tihrary of trhe theological ^mmary 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 , 503-5: 
 
THE CLAIMS . 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CHUECH OF ENGLAND 
 
 CONSIDERED; 
 
 BEING THE CLOSE OF A CORKESPONDENCE 
 BETWEEN 
 
 THE EEV. JAMES ELL Y, 
 
 Of St illogan, IreUnd, 
 
 AND 
 
 J. N. DAEBY. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 W. H. BEOOM, 34, PATEENOSTEE EOW, E.C. 
 
 1864. 
 
i 
 i 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The only thing necessary to be explained in the pub- 
 lication of the following correspondence, is the fact of 
 its having been pubhshed after so considerable a lapse 
 of time. It will be seen by the correspondence itself, 
 that one of the parties declined pursuing it farther.* 
 The other disliking contention, and weary of it, much 
 preferring direct edification, had this additional motive 
 for not taking any positive step — namely, an imwilling- 
 ness, unless by what was identified with direct edifica- 
 tion, to raise questions in pubKc on what had the 
 repiitation of Protestant truth, in the presence of error, 
 which lifted up its head high enough. 
 
 Some brethren in Christ who had seen the MSS. of 
 the correspondence, urged by the actual state of things 
 in England, desu-ed particularly the publication of the 
 last letter, adding the last of Mr. Kelly's,f that it might 
 be understood, or of all if that were demanded. 
 Under the cu-cumstances, he wrote to Mr. Kelly, ac- 
 quainting him with what has just been mentioned, and. 
 asking permission to satisfy the wish expressed of pub- 
 lishing the two last letters. At fii-st Mr. Kelly required 
 the publication of the previous part of the correspond- 
 ence, which was acquiesced in, as indeed the other party 
 was naturally bound thereto if demanded ; but in a 
 subsequent letter Mr. Kelly declared his mind changed 
 in this respect, and acquiesced in the publication de- 
 manded, the following communication being annexed. 
 
 • An additional letter has since been sent, which is added at 
 the request of Mr. Kelly. 
 + Now the last but one. 
 
 A 2 
 
1 
 
 Digitized by 
 
 the Internet Arclnive 
 
 
 
 in 2014 
 
 
 
 lnttps://arclnive.org/details/claimsofclnurclnofOOkell 
 
To THE Eev. J. Daebt. 
 
 Stillogan Glebe, Dublin, 
 Jan. im, 1842. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 In reply to your letter from Lausanne, which has 
 just reached me, I hasten to say that since our last cor- 
 respondence I inquired after you several times as to 
 whether you had returned to this country, with a view 
 formally to decline pursuing the subject of controversy 
 between us any further; but hearing you were still 
 abroad, I did not think the matter of sufficient import- 
 ance to communicate with you by a foreign post. I 
 now avail myseK of this opportunity to let you know 
 my decision. The grounds on which I have come to it 
 are these : First, the inutility (in many of my respected 
 brethren's estimation) of disputing with you. Second, 
 the accession of care and occupation connected with my 
 appointment to this parish, which I was led to reflect 
 afforded more profitable exercise of my little talents than 
 carrying on a discussion with the leader of an extra- 
 vagant class of schismatics. Third, the little hope I 
 entertained after reading your most diSuse and inco- 
 herent reply to mine of February 8th, 1839, of being 
 able to bring you to the real point at issue between us. 
 
 As to the publication of the letters to which you 
 allude, I can have no objection if you see fit, although 
 I must confess I do not attach to them the importance 
 
vi 
 
 which you do. I have only to request that you will 
 annex to them the following observations by way of 
 explanation of some passages in my letter which you 
 have misimderstood, and of final comment on some 
 sentiments of your own. 
 
 I remain, my dear sir, 
 
 Yours in Christian truth and love, 
 James Kelly. 
 
 The observations tbemselves, alluded to in this 
 letter of Mr. Kelly, are placed at the end, as coming 
 then naturally in their place after the letter on 
 which they comment. 
 
 With this brief iatroduction, acquiesced in by both 
 parties, as to what has led to the publication of them, 
 these letters are now submitted to the reader, with 
 the desire that the Lord may use them for the esta- 
 bhshment of truth, the strengthening of souls in it, 
 and the refutation of error. 
 
THE LETTEES. 
 
 To THE Rev. J. Darby. 
 
 Liverpool, Feb. 8, 1839. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 Though I might recount many other adequate 
 causes of my silence since I received your last, yet 
 I must say my chief reason for not being more 
 prompt has arisen from the very uninteresting 
 reply yon have given to mine of December 12. It 
 really appeared to me evasive of discussion. I asked 
 you, in order that we might come to the argument 
 of the subject at once, to allege yoiir groimds of 
 separation from the commimion of the Church of 
 England — a very straightforward question methinks, 
 and the import of which was very obvious. But 
 instead of a plain answer, as might have been ex- 
 pected, you occupy a considerable portion of your 
 letter in making reflections on me as " an adversary," 
 as you call me, of whom you add " nothing " (Chris- 
 tian I suppose you mean) " is to be expected." You 
 then quarrel with my assuming that you have for- 
 saken the Church of England, as though this was 
 not the case (remember, I did not say the Church, but 
 the Church of England) ; and, lastly, you give out 
 
8 
 
 your impressions against the character of the Church 
 of England, erecting them into assertions, and dilat- 
 ing upon a new and better way, as you are pleased 
 to think — adding in the meanwhile not one syllable, 
 not even professing to do it, of argument to bear 
 out your assertions. Now, my dear sir, I feel from 
 this, as well as the loose character of your former 
 commimications to me, that it is vaia to expect from 
 you anything like an orderly and inteUigible vindi- 
 cation of your views ; in this respect you seem to 
 write as you speak. I therefore propose for the 
 future, without waiting for such, taking up just as 
 they come your aspersions of the Church of England, 
 and the peculiarities of yourself and brethren as dis- 
 senters, sifting them as the Lord may enable me, 
 and bringing out the truth as distinctly as I can, for 
 the perusal of aU who may see our correspondence. 
 
 First, then, yoii say that the world is in the Church 
 of England. What do you mean hj "the world" ? 
 Is it the openly profane and vmgodly? This we 
 deny : the Church recognizes as her members only 
 those who are baptized into and make a solemn pro- 
 fession of " the ti-uth as it is in Jesus," and all those 
 who scandalize theii- profession by evil lives, are, by 
 the discipline of the Church, to be excluded from her 
 communion. Do you mean earthly-minded pro- 
 fessors ? In sorrow we assent to the sorrowfrd truth 
 of this. St. Paul wept over such in the Philippian 
 Church, and the same, we have reason to beHeve, 
 aboimded in the Chiu'ch of Coiinth. There never 
 has been, and there is nowhere upon earth a pure 
 Church in the sense of excluding false, worldly- 
 minded professors. Or do you say that the consti- 
 tution of our Chm-ch, looking at our articles and 
 formularies, is worldly ? This I deny, and call upon 
 you to prove the statement if you make it. 
 
9 
 
 Worldly professors, then, being in the Church of 
 England, which is all the amount of meaning that 
 yom- (^liarge has in it, what is the duty of God's 
 children who are also within her pale ? This is the 
 fundamental point of difference between us ; this is 
 the question which, troubling the consciences of our 
 dear people, gave you the occasion — which, alas ! you 
 have industriously improved — to separate them from 
 us. Yon hold and teach that it is imperative on the 
 faithful to come out from the communion in which 
 are the unfaithful. To use your own words, they are 
 " to cease from the evil ;" to more than this, in the 
 first instance, it appears you do not aspire. Mr. 
 Hargrove says, "Do you see the evil? then cease 
 from it ; let that be your first step, — God will show 
 you the next when you have taken that." In other 
 words, we are to take a leap in the dark from the 
 Established Church, not knowing where we shall 
 land, nor why this course. Is there no evil bound up 
 in the body of flesh which you carry about with you ? 
 is it not even hindering the regenerate spirit, lusting 
 against it, "a vile body," as the Scriptui-es call it, 
 and to continue to the last ? And yet you do not 
 recommend the withdrawal of ourselves from the 
 body, i. c, suicide — that be far from yoi; ; but why 
 not, according to your principle above laid down ? 
 are we not afflicted with an evil companionship, so 
 that by reason of it we often " caimot do the things 
 that we would " ? 
 
 To siich a proposal' as this, of course you justly 
 reply. The word of God says we are to bear this 
 conflict between the flesh and spirit, wrestling vsdth 
 the foi-mer, though in the flesh not walking accord- 
 ing to it, which, so long as we attend to, we are told 
 it is no more we that do the evil, but " the sin that 
 dwelleth in us." Precisely similar, then, is what the 
 A 3 
 
10 
 
 Scriptures say in the case you put of Christians 
 being in a Church in which there is worldhness. 
 Look at the declension on the part of the Jevrish 
 Church throughout their history. Behold also the 
 prophets testifying against the evil, hd yet remaining 
 members of that Church : and if we turn to the New 
 Testament Scriptures, what do we find there ? The 
 account of Churches which had become grieTously 
 corrupt ; even exhortations to the faithful -n-ithin 
 their pale ; but in no instance separation enjoined. 
 Take the Churches of Thyatira and Sardis for ex- 
 amples : in the former it appears a false prophetess 
 was allowed to assume to herself a commission from 
 God, and to teach men to commit fornication, and 
 judgment is denounced in consequence. But what 
 is said to the remnant that preserved their allegi- 
 ance ? Is it flee out of her — form yourselves into a 
 new Church? This would be your remedy; but 
 such is not the injunction of Jesus ; it is simply, 
 "That which you have already, hold fast till I 
 come" (Eev. ii. 25). As to Sardis, we read there 
 were but " few names left which had not defiled their 
 garments ;" but even here there is no recommenda- 
 tion to separate (Quere — Is not this the secret why 
 you and your party deny the Church of England to 
 be a Church at all, to get rid of such passages as 
 these?). We do find separatists indeed spoken of 
 elsewhere (Jude 13) ; but it is ia a bad connexion — 
 in company with " murmui'ers, complainers, and 
 mockers" — the inscription over whom is "sensual, 
 having not the Spirit." I can readily conceive sepa- 
 ration to be the easy course to take — easy to flesh 
 and blood ; just as in the degenerate Christian family, 
 for the member who walks close with God, and is 
 anxious that aU the domestic arrangements should be 
 characterized by the spirit as well as the form of 
 
11 
 
 religion — for him to withdraw himself fi'om the 
 sphere in which his bearing and long-suffering 
 tenderness, alternately with his faithfulness, is exer- 
 cised, and either Uve by himself in solitary commu- 
 nion -nath God, or imite with more kindred spirits, 
 — all this would be comparative enjoyment, but then 
 it would be a selfish enjoyment ; it would be a pleas- 
 ing of himself — a "looking on his own things, not 
 on the things of others." He has left the family 
 circle which he should have dearly loved ; in which, 
 as it was his duty, so God might have made it his 
 privilege, to witness for His truth, and promote a 
 revival of the power of vital godliness. Of course, if 
 there were rules laid down for the regulation of the 
 family, or doctrines professed by them at their family 
 altar, at variance with the word of God, separation 
 would be lawful, though even then it should be re- 
 sorted to only after the most patient zeal in striving 
 to effect a reformation. But I have supposed the 
 femily only to have declined in spirit, and that their 
 professed reverence for, and outward observance of 
 piety stiU existed ; and under these circumstances it 
 is plain that the rending the unity of the domestic 
 circle would be quite inexcusable. Though separation 
 might spare the individual in question many an ex- 
 ercise of his grace, yet it would be wrong. 
 
 Now this, I conceive, aptly represents the case of 
 the Church of England and you separatists. There 
 has been a lamentable degeneracy among us, though, 
 praised be the Lord, a considerable alteration for 
 the better is taking place. But as a Church we 
 profess God's truth, which, handed down to us in 
 our venerable formvdaries from apostles and martyrs 
 who have gone before us, we have neither added to 
 nor taken from. The deposit of Christian doctrines 
 is with us as a Church, and our people (however 
 
12 
 
 wayward they may walk) yet profem adherence to it. 
 But how have you separatists acted? Instead of 
 resting the lever of your brotherly love and Christian 
 devotedness upon this important fulcrum of the 
 Church's still faithful profession, and bending all 
 your energies to effect a re\dval in the family, you 
 have selfishly withdi-awn yourselves from us, and, 
 aggravating the degeneracy in which you should 
 have sjonpathized as members of the body, have con- 
 temptuously left us under God's judicial sentence,— 
 " imnatural sons," says Bishop Hall, " that spit in 
 the face of the father that begot them, and the 
 mother that bore them." 
 
 Thus, my dear sir (I trust speaking the truth in 
 love), I have alleged selfisJtness of conduct against 
 you and your party ; may it not be possible, I would 
 add, that there attaches pride to your procedure also ? 
 We know how insensibly it works ; — " a sin," as some 
 one observes, "that rises from the ashes of other 
 sijis^" — mingled among a company whose title, many 
 of them, to the Christian character is almost defaced, 
 except to the eye of charity which " hopes all things," 
 the shining graces of individuals are obscured ; but 
 when they come out and stand apart in a little body 
 by themselves, ah ! then they attract notice. "Wldle 
 they remain in the Church, " serving the Lord with 
 humihty, supportiag the weak, comforting the feeble- 
 minded, restoring the offender in the spirit of meek- 
 ness," Cliristians are like the convalescent patients we 
 sometimes see in an hospital tending theii- fellow- 
 sufferers ; but these persons, we can imagine, might 
 get impatient of their charitable office, and, revelling 
 in the consciousness of strength themselves, might 
 not brook being confoimded longer with the diseased 
 and dying, and so depart from the asylum that had 
 been so blessed to themselves. Alas, my dear sir, 
 
13 
 
 wHle I write it, the apprehension of something 
 similar having to do with the course you are piir- 
 suing, and persuading others to, growingly presncs on 
 me. I do not say this is the case, and I heaitily 
 pray it may not he the case with any of you ; but 
 you must see how incident the exil is to the pro- 
 cedure you have adopted ; and as one who is in the 
 flesh liimself, I cannot but remark it. Would to Grod 
 the people who have gone out from us would reflect 
 upon this. They felt the cross of having to witness 
 for Jesus, and keep their garments in the midst of 
 declension and inconsistencies around them, which 
 was the school for them, and they were thiiving in 
 it ; but, alas, they forgot that this might be the case ; 
 and enamoiu-ed of the prospect of purer communion 
 (apart from the embarrassing presence of the worldly), 
 and of the conspicuous position they would then 
 stand in, they embarked in the enterprise of dissent. 
 They know, perhaps with bitter disappointment, the 
 result — that while the tares are more like wheat, they 
 are bound up ■with them still, only closer tiiaii hefore ; 
 and that the liberty of ministry which you have 
 among you is a sorry substitute for the solemn re- 
 sponsibility of office in secm-ing edification. Would 
 to God, I say, that with the experience to which I 
 know some, not unlike yom- party, have been 
 brought, you woidd all " search and try your ways," 
 and see if the flesh, with its ten thousand labyiinths, 
 has not betrayed you into your present position. 
 
 Having thus briefly vindicated the Church of 
 England against your sweeping accusation of being 
 a worldly system ; shown — and that even when there 
 has a tide of corruption set in upon a Church — separa- 
 tion is contrary to the mind of God; and ha^dug sug- 
 gested some dangerous motives which inay he operat- 
 ing upon you, I come to analyze for a moment your 
 
14 
 
 improvement, as you think, upon ordinary dissent — 
 for you must know I cannot suffer you to disclaim 
 altogether affinity with common dissenters — the only 
 difference I see between you and them is that, accord- 
 ing to the genius of the day, you are more latitudi- 
 narian. Until yom* views came out, it was thought 
 that the dissenting bodies in this coimtry had become 
 grievously lax in their principles in order to effect 
 unity : the followers of John Owen, for instance, 
 changing jjulpits with the followers of John Wesley 
 — each party for the time being keeping in abeyance 
 those doctrines which were obnoxious to the other. 
 Even the heterogeneous materials of Caltinism, 
 Socinianisin, and Popery appeared not long ago com- 
 bined on the subject of pohtical agitation ; and at this 
 moment, in the national system of education for poor 
 Ireland, we see the sad spectacle of representatives of 
 these several classes sitting in conclave to determine 
 how much of what each maintains to be truth is to 
 be sacrificed at the shiine of the popular idol unity. 
 I, for my part, did not think that latitudinarianism 
 could go beyond this; but you and your brethren 
 have found out a stiU more comprehensive ground of 
 union : you propose to unite all classes, not by the 
 old-fashioned way of endeavouring to banish " erro- 
 neous and strange doctrines " — the fruitful parent of 
 strife — but by cushioning them, and inscribing upon 
 your standard only one or two articles of faith as 
 essential : and really while I admit this, that you 
 have set your seal as a body to any truth, I do not 
 know that I am altogether right, for where is yo\ir 
 confession of faith to be found ? If you say in the 
 wi'itten word — ^well, the Socinian professes to find his 
 there too, — is he therefore admissible to your com- 
 mimion ? I believe not ; how then do you exclude 
 him, since you have no defined standard of truth ? 
 
15 
 
 Why it is by using a standard stealthily and in pri- 
 vate, bt/ secretly defining what is truth. You have your 
 touchstone of error in each of your breasts; the 
 leaders among you appeal to it as occasion requires, 
 and thus the Socinian is excluded ; but, by the way, 
 where is the security for your continuing to exclude him, ? 
 That touchstone of unrecorded opinions within you 
 may change, so that the sentiments which are not 
 congenial to you to-day may become so to-morrow. 
 Not to diverge, however, from the point — ^you do ex- 
 clude the Socinian, though in an imsatisfactory way : 
 do you exclude any others ? — Eoman Catholics. How 
 do I know this ? Pascal and Fenelon — and doubt- 
 less they have their successors in our day — would be 
 as devotional as any of you in speaking of and extol- 
 ling Jesus ; — if you have no other test than this, why 
 the wafer idolaters may come among you, and be 
 called bretkren. If indeed you have your mental 
 touchstone to apply to their views, you are free, I will 
 suppose, from the intrusion of both these obnoxious 
 classes, though I leave it to you to show your consist- 
 ency in recognizing what is truth in their cases, and 
 then stopping short. Do you not see, my dear sir, 
 that at the very point your recognition of truth ends, 
 there your adinission of error begins ? and here is your 
 latitudinarianism. Let men but profess their belief, 
 as your phrase is, " in the blood," and then, whatever 
 be their heterodoxy, they are admissible among you — 
 Baptists and Psedobaptists, Ai-minians and Calvinists, 
 Millennarians and Anti-millennarians, Quakers, &c. 
 Your cords of union are indeed lengthened, but, alas, 
 how superficial the truth they circimiscribe ! The 
 ordinance of baptism, though a command, cannot be 
 administered among you ; the doctrine of God's 
 electing love, the second advent, the agency of the 
 Spirit in the Church, cannot be introduced at your 
 
16 
 
 meetings, forsootli, because the moment you touch 
 upon these topics your boasted unity is at an end. 
 Doubtless it has happened because of the paucity of 
 your numbers, and their select character, beino- 
 chiefly from the one communion, that you have had 
 somewhat more of liberty than I have described as 
 the tendency of your system (though, by the way, I 
 saw myself the elements of discord working among 
 you at Clifton) ; but according, I repeat, to your lati- 
 tudinarian principle, coming together only as be- 
 lievers in the atonement, this liberty you have had 
 does not legitimately belong to you. Just as in the 
 national system of education, when the teacher goes 
 beyond the books of extracts he transgresses the rule, 
 so when in yoiir assemblies for worship you touch on 
 ground other than what is common to you as Christians 
 of all denominations, you \'iolate your principles. The 
 only way you can fairly get out of this bondage is by 
 determining your views of doctrine, and authorita- 
 tively setting them forth; then indeed your ranks 
 will not present so party-coloured and motley a group, 
 but they will be sadly thinned ; and if you have not 
 your Thii-ty-nine Articles, like the Church of Eng- 
 land, which you afiect to despise, yet will you have 
 some " Shibboleth " which will get you the character 
 you are now giving others. Tou see how involved 
 you are in a dilemma : either you meet on the com- 
 mon groimd of one or two truths, and then you can- 
 not go beyond them in your teaching, or you have a 
 regular system of doctrine, conformity to which is 
 expected, and then you are inconsistent, for you 
 repudiate all confessions and creeds. 
 
 But now to another subject. Tou say that the 
 Holy Ghost is not honoured in the constitution of 
 our Church. Tour letter does not explain where the 
 hindrance lies; I guess, however, what you mean, 
 
17 
 
 from your addresses which I have heard, ana yom- 
 brethren's pubUcations : it is because, it seems, we 
 admit an ordained ministry among us, i.e., by ordi- 
 nation we give authority in the Church to those 
 whom we beheve endued with the necessary gifts, 
 and called by the Holy Grhost. Mark, we do not 
 an-ogate to ourselves in the first instance, as our 
 Htm'gy testifies, the selection of our ministers ; but 
 those who appear by their solemn profession and 
 examination to be called by the Holy Ghost to take 
 upon them the office, we ordain to it. Wliy, my 
 dear sii', you do yoursehrs sometliing similar : those 
 who commend themselves to you by their gifts, and 
 as apt to teach, you yield submission to, and they act 
 as pastors among you. I remember, at your late 
 meetings at Clifton, asking Mr. Hargrove how he took 
 upon him to expoimd Scripture to his assembled bre- 
 thren one morning, and his answer was to this effect, 
 " You and some two or three others had arranged it 
 pre\'iously." You see, then, you have authority 
 exercised among you, though in a covert way ; the 
 difference is, that we demand from all candidates for 
 the ministry among us, Do they believe they are 
 moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon them the 
 solemn office ? and so far as man can go, we see that 
 we are not imposed upon, by requiring that they be 
 persons well reported of, and of competent know- 
 ledge in the word of God ; whereas )/ou, by a sort of 
 whispering debate among those who are the managers 
 of your party — irresponsible persons, determine who 
 are fit to teach, and who not. There is with you no 
 solemn examination of the individual by those who 
 have authority given them in the Church ; there is no 
 fasting or prayer previously, to implore the guidance 
 of the Holy Spirit; but just according to the way 
 the individual pleases his hearers, and it might be by 
 
18 
 
 sparing their sins, jom selection is made ; and then it 
 is only for the time being, for you may supersede 
 him on the morrow — and all this most inconsistently, 
 for he may affirm that the Spirit has moved him to 
 speak just as confidently as you aflfirm you are moved 
 by the Spirit to silence him. I ask, my dear sir, is 
 God a Grod of order ; and can you say that amidst 
 this confusion the Holy Grhost is honoured among 
 you ? To sum up in a few words this part of the 
 matter, there must he authoriir) used in the ordering 
 of the Church ; and while this is conformable to the 
 general rule laid down in the word, it is as absurd to 
 say that this introduction of it hinders the Spirit, as 
 it would be to contend that the use of t^-pes, ink, and 
 paper is officious meddhng on our part to preserve 
 the Scriptiu'es, and that it interferes with the agency 
 of the Spirit. Authority, I repeat, must be had 
 recourse to ; and we maintain that ours is conform- 
 able to the general rule laid down in the word of 
 Grod ; but while you have authority among you in a 
 covert waj', it is capriciously exercised according to 
 no open acknowledged standard ; and thus while our 
 dear people whom you have got among you are 
 taught to flatter themselves that they are free from 
 the yoke of man, you and the other managers of 
 your party are virtually their lords ; and if yom- 0"kti 
 minds receive an evil impulse, God hnotrs what mis- 
 chief you may inflict upon them ; or if you are pre- 
 served — and I pray the Lord you may, and, further, 
 be reclaimed from your present schismatic course — 
 other leaders may arise among you, men of parts and 
 ambition, who may become the worst of spiritual 
 despots. 
 
 On the whole, my dear sir, I think I have proved 
 that your system has not originated in obedience to 
 the word of Grod, and that its tendency is most per- 
 
19 
 
 nicious. Here I would be content to close my letter 
 — beseeching the Lord to open your eyes, and the 
 eyes of oxvr dear people who have been decoyed away 
 from us by your vain, though, I admit, sincere repre- 
 sentations — ^but your letter turns to personal matters, 
 upon which, lest you should be offended if I were 
 silent, I beg to spend a few words. 
 
 First. — ^You reproach me for challenging this dis- 
 cussion; but this I leave. If I were in the strict 
 sense of the term " the challenger," as I said before, 
 it would be only conformable to my ordination vow. 
 
 Secondly. — ^You go back to what transpired at the 
 Chfton meetings ; aU I shall say to this is, that I 
 am surprised at your venturing to allude to the sub- 
 ject, after your shrinking in the manner you have 
 done (I allude to our correspondence) fi'om, on the 
 one hand, the vindication of yourself from the xm- 
 charitableness which, on the testimony of yom- own 
 brother, Hargrove, I alleged against you ; or, on the 
 other hand, the honest confession of your fault as a 
 follower of J esus. 
 
 Thirdly. — ^You do not imderstand, you say, my 
 regretting that this is not a vim voce discussion, — 
 time, manner, and place being left entirely to me. 
 On this I beg to observe that, independent of my 
 unsettled ciiciunstances in the ministry at that time, 
 and which occurred to disturb my original design 
 and wish, and of this you were duly apprised, when 
 I came matui'ely to reflect iipon the novel position I 
 should occupy in going to Hereford, or any other 
 place where your party was, to argue against you, as 
 though my brethren in the ministry stationed there 
 were not fully competent, if they approved of such a 
 course, to enter upon it themselves, I recognized it 
 as providential that the alternative of the press, 
 through which without any indelicacy I could meet 
 
20 
 
 you, was suggested by you instead of the platform. 
 Not but that if, in the providence of God, you or 
 any of your party broaching your schismatical views 
 came within the sphere of labour \mder my control, 
 I would for a moment hesitate to challenge you to 
 oral discussion. I think it a sad pity when it is a 
 legitimate course to adopt, that my reverend brethren 
 do not pursue it, though, as I told you, a most valued 
 brother said he thought it would be making too 
 much of you. 
 
 Fourthly. — With regard to the publication of our 
 con-espondence, I shall go as far back as you please. 
 It was really for //our sake, your first letters were so 
 tmchristian and slovenly, as well as that they related 
 to personal matter, that I proposed omittiag them ; 
 and if you name any medium in England through 
 which the whole correspondence can appear, / am 
 perfectly content. I think the Statesman would be 
 available for Ireland. 
 
 I remain, my dear sir. 
 
 Tours in Christian truth and love, 
 James Kelly. 
 
21 
 
 Stafford, Feb. 26, 1839. 
 
 Dear Mr. Kelly, 
 
 I am glad we are at last launelied in the 
 subject ; it is a great relief to my spirit, though not a 
 pleasant task in itself. I received your packet from 
 Dublin in London, I suppose by private hand, and sit 
 down at once to answer it, having ran it over as 
 I came down again here. 
 
 Your letter has completely justified to me the 
 ground I took in my last letter to you ; satisfactory, 
 if not to you, at least to others, whose minds were 
 anxious on the subject. All your present letter goes 
 on the assmnption exactly of what I refused to 
 acknowledge in my last — no attempt beiag made on 
 yom- part to prove it. In replying to the question. 
 Why I left the Church of England ? I replied, not 
 that the world was in the Church of England, as you 
 say — no such thing at all; but that I found the 
 system I was mixed up with to he the world, and not 
 the Church of Ood at all. That is a very distinct 
 thing from worldly people being in the Church. 
 
 I said to you very plainly that your question 
 assumed that the EstabUshment was the or a Church, 
 which I did not admit. Now this is a very plain 
 ground ; it is to me precisely the groimd of import- 
 ance ; and a plain truth which, when once appre- 
 hended, frees the conscience of many an anxious 
 person. The position in which you desired to place 
 me is also evident from the expression, you will take 
 up " my aspersions of the Chuxch of England." I 
 
22 
 
 have no pleasure in casting any aspersions on it ; to 
 free my own and others' conscience from all that may 
 be, or tend to evil, I do desire. Fm-ther, sir, I have 
 to admit that the manifested progress of Popery, of 
 v^'hich the system of the Church of England is the 
 instrument, renders me less jealous and less anxious 
 to avoid the plain expression of what one may feel 
 parufully, and yet, from ten thousand associations, be 
 imwilling to declare, lest some rude Edomite might 
 suppose for a moment one felt with them. My mind 
 has long admitted its tendency, and I have acted on 
 it. The signs of it are too pubUcly apparent not to 
 call forth at least some additional wamuig voice. If 
 mine be so very feeble and despised, as I am sure it 
 is, may the Lord give it truth and affection, and 
 therefore His own force. The Oxford ti-acts and their 
 prevalence cannot but have di-awn your attention, as 
 they have of Bishops, and even newspapers; and 
 recently we have had a very remarkable sign of the 
 times, — the highest ecclesiastical authority in the 
 coimtry pronoimcing a definite judgment that 
 prayers for the dead are not inconsistent ■with the 
 doctrines of the Church of England. Tou may say 
 this is not right: her godly ministers protest 
 against it. Be it so. Thej cannot help it ; and if 
 they say, we declare it is not right, then is the judg- 
 ment of Grod on them, because they ^^ill not plainly 
 act on and abide by what is right, and renounce 
 what is %vTong. What is the resource from the evil 
 proposed by the Record ? — An appeal to the Privy 
 Council ! What a condition for the Chm-ch of GOD 
 to be placed in, that when a heresy comes in, and is 
 sanctioned, its appeal is to the Privy Coimcil to get 
 rid of it ! But I aUude to this merely as a sign ; 
 and whether the Church exculpate herself or not, a 
 sign it is to them that have eyes to see. 
 
23 
 
 I believe, dear sir, this, that at the time of the 
 Eeformation two great elements entered into the 
 composition of the Church of England, as it is called : 
 one, the power of the Spirit of GOD in the preached 
 word, which was directed against the Church of Eng- 
 land, or of Rome in England then subsisting, and 
 which was carried on by a system of irregularities — 
 Latimer, Bernard Grilpin, and a host of others, many 
 whose names are better known in heaven than on 
 earth, preaching and teaching all about the country, 
 %vithout regard to parish or any thing — but which 
 was the power of light against the power of darkness, 
 and that was blest. The other element was partly 
 through the fears of Churchmen, and mainly through 
 the interference of the Crown and secular power — a 
 system in which, in order to maintain unity in the 
 whole country, and that even to conciliate Roman 
 Catholics for political purposes, under Queen Eliza- 
 beth, a vast mass of association with Roman Catholic 
 forms and the value of ordinances was preserved and 
 asserted, by which a connexion with the great apos- 
 tacy was kept up; which, although the power of 
 truth and the providence of Grod may have a long 
 while hindered its effect, is now beginning distinctly 
 and publicly to show itseK, and wiU, I have no doubt 
 — woe isme that I should have to say it — result in this 
 once comparatively happy coimtry being immersed in 
 and given up to darkness and opposition to GOD. 
 Can 3"ou suppose, sir, that this gives me satisfaction 
 or pleasm-e in saying it? The Lord knows who 
 grieves over it most — those who sanction the system 
 that leads to it, or such as in sorrow of heart have 
 gone out without the camp, though bearing his re- 
 proach, and in word and work become a witness, 
 however feeble. 
 
 A man cannot, whUe acting in and sanctioning a 
 
24 
 
 system which involves these evils, honestly bear -wit- 
 ness against the evils he partakes of and upholds. 
 The whole system is thoroughly woven together. 
 He subscribes his assent and consent to all and every 
 thing contained in it. Satan, imder divine permis- 
 sion, has been allowed to force the adoption of all or 
 none; and makes the single sentence, or word, or 
 even fonn of apparel, as necessary to imitj^ or to 
 living honestly in the Church, as justification by 
 faith or any thing else. This is the position of a 
 minister of the Estabhshment : it cannot be denied. 
 Mr. Head, near Exeter, is a public instance lately of 
 the truth of what I say. But though the truth 
 might be preached by individuals, which I do not 
 controvert, the consequence of the preservation of 
 this Popish parochial unity was the entire forfeiture 
 by the Establishment of the title to being a Church 
 at all — not merely by accident, but by its very 
 essence and system. There was a transfer of all the 
 inhabitants of a parish to a Protestant form from a 
 Popish, but no gathering of saints at all. It was 
 matter of legal penalty not to go to church. The 
 parochial centre was there ; the minister the law 
 provided was there ; the legal right to seats was 
 there; the whole framework of ordinances for the 
 whole parish was there ; and, I repeat, there was a 
 legal penalty for not attending. These are matters 
 of historical fact. The whole population, as such, were 
 transferred in geographical divisions to another form 
 of worship, and there was no gathering of the saints, 
 though there was, to a considerable extent, the truth 
 preached. 
 
 That was the system of the Church of England, 
 not its abuse. Those who refused to come were 
 termed Popish recusants, and dealt -nith as such ; and 
 those whose consciences refused submission were very 
 
26 
 
 extensively subjected to punishment and imprison- 
 ment. Aid this is still the boasted principle of the 
 Establishment. The toleration that there is, forced 
 on by the consciences of others, has in nowise altered 
 the principle of the Establishment. Her boast is, 
 that she provides religious instruction for the whole 
 population of the country : the truth of this we may 
 shortly inquire, but it is her boast; but when I 
 begin to seek what is meant by religious instruction, 
 I find this a most deceptive and inadequate state- 
 ment. Her system, be there instruction or not, be 
 there bad or good, is a system of ordinances by 
 which the whole popiilation are received as Christian, 
 whether they believe or not, and are dealt with as such 
 by her ordinances, with which, according to her 
 directions, they are all bound to comply ; so that 
 those who do not are called recusants, dissenters, and 
 schismatics. So that it is really a provision, not for 
 the instruction of all, but for calling all Christians, 
 whether they are so or not. Do I go into a town or 
 eotmtry parish, if there should not be any dissenting 
 body, it woiild be the boast that they were all Church 
 of England people — though a Christian minister 
 within her pale would perhaps avow he was satisfied 
 there was not one who was a Christian, or knew the 
 Lord, amongst them, and would preach to them as 
 entirely unconverted people, and often does so very 
 faithfully. 
 
 You say that discipline is to be exercised. In fact, 
 it is not, nor could be scripturally : if it were, it 
 would be merely to make the world decent, not to 
 keep the Church holy ; and discipline with unbe- 
 lievers is merely entirely deceiving the souls of all — 
 the height of confusion and absm-dity. My assertion 
 then is, that the Establishment is not, unless in self- 
 assumed responsibility, the Church, or a Church at 
 
 B 
 
26 
 
 all, — is not a body that God owns as such, save for 
 judgment. And yet she treats as schismatics those 
 who separate from her pale. 
 
 This short remark sets this clear. If a man left 
 the Church of God, he was out of the manifested 
 body of God's saved people altogether. But farther, 
 if a man at Corinth left the Church of Corinth, he 
 left the Church of God— he left God's assembly. 
 Could that be said of the Church of England? I 
 find no such thing as a national Church in Scrip- 
 ture. Is the Church of England — was it ever God's 
 assembly in England ? I read of the Churches of 
 Galatia, which was a province or country — that is, 
 God's assemblies in that coimtry ; but the very idea 
 of an assembly of God is lost in the claim and boast 
 of the Establishment. 
 
 Now, dear sfr, instead of this being an aspersion 
 on the Church of England, it is her boast. In her 
 effort to build new Churches now — may the Lord 
 turn it to blessing by sending the truth into them, 
 for He is sovereign, and not tied to our ways or any 
 but His own — her plea is to keep pace with the popu- 
 lation, not with the growth and extension of the 
 Church of God. Such is the practical evidence of a 
 fact too notorious to requii-e much proof. 
 
 If you refer to the Irish canons, I think the sixth 
 (I have but my Bible with me here and a borrowed 
 litm'gy), you wiU find that the parishioners ai-e to go 
 to the sacrament so often, or to be forced by penalty 
 of law. An analogous canon, but not quite so violent 
 in form, but the same in principle, will be found in 
 the Enghsh collection. "What has been the conse- 
 quent history ? for I may be told that these are obso- 
 lete ; for when we turn to fads, we are told that they 
 are abuses ; when we tm-n to documents, we are told 
 they are obsolete. But facts and documents aKke 
 
27 
 
 prove that in the principle of the Establishment, " the 
 Church and State are but different aspects of the 
 same body," to use the expression of one of her dis- 
 tinguished defenders. Hence I am relieved from the 
 thought altogether, save in sorrow for the saints in 
 her pale, of leaving the Chm'ch of God, when I cease 
 to be of the Establishment. If you are not the 
 Church of God in England — and such a pretence is 
 idle — then, save the importance of avoiding the 
 deceiving myself and others, my having nothing to 
 say to you can be of no sort of consequence. Tou 
 tell me to remember that you did not say the Church. 
 If you are not, as far as England goes, the sooner I 
 have done with what pretends to be, and is not, the 
 better. It seems to me to be an awful thing to pretend 
 to be the Church of England, if you are not the Church 
 of God there. Whose Chui'ch are you ? or what new 
 thing have you introduced ? 
 
 These are questions which ought to be answered 
 before charges of schism and dissent are laimched out 
 so readily against those who cannot form their con- 
 sciences on the model of a Church which is not the 
 Church of God. How is it schism to leave you, if you 
 are not the Church of God ? What is schism ? Would 
 it be schism to divide Turks, or to divide Christians 
 from them ? Would it be schism to seek the unity 
 of all saints, apart from the world ? Were the 
 Establishment blameless, to force a weak Christian's 
 conscience on an indifferent point would be schism. 
 But what do I find in the history of the Establish- 
 ment ? Why that in order to enforce imity, or rather 
 uniformity, and that even in apparel (and that can 
 hardly be necessary for the xmity of the Spirit), 
 nearly two thousand of her godly parochial ministers 
 were rejected at once. If it be said, this was by Act 
 of Parliament, not by the act of the Church, I answer, 
 
28 
 
 then have you for secular reasons made yourselves 
 the slaves, the helpless slaves, of whatever the world 
 chooses to impose upon you ; and that in the most 
 important point of ecclesiastical discipline. And the 
 unhappy excuse — what a plea for one who is jealous 
 for the actual real maintaining of Chiist's honour in 
 the Chui-ch ! — that the Parliament and Eang are part 
 of the Chuixh ! Who made them its judicial visitors ? 
 But even this poor excuse is taken away now, and 
 we have the modern evidence that Roman Catholics, 
 Socinians — in short, the world, can dispose of the 
 whole ecclesiastical aiTangements of the coimtry ; and 
 a Chancellor of the Exchequer can get up and say 
 he has considered the state of the coimtry, and it 
 can spare ten bishoprics, and they are taken away. 
 This may seem to your minds order; but to us 
 the authority of Chidst over His Church seems east 
 to tlic winds by it, and His honour despised. And 
 I cannot but feel it preferable in ever so lowly 
 and despised circumstances, and that without the 
 camp, in ever so much acknowledged weakness, 
 to wait humbly for the guidance of the Spirit, 
 and the word of God, in the sorrow into which 
 aU this worldHness has cast the Church of God. 
 
 If I be asked by what authority I do these things, 
 my answer is an appeal to the plain righteoiisness of 
 the case, and the refusal on such a charge as schism 
 to reply to the inquiry whether the Establishment 
 is the Church of God or not, or even give a plain 
 answer whether they consider her baptized children 
 regenerate or not. If I be told as to the Act of 
 Uniformity that it has ceased to be binding, I ask by 
 what authority ? Is schism to be permitted by Act 
 of Pai'liament ? When the Act of Unifonnity, that 
 great public act of schism, was foimd politically 
 intolerable, the authority which had tried to force 
 
29 
 
 unity in a worldly way, sanctioned, according to 
 Church notions, schism in a worldly way. 
 
 Such is the history of the Church of England. To 
 turn to Scripture or its idea of a Chui-ch, no one 
 thing the least like it can be traced in the New Tes- 
 tament, or Old either. When you speak of the 
 world being in the Church, in the sense of it as 
 referred to in Scripture, it could not be in the Esta- 
 blishment. I admit there were false professors — but 
 how was this ? While the Chirrch xcas in a state 
 which Scripture recognized at all, I read of false 
 brethren coming in unawares : this could not happen 
 in the Establishment. There is nothing for them to 
 come into unawares. All, false and true, are bound 
 to go there ; and if they preserve a good worldly 
 character, welcome in theory, and without it even in 
 practice. In Scripture I find a within and tvithout — 
 a direction to judge them that are within. This state 
 of things does not exist in the Establishment. Her 
 aim and boast is to have the whole population tvithin. 
 I repeat, there is no pretence of being a Church at all. 
 And really, sir, when you deny that the openly pro- 
 fane and imgodly are in the Church of England, in 
 your own sense of it, you make an assertion of a 
 very strange character to those who are familiar with 
 facts. People's consciences must answer this for 
 themselves. Will you allow me to ask you, and beg 
 you to read it over. Is the Commination Service 
 intended for the members of the Church of England, 
 or for those without ? for believers or unbelievers ? 
 for people under the law or gospel ? But I will not 
 suffer myself, in the Lord's mercy, to be led away 
 from great principles. I believe it was meant in 
 honest hatred of sin. I honour this. But on what 
 ground it can be defended by a minister of the 
 Church of England now, it is hard to tell. Were I 
 
30 
 
 to use an argumentum ad hominem, I could remind 
 you that, in the homilies, the right use of ecclesias- 
 tical discipline is one of the three marks whereby the 
 true Church may be known. How this consists with 
 the Church of England being a true Church, anc' 
 avowing what it does in the Commination Service, is 
 hard for a simple mind to tell. 
 
 You can now pretty well understand why I speak, 
 not of the icorld being in the Chiu-ch of England, but 
 of its being the world, and not the Church at all. It 
 is notorious that, if they be not actually dissenters, 
 the population of a parish, town, or county, if they 
 be ui pitch darkness, are all members of the Church 
 of England, so called. They would call themselves 
 80. They are called so, and boasted of by their 
 ministers as such. They are entitled to be received 
 as such, if not notoriously profligate, though they 
 may not be able to tell you who J esus was, and deny 
 iu their ignorance every truth of the Gospel. And 
 that this is a fact, and not a fiction, is known to 
 every one acquainted with the state of the coimtry : 
 that is, the world behaving themselves so as not to 
 shock public decency, are entitled to be received at 
 communion, because the system rests on ordinances, 
 not on faith. And a minister faithful as to the truth 
 he preached would address the whole congregation 
 in the services of the Church of England as his bre- 
 thren and as the Church ; and when preaching to 
 them, perhaps honestly and faithfully tell them they 
 were all unconverted, and unless they repented they 
 would all perish. In a word, he would address them, 
 when he told his own mind, as faithfully serving 
 Christ in the Spirit, as unbelieving siuners ; and 
 when he recited the Church's forms, and told hers, 
 as congregated saints. Which is right ? But, first, 
 which is true ? Who is the faithful minister (I put 
 
31 
 
 it to yoiir own conscience), the man who in a dark 
 parish, or as to the great hody of every parish, 
 preaches the Gospel to them as sinners — poor, lost sin- 
 ners, or the minister who treats them all as the con- 
 gregated Church of God ? The latter minister, on 
 your own statement, and the clear avowal of the 
 Prayer Book, acts in the mind of the Church of 
 England. 
 
 The truth is, you have two irreconcileable ele- 
 ments at work within her pale — truth in the hearts 
 of many of her ministers, and in a feeble measure in 
 her Articles ; and a system of old bottles, which can- 
 not bear the new wine of the kingdom. In these 
 times of God's dealings they cannot both go on 
 together. 
 
 I say, then, that the constitution is worldly, because 
 she contemplates by her constitution — it is her boast 
 — the population, not the saints. 
 
 If circumstances have driven many outside her pale, 
 she treats them as dissenters and schismatics, and so 
 do you, and therefore in principle avow and admit 
 the charge. The man who would say that the Church 
 of England is a gathering of saints, must be a very 
 odd man, or a very bold one. The parishioners are 
 bound to attend by her principles. Are they all 
 saints in theory ? If you say yes, I answer, then it 
 is not God's theory, and judgment is pronounced on 
 the question. 
 
 But there are other points connected with this 
 point, of theory and discipline, which are to me 
 very important. 
 
 We are habitually told not to judge, and this 
 sounds well ; but it is a very awful and anti-gospel, 
 and at the same time a very hollow principle. True 
 it is that I am not to pass a human judgment on a 
 brother, as regards God's final estimate of him ; nor 
 
32 
 
 to say, he being before me as such, as to Grod's pre- 
 sent acceptance of him. This is clear ; but to treat 
 all as christians because they have been baptized in 
 their infancy, and connected with the formularies, is 
 a very uncharitable deception, and you know that as 
 a Christian minister you do not. The system of 
 your Church may do it, but I am persuaded your 
 heart does not. It could not if the Spirit of Christ's 
 love be there, neither then should our acts or words. 
 They forget that Chiistianity begins with this, " The 
 love of Christ constrains me, because tee thus judge, 
 that if one died for all, then were all dead." And if 
 a system of ordinances have concealed these truths ; 
 if the Church has learnt to rest in the ordinances in 
 lieu of /;■/(' and its necessity ; it is just in the practical 
 state of apostacy from which I have to flee, in love 
 to my own soul and that of others. 
 
 Next, I believe that the notion that I cannot recog- 
 nize brethren, as such, is an abominable delusion of 
 Satan, to the destruction of the grand witness of 
 Christ on the earth. I am told not to judge who are 
 and who are not. I answer, the practical recognition 
 of them is the piinciple of the dispensation. Know- 
 ing that all are dead, the recognition that any are 
 alive w the joy of charity. Their corporate tmion and 
 worship is Christ's witness in the earth, "that 
 they may be one, that the world may beheve that 
 Thou hast sent me." And though the disregard 
 of the unity of worship of the saints, known to each 
 other as such, may seem to a carnal man as charity, 
 it really destroj's all the first springs of holy afiec- 
 tion. What would come of family afl'ections if all were 
 reduced to uncertainty as to who was a brother and 
 who was not ? How can I greet with cordial afiection 
 as of one heart and one mind my brethren in the 
 Lord, if I do not and am not to know who they are ? 
 
33 
 
 Is there not, according to Scripture, to be some set 
 of people who are all of one heart and one mind ? Is 
 not charity injured, and Grod's witness of love from 
 each injured and destroyed by this cold and hearth ss 
 doctriae, that I am not to judge who are brethren 
 and who are not ? Love the brethren, says the Spirit 
 of God. Nay, I am told you must not judge who 
 are and who are not. The first precept of charity is 
 annulled by this system, " Hereby shall all men 
 know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to 
 another." How can this great witness and test of 
 discipleship be manifested if there be not a mutual 
 recognition by the disciples of the Lord as such? 
 This fair form of worldly charity is, I believe, a very 
 evil delusion of the enemy. And is it not the fact 
 you do judge, you preach to many as unconverted, 
 and you converse with others as saints ? You must 
 do so if you have the Spirit of Christ. 
 
 Fiu-ther, as to disciphne, there is not othei-wise a 
 body capable of discipline as led of the Spirit of God, 
 by which alone it can be rightly exercised. Dis- 
 cipline by a body of unconverted persons is ridicu- 
 lous. A remark of your friend Mr. M'Neil is an 
 evidence of this. He says, speaking of those who 
 complained of mixed communion, "Have you fol- 
 lowed the Scriptirres? If your brother has driven 
 you from participating in this ordinance, he has cer- 
 tainly trespassed agaiast you." This is a poor and 
 strained way of taking a brother's trespass against 
 me, and it is besides a piece of sophistry ; for my 
 difficulty is not that my brother has trespassed, but 
 that you have by your system gathered a heap of 
 people tcJio are not brethren at all, and would reject 
 and scorn the title of saints in heart and life, so that 
 it is a very poor sophistry. But let that pass. " Have 
 you gone to him alone?" says Mr. M'Neil, "then 
 
34 
 
 taken two or tkree more ? and, if that failed, then 
 told it to your minister ?" Why " your minister " ? 
 because the use of the scriptuial direction would 
 have laid bare the iaconsistent and absxird position 
 he was in. If he had said, teU it to the Church or 
 assembly, every straightforward person would have 
 seen its absurdity : there was reaUy no Church to teU 
 it to. But to be in a position which obliges one to 
 change the word of God, is just the expression of 
 unwilling consciousness that the word of God con- 
 demns my position. It condemns it in the very 
 point at issue between us. Thus holy discipline is 
 destroyed, as well as charity, by the world being 
 called the Church; and "put out from among 
 yourselves that wicked person " is as impracticable 
 as " love the brotherhood." Everybody knows the 
 fact. 
 
 Now as to one or two objections you make. First, 
 you refer to Israel. There was abuse, you say, but 
 they were not to leave it. In the fii-st place, we are 
 not Jews, but Christians. Judaism was an elect 
 nation ; there could be no such thing as leaving it : 
 Christianity is not, but a gathering of saints. God 
 has not recorded His name in the English nation ; 
 but wherever two or three are gathered together in 
 His name, there is Jesus in the midst of them. 
 What the temple was to a Jew, the gathering of the 
 saints is to me. My complaint of the Establishment 
 is that it is not, and never was, a gathering of mints. 
 If a man ceased to be a J ew, he ceased to be of God's 
 people altogether. That nation and its ordinances 
 were whoUy, solely, and exclusively God's people, 
 sanctuary, and place : to leave them was to apostatize 
 from God. They were gathered, not in spiritual 
 worship, but to carnal ordinances, imposed not by 
 conversion of heart, but by Jewish parentage. The 
 
35 
 
 Cliurch of God alone is analogous in one place. The 
 Establishment has no pretence to be what Israel was 
 as God's only place of abode. Where Judaism and 
 Christianity are entirely different from each other in 
 principle, in naturalism, and obligation of carnal 
 ordinances, there it has followed Judaism, and then 
 uses this as an argument why it should not be left. 
 If this argument proves anything, it proves its 
 apostacy. Two or three gathered together in Christ's 
 name has the authority of unity which Israel had of 
 old, not a sorry imitation of that which the Gospel 
 treats as beggarly elements, and now equivalent to 
 idolatry (see Gal. iv.) and carnal ordinances. Israel, 
 I repeat, was a national election ; Christianity is not. 
 The laws of the country were God's own laws, the 
 presence of God was there, and the abuses and cor- 
 ruptions did not alter that. A person could not leave 
 it, and be in the place of God's worship and God's 
 ordinance. Now the place of God's worship and 
 God's ordinance is where two or three are gathered 
 together in Christ's name, and this the Establish- 
 ment is not, but a provision of ordinances for the 
 population in confessed imitation of Judaism. 
 
 Next you refer to the seven Churches. Tliis there 
 is more occasion to answer specially, as it is the 
 common resort of argument on the question. The 
 simple answer is, they were God's Churches or assem- 
 blies in the place mentioned, and they could not be 
 left ; corruptions are no ground for leaving the 
 Church of GOD. The Church of GOD cannot be 
 left, and a man be in the path of salvation in so 
 doing. These were the Churches of GOD — the 
 assemblies of GOD in those different towns — gather- 
 ings of saints, although carelessness had introduced 
 corruption. The Establishment is not this at aU. 
 Were the Apostle to address an epistle to the Church 
 
36 
 
 of GOD wliicli is at Liverpool, or London, there is 
 no gathered body distinct from the world who could 
 receive and act upon the letter. Where the epistle 
 says, Ye have among you such and such, and calls 
 for repentance, were they not to put them out, or 
 would they otherwise have repented ? Where is the 
 body, then, which could act thus, when you are 
 preaching to an indiscriminate heap of unconverted 
 people ? In a word, there was a known body which 
 could act by the leading of the Spirit of GOD. There 
 was no direction to leave these Churches, because 
 they were Churches. The Establishment has no such 
 claim, and I do not leave it properly, but have no- 
 thing to say to it, because it is not one. The Esta- 
 blishment does not, nor ever did, stand on the ground 
 of these Churches or local assemblies of God at all, 
 and has no principle of their structure, order, or con- 
 stitution. I should think it a great sin to leave a 
 Church of God because corruptions were foxmd in it ; 
 but the EstabKshment is a great national, secular 
 system, and not the Church of God at all. 
 
 Another assertion you make is, I have evil in 
 myself, and that I cannot leave, and therefore it is a 
 hopeless thing to seek purity. This, forgive me for 
 saying it, is an ugly argument. There is no hope : 
 we will continue to do evil. But it is a poor piece 
 of sophistry. I cannot leave the evil in my flesh, so 
 I remain in the body. I can leave the evil around 
 me, so I am to remain in that too. You will admit 
 this is not very strong reasoning. But more plainly, 
 the Lord says, " Come out from among them, and be 
 ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing ; and I 
 wlU receive you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, 
 saith the Lord Almighty." He does not say. Come 
 out from your body. The Lord says, "If a man 
 purge himself fi'om these, he shall be a vessel made 
 
37 
 
 unto honoTir, fit for the master's use." I cannot 
 have done with my body, though I may mortify it 
 and treat it as dead, through grace and infinite 
 mercy. The Lord says, " From such withdraw thy- 
 self." I cannot from my body. The Lord says, 
 speaking (I believe you will agree with me) of these 
 latter days — days it may be not fully ripened, still 
 they are now the last days — " From such turn away." 
 From my body I cannot turn away. The answer 
 simply then to this is, that the Lord has commanded 
 me to come out and be separate from the world ; He 
 has not commanded me to come out of my body. Is 
 yom- argument really a righteous one in this ? 
 
 One only remark I believe remains in this part : 
 your objection to ceasing to do evil before we know 
 to do good — taking, as you call it, a leap in the dark. 
 Is it taking a leap in the dai'k for a Christian ceasing 
 to do known evil, because he does not yet know all 
 the Lord's subsequent will concerning him? Are 
 we to say, I will not act on what I do know, till you 
 teU me all my course on to glory ? I have seen the 
 Lord thus continually exercise His children, giving 
 Hght enough to make a thing a matter of plain 
 Christian obedience, and not show all the happy, and 
 blessed, and full consequences, tiU faith acted on 
 that. It is just a holy and excellent trial of faith. 
 He says, in principle, I am the door. The mind may 
 say, where to ? The Lord answers, I am the door : 
 and wherever the soul finds Christ or the will of 
 Christ, it, if walking in faith, trusts that, and the 
 blessing follows. It soon goes in and out, and finds 
 pastm-e. You seem to forget the praise of Abraham's 
 faith was. He went out, not knowing whither he went. 
 It is better to trust God in doing His will, than the 
 consequences which doing His will may produce, 
 however blessed. Now surely it is of Christ and the 
 
38 
 
 ■will of Christ to cease from known e-vil. If you call 
 this taking a leap in the dark, Christ's will — and 
 surely it is His will to leave known evil — is not dark- 
 ness to us, but light, for which our poor foolish souls 
 are thankful. Nor shall he that foUoweth Him walk 
 in darkness, though he may only know that in the 
 very next footsteps Christ has gone before him. 
 And if you woidd know our experience, sir, we have 
 not foimd it darkness, but blessed Hght ; we have 
 found our own weakness, and the poverty and ruin 
 of the Church; but we have found marvellous and 
 abundant light in the Lord, though hght affliction 
 for a moment might accompany it. 
 
 As to the Corinthians, though the principle is 
 unaffected by it, it is perfectly plain that the worst 
 among them was a Christian, though a fallen one. 
 The habits of the Establishment seem to have con- 
 founded decency of morals and deportment with 
 the very faith of the Church of GOD. As to the 
 Philippians, that corruption and apostacy were then 
 rapidly flowing in on the Church of God is imques- 
 tionable. I do not see that these people were at 
 PhUippi, and therefore there is no consequence to be 
 drawn from the passage. "With regard to Jude (if 
 you do not beheve that we are wandering stars, 
 reserved for the blackness of darkness for ever, un- 
 godly men before ordained to this condemnation, 
 turning the grace of God into lasciviousness), you are 
 not — forgive the saying so — quite honest in quoting 
 it. Do you believe this ? But there is a little cir- 
 cumstance in this epistle to wliich this convenient 
 word " separate themselves " seems to have blinded 
 those who quote it in the Estabhshment ; and this is, 
 that these persons had crej^t in, not gone out. This 
 you will admit is a material point. They were cor- 
 rupters come into the once pure Church, not saints 
 
39 
 
 gone out. They feasted with them. They were 
 spots in their feasts of charity. Tour charge against 
 us is that we are gone out. Yea, and because we 
 feared to feed ourselves without fear where evil was. 
 I think if you examine the word "separate them- 
 selves " {a-rroliopil^ovTtQ) with the context, you will find 
 a very different force in it from that which you 
 attach to the English one, as a convenient placard to 
 the eye, against those whom you condemn — to a well- 
 instructed mind one of no great difficulty. 
 
 And why do you say you find separatists in bad 
 company ? I read, " These be they who separate 
 themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit." Do you 
 believe in fact, as an honest man, that these latter 
 characters apply to the greater majority amongst 
 ourselves, or the professed members of the Church of 
 England ? And just allow me to ask you also, why 
 you state m the outset that I complain of the world's 
 being in the Church, when you, in speaking of the 
 seven Churches, give a reason why " our party " say 
 the Establishment is no Church at all? All the 
 character you give yourself of alternate tenderness 
 and faithfulness, and our comparative enjoyment by 
 selfishly quitting the family, I pass by ; great com- 
 parative enjoyment indeed I believe we have had, 
 not in selfishly pleasing ourselves. But the point is, 
 What is God's will ? One charge is, that you have 
 called that the family which is not the family at all. 
 And if you have lifted up your eyes and seen the 
 plain of J ordan, that it was well watered everywhere, 
 and then found yourselves in Sodom vexing your 
 righteous souls, for such I admit there are, you have 
 nothing to boast of in that sort of patience. We 
 prefer the place of Abraham, and give it all up to 
 you, trusting that the Lord will deliver you too ; 
 but see no motive to follow your example, or to 
 
40 
 
 associate ourselves witli that on wliicli the Lord's 
 judgment is coming — and coming on it you yourself, 
 I bless God, do not deny that it is. 
 
 I have now, in reply to the earlier part of yo\ir 
 letter, spoken of the great principle on which I rest, 
 as an obedient servant of Clirist, in not recognizing 
 the Establishment as the Church. I must now — a 
 much more disagreeable and painful task — refer to the 
 plainer facts of the case, and some of your ovm docu- 
 ments, showing its working, and how it is mixed up 
 with the canonical principles of the Establishment. 
 I have preferred resting first on the great principle, 
 partly because I am replying to your letter, which 
 does so, and partly because the plea of there being 
 abuses does not enter into the question. The real 
 subject is fairly before us ; and effects, what you caU 
 abuses, act most directly upon the conscience, and 
 therefore are most material in this question ; for all 
 healthful action is action by a conscience led of God's 
 -Spirit and the Word. And if, in the whole arrange- 
 ments of a system, there be a constant violation of 
 the laws of Christ and His will and righteousness in 
 the Church, it becomes impossible for a righteous 
 man to act in it or with it. This, I repeat, is a 
 much more painful part of the subject. It is plea- 
 santer far — oh, how much so — to keep the soul in the 
 imsullied regions of Christ's blessedness ; and one 
 has to watch one's treacherous heart, lest one shoxild 
 begin to rejoice in iniquity, because it proves one 
 against whom we are contending to be in the wrong ; 
 and I feel that one is not fit to speak of evil to 
 another, imless we can bear its burden in so^tow of 
 heart before the Lord, as our own burden in their 
 behalf, at least for those that are saints, beloved of 
 God, the pure and holy One. Controversy tends to 
 destroy estimate, and to make us prove rather than 
 
41 
 
 cover the sins. Still you have compelled me to state 
 the facts, which are plainly inconsistent with God's 
 righteousness in the Church of Grod. 
 
 In the first place, then, pastorships, or what hold 
 their place in the system, are publicly bought and 
 sold, or at least the right to appoint them. At this 
 moment the Corporation livings are on sale. I re- 
 member a town where the next presentation to a 
 living was sold to enable the Coq^oration to build 
 (or pay for) a theatre. I have one now with me 
 cojiying this, for whom a living was bought as pro- 
 vision for him as a younger son, and he then of course 
 to be brought up at a University for the ministry. 
 But the placards of auctioneers and the advertise- 
 ments of newspapers are evidence that the pastor- 
 ships of the Church of England are bought and sold 
 in the market like other property ; nay, if I am to 
 believe Mr. M'Neil, they are consequently appointed 
 because they are unfit (see his letters on the Church, 
 in a note I think to page 104). Do you think this 
 consistent with the order of the Church of God ? 
 You will tell me this is an abuse. Is it not sanc- 
 tioned by the courts of law, by the ecclesiastical 
 com-ts, by the institution of the bishops, so that the 
 Chm'ch of England treats any one else but the 
 person so holding it as an intruder and schismatic ? 
 It is the consequence of that organized connexion 
 with the State which makes it the National Church — 
 the Establishment. 
 
 There is another thing beside that : some one has 
 a legal secular right so to present, giving secular 
 advantages, and therefore temporally cognizable as a 
 right by the State. It is the horrid price you pay 
 for your specific and formal character. I do not 
 understand how, if all the spiritual and temporal 
 authorities of the system treat as an intruder and a 
 
42 
 
 schismatic any one else than the person so appointed, 
 the appointment can be called an abuse. If you say 
 it is, comparing it with the Church of Grod as dis- 
 played in the word, we are agreed indeed ; but then 
 it is in this abuse that the system and order of the 
 Establishment are entirely, and fatally for its cha- 
 racter as a Church, at variance with what we find in 
 the word of God. But this is exactly what presses, 
 and justly presses, on the consciences of the Lord's 
 people, and compels them to disown her authoritj' 
 and her state. You may teU me that such or such 
 instances are abuses ; but I say that it is just as 
 abhorrent to the principles of the Church of the 
 living God to have a good man or a society buy up 
 livings as to have an infidel do so. Do you think 
 an infidel ought to have the right to present any one 
 to the pastorship of a place ? Perhaps indeed by the 
 system of the Establishment there may be no saint 
 there, but by the system of the Establishment it is 
 perfectly competent for him to do so : he may be 
 seized of or purchase the advowson, and the bishop 
 must admit his right, and institute his nominee, and 
 treat all else as schismatics and intruders. You will 
 say his nominee must be a clergjonan — be it so ; but 
 by reason of the system of national advantage, the 
 bishop is bound to ordain, if there be no legal reason 
 to the contrary : and supposing the clergy to be all 
 faultless, do you think it is the system of the Church 
 of God that an infidel should have the right ;of 
 choosing the pastor of a place ? How would such 
 a system have appeared at Corinth or Ephesus ? Is 
 it in principle — I do not talk of abuses — the system 
 of the Church of God ? But it is the system of the 
 Church of England. Her system is a system of pa- 
 rochial geographical divisions, to which certain legal 
 rights, privileges, and emoluments are attached. This 
 
43 
 
 is lier boast as contrasted with what she calls dissent, 
 by reason of which the appointment to these geogra- 
 phical divisions is vested as a right or privilege in 
 some one or another, it matters not who. Now I say 
 this, let it be ever so well ordered, is not the system 
 of the Church of God at all. Mr. M'Neil says this is 
 a disgusting ingenuity of abuse. How is the legal 
 authorized system of the Church as such ? I leave 
 the hard words with him ; I have only to say if this 
 be the system, it is not the system of the Church of 
 the living God. 
 
 And now, sir, will you show me one document or 
 formulary of the Church which says the patronage of 
 livings and other benefices, or the sale of advowsons, 
 is an abuse, or disallowed by the Establishment ? If 
 you can, I can only say, to gain the world's advan- 
 tages you have reduced yourself to an impotency of 
 doing right, and that is no place for a Christian to 
 remain in. Further, I have heard it asserted, as 
 a matter of triumph by evangelical ministers, that 
 there are probably near three thousand evangelical 
 ministers now in England — that is, ministers who, 
 they reckoned, held the Gospel of Christ, and were 
 Christian men. There are, I suppose, about twelve 
 thousand ministers in England, more or less. Now 
 what is the nature of the system which, under plea 
 of providing instruction for all, and chargiag all not 
 within her pale as schismatics, has, when her state 
 was boasted of as remarkably improved and under 
 blessing, provided that three-fourths of the population 
 should be taught contrary to the Gospel ? and that 
 whoever did, under the blessing of God's holy Spirit, 
 go and preach it, these should be denounced as 
 schismatics and intruders ? — that three-quarters of the 
 pastors of the Church of God, according to them (if 
 not, avow you are not the Church of God, and cease to 
 
44 
 
 talk of scliism and dissent) should not be Cliristians 
 at all. These are things inexpKcable as a state con- 
 sistent with being the Church of God, to one who 
 has read the word of God, and drawn his ideas 
 therefrom, and not from habit or tradition. Indeed, 
 sir, there are little expressions habitual with ministers 
 of the Establishment which show they are not con- 
 versant with the idea of ministering in the Church 
 of God. I read, " our people," " our dear people," 
 and hear, " my flock," and " why do you intrude on 
 my flock?" Who made them your people, or your 
 flock ? An apostle would not, nor the Spirit of 
 God, have called them so. He would have spoken 
 of the Lord's people, and the flock of God. How 
 could a servant of Christ, ministering holily in what- 
 ever gift God had given him — an ApoUos at Corinth, 
 or Priscilla and Aquilla at Ephesus, or anyn^here else 
 — have been intruders on the flock of Christ ? They 
 were part of it, wherever they were, and to serve in 
 it as able and bound so to do. But all is altered with 
 you. Tou have not even — forgive the word — the 
 ideas connected with it ; — ^your speech betrays you. 
 And why ? because you are a minister, even if true, 
 of such a parish in the Church of England — your 
 flock perhaps not Christian, nor the Church of God 
 at all — not a minister of the Chiirch of God. Again, 
 sir. Who appoints the chief pastors of the Chui'ch of 
 England ? In fact, the Prime Minister of the day, 
 for any reason perhaps that suits his convenience ; 
 the fact is well known, and facts, sir, ai'e important 
 to conscience. The Church of God ought not to be 
 trifled with by theories, while the sheep of Chi-ist are 
 actually scattered. It seems to me to be a very evil 
 sign, when the Spirit is pressed by the actual scatter- 
 ing and wrong done to Christ's sheep, to be told 
 there is such a document which shows the theory of 
 
45 
 
 my system is quite right : these are abuses. The 
 Spiiit of Christ cares for the sheep of Christ, dear 
 sir, and not for neglected scraps of paper. But I 
 take the theory, for I wish to avoid resting at all on 
 abuses. The king appoints them. If you teU me 
 there is a conge d^elirc, Mr. M'Neil shall answer you 
 in the note previously quoted, that the king does 
 really appoint, for by the theory he nominates the 
 person to be so elected. In Ireland they are ap- 
 pointed dii'ectly by the king's letters patent. What 
 part of the system of the Church of God is this ? 
 And let me here remark, that an appeal to Church 
 of England documents is in many respects a very 
 fallacious mode of judging, for the most material and 
 distinctive characteristics of her system are not foimd 
 there at all. The work of ordering, governing, and 
 directing the Church is entrusted to persons chosen 
 by the head of the secular authority of the country ; 
 and here, again, the whole principle and theory of the 
 Church of God is contravened and set aside, not by 
 the abuses, but by the order of the EstabHshment. 
 How can I own them as bishops (supposing me a 
 rigid Episcopalian) appointed by God, when I know 
 they have not been in theory so appointed ? — that 
 the whole is a mere secular affair? You teU me 
 they must be clergymen, and be thirty years of age. 
 Is every clergjonan of thiiiy competent to be the 
 chief director of the Church of God Y Is that God's 
 theory, or is He the endower with needful gifts for 
 His own work ? One who believes, then, God to be 
 the author and gatherer of His own Church, and the 
 divine orderer of its government, can find neither 
 the body nor the guidance or order of that Church 
 in the system of the Establishment ; and, as Mr. 
 M'Neil jiistly says, no reform remedies this, while 
 the principle continues. The effects shock the con- 
 
46 
 
 science ; the principle is judged by the spiritual mind 
 taught by and formed on the word of God. 
 
 Supposing a child of God in a parish where the 
 system of the Church of England has placed a 
 minister who does not know the Gospel, but quite 
 preaches the contrary ; and in the communion of the 
 Church there is no one who owns the Gospel on 
 which communion is founded : here are the effects 
 which try the spirit. But the person is boimd to 
 abide and hear error taught and souls deceived, and 
 to own as one body, and thereby help to deceive 
 them, those who are entirely imeon verted, because by 
 the theory of the Chiirch of England he is Christ's 
 minister and they are the Church. If such a person 
 does not, he is a schismatic and dissenter. Supposing 
 two or three in the same circumstances, and they 
 cease to own them who hy their projhsion of doctrine 
 are not beUevers, as ministers and the Church, and 
 they meet because Chiist has said, " wherever two or 
 thi-ee are gathered together in my name, there am I 
 in the midst of them," they would be set down as wilful 
 /schismatics ; but according to the word of God, they 
 j would be reaUy the Chm-ch of God ia that place, let 
 uhem be ever so feeble, and have no minister at aU — 
 ] despised perhaps by those who had thousands to fill 
 Itheir aisles, and the respectability of ecclesiastical 
 •associations to clothe their fonns, but not of God. 
 
 The promise of the Lord outweighs to faith all 
 these charms on the imagination — these goodly stones 
 and gifts ; and how sti'ong they are my own heart 
 well knows. I speak not, then, of abuses ; but will 
 3'ou say that it is the theory of the Church of God 
 that the King should appoint the chief pastore or 
 bishops of the Church of God by his letters patent ; 
 or whether it be the system or principle of the 
 Church of God, or compatible with it, that the ap- 
 
47 
 
 pointment of the pastors should be in Landlords, 
 Coi-porations, Universities, the Crown, or whoever 
 may buy them; and whether you are to be content 
 with the scattering and grieving of Christ's sheep 
 produced by such a system — a system sought to be 
 enforced by the seciilar arm, to the expulsion of 
 thousands of devoted ministers; and then what is 
 called schism tolerated by Act of Parliament, because 
 the social effects were mischievous — a system which 
 contemplates not the ChurcJi, of God, but tlie popu- 
 lation, and secularizes the Church of God, by forcing 
 the population to be all one with it ? And let me 
 add this question : Can you, while I do not admit 
 the propriety of staying a day in connexion with 
 such evQ in a system, by your own confession not the 
 Church of Ood, can you give the smallest rational 
 hope of the change of the principle and theory from 
 which all the evil flows — that the king nor the land- 
 lords, shall not nominate the pastors, nor advow- 
 sons sold ? Can you say that such a system is the 
 system of the Church of Grod, according to the word 
 of God ? But I have said enough to show the prin- 
 ciple on which, in conscience before God, I act, and 
 must disown it as standing before me as the Church 
 of God ; and to dispel, I trust, however feeble my 
 thought (and I admit it humbly and sorrowfully 
 before God), the prestige of a sort of hallowed 
 obscmity, soon to merge, I am fiilly persuaded, in j 
 the daikness of Popery, which, perhaps, by its claims 
 and influence, may deliver the nominal Church from , 
 the incubus which presses down the Establishment ' 
 as it is, and satisfy the desu-es of the Puseyite school | 
 — men who, though I believe honest (for I know | 
 their views well), are as inconsistent as they are i 
 mischievous ; for the secular bondage of the Chm-ch i 
 is a very Babylon in the mind of an honest theoretic 
 
48 
 
 successionist. I would add a little word to them as 
 well as to you, that^it is all butj)erfectly cer tain th at 
 t^LiP^^ 2i tiis English succession was an uncon- 
 secrated man. I once pursued the point with a good 
 deal of research, and thus by their system they will 
 be easily thro^\'n when it is pressed home, and they 
 ripen a little, into the necessary arms of undisguised 
 Popery. Such is the prospect which your cherished 
 Establishment is engendering for us — ^not -willingly, I 
 freely admit, in the minds of many of her members, 
 but helplessly, because she has tied herself to the 
 car of the State, not to dependence upon GOD ; and 
 wherever its interested or careless wheels roll on, she 
 must go, or cease to be the Establishment. Her 
 efforts, therefore, are to control the State, not to 
 follow God, because she is boimd and governed by it 
 — not obedient in fi-eedom and simplicity to Him. 
 " She is my sister, not my vdie," acquired Abraham 
 cattle and Egj^tian riches in abimdance. 
 
 I would now tiirn to the documents of the Esta- 
 blishment on the two main points connected with the 
 subject I am upon — the constitution and membership 
 of the body, and the ordering of the ministry. I 
 have already referred to the Canons, vdth which the 
 Rubrics concur, which require the attendance of the 
 parishioners — " every parishioner " — at the Lord's 
 Supper so often in the year, and treat as recusants 
 and schismatics all absenting themselves or impugn- 
 ing any part of the system. But there is a point 
 which lies deeper than this, and gives not its relative 
 but positive character to the system — those docu- 
 ments which describe its members, those within, not 
 those without, the assumption of which was quite 
 •necessary to the other. Now these documents show 
 that the ecclesiastical system of the Establishment is 
 founded on the efficacy of ordinances, not of faith, 
 
49 
 
 and thus is enabled in theory to embrace the whole ( f 
 population, and treat them as Christians, -without 
 reference to faith at all ; and that any operation of ] \ 
 the Spirit of God in the heart, save as commimicated 1 / 
 by an ordinance, does not come within its scope 11 
 of instruction, or introduction to full membershipJJ 
 If I am told it cannot judge but by fruits, be it so ; 
 but these do not either form any part of the question 
 of membership : a member who is a notorious evil 
 liver, is refused communion in theory, but that is all. 
 First, as you are aware, the child is pronounced 
 regenerate by the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it is 
 attempted to say that this is a change of state, not of 
 personal condition. This is an idle effort. Were I 
 told, according to the fathers, regenerate means bap- 
 tized — though abuse of words produces much mischief 
 if it were merely meant to say they are baptized, 
 and thereby personally admitted into the pale of the 
 visible Church — my present argument would not hold : 
 baptized persons are certainly baptized. But I say 
 this is an idle effort. The congregation are to pray 
 that God will grant to the child that thing which by 
 nature he cannot have; that he may be baptized 
 with the Holy Ghost — an expression itself full of 
 confusion, but certainly something positive, and per- 
 sonally spiritual : again, that he may be sanctified 
 with the Holy Ghost, that he, being delivered from 
 God's wrath, may be received into the ark of Chi'ist's 
 Church, and being steadfast in faith, &c. : again. 
 Give thy Holy Spirit to this infant, that he may be 
 horn again, and made an heir of everlasting salvation. 
 The congregation are told they have prayed God to 
 release him of his sins, sanctify bim with the Holy 
 Ghost, and give liim the kingdom of heaven and 
 everlasting life ; and Chi-ist, they are told, has pro- 
 mised to grant them : and passing by other consis- 
 
50 
 
 tent expressions, after the rite, it is stated, the child 
 is regenerate ; and they pray he may lead the rest of 
 his life accordingly, and then give hearty thanks that 
 it has pleased the Father to regenerate the infant 
 with the Holy Spirit, and to receive him for His o^ti 
 child by adoption. What other terms could you use 
 for a saint quickened by God, and made actual par- 
 taker of divine life ? The prayer is changed when 
 there has been previous private baptism into "that 
 he being bom again — Give that he may be ;" and it 
 is then stated that he is by baptism regenerate. In 
 the foi-mer ser%ice the expression is used, that he may 
 receive remission of his sins by spiritual regeneration : 
 again, confusion of thought as to an infant, but defi- 
 nite in the extent of what is attributed to baptism. 
 The baptism of such as are of riper years seems to me 
 to seal the confusion, but that is not the question now 
 to occupy us. In the Catechism the child is taught 
 that he was made a member of Christ, a child of God, 
 and that by baptism ; and therein it was promised he 
 should heliece — the Scriptm-e sa;ying we are children 
 of God by faith, not by ordinances. The child con- 
 fesses he is boimd to believe, and keep God's holy 
 will and commandments, which he -ftill, and thanks 
 God he is in this state of salvation. Now hevefnith 
 ■in certain articles, and keeping the commandments, 
 are obligations on the child, he being (on the proxies 
 undertaken for him) made a child of God by the 
 baptism itself abeady, where he assented too imquali- 
 fiedly that he would licep the conunandinents. And 
 the promise of faith, aftei-wards they are stated to 
 he hound to perform. The Sacrament also he is 
 taught expressly was the means by which he received 
 the inward and spiritual grace (are not these words 
 plain ?) of a death imto sin, and a new birth unto 
 righteousness ; and this, anomalous and inconsistent 
 
51 
 
 as it is, is clearly the doctrine of the framers of these 
 services and this system; for the strict sense and 
 definition of a sacrament is declared in the homilies 
 to be, that the forgiveness of sins is aitncxcd and tied 
 to the visible sign. It is there said that absolution is 
 not a sacrament, because though there is forgiveness 
 of sins, there is no visible sign instituted by Christ ; 
 ordination is not, because though there is a visible 
 sign, there is no forgiveness of sins ; and that there 
 ai-e only properly two sacraments, because there are 
 only two where the forgiveness of sins is annexed and 
 tied to the visible sign. 
 
 Let me call to your memory that I am not ad- 
 ducing these statements to prove the faults of the 
 Litui'gy, but the principle on which the Establish- 
 ment incorporates the whole population into Christian 
 membershiji, believing or imbelieving, affinning them 
 to be regenerate by the ordinance, and then making 
 the belief of eertaia articles incumbent on them on 
 another's promise. 
 
 Next, the child is to be brought to be confirmed so 
 soon as it can say the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and 
 the Ten Commandments, in the vulgar tongue, and is 
 able to answer the Catechism set forth for that pm-- 
 pose. That Catechism sets forth and has taught hun 
 that he is a child of God by baptism already, and 
 acknowledges he is liouitd to believe and to do as has 
 been promised for him — articles which, though of 
 course containing facts of Christianity, tell him 
 nothing really of the way of a sinner's salvation at 
 all, for even in the intei-pretation he is taught that 
 all mankind are redeemed, and clearly they are not 
 all saved ; and he is made to rest on the promises 
 which ruined Israel under Moimt Sinai : " All that 
 the Lord hath spoken we will do " — an undertaking 
 which, because of its perfection, works death to the 
 
52 
 
 sinner ; and lie is taiiglit the Lord's Prayer. I would 
 remark, in passing, that the instruction as to what he 
 learns in the articles of his belief is objectionable even 
 as articles, because creation is ascribed to the Father 
 only as His act ; and then redemption to God the 
 Son, as if He had no part in creation, but had only 
 a distinct act of redemption as His. But this by-the- 
 bye. The instructions as to duty I have nothing to 
 remark on, save that the knowledge of the Father, as 
 His child should know Him, is nowhere found in the 
 Catecliism. In a word, what is properly Clrristian 
 faith is found in it nowhere, though many topics of 
 Christian trnth are referred to. 
 
 The Sacraments I have already spoken of, save to 
 note that it is stated that the promises of God are 
 made to them in the sacraments, and whatever arti- 
 f I cles may be given credence to, i^romises ix a sacra- 
 ment are the only personal resting-place which is 
 proposed to the chUd: he is to believe in promises 
 made in that sacrament. This preparation being 
 made, he is to be brought to the bishop, he ha\ing 
 there asserted that he is bound to beUeve, and that 
 he will keep the commandments. It is repeated that 
 they had been regenerated with the Holy Ghost, and 
 been given the forgiveness of all their sins ; and thus 
 after confinnation they are introduced to the Com- 
 munion, being now in full membership (and why not, 
 if they are regenerate of the Holy Ghost !"), and now 
 confirmed. And aU her members are called upon by 
 the Establishment as Christians, as Mr. M'NeU justly 
 agrees, to partake of the Lord's Supper. The very 
 people to whom the same person would preach, as 
 sinners, I believe very faithfully, to repent and turn 
 to God, and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, that 
 they might be saved. 
 
 Thus we have evidence as to the body, how the 
 
53 
 
 population — the pariskioners — are fictitiously made 
 the Church; and whQe individuals may preach they 
 Gospel, the body rests on a system of ordinances \ 
 which makes the whole body, the whole popidation, i 
 by a fiction preserved to their burial, a body of rege- J 
 nerate Christians. If these services be compared 
 with the system of Popery, and the order of their 
 administration, then not a moment's hesitation can 
 be entertained of what (though doubtless purged of 
 many details) the meaning and principles of them 
 are. Of the fact that the body of commimicants are 
 not really Christians, no question is or can honestly 
 be maintained : but the prraciple of the Establish- 
 ment being that aU parishioners should come, and 
 orderly provision by her previous ser\ices being made 
 that they should, it becomes not wrong that they 
 should be there, but their positive fault and sin that 
 they are not : they are boimd to come, believers or 
 not ; and thus is the principle of the Church of God 
 laid prostrate altogether. And Mr. M'Neil presses 
 it as the fii'st act of obedience, should there have been 
 previous disobedience all the week ; and the rule of 
 the Establishment would apply to an infidel who was 
 not a notorious evil liver, and the fiction be kept up 
 by his presence beiag taken as profession. This then 
 is the principle of the Establishment as to the body : 
 the effect is to scatter the saints of God, grieve and 
 gall theu- consciences, and then reproach them with 
 dissent and schism. 
 
 I am now to refer to the docimients, upon which I 
 would only remark as to the former point that all the 
 daily services go on the same principle of all the 
 parishioners being good Christian people. It is vain 
 to allege that a ser^ice is to be made, and must be 
 for Chiistian people. The fact of the Establislmient 
 is, that they have made the Christian people for the j 
 
54 
 
 ; service, which is a matter generally left out of sight 
 in their plea for this. Who warranted them in doing 
 this ? or what does such a making amount to ? A 
 reference to the homilies and canons will abimdantly 
 confii-m the statement that this is the principle of the 
 Establishment. But to apply myself to the docu- 
 ments as to the ministry, we have seen, as I said, the 
 facts (these are notorious) that the Crown and secular 
 persons and bodies present to livings and bishoprics, 
 and that yoimg men are brought up to them as to a 
 lucrative profession, and that they are bought for that 
 
 43uq3ose. And you cannot show a single doctmient 
 by which these thiugs can be shown to be an abuse : 
 they are strictly legal by the system of the EstabUsh- 
 ment. But the two documents I shall refer to are 
 
 ' the twenty-third and twenty-sixth articles, which 
 give the authorized form to the ecclesiastical part of 
 it. The fii'st states that those we ought to judge 
 lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and c aUed 
 
 . j by men. Do I quote this wrongly ? Here then we 
 g^ a principle formally laid down which makes men 
 the choosers and callers to this work. They have 
 
 ■ authority given to call and send ministers into the 
 Lord's vineyard. Now I see the Lord directing the 
 apostles to pray the Lord of the harvest to send 
 labourers into His harvest, and it was the householder 
 who hired the labom-ers into the vinej'ard. It is fur- 
 ther stated, that it is not lawftd for any man to take 
 
 j upon him the office without it. Provision is made for 
 
 ; the consequence of this human caUing in the twenty- 
 sixth. Sometimes CNil men have chief authority in the 
 
 : ministration of the word and sacraments ; and though 
 it may be right to see to this, yet if it be not seen to, 
 they minister by Chi'ist's commission and authority, 
 
 / and are to be attended to even in heaiing the word of 
 
 I God, though perhaps what they preach is contrary to 
 
55 
 
 all God's tnitli : and thus, to maintain the authority f 
 of the system, and the validity of ordinances where ) 
 there is no grace, as far as man goes, souls are - 
 jeoparded, and the people subjected to all manner of 
 false teaching as of Clirist's commission. Do you i 
 believe that Christ has really sent a man to preach 
 Tvho is not a Christian, and does not preach the 
 Gospel at all? If not, what is the meaning of 
 Clirist's commission ? and why this care to maintain 
 the authority of those called and sent by man, even 
 when they are evil, but to maintain the validity of a 
 system of ordinances which rests on man where there 
 is confessedly not the grace of Christ? I may be 
 referred to the Ordination Service, where the person 
 says he is called by the Holy Spirit. Be it so : but 
 there are ariicles, on the one hand, to hinder any one 
 from acting in that, unless he has man's sanction and 
 authority for doing it ; and, on the other, if it be 
 quite false, and the man a pretender, or careless, or 
 a h}^DOcrite, there are articles to maintain liis autho- 
 rity, as of equal validity by Christ's commission, as 
 if he really were ; otherwise it would be clearly im- 
 possible to regard him as the minister of the paiish, 
 which by law they must, and treat those as dissenters 
 and schismatics who have been perhaps called by the 
 Holy Ghost, but have not submitted to avow their 
 receiving the Holy Ghost from a bishop, whom the 
 king or his minister has appointed. Do you believe ' 
 every bishop the king appoints has power to confer i 
 the Holy Ghost ? If not, surely it is an awful thing \ 
 to pretend to receive it at his hands. We are told, ! 
 first, the bishops are secvrrities against any not really 
 ministers intmding, and that we are liable to this 
 evil ; and then, where the fact is notorious that the 
 vast body are not ministers, and are absohitely op- 
 posed to the Gospel, are not called by the Holy 
 
56 
 
 Ghost, but enter it as a profession, we are told that, 
 they having avowed they are led by the Holy Ghost, 
 through their own hypocrisy and fault, the Church 
 has done all she can. Well, then, the plea of this 
 security is folly — save, observe, to authenticate as 
 ministers ; and the only lawful ministers of the place 
 those who are not ministers at all. This is aU it 
 does. The call of the Holy Ghost does in itself 
 necessarily remain in the bosom of him who asseiis 
 it, but by his ordination the man is authenticated 
 before the truth of his calling by the Holy Ghost is 
 proved. 
 
 I have now I believe, dear sir, gone through what 
 the doeiuneuts of the Establishment present, and her 
 legal authorized proceedings, which do not appear 
 upon the face of her documents, but which are just her 
 form and constitution as an Establishment, in order 
 to judge as to my continuance within her pale as 
 recognizing her as the Church of God. If you avo-w 
 she is not the Chui'ch of God, then I feel no claim 
 upon my soul on her part at all ; but your assertion 
 of schism or dissent in not being of her, assumes a 
 very important character indeed, because it 2)rctends that 
 she is. The framers of her canons and constitutions 
 who took, if imfounded, very clear and decided 
 ground as to this, were well aware of this, and there- 
 fore honestly denounced and excommunicated aU who 
 questioned or impugned it. And this is the point 
 you must meet, if you mean to hold the consciences 
 of God's chOdi-en. That party feeling, early habits, 
 and natm-al associations, and in many cases personal 
 attachment, may hold a multitude within her pale, I 
 do not question. 
 
 I do not think you can charge my letter with 
 aspersions, nor -with evading the discussion. The 
 groimd I have taken is clear and distinct on which 
 
57 
 
 my mind rests, not -nithout sorrow — I should grieve 
 if it did — but in perfect, joyful, thankful peace of 
 conscience as to the position in which divine mercy 
 and grace has placed me, and a clear thoughy 
 very son-owful judgment as to the point at issue.;: 
 Save as to the responsibility which every false as-^, 
 sumption casts on the party making it, I cannot own'^ 
 it as " The Chi<rch," or a Church at all, but as a; 
 system by which the saints of God have been and are ; 
 scattered, and which I fu-nily belie^-e is the channel' 
 of the coiuitry into Popery, by the importance iti 
 gives to ordinances, and the sanction of that Avhich is 1 
 in word and not in power, and the hindering the 
 corporate manifestation of the childi-en of God, and i 
 theii- fully foUomng the Light. The pro^^Ldence of | 
 God in tliis, and the judgment which it will close in, 
 though matter of midoubting certainty to my mind, ; 
 confinuing my faith, and, where occasion is given, 
 matter of mine and others' testimony, is not dii-ectly 
 the groimd of conscience, and to that in dii-ect argu- 
 ment I have here confined myself. 
 
 As to selfishness and pride, and the like, as being 
 merely a question of motives, I feel it not to the 
 point to argue them. As to your appeals to our 
 brotherly love to remove the degeneracy of the 
 Chm'ch of England, my answer is, I cannot spend 
 my strength on correcting what is in principle wrong, 
 — it is lost labour. It is not degeneracy : it is the 
 system and principle of it as to its incorporation, 
 government, and principle of ministry (though indi- 
 \iduals may be good men and Christians who minis- 
 ter), which I believe contrary to the mind, word, and 
 vdll of God. This was not the case vdth. Israel — the 
 principle and system were God's oato there : not the 
 case vfith. Sai'dis and Thyatu'a — the principle and 
 sj-stem were God's owa there too ; aud therefore 
 c 3 
 
58 
 
 degeneracy claimed service, and not departure ; for 
 it would have been departure from the principles of 
 God's gathering and assembly in the two dispensa- 
 tions. By being of the Establishment, I feel I 
 should be in a state of departure from the principles 
 of God's gathering, not by being out of it. Nothing, 
 I think, can be clearer than this distinction. 
 
 When you talk of the Establishment being a com- 
 pany whose title to the Christian character is almost 
 defaced save to the eye of charity, I can hardly think 
 you serious. Do not jou, do not all real ministers 
 of Christ acting in charity, preach to the mass of 
 them as ujiconverted and unbelievers? Do you 
 think them micharitable ? I do not. But when you 
 state that the shining graces of individuals are ob- 
 scured by this company, but that they attract notice 
 when they come out and stand apart in a little body, 
 A ou just state the grand excellency of doing so ; and 
 God's principle of dealing with a poor, ruined, sin- 
 darkened world. God does not light a candle to 
 put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick : "A city 
 set on a hill cannot be hid." " Let your light so 
 shine before men, that they may see your good 
 works, and glorify yom- Father which is in heaven." 
 The method and principle you accuse us of follo\\-ing, 
 then, are God's own, vdth this precise object. The 
 ascribing of motives to us in acting on it I leave in 
 3-our o^Ti hands. 
 
 As to staj-ing in the hospital, it sounds fair, but 
 our objection, dear sir, is to staying in the tombs. 
 You are preaching to them, at least the great mass 
 of them, as dead in sins. Ai'e you not ? Certainly 
 in charity and trath you ought to be. "Well, we 
 agree vnth. you as to the mass that ai-e in the great 
 broad road ; only we do not then come do-mi and 
 join them as brethi-en actually in the road to glory ; 
 
59 
 
 "bound to avow that tliey are heirs of it, in partaking 
 of that one loaf at least three times a year, and 
 assiu'ing them they are children of God, members of 
 Cluist, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. 
 An hospital is for a people that are alive. — Is it not ? 
 Do you believe that the mass of the Establislmient 
 ai-e alive to Grod ? In fact, your statement about the 
 hospital is merely playing on our feelings. 
 
 I hardly know how to answer yom- exhortation to 
 ns to search and try our ways. You tell us that we 
 were " thriving in the Establishment ;" then, " that 
 though the tares are more like wheat, we are only 
 closer bomid to them still ;" and "where people not 
 unlike our party have been brought." I can only 
 say they are all pleasant assumptions or suggestions 
 on your part. We have deeply felt and foimd our 
 ovm weakness, and the condition to which the prin- 
 ciples of the system of which you form a part have 
 reduced the Chm-ch of God. But in this weakness 
 we have found God faithfid, and very merciful and 
 gentle with us too ; and in spite of om- infii-mities, 
 enlargement and comfort of heart, and growth and 
 liberty, and ability in some increased measm-e to feel 
 sjanpathy, deep and conscious sympathy, for the 
 whole Chm'ch of GOD — even for that part of it 
 which is in the Estabhshment, and a safeguard too, 
 through His mercy, fi'om the many ruinous prin- 
 cii)les which are flowing in from different quarters, 
 both in the Church of God and in the world. Our 
 o^vn weakness and imperfection I trust we are freely 
 and fully ready to adirdt, and be humbled for ; for 
 my own part I avow it, without hesitation ; but in 
 the path of righteousness and God's will we know at 
 least where strength lies. But enough of ourselves : 
 you have compelled me thus far to be a fool. 
 
 I might have appealed to Mr. Kelly, at Clifton, 
 
60 
 
 for the refutation of some of your suggestions ; hxit 
 I pass on to the charge of latitudinarianism, and it 
 is only striking to my mind how exH and systematic 
 habits hinder simple understanding and subjection 
 to God's blessed word and ways. But first as to one 
 or two charges. You charge us with having Baptists, 
 Ptedobaptists, Ar-miuians, and Calvinists, Millenna- 
 rians, Aiti-Millennarians, and even Quakers. Well, 
 are there not Poedobaptists, Arminians, Calvinists, 
 Millennarians, Anti-MiHennarians, in the Establish- 
 ment, and teaching too? And Quakers have been 
 received there too : also they have been -with us, and 
 have been baptized, as became them, from the cir- 
 cumstances they were placed in. The only differ- 
 ence, then, on this point, is as to the existence of these 
 various views in the minds of those amongst us ; 
 they being real Christians, we should undoubtedly 
 feel it wrong to shut them out, and rejoice we can 
 walk together in love. There is only this additional 
 difference, that there is not, thi'ough mercy, amongst 
 us a A ast body of members who have no faith at all. 
 And I think you would find more imity of mind 
 amongst us than amongst j'om-selves ; nay, it was 
 your complaint at Clifton, that we were all so made 
 up in one mind, that wherever you met us you just 
 heard the same testimony from us all ; and when you 
 had heai'd one, j'ou had heard all. Others have made 
 J- the same complaint. We are thankful the Lord has 
 i kept us thus hithei'to, and lean on His mercy to be 
 preserved in this amity. As to not being able to 
 baptize, I have only to say you are quite mistaken, 
 and that we do so when the occasion arises. That 
 some are Baptists, so called, and some Poedobaptists 
 amongst us, is very true ; but by the Lord's mercy 
 we have felt the luiity of Ckrist's body more import- 
 ant than the unity of judgment on this point ; and 
 
61 
 
 each person, witliout any hindrance to charity, acts 
 in this as he heKeves according to the miad of GrOD. 
 Would you exclude a Baptist from the Lord's tahle 
 ■with you, were he disposed to go ? We have acted 
 on the principle of this word, " Whereto ye have 
 already attained, let us walk hy the same rule, let us 
 mind the same thing." "If in any thing ye he 
 otherwise minded, Grod shall reveal this also unto 
 you." We have foimd most happy peace and flow 
 of charity ia it ; we do not pretend to have attained 
 perfect hght in all that God reveals. 
 
 Next, sir, you should have been surely more 
 guarded on reading the 17th chapter of John's 
 Gospel, ia talking of " the popular idol, imity." I 
 think, su', deference to the word of God should have 
 made you attach more importance to it. That the 
 world is imitating it hy latitudinarianism I know ; 
 such is Satan's giule often, and I am not now denj-- 
 ing, for I. fully believe it, its existence ; hut the allu- 
 sion is rather an imfortimate one. Axe Churchmen 
 or the brethi-en engaged in caiTjdng on this latitu- 
 dinaiianism of which you cite Irish national schools 
 as the example ? I believe the latitudinarianism you 
 speak of is the principle of infidehty and atheism ; 
 but I know that the authorities of the Establisliment 
 were the means of its introduction into L'eland. 
 Somehow they were able to exclude near three thou- 
 sand godly men for a gannent in 1662, but unable to- 
 hinder the introduction of public latitudinarianism in 
 1828. Was it the brethren or the public supporters 
 and champions of the Church who annoimced that 
 the reading of the Scriptures in the schools was a 
 vital defect, because it was contrary to the principles 
 of the Roman Catholic religion ? I do not introduce 
 these things I trust as recriminations. I have abeady 
 said I believe modem latitudinarianism is just athe- 
 
62 
 
 ism and infidelity in its worst and perhaps basest 
 shape ; nor am I aware of its existence amongst the 
 brethren, but on the contrary the strongest testimony 
 I know against its real e\il. But I believe the nar- 
 row sectarianism of the Church as to rules of forms, 
 and its extreme latitudinarianism in introducing by 
 these forms a mass of uncon verted, careless persons — 
 careless imbehevers — ^within its pale, has given occa- 
 sion to the existence of this latitudinarianism, and a 
 plea for those who have the worst spirit of it to 
 attack that of which the Estabhshment bears the 
 name as more conscientioiLS than it. Do you think, 
 sir, an infidel cannot act on the minds of men in 
 charging bigotry where godly men are excluded from 
 Christ's Chm'ch for the shape or form of clothes — 
 clean contrary to the apostolic rule? — and that a 
 handle is not given such to ridicule the picture of 
 holy pastorship when the sale of their appointments 
 and the education for them as one of the professions 
 ,are notorious facts, however the advocates of the 
 Establishment may excuse or colom- them ? It is an 
 awful time, and I would press upon you a tune nea r 
 judgment, wlieu the conscieiice of moral Judgment of 
 infidels is in advance of the practice of that winch 
 carries the name of religion as the Establislun ent. 
 'Such is its effect ; and thus while it feels the effect "ol" 
 latitudinarianism as inconvenient, it strengthens its 
 hand by the position and character wliich it holds 
 before them. It is this want of godliness and hea- 
 venly character in the Church which has given the 
 world the occasion to legislate for it. Persecution 
 there might be, but not legislation for a body who 
 only sought heaven and renounced the world really. 
 You may charge us, as they did Jeremiah, with 
 weakening the hands of all the men of war in the 
 <?ity, but, by the help of the Lord, we would not 
 
63 
 
 cease from our testimony, nor join the Edomites, but 
 be alike strangers to wbat you call your Zion, and 
 keep aloof from all tbat at bottom bate it ; not be- 
 cause it is corrupt, but because it is nominally the 
 bouse of God. 
 
 But ha\ing thus far replied to the charge of latitu- 
 diuarianism, your statements as to the possibility of 
 going beyond the foimdation in teaching have to be 
 noticed. And here it is remarkable how habits con- 
 trary to Scripture obscm-e the judgment ; and while 
 we are judged as if to set aside ministry, the real r 
 value of ministry is lost in the mind of one who rests ; 
 on Establishment and creeds. The truth is, sir, 
 EstabHshment — that is, men's support and a creed — 
 has taken the place in your mind of the Holy Grhost 
 and of truth. One woidd suppose that the person, 
 who made the remarks you do, did not really believe « 
 that there was any Holy Grhost really to guide, ani- 
 mate, control, order, and provide ministry in the 
 Church ; no Saviour to noiuish and cherish it as 
 His own flesh. This is om' dependence (however 
 feeble and faltering our dependence may be), that 
 He will guide us into all truth — truth treasui'ed up 
 in the word of God, but into which we have daily 
 to be guided, and all of which is before us in the 
 word. You might say of yom'selves, who have a 
 limited standard of truth which you subscribe, 
 " TVIiere om- creed ends, error begins." But we have 
 no limit to om- creed, but the whole wisdom of the 
 Bible; unless our own want of spu-ituality, which 
 must ever hinder. We are open to receive and thirst 
 for all ti-uth. If you say, What is to keep you from 
 error ? we shoidd watch against it on the very same 
 principle that an apostle did (I do not say with the 
 same power), but we can lean only on GOD to keep 
 us from it ; and we trust He will, and are sure He 
 
64 
 
 will while we humbly wait on Him. Tou have, on 
 the contraiy, trusted a creed — so have the foreign 
 ecclesiastical bodies ; and what is the consequence ? 
 Error, justification by works, and neology — here in 
 three-fourths of the pulpits of the country, abroad in 
 I eight-tenths. Creeds cannot give living truth to the 
 i' soul, nor can they secure truth beyond the compiler 
 of them, even in fonn. Tou have kept a measm-e of 
 truth in a book, but nothing more : yom* body has 
 fallen into eiTor ruinous to souls just as much as even 
 f those you declaim agaiast ; and remember that even 
 Neology and Socinianism prevailed more where 
 creeds were than where they were not, I have not 
 found the advocates of litm-gies and creeds qmte 
 honest on this point; and if they boast of this 
 country and the wisdom of its Chm-chmen (not the 
 continuing grace of God), the answer is, It was 
 dark as others ; and it was grace, not creeds, which 
 re-\aved the Lord's work, and that not quite -nithin 
 the regulations and limits of the Chm-ch, I think you 
 must admit. But as regards om'selves, if you can- 
 not distinguish between the unity of GOD's saints 
 on one foundation, and that, if you jjlease, as you 
 rather slightingly say, in the blood — ^yes, the pre- 
 cious blood of Christ — and latitudinarianism ; if your 
 system of imiformity -n-ithout unity have reduced you 
 to this state of mind, I can only sorrow for it. If 
 you call the unity of God's cluldi'en a j)opulai' idol, 
 we are sorry you are in such a state of mind ; with 
 us it is a cherished, deeply cherished object, because, 
 in heart and pruiciple at least, we ai-e led by TTirn 
 " who gave Himself not for that (His ov,tl) nation 
 only, but that He might gather together in one the 
 children of God which were scattered abroad :" and 
 that the Holy Ghost leads us to seek to keep the 
 imity of the Sjnrit in the bond of peace, in that by 
 
65 
 
 one Spii-it we are all baptized into one body — aU one 
 body, as partakers of that one loaf ; and the prayer 
 of Jesus has sounded in our ear a voice that subdues 
 our thoughts, " that they all may be one, that the 
 world may believe." "We may fail in the object — we 
 cannot be wi-ong in the desire. But that the imity 
 of God's children (this alone we desire) is a popular 
 idol, sounds to us like a stranger's voice, not that of 
 the Good Shepherd, and we flee from it. If you.. 
 
 strangers. Have you found this to be the case? 
 One truth, the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, 
 I trust will ever hold undisguised prominency ; but 
 do you think those who have been much amongst us 
 are less taught than those who have not been ? — are 
 less acquainted with scriptural truths ? This is not 
 a usual charge, whatever the value of knowledge may 
 be ; for I believe grace is far more important, though 
 truth be most blessed ; but our piinciple is this, sir : 
 Whenever the first great truth of redemption — ^in 
 a word, whenever Christ has received a person, we 
 would receive him. That false brethren niaij creep in 
 unawares is possible. If the Church be spiritual, 
 they wiU soon be made apparent, but as oiu- table is 
 the Lord's, not ours, we receive all that the Lord 
 has received, aU who have fled as poor sianers for 
 refuge to the hope set before them, and rest not in 
 themselves, but in Christ, as their hope. We then 
 afterwards teach them as they are able, according to 
 the grace, and knowledge, and wisdom we have 
 received — all the truth we have received at God's 
 hands ; and here it is that ministry comes in. We do 
 not make a creed, but Christ the groimd and term of 
 imion ; but trusting to the help and ever- watchful 
 and ready care of the Lord over us, and the true and 
 
66 
 
 real presence of the Holy Ghost the Comforter, seek 
 and give all the instruction, exhortation, comfort, 
 and when need arises rebuke in love, we are enabled. 
 One may lay the foundation, and all that are on it 
 we receive, and another build thereon ; and they must 
 take heed how they build thereon. You may say, 
 But there will be false teachers. So God has taught 
 us, and all your plans will not prevent it ; but the 
 grace of God will overrule it, enable us to detect them 
 by the word, and turn it to good ; and your plans only 
 hinder your leaning on thatwhich is effectual — a spirit 
 of constant dependence. There will be heresies — there 
 must needs be, says the Apostle — that they which 
 are approved may be made manifest. In a word, 
 sir, your plan is to take the Church of GOD out of 
 the field of faith and dependence, and thereby lead 
 it away from the constant and blessed energies of the 
 Holy Ghost, and make it lean on something else. 
 But the truth is, God is most gracious, and faithful, 
 and blessed in His careful mercy, though you may 
 not trust Him. He knows that we have but a little 
 strength ; and though He has graciously permitted 
 that which may exercise and strengthen our faith, 
 He has never suffered us to be tempted above that 
 we are able, but rather set before us an open door. 
 The Lord keep us in the word of Mis patience, and 
 men or Satan shall in vain seek to shut it. 
 
 We do then receive on the one great truth of 
 Christ's salvation aU that through divine grace be- 
 lieving it are converted to God. And we then, 
 having ministry of truth, build them up according to 
 
 in the teaching I do not deny, for we are aU imper- 
 fect. But I do not think, dear sii-, if you are ac- 
 quainted with, and your mind is based on Scripture, 
 you can object on principle to this as unscriptural. I 
 
 That there is imperfection 
 
67 
 
 think you would find amongst us the very opposite 
 to latitudinariauism — a strong desire, prayer for, and 
 search after unity among the sauits of Gtod ; and the 
 careful and diligent teaching of the measure of truth 
 we have received. And if you say no good thing 
 can come out of Nazareth, we will count it only pre- 
 judice, and say, " Come and see." 
 
 As to our banishing of error, we have abundant 
 provision in the word of God, if we have grace to do 
 it ; and on this we lean : without it clearly we can do 
 nothing. You assert that the Scriptui'e is insufficient 
 for this, precisely on the same ground as the Roman 
 Catholic does. We have no stealthy standard at all ; 
 we openly condemn every discovered en-or. We be- 
 lieve not in the iafallibiUty of the clergy, and the 
 insufficiency of the Scriptui-e, and the sufficiency of 
 hiimanly composed creeds, which is your ground. 
 Tou say, with the Roman Catholic, that a Socinian 
 could appeal to the written word. Could he ? Do 
 you say he could ? — But we believe in the sufficiency 
 of the Scripture, and the grace, energy, and power 
 of the Spirit — the Comforter, to keep out error from 
 the Church, so as to guide us in the truth. 
 
 This is a very grave question — I believe the ques- 
 /tion between us ; yet I would not willingly my so ; 
 Tor I believe it to be the question between apostacy 
 \ahd the special point of truth now. But you have 
 put yourselves on this ground : you deny either the 
 sufficiency of Scriptm-e, or the grace of the Spirit to 
 use it under the faithfulness of oiu* blessed Head's 
 love to the Church. On this, in all our weakness, we 
 lean. You say, " If you say in the wiitten word," 
 well, the Socinian professes to find liis there too. Did 
 you never hear this from other mouths, arguing 
 against Protestant platforms, or clergymen else- 
 where ? I tremble, — nay, but it confixms my faith 
 
68 
 
 when I see arrows drawn from such a quiver. You 
 say, " Would you receive a Eoman Cathoho ?" If a 
 Roman Catholic really "extolled Jesus " as a Saviour, 
 and His one sacrifice of Himself as the sole p utting 
 away of sin, he would have ceased to hold the error 
 and delusion by which the enemy has misled some 
 souls (who are still I would trust precious to Jesus), 
 he would have ceased to be a Roman Catholic in the 
 evil sense of the word, and on these terms only could 
 i he be with us. I repeat, then, we receive all that 
 are on the foimdation, and reject and put away all 
 error by the word of G-od, and the help of His ever 
 blessed, ever living, and ever present Spirit. If you 
 have neutralized the Church's energies by mixing it 
 with the world, so as to be unable to do this, it is matter 
 of sorrow surely, not of boast. Justification by works 
 is preached in the majority of pulpits to souls. Tou 
 refer me to a scrap of paper which the poor people 
 have never read, so that your provision against error 
 is null. Such preaching would not be borne for one 
 time by one single person professing to be a minister 
 amongst us ; and to your suggestion, " God knows 
 what mischief you may inflict upon them," my only 
 answer is, " God knows what mischief you have in- 
 flicted upon them." The stranger's voice, sir, has 
 been heard ia hundreds of pulpits of the Establish- 
 ment. Has it not ? Well, the sheep have fled from 
 it. Do you rebuke them? you may teU them to 
 stay and hear it. They dare not, by virtue of their 
 weakness and timidity. It is not the Shepherd's 
 voice : then- safety is in flight, not in pretended 
 strength or artificial reasonings. Tou have scattered 
 the sheep by your system, and as yet yom- conscience 
 is not awakened. I have little hope that it ■nill be, 
 or rather the change is impossible. Parliament is 
 your legislator, not yom'selves, — a body I suppose 
 
69 
 
 you would charge with evil enough now : I thank 
 God I have nothing to say to it. It is really a little 
 too bad to be told we cannot testify the second ad- 
 vent, and the agency of the Spirit. Forgive me if 
 I ask how you could really honestly say this, when 
 they are the two great topics to which testimony 
 among us has been specially directed — to urge which 
 meetings have been held both yearly and wherever 
 God has opened a door ; so that our adversaries have 
 charged us with being a MHlennarian Church, and 
 Irvingites, on account of these two topics being so 
 much held up before the saints ? But I need hardly 
 answer tliis charge. A charge that the brethren can- 
 not teach the second advent, and the agency of the 
 Spirit, will have but small weight, unless to show you 
 were a little hard set for an argument. 
 
 As to " Where is your security for continuing to 
 exclude error ?" I reply, In God alone is continuance. 
 We have found error ia your teaching, which is ex- 
 cluded from amongst us now. So far, we have clear 
 gain, for we were continuing in error while with 
 you. But nothing but grace will keep us onward. 
 This may seem a poor dependence to you ; it is oot 
 only one. I press this point, sir. When Paul said 
 that after his decease grievous wolves shotdd enter 
 in, not sparing the flock ; yea, that of their own selves 
 men would arise teaching perverse things, to draw 
 away disciples after them ; he desired them to 
 watch, and remember how he had not ceased night 
 and day with tears to warn every man ; and then, 
 stating that his own hands had ministered to his 
 necessities, and that he had showed them how that 
 so labouring they ought to support the weak, he 
 commends them to God and the word of His grace, 
 which was able to build them up, and give them an 
 inheritance among them that are sanctified. To 
 
70 
 
 what he apostolieally commanded them vre look, to 
 God, and the word of His grace ; and we would en- 
 deavoui- as far as i)ossible, as far as we have grace, 
 to watch, and by His o\ni blessed mercy we have in. 
 our feeble measure done so. AVithout His grace we 
 are sure we should go astray ; but we lean upon it, 
 and in the trial consequent on the absence of apos- 
 tolic energ}', here forewarned of by the blessed and 
 zealous servant of the Lord, we have endeavoured in 
 principle to turn to and use that to which He has 
 directed us. If you think creeds more efficacious, 
 cm- answer might be, they have not proved so. 
 Witness all tlie different Protestant Establishments, 
 and indeed the whole professing Church in its depar- 
 ture from the faith once delivered. But my answer 
 goes further, and I say the ground of your appeal to 
 them is that of the insufficiency of Scripture, a re- 
 currence to other means of securing tinith, or there- 
 with a practical denial of the presence of the Spirit 
 of God — the Spirit of truth, the Comforter — to use it. 
 Here we openly take a plain ground against the 
 principles or apostacy of Catholicism, and the iden- 
 tically same groimd taken by the defenders of the 
 Estabhshment. We ai-e on ground of the very last 
 inipoi'tance to the Chiu-ch of God now. You rest in 
 tradition in some shape, ancient or modem, it mat- 
 ters not. I do not : I rest imder divine grace — ^my 
 only hope for unworthy and helpless sinners, in the 
 perfect sufficiency of the word, and the presence of 
 the Spirit in the Chm-ch, according to the faithftd- 
 ness of God. This I believe is a cardinal point for 
 the Chm-ch of God now — this great and blessed truth 
 being taken in connexion vdth. it, that the Holy 
 Spiiit is present with the Church, abiding for ever. 
 Popery and the Establishment take ecclesiastical suc- 
 cession and creeds, and assert together that the Bible 
 
71 
 
 is not an all-sufficient guide, leaving quite aside tlie 
 continual presence of the Holy Ghost. Trg,dition 
 and suc-c-essional authority are their resource; and 
 let me add that you cannot even plead here that you 
 refer to tradition, or authority, or some other resource 
 than Scripture and the Holy Ghost, merely for rites 
 and c-eremonies ; we are <iiscussing creecL-i here. Your 
 argument is, that it is insufficient in practice for mat- 
 ters of faith, and to banish error — assuming, as I have 
 surely title to do, the faithfulness of God by His 
 Spirit. If you deny it, do so openly. I see no re- 
 ference to it in your letter, or that on which your 
 system rests. As to this, my answer, then, to this 
 charge is, we admit of no heterodoxy, but aU Chris- 
 tians. If you ask, How can you do this ? I answer. 
 By the word, and Spirit, and grace of God. Tom- 
 system rec-eives the population, and calls imity a 
 popular idol, and (Mr. M'Xeil being witness) is 
 arranged so as to appoint pastors, hucau-ie they are 
 unfit. The fact he admits ; and I have already asked 
 you, is not the person so appointed recognized as the 
 only lawful minister of the parish, and all else in- 
 truders ? instituted hij the Bishop as such, recognized 
 by the ecclesiastical court as such, and by every 
 authority (except the Lord's) in the eoxmtry ? 
 
 If you say the Bishop cannot help it, I say, " Just 
 so, because it is the legal system, and not an abuse 
 of it at all." 
 
 I can apprise you, if public rumour has not, that 
 the members who have increased our fellowship lat- 
 terly, have been, I think I may say chiefly (at least 
 in England) from among dissenters, feeling the evil 
 of their system as well as of yours — at any rate quite 
 as large a nimiber, and of the Establishment very 
 many, by the conversion to God often of those long 
 accepted as members among you ; in other cases cf 
 
72 
 
 poor neglected souls, to whose ears the truth had 
 never reached by that which claims to provide for all 
 as of the Church of England. But the most remark- 
 able accessions, and the action of our testimony 
 among Christians, has been de fado chiefly among 
 dissenters. Two dissenting mioisters who came to 
 the Chfton meeting to get aU the good they coiild, 
 and not to challenge us all, and banish away all our 
 errors, found happy and joyful Hberty in fellowship 
 with us, and we with them; and this testimony I 
 trust will spread. Many Christians from the Esta- 
 bhshment also have found their joy and fellowship 
 along with us. 
 
 When you speak of our violating our principles 
 by teaching other than what is common, as I have 
 already stated, it is only that you do not know them. 
 If you mean "by authoritatively setting them forth, 
 as lords over their faith," certainly we disclaim it. 
 As helpers of their joy we teach all we can : we will 
 teach or be taught by you, if you can edify us in the 
 Lord, and be thankful for it. If God has given you 
 any gift, we are there in no dilemma at aU : we meet 
 on the ground of the foundation, Christ ; and we 
 learn, and as Grod has enabled any, teach aU that is 
 in the Bible, trusting God to keep us from eiTor ; and 
 if " there must needs be heresies," tmsting it shall 
 be through His grace that they which are approved 
 may be made manifest. This continual responsibility 
 of the Church in its pei-petual conflict with Satan, 
 not yet cast down and bound, you seem to have lost 
 sight of, or to suppose that you can provide for the 
 exclusion of. But then the Chiu'ch must lose its 
 heavenly-mindedness and character, for we do wrestle 
 with spiritual Avickedness in heavenly places ; and all 
 the profit of the exercise of faith, and the deeper 
 acquaintance with the whole armour of God, and the 
 
73 
 
 faithfulness of the God who gave it, and gives it to 
 us still. 
 
 I believe only one material point remains unno- 
 ticed still, on which indeed many preceding facts and 
 statements bear, honoiu-ing the Holy Ghost, which 
 introduces in your letter the question of ministry. 
 The facts to which the system you advocate leads 
 have been already noticed, and if you think the sale 
 of advowsous, the giving of the appointment of the 
 chief pastors or bishops into the liands of the Crown, 
 honouring the Holy Ghost's rule in the Cliurch, cer- 
 tainly there are many (such as the Irisli Chrisfian 
 Journal describes as having morbid consciences) who 
 caimot. This, I say, which is the regular order of 
 the Establishment, the constitution of it, is not 
 honouring the Holy Ghost. It is not merely there 
 being the fact of an ordained ministry. I see nothing 
 like an appointment of elders in an existing body of 
 Christians, in the ordaining young men of twenty- 
 three or twenty-four, in the nomination of a pastor 
 who has got an appointment from some lord of the 
 manor, or his being made a priest, presbyter if you 
 please, on the same appointment. You do not aiTO- 
 gate to yourselves, you say, the selection of your 
 ministers, but you give them authority to exercise 
 their gift, when they say they are called, and the 
 bishop has ascertained by certain testimony they are 
 of good morals, not heretics, and can answer in 
 Latin. Now supposing tliis sufficient and right 
 (both of which I entirely deny, and say that it is 
 entirely unscriptural, and opposed to Scripture, but 
 it would lead me into another large question), you 
 do in the appointment of this person to some cure, 
 not by the Spirit, but by a landlord, preclude others I 
 from exercising their gift there in the Clmrch, and 
 thereby, as the appointment is secular, and you dis- 
 
 D 
 
74 
 
 ^honour the Holy Ghost in that, so the direction of 
 the word of God, " as everj^ man hath received the 
 gift, so minister the same, as good stewards of the 
 . manifold grace of God," is set aside. It is not, " he 
 that teacheth let him wait on his teaching, he that 
 exliorteth on his exhortation." AH gifts must be 
 ' assumed to be in the secularly appointed minister, or 
 . the Chiu-eh dej^rived of them. This is what I call 
 j dislionoui'ing the Holy Ghost. Again, when you 
 • speak of not selecting ministers, what is your system ? 
 You have divided the country into ten thousand pa- 
 rishes. Who has authorized you to say that the Holy 
 Ghost would raise up just ten thousand ministers at 
 all times to minister by His help and power in these 
 parishes ? Yet by yom- system you are boimd to 
 provide for them, and in order to the attainment of 
 this, secular advantages are attached, and titles of 
 nomination put into the hands of interested persons. 
 This I call dishonoui-ing the Holy Ghost, " who dis- 
 tributes to every man severally as ge wiU." It all 
 hangs on the same great s^-stem, that It is the world, 
 and not the Chui-ch. Suppose your ecclesiastieal 
 - authorities sincere, though I do not admit their title 
 at all, they are administering a system which sets 
 quite aside the sovereign ministry of the Holy Ghost 
 in distributing as He -wiU.. The ten thousand pa- 
 rishes are to be filled ; men have a secular right to fill 
 them, or to seU tlieir title. This is not waiting on, 
 honoiu'ing, or owning the authority and only power 
 of the Holy Ghost to bless and minister . by vessels 
 of His appointing and qualif;\-ing in the Church. And 
 then, when thus filled, the Holy Ghost's title to raise 
 up one to teach in one of them, or to exhort in one of 
 them (though indeed they are not Chm-ches at all), 
 is positively denied, such an one is disorderly and 
 schismatic. The Holy Ghost is limited by your 
 
75 
 
 system to the ten thousand clergy, and theii' curates 
 perhaps, and is assumed to provide them for the 
 nomination of the owners of advowsons, and n(me 
 else. I am not speaking this Hghtly, for I believe 
 it is a most horrible and crying dishonour done to 
 the Holy Grhost. If I were to speak to the majority ( 
 of youi- clergy of the " Holy Ghost distributing to / 
 every man severally as He mil," they would account 
 me an enthusiast and a fanatic ; or to the owners of) 
 advowsons, of His raising up elders and pastors of His ( 
 selecting and appointment, they would treat me as / 
 wild and dissenting. Theii- affair was their rights, 
 and they exercise them. 
 
 Where there are ten thousand offices specifically C 
 to fill, and an education to fill them provided as a ) 
 qualification, it is a profession, and not a ministry ( 
 depending on the Holy Ghost, distributing as He J 
 will. The statement that a man is moved to it comes 
 in by-and-by, and itself lumps all possible ministries, 
 to the exclusion of all others, into one nominally a 
 deacon's, and then an elder's — very excellent offices 
 in their place, but neither of them really undertaken, 
 or ought not to be, at that age ; neither of them pro- 
 perly or necessarily ministries of the word, though 
 they may be united with them. But this may be 
 called confusion, not dishonour to the Holy Ghost, 
 and is only collaterally connected with the question. 
 But while I might turn to abuses enough to diive 
 almost an infidel from the professed Church in dis- 
 gust, were I to turn to the preparation for the 
 ministry at the universities, I confine myself to the 
 plain facts and arrangements of the system. These 
 abuses indeed are its genuine consequences, because 
 it has been made a regular, settled, lucrative profes- 
 sion :^ it must be if the Church goes by a geographical 
 division of the population, not the gathering of the 
 
76 
 
 saints. But the plain facts and arrangements of the 
 system permit no one to preach save those called by 
 man, and who have received authority from man ; so 
 that in the piinciple of it St. Paul could not — for he 
 assei-ts the contrary principle — provide h-tdngs for so 
 many, say ten thousand ministers, whether the Holy 
 Ghost has called them or not, and forbid any else to 
 exercise it, so much so that a bishop cannot ordain 
 without a nomination, though the man would profess 
 that he was called and moved by the Holy Grhost 
 still. They are educated for it, without possibly 
 knowing whether they will be so moved or not, being 
 designed for the ministry or for a Uving by their 
 parents as boys ; and when placed there, their one 
 gift, if they have any, must exclusively be exercised 
 — a pastor with perhaps no saints, or a young evan- 
 gehst with old Christians to feed, and this regulated 
 by secular appointment. There is not then the least 
 reference to owning or following the Holy Ghost as 
 the source of authority, and various gifts in the 
 Church of God ; and if he should act without this 
 secular system, his work is treated as disorderly. I 
 say, then, that the Holy Ghost is not reaUy honoured 
 at all in this system. To make a parcel of yoimg 
 men, educated for the purpose, come and say they axe 
 moved by the Holy Ghost, when it is in nine cases 
 out of ten secular and family an-angements which 
 have induced it, I do not think this honoming the 
 Hoi}' Ghost ; nor, if all really were, do I beUeve that 
 it would be honouring His authority. His paramount 
 authority in the Church of God. I challenge you to 
 show me anything the least hke the organization of 
 the Chvu-ch of England in the Scripture — a parochial 
 an-angement of the population, justified by a set of 
 wiitteu documents that they are Christians, which 
 all ai-e called on to use. 
 
77 
 
 As regards what you state of the Clifton meeting, 
 you must know that it was not an assembly of the 
 saints as a Church for teaching or worship at all, 
 but a griyate^ meeting to which we were all invited 
 by the two persons who arranged it, and yoiu'self in 
 like manner. I see nothing inconsistent in their 
 asking such as they thought likely to edify to lec- 
 ture and pray as a morning service, or indeed any 
 other arrangement they might make, provided those 
 individually called on felt disposed and led to do it. 
 No such thing is ever done when the brethren meet 
 for worship; all who can edify the Church may 
 speak, subject to the apostolic rule for order. If any 
 taught error, or acted in the flesh, it would be sub- 
 ject to righteous disciphne, or any other fleshly act. 
 The Scripture, if we have grace to use it, we find 
 abundantly sufiicieht for tliis : we recognize, more- 
 over, distinct and ordinary abiding gifts, as it is said 
 "there were certain teachers in the Church." If 
 f| you think the Spirit of God cannot make good His 
 J power by the word spoken in the conscience, or 
 ij detect error, and the pretence of the flesh, you have j j 
 a bl essed truth to learn. - — ■ — — — 
 
 How do you know we have not fasting and prayer 
 when any special work may be on hand, or any bro- 
 ther to be commended to the Lord for any special 
 service? Is it right to assume the truth of such 
 charges ? We may have been deficient, but had yoii 
 been among us, you would have known that fasting 
 and prayer have often and often been the resource 
 and comfort of our souls before God in any various 
 circumstances, and sometimes merely to seek more of 
 His presence and blessing. I dare say we have not 
 done it sufficiently, nor as we ought. 
 
 We have no election of ministers at aU, so that all 
 yoxir remarks on this are gratuitous. God in His 
 
78 
 
 mercy lias provided us with many who have been a 
 comfort to our souls, and spread, I trust, much truth 
 by them ; we find stUI the harvest plenty, and the 
 labourers few, and therefore earnestly pray the Lord 
 of the harvest to send forth labourers into His har- 
 vest. Whatever He gives we shall receive thankfully, 
 and if any special work arises to which they may be 
 called, be ready, I trust, to recommend them to the 
 grace of God for it. 
 
 The way you speak of authority hindering the 
 Spirit shows you imderstand our principles in 
 nothing. True authority is by the Spirit just as 
 much as any other gift, and, instead of hindering, is 
 one ser\'ice of it. That the Chui-ch is in the same 
 order and energy as to tliis as in apostolic days, we 
 do not pretend, as you do ; though the majority of 
 your authorities, from the nature of their appointment 
 which Mr. M'Neil says is by an iniquity of abuses 
 truly disgustingj, are not fi'om the Spirit at all, and 
 generally opposed to the truth. We believe the 
 Church to have fallen and gone astray. Tour con- 
 dition is the plain evidence of it. We do not pretend 
 to have competency to set it all right, but to act in 
 righteousness, strengthening those things that remain 
 ready to perish, and to walk in love, which is the 
 bond of perfectness. We do not say we can restore 
 the Shechinah, or the Urim and Thummim, nor the 
 Ai'k of the Covenant ; but we vdll do all we can that 
 the word of God authorizes and enables us, by the 
 Holy Ghost, even yet ■with the Church to do. Tou 
 pretend to all these things, but we say they are false ; 
 and that is worse than nothing — a wi-etched picture 
 which the spu-itual eye detects as not even like the 
 scriptural originals. 
 
 I beHeve I have answered all the questions, charges, 
 and observations in your letter. If I have not tired 
 
79 ff 
 
 you, I certainly liave myself-: but I could not answer 
 your questions and charges lightly, and a short ques- 
 tion perhaps involved the investigation of important 
 principles ; but I have endeavom-ed to confine myself 
 to what was properly in answer to your statements, 
 and not diverge into others, though perhaps im- 
 portant topics. Though you have in nowise foUoAved 
 yom- proposed plan of certain questions which I was 
 to answer, I have fairly, I trust, gone into all which 
 yoirr paper suggests, not as a mere arguer, but on 
 the substantial groimds of the merits of the question, 
 for it is not a mere question between uh. The 
 enemies of the Establishment might be displeased 
 with me that I have not run thi'ough its abuses, 
 and I have not wished to do so. It is hard to be 
 occupied with dirt, and not get dirty. I am per-i f 
 suaded we have not much business with evil, saveM^ 
 in direct spiritual denunciation of it when actually i I 
 before us, or warning against it. I have dealt with-' ^ 
 the principles of the system, which I believe deprives 
 it of the title to present itself to the consciences as 
 the, or a Church of God, and make it guilty of much 
 dishonour done to His name. I am not conscious 
 of having used an ungracious or harsh expression, 
 nor even ascribed motives to any. I believe there 
 are many saints within its pale. You will not have 
 any aspersions to answer, unless stating acknow- 
 ledged facts are such. You will hardly accuse me 
 of evading discussion, though I have endeavoured to 
 confine myself (under the Lord's guidance) to what 
 I proposed, answering your questions. At any rate, 
 I have stated the ground on which my mind actually 
 rests, as regards the particular points you have re- 
 feiTed to. That the gross and palpable consequences 
 met %vith in every-day life act on the conscience, I 
 admit, and so in the Lord's mercy it will be with 
 
80 
 
 multitudes unable to trace the principles. But any 
 poor saint conversant in Scripture is soon convinced 
 by practical comparison that the Chiu-ch of England 
 is not the Chui'ch of Grod, by what he meets every 
 day in his ovm parish ; and it requires an uncommon 
 deal of theology and tradition to show how it is, and 
 many a chain put upon plain conscience : as when I 
 go to the parish church on what is called Sacrament 
 Sunday, or Easter, and am told I am bound to own 
 all I find there as Christians, when I know well all 
 the other days of the year they make no pretence 
 to it ; and am perhaps plainly told by my minister, 
 if he knows the truth, all the other daj-s in the year 
 that they are not, and the difference pressed upon 
 me. However you have the piinciples and system 
 here, not even its consequences. And I ask you, 
 does the Establishment contemplate having all the 
 population within her ordinances, or distinctly ga- 
 thering together in one the children of God which 
 are scattered abroad ? The latter I would desire 
 and seek ; preaching to all. In whose hands is the 
 appointment of the pastors of the Establishment as 
 instituted and recognized by the bishops themselves ? 
 If the Holy Ghost be He who gives and orders the 
 gift of pastorship, and their exercise, on what au- 
 thority do you divide the coimtry, without reference 
 to the actual presence of hving faith, into ten thou- 
 sand and some one hundred portions, and assign a 
 pastor to each, to the exclusion of all other spiritual 
 gifts ? Do you dc facto acknowledge the mass of 
 membere of the Establishment as really Christians ? 
 Ought there to be any hodij to whom it could be said 
 that they should love one another with a pirre heart 
 fervently, seeing they had obeyed the truth through 
 tlie Spirit, to the unfeigned love of the brethren ? 
 Ought the saints of God to be gathered together in 
 
81 
 
 unity ? I have written offhand, trusting to the Lord 
 my God to direct and guide me, as indeed my letter 
 will witness. I do not think I have omitted any 
 point in your letter. 
 
 Believe me truly. 
 
 Yours in the Lord, 
 
 J. N. D. 
 
 I have written to the Record, I confess with little 
 hope at any rate of their putting so long letters as 
 these in. I do not write to the Patriot, not wishing 
 to have the appearance of identifying myself with 
 what I have seen of its spirit. I shaU hardly be 
 suspected of this with the Record. But if you will 
 write to the Patriot, who will he above suspicion on 
 that side, I should have no objection. The Patriot 
 is more opposed to us at this moment than the 
 Record. 
 
 D 3 
 
82 
 
 The remainder of Mr. Kelly's letter^ dated Dublin, 
 March 18(h, 1842, referred to in the Introduction, 
 witli some notes in repbj hij Mr. J. N. Darhy. 
 
 I DID remind you that in my former letter putting 
 you on the defensive, as you -wished, I asked you not 
 why you had left the Church, but why you had left 
 the Church of England. What I wished was to avoid 
 " begging the question." You knew what body the 
 phrase " Church of England " denoted, and that you 
 had left it. I wanted to ascertain your reasons for 
 lea^dng it; but although I used the common teim 
 '■'■Church of England" I did not intend to give up 
 the point that the bodj'^ thus denominated was the 
 Church of God ia England ; and however you 
 are disposed to exclaim at my intolerance, this is my 
 position. I cannot allow the title "Church"* to 
 "apply to your union of Plymouth brethi-en, as you 
 are caUed, or to any class of separatists ; at the same 
 time when I unchurch you collectively, I do not im- 
 christian you iudividually. I may admit that those 
 members of Parliament who attend political unions 
 are bond fide members ; but this is a very different 
 thing from admitting that the meetiug is a meet- 
 
 * I feel it to be of little importance what name is given to those 
 who meet in the name of Jesus, provided they follow faithfully the 
 word of God. 
 
83 
 
 ing of Parliament. Thus my belief concerning you 
 and all dissenters is that you may individualli/ be 
 Clu'istians, but your meetings are scbismatieal — a 
 sinful rending of the body of Christ ;* and a meeting 
 of this kind, though composed of Christians, is not to 
 be confounded with the Church of God meeting in 
 the name of J esus. 
 
 I would now briefly touch on the contents of your 
 letter in general, calculated as they are to make 
 unreflecting Christians impatient of what is their 
 path of duty, namely, adhering to the Chm-ch of 
 England. 
 
 And first allow me to say that you confound the 
 question of the establishment of the Church with its 
 constitution. The establishment of, that is, in other 
 words, the receiving the State f into the Church, with 
 the interference naturally allowed to the State in 
 certain ecclesiastical arrangements, has, I admit, 
 
 * According to this, the Church of England is the body of Christ, 
 and those not of the Church of England are not of the body of Christ ; 
 "rending the body of Christ" may alann timid consciences, but 
 neither the expression- nor the idea are scriptural ; the body of Christ 
 cannot be rent — His sheep may be dispersed, and the nati iUal system 
 
 f It is singular how false systems darken the intelligence. To a 
 person who has learnt to think with Scripture, " receiving the State 
 into the Church " presents no conceivable idea. Put the assembly of 
 believers, or "the assembly of God," in place of " the Church," and 
 what is the meaning of " receiving ihe State into the assembly of 
 God ? " God may add such as shoidd be saved, three thousand souls 
 may be added to the Church, false brctlu'en may creep in — in a word, 
 men or souls may be received in, but how the State can be received 
 in it is impossible to conceive. ."Vnd what is " the interference 
 naturally allowed to the State," when the Holy Ghost can alone 
 really govern and act in the power of God ? It is easy to talk of 
 ecclesiastical arrangements, and " naturally allowed," when the title 
 of Christ and the power of the Holy Ghost are forgotten ; but that 
 the State should interfere in the work of the Holy Ghost is very 
 unnatural to those who are accustomed to look at the Church as the 
 Church of God, where all that is real is of the Holy Ghost. — 
 
84 
 
 through the iinwatehfalness of the Church, led to many 
 evils, just as the accession of men of rank and foitune 
 creeping into j'our Little community might operate im- 
 favom-ably upon it, and hinder its efficiency for good. 
 But cstahUshment is not the essence of the Church ; its 
 truth and apostolicity, as it came not from the State, 
 nor is maintained by it, so neither can it be taken 
 away by the State. Should the State, that is the 
 Queen and her executives, to-morrow forsake the 
 Chm'ch of England, and adopt* one of the sects of 
 the day, suppose yours, making the profession, &c., 
 }'ou requii'e — and I see not how you could decline 
 this uuion — the Church of England would not cease 
 to be the Church of God. Her endowments might be 
 rapaciousl}' seized on, her buildings for worship 
 ahenated from her use, the different orders of her 
 ministers proscribed, her members reduced to meet 
 in a " little upper chamber," but still might she, and 
 I ti-ust would she, be God's chosen witness in the 
 land : unestablished she might be, but not unchurched. 
 Parliament, ■\vith aU its vaimted omnipotence, could 
 not reach to this. You may perhaps take an excep- 
 tion to this assertion, from the fact to which you 
 allude of ten bishoprics in Ireland having been 
 extinguished by Parliament ; but I maintain this 
 could not have been done had the Church herself 
 been faithful, and for her disloyalty to her glorious 
 Head in this matter much chastening has fallen, and 
 I am persuaded will fall on her. Her language to 
 the State when this aggression was threatened, ought 
 
 * The Queen could not adopt the brethren, as they are called. If 
 through the grace of God the Queen be converted, and take her place 
 among God's children, she does it not as Queen, but as any other 
 sinner saved by grace, though God's children will render her, and 
 even every subordinate magistrate, all honour in the place in which 
 God has set them as rulers. 
 
85 
 
 to have been — what many, though not, alas, the 
 majority of her members felt — " You may confiscate 
 our properties, though it is personal robbery ; you 
 may grasp our diocesan and parochial revenues 
 throughout the country, though it is sacrilege ; but 
 you must not dare to lay 3'oui" hands on the ark, or 
 spiritual functions : as the Church of God, we shall, 
 despite of all pains and penalties, maintain the suc- 
 cession of our ministers." Such, I say, should have 
 been the language of the Chui'ch on the occasion in 
 question, followed -up, if necessary, by the election of 
 bishops to the condemned sees as they fell vacant. 
 Her sin has been that she submitted to the usiirpa- 
 tion of the State, in not keeping up the sucqession of 
 her chief pastors ; yea, that she did not exercise dis- 
 cipline in excommunicating the perpetrators* of so 
 presumptuous an act, even though the highest per- 
 sonage in the realm might have become thereby 
 involved. 
 
 But I ask, did not the Church of Thyatira act 
 somewhat after the same manner, when her great 
 Head thus speaks to her : " Notwithstanding I have 
 a few things against thee, because thou sulferest that 
 woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to 
 teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, 
 and to eat things sacrificed unto idols " (Rev. ii. 20) ? 
 Yet you admit Thyatira to have been a true Church 
 of God. I do beg the attention of our readers to 
 this. The Church of England, it is acknowledged 
 with sorrow, does suffer the State to encroach too 
 much on sacred things, but the Chm-ch of Thyatira 
 connived t at similar evil. And if you say that this 
 
 * And among the rest all the hishops, who, as lords spiritual, figure 
 among the enactors of the Bill. 
 
 t Uow the Church of Thyatira connived at similar evil I am at a 
 loss to discover. That assembly of God was fearfully culpable in not 
 
86 
 
 was consistent with the latter being a true Church 
 of God, why not say the same in regard to the 
 
 former ? 
 
 Let our readers remember you have subscribed to 
 this scriptural principle, that ice are not to leave a true 
 Church because of corruption in her ; and I fear not the 
 effect of your letter upon them, for the denial that 
 the Church of England, whose martyrs are before 
 the thi'one of Cod, is a ChurcJi at all, is so monstrous, 
 and the reasoning to prove it from the adventitious 
 circumstance of her being estabhshed so inconclusive, 
 that every one must see the untenableness of the po- 
 sition which reduces its dependers to such shifts, such 
 revolutionary assei-tions. 
 
 I consider that, with these observations, aU your 
 allegations concerning the appointment by irrehgious 
 statesmen to offices in the Chiu-ch are fully disposed 
 of. They relate, I repeat, to the question of the 
 Church's establishment,* the aiTangement of which 
 may be more or less prejudicial to her ; but they 
 touch not her essential character as a true apostohc 
 Church ; and moreover let it not be forgotten that, 
 though an infidel minister may nominate to bishop- 
 exercising discipline when seductive errors were taught by one pre- 
 tending to be a prophetess. The Establishment makes all the uncon- 
 verted Christians in a lump, and ascribes to the State and other 
 authorities, as a civil right, the nomination of all those who have places 
 of pastors and other authorities in her pale. The Church of Thyatira 
 was very guilty, but was a guilty Church ; the Establishment is all 
 the world in England, having substituted a civil arrangement for the 
 power of the Holy Ghost. I cannot discover the analogy. To use 
 the expression of an eloquent foreigner, " the Establishment has made 
 of unfaithfulness an institution." 
 
 * Establishment or not, it is the fact that the bishops and priests 
 are presented to their places by the persons alluded to. There lies 
 the whole point. That act of revolt against the authority of the 
 Spirit is the legal, the only legal position of a member of the Esta- 
 blisliment, and he treats, according to the writer, as schismatics all 
 who do not acquiesce in it. 
 
87 
 
 rics, yet he must select for the dignity from amongst 
 those whom the Chm'ch herself has sanctiouecl with 
 her confidence,* so that if the Chm-ch were faithful 
 to the word of her God, the bishops laying hands 
 suddenly on no man, she might, notwithstanding 
 her connexion with the State, defy its deteriorating 
 influence. 
 
 I come, secondly, to your strictures on the Bap- 
 tismal Service of the Church. And here I would 
 request our readers to observe the important place 
 the ordinance occupies in the New Testament, stand- 
 ing as it does in relation to every blessed feature of 
 the divine life in the soiils of believers. For ex- 
 ample, as to the forgiveness of sins, we read, " Arise 
 and be baptized, and wash aicaij tin/ sins " (Acts xxii. 
 16). As to ovir identification of Christ in His death, 
 '■'■we are buried ivith Sim by baptism unto death" 
 (E,om. vi. 4). As to the participation with Him in 
 His resurrection life, " icherein also ye are risen with 
 Him, through the faith of the oj)eratioii of God" (Col. 
 ii. 12). As to the " unity " even of the Church, about 
 which you say so much, we find it also associated 
 with baptism, "/or by one Spirit are we all baptized 
 into one body"f (1 Cor. xii. it5)7"~Now is not this 
 continual connexion of baptism with the operations 
 of the Spirit of God an ample warrant for the im- 
 portance assigned to it in the Liturgy of the Chm-ch 
 of England ? whilst strongly contrasting, I must add, 
 with the liberalism of your party, which leaves its 
 
 * The Cliurch has sanctioned with her confidence, for what ? fo 
 be a bishop or the pastor of such a flock : If Nero or Domitian hnd 
 appointed Diotrephes Bishop of Ephesus or pastor, would that have 
 been the sanctioned act of the Holy Ghost ? or John, whose surname 
 was Mark ? or Luke ? or any other ? Would not such au act have a 
 deteriorating influence ? 
 
 t " Baptized by one Spirit " is not the baptism of water, but of 
 the Holy Ghost, which is the true power of unity. ^ 
 
88 
 
 reception or rejection an open question.* As to the 
 efficacy asciiboi to the ordinance by the Church of 
 England, in that after its administration we " thank 
 God for regenerating the person baptized " (and I 
 take these words in their plain obvious sense), it is 
 quite consistent, I conceive, with the word of God, 
 for the foregoing passages, tracing back as they do 
 the spiritual life of Christians to baptism as its source,t 
 certainly indicates the efficacy of the ordinance m their 
 
 * There are those among the brethren who are not content with 
 the baptism which they received in infancy, and have thought it more 
 scriptural to have adults baptized on their believing ; thus the manner 
 or circumstances of baptism have been differently judged of by many 
 nmongst them ; but instead of its being an open question, I never 
 heard of baptism itself being a question at all among them. A few 
 who left the Quaker body naturally passed individually through this 
 question, that boily not receiving the Sacrament ; but it was only to 
 lead them to attach due importance to it. 
 
 t None of these passages trace spiritual life to baptism. They 
 speak of the position in which believers were placed by baptism as 
 their formal entrance into Christianity by a public confession, but 
 none attribute life to baptism as its source : " OT'HTs own wHT begat 
 He us by the word of ti uth." It would be singular if it were the 
 cise, that the Apostle should thank God that he baptized none, God 
 having sent him not to baptize (not therefore that life might be 
 received), but to preach the Gospel, the reception of which in the 
 heart, it appears, by the quickening power of the Holy Ghost, 
 does not communicate life, though it be the power of God unto 
 salvation to every one that believeth. " He that hath the Son 
 hath life." It may be true that he who refuses to confess the Son 
 in baptism, is not to be counted as having life ; but to speak of 
 baptism as the source of life would be quite a sutficient eiTOr to oblige 
 the rejection of the Established system, as in its root papist and 
 heretical ; it is an essential and vital point. It is a source of life too, 
 hypothetical on the secret of election it appears, without any action 
 on the conscience, or testimony of the word of God. Hence also 
 every case of conversion or regeneration of adults in these countries, 
 at least in the pale of the Establishment, is absolutely false. Such a 
 thing cannot exist, for being proved elect by their fruits and the seal 
 of the Holy Ghost, it is evident, according to the writer, that they 
 have been regenerated at their baptism. All his preaching of the 
 truth, that souls may be begotten to God by the word, is false from 
 beginning to end, for all th" elect who are there have been already 
 regenerated in their baptism. Would he tell them so — the drunkards, 
 
89 
 
 case — that is, of the real Church, the elect of God. 
 But wliQ are we to discriminate between them and 
 the non-elect ? We cannot do it, and therefore in 
 the judgment of charity we speak of all as being 
 regenerated. In a word, we speak of the visible 
 Chui'ch in terms that belong to the elect Church, 
 because we cannot distinguish them, and that this is 
 scriptm-al see the Apostle's language concerning the 
 IsraeUtes of old :* " Thci/ did all eat the same spiritual 
 meat, ami they did all drink the same spiritual drink, 
 for fhei/ drank of that spiritual Bock tlutt fullo/erd llii in, 
 and that Hock was Christ : but with mini// of Ihein (Jod 
 was not loell pleased, for they were overthrown in the 
 ivilderness" (1 Cor. x. 3 — 5). Here we perceive the 
 
 fornicators, avaricious— that, if elect, they have been regenerated 
 already really at thi'ir baptism, and of course cannot be so again ? 
 they have only to mend their ways ? Where faith comes in it is hard 
 to tell ; but these regenerate persons are as to their heai-ts unbelievers, 
 and perhaps oppose the truth of God strongly. But to what a laby- 
 rinth does error introduce us. Or would he say that these unhappy 
 sinners, or the self-righteous, who are really just as bad, can never 
 be regenerate, and cannot be among the elect ? Alas, alas, where does 
 systematic error lead him to whom the system is truth ! 
 
 * Why does the writer omit the part of the verse that relates to 
 baptism which does not hint at anything spiritu:il ? " They were all 
 baptized to Moses in the cloud and in the sea." To apply figuratively 
 — and in the part of the passage quoted it is avowedly a figure — the 
 name of the thing signified to the sign, is altogether another thing 
 from afiirming its efficacy in the individual who partakes of it. This 
 latter is what the writer attempts to justify as to his use of the pas- 
 sage he here quotes for it, having omitted, as we have seen, tlie part 
 relating to bapiism. The Article of the Church of England itself will be 
 a complete refutation ; it takes pains to make the distinction Mr. Kelly 
 would do away. Article 28 is entitled, " Of the wicked who eat not 
 the body of Christ in the use of the Lord s Supper." Although they 
 carnally press the Sacrament with their teeth, yet in nowise are they 
 partakers of Christ. The writer's view is merely the opus operato 
 doctrine of the Papists applied to the elect— not a tittle else. The 
 passage in the Corinthians is to show that men may partake of sacra- 
 ments and not of life. Mr. Kelly uses it to show that we may rightly 
 affirm life of all those who partake of the sacraments. It is a sin- 
 gular perversion of the passage to the exact opposite of its intention. 
 
90 
 
 participation of Ckrist, which belonged in reality only 
 to some, predicated of all, because all partook of the 
 sacramental sign. It would be well, my dear sir, if, 
 before you revile the Church of England for the 
 vocabulary she employs iu this and her other formu- 
 laries, you had examined the Scriptures more ac- 
 curately ; it might have changed your scorn into 
 reverence to observe that invariably the receiving 
 of the sign is spoken of in language belonging to the 
 reception of the thing signified. 
 
 The next thing to which it occurs to me to allude 
 is your reference to my expression " the popular idol, 
 unity, by which you seem greatly shocked; but 
 why? Is there not such a thing ? Are not men 
 of aU classes endeavoui'ing to coalesce for the pro- 
 motion of their favourite object, by foregoing the 
 assertion of inconvenient truths? and is not tliis a 
 characteristic of your party? Look, for instance, 
 at the ordinance I have been just speaking of, bap- 
 tism ; because its scriptural use, as introductory to 
 the Church, is adverse to the sentiment of some 
 among you, it is omitted. The same, ;/ you were 
 consistent, would apply to your preaching, for there 
 being no agreement among you as to what con- 
 stitutes " the truth," beyond the elementary point 
 devotionaUy held that Jesus is the Christ, to proceed 
 further in the Christian faith would tend to hazard 
 the maintenance of your unity, and so there could 
 not be edification. But you are inconsistent, happily 
 for this end : accordingly, though ia a covert way, 
 imitiag to undervalue baptism, on which Grod lays 
 such s&ess, you have a secret Shibboleth,* I repeat, 
 made up of other things, which gives you a sort of 
 
 • "We have a public Bible, the sufficiency of which the writer seems 
 exceedingly to call in question. 
 
91 
 
 latitude in your teacliing. Were it not for this secret 
 Shibboleth, you could not exclude even the Popish 
 priest, if he cJmc to be one of you, for he could say 
 he believed in Christ as the Saviour of sinners, the 
 Lamb of God ; but then you have set it down in your 
 min(h that the doctrines of Popery are an abomina- 
 tion — that is, you have your Thirty-nine Articles, your 
 interpretation of truth, though not printed ; and there- 
 fore, if he got up to teach you about the sacrifice of 
 the mass, you would silence him, and put him from 
 among you. In short, if you acted consistently mth 
 jOMi boast that you have no creeds or interpreta- 
 tions of truth among you, then you could have no 
 \mity — at least it would only be that of different 
 colom-s in the dark; and thus whereinsoever you 
 have unity, by acting inconsistently, it is obvious your 
 system cannot get the credit of it. 
 
 As we are upon the subject of the unity of the 
 Church, allow me to add that the passage in John 
 xvii. 21, upon which you lay such emphasis, I mean 
 our Lord's prayer that they may be one, &c., does 
 not contemplate the Church in her present state, dis- 
 persed through the world,* but rather in her futm'e 
 glory which awaits her at the coming of her Lord. 
 
 * " Dispersed through the world." But the Saviour gave Him- 
 self to gather into one the children of God which are scattered 
 abroad, or dispersed through the world. The Lord does not speak 
 there of gathering into one in heaven, for no question could be as to 
 that ; He speaks of an economy distinct from the nation. He gave 
 Himself for the nation, and to gather the children of God into one. 
 " There is one Spirit, and one body," which applies to this world, 
 because the Apostle speaks of what the joints supply for the increase 
 of the body, as elsewhere of the members suffering with each other. 
 Also the passage in John is in contrast with the unity in glory ; the 
 Saviour prays that those that believe through their word maij be one, 
 that the world may believe, and then adds, " The glory which Thou 
 hast given me I have given them, that they may be made perfect in 
 one, that the world may know." 
 
92 
 
 Then indeed shall she be manifestly one in union 
 with her glorious Head, and then will the world be- 
 lieve that the Father sent Him. Tour interpretation 
 antedates this consummation. 
 
 One remark more, and I shall have done. You 
 misrepresent me in saying that by my plan, or rather 
 the Church's, " I would take the Church of God out 
 of the field of faith and dependence on the energies 
 of the Holy Ghost." Such is not the case. I would 
 have the most imphcit faith exercised, and the Holy 
 Ghost honoured in all His offices by the child of God, 
 but I see not that the use of means is incompatible 
 with this. The Holy G/iosf works by means. Paid, 
 who, as you quote, ia the prospect of perverse men 
 arising after his decease to deceive the Ephesian 
 Church, commended " to God and the word of Hi.s 
 grace " as the real safeguard, omits not to instruct 
 Timothy, who presided over that Church ; thus, " The 
 things that thou hast heard of me among many 
 witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, 
 who shall be able to teach others also " (2 Tim. u. 2). 
 In like manner Peter says, " Moreover I will endea- 
 vom- that ye may be able after my decease to have 
 these things always in remembrance." According to 
 you, no pro^-ision ought to be made for future exi- 
 gencies in the Chm-ch of God, but all should be left 
 to the Spirit when the crisis comes ; and, consistently 
 with this, we should not multiply copies of the word 
 of God by printing, using that human invention, 
 type ;* but the Holy Ghost should be expected to 
 speak orally in the various assemblies of believers, 
 
 * Does the writer mean to place the use of the word of God on 
 the same ground with human arrangements, and learning, and 
 academies, and the education of young men for a professicm who 
 perhaps are not faithful at all, as if that was the ministry of the 
 Church of Christ ? 
 
93 
 
 using some individual as liis organ, and thus super- 
 seding owe ingenuity ! 
 
 Let me tell you, my dear sir, it is not honouring 
 the Holy Ghost to disdain the helps wliicli prudence 
 and experience suggest for preserving the precious 
 deposit of the faith, and maintaining tlie unity of 
 the Church ; it is rather tempting and grieving Him. 
 Satan would have God honoured thus wlien he plied 
 Jesus with his artful reasoning, that if He wore the 
 Son of God He should cast Himself down from the 
 pinnacle of the temple ; but Jesus replied, " Thou 
 shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."* True faith 
 will depend on God in the use of all lawful means ; 
 and in regard to the edification of the Cluiroli, will 
 not risk it by abolishing all form of sound words, and 
 preparation for the ministry, and thou leaving that 
 ministry open to all who may choose to take it upon 
 them, running before they are sent ; but putting into 
 requisition f every reasonable precaution, will then 
 
 • Tempting God, was making essays to try whother the Lord was 
 among them, saying, "Is the Lord indeed amongst us?" not a 
 humble confidence that He was, and therefore doing His will being 
 based on that confidence. 
 
 t It is hard to see how educating young men for the ministry, 
 without knowing whether God has caili d them at all, and then wait- 
 ing upon God for His blessing, is a reasonable precaution. In the 
 national system young men are educated for the ministry, and after- 
 wards caliud upon, when their life has received this direction as a 
 profession, to declare that they are called of God. I find it hard to 
 call this a reasnnalilc precaution, if I believe the Holy Ghost to be 
 the only real soiui:e of ministry. Besides, reasonable precautions are 
 a very prci aiinus ground, when our point is to follow the word of 
 God. There is no precaution like obedience. All th it this sentence 
 means is, that when man has arranged thinps rx rur.lin- to liis own 
 wisdom, then he will expect God to bless. '11 ' 'i "Mlemned 
 by the writer puts God's blessing and will /" \ ! ' ' l'> that as 
 the sotiroe of comfort and edification. Thf ^■Art i<, ili ii every one 
 who wills enters on what is called the ministry ol' the Kstablishment, 
 if he has a decent education in a college, and a decnt character, or 
 three persons to say he has ; whereas what is condemned admits no 
 
94 
 
 wait upon God for His blessing, which alone can 
 prosper, and this is as compatible with dependence on 
 God's grace, as the culture of the soU and the scatter- 
 ing of the seed is Tvdth dependence on His providence. 
 
 I perceive that, whereas I intended only a fiew short 
 notes, I have been drawn out to write a long letter ; 
 I shall now close, leaving you to have the last word, 
 if you please, before going to press. 
 
 If you like, by the way, you may answer to our 
 readers the following queries : — 
 
 I. — Where was the Chm-ch of God in England at 
 the time of the Eeformation ?* and was that Church 
 identified with the use of creeds, and an ordained 
 ministry separate from the people ? If so, are you 
 not separatists fr'om the Church ? 
 
 II. - — How are teachers appointed among youPf 
 Is it competent to any one who feels he has the gift 
 to stand up and minister in the word, and then if 
 he teach Socinianism how can you consistently silence 
 him ? May he not saijX he speaks in the Spirit as 
 well as you ; and thus are not all your meetings for 
 worship and edification liable to become arenas of 
 controversy ? And 
 
 ministry tut ttat wMch flows from the gift, and presence, and power 
 of the Holy Ghost. Which is most scriptural ? 
 
 * Scattered by the wickedness of men and the vmscriptural inter- 
 vention of princes, haTing been never in Saxon England foimded on 
 any true basis, it was buried under the heaps of Popery, from which 
 it never half emerged. 
 
 t As in the Ephesians, Christ gave some apostles, some prophets, 
 some pastors and teachers. What passage warrants their appoint- 
 ment by men ? — "Let two or three speak," says the Apostle, " and 
 let the rest judge." 
 
 J The Socinian, as well as the Church of England, so called, is to 
 be judged by the word of God. " If a man come and bring you not 
 this doctrine, neither receive him into your house, nor bid bim God , 
 speed." The writer seems to forget that there is a word of God by I 
 which what men say, and all their pretensions to the Spirit, or to be J 
 the Church of God, are to be judged of. , 
 
96 
 
 III. — Is it a hindering of the Spirit of God to 
 provide against this confusion by submitting the 
 pretensions of gifted persons * to such an officer in 
 the Church as Titus, appointed " to set in order the 
 things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every 
 city " (Titus i. 5) ? And, 
 
 IV. — Pray who is this officer among you ? 
 
 A clear and concise answer to these questions will 
 I am siu-e be acceptable to all our readers. 
 
 Praying that in these times of temptation through 
 di\ision, God may render the perusal of this corre- 
 spondence (so humble at least on my part) profitable 
 to His children, 
 
 I remain, my dear sir. 
 
 Yours in Christian truth and love, 
 James Kelly. 
 
 * It was not to such an officer that this task is allotted in the 
 word of God. Next I deny that Titus was any constituted officer in 
 the Church, or other than a temporary delegate of the Apostle. The 
 20th of Acts proves that all application of the title of diocesan epis- 
 copacy to Timothy is utterly false, for the Apostle puts the elders on 
 their own responsibility, without the smallest reference, and to the 
 exclusion of any such officer. Such delegate of apostolic authority 
 does not exist, because the Apostle is not here to delegate him, what- 
 ever the various measure of gift may be. Episcopal pretension to it 
 is to be avoided for a very simple reason, that the power does not 
 exist, and the kingdom of God is in power. If those who are called 
 bishops in the Establishment, or in Popery, examine the qtialifica- 
 tions and source of mission of Timothy and Titus as given by the 
 apostles, a very small share of modesty, not to say of truth, would 
 make them resign all pretensions to being in the same position. 
 Their service after all was very diffi^rent in its character, but in both 
 instances temporary. Do the archbishops or bishops seriously pre- 
 tend to confer the Holy Ghost on men marked out by prophe -y, when 
 a bishop named by the prime minister is consecrated ? It is serious 
 trifling with these subjects— a grave thing to pretend to give, or to 
 have received, the Holy Ghost, and above all to take one's place in 
 the Church of God as doing so. I tremble in thinking of the respon- 
 sibility ; and the facts — the Lord keep me from judging. 
 
WORKS BY J. N. D. 
 
 Evidence from Scripture of the Passing Away of the Pre- 
 sent Dispensation. 3d. 
 
 Divine Mercy to the Church and to Israel. 6d. 
 
 Consirlerations on the Religious Movements of the Day. fid- 
 French New Testament. A New Translation. 3s. & 4s. 
 
 German Nev7 Testament. New Translation, 4s. 
 
 Synopsis of Books of Bible. Vols. 1-4, cloth, each, 7s. Cd. 
 
 Dialogues on the Essavs and Reviews 2nd ed. 8vo, el., 5s. 
 
 Nature and Unity of the Church of Christ. 3d. 
 
 Is tbe Law the Rule of the Christian's Life ? 3d. 
 
 Separation from Evil God s Principle of Unity. Id. 
 
 On Ministry : its Nature, Source, Power, &c. 6d. 
 
 Resurrection tl)e Fundimental Truth of the Gospel. 2d. 
 
 Dispensation of the Kingdom of Heaven, "id. 
 
 Reflections on the Present Ruin of the Church. 2d. 
 
 The Gifts of the Spirit remaining among the Saints. 2d. 
 
 Christian Liberty of Preaching the Lord Jesus Christ. 2d. 
 
 The Claims of tiie Church of England. Is 6d. 
 
 A Letter to the saints in London, as to the Presence of the 
 Holy Ghost in the Church. 2d. 
 
 Exposition of Matthew xxiv, xxv. 3d. 
 
 Notes on the Book of Revelations. Cloth, 2s. 
 
 Melchisedec Priesthood of Christ. 2d. 
 
 The Believer entering into God's Rest Id. 
 
 A Dialogue on Christian Perfection. Cd. 
 
 The Irrationalism of Infidelity. Clotli, 6s. 
 
 Notes anil Kxpositions. Cloth, Is. Gd. 
 
 Two Warnings and an Example. Id. 
 
 Substance of a Lecture on John v. Id. 
 
 A Lecture on Prophecy. 2d. 
 
 Gospel Sermons. Is. fid. ; cloth, gilt, 2s. 
 
 God's Grace and Man's Need. Id. 
 
 Inspiration of the Scriptures. New ed., with additions, fid. 
 Discipline, ^d. On the Apos'acv. IJd. 
 
 The Feasts. Ud. -^Hiat is the Church ? 3d. 
 
 Father and Prodiial. Id. Superstition not Faith, '.'d. 
 Romans viii, and ix. 2d. Types of Leviticus. 3d. 
 Notes on the Offerings. 2d. A Collection of Tracts. 3s. 
 Obedience 'M. Eternal Punishment. Id. 
 
 On Worship. 3d. 
 The Rapture of the Saints, fid 
 Brethren and their Reviewers. Gd. 
 The Righteousness of God. Gd. 
 
 Further Remarks upon Righteousness and Law: with 
 Answers to Different Objections. 6d. 
 
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