LTBRAEY 
 
 PRINCETON. N. J 
 
 No. Case, 
 
 No. Shelf, -s^^S 
 -M^ Konk . __. 
 BV 603 .M31 
 Mcllvaine, Charles Pettif 
 
 1799-1873. ettlt ' 
 
 The holy catholic church 
 
 <L«pv I 
 
THE 
 
 HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH; 
 
 OR THE 
 
 COMMUNION OF SAINTS, 
 
 IN THE 
 
 MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST: 
 
 A SEEMON, 
 
 PREACHED IN THE CHURCH OF THE EPIPHANY, IN THE CITY OF 
 PHILADELPHIA, ON SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6TH, 1844, 
 
 BY CHARLES PETTIT M'lLVAINE, D. D, 
 
 BISHOP OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 
 IN THE DIOCESE OF OHIO. 
 
 WITH AN APPENDIX. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 H. HOOKER, CHESNUT STREET. 
 
 1844. 
 
Enlered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, by 
 CHARLES PETTIT M'lLVAINE, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District 
 of Pennsylvania. 
 
 KING AND BAIRD, PRINTERS, 9 GEORGE STREET. 
 
To Peter G. Stuyvesant, Esq., 
 
 This discourse is affectionately inscribed, 
 as an humble expression of regard for one, who 
 in his efforts to promote the best interests of 
 sacred learning, and gospel truth, in the Protes- 
 tant Episcopal Church, has merited the warmest 
 gratitude of her members, and has laid under 
 special obligation, 
 
 His humble servant, 
 
 And brother, in Christ, 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
Philadelphia, October 8th, 1844. 
 
 Rt. Rev. Charles P. M'Ilvaine, 
 
 Bishop of the Diocese of Ohio. 
 
 Rt. Rev. and Dear Sir— 
 
 The undersigned heard with profound attention and respect, 
 the Sermon which you delivered last evening at the Church 
 of the Epiphany, and they take this opportunity to express to 
 you the sense of their obligation for this addition to the treasures 
 of the Holy Catholic Church, and to ask that you will have the 
 goodness to furnish them with a copy for publication, that they 
 may be enabled to impart to their Brethren in the Lord, a portion 
 of the satisfaction and pleasure which they have themselves 
 received. 
 
 With great Respect and Esteem, 
 
 We remain yours, &c. 
 
 C. G. Memmingek, J. B. Gallagher, 
 
 Wm. H. Macfarland, Wm. H. Barnwell, 
 
 A. Williams, Jr. H. Anthon, 
 
 John P. Convngham, H. Hooker, 
 
 J. W. Macph. Berrien, Edward A. Newton, 
 
 Lewis Morris, Edward S. Rand, 
 
 Alexander Hamilton, F. S. Winston, 
 
 Wm. Appleton, J. Smyth Rogers, 
 
 James Potter, P. G. Stuyvesant, 
 
 Stephen H. Tyng, Stewart Brown. 
 
 1* 
 
Philadelphia, October 9th, 1844. 
 
 Messrs. C. G. Memminger, 
 
 Wm. H. Macfarland, and others. 
 
 Gentlemen— 
 
 I have just received your kind request that I would furnish 
 a copy of the discourse which I preached last Sunday night, for 
 publication. In reliance upon your opinion, as well as that of 
 many others of my friends and brethren, clergymen and laymen, 
 (who have severally expressed the same desire,) that the publi- 
 cation of the discourse may be of use to the great cause which 
 we love, and seeking the blessing of our Lord thereon, I cheer- 
 fully accede to your request. 
 
 Very truly and respectfully, 
 
 Your friend and brother, 
 
 CHARLES P. M'lLVAINE. 
 
THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH. 
 
 II CORINTHIANS, vi. 16. 
 
 Ye are the temple of the living God ; as God hath said, I will 
 
 dwell in them and walk in them ; and I will be their 
 
 God and they shall be my people. 
 
 These words were addressed, by St. Paul, to 
 the collective body of the Christians at Corinth. 
 The same, he said, to the whole body of christian 
 Jews and Gentiles; addressing them as "the 
 household of God" — " builded together in 
 Christ," "a habitation of God," and " growing 
 unto an holy temple in the Lord."* Hence we 
 understand in what sense the christians in Co- 
 rinth were called the temple of God ; not as if 
 God had as many temples as there were sepa- 
 rate communities of christians ; but that all 
 christians, Jews and Gentiles, wherever found, 
 composed one holy temple, "built upon the 
 foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus 
 Christ himself being the chief corner-stone." 
 
 * Eph. ii. 19-22. 
 
8 THE HOLY 
 
 We shall consider the text therefore as ad- 
 dressed to all members of the Church of Christ. 
 All are " the temple of the living God" 
 
 The Church of God, in all the world, is the 
 Temple of God. 
 
 That we may the better realize the propriety 
 with which the Church of God, composed, not 
 of visible walls, but of invisible minds, is called 
 His Temple, we must divest ourselves of the 
 habit of thought arising out of the almost exclu- 
 sive application of that name to visible struc- 
 tures of man's workmanship, for the worship of 
 God. The temple of Solomon, built under di- 
 vine direction, — a wonder of the world for gran- 
 deur and magnificence, — and inhabited by that 
 visible and miraculous glory, which was the 
 supreme expression of the divine presence, is 
 supposed, very generally, to have been the high- 
 est, as well as the most literal, idea of a temple 
 of the living God. Any departure from the ma- 
 terial and visible character of that structure, under 
 the name of a Temple, is supposed to be a de- 
 parture from the literal to the figurative ; and 
 when we come to speak of a collective body of 
 the people of God, as His Temple, and especially 
 when the scriptures speak of every true child of 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 9 
 
 God, as His Temple, the supposition is that the 
 expression has departed very far from a literal, 
 and has taken on a very figurative or accommo- 
 dated sense. 
 
 Now this, we apprehend, is an entire misap- 
 prehension. The house erected by Solomon was 
 the Temple of God, not because of its walls, and 
 courts, and apartments, and altars, but because the 
 Schechinah of God's presence, appeared therein, 
 indicating that God dwelt among his people 
 Israel. Suppose those walls and altars all cast 
 down, and every stone removed, but that glory 
 still there, and there would still have been, as 
 much as ever, the Temple, the habitation of the 
 mighty God of Jacob. It was simply that glo- 
 rious appearing of His presence which made the 
 tabernacle in the wilderness as much the tem- 
 ple of God, as the statelier and more permanent 
 habitation in Jerusalem. It was the same pre- 
 sence that made the place where Moses stood on 
 Mount Horeb, when God appeared to him in a 
 name of fire, out of the midst of the bush, the 
 temple, for a time, of the living God.* God was 
 there. Jacob found the temple of God in the 
 
 * Exod. iii. 
 
10 THE HOLY 
 
 way from Beersheba to Haran, where no house 
 was, nor altar ; nothing but the ground he lay on 
 to sleep, and the stones he placed for his pillow. 
 But God appeared to him there. And Jacob 
 awakejd and said : " Surely the Lord is in this 
 place." And, because the Lord was there, he 
 said : " How dreadful is this place ; this is none 
 other but the house of God." " And he called 
 the name of the place Bethel"* And had he 
 surrounded that place with courts and buildings 
 as noble as those of the temple in Jerusalem, it 
 could not have been more really, however it 
 would have been more visibly, "the temple of 
 the living God." 
 
 Let us keep it distinctly in our mind, that it is 
 not a visible building, but the special presence of 
 God, that makes any place the temple of God ; 
 and then we shall see the strictly literal propriety 
 with which every true servant of God is called 
 His Temple. God dwelleth in Mm by His 
 Spirit. And hence the whole community of 
 God's true people is His Temple, because, saith 
 St. Paul, they are "the habitation of God, 
 through the Spirit."t And in the same way, St. 
 
 * Gen. xxviii. 10-22. j- Eph. ii. 22. 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 11 
 
 Paul says to the Corinthian christians, in the text : 
 "Ye are the temple of the living God;" giving 
 for explanation, the promise, " I will dwell in 
 them and walk in them ;" wherein, you perceive, 
 the dwelling of God in His people is taken as 
 equivalent to making them His Temple. And 
 hence the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, or his 
 human nature, is called " the temple of his body," 
 because in that nature, dwelt " all the fulness of 
 the Godhead bodily."* 
 
 And now we get the highest and most literal 
 conception of the temple of God. In the hu- 
 man nature of our Lord, dwells, in inseparable 
 union therewith, without distinction of person, 
 or confusion of essence, the whole nature of the 
 Godhead. He is " God manifest in the flesh. "t 
 Nothing was ever the habitation of God, as was, 
 and is, and ever shall be, that once crucified, now 
 glorified body of our Lord and Saviour. That, 
 therefore, is the perfect temple. Hence, St. 
 John, describing the New Jerusalem, which he 
 saw, in vision, coming down from God out of 
 heaven, said: " I saw no temple therein, for the 
 Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the tem- 
 ple of it."J The divine nature of the Lord 
 * Col. ii. 9. f 1 Tim. iii. 16. * Rev. xxi. 22. 
 
12 THE HOLY 
 
 God, dwelling in the human nature of the Lamb 
 that was slain, makes it the glorious temple of 
 that commonwealth of Israel, in, and through, 
 which, all the fulness of the Godhead, and all the 
 riches of grace and glory, will be made manifest 
 to the saints, forever and ever. 
 
 The nearer we approach, in likeness, to that 
 habitation of God, in Christ; the nearer we come 
 to be each the temple of God. Now, in every 
 true christian, there is the indwelling of God, 
 by his Spirit, as none but spiritual and immortal 
 beings can possess it. God's Spirit is in him as 
 an Inhabitant, — He is made a " partaker of the 
 divine nature;" not indeed, as Christ was, by 
 oneness of essence, but by communication of per- 
 sonal, indwelling, holiness. " I will dwell in them 
 and walk in them," is the promise of God to his 
 people. Here then, next to the human nature of 
 our Lord, is the most literal and perfect temple 
 of the living God ; the man who has, abiding in 
 him, God's Holy Spirit.* Compare with this, 
 
 * "What resemblance, (asks Bishop Andrews,) is 
 there between a bod)' - and a temple] Or how can a body 
 be so termed] Well enough ; for I ask what makes 
 a temple. Is it not a temple because it is the house of 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 13 
 
 the temple at Jerusalem, in which appeared 
 rather the symbol, than the power of His indwell- 
 ing ; and you will see that that was not so much 
 the true temple, as its type. In all its glory, it 
 was not arrayed like one immortal soul which 
 halh received the Holy Ghost, and in whom God 
 manifests the power of His presence by daily 
 renewing and sustaining him in His own image 
 and likeness. What is the noblest edifice of 
 man's workmanship, for a habitation of God, 
 compared with an immortal mind, in the beauty 
 of holiness ? "God is a spirit!" 
 
 We are now prepared for a nearer contempla- 
 
 God? because God dwelleth there 1 For as that where- 
 in man dwells is a house ; so that wherein God dwells 
 is a temple properly, be it place or be it body. « Know 
 ye not (saith the Apostle) that your body is the temple 
 of the Holy Ghost.' A body, then, may be a temple, 
 even this of ours. And if ours, in which the Spirit of 
 God dwelleth only by some gift or grace, with how 
 much better right his body, in whom the whole Godhead in 
 all the fulness thereof dwelleth corporally, by nature, by 
 personal union, not (as in us) by grace, by participation 
 of it only. Alas, ours are but tabernacles under goat 
 skins ; His, the true, the marble, the cedar temple in- 
 deed." — Bishop Andrew's Sermons, No. 10. 
 2 
 
14 THE HOLY 
 
 tion of the Church, as the Temple of the living 
 God. Let us begin at its foundation. 
 
 The Church, or Temple, of God is built on 
 Christ as its corner-stone. 
 
 " Behold (saith the Lord) I lay in Zion a chief 
 corner-stone, elect, precious, and he that believ- 
 eth on him shall not be confounded."* " In 
 whom (saith St. Paul) all the building fitly framed 
 together, groweth unto an holy temple in the 
 Lord." "To whom coming (saith St. Peter) 
 as unto a living stone, ye also as lively stones are 
 built up a spiritual house. "t Let us take care 
 that we get the whole literal reality of this doc- 
 trine. There is a figure of speech in calling our 
 Lord a stone, a corner-stone ; but there is no 
 figure in making the whole Church just as lite- 
 rally and immediately dependent on him, person- 
 ally, for all its being, as a house is dependent on 
 its foundation. Christ is the very being of the 
 Church. Not only did he found it; not only 
 does he sustain it, and enlighten it, and defend 
 it ; but he is personally and directly the life there- 
 of. Because he is such to each individual be- 
 liever, therefore is he the same to the whole 
 
 * 1 Pet. ii. 5, 6. f Eph. ii. 21 : 1 Pet. ii. 5. 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 15 
 
 fellowship of believers. Does the single chris- 
 tian say, " for me to live is Christ ?" The whole 
 mystical union of true christians, composing the 
 Church of God, must say the same. It is only 
 because all the building is, in every individual 
 part, "framed together in him," — in him as its 
 righteousness, in him as its sanctification, in him 
 as all its strength and life, that it " groweth unto 
 an holy temple in the Lord." "He that abideth 
 in me and I in Ann," — that is the true descrip- 
 tion of what Christ is, as the corner-stone of His 
 Church, to every part thereof. All of it, in every 
 least part, abides in him. He, by his sanctify- 
 ing Spirit, abides in every part. Its oneness is 
 the oneness of its life in Christ. Hence our 
 Lord is called a "living stone; 11 not so much 
 because he lives — " the Lamb that was slain, 
 and is alive again for evermore;" as because he 
 is the source, and centre, and power of life, to 
 give, and to sustain, it in his people ; to make 
 every soul that is built up in him, a living temple, 
 a spiritual house. When, on a certain occasion, a 
 dead body was laid in a prophet's grave, as soon 
 as it touched the bones of the man of God, it 
 lived. But the life came not from the bones. 
 Not so when the dead carcass of man's ruined 
 
16 THE HOLY 
 
 nature, dead in sin, is brought into contact, by- 
 faith, with the elect, corner-stone of the Church 
 of God, and immediately is alive unto God, — a 
 new creature in Christ Jesus. The life cometh 
 from that stone. It is a living stone, and has 
 life in itself, to give life to the dead. " Our life 
 is hid with Christ in God." It is all there, in 
 the infinite depths, in the inexhaustible riches, 
 in the inviolable security of that divine nature 
 which is in him. The gates of hell cannot pre- 
 vail against the Church, because the seat, and 
 source, and power of its life are not in the world, 
 not in man, not in any community of men, not 
 in the body of the Church, not exposed to any 
 of the infirmities of our nature ; but in that living 
 stone, that mysterious union of God and man; 
 "hid" out of the reach of Satan, beyond the 
 grasp of the creature's enmity, where no convul- 
 sions of this world can affect it, in the deep of 
 the wisdom, and power, and grace of God. 
 
 Let us next consider the materials of the 
 Church and Temple of God. 
 
 They are none but the true people of God. 
 Thus in the text, " Ye are the temple of the liv- 
 ing God ; as God hath said, « I will dwell in 
 them and walk in them, and I will be their God, 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 17 
 
 and they shall be my people." Does this mean 
 that they in whom God will dwell, are his peo- 
 ple exclusively ; or that He dwells also in those 
 who are only professedly his people? None 
 can hesitate. He dwells in none but those who 
 love Him, and have received His Spirit. None 
 but these, therefore, are addressed in the text as 
 the temple — none else are the Church of God. 
 True, the words of the text were addressed to 
 all the professed christians of Corinth, among 
 whom were the false as well as the true. But 
 they were all addressed as " sanctified in Christ 
 Jesus"* because all professed to be sanctified, 
 and only as their sanctification ivas as professed, 
 were they the Temple of God. 
 
 But St. Peter settles this matter, once for all. 
 He calls the several parts of the temple, " living 
 stones," as he calls the great Head of the corner 
 "a living stone." " To whom coming, as 
 unto a living stone, ye also, as lively stones, 
 are built up a spiritual house."^ What is the 
 doctrine here? Evidently that none but living 
 stones compose that house — that the stones of 
 the walls must be conformed to the stone of the 
 
 * 1 Cor. i. 2. f 1 Pet. ii. 5. 
 
 2* 
 
18 THE HOLY 
 
 corner. Because he lives, they must live also. 
 In other words a dead christian — a mere profes- 
 sor of religion, a mere thing of ordinances, with- 
 out Christ dwelling in him by His Spirit, — what 
 Bishop Taylor calls the mere "outsides" of the 
 church, — can have no membership in Christ's 
 true Church, can make no part in God's Tem- 
 ple. The mind of Christ must be also in us — 
 we must be like Him. "If any man have not 
 the Spirit of Christ he is none of His." If none 
 of his, then none of his body, none of his Tem- 
 ple. Each of us must be himself "the temple 
 of the Holy Ghost," before he can be built up in 
 that spiritual house which is the Church of God, 
 " the blessed company (as our communion office 
 defines it) of all faithful people." " Others, 
 (says Augustine,) are so said to be in the house 
 of God, that they do not pertain to the structure 
 of the house, but are as chaff in the wheat. * * 
 Those who are condemned by Christ, for their 
 evil consciences, are not in Christ's body, which 
 is the Church, for Christ hath no damned mem- 
 bers."* " If Christ's quickening spirit be want- 
 
 * Quoted by Bishop Taylor, Dissuasive from Pope- 
 ry. P. ii. 1. 1, § 1. 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 19 
 
 ing in any, no external communion with Christ 
 can make him a true member of Christ's mysti- 
 cal body, this being a most sure principle, that 
 he which hath not the Spirit of Christ is none 
 of His."* 
 
 But how are the dead stones out of the quarry 
 of our ruined nature made alive in Christ? By 
 what means? By what instrumentality ? Simply, 
 answers the Apostle, by being brought unto 
 Christ. "To whom coming as unto a living 
 stone,' 1 &c. "Ye will not come unto me that 
 ye might have life. These words of St. Peter 
 and of our Lord, teach the whole lesson on this 
 subject. It is the coming of each soul, in a per- 
 sonal application directly to Christ, by which 
 he obtains life ; and in obtaining life by this ap- 
 plication, he becomes united to the living stone, 
 Christ Jesus, and by that union he is built up as 
 part and parcel of the spiritual house. His coming 
 to Christ is his life ; his deriving life from Christ 
 is his union unto him ; and in that very union 
 unto Christ is contained and involved his being, 
 built up in His true Church. "This union to 
 Christ maketh the church to be the church ; and 
 
 * Usher's Sermon before the House of Commons. 
 
20 THE HOLY 
 
 by it the members thereof, whether they be in 
 heaven, or in earth, are distinguished from all 
 other companies whatsoever."* What is meant 
 by the communion of saints, is simply that com- 
 mon union with that common centre of the life of 
 all and of each. They are one spiritual body, be- 
 cause they have one living head, by which they 
 all have life. That which makes the several 
 parts of the human frame one body, is not that 
 they are joined one to another by bones and liga- 
 ments, and enclosed in the same integument; but 
 that they have all vital union with the life of one 
 head. Communion in the life of that one head, 
 constitutes them one body. And in the spiritual 
 house of God, communion of the several stones 
 in the life of the one living head of the corner, 
 constitutes them one holy temple — the one true 
 Church of God.t 
 
 Before we leave this part of our subject, it is 
 of great importance to the whole view we have 
 taken, that we be very clear upon one point — I 
 mean that act by which, instrument ally ', we are 
 built upon Christ. We have mentioned it inci- 
 
 * Perkins' Works, vol. I. p 277. 
 
 •}■ See on Immediate Union to Christ, App. A. 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 21 
 
 dentally before. It is well to speak of it more 
 directly now. "To whom coming, &c, (saith 
 St. Peter,) ye are built up," &c. Coming to 
 Christ is then the act of being built up in him. 
 But what shall we understand by that coming? 
 The answer is given by St. Peter immediately 
 after: "Wherefore also, (he says,) it is con- 
 tained in Scripture — 'Behold, I lay in Sion a 
 chief corner-stone, elect, precious ; and he that 
 believeth on him shall not be confounded.' " 
 Hence there can be no question that believing 
 on Christ is of the same meaning with the pre- 
 vious expression, coming unto him. Hence the 
 apostle proceeds in the next verse to say : "Unto 
 you, therefore, which believe, he is precious." 
 The act of faith, then, is that which puts us in 
 possession of all the preciousness of Christ ; 
 which builds us upon that elect, living stone; 
 which makes us alive in him, and members of 
 his own living Church. " Faith, (says our 
 Hooker,) is the ground and the glory of all the 
 welfare of this building."* "That which link- 
 eth Christ to us, is his mere mercy and love to- 
 wards us. That which tieth us to him, is our 
 
 * Hooker's 2d Sermon on Jude, § 14. 
 
22 THE HOLY 
 
 faith in the promised salvation revealed in his 
 word of truth."* "No work of ours, no build- 
 ing of ourselves in any thing, can be profitable 
 unto us, except we be built in faith. "t We may- 
 be brought nigh, in a certain sense, to the one 
 foundation ; ordinances and sacraments may set 
 us down, as it were, immediately by it, and may 
 put us into visible connection therewith, as visi- 
 ble members of the Church; but after all we 
 shall be but as so many loose stones, without 
 bond, without life — having no real union with 
 the church, or with Christ, until we begin to ex- 
 ercise a living faith in him as all our life. It 
 is a good sentence of holy Leighton: "This 
 union is the spring of all spiritual consolations ; 
 and faith, by which we are thus united, is a di- 
 vine work. He that laid this foundation in Zion 
 with his own hand, works likewise, with the same 
 hand, faith in the heart, by which it is knit to this 
 corner stone.J 
 
 * Hooker's 1st Sermon on Jude, § 11. 
 f 2d Sermon on Jude, § 19. 
 
 * On 1st Peter, c. ii: 6. § 3. — "Faith is that spirit, 
 ual mouth in us whereby we are made partakers of 
 Christ, he being, by this means, as truly and every 
 way as effectually made ours as the meat and drink 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 23 
 
 I have thus enlarged on this part of our sub- 
 ject, because, however great the value and neces- 
 sity of visible ordinances and sacraments to the 
 visible form of the otherwise invisible house of 
 God ; and however important their uses as 
 divinely appointed instruments in leading sinners 
 to Christ, and in helping them to abide in him ; 
 we cannot keep too distinct the great truth, nor 
 urge it too plainly, that it is not these which con- 
 stitute the true Church of God, whatever their 
 office as parts of, and as essential to, its visible 
 form ; that the great constituent act on which the 
 whole being of the true Church depends, is just 
 that on which all true piety in each soul depends 
 — the coming of sinners, each for himself, unto 
 Christ, by faith; that in proportion as this indi- 
 vidual exercise of faith, immediately upon Christ, 
 increases in strength, and thus draws more and 
 more life from him into each soul, so increases 
 the life and holiness of the Church — in other 
 words, that the spiritual life of the Church is not a 
 sort of corporate investment in something called 
 the body of the Church, independently of the 
 
 ■which we receive into our natural bodies." — Usher's 
 Sermon before House of Commons. Jj 
 
24 THE HOLY 
 
 spiritual character of its several members, from 
 which body, as a fountain, theirs is drawn, and 
 which continues ever the same in fulness, whe- 
 ther they severally be holy, more or less : but 
 that it is simply the aggregate of the spiritual life 
 and holiness of all individual believers, severally 
 united to, and drawing life immediately from, 
 Christ; that to facilitate this individual deriving 
 of life directly from Christ all the way of our 
 pilgrimage, each for himself, drinking of that rock 
 which follows us, and gathering of that manna 
 which, to the believer, daily cometh down from 
 heaven, is the great object of all the external 
 institutions of the Church ; and that whenever 
 they become so employed or regarded that they 
 perform not this subordinate office, especially 
 when placed so high in dignity that they stand 
 as evidences of the possession of grace, instead 
 of only signs and seals and means of grace; that 
 they intercept, instead of aiding the soul's direct 
 looking unto Jesus for righteousness and life, 
 rendering access to Him less simple, less per- 
 sonal, less immediate, and more vicarious — more 
 by intervening and intercessory agencies; when 
 they become themselves the objects of faith in- 
 stead of its auxiliaries— assuming, in any degree, 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 25 
 
 to stand as vicars of Christ to the soul, inviting 
 reliance in themselves instead of glorying, like 
 John the Baptist, to point the sinner away from 
 them to the Lamb of God ; whenever thus used,, 
 (we cannot say it too strongly,) they are griev- 
 ously perverted and dishonored. 
 
 Never did the forerunner of our Lord appear 
 more truly great than when retired most behind 
 his message, and endeavoring to centre all atten- 
 tion upon Him who was to baptize, not with 
 water, but with the Holy Ghost. Never do the 
 visible ordinances of the Church appear in their 
 real beauty and dignity as when their signs are 
 most retired behind the great truths they signify, 
 and most effective in fixing the hearts of those 
 who come to them on the person and offices of 
 that Saviour whose inward grace they pledge, 
 and to faith convey. 
 
 How prone are christian men to lose sight of 
 the real adorning of the house of God ; to think 
 of the type more than the reality; to dwell on 
 the outward appearance which, however costly 
 and magnificent, like the most fine gold of the 
 temple of Jerusalem, is temporal ; instead of the 
 glorious jewelry of the spiritual sanctuary which 
 is unseen and eternal. How prone we are, while 
 3 
 
26 THE HOLY 
 
 estimating very highly, as we ought, the assem- 
 bling together of the many to the solemnities of 
 the sanctuary, to make a low practical estimate, 
 comparatively, of the value of the coming of one 
 sinner to Christ, by a living faith. Angels, in the 
 presence of God, rejoice over one sinner that 
 repenteth ; and all the worth they see in our out- 
 ward things, is their tendency to advance the 
 repentance and faith of sinners. But we — how 
 prone to take the means for ends, satisfying our- 
 selves too much with the dignity and propriety 
 of the visible array — zealous to gather about our 
 altar the tributes of wealth and taste — the sculp- 
 ture, the architecture, the robe, the chaunt, — all, 
 it may be, as is well befitting the courts of the 
 Lord's house ; but looking too little beyond these 
 swr/ace-things, to inquire how far it may be hoped 
 the inward adorning of faith that worketh by love, 
 and hath fruit unto holiness, is keeping pace.— 
 Alas ! let us not forget what emptiness and no- 
 thingness are in the one, but as it is met at each 
 point and filled out with the reality of the other; 
 that dead materials, wood, hay, stubble, however 
 covered over with the sacramental robe of a chris- 
 tian profession, are stubble still ; that the spiritual 
 death of a merely professing christian, instead of 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 27 
 
 being made less dead by being arrayed in the cir- 
 cumstance of life, is only made the more awful by 
 being thus laid out in state. The painted corpse, 
 dressed as in life, is the most revolting form of 
 death. But there is a way to be adding ever in- 
 creasing beauty and glory to the house of God. 
 Oh ! that we may prize it more and more ! Go 
 out into the lanes and highways ; find some out- 
 cast wretch, some stray fragment of the univer- 
 sal wreck of man, some trampled stone in the 
 miry clay— sound aloud the word of the Lord — 
 that harp of blessed music, by which the Spirit 
 draws dead stones to Christ. By and by, under 
 the power of God, blessing the word, that soul 
 is led, in the strong captivity of the truth, to 
 Christ. No sooner does he touch that rock, than 
 the virtue of a new life comes unto him, and he 
 lives. The love of God is shed abroad in his 
 heart. The beautiful garniture of inward graces, 
 more precious than the most fine gold, adorns him. 
 He is united to Christ, and through him to God. 
 What a miracle of Grace ! How wonderful that 
 communication of life — that resurrection from 
 the dead — that ascension of the regenerated soul 
 to "sit in heavenly places in Christ." Look 
 unto the rock whence he was hewn, and the hole 
 
28 THE HOLY 
 
 of the pit whence he was digged ! How is God 
 glorified in such an addition to His Church ! 
 What joy is it to the angels that do His will ! 
 By such additions, is the Church a building of 
 God. Thus does it rise towards heaven. These 
 are thy jewels, daughter of Zion ! Thy " walls 
 salvation, thy gates praise !' 
 
 In all that we have now said, we have scarce- 
 ly hinted at what is called the visible Church, 
 as distinguished from the invisible. We have 
 spoken exclusively of that Church which, in the 
 words of the Martyr Ridley, "standeth only of 
 living stones, and true Christians, not only out- 
 wardly in name and title, but inwardly in heart 
 and truth."* This we have spoken of as the 
 only real Church, because the only " household 
 of faith." All are of it who are living a life of 
 faith on the Son of God ; none are of it, who are 
 not living that life. 
 
 But we do not deny that the name of Church 
 is also applied in Scripture to the whole mul- 
 titude of those who, by participation in the 
 ordinances of the gospel, profess the faith of 
 Christ, and hence are called Christians. This 
 
 * Bishop Ridley's Work's, (Parker Soc. Ed.) p. 126. 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 29 
 
 is what is called the visible Church. But 
 what do we mean by this language ? Because 
 we call all professing Christians, the visible 
 Church, and only real Christians, the invisible 
 Church, is it meant that there are two real 
 Churches ; or only that the real Church, which 
 we term " a body mystical, because the mystery 
 of the conjunction of the several members in 
 Christ, is removed altogether from sense;" and 
 which we call also the invisible, " because the 
 parts thereof are some in heaven with Christ, and 
 the rest that are on earth, (although their persons 
 be visible) no man can infallibly tell who they 
 be;"* is it that this only true Church is made 
 visible, (so far as at present it can be,) under the 
 visible ordinances, the visible profession, and the 
 wider amplitude of the other ? Certainly this is 
 the true view. The visible Church is the 
 Church, as seen of men, in the mixed mass of the 
 true and the false, the genuine and the coun- 
 terfeit, people of God. The invisible Church is 
 the same Church, as seen only of God, in the un- 
 mixed company of all His faithful people. The 
 one is that great flock, gathered together by the 
 
 * Hooker's Eccl. Pol., b. iii. § 1. 
 3* 
 
30 THE HOLY 
 
 call of the Gospel, from all parts of the earth to 
 the professed following of the Good Shepherd, 
 in which the sheep of his pasture are mingled 
 with the goats that know him not, and are none 
 of his ; all, however, visibly, that is, professedly, 
 his flock. The other is simply so much of that 
 mixed multitude as do truly hear the voice of the 
 Shepherd, and follow him, and unto whom he 
 giveth eternal life. 
 
 To call all the visible Church, the Church of 
 God, when it is not all really the Church, but 
 only contains it, and when indeed a very great 
 part is really of the kingdom of darkness, is only 
 consistent with a mode of speech common in the 
 Scriptures, and in ordinary life. We speak of 
 the husk, while it contains the corn, as the corn, 
 though in itself fit only to be burned. All the 
 stately structure at Jerusalem was called in 
 Scripture the Temple, while the sanctuary, far 
 within, and making only a small part of the 
 whole structure, but distinguished from all the 
 rest by having within it, the mercy-seat and the 
 glory of God, was really the Temple. All the 
 people of Israel were called "the people of 
 God," "the Israel of God," "the circumci- 
 sion," " the congregation" (or Church) of the 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 31 
 
 Lord, because all were visibly so, by the profes- 
 sion which all made in the visible ordinances of 
 the Jewish Church. But, said St. Paul, " all 
 are not Israel, that are of Israel ;" neither be- 
 cause they are all the seed of Abraham are they 
 all children of the promise made to Abraham* 
 " He is not a Jew that is one outwardly, neither 
 is that circumcision which is outward in the 
 flesh. But he is a Jew which is one inwardly ; 
 and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spi- 
 rit, and not in the letter ; ivhose praise is not 
 of men but of God"\ Thus did St. Paul draw 
 the distinction between the visible or professing 
 Church, andthe real but invisible Church, under 
 the Mosaic dispensation. All the children of 
 Abraham, according to the flesh, all the children 
 of the external covenant, all that were Jews by 
 birth and sacrament, were of the visible congre- 
 gation or professing Church of Israel. But all 
 were not " of Israel," the true Israel. The true 
 Church of God was only of those who were 
 Jews inwardly; who had received the circumci- 
 sion " of the heart, in the spirit,'''' and were 
 thus known to the searcher of all hearts, however 
 unknown in that respect to men. To them only 
 * Rom. ix. 6, 7, 8. f Rom. iii. 28, 29. 
 
32 THE HOLY 
 
 belonged the promises, because they only were 
 the children of faithful Abraham. St. Paul found 
 no fault with the usual mode of speech in which 
 all were said to be of the circumcision who had 
 received the sign or sacrament of circumcision ; 
 but he thought it highly important to be very 
 distinct in his instruction on the point that the 
 sign was not the thing ; that the sacrament of 
 circumcision was not the circumcision. It was 
 the thing only sacrament ally, or in the sign ; not 
 in the reality. It was the visible rite ; not the 
 invisible grace. It made a visible or professed 
 Israelite, not " an Israelite indeed ;" for circumci- 
 sion (said he) is that of the heart, in the spirit, 
 and not in the letter. 11 
 
 Precisely the analogous use of language extends 
 to all that is visible of the Church under the 
 Gospel. There is but one real baptism, " not 
 the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but 
 the answer of a good conscience towards 
 God; 11 * not the outward washing, but the in- 
 ward sanctiflcation — for Baptism, precisely as cir- 
 cumcision, is that of the heart, in the spirit, and 
 not in the letter, ivhose praise is not of men but 
 of God. Still that outward washing is called 
 * 1 Pet. iii. 21. 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 33 
 
 baptism, just as the outward Jewish sacrament 
 was called circumcision. But it is important 
 now, as in St. Paul's time, to keep it very dis- 
 tinctly in mind that it is only sacramental bap- 
 tism, only the sacrament or sign of baptism — not 
 the thing. The real baptism is invisible, "whose 
 praise is not of men but of God." The sign or 
 sacrament is not depreciated in this ; but the thing 
 signified is relatively honoured above it.* 
 
 * "All receive not the grace of God (says Hooker) 
 who receive the sacraments of his grace." — Eccl. Pol., 
 b. v. § 17. 
 
 " External baptism and the waters of Noah are types 
 of the same rank ; both types or shadows of that inter- 
 nal baptism by the Holy Ghost, by which we are in- 
 corporated into the body of Christ and become more 
 undoubtedly safe from the everlasting fire, than such 
 as entered into Noah's Ark were from the deluge of 
 water." — Dr. Jackson's Treatise on the Church. — Goode's 
 Edition. Lind. p. 97. 
 
 "Although baptism be a sacrament to be received 
 and honourably used of all men, it sanctifieih no man. 
 And such as attribute the remission of sin to the ex- 
 ternal rite, doth offend *** Such as be baptized must 
 remember that repentance and faith precede the ex- 
 ternal sign ; and in Christ, the purgation was inwardly 
 obtained, before the external rite was given. So that 
 there are two kinds of baptism — the one interior which 
 
34 THE HOLY 
 
 Again, there is but one real communion of the 
 body and blood of Christ, that of those who feed 
 on Christ, in their hearts, by faith, with thanks- 
 giving. And yet in Scripture the visible sacra- 
 ment is called the communion. " The bread 
 which we break, is it not the communion of 
 the body of Christ? 11 * But in strictness of 
 speech it is not the communion of the body of 
 Christ, but only the sacrament, or divinely insti- 
 
 is the cleansing of the heart, the drawing of the Father, 
 the operation of the Holy Ghost; and this baptism is 
 in man, when he believeth and trusteth that Christ is 
 the only author of his salvation. **** So it is in the 
 Church of Christ : man is made the brother of Christ, 
 and heir of eternal life, by God's only mercy received 
 by faith before he receive any ceremony to confirm 
 and manifest openly his right and title.*** Thus as- 
 sured of God, and cleansed from sin in Christ, he hath 
 the livery of God given unto him, baptism, the which 
 no Christian should neglect; and yet not attribute his 
 sanctification unto the external sign, as the King's 
 majesty may not attribute his right unto the crown, but 
 unto God and unto his father, who have not only given 
 him grace to be born into the world, but also to govern 
 as a king in the world ; whose right and title the crown 
 confirmeth and sheweth the same unto all the world." — Works 
 of Hooper, Bishop and Martyr. (Parker Soc. Ed.) pp. 74, 75« 
 * 1 Cor. x. 16. 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 35 
 
 tuted sign, of that communion. It is the visible 
 communion. The real is invisible.* 
 
 It is an old saying of St. Augustine, quoted in 
 our Homilies,! and very common in our old writ- 
 
 * Art. XXVIII. 
 
 f Homily on Common Prayer and Sacraments. 
 
 "The thing itself in this sacrament (the Eucharist) 
 that is the precious body of Christ broken, and his 
 innocent blood shed, be absent ; yet be the bread and 
 the wine called the body broken and the blood-shedding 
 according to the nature of a sacrament, to set forth, 
 the better the thing done and signified in the sacra- 
 ment. There is done in the sacrament the memory and 
 remembrance of Christ's death, which was done on the 
 cross, where his precious body and blood was rent 
 and torn, shed and poured out for our sins. 
 
 " With this agreeth the mind of St. Augustine. — id 
 Bonifacium, Epist. xxiii. — Si enim sacramenta quandam 
 similitudinem earum rerum quarum sacramenta sunt, non 
 haberent, omnino sacramenta non escent : — that is to say, 
 1 If sacraments had not some proportion and likeness 
 of the things whereof they be sacraments, they were 
 no sacraments at all. And thus rather of the simili- 
 tude and signification of the thing which they repre- 
 sent and signify, they take the name, and not that indeed 
 they be as they be named.' 
 
 So after the manner is the sacrament of Christ's body 
 called Christ's body ; and the sacrament of Christ's 
 blood called his blood ; and the sacrament of faith is 
 
36 THE HOLY 
 
 ers, for the illustration of this precise point, that 
 " sacraments do, for the most part, receive the 
 names of the self-same things which they sig- 
 nify." In this application of terms, the Sacra- 
 ment of Communion is called the Communion; 
 the Sacrament of Regeneration is called the Re- 
 generation. By analogous terms, the receiver of 
 these sacramental signs and visible notes of a 
 Christian, is called a Christian, whether he be a 
 Christian inwardly or not; and the vast multitude, 
 in the whole earth, united into one professing 
 community, under the same signs, are called the 
 Christian Church ; though it is no uncharitable- 
 ness to suppose that an immense proportion of 
 them have not the Spirit of Christ, and so are 
 none of his, and consequently are no more his 
 Church, than a merely professing Christian is a 
 true Christian, or than a merely external commu- 
 nicant is a real communicant of the body and blood 
 of Christ. The visible or professed Church of God 
 they all certainly are ; because they are the com- 
 pany of the visible or professing people of God. 
 
 called faith. As St. Augustine learnedly and godly 
 saith in the same argument, ' Let the word come unto 
 the element, and then is made the sacrament.' " — Bishop 
 Hooper's Works, (Parker Soc. Ed.) p. 515, 16. 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 37' 
 
 But the true Church of God, to which belong 
 all the glorious titles and privileges and promises 
 of God, in Scripture ; which is " the pillar and 
 ground of the truth," and against which the 
 gates of hell cannot prevail, that company cannot 
 be but in proportion as it consists (as our good 
 Hooker says on this head) " of none but true 
 Israelites, true sons of Abraham, true servants 
 and saints of God."* 
 
 Now we find no fault with this use of lan- 
 guage. It is scriptural. Much less, when we 
 speak thus of the visible form of the Church, do 
 we mean to diminish aught from your deepest 
 sense of the duty and importance of those seve- 
 ral divinely appointed signs and forms by which 
 the invisible Church, like angels of old, when 
 they appeared to man, puts on a body that she 
 may stand confessed before the world, and by 
 which the invisible God, as when He spoke to 
 Moses out of the burning bush, gives sensible form 
 to His presence among His people — "dwell- 
 ing in them and walking in them," under the signs 
 of sacraments, as He dwelt in the camp of Israel, 
 
 * For a further view of the doctrine of our Church 
 on this head, see App. B. 
 
 4 
 
38 THE HOLY 
 
 under the sign of the cloud by day, and of fire 
 by night. 
 
 The evil is, when, through fault, not of the 
 thing, or the language, but of men's want of 
 spiritual discernment, the spiritual signification 
 is lost in the relative misplacement of the sign ; 
 when the right outward use of church ordinan- 
 ces is confounded with union to Christ by faith, 
 in the one communion and fellowship of the 
 spiritual house of God ; so that we get to feel a 
 sort of security that in carrying on the former, 
 with all regularity, we are necessarily attaining 
 the latter; and thus the communicant becomes 
 negligent of the great question, ' am I a living 
 stone of the House of God, built by faith upon 
 Christ the head of the corner?' and the minister 
 becomes negligent of that great instrument, in 
 the hand of the Spirit, of gathering the scattered 
 stones of the fallen temple of the first creation, 
 into the more glorious temple of the new crea- 
 tion in Christ Jesus — the preaching of the Word 
 of God. 
 
 The tendencies to this are stronger at some 
 times than at others. Under some circumstan- 
 ces, we feel called to preach, with chief enlarge- 
 ment upon the visible institutions of the Church. 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 39 
 
 Under others, upon the invisible structure of 
 the Church ; and thus we have, at this time, 
 confined our attention so much to its only foun- 
 dation, Christ; to its only materials, sinners 
 made alive in Christ, through faith uniting them 
 to him ; to its essential unity and communion, 
 as found in the vital relation of each to Christ, 
 as the common life, and the joining together of 
 all in Him, so as to be members one of another, 
 in his one mystical body. 
 
 This church, whether great or small, is the 
 only true host of God on earth, for true service 
 in that great battle, which is yet to be fought, be- 
 fore Satan shall go into bonds for a thousand 
 years — and which draweth nigh — perhaps is at 
 the door. When Gideon went against the host 
 of Midian, then encamped against Israel, his 
 apparent force was two and thirty thousand. 
 But it was only his visible strength. The num- 
 ber was diminished, by tests of divine appoint- 
 ment, until all that were not to be relied on when 
 faith in God was to be all the strength, had de- 
 parted. Three hundred only remained. But 
 the Lord said : " By the three hundred men, I 
 will deliver the Midianites into thine hand." All 
 the strength of the original thirty and two thou- 
 
40 THE HOLY 
 
 sand, for that fight of faith, was in those three 
 hundred that remained. Such is the Church. 
 Visibly, the host is a multitude without number, 
 comprehending the whole professing people. 
 Really, the whole strength for the battle with 
 the rulers of the darkness of this world, is in 
 the inner, the smaller, and apparently so much 
 weaker, company of those who live by faith. 
 Should a separation of these be made from all 
 the rest, surely they would appear a very small 
 band in comparison with the whole array, a lit- 
 tle flock, and a great part of them consisting of 
 the poor of this world, the unlearned, the sim- 
 ple, the widows, the fatherless, the men of no 
 might, but nevertheless the praying, the believ- 
 ing, the wrestling, the hoping, the contrite ones, 
 the people that have the hope of salvation for a 
 helmet and the word of God for a sword. These, 
 however, are the living ones, whether few or 
 many, unto whom the word of the Lord has 
 come, saying, " Fear not little flock, for it is 
 your Father's good pleasure to give you the 
 kingdom. " These are that true body of Christ, 
 which is indeed His "fulness — the fulness of 
 Him that filleth all in all."* This comparatively 
 * See Hooker on Eph. i. 23, b. 5, § 56. 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 41 
 
 little flock is that church, that " blessed company 
 of all faithful people;" that "elect" people, 
 " knit together in one communion and fellowship 
 in the mystical body of Christ," (as our Prayer 
 Book describes it,) unto which alone pertaineth 
 the promises. " Whatsoever we read in Scrip- 
 ture concerning the endless love and saving mer- 
 cy which God showeth towards His Church, the 
 only proper subject thereof is this Church. Con- 
 cerning this flock it is that our Lord and Saviour 
 hath promised : 'I give unto them eternal life, 
 and they shall never perish, neither shall any 
 pluck them out of my hands.' "* 
 
 "Therefore is the strength of this Church great 
 indeed. It prevaileth against Satan, it conquer- 
 eth sin, it hath death in derision, neither princi- 
 palities nor powers can throw it down ; it leadeth 
 the world captive, and bringeth every enemy 
 that riseth up against it to confusion and shame, 
 and all by Faith ; for ' this is the victory that 
 overcometh the world, even our Faith.' "t 
 
 But when I speak of the Church of God as 
 comparatively a little flock, it is only one sec- 
 
 * Hooker, b. 3, § 1. 
 
 f Hooker's 2d Sermon on Jude, § 15. 
 
 4* 
 
42 THE HOLY 
 
 tion of it that we mean — that which is militant 
 here on the earth. We must not forget that the 
 Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of 
 Saints, the General Assembly and Church of the 
 First Born, whose names are written in heaven, 
 has only one of its thousand generations here 
 on earth. Here we have but the nursery of that 
 great household of God, now sitting in heavenly 
 places, in Christ Jesus. Generation upon ge- 
 neration, ever since the world began, has been 
 flowing into that great congregation of white- 
 robed, blood-washed, glorified spirits of just men 
 made perfect. Oh ! the multitude there that 
 cannot be numbered, with which we have com- 
 munion, as brethren together in Christ Jesus, 
 our common portion and life. Glorious temple 
 of the living God ! It isgrowingstill in breadth, 
 and length, and height, and glory. "All the 
 building fitly framed together" in Christ, "groio- 
 eth unto an holy temple in the Lord. 19 
 
 Nothing can stop that growth. In troublous 
 times, or the opposite, this House of God must 
 grow. Its Maker and Builder is God. All 
 things work together for its good. The world 
 is preserved but that its walls may be completed, 
 and when they are done, the time of the world 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 43 
 
 will be ended. It grows in height, in the spirit- 
 ual, heavenly graces of christians, as well as in 
 amplitude, in the number of those who have 
 the spiritual grace of true christians. It grows 
 in the constant addition of more and more souls 
 joined unto Christ. It grows in the continual 
 ascension of thousands upon thousands, from the 
 feeble state of saints on earth, to the established, 
 perfected state of those in heaven. Who can 
 measure its rapid increase by all these modes, 
 toward " the measure of the stature of the ful- 
 ness of Christ?" True it " cometh not with 
 observation." This growth is little visible to 
 man. As in the temple of Solomon, its type, 
 " there was neither hammer, nor any tool of iron 
 heard in the house, while it was building," so 
 the hand of God carries up this spiritual struc- 
 ture, as he carries on his work in the heart of 
 each of his people, by a progress which little 
 engages the notice of the world. Upon the 
 outer courts, upon the visible temple, the sound 
 of man's working is heard. Upon the inner 
 sanctuary, the growth is as silent as was the 
 creation of the heavens and the earth, because 
 " the builder and maker, now as then, is 
 God." 
 
44 THE HOLY 
 
 r 
 
 It was a striking feature in the building of 
 the temple of Solomon that the materials came 
 from so many different and distant regions. 
 The isles of the sea, the mines of Ophir, the 
 forests of Lebanon, the quarries of Tyre, all 
 conspired. Thus has risen, thus will be com- 
 pleted at last, the temple of God. The ministry 
 of the gospel, in all lands, is gathering souls of 
 men to be joined unto the Lord. The time 
 cometh — probably is nigh at hand — when " the 
 abundance of the sea shall be converted, and the 
 forces of the Gentiles shall come" unto Zion ; 
 when " the sons of strangers shall build her walls, 
 and kings shall minister unto her." The Lord 
 hasten the time ! At last the work will be done. 
 The Church will be spotless — her walls perfected 
 — the two companies on earth and in heaven, 
 will be one with Christ in his glory ; the scaffold- 
 ing of ordinances will be taken down ; the human 
 builders will have no more to do ; the ministry 
 of men will pass away before the personal min- 
 istry of the great Prophet, Priest and King, as 
 that of planets, when the sun arises. Then will 
 cease the frailties that dishonour, and the conten- 
 tions and divisions that disturb the peace of, the 
 present militant portion of the Church. With 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 45 
 
 the endless separation of all who have not the 
 mind of Christ, will cease the distinction between 
 the Church visible and invisible. All the visible 
 of that finished Temple will be spiritual ; all the 
 spiritual will be perfect. The work of redemp- 
 tion will be complete. The new creation will 
 be finished. The everlasting Sabbath will then 
 begin; Jesus, resting from his work, and seeing 
 of "the travail of his soul," and satisfied : all his 
 people satisfied in him as their infinite portion ; 
 He satisfied in his people ; their rest glorious 
 "in the holy Catholic Church; the communion 
 of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrec- 
 tion of the body, and the life everlasting." 
 
 Alas ! we cannot think of that unruffled peace, 
 thatceaseless harmony, that great harp of countless 
 strings, that vast choir of perfect saints, all full of 
 the same joy, without thinking with deep sorrow 
 and humiliation, of the sad contrast in the church 
 as it now is on earth. How much is there to make 
 us mindful that this portion of the church is yet, 
 in regard to what it ought to be now, and will be 
 hereafter, precisely as each of her members on 
 earth is, as to his " ripeness of age in Christ." 
 The whole body has yet need to grow in grace, 
 just as, and because, each single christian has 
 
46 THE HOLY 
 
 need to grow. How painfully is the bond of 
 peace among christians broken by incessant and 
 numberless controversies about points of faith 
 and order, so that, outwardly seen, there appears 
 little else than conflicting parties striving for the 
 mastery, each with its own distinct profession 
 and altar and ministry and interest and church, 
 making the house of God seem a Babel of jar- 
 ring tongues, and the brotherhood of christians a 
 den of strife. But deeply as this is to be sor- 
 rowed over, we must not let it possess our minds 
 so much as to make us forget the difference be- 
 tween "the bond of peace" and "the unity of 
 the Spirit ;" and how much the former may be 
 broken, while the latter remains undivided. — 
 "The bond of peace is the common use of 
 creeds and sacraments," and belongs to all that 
 name the name of Christ in truth or not. " The 
 unity of the spirit is the peculiar of the saints, 
 and is the internal confederation and conjunction 
 of the members of Christ's body in themselves 
 and to their head."* The one is external, easily 
 invaded ; the other is internal, laid up in the ark 
 of the covenant; it is our life — "it is hid with 
 
 ^* Bp. Taylor, Dissuasive from Popery, p. 2. c. i. § 1. 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 47 
 
 Christ in God." Nothing can break it but what 
 can break the bond between Christ and his peo- 
 ple. It is the unity of one Lord — one sanctifying 
 Spirit, one bread of life, " one God and Father of 
 all." It is essential to the church in its real, 
 invisible being. Wherever there is a soul under 
 the whole heaven who is united to Christ by a 
 living faith, he is in that spiritual union with all 
 his true church. Assemble together from all 
 parts of the earth, all that call themselves chris- 
 tians ! They are not all united by the Spirit, in 
 a living faith, to Christ ; then they may have 
 " thebond of peace" unbroken, but they are not 
 all in "the unity of the Spirit." Gather out of 
 them as many as are truly in Christ, living stones 
 built together in him ; then however divided as 
 to contents of creeds and doctrine of sacraments 
 and order and form, and however the bond of 
 peace among them be broken, they are one in 
 Christ Jesus : they are in that unity of the Spirit 
 which makes them one holy temple in the Lord, 
 the one universal church, the one communion of 
 saints.* To have a common head and life, a 
 
 * " The holy Catholic Church consists, (says Bishop 
 Taylor,) by comprehension and actual potential enclo- 
 
48 THE HOLY 
 
 common hope and obedience; to be sanctified 
 by the same Spirit of holiness ; to feel the same 
 spiritual wants ; to contend with the same spir- 
 itual enemies ; to worship at the same throne of 
 grace ; to eat of the same spiritual meat, and 
 drink of the same spiritual rock that follows us ; 
 thus to be one, and thus to have community in 
 everything pertaining essentially to the love of 
 God and the following of Christ : — this is to 
 have the unity of the Spirit — this is the com- 
 munion of saints; and the more the bond of 
 peace is broken among real christians of different 
 names, the more should we love to recognize 
 this which can never be broken, but by the utter 
 destruction of the spiritual house of God. 
 
 And after all, brethren, how little is the dis- 
 cord, compared with the harmony of the church ! 
 In the fiercest tempests that rage upon the ocean, 
 it is but the mere surface — the visible form of 
 the great deep that feels their power. A very 
 little way beneath, and thence all down to the 
 
 sure, of all communions of holy people. — Dissuasive 
 from Popery, p. 2, c. i. § 1. Bishop Ridley says;— 
 "The holy Catholic Church, which is the communion of 
 sainto."— Ridley's Works, (Parker Soc.,) p. 122. 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 49 
 
 unfathomable depths, is a perfect calm. To the 
 eye, looking on the outward and visible of the 
 ocean, all seems confusion and rage. To the 
 thoughts of the mind, reaching within to the 
 great heart of the ocean, and comparing the vast 
 magnitude of the invisible body of waters un- 
 moved, with the mere covering that is tossed in 
 the storm, it seems that almost all is peace. 
 
 Thus it is with the great communion and fel- 
 lowship, the mystical body, of all God's faithful 
 people. It is a great deep — a boundless ocean. It 
 is " the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." The 
 storms of controversy, the strifes of conflicting 
 divisions, are all over that little bay which is 
 visible to us out of the whole wide sea. You 
 stand low — a single wave bounds your sight. It 
 seems to you a mountain : — You feel as if all 
 were convulsed to the very centre. Could you 
 measure how much of all this confusion is about 
 matters which, however important, affect not the 
 fixed settlement of all christians upon the one 
 Saviour of all ; — could you look down into the 
 inner life of the people of God, and see how all 
 that is spiritual and eternal is unmoved ; — could 
 you compare, at one view, the infinite magnitude 
 and preciousness of those great interests in which 
 5 
 
50 THE HOLY 
 
 all who are in Christ must, in the very nature of 
 that living union with him, agree, with the rela- 
 tive inferiority of those about which they differ; 
 could you see how small is the portion of the 
 great Catholic Church which so much as hears 
 the sound of the waves of strife, compared with 
 all those of that church who are at rest with 
 God, in the peace that passeth understanding; 
 you would then see that the temporary and visi- 
 ble confusion and distraction are as nothing to 
 the present spiritual harmony of the Temple of 
 the living God. You would see that the present 
 state of the redeemed church is truly symbolised 
 in that vision of St. John, wherein he saw the 
 four-and-twenty elders, as representatives of the 
 whole communion of saints, falling down before 
 the Lamb, " having every one of them harps and 
 golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers 
 of saints." "And they sung a new song, say- 
 ing, Thou art worthy, for thou wast slain and 
 hast redeemed us to God, by thy blood, out of 
 every kindred and tongue and people and nation, 
 and hast made us kings and priests unto God." 
 And now, if you will allow me to take any 
 more time, comes the important question, which 
 must have arisen in many minds, what are the 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 51 
 
 consequences of the views, now delivered, as to 
 the importance of those great features of the visi- 
 ble church in which we, as members of a Pro- 
 testant Episcopal Church, so widely differ from 
 a multitude of professing christians around us ? 
 Are the importance and duty of contending ear- 
 nestly for what we believe to be of apostolical 
 institution in the visible body of the church, in 
 any wise diminished by this wide distinction 
 between the outward and visible form, and the 
 inward and invisible being of the church ? 
 
 We answer — in no wise; no more than to 
 draw an equally broad distinction between man, 
 as he is an immortal spirit, and man's body, depre- 
 ciates the importance of defending the latter 
 against all mutilations. 
 
 There is a pregnant passage of Hooker, which 
 could be enlarged into a volume: "As those 
 everlasting promises of love, mercy and blessed- 
 ness belong to the mystical church, even so, on 
 the other side, when we read of any duty which 
 the Church of God is bound unto, the church 
 whom this doth concern is a visible and 
 known company."* Now each true christian 
 
 * Eccl. Pol. c. iii. § 1. 
 
52 THE HOLY 
 
 is God's temple. When you speak of that 
 christian, as God's temple, in his spiritual rela- 
 tions to God, as the receiver of his promises, 
 and united to him, through Christ Jesus; you 
 speak with reference to him as an invisible 
 and spiritual being. He worships God "in 
 the spirit." "But when you speak of that 
 temple, that christian, with reference to what 
 God has given him to do in the ivorld, and for 
 the world, you mean that man, in his visible 
 body — because, though he can live out of the 
 body, he cannot come into contact with the 
 world without that body. So the Church — the 
 fellowship of all true people of God — when you 
 speak of what God has given it to do in the 
 world, you speak of it as visible, under the form 
 of a "sensible known company," with all the attri- 
 butes of an ecclesiastical body. It cannot come 
 into contact with the world without them. Con- 
 sequently, the importance of the visible form, or 
 body, of the spiritual church, and therefore of 
 maintaining it as God hath appointed it, is pre- 
 cisely measured by the importance of all that 
 mighty and glorious work which God has com- 
 mitted to his people for the salvation of all 
 mankind. 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 53 
 
 Again, the question has probably arisen in 
 your minds, what is the bearing of the views we 
 have given on the relations we bear, as true 
 christians, to believers in any other ecclesiastical 
 connection. Surely it is a most interesting and 
 important question ; and I have no disposition to 
 shun it. It is precisely the question of our 
 Lord : " Who are my brethren ? He that doeth 
 the will of my Father which is in heaven, the 
 same is my mother and sister and brother." — 
 We ask the same — Who are our brethren? 
 Who belong to the communion of saints, that 
 Holy Catholic Church, which we believe in, as 
 the mystical body of Christ? We answer: 
 Every soul of man that hath a living faith in 
 him, wherever found, whatever called. There 
 is no difference here. Diversity of outward and 
 visible church-institutions, doubtless makes a 
 great difference of privilege, and of benefit. But 
 it makes no difference in the reality and per- 
 fectness of spiritual union to Christ, and to His 
 Temple — His living Church, among those in 
 whom, is "like precious faith," in Christ. 
 
 I beg to say that it is not because I am forced 
 by the necessary result of the views we have 
 taken of the true Church of God, to make this 
 5* 
 
54 THE HOLY 
 
 concession. It is no concession. It is simply, 
 the^glad profession of a blessed truth which we 
 love, and love to declare and embrace. And the 
 more we have to be separated by difference of 
 institutions and doctrines ; the more must we love 
 to remember that true believers in Jesus Christ 
 are one in him, and will be one with him for- 
 ever. I cannot allow the partition walls which 
 divide the courts of the Lord's visible house, to 
 prevent me from the precious enjoyment resulting 
 from the thought that wherever my Lord has a 
 true believer, I have a brother; that if a poor 
 sharer in the fall is also a blessed sharer with me 
 in the saving grace by faith in Jesus Christ, no 
 matter how he may stand afar off, by departing 
 from visible institutions, which I consider of great 
 price, and which ought to be held at any earthly 
 cost, he is still united to me, and I to him, as bone 
 with bone, in that living, invisible, body of which 
 Christ is head, and no member of which shall 
 ever die. 
 
 So far from being the less disposed to recog- 
 nize our union with all penitent believers in 
 Jesus, as being one with us in the unity of the 
 Spirit, because of the wide and lamentable 
 breaches in the bond of peace, we ought to be the 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 55 
 
 more desirous of doing so, precisely in propor- 
 tion as those bonds are broken. As distributed 
 into separate ecclesiastical organizations, we 
 may become hereafter more and more separated 
 — " we know not what we shall be" in that re- 
 spect. The great adversary may succeed in 
 widening us yet more powerfully. I am not dis- 
 posed to give up, or diminish, our firm attachment 
 to any one of our great distinctive church peculi- 
 arities, for the sake of filling up the sad interval, 
 in such respects, between us and others. Those 
 peculiarities seem to me to involve great interests 
 of truth and order which cannot be compromised. 
 But the more I stand on this ground, with respect to 
 separate ecclesiastical organizations, the more I 
 love to believe that in those separated and conflict- 
 ing visible churches, there are individuals, (a great 
 multitude, I trust) who are alike, with us, united to 
 Christ, my Lord and Life, by a living faith ; and 
 therefore united to me, as brethren in the family 
 of God, and united to the whole Catholic Church 
 and Communion of Saints, as members of Christ 
 and his kingdom. Do those churches contend 
 with ours, and we with them ? I take refuge 
 from the affliction of such controversy (for how- 
 ever necessary it may be, it is an affliction to a 
 
56 THE HOLY 
 
 Christian mind) ; I take comfort under all such 
 tribulations, in the precious truth professed in that 
 article of our Creed, "I believe in the Communion 
 of Saints." — The sweetness of that truth was 
 never greater to a Christian heart than now, when 
 the visible Communion of Christians seems to be 
 becoming more and more broken, and their real 
 Communion in Christ more and more to be 
 known only as a matter of faith in God's pro- 
 mises to make and hold the true people as one 
 in Christ Jesus. The trials of believers, in this 
 respect, I do not suppose have reached their 
 height. When the prophet was surrounded with 
 armed forces to take him, and his servant trem- 
 bled at the danger, the prophet prayed, and the 
 eyes of his servant were opened, and he saw a 
 great army of the hosts of God, come down from 
 heaven, surrounding the man of God, and ready 
 to do battle with his enemies. The compara- 
 tively little flock of God's true people may in a 
 few years find themselves in a similar peril, when 
 it will be more felt than it is now, how comforting 
 it is to be able to lift up the eye of faith and see, 
 under all the conflicting elements of the visible 
 Church, a brother in every true believer, and in 
 all the people of God, a holy Church, the unity 
 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. 57 
 
 of which, in Christ, cannot be broken, and against 
 which the gates of hell can never prevail. 
 
 In conclusion. All that we have said, preaches 
 most solemnly to every soul the necessity of 
 seeing that, whatever else he may be, he is in 
 Christ Jesus, and will be found in him, when 
 the separation of the great day shall be made 
 between the true flock of Christ, and all that only 
 name his name. Oh ! to be in the ark of Christ, 
 when the flood cometh ! Oh ! to have, besides the 
 handwriting of ordinances upon us, when God's 
 inquisition shall be made, the hand-writing of the 
 Spirit of God upon our souls, witnessing that we 
 are His people ; that seal, whereby the Holy 
 Ghost seals " unto the day of Redemption." St. 
 Paul understood this, and counted all things but 
 loss, all externals as worthless, compared with 
 being "found in Christ,'' by having on "the 
 righteousness of God by faith." Let us feel his 
 spirit ! Let us press on in his race ! Let us, 
 with him, bow our knees " unto the father of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in 
 heaven and earth is named, that he would grant 
 us to be strengthened with might by his Spirit, in 
 the inner man, that Christ may dwell in our hearts 
 by faith ; that we being rooted and grounded in 
 
58 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH. 
 
 love may be able to comprehend, with ail saints, 
 what is the length, and breadth, and depth, and 
 height, and to know the love of Christ, which 
 passeth knowledge, that we may be filled with 
 all the fulness of God. Now unto Him that is 
 able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we 
 ask or think, according to the power that work- 
 eth in us, unto Him be glory, in the Church, by 
 Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without 
 end. Amen."* 
 
 * Ephes. iii. 
 
 $ 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 Immediate union by faith to Christ. It is a ques- 
 tion of vastly greater consequence than at first appears 
 to many, whether the sinner comes by faith imme- 
 diately to Christ, or intermediately only, through the 
 sacraments of the Church ; whether he is privileged 
 to come nigh, and draw life directly, from Christ the 
 Head ; or whether he can only come to His visible 
 body, (the visible Church) and get life through its 
 sacramental channels and ministrations ; whether 
 we are allowed to receive the precious anointing of 
 the Holy Ghost, directly from the head of our Great 
 High Priest, on whom, as Man for us, it was poured 
 out u without measure," each believer receiving as 
 directly from Christ as if he were the only member of 
 Christ; or whether the several believers can only re- 
 ceive that anointing of grace when it has first flowed 
 down to something called Christ's body, abstractedly 
 from the several members comprising Christ's people, 
 and thence down to the skirts of his clothing. 
 
 The docrrine is maintained by many, who sympa- 
 thise with the Tractarian writers, that Christ has 
 given the whole administration of his grace to His 
 Church — which, in this sense, is called "His ful- 
 ness;" that the Church, by Priesthood and Sacra- 
 ments, gives to every man the grace purchased by 
 
60 APPENDIX. 
 
 Christ, as each has need ; that to this end, when the 
 Church was established, on the day of Pentecost, 
 all the fulness of Christ, all his grace for his people 
 was invested in that Church, as a corporate spiritual 
 institution, to hold that sacred property and use it as 
 Christ's steward ; consequently that when a sinner 
 is said to come to Christ, the meaning is that he 
 comes to Christ's Church, as his representative and 
 agent. He does not touch Christ by faith; but only 
 the hem of his garment, the visible signs of the 
 Church's ordinances. He is made a living stone, not 
 by being brought directly to that great living corner- 
 stone which is (i lain in Zion ;" but to a building 
 erected on that stone which itself has all its life and 
 represents it ; and from which, life is received by 
 every new addition ; so that the passage of St. Peter, 
 " To whom coming as unto a living stone, ye also as 
 lively stones are built up" &c. does not mean coming 
 unto Christ, except as it may be considered to be a 
 coming unto Christ, when we come unto those who 
 having come to him before us, and have been already 
 built up in him. 
 
 Now this is an awful perversion of the Gospel, 
 and denial of the most precious privileges of the be- 
 liever. It is one of the grand fictions of Rome, 
 which lies at the base of her Anti-Christian system. 
 It is nothing less than taking the sinner to man, 
 instead of God. It is the precious birth-right of the 
 believer, in his secret exercises of communion, by 
 faith, with God, to cease from man, to look above ordi- 
 
APPENDIX. 61 
 
 nances, to see, without any intervening cloud, or 
 medium, the Lamb of God ; to come as directly to 
 him as if there were not a sacrament, or ordinance, 
 or ministry, on earth, and be built up in him as im- 
 mediately as if not a soul had ever been built up in 
 him before. In other words, precisely as the first 
 souls that were united by faith to that living corner- 
 stone, could have had none between them and Christ, 
 no row of intervening stones ; so all believers, to the 
 end of the world, are united just as immediately. 
 The mere incidental difference that some are con- 
 verted in one century, some in a later, makes no 
 difference as to the privileges of any. All are alike 
 built immediately on Christ. All are equally in the 
 head. All have the same directness of communion 
 with him. All receive alike out of his fulness. 
 
 This is not only illustrated, but typically proved 
 by the history of the Manna in the wilderness. The 
 Church of God in the wilderness was sustained, as 
 to bodily food, exclusively by the Manna which came 
 down from heaven. Our Lord, in the sixth chapter 
 of St. John, expressly points to that Manna as a 
 type of Himself. As that supplied the bodily wants 
 of the people Israel ; so is he the bread of life for 
 the spiritual wants of God's true Israel. But was 
 the Manna laid up in some depot of the Church 
 in the wilderness ; was it invested in the hands 
 of some stewards, at the beginning of the jour- 
 ney, to be kept and dealt out during all the forty 
 years; was the prerogative of its administration 
 
 6 
 
62 APPENDIX. 
 
 given to the Priesthood, and were the people to go 
 to them, day by day, to get as much as they needed 1 
 No such thing ! The Priesthood had nothing to do 
 with its distribution. It was a matter of direct, daily 
 communication between the Head of that Church 
 and every individual member. There was no supply 
 laid up in certain hands. When this was attempted, 
 the bread corrupted ,• just as when the Anti-Christian 
 doctrine, against which I am arguing, took posses- 
 sion of the Church, and the attempt was made to 
 interfere with the direct, daily intercourse between 
 Christ and each of his people, every thing in the 
 Church corrupted. The simple mode by which each 
 man of Israel was fed, was his going out, day by 
 day, whether he was Priest, Levite, or any thing 
 else, Aaron or Moses, or the least of the host, and 
 gathering/or himself. There was no vicarious work 
 on the part of the Church, or any representative 
 body. It w r as an act of faith for each man daily 
 to exercise. The supply was all held in the hands 
 of the Great Head of the Church, from begin- 
 ning to end. No stewardship was appointed. It 
 was He who gave to every man ; and he gave only 
 for the day, lest the sense of constant, individual, 
 entire dependence on Him should be impaired. 
 
 So are we taught by Him, every day, to ask our 
 Manna — " Give us this day our daily bread." The 
 Church is still on its pilgrimage. The people of 
 God live by faith ; their bread comes down from hea- 
 ven. Each soul looks for it directly unto Christ, 
 
APPENDIX. 63 
 
 who himself is that bread. He only knows what 
 each wants. He only can give as each needs. 
 Prayer of faith is the hand by which each receives 
 out of his fulness. He has never given his glory, 
 in this respect, to another. Corruption must enter 
 into the Church that attempts to interfere with the 
 immediate, continual application of his people, for all 
 grace, to their one, only, and glorious Head and Life. 
 
 I have not set out to write an essay on this part 
 of our subject. If the views exhibited in the sermon 
 concerning the invisible Church, be true, the theory 
 of the visible Church being the depository of grace, 
 &c, cannot stand. I will allude to one passage 
 which is often used, as if there could be no doubt 
 of its sustaining that theory. 
 
 I refer to the 23d chapter of the Epistle to the 
 Ephesians, and 23d verse. 
 
 St. Paul speaking of the Church, says, " which is 
 his (Christ's) body, the fulness (rtta^wfia) of him that 
 filleth all in a//." 
 
 This passage is often treated, as if the Church 
 were Christ's fulness, in the sense of being, corpo- 
 rately, in possession of all the grace which Christ 
 has purchased for his people, independently of his 
 indwelling, by his Spirit, in the heart of each. It 
 will be seen, from the following references, that 
 such is in no sense the understanding of the passage 
 by our old divines, and others. It will appear that 
 the passage is understood as meaning that the 
 Church is Christ's fulness, simply as the completion 
 
64 APPENDIX. 
 
 of Him, in his officers head of the mystical body — his 
 Church ; j ust as a king is relatively incomplete with- 
 out a kingdom, and thus a kingdom is the fulness, 
 or complimentum, of a king. 
 
 Hooker says, " It pleaseth Christ, in mercy, to 
 account himself incomplete and maimed without us. 
 (Note of Hooker's to this. Eph. i. 23, Ecclesia 
 complimentum ejus qui implet omnia in omnibus.) 
 
 " But most assured we are, that we all receive of 
 his fulness, because he is in us as a moving and work- 
 ing cause. — Hooker 6 v. § 56, near end. 
 
 Archbishop Usher comments on the same passage 
 as follows : " As it hath pleased the Father, that in 
 Him should all fulness dwell ; so the Son is pleased 
 not to hold it any disparagement, that his body, the 
 Church, should be accounted the fulness of Him that 
 Jilleth all in all', that, howsoever, in himself, he is 
 most absolutely, and perfectly, complete, yet in his 
 Church, so nearly conjoined with him, that hehold- 
 eth not himself full without it; but as long as any 
 one member remaineth ungathered and unknit into 
 this mystical body of his, he accounteth, in the 
 meantime, somewhat to be deficient in himself." — 
 Sermon before the King — in Usher's Jlnswer to a 
 Jesuit, p. 694. 
 
 Beveridge gives the same. " The Church is so 
 Christ's body that it is his rfK^ioua, His Fulness, 
 that whereby he is full and complete, which other- 
 wise he would not be, no more than a head is with- 
 out a body. * * And therefore the Epistle here truly 
 
APPENDIX. 65 
 
 calls the Church his fulness or complement. Beve- 
 ridge^s Sermons, No. 32, vol. 1, p. 385. 
 
 McKnight gives the same view, on Eph. i. 23, 
 and on Rom. xi. 12 — " If the diminishing of them be 
 the riches of the Gentiles how much more their fulness, 
 " rtto^w^a" — see the same word in 3Ialthew ix. 16. 
 
 The same view is given in Poole's Synopsis, and 
 in Schleusner's Lexicon. Art. rt^w^a. 
 
 There is a very important and solemn sense, in 
 which each Christian may be "filled with all the ful- 
 ness of God." St. Paul prays for the Ephesian 
 Christians — Eph. iii. 19 — that they " may be filed 
 with all the fulness of God" — not " the fulness of 
 the Godhead" as Christ was and is ; but " the fulness 
 of God ;" the fulness of that sanctifying grace which 
 God has promised to his people, as the purchase 
 of Christ in their behalf. But in this passage 
 it is the individual believer, and not any corporate 
 body that is prayed for. The context shows that, as 
 St. Paul prays for the Ephesians, individually, that 
 Christ may dwell in their hearts, by faith ,- so he prays 
 for the same individuals that they may be severally 
 filled with the fulness of God. In one sense indeed, 
 the Church may be spoken of in the same way, but 
 only as it is the aggregate of all in whose hearts, as 
 individual believers, Christ dwells by faith. 
 
 The passages below from those great divines of the 
 17th century, Dr. Jackson and Archbishop Usher, 
 will show how giants in divinity of those days were 
 wont to speak of union to Christ. 
 
 6* 
 
66 APPENDIX. 
 
 " All that believe, as Peter and the other Apostles 
 did, or shall so believe, unto the world's end, are 
 immediately laid on the same foundation stone, not 
 one upon another, their union or annexation unto 
 Christ is as immediate as Peters was, and is or shall 
 be as indissoluble as his was to Christ, albeit, their 
 growth be not so great, nor for quality so glorious. 
 The best description of this edifice, thus immediately 
 erected upon the same stone, would be that of the 
 poet, Crescit crescentibus illis. As the number of liv- 
 ing stones which are laid upon the foundation stone 
 increases, so the foundation or corner stone, which 
 God did promise to lay in Zion, doth increase. As 
 every particular living stone increaseth or groweth 
 from a stone into a pillar of the house of God, unto 
 a temple of God ; so this foundation stone, that is, 
 Christ as man, still groweth, still increaseth, not in 
 himself, but in them. For they grow by his growth 
 in them, or by diffusion of life from him into them. — 
 Jackson's Works, vol. III. b. II. c. IV. § 22. 
 
 "Our Apostle's words are express that all the 
 building is fitly framed together in Christ, and so 
 framed together groweth up unto an holy temple 
 in the Lord. He saith not, we are builded one upon 
 another, but builded together in him for an habita- 
 tion of God through the Spirit. The Spirit by which 
 we are builded together in Christ, or through which 
 we become the habitation of God, is not communi- 
 cated and propagated unto us as from intermediate 
 foundations or roots. We and all true believers receive 
 
APPENDIX. 67 
 
 the influence of the Spirit as immediately from Christ, 
 or from God the Father and the Son, in the same 
 manner as St. Peter did. — Ibid, § 6. 
 
 " Christ is not the foundation only, but the temple 
 of God. * * * That we then become living stones 
 in this edifice, it is from our immediate union with 
 this chief corner-stone ; being united to him he is 
 fashioned in us ; we become living stones, growing 
 stones, &c." — Ibid, § 9. 
 
 " The mystery of our union to Christ, (says Arch- 
 bishop Usher) consisteth mainly in this ; that the 
 self same Spirit which is in him, as in the head, is 
 so derived from him into every one of his true 
 members, that thereby they are animated and quick- 
 ened to a spiritual life. * * * 
 
 " The formal reason of the union of the membeis 
 of our bodies consisteth not in the continuity of the 
 parts, though that also be requisite to the unity of 
 a natural body, but in the animation thereof by one 
 and the same spirit. * * And even thus it is in 
 Christ, although in regard of his corporal presence, 
 the heaven must receive him until the times of the 
 restitution of all things ; yet he is here with us 
 always, even unto the end of the world, by the pre- 
 sence of his Spirit. — Sermon before House of Com- 
 mons. 
 
APPENDIX B. 
 
 FURTHER REMARKS ON THE RELATIONS OF THE 
 VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE CHURCH. 
 
 If the reader, unaccustomed to such subjects as 
 are treated in the sermon, would rightly appre- 
 ciate the views therein given, he must keep 
 clear in his mind the distinction between the uni- 
 versal visible church, and all particular ecclesias- 
 tical organizations. The visible church, universal, 
 is not the comprehension of all separate eccle- 
 siastical organizations, such as the particular con- 
 stitutions of parishes, dioceses or national churches, 
 but of all professing- christians, united in the bonds 
 of common sacraments, and the common funda- 
 mental faith, into one community, however scat- 
 tered in place, however diversified in other ecclesi- 
 astical relations. 
 
 It may seem at first sight that the views of the 
 discourse are incompatible with the 19th Article, 
 entitled — " Of the Church" — which is as follows: 
 
 "The visible Church of Christ is a congregation 
 of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God 
 is preached, and the sacraments be duly minis- 
 tered, according to Christ's ordinance, in all those 
 things that of necessity are requisite to the same." 
 
 This is a description of the Visible Church. At 
 first view it seems to identify the bounds of the 
 
APPENDIX. 69 
 
 visible church with those of the company of all 
 God's true, believing, obedient people ; for no one 
 acquainted with the language of the writers of the 
 days when the articles were written, can doubt that 
 il a congregation of all God' 's faithful people ," means 
 the community or society of all God's true people ; 
 in other words, all who are living "a life of faith 
 upon the Son of God." 
 
 Now, can it be for a moment supposed that our 
 Reformers intended to say that the visible, or pro- 
 fessing church, embraces none but such faithful 
 people ? in other words, that all professing chris- 
 tians are true christians? This were impossible. 
 The Reformers, we all know, held no such views ; 
 but loudly contended against all approach to it in 
 the Church of Rome. 
 
 What then does the article mean 1 A little con- 
 sideration will show that it speaks to two points. 
 1st. What is the Church? for it is entitled — "Of 
 the Church.'''' 2d. What is the visibility of the 
 Church, or in what is it visible? 
 
 To the first, it says, The Church is "a congre- 
 gation" or, society, of God's faithful people, pre- 
 cisely according to the doctrine of the sermon. To 
 the second, it says, The Church is a visible church 
 in this, viz: — In it "the pure Word of God is 
 preached, and the sacraments be duly ministered 
 according to Christ's ordinance, &c. In other 
 words, the essential notes of the church, by which 
 it is made visible, are the administration of the 
 
70 APPENDIX. 
 
 sacraments in all things essential to them, and 
 the preaching of the pure word of God. Where- 
 ever these are, is the visibility of the church : — 
 Wherever there is, under them, a community of 
 God's true people, there the true church not only is, 
 but is visible, as far as it can be,"to those who cannot 
 search the hearts. 
 
 The views, given in the sermon, of the invisible 
 church, are beautifully expressed, not only in the 
 communion office, where it is called — " the blessed 
 company of all God's faithful people" — but in the 
 collect for Ml Saints Day, as follows : — " Oh, Al- 
 mighty God, who hast knit together thine elect in one 
 communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy 
 son Christ, our Lord; Grant us grace so to follow thy 
 blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living," $rc. 
 
 This leads us to some remarks on what are ealled 
 " Notes of the Church." 
 
 Precisely as visible sacraments are spoken of, as 
 if they were the invisible grace which they signify 
 — (see the discourse,) so the whole visibility 
 of the church is spoken of as if it constituted the 
 church which it indicates. Thus what are called 
 " Notes" of the true Church, which, in protestant 
 doctrine, are simply the profession of the funda- 
 mental christian faith, in the right use of the christian 
 sacraments and ministry, are often spoken of as if 
 they were constituent elements of the church. All 
 this language is correct, precisely in the sense in 
 which it is correct to speak of the sacramental re- 
 
APPENDIX. 71 
 
 ceiving the communion, as the communion of the body 
 of Christ ,• or the sacramental receiving of baptism, 
 as the baptism of the Holy Ghost ; or that the sa- 
 cramental receiving of circumcision was the cir- 
 cumcision ; or that the man who has the notes of 
 being a christian, in having the profession of the 
 fundamentals of the faith, joined with the recep- 
 tion of the sacraments, is thereby a real christian. 
 He has the notes, or signs, of a christian, and 
 therefore is called a christian; but those notes or 
 signs do not make him a true christian, nor prove 
 him to be such. They only prove that he has the 
 divinely appointed visibility of a christian. Thus, 
 as to the notes of the true church. They do not 
 belong to the being of the church in the sight of 
 God; but only to its being in the sight of man — 
 that is, to its visibility, its form. That form may 
 be supposed all laid aside, and a new mode of pro- 
 fession put on, under another dispensation ; and yet 
 the church may continue essentially the same. Its 
 notes, or signs, indicate ,• they do not constitute its 
 being. They are marks, not properties. Thus the 
 whole divinely appointed visibility of thechurch is 
 the one sign of the church, indicating, as the light 
 upon the dwellings of the Israelites in Egypt, 
 amidst the deep surrounding darkness, the existence 
 in this dark world, of a church which otherwise 
 would be invisible; but it does no more. It is not 
 the church, any more than that miraculous light 
 wherewith God marked off his people Israel, and 
 
72 APPENDIX. 
 
 made his church visible in the night of Egypt, was 
 that people. 
 
 The church has no more right to dispense with 
 the visible form, under which God has appointed it 
 to be in this world, than a man has a right to divest 
 himself of the body which Gcd has given him to 
 wear. We consider the body of sacraments and 
 ordinances, by which the true spiritual church is 
 made visible, to be quite as necessary to the church 
 for its office in this world, as the body of flesh, by 
 which the true man is made a visible man, is ne- 
 cessary to his duty on earth. But the question, 
 what constitutes the church, is as independent of 
 what makes it the visible church, as the question, 
 what is the intelligent man, is independent of what 
 makes the body of a man. 
 
 For ordinary purposes, no harm may arise from 
 confounding, in common speech, the visibility of 
 the church with the being of the church, and speak- 
 ing of the one, as if it were identical with the 
 other. Thus we speak of man. The visible man, 
 his body, is spoken of as the man. We say the 
 man is dead, when we mean only that his body, 
 the visible form, or sign of the man, is dead. The 
 man himself is living still, but invisibly. But 
 when the great question comes — what is it to be a 
 christian, to be of the communion of saints — in 
 other words, what is it to be a member of the holy 
 Catholic Church, the body of Christ; what is that 
 society to which belong exclusively the promises 
 
APPENDIX. 73: 
 
 of the Gospel, the life of Christ, and the heritage 
 of God ; then, as we say of every individual person 
 who has been baptized, and is a communicant, that 
 he is not a christian, except he have received the 
 inward baptism of the Holy Ghost, and does feed 
 upon Christ in his heart by faith ; so we must say 
 of all the baptized and the communicating, that 
 while they all have the visibility of the church, 
 none of them have any part in its reality, except 
 they be joined by a living faith to Christ. 
 
 If the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, in the 
 sense of the Church of Rome, and of Tractarian di- 
 vinity be true, namely, that baptism is invariably 
 accompanied by, and efficacious in producing, all the 
 inward and spiritual change which is necessary to 
 the spiritual life, then every man that is a chris- 
 tian outwardly, is a christian also inwardly — then 
 the rites of the church, or its visible marks, are co-ex- 
 tensive with its spiritual being; then also the distinc- 
 tion between the church mystical or invisible, and the 
 church visible, is but a fancy ; then all the visible 
 is the spiritual and the true ; all are of Israel that 
 are called Israel; and the holy Catholic Church, as 
 it stands before God, is essentially the Catholic- 
 visible church as seen of men. 
 
 Such is the doctrine of the papal system. Popery 
 
 cannot abide the doctrine of an invisible church, as 
 
 exhibited in this discourse, and as we shall show in 
 
 this appendix, was the teaching of the great divines 
 
 7 
 
74 APPENDIX. 
 
 of the Church of England, from the Reformation 
 downward. 
 
 The effect of this doctrine upon the Romish 
 claim of infallibility, will illustrate the cause of 
 Romish enmity thereto, as well as that of systems 
 of divinity more or less approximating to the Ro- 
 mish faith. The church, according to Rome, is, by 
 some representative or other, an infallible guide of 
 faith and determiner of controversy . This she can 
 only be, if at all, because to her the promises of God 
 are made. It becomes then a great question for 
 Rome to settle what is that church to which are 
 given the promises of God, and which thus becomes 
 " the pillar and ground of the truth ;" and is, there- 
 fore, by Romish inference, the infallible indicator of 
 truth. It must be either what protestants call the 
 invisible church, consisting only of those who are 
 in the exercise of a living faith; or it must be what 
 protestants call the visible church, as embracing the 
 merely nominal as well as the true people of God. 
 If the former be exclusively the church which pos- 
 sesses the promises, then because, while the per- 
 sons of the members of that church are visible, 
 their distinctive character, as true Israelites, is invi- 
 sible, Romanists can never see their guide; the 
 oracle is of no use, since its whereabouts is not 
 known; and so infallibility, if it exist, is of no 
 tangible use. The necessity of escaping this con- 
 sequence, by denying the premises, was perfectly 
 understood by Cardinal Bellarmine. Therefore 
 
APPENDIX. 75^ 
 
 he said : " It is necessary it should be infallibly 
 certain to us, which assembly of men is the Church, 
 For since the Scriptures, traditions, and plainly all 
 doctrines, depend on the testimony of the church; 
 unless it be most sure which is the true church, all 
 things will be wholly uncertain. But it cannot 
 appear to us which is the true church, if internal 
 faith be required of every member or part of the 
 church.''''* 
 
 Here is precisely the point. If none can be a 
 member of that mystical body to which pertain the 
 promises, unless he have internal faith — that is, 
 living faith — the infallibility of the church, as a 
 determiner of controversy, perishes. Hence, of 
 course Rome must deny that necessity, and main- 
 tain that those who have not living faith, are not 
 only professedly, but really, members of the true 
 church, and therefore sharers in the promises. — 
 Hence, in her use, the expressions, mystical body 
 of Christ, temple of God, communion of saints, 
 holy Catholic Church, visible church, are precisely 
 of the same application. Most of the later Romanist 
 writers " take all those glorious titles or promises 
 made to the church in its most ample or exquisite 
 signification, to be exactly and entirely fulfilled of 
 the visible church throughout all ages. The visible 
 church, in their language, is a society or body ec- 
 
 * Lib. iii. de Eccl. Milit. cap. 10 sect. Ad hoc ne- 
 cesse est, &c; quoted by Bp. Taylor. 
 
76 APPENDIX. 
 
 clesiastic, notoriously known by the site or the place 
 of its residence, or by their dignity, order and 
 offices, which are the perpetual governors of it." In 
 support of their doctrine, that this visible church is 
 the true, universal, holy church, "never did the Jew 
 doat half so much on external circumcision and legal 
 sacrifices, or the canonical priesthood, as the mo- 
 dern Romanist doth on the sacraments of the gospel, 
 and on his imaginary priesthood, after the order of 
 Melchizedeck, or other like notes or sensible cogni- 
 zances of the visible church."* Cardinal Bellar- 
 mine makes an argument against Calvin's view of 
 the invisible church, " which being drawn into 
 form, (says Dr. Jackson,) stands thus : " The word 
 {church) in Scripture doth always import a visible 
 company of men ; therefore it doth not belong to an 
 invisible congregation" The argument, (proceeds 
 Jackson,) is no better than this : The holy ointment 
 did bedew or besprinkle Jar on' s garments ; ergo, it 
 was not poured upon his head, or it did not mollify 
 or supple some other parts of his body; whereas, the 
 truth is, unless the ointment had first been plenti- 
 fully poured upon his head, it could not have run 
 down his neck unto the skirts of his vesture. An- 
 swerable to this representation, we say that all the 
 glorious prerogatives, titles or promises, annexed 
 to the church in Scriptures, are in the first place, 
 
 f * Dr. Jackson's Treatise on the Holy Catholic 
 Church, (Goode's ed., Lond.,) pp. 68, 34,98. 
 
APPENDIX. 77 
 
 and principally meant, of Chist's live mystical 
 body. But being in abundant measure bestowed 
 on it, they descend by analogy or participation, 
 unto all and every one that hath put on Christ by 
 profession, without respect of person, place or 
 dignity. All the difference in the measure of their 
 participation or manner of their attribution, ariseth 
 from the divers degrees of similitudes or proportion 
 which they hold with the actual live-members of 
 Christ's mystical body in matter of faith or conver- 
 sation. Such as have the true model or draft of 
 that Catholic faith, without which no man can be 
 saved, imprinted on their understandings, albeit not 
 solidly engrossed or transmitted into their hearts 
 and affections, are to be reputed by us, (who under- 
 stand their external profession better than their in- 
 ward disposition,) true Catholics — true members of 
 Christ's body and heirs of promise; although in 
 very deed, and in His sight that knows the secrets 
 of men's hearts, many of them be members of 
 Christ's body only in such sense as a human body 
 shaped or organized, but not yet quickened with the 
 spirit of life, is termed a man. 
 
 " The conclusion, touching this point, which 
 Bellarmine and his followers are bound to prove, is 
 this : that under the name and titles of that church 
 whereunto the assistance of God's spirit for its 
 direction or other like prerogatives, are, by God's 
 word, assured, the visible church, taken in that 
 
78 APPENDIX. 
 
 sense in which they always take it, is either literally 
 meant, or necessarily included."* 
 
 Until the Council of Trent constructed the pre- 
 sent fixed creed of the Church of Rome, out of 
 what before were, in a great degree, floating, 
 unfixed opinions, more or less prevalent among her 
 writers, there were not wanting those who wrote 
 with sufficient clearness in support of the distinc- 
 tion between the church invisible and visible, as 
 exhibited in this discourse. It was not until some- 
 time after the Council that such writers quite 
 ceased. Jackson says: "Until Bellarmine, Valentia, 
 Stapleton, and some others, did trouble the stream 
 of God's word," the doctrine here shown "was 
 clearly represented to the adversaries of our church." 
 Bishop Taylor, in his Dissuasive from Popery, 
 quotes several Romish doctors, as Aquinas, Petrus 
 a Soto, Melchior Canus, &c, as holding that 
 wicked men are not true members of the church, 
 but only equivocally. Mali quidem sunt in ecclesia, 
 sed non de ecclesia ; quia mali non sunt de regno 
 Dei, sed de regno diaboli." Bellarmine confesses 
 that such is the declaration of those writers, but 
 tries to evade it by saying that the wicked are not 
 in the church in the same sense as others, while he 
 contends that they nevertheless do truly constitute a 
 true part of the true church. 
 
 Nothing can be more satisfactory to a protestant, 
 
 * Jackson lb. pp. 32, 33, 34. 
 
APPENDIX. 79 
 
 on this head, than the language of the Provincial 
 Council of Colon in its Enchiridion of Christian 
 Institutions, where it speaks of the Article of the 
 Creed in the Catholic Church, after dividing the 
 church into triumphant and militant. Of the latter, 
 it says : "The church militant is to be regarded 
 under two aspects; first, more strictly, as con- 
 sisting of those who are so in the Church of 
 God, that they are themselves the Church of God, 
 or the Temple of the Holy Ghost, built of 
 holy stones. The Church in this sense is known only 
 to God. But such is not the sense in which the 
 word Church is to be taken, either where Christ 
 gives command concerning hearing the church, or 
 the fathers, after the Apostles speak of the autho- 
 rity of the Church."* 
 
 But such is not the doctrine of the Church of 
 Rome, as the Council of Trent has decreed it, and 
 as its expositor and vindicator, Bellarmine, exhibits 
 it. That the visible Church, with all its mixture, is 
 the one holy, Catholic, living, Church of God, to 
 which belong all the promises which belong to 
 Christ's living, mystical body; and that every bap- 
 tized person who is neither excommunicate, a here- 
 tic, infidel, or schismatic, is a true member of that 
 Church, is a doctrine essentially involved in her 
 whole system. By Baptismal Regeneration, and 
 Justification, as held in the Church of Rome, the 
 
 * Enchirid. Christian. Institut. fol. 65, quoted by 
 Jackson. 
 
80 APPENDIX. 
 
 baptism of water and the inward renewing of the 
 Holy Ghost are so identified, that all who have 
 received the former are declared to have received, 
 ex opere operato, the latter, and to have thus become 
 spiritually the children of God by adoption and 
 grace. Then, for that part of the baptized who have 
 fallen into mortal sin, and thus lost their baptismal 
 purity, and who have not taken advantage of the 
 sacrament of penance to reinstate them in the favour 
 of God, and are therefore continuing under deadly 
 sin, their faith dead, she kindly pronounces that they 
 have true faith and are true Christians still ; she 
 pronounces anathema on any who shall say " that 
 when grace is lost by sin, faith is lost together with 
 it ; or that the faith which remains is not true faith, 
 though it be not living; or that a man is not a chris- 
 tian who has faith without love."* 
 
 The Catechism of the Council of Trent declares 
 accordingly, as the authentic interpreter of the coun- 
 cil, that " however wicked and flagitious men may be, 
 it is certain that unless they be infidels, heretics and 
 schismatics, or excommunicate," (which would cut 
 them off from the visible church) " they still belong 
 to the Church."-)- This expansive pale takes into 
 the true membership of the true living Church of 
 true Christians, the very worst as well as the best, 
 if only they be neither heretics, schismatics, infidels 
 
 * Council of Trent, Can. XXVIII. Sess. VI. 
 f Catechism, pp. 94, 95 Bait. Ed. 1833. 
 
APPENDIX. 81 
 
 or excommunicate. Thus is obtained a visible body 
 for the deposite of infallibility, as well as of all the 
 other gifts and graces of God's true Church; — this 
 same terribly permixta ecclesia, which we call the 
 visible Church, and which the Scriptures liken to 
 a great net which catches the good and the bad. 
 All now that remains for the Church of Rome to 
 do is to settle the representation of this Church, so 
 as to fix the definite, accessible seat of the oracle, 
 and at what points the grace given to the whole body 
 can be drawn out by the individual applicant. The 
 latter she readily arranges between the Sacraments 
 and the Priesthood, multiplying the Sacraments for 
 the sake of increasing the prerogatives of the Priest- 
 hood. The former is yet vexata qusestio, between 
 General Councils as representatives of the Church, 
 and the Pope as the Vicar of Christ ; and both united 
 as the combined representation of the Head and the 
 members. The settlement of that question is not 
 necessary to the practical working of the system. 
 General Councils are not likely soon again to appear 
 for their claim. — Meanwhile the Pope is the eccksia 
 docens, the practically conceded depository of infalli- 
 bility. He is holder of the keys, and the ultimate 
 controller of the several agencies, by which the grace 
 committed to the Church is dispensed to the several 
 members of the whole body, whether on earth or in 
 purgatorial pains. Take away from beneath his feet 
 these two props —first, the pretence that every bap 
 
82 APPENDIX. 
 
 tized person is spiritually and internally renewed, 
 ex opere operato ; secondly, that to be a true christian 
 and have true faith, and so to be a true member of 
 God's Church, does not require that a man should 
 have " faith that worketh by love," or be else than 
 " most wicked or flagitious ;" in other words, estab- 
 lish the Scriptural doctrine that the Church of the 
 promises, " the pillar and ground of the truth," the 
 communion of saints, the holy Catholic Church, the 
 living, mystical body of Christ is composed only 
 of those who are " in Christ Jesus" by a living, 
 fruitful faith, and the foundations of that whole city 
 of abominations will become as quicksand. 
 
 Hence the pains taken by our old Anglican divines, 
 of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, to make 
 plain the distinction between the church visible and 
 invisible, " for lack of diligent observing of which 
 (says Hooker) the oversights are neither few nor 
 light that have been committed." 
 
 The present writer has observed in many ministers 
 of our Protestant Church of these United States, 
 a great lack of the diligent observing of that differ- 
 ence ; and he thinks that the oversights which have 
 ensued, and do still increase, are neither few nor 
 light, but so many and weighty as to affect in a very 
 important degree the great interests of gospel truth. 
 The whole matter concerning Regeneration and Jus- 
 tification, as connected with the Sacraments, and all 
 the language of the Scriptures, the early Fathers, 
 and the early Anglican divines, would be mnch 
 
APPENDIX. 83 
 
 more correctly and easily understood, were that dif- 
 ference well seen and forcibly fixed in the mind. 
 
 Peculiar circumstances have tended so much to 
 draw the minds of the Protestant Episcopal ministry 
 in this country, to the study and defence of those 
 visible institutions of the Church which we believe 
 to be apostolic in origin, and important enough tojbe 
 sustained by any earthly sacrifice, that it is appre- 
 hended there are not a few minds, otherwise strongly 
 imbued with evangelical truth, that have become so 
 unused to the old Anglico-Protestant views of the 
 Church as it is invisible or mystical, that the undis- 
 guised exhibition of them in this discourse will seem 
 almost new and dangerous. Such minds, on a little 
 reflection, will come to their true bearings. The 
 slightest effort to controvert these views from Scrip- 
 ture, or in consistency with other great truths of the 
 gospel, will convince them that nothing else can be 
 true, and that the whole doctrine is as well Anglican 
 as scriptural. The tendency in the present day 
 among many, in the precise direction by which the 
 Romish Church arrived at its present doctrine, has 
 suggested the importance of giving those views the 
 prominence they occupy in this discourse. And 
 that no reader of these pages may be at a loss to 
 know how entirely the doctrine they contain is 
 identical, in every particular, with that which our 
 Hookers, and Taylors, and Ushers, &c. most ear- 
 nestly taught, a series of extracts from such autho- 
 
84 APPENDIX. 
 
 rities is here added, to which the reader's careful 
 attention is requested. 
 
 We have taken Cranmer and Ridley for the times 
 of the Reformation — Hooker for the days immedi- 
 ately succeeding — Bishops Taylor and Hall, Arch- 
 bishop Usher, Drs. Jackson and Perkins for the 
 trying times of the early part of the 17th century — 
 and Dr. Barrow for those immediately succeeding. 
 
 In this selection we have, as holding what are 
 now called Calvinistic views of the doctrines of 
 grace, Hooker, and Hall, and Usher, &c. On the 
 opposite side, we have the golden-mouthed Bishop 
 Taylor ; a little less Arminian, Dr. Barrow — still 
 less, Dr. Jackson. Thus we have representatives of 
 all classes of English divines, of the ages above 
 mentioned, in regard to what is supposed so much 
 to modify one's views of questions, like those treated 
 in this discourse. Nevertheless it will be seen, from 
 the extracts here subjoined, that among these great 
 writers there was not the least difference of opinion 
 in the points now in view. That the true Catholic 
 Church is composed only of the true children and 
 people of God, who are united by a living faith to 
 Christ ; that none others have any real membership 
 in God's Church, however they may be externally 
 associated with it in visible ordinances ; that this 
 Church is the Holy Catholic Church, and Commu- 
 nion of Saints ; having all its being in the union of 
 its several members, by faith, immediately to Christ; 
 that this is the mystical body of Christ, as nothing 
 
APPENDIX. 85 
 
 else can be, and invisible, because while its members 
 on earth are personally visible, their distinction as 
 such members is invisible ; that this and no other is 
 the Church to which all the promises are given, as 
 the real believers among the children of Abraham 
 were the only Church to which the promises then 
 made, belonged; finally that this Church, mystical 
 and invisible, is "the pillar and ground of the truth," 
 against which "the gates of hell shall not prevail," 
 to which belongs essentially the Unity of the Spirit, 
 however the bond of peace, in the common use of 
 creeds and sacraments may be broken, the reader 
 will find to be the concurrent testimony of those 
 unquestionable witnesses of the doctrine of the 
 Protestant Episcopal Church in their respective 
 times. 
 
 Archbishop Cranmer, on the Apostles' Creed. 
 
 " I believe the Holy Catholic Church ; that is to 
 say, that ever there is found some company of men 
 or some congregation of good people, which believe 
 the Gospel and are saved. * * * For this word, 
 Church, signifieth a company of men lightened with 
 the Spirit of Christ, which do receive the gospel, 
 &c. And this Christian Church is a communion of 
 Saints, that is to say all that be of this communion, 
 or company, be holy, and be one holy body under 
 Christ, their head. And this congregation receiveth 
 of their head and Lord, all spiritual riches and gifts 
 
 8 
 
86 APPENDIX. 
 
 that pertain to the sanctification and making holy 
 of the same body. And these ghostly treasures be 
 common to the whole body, and to every member of 
 the same" 
 
 Crammer's Catechism of 1548, Fathers of the Eng. Ch., 
 pp. 235, 6. 
 
 "But the holy Church is so unknown to the 
 world that no man can descrie it, but God alone, 
 who only searcheth the hearts of all men, and know- 
 eth his true children from others. 
 
 " This Church" (the invisible) " is the pillar of 
 truth, because it resteth in God's word ; * * but as 
 for the open, known Church," (the visible) " and 
 the outward face thereof, it is not the pillar of truth, 
 otherwise than it is (as it were) a register, or trea- 
 sury, to keep the books of God's holy will and 
 testament, and to rest only thereupon. * * For if 
 the Church" (the visible) "proceed further, to 
 make any new articles of the faith, besides the 
 Scripture or contrary to the Scripture, or direct not 
 the form of life according to the same ; then it is not 
 the pillar of truth, nor the Church of Christ, but the 
 synagogue of Satan, and the temple of Antichrist.'' 
 
 Crammer's Answer to Dr. Smith, Fathers of the English 
 Church, pp. 544, 545. 
 
 Bishop Ridley. 
 
 " The name, Church, is taken in Scripture some- 
 times for the whole multitude of them which profess 
 
APPENDIX. 87 
 
 the name of Christ, of the which they are also 
 named Christians. But, as St. Paul saith of the 
 Jew, ' Not every one is a Jew outwardly, &c. Neither 
 yet all that be of Israel are counted of the seed.'* Even 
 so, not every one which is a christian outwardly, is 
 a christian indeed. For ' If any man have not the 
 Spirit of Christ, the same is none of his.' Therefore, 
 that Church, which is his body, of which Christ is 
 the head, standeth only of living stones and true 
 christians, not only outwardly in name and title, but 
 inwardly in heart and in truth." 
 
 Ridley's Works, (Parker Soc. Ed.) p. 126. 
 
 Hooker. 
 The Visible and Invisible Church. 
 
 " For lack of diligent observing, the difference 
 first between the Church of God mystical, and 
 visible, then between the visible sound and corrupted 
 — the oversights are neither few nor light that have 
 been committed." 
 
 He proceeds to show the difference between the 
 Church visible and invisible, as follows : 
 
 " The Church of Christ which we properly term 
 his body mystical, can be but one, neither can that 
 be sensibly discerned by any man, inasmuch as the 
 parts thereof are some in heaven already with Christ, 
 and the rest that are on earth (albeit their natural 
 persons be visible) we do not discern under this 
 property whereby they are truly and infallibly of 
 that body. Only our minds, by intellectual conceit, 
 
88 APPENDIX. 
 
 are able to apprehend that such a real body there 
 is : a body collective, because it containeth a huge 
 multitude; a body mystical, because the mystery of 
 their conjunction is removed altogether from sense. 
 Whatsoever we read in Scripture, concerning the 
 endless love and saving mercy which God showeth 
 towards his Church, the only proper subject thereof, is 
 this Church. * * * They who are of this society, 
 have such marks and notes of distinction from all 
 others, as are not objects unto our sense; only unto 
 God who seeth their hearts, and understandeth all 
 their secret cogitations ; unto him they are clear 
 and manifest." 
 
 Having thus defined the mystical or invisible soci- 
 ety, Hooker proceeds to do the same for the visible. 
 
 " As those everlasting promises of love, mercy and 
 blessedness belong to the mystical Church ; even so, 
 on the other side, when we read of any duty to which 
 the Church of God is bound unto, the Church whom 
 this doth concern is a sensible and known company. 
 — And this visible Church, in like sort, is but one, 
 continued from the first beginning of the world, to 
 the last end. * * * The visible Church of Jesus 
 Christ is one in outward profession of those things 
 which supernaturally appertain to the very essence 
 of Christianity, and are necessarily required in every 
 particular Christian man. * * * If by external pro- 
 fession they be christians, then they are of the visible 
 Church of Christ: and Christians, by external pro- 
 fession, they are all whose mark of recognizance hath 
 
APPENDIX. 89 
 
 in it those things which we have mentioned; (one 
 Lord, one Faith, one Baptism) yea, although they 
 be impious idolators, wicked heretics, persons ex- 
 communicable. * * * Such we deny not to be imps 
 and limbs of Satan, even as long as they continue 
 such. Is it then possible that the self-same men 
 should belong both to the Synagogue of Satan, and 
 to the Church of Jesus Christ? Unto that Church 
 which is his mystical body, not possible; because 
 that body consisteth of none but only true Israelites, 
 true sons of Abraham, true servants and saints of God. 
 Howbeit, of the visible Body and Church of Jesus 
 Christ, those may be, and oftentimes are, in respect 
 of the main parts of their outward profession, who 
 in regard of their inward disposition of mind, yea, 
 of external conversation, yea, even of some parts of 
 their very profession, are most worthily both hate- 
 ful in the sight of God himself, and in the eyes of 
 the sounder parts of the visible Church most execra- 
 ble." 
 
 Eccl. Pol b. iii. § 1. 
 The True Temple. 
 " The multitude of them which truly believe 
 (howsoever they be dispersed far and wide, each 
 from other) is all one Body, whereof the Head is 
 Christ; one building, whereof he is corner-stone, in 
 whom they, as the members of the body, being 
 knit, and as the stones of the building, being cou- 
 pled, grow up to a man of perfect stature, and rise 
 to an holy temple in the Lord. That which linketh 
 8* 
 
90 APPENDIX. 
 
 Christ to us is his mere mercy and love towards 
 us. That which tieth us to him, is our faith in the 
 promised salvation revealed in the word of truth. 
 That which uniteth and joineth us amongst ourselves, 
 in such sort that we are now as if we had but one 
 heart and one soul, is our love. Who be inwardly 
 in heart the lively members of this body, and the 
 polished stones of this building, coupled and joined 
 to Christ, as flesh of his flesh, and bones of his 
 bones, by the mutual bonds of his unspeakable love 
 towards them, and their unfeigned faith in him, thus 
 linked and fastened to each other, by a spiritual, 
 sincere, and hearty affection of love, without any 
 manner of simulation ; who be Jews within, and 
 what their names be ; none can tell, save he whose 
 eyes do behold the secret dispositions of all men's 
 hearts." 
 
 Hooker's 1st Sermon on St. Jude. 
 
 William Perkins, D. D. 
 
 This eminent English divine of Christ's College, Cambridge, 
 died 1602. His works have been translated into Latin, Dutch, 
 Spanish, &c. He connects the age of the Reformers with that 
 of the writers of the 17th century. 
 
 The Militant Catholic Church. 
 " The number of believers, dispersed through the 
 whole world, who are effectually called, and sancti- 
 fied and preserved unto life everlasting * * for 
 however in the Catholic Church there be two sorts 
 of men professing religion, the one of theui that do 
 unfeignedly believe and are sanctified ; the other of 
 
APPENDIX. 91 
 
 them who make show of faith, but indeed believe 
 not, but remain in their sins ; of the former doth the 
 Catholic Church consist, and not of the latter, who 
 are no members set into the head of this body, though 
 they may seem to be. 
 
 " This confuteth the Romish Church, who teach and 
 hold that a reprobate may be a member of this Church. 
 
 " This Catholic Church is invisible, and cannot 
 by the eye of flesh be discerned * * for who can 
 infallibly determine the things that are within a 
 man 1 which again overthroweth that Romish doc- 
 trine which teacheth that the Catholic Church is 
 visible and apparent upon earth. Yet some parts 
 are visible, as in the right use of words and sacra- 
 ments appeareth. 
 
 " This Catholic Church cannot utterly perish and 
 be dissolved. All other congregations and particu- 
 lar Churches being mixed may fail, yet this cannot 
 be overcome." 
 
 Works, Vol. III. p. 482. 
 
 " To this assembly and no other belong all the 
 promises of this life and the life to come. It is the 
 ground and pillar of truth ,• that is the doctrine of 
 true religion is always safely kept and maintained 
 in it. 
 
 " In visible Churches are two sorts of men ; just 
 men and hypocrites, who although they be within 
 the Church, yet the Church is not so called of them," 
 (i. e. is not called the Church on account of them) 
 
92 APPENDIX. 
 
 " but in regard of them only who are truly joined 
 unto Christ. 
 
 " Adversaries hereof are Papists, who frame not 
 the Church by these true properties, but by other 
 deceitful marks, as succession, multitude, antiquity, 
 consent." 
 
 Works, Vol. III. p. 504. 
 
 Bishop Hall. 
 The Visible and Invisible Church. 
 
 "The word Church is not more common than 
 equivocal : whether ye consider it as the aggrega- 
 tion of the outward, visible, particular Churches of 
 Christian professors ; or as the inward, secret, uni- 
 versal company of the Elect ; it is still one. 
 
 " To begin with the former. What Church hath 
 one Lord, Jesus Christ, the righteous, one Faith in 
 that Lord, one Baptism with that Faith, it is the one 
 Dove of Christ ; to speak more short, one Faith 
 abridges all. But what is that one Faith ? What 
 but the main fundamental doctrine of religion neces- 
 sary to be known, to be believed unto salvation. It 
 is a golden and useful distinction that we must take 
 with us, betwixt Christian Articles and Theological 
 Conclusions. Christian Articles are the principles of 
 religion necessary to a believer; Theological Con- 
 clusions are school-points fit for the discourse of a 
 divine. Those Articles are few and essential, these 
 conclusions are many and unimportant (upon neces- 
 sity) to salvation either way. 
 
APPENDIX. 93 
 
 "But if from particular visible Churches you shall 
 turn your eyes to the true inward, universal company of 
 God's elect and secret ones,- there shall you see more 
 perfectly the one Dove ; for what the other is in profes- 
 sion, this is in truth ; that one Baptism is here the 
 true Laver of Regeneration ,• that one Faith is a saving 
 reposal upon Christ; that one Lord is the Saviour 
 of his body. No natural body is more one than this 
 mystical ; one head rules it ; one spirit animates it ; 
 one set of joints moves it; one food nourishes it, 
 one robe covers it. So it is one in itself, so one 
 with Christ, as Christ is one with the Father : 
 " That they may be one, even as we are one ,• / in 
 them and them in me." — John xvii. 22. 
 
 Bp. Hall's Sermon on the Beauty and Unity of the Church. 
 
 The Reformed Churches of the continent, because 
 holding the fundamental faith of the gospel, though 
 non-episcopal in order, Bishop Hall calls the Church 
 of England's " dearest sisters abroad" — and with re- 
 gard to them makes this passionate lament — "Oh, 
 how oft, and with what deep sighs, hath this most 
 flourishing and happy Church of England wished 
 that she might, with some of her own blood, have 
 purchased unto her dearest sisters abroad, the reten- 
 tion of this most ancient and every way best of 
 governments." 
 
 Bp. Hall's Sermon on Noah's dove. 
 
 The Unity of the Church. 
 " It is not the variety of by-opinions, that can ex- 
 
94 APPENDIX. 
 
 elude them from having their part in that one Catho- 
 lic Church, and their just claim to the Communion 
 of Saints. While they hold the solid and precious 
 foundation, it is not the hay or stubble (1 Cor. iii. 
 12), which they lay upon it, that can set them off 
 from God or his Church. But, in the mean time, it 
 must be granted, that they have much to answer for 
 to the God of Peace and Unity, who are so much 
 addicted to their own conceits, and so indulgent to 
 their own interest, as to raise and maintain new 
 doctrines, and to set up new sects in the Church 
 of Christ, varying from the common and received 
 truths ; labouring to draw disciples after them, to 
 the great distraction of souls, and scandal of Chris- 
 tianity. With which sort of disturbers I must needs 
 say this age, into which we are fallen, hath been, 
 and is above all that have gone before us, most 
 miserably pestered : what good soul can be other 
 than confounded, to hear of and see more than a 
 hundred and fourscore new, and some of them dan- 
 gerous and blasphemous, opinions, broached and 
 defended in one, once famous and unanimous, Church 
 of Christ? * * * 
 
 " But, notwithstanding all this hideous variety 
 of vain and heterodoxal conceptions, he, who is the 
 Truth of God, and the Bridegroom of his Spouse, 
 the Church, hath said, My dove, my undefiled is 
 one ; Cant. vi. 9 : one, in the main, essential, funda- 
 mental verities necessary to salvation ; though dif- 
 fering in divers mis-raised corollaries, inconsequent 
 
APPENDIX. 95 
 
 inferences, unnecessary additions, feigned traditions, 
 unwarrantable practices. The body is one, though 
 the garments differ ; yea, rather, for most of these, 
 the garment is one, but differs in the dressing; 
 handsomely and comely set out by one, disguised by 
 another. Neither is it, or ever shall be, in the power 
 of all the fiends of hell, the professed make-baits of 
 the world, to make God's Church other than one : 
 which were indeed utterly to extinguish and reduce it 
 to nothing; for the unity and entity of the Church 
 can no more be divided than itself. * * * 
 
 " The whole church is the spiritual temple of God. 
 Every believer is a living stone laid in those sacred 
 walls. * * There is no place for any loose stone 
 in God's edifice : the whole Church is one entire 
 body. * * In case there happen to be differences in 
 opinion concerning points not essential, not necessary 
 to salvation ; this diversity may not breed any aliena- 
 tion of affection. * * In all the main principles of 
 religion, there is an universal and unanimous consent 
 of all Christians : and these are they that constitute a 
 Church. Those that agree in these, Christ is pleased 
 to admit, for matter of doctrine, as members of that 
 body whereof he is the Head ; and if they admit not 
 of each other as such, the fault is in the uncharita- 
 bleness of the refusers, no less than in the error of 
 the refused. And if any vain and loose stragglers 
 will needs sever themselves, and wilfully choose to 
 go ways of their own, let them know that the union 
 of Christ's Church shall consist entire without them: 
 
96 APPENDIX. 
 
 this great ocean will be one collection of waters, 
 when these drops are lost in the dust. In the mean 
 time, it highly concerns all that wish well to the 
 sacred name of Christ, to labour to keep the unity 
 of the Spirit in the bond of peace ; Eph. iv. 3 : and 
 to renew and continue the prayer of the Apostle for 
 all the professors of Christianity — Now the God 
 of patience and consolation grant you to be like- 
 minded one towards another, according to Christ 
 Jesus : that ye may, with one mind and one mouth, 
 glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ ; Rom. xv. 5, 6. 
 
 Bp. Halfs Treatise of Christ Mystical, c. vii. § 2. 
 
 Faith the Instrument of Union. 
 " As there are two persons between whom this 
 union is made, Christ and the believer ; so each of 
 them concurs to the happy effecting of it : Christ by 
 His Spirit diffused through the hearts of all the 
 regenerate, giving life and activity to them ; the 
 believer laying hold by faith upon Christ ; so work- 
 ing in him ; and these do so react upon each other 
 that from their mutual operation, results this gracious 
 union whereof we treat. * * the grace of faith 
 justly represented to us by St. Paul, (Eph. vi. 16) 
 above all other graces incident unto the soul, as 
 that, which if not alone, chiefly transacts all the 
 main affairs tending to salvation. For faith is the 
 quickening grace; Gal. ii. 20 — Rom. i. 17: the di- 
 recting grace ; 2 Cor. v. 7 : the protecting grace ; 
 Eph. vi. 16 : the establishing grace; Rom. xi. 20 — 
 
APPENDIX. 97 
 
 2 Cor. i. 24 : the justifying grace ; Rom. vi. ; the 
 sanctifying and purifying grace ; Acts xv. 9. Faith 
 is the grace that assents to, apprehends, applies, 
 appropriates Christ ; Heb. xi. 1 ; and hereupon the 
 uniting grace, and (which comprehends all) the 
 saving grace" 
 
 Bp. HalVs Treatise of Christ Mystical, c. vi. 
 
 Bishop Taylor. 
 The Church Visible and Invisible. 
 The Church is a company of men and women 
 professing the saving doctrine of Jesus Christ. This 
 is the Church 'in se?isa forensi^ and in the sight of 
 men, but because glorious things are spoken of the 
 city of God, the professors of Christ's doctrine are 
 but imperfectly and inchoatively the Church of God ; 
 but they who are indeed holy and obedient to Christ's 
 laws of faith and manners — these are truly and per- 
 fectly ' the Church: * * These are the Church of 
 God in the eyes and heart of God. For the Church 
 of God are the body of Christ; but the mere prof es- 
 sion of Christianity makes no man a member of Christ 
 — nothing but a new creature, nothing but ' a faith 
 working by love ;' and keeping the commandments 
 of God. Now they that do this are not known to 
 be such by men ; but they are known only to God ; 
 and therefore it is in a true sense, 'the invisible 
 Church ,•' not that there are two churches, or two 
 societies, in separation from each other. * * * No, 
 these two churches are but one society: the one 
 
 9 
 
98 APPENDIX. 
 
 is within the other — but yet though the men be 
 visible, yet that quality and excellency by which 
 they are constituted Christ's members, and distin- 
 guished from mere professors and outsides of chris- 
 tians, this, I say, is not visible. All that really and 
 heartily serve Christ in abdito, do also profess to do 
 so ; * * the visible Church is ordinarily and regu- 
 larly part of the visible, but yet that only part that 
 is the true one ,• and the rest, but by denomination of 
 law, and in common speaking, are the Church — not in 
 mystical union, not in proper relation to Christ; they 
 are not the House of God, not the temple of the Holy 
 Ghost, not the members of Christ ; and no man can 
 deny this. Hypocrites are not Christ's servants, and 
 therefore not Christ's members, and therefore no part 
 of the Church of God, but improperly and equivocally, 
 as a dead man is a man, all which is perfectly sum- 
 med up in these words of St. Augustine, saying, 
 that " the body of Christ is not ' bipartitum, 1 it is not 
 a double body — ' all that are Christ's body, shall 
 reign with Christ forever.' And therefore they who 
 are of their father, the devil, are the synagogue of 
 Satan, and of such is not the kingdom of God ; and 
 all this is no more than what St. Paul said : ' They 
 are not all Israel, who are of Israel," 1 and ' He is not 
 a Jew that is one outwardly, but he is a Jew that is one 
 inwardly? Now if any part will agree to call the 
 universality of professors by the title of ' the Church,'' 
 they may if they will ; any word by consent may sig- 
 nify any thing } but if by a Church we mean that 
 
APPENDIX. 99 
 
 society which is really joined to Christ, which hath 
 received the Holy Ghost, which is heir of the pro- 
 mises and of the good things of God, which is the 
 body of which Christ is the head ; then the invisible 
 part of the visible Church, that is, the true servants 
 of Christ only, are the Church ; that is, to them only 
 appertain the Spirit and the truth, the promises and 
 the graces, the privileges and advantages of the 
 gospel ; to others, they appertain as the promise of 
 pardon does ,• that is when they have made themselves 
 capable. The faithful only and obedient are beloved 
 of God. Others may believe rightly; but so do the 
 devils, who are no parts of the church, but princes 
 ' ecclesia malignantium? and it will be a strange pro- 
 position which affirms any one to be of the church, 
 for no other reason but such as qualifies the devil 
 to be so too. 
 
 Bp. Taylor contends that the Article in the Creed 
 — "Holy Catholic Church,' 1 '' and the next, "the Com- 
 munion of Saints," refer to the same thing, and mean 
 only what before he has defined as the invisible 
 Church, viz. the society of the true followers of 
 Christ. " If it be asked (he says) what is the 
 Catholic Church ? — the Apostles' Creed defines it ; 
 it is ' communio sanctorum'' — ' I believe in the Holy 
 Catholic Church,' that is, the Communion of Saints,' 
 the conjunction of all them who heartily serve God 
 through Jesus Christ ; the one indeed is exegetical 
 of the other, as that which is plainer is explicative 
 of that which is less plain ', but else they are but 
 
100 APPENDIX. 
 
 the same thing : which appears also in this, that in 
 some creeds the latter words are left out, and par- 
 ticularly in the Constantinopolitan, as being under- 
 stood to be in effect, but another expression of the 
 same article. * * St. Augustine spends two chapters 
 in affirming that only they who serve God faithfully 
 are the Church of God. For this is in the good and 
 faithful, and the holy servants of God, scattered 
 every where, and combined by a spiritual union in 
 the same communion of sacraments, whether they 
 know one another by face or no. Others, it is cer- 
 tain, are so said to be in the house of God, that they 
 do not pertain to the structure of the house. * * * 
 Those who are condemned by Christ (continues St. 
 Augustine) for their evil and polluted consciences, 
 are not in Christ's body, which is the Church ; for 
 Christ hath no damned members.' 
 
 " But I need not be digging the cisterns for this 
 truth — Christ himself hath taught it very plainly : 
 4 Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command 
 you, not upon any other terms ; and I hope none but 
 friends are members of Christ's mystical body, 
 members of the Church whereof he is head * * to be 
 united to Christ, and to be members of his body ; 
 these are the portions of saints, not of wicked per- 
 sons, whether clergy or laity. * * As all the prin- 
 ciples and graces of the gospel are the property of 
 the godly, so they only are the Church of God of 
 which glorious things are spoken, and it will be vain 
 to talk of the infallibility of God's Church; the 
 
APPENDIX. 101 
 
 Roman doctors either must confess it subjected 
 here, that is, in the Church in this sense, or they can 
 find it no where. In short, this is the Church, (in 
 the sense now explicited) which is ' the pillar and 
 ground of the truth ,•' but this is not the sense of the 
 Church of Rome" nor (we add) of those who are 
 now endeavouring to bring us so near to Rome, but 
 on the contrary is the sense which their whole sys- 
 tem, as much as that of Rome, requires them to 
 oppose. Hence the necessity of keeping it distinct, 
 and holding it fast. * * * 
 
 " The word ' church,' I grant, may be, and is 
 given to them by way of supposition and legal pre- 
 sumption, as a jury of twelve men are called ' good 
 men and true' — that is, they are not known to be 
 otherwise, and therefore presumed to be such ; and 
 they are the church in all human accounts — that is, 
 they are the congregation of all that profess the 
 name of Christ, * * * in which are the wheat 
 and the tares ; and they are bound up in common 
 by the union of sacraments and external rites, name 
 and profession, but by nothing else. This doctrine 
 is well explicited by St. Austin. lC Not only in 
 eternity, but even now, hypocrites are not to be said 
 to be with Christ, although they may seem to be 
 of his church. jJut the Scripture speaks of them 
 and these, as if they were both of one body, propter 
 temporalem commixtionem et communionem sacramen- 
 torum. They are only combined by a temporal 
 
 9* 
 
102 APPENDIX. 
 
 mixture, and united by the common use of sacra- 
 ments. * * * So that which we call the church, 
 is l permixta ecclesia^ and for this mixture's sake, 
 under the cover and knot of external communion, 
 the church — that is, all that company, is esteemed 
 one body ; and the appellations are made in com- 
 mon, and so are the addresses and offices and min- 
 istries. Therefore it is no wonder that we call this 
 great, mixture by the name of ' the church ;' but then 
 since the church hath a more sacred notion, as it is 
 the spouse of Christ, his body, his temple, &c. * * 
 therefore, although when we speak of all the acts 
 and duties, of the judgments and nomenclatures, of 
 outward appearances and accounts of law, we call 
 the mixed society by the name of the Church ; yet 
 when we consider it in the true, proper and primary 
 meaning * * all the promises of God, the Spirit of 
 God, the life of God, and all the good things of God, 
 are peculiar to the Church of God, in God's sense, 
 in the way in which he owns it, that is, as it is holy, 
 united unto Christ, like to him, and partaker of the 
 divine nature. The other are but a heap of men 
 keeping good company, calling themselves by a good 
 name, managing the external parts of union and 
 ministry ; but because they otherwise belong not to 
 God, the promises no otherwise belong to them, but 
 as they may, and when they do, return to God. 
 Here then are two senses of the word ' Church ;' 
 God's sense and man's sense; the sense of religion, 
 
APFENDIX. 103 
 
 and the sense of government; common rites, and 
 spiritual union." 
 
 Bp. Taylor's Dissuasive from Popery, Part II. B. I. Sect. 
 I. §§ L & II. 
 
 Having laid his foundation in the position that 
 none but the true servants of Christ make the true 
 Church of Christ, and have title to the promises; 
 and having observed that the Romish church relies 
 upon the church under another definition, Bishop 
 Taylor proceeds : 
 
 " Of the church, in the first sense, St. Paul 
 affirms, it is "\he pillar and ground of truth" He 
 spake it of the church of Ephesus, or the holy 
 catholic church over the world ; for there is the 
 same reason of one and all ; if it be, as St. Paul 
 calls it, "Ecclesia Dei vivi," if it be united to the 
 head, Christ Jesus, every church is as much the 
 " pillar and ground of truth" as all the church ; 
 which, that we may understand rightly, we are to 
 consider that what is commonly called the "church," 
 is but " domus ecclesiae verae," as the " ecclesia 
 vera" is " domus Dei :" it is the school of piety, 
 the place of institution and discipline. Good and 
 bad dwell here ; but God only, and his Spirit, dwell 
 with the good. They are all taught in the church; 
 but the good only are " taught by God," by an 
 infallible Spirit — that is, by a Spirit which neither 
 can deceive, nor be deceived; and therefore by 
 him the good, and they only, are led into all-saving 
 
104 APPENDIX. 
 
 truth ; and these are the men that preserve the 
 truth in holiness. Without this society, the truth 
 would be hidden, and held in unrighteousness, so 
 that all good men, all particular congregations of 
 good men, who, upon the foundation, Christ Jesus, 
 build the superstructure of a holy life, are " the 
 pillar and ground of truth ;" that is, they support 
 and defend the truth — they follow and adorn the 
 truth, which truth would in a little time be sup- 
 pressed, or obscured, or varied, or concealed, and 
 misinterpreted, if the wicked only had it in their 
 conduct. That is, amongst good men we are most 
 like to find the ways of peace and truth, all-saving 
 truth, and the proper spiritual advantages and love- 
 liness of truth. Now, then, this does no more 
 relate to all churches, than to every church. God 
 will no more leave or forsake any one of his faith- 
 ful servants, than he will forsake all the world. 
 And therefore here the notion of catholic is of no 
 use: for the church is the communion of saints, 
 wherever it be or may be; and that this church is 
 catholic, it does not mean by any distinct existence, 
 but by comprehension and actual and potential en- 
 closure of all communions of holy people 'in the 
 unity of the spirit, and in the bond of peace' — 
 that is, both externally and internally : ' exter- 
 nally' means the common use of the symbols and 
 sacraments, for they are the bond of peace ; but 
 the unily of the Spirit is the peculiar of the saints, 
 and is the internal confederation and conjunction of 
 
APPENDIX. 105 
 
 the members of Christ's body in themselves, and 
 to their head. And by the energy of this state, 
 wherever it happens to be, all the blessings of the 
 Spirit are entailed ; every man hath his share in it ; 
 he shall never be left or forsaken ; and the spirit of 
 God will never depart from him as long as he 
 remains in, and is of, the communion of saints.' 
 Dissuasive from Popery, supra. 
 
 Archbishop Usher. 
 
 " What is meant here (in the Creed) by the Cath- 
 olic Church?" 
 
 " That whole universal company of the elect that 
 ever were, are, or shall be gathered together in one 
 body, knit together in one faith, under one head, 
 Jesus Christ. For God, in all places, and of all 
 sorts of men, had from the beginning, hath now, 
 and ever will have, an holy church, which is there- 
 fore called the catholic church — that is, God's 
 whole or universal assembly, because it compre- 
 hendeth the multitude of all those that have, do, or 
 shall believe unto the world's end. Part are already 
 in heaven triumphant, part as yet militant here upon 
 earth. 
 
 " What is the Church militant ?" 
 
 " It is the society of those that being scattered 
 through all the corners of the world, are, by one 
 faith in Christ, conjoined to him and fight under 
 his banner against their enemies, the world, the 
 flesh and the devil ; continuing in the service and 
 
106 APPENDIX. 
 
 warfare of their Lord, and expecting in due time, 
 also, to be crowned with victory, and triumph in 
 glory with Him. 
 
 " Who are the true members of the church mili- 
 tant on earth]" 
 
 "Those alone who, as living members of the 
 mystical body, Eph. i. 22, 23 ; Col. i. 18, are, by 
 the Spirit and Faith, secretly and inseparably con- 
 joined unto Christ, their head — Col. iii. 3 ; Ps. 
 lxxxiii. 3. In which respect, the true militant 
 church is both invincible — Mat. xvi. 18 — and invi- 
 sible — Rom. ii. 29 ; 1 Pet. iii. 4. 
 
 "Truly and properly none are of the church saving 
 only they which truly believe and yield obedience ; 
 (1 John, 2, 19,) all which are also saved. How- 
 beit, God useth outward means with the inward for 
 the gathering of his saints ; and calleth them as 
 well to outward profession among themselves, as 
 to inward fellowship with his Son ; (Acts ii. 42 ; 
 Cant. i. 7,) whereby the church becometh visible. 
 Hence it cometh, that so many as partaking the 
 outward means, do join with these in league of 
 visible profession; (Acts viii. 13,) are therefore in 
 human judgment accompted members of the true 
 church and saints by calling; (1 Cor. i. 2,) until 
 the Lord, who only knoweth who are his, do make 
 known the contrary, as we are taught in the para- 
 ble of the tares, the draw net, &c ; (Mat. xiii. 24, 
 47.) Thus many live in the church, as it is visible 
 and outward, which are partakers only outwardly 
 
APPENDIX. 107 
 
 of grace ; and such are not fully of the church that 
 have entered in but one step ; (Cant. iv. 7; Eph. v. 
 27; John ii. 19.) That a man may be fully of the 
 church, it is not sufficient that he profess Christ 
 with his mouth, but it is further required that he 
 believe in him in heart. 
 
 Usher's Body of Divinity, 187, 189. 
 
 "The communion of saints consists in the union 
 which we all have with one Head. For Christ, 
 our head, is the main foundation of this heavenly 
 union. 
 
 Ushers Sermon before the House of Commons. 
 
 Dr. Jackson. 
 
 "Of all terms used in Scripture, this word Church, 
 as was observed before, hath the greatest variety of 
 signification or importances. And by consequence 
 it must have one, the principal object, of which all 
 the principal attributes or titles of the church are 
 punctually and actually verified; and other objects 
 less principal, to which notwithstanding, the same 
 name or titles are in some measure often commu- 
 nicated — (Treatise on the Church, Goodes"* Ed., Lond. 
 p. 32.) " The visible church is a transcendent, and 
 doth neither exclude the members of the holy church 
 triumphant or militant, nor doth it consist only of 
 them — but of them and of others called only by a 
 mere external vocation. * •* * The church 
 
108 APPENDIX. 
 
 militant is visible to God and to the several mem- 
 bers of it; but what members of this visible and 
 militant church be live members of the one holy 
 and catholic church, is known only to God or to 
 men's private consciences, &c. — p. 48. 
 
 " All God's promises to the church belong to the 
 principal members of it, who are distinctly and 
 individually known to Himself only — not so to us, 
 to whom, notwithstanding their persons are visible, 
 their profession of faith is also visible. The sin- 
 cerity of their hearts or faith, is, to us, invisible; 
 and therefore invisible it is to us whether they be 
 live members of the holy catholic church or no. 
 — p. 31. 
 
 " Though the church be sometimes, by good 
 writers, entitled as well invisible as visible, we are 
 not, from this opposition of words or terms, to con- 
 ceit an opposition or distinction of churches, as if 
 some were visible, others altogether invisible. Such 
 as most use these terms, mean no more by them 
 than we have said, to wit: What persons of the 
 militant and visible church be true denizens of the 
 heavenly Jerusalem, or city of God, is to us invisible 
 or unknown. I cannot say whether it were igno- 
 rance or malice in the Romanists to construe these 
 terms of visible and invisible, whilst they found them 
 in some of our writers, as if they had constituted 
 two contra-distinct, or opposite churches, when as 
 it is plain that they are, for the most part, subordi- 
 nate and co-incident. Ordinarily, the live-mem- 
 
APPENDIX. 109 
 
 bers of the holy Catholic Church, or of that part 
 of it which is to us invisible, are members of some 
 visible church — but not e contra ; for neither all, 
 nor most part of any visible church, in latter ages, 
 are true and live members of the holy and catholic 
 church, part of which we believe to be here on 
 earth, though it be to us invisible. * * * Many 
 there be which are no members of the visible 
 church, and yet better members of the true church 
 than the members of the church-visible, for the pre- 
 sent, are. — pp. 48, 49. 
 
 " This church, (the true, holy and catholic 
 church,) is a true and real body, consisting of many 
 parts, all really (though mystically and spiritually) 
 united unto one head ; and by their real union with 
 one head, all are truly and really united among 
 themselves. Every one is so far a member of 
 Christ's Church, as he is a member of Christ's 
 body. He that is a true live-member of the one, 
 is a true live-member of the other. He that is but 
 an equivocal, analogical, hypocritical or painted 
 member of the one, is but an equivocal, hypocriti- 
 cal, painted, or analogical member of the other. 
 As Christ is the true Temple, because the Godhead 
 dwelleth in him, so all. they, and only they, in whom 
 he dwelleth by faith, are true temples of God, 
 and live-members of the Catholic Church. — 
 pp. 18, 19, 20. 
 
 " The Catholic Church, in the prime sense, con- 
 sists only of such men as are actual and indisso- 
 
 10 
 
110 APPENDIX. 
 
 luble members of Christ's mystical body, or of 
 such as have the Catholic faith, not only sown in 
 their brains or understandings, but thoroughly 
 rooted in their hearts. In a secondary, analogical 
 sense, every present, visible church, which holdeth 
 the holy Catholic faith, without which no man can 
 be saved, pure and undefiled with the traditions 
 and inventions of man, may be termed a holy Cath- 
 olic Church. When we say a man may be a visible 
 member of the holy Catholic Church, and yet no 
 actual member of any present visible church, we 
 take the Catholic church in the latter or secondary 
 sense. Who are indissoluble members of Christ's 
 body, is only visible or known to Him. Many 
 thousands are, and have been, true members of it, 
 which are, and have been, altogether invisible to 
 us. But who they be that possess the unity of that 
 faith which the Apostles taught, and without which 
 no man can be saved, is visible and known to all 
 such as either hear them profess it viva voce, or can 
 read and understand their profession of it given in 
 writing. — p. 152. 
 
 These last extracts are from a Treatise on the 
 Church, by the learned Dr. Jackson, one of the 
 most distinguished of those divines of gigantic 
 learning, who fought the fight of the protestant 
 faith against the church of Rome, in the seven- 
 teenth century. His Treatise on the Church is 
 part of a great work, unfinished, on the Apostles' 
 
APPENDIX. Ill 
 
 Creed. The Rev. Mr. Goode, of London, has re- 
 vived attention to it, because of its decided oppo- 
 sition to those views of the church which the 
 Tractarian writings have re-produced out of what 
 were once considered, among us, the worn-out 
 errors of Romanism. From the edition by Mr. 
 Goode, a re-print has been made in this country by 
 Mr. Hooker. I cannot abstain from earnestly recom- 
 mending that little book to the study of all who 
 wish to know what is the Holy Catholic Church 
 and Communion of Saints, in which they profess to 
 believe. 
 
 The account given by the great Dr. Isaac BarTow, 
 of the Visible and Invisible Church, in his " Dis- 
 course on the Unity of the Church," agrees per- 
 fectly with the above. I shall quote from vol. vi. 
 of the Oxford edition of his works, 1818. 
 
 He defines the one as u the society of those who 
 profess the faith and gospel of Christ, and under- 
 take the evangelical covenant in distinction to all 
 other religions." 
 
 The other he defines as "the whole body of God's 
 people that is, ever hath been, or ever shall be, from 
 the beginning of the world, to the consummation 
 thereof, who having (formally or virtually) believed 
 in Christ, and sincerely obeyed God's laws, shall 
 finally, by the meritorious performances and suffer- 
 ings of Christ, be saved." 
 
 The latter he calls " the Catholic society of true 
 
112 APPENDIX. 
 
 believers and faithful servants of Christ," the " true 
 universal church, called the Church mystical and 
 invisible." — pp. 497 and 500. 
 
 To this invisible church, composed only of such 
 as shall finally be saved, belong, he says, "all the 
 glorious titles and excellent privileges attributed to 
 the church in holy Scripture." " This is the body 
 of Christ," "the spouse of Christ," "the house of 
 God built on a rock, against which the gates of hell 
 shall not prevail '," " this is the elect generation," &c. 
 
 " To this church, belongs peculiarly that unity 
 which is often attributed to the church." 
 
 " This is that one body into which we are all bap- 
 tized by one Spirit; the members whereof do hold a 
 mutual sympathy and complacence; which is joined 
 to one head, deriving sense and motion from it ; 
 which is enlivened and moved by one Spirit." 
 
 "This is the society of those for whom Christ 
 did pray that they might be all one" — pp. 497, 
 498, 499. 
 
 The essential unity of this invisible, catholic 
 church, to which only belong the promises of God, 
 according to the above, is thus described : 
 
 " All christians are united by spiritual cognation 
 and alliance, as being all regenerated by the same 
 incorruptible seed, being alike born, not of blood nor 
 of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of 
 God, whence, as the sons of God, and brethren of 
 Christ, they become brethren one to another. * * 
 
 " The whole christian church is one by its in- 
 
APPENDIX. 113 
 
 corporation into tho mystical body of Christ, or as 
 fellow-subjects of that spiritual, heavenly king- 
 dom, whereof Christ is the sovereign head and 
 governor, whence they are governed by the same 
 laws, are obliged by the same institutions and func- 
 tions ; they partake of the same privileges, and are 
 entitled to the same promises, and encouraged by 
 the same rewards. So they make one spiritual 
 corporation or republic, whereof Christ is the sove- 
 reign Lord." — p. 597. 
 
 Then in what sense the Visible church, the mixed 
 society, may be considered as partaking in the 
 titles, privileges, &c, which belong of right to the 
 invisible only, Dr. Barrow thus teaches : 
 
 " The places of Scripture which do represent the 
 church one, as unquestionably they belong (in their 
 principal notion and intent) to the true Universal 
 Church, (called the church mystical and invisible ;) 
 so may they by analogy and participation, be under- 
 stood to concern the visible church-Catholic here on 
 earth, which professeth faith in Christ and obedi- 
 ence to his laws." — p. 501. For because the visi- 
 ble church doth enfold the other, (as one mass doth 
 contain the good ore and base alloy, as one floor 
 the corn and the chaff,) * * * because, pre- 
 sumptively, every member of this (the visible) doth 
 pass for a member of the other, (the invisible,) the 
 time of distinction and separation being not yet 
 come ; * * * therefore, commonly the titles 
 
114 APPENDIX. 
 
 and attributes of the one are imparted to the other. 
 All (saith St. Paul,) are not Israel who are of Israel, 
 nor is he a Jew that is one outwardly ,• yet in regard 
 to the conjunction of the rest with the faithful Isra- 
 elites, because of external consent in the same pro- 
 fession, and conspiring in the same services, all the 
 congregation of Israel is styled a holy nation and 
 peculiar people. 
 
 " So likewise do the Apostles speak to all mem- 
 bers of the church (visible) as to elect and holy 
 persons, unto whom all the privileges of Christi- 
 anity do belong, although really hypocrites and bad 
 men do not belong to the church, nor are concerned in 
 its unity, as St. Austin doth often teach." — 
 pp. 499, 500. 
 
 The places of St Austin, which Barrow cites 
 and makes his own, are such as these : Non ad 
 earn pertinent avari, raptores, fxnatores. Videntur 
 esse in Ecclesia, non sunt. Ecclesiam veram intelli- 
 gere non andeo, nisi in Sanctis et justis. Multi sunt in 
 sacramentorum communione cum Ecclesia et tamen jam 
 non sunt in Ecclesia. " The covetous, &c, do not 
 belong to the church. They seem to be in it, but 
 are not. I dare not understand the true church 
 to be but among the holy and righteous men." — 
 " There are many who communicate in sacraments 
 with the church, and yet they are not in it." — 
 p. 500. 
 
H. HOOKER, 
 ITiU Publish in a few days, tbe 
 
 OF 
 
 THE RT. REV. JEREMY TAYLOR, D. D. 
 
 Complete In One Vol. 8vo. 
 
 ALSO, NOW READY 
 
 FOR THE USE OF THE CHURCH IN PRAYER MEETINGS, AND AT 
 WEEKLY LECTURES, BEING 
 
 A SELECTION OF 250 HYMNS IN ADDITION 
 TO HYMNS OF THE PRAYER BOOK, 
 
 BY THE REV. C. W. ANDREWS. 
 
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 A NEW EDITION OF 
 
 COTTERILL'S FAMILY PRAYERS. 
 
 These Prayers are distinguished above most, if not all 
 others, for their simplicity and devotion.