such promises as these, the aspirant to participation in Christian truth and blessedness would be disposed to comply, and that out of the abundance of a willing heart, without cavil or grudging, with any conditions that might be prescribed, any means that might be signified to him, as connected by the appointment of God with this most precious gift of the Holy Ghost?

Such, indeed, would appear to be the obvious, nay the inevitable conclusion to be drawn by any mind capable of reflection, both from the general nature of the case, and from the explicit declarations of the Gospel in regard to it; but how different from this reasonable anticipation is the reality! By one set of men the influence, nay the very existence, as a distinct person in the triune Godhead, of the Holy Spirit is altogether called in question, and the Gospel subjected like any ordinary human composition to the sceptical cavils and the presumptuous criticisms of the finite and darkened intellect of man, with its ostentatious poverty of fragmentary knowledge, gathered in haste and confusion during his short passage through a perishable world. By another set of men that influence is, to the utter contempt of whatever appointments God may have made in

up

Take for example the Socinians of our own country, or the Rationalists of Germany.

connexion with it, presumptuously claimed as a thing which is at the beck and call of every man upon his own terms, or upon no terms at all; and follies, begotten by the licentiousness of man's imagination, are blasphemously referred to that holy person of the Godhead as their fountain." And while sectarians of various kinds oscillate between doubt and presumption on this awe-inspiring subject, we find an immense branch of nominal Christendom pledged, as it would seem irrevocably, to a fearful combination of both, by the assertion on one hand of a superhuman infallibility, and by the tyrannical subjection, on the other, of every individual mind and conscience to the thraldom of human decrees and traditions; compensating as it were by the arrogance of one sin, the total unbelief which lies at the root of the other.

And if we cast our eye back upon our own Church, how much reason have we not to deplore the want of sobriety, the foolish and unsound excitement of unsanctified feelings under the name of spirituality in some quarters, while the deadly torpor in which the great mass of the periodical frequenters of our sanctuaries lies buried, causes us to remember with intense grief the fact, that

Take for example any of the countless shades of wild enthusiam, from the original Quaker, (not the sedate "Friend" of the present day,) to the Revivalist and Irvingite of our own times.

the promise of the Holy Ghost is to them also and to their children, and to exclaim with trembling heart, "Lord, increase our faith!" How needful then, to the right and the left of us, and among ourselves, is a return to that simplicity of faith to which the Gospel so plainly points,-that the knowledge of its true doctrine and the inheritance of its blessed promises can never fall to the share of any one but him, who in all humility and in holy reverence hearkens to the voice of the Spirit; and that that voice will never be withheld from him who seeks it with earnestness of heart, and in devout obedience to the appointments and ordinances of God.

CHAPTER III.

Christianity inseparable from the Body of the Church.

66

CHRIST LOVED THE CHURCH, AND GAVE HIMSELF FOR IT, THAT HE MIGHT SANCTIFY AND CLEANSE IT WITH THE WASHING OF WATER BY THE WORD, THAT HE MIGHT PRESENT IT TO HIMSELF A GLORIOUS CHURCH, NOT HAVING SPOT OR WRINKLE, OR ANY SUCH THING; BUT THAT IT SHOULD BE HOLY AND WITHOUT

BLEMISH."-Ephes. v. 25-27.

In the foregoing chapter two propositions were indicated as obviously deducible from the declaration of our Saviour to St. Peter, on the occasion of his confession that Jesus is "the Christ, the Son of the living God." The former of those propositions, viz. that Christianity is inseparable from the voice of the Spirit, has been clearly established on the most explicit testimony of Scripture; and it now remains for us to consider how far the second proposition, viz. that Christianity is inseparable from the body of the Church, is borne out by the same infallible evidence of holy writ.

There are a variety of grounds on which this

question is wont to be argued, and on which different parties, both in the church and out of it, have at different times taken their stand. On reviewing these, it is very observable that the most extreme opposites of error have engendered each other in the heat of discussion,-a circumstance well calculated to render us cautious as to the grounds upon which we shall proceed to test the matter. From the presumption of the church of Rome, who maintains that because she has preserved the external means of grace in unbroken succession, all Christendom is bound to bow to her assumed supremacy and to concur in her superstitions, as long as it shall be her pleasure to assert the former and to uphold the latter,-to the presumption of the "broad basis" principle, according to which every individual or collection of individuals who choose to frame some system of their own upon the ground of Scripture, however loosely and erroneously received and interpreted by them, have a right to the Christian name, and in fact, by such their own act, constitute themselves parts of the Church catholic, there is no shade of intermediate error which is not, in some of its roots and in some of its off-shoots, connected with the proposition which in their own sense all admit, that Christianity is inseparable from the body of the church; and on examination