Heb.x.1. In your zeal to shew that the Mosaic dispensation was not the very image of the good things, you have entirely disused the shadow of them. Mr. Irving, and all statechurchmen make the shadow the image; and thus because Church and State were mixed in the first "heaven and earth," or Jewish polity, of course they must be mixed in "the new heaven and earth," which Mr. Orme, in your strange system, you have distinguished from the heavenly Jerusalem, and have thus in effect added to it a second new heaven and earth," to arise when the heavens shall be no more" as your rhetoric says. Now as bad imitators generally imitate the faults of their authors, this has been done by the state-churchmen. For exactly in that very point where St, Paul shews the first covenant was in fault, there the state-churchmen have imitated it. "If that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second" says St. Paul, Heb. viii, 7; and immediately proceeds to shew the glories of the New Covenant, that it was not according to the compulsory one that was made with the Jews when they came out of Egypt, one only of outward obedience in which they did not continue, but one which should pervade the heart, and require not outward drilling by the birch of the Mosaic schoolmaster, civil power, since the wrath of man could never effect the righteousness which was required by God (James, i. 20), the Mosaic dispensation being "the ministration of death," but the Christian "the ministration of the Spirit," "the perfect law of liberty in Christ Jesus" (2 Cor. iii.7, 8)," who is as a son over his own house" which is taught privately at home. So that I take a certain shuffling British Critic, to be nothing less than something which I should not wish to name, when he wishes to insinuate that our Lord's declaration that " his kingdom is not of this world, else would his servants fight," meant nothing more than that the church was not the state, for that was the case even under the Mosaic economy. There was a

heaven and a earth there. But it shews not only that the church was not the state, but that they were opposites, and could not mix from their very nature. The Mosaic economy, therefore, being inefficient to work the righteousness required by God, made way for the better covenant, of which the former was only the shadow, and not the very image, and therefore not to be imitated. To say then, that kings, under the new dispensation, should exercise the "prerogative which we see to have been given always to all godly princes in holy Scripture by God himself" as the Thirty-seventh Article of the Church of England says, is to bring back the "weak, and unprofitable, and imperfect, and beggarly commandment going before, which had been disannulled," (Heb, vii. 18, 19). Jesus Christ "having spoiled principalities and powers" of their religious use, "made a shew of them openly, carrying them off in triumph in himself," of whom they were the shadow, though not the image, they being civil and He spiritual. So that it is right down blasphemy to make the HORNS of the Beast the substance, as if the Jewish civil magistrates were types of them (Coloss. ii. 15-19). And now, Mr. Orme, we come to the shadow. We have received the New Covenant, but in the wilderness, which like that of Moses, contains many things which can be brought into full operation, only when we arrive in the land of promise. The former earth and heaven have been shaken and removed. We act upon the faith of things hoped for, and as a body we press forward to the promised land, though we must all die in the wilderness before we enter upon it, and our leader must die with us, and for us. In our march also to the better country, in every stage of our journeying when the ark is taken up and our trumpet sounded, we must not make any compromise with the nations among whom we pass, we must not intermarry with them by any apostate coalition, we must keep clear of all secularities; but then Mr. Orme, when we keep clear of them, it is not because we intend to let them alone, for we must give them no quarter, we must not even step into their Babylonish garments, we must kill our enemies right out, strip them bare and burn their spoil without the camp. We are free, because we must act freely upon them, without being warped and clogged by any untimely connexion. We have power over the waters of nations to turn them into blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues as often as we will, each of us being a Moses, but not by the carnal,

secular, temporal fire and sword, but by the spiritual fire and sword, of the Word of God, the moral violence and legitimate agitation of OPINION. We must infuse our own spirit into civil governments, leaven them with our own leaven, mould them according to our own shape, and eventually supersede them, take the kingdom and possess the kingdom for ever and ever. It is true, Mr. Orme, what you say of Christianity, that "though not equally congenial, its existence is compatible with every form of civil government" (p. 36). But, Mr. Orme, it is perfectly congenial with none, it cannot endure a civil government by the side of it,-it is to make us all kings and priests-it is to produce order without law, and har mony without any sort of discipline. This is the new earth and new heaven to which we march. This is the visionary, highly laughable, preposterous project upon which our spiritual Moses has led us out in the wilderness for; and consequently, Mr. Orme, we must all die there first, before he can get a race to spring up by a resurrection who shall forget the flesh-pots of Egypt, and be cured of that grovelling swinishness which so easily besets us. But, Mr. Orme, we are now nigh the end of our march. We are close upon the banks of the Jordan. We Nonconformists have infused civil governments with a great portion of our spirit since the Reformation, our enemies themselves being judges. But, Mr. Orme, there is another tussle, a grand, grand, tussle, which requires a few such stouthearted men as yourself, Mr. Orme, before human institutions are informed with the last possible grade of liberty which is compatible with the present order of things. A Joshua has begun to supersede the Moses by the commencing last diffusion of the Holy Spirit i. e. of correcter notions of Christ's kingdom, as a preparatory Elias to the Millennium. All his commission may be effected by the ordinary means, but never, never, never, Mr. Orme, can we pass over the Jordan into the land of eternal inheritance without some miraculous intervention. You may get all you "expect," Mr. Orme, without "the employment of any new species of moral force," viz. "a state of political economy, of judicial procedure, of international relationship with all their inseparable adjuncts, which the world before had never witnessed," and all that worldly sort of thing, which you can find to be compatible with your "exclusive spirituality;" but all what God expects, and