tihvaty of Che t:heological ^tminavy 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 Gift of 
 Samuel Agnew, Esq. 
 1881 
 
 BX 4810 .M5E1846 
 
 Miller, John. 
 
 The design of the church 
 
DESIGN OF THE CHURCH 
 
THE 
 
 DESIGN OF THE CHURCH, 
 
 / 
 
 AS AN INDEX TO 
 
 HER REAL NATURE 
 
 THE TRUE LAW OF HER COMMUNION. 
 
 BY JOHN'MILLER, 
 
 PASTOR OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN FREDERICK, MD. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 JAMES M. CAMPBELL, 98 CHESTNUT STREET. 
 
 NEW YORK: SAXTON AND MILES, 205 BROABWAY. 
 
 '1846. 
 

 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846, 
 
 By James M. Campbell, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of 
 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
 C. SHERMAN, PRINTER, 
 
 19 St. James Street. 
 
CONTEIs'TS. • %vr.*- 
 
 Introduction, - - - - 1^ 
 
 CPIAPTER I. 
 The Principle of Design, - - - 33 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 The Design of Religion, - - - 61 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 The Design of Externals in Religion, - - 72 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Design of an External Church, - 90 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Danger of Attributing to Externals Certain 
 
 Spurious Designs, - - - - 103 
 
 1* 
 
VI ♦ CONTENTS. j# 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 A Spurious Design of Certain Externals, 119 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The True Doctrine of Church Communion, Ar- 
 gued from the Design of an External 
 Church, . - - - 171 
 
pbhtcetoh 
 
 THE0L0CIC4L 
 
 P R EFTCli. 
 
 The world has had three grand lessons, each lasting 
 about two thousand years, bearing on a single point of 
 the church's creed ; and, as if to keep the three always 
 and distinctly with us, three grand monuments remain : 
 the wrecks of institutions out of the history of which these 
 lessons have been brought. Poor a learner as the world 
 always is, still, it is an idea specially hard to bear, that 
 such lessons have gone for nothing, and that He who 
 alone is worthy to open the book of Providence, or to 
 look thereon, has loosed already a fourth seal, and is 
 busy unwinding the roll again, and pointing in the dim 
 future to a fourth wreck, a monument for another age. 
 
 1. God gave to Adam after the fall a pure religion. It 
 grew corrupt. The main form of its corruption was, 
 
 THE EXALTING OF EXTERNALS, tO the nCgleCt of tWO faCtS, 
 
 that God is a Spirit, and that He can be worshipped only 
 with the spirit. It grew more and more corrupt, as the 
 dividing families of men carried it abroad into the places 
 of their dispersion, till it had secured for the world, 
 through all after history, that vast preponderance of 
 heathenism, against which Christianity is toiling yet. 
 
 2. Nearly two thousand years later, God gave to 
 Abraham a pure religion, a religion having the advan- 
 tage now of past example ; guarded by the calling of 
 
8 PREFACE. 
 
 Abram out from among those fathers beyond the flood 
 who served other gods ;^ having the warning of God 
 Himself out of Sinai, — " Thou shalt not bow down to 
 their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works : but 
 thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down 
 their images,"^ and having a memento, in the very wreck 
 of a past religion, of the precise nature and hard result 
 of such apostacy. In spite of all, it grew corrupt. The 
 main form of its corruption was, the exalting of exter- 
 nals, precisely as before. It grew more and more cor- 
 rupt, till first the images of Baal and the fires of Moloch, 
 the gods of the nations in whose land it dwelt, had 
 gathered to them more worshippers than God, and then, 
 after the Captivity, when foreign idolatry was cast away, 
 its own rites had claimed their turn in the superstition — 
 the Pharisee, that embodiment of the whole corruption, 
 had appeared, and trust to mere externals had become 
 general enough to find a place in alleged divine tradition 
 for the rule, " No circumcised man can perish." 
 
 3. About two thousand years from Abraham, God 
 gave by Jesus Christ a pure religion ; still with the warn- 
 ing, " Flee from idolatry,"'^ " Little children, keep your- 
 selves from idols ;"'^ and now, with two monuments, pre- 
 sent in all lands, wherever it might turn, the wreck of 
 oral religion, in the heathenism of the world, and the 
 wreck of Abraham's religion, in its Judaism. 
 
 Precisely, as if these costly lessons of forty centuries 
 had been on some other planet, and our first experiment 
 in rehgion opened with the Christian era, it grew cor- 
 rupt again. The main form of its corruption was the 
 exalting of externals, without a shade of essential 
 
 => Josh. xxiv. 2. b Ex. xxiii. 24. ^ j Cor. x. 14. ^ 1 John v. 21. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 difference between this instance of it and the last. It 
 grew more and more corrupt, and even faster than be- 
 fore, so that in less than two thousand years baptism had 
 taken the place of circumcision, as a saving rite, and 
 birth in the church of a birth from Abraham, as a saving 
 birth, and wafer, and wine, and penance of the " blood 
 of bullocks," and " the fat of fed beasts," and of the " new- 
 moons, and sabbaths, and calling of assemblies," as, in 
 themselves, of saving efficacy ; differing, it is true, in de- 
 tail of doctrine, but bringing up to our minds the same 
 essential principles — direct efficiency, and absolute neces- 
 sity of certain externals in salvation. 
 
 4. Fifteen centuries from Christ, God gave back the 
 same religion by the hand of Luther, and the men of that 
 reformation — men who, into whatever country they 
 might go, to restore the written word, and to attack the 
 reigning superstition, had now three monuments at hand 
 to attest the value of their errand : — the wreck of the 
 first religion, (heathenism,) the wreck of Abraham's 
 religion, (Judaism,) and a wreck of Christianity, in the. 
 religion of Rome. What has been the result? Alas! 
 strange as it is that, among a hundred roads to ruin, the 
 world should be always choosing one ; strange as it is 
 that an error, narrow and singled out, like this, and re- 
 impressed upon the memories of all by the heaviest 
 curses that our race has felt, should lift its head, once 
 more, and show its old familiar features, and men not 
 shrink from it with quick fear, or attack it with liveliest 
 jealousy ; — strange as this is — the religion reformed in 
 the time of Luther, is growing corrupt again. The main 
 form of its corruption is, the exalting of externals. It 
 is growing more and more corrupt ; no longer, blessed 
 be God, in one corrupting mass, but in members stand- 
 
10 ^ PREFACE. 
 
 ing aloof from the rest in doctrine and government, — 
 standing aloof, and yet dear to us, by virtue of the family 
 name, and for their share in the early struggles of our 
 common Protestantism. 
 
 What is to be done ? To take up the cold instruments 
 of reasoning, and begin to challenge and refute, is cheer- 
 less business. History, since the vi^orld began, turning 
 over that one error, and showing it in a thousand phases, 
 has defined it a thousand-fold more clearly than the best 
 chosen form of words. God, out of heaven, blasting it 
 with curses, wherever it has raised its head, has argued 
 against it with such light and power, that there seems 
 nothing left for human demonstration. Nay, all, the most 
 pure of mankind, at three successive periods of the world, 
 and after near twenty centuries of trial and rebuke, call- 
 ing up the error before their minds, in its single narrow- 
 ness, have openly recanted it, and left their experience 
 on record, for the benefit of all after time. What can be 
 done more ? Where has error risen nearer to the point 
 (if there be one), where truth may rest from the toil and 
 strife of argument, and deal only in calm denunciation ? 
 , What can be done ! All that Elijah did, patiently bear- 
 ing testimony, and arguing on ; — all that Elijah did, when, 
 though the Shekinah was yet in Jerusalem, and miracles, 
 clearly giving witness to the one spiritual Jehovah, were 
 yet in Israel, still " Baal's prophets were four hundred 
 and fifty men," — patiently bearing testimony, " if the 
 Lord be God, follow Him, and, if Baal, then follow 
 him," and cheerfully oflering appropriate proof, " The 
 God that answereth by fire, let him be God."^ 
 
 Two things may be done. Two aims ought to be 
 
 » 1 Kings 18. 
 
PREFACE. 1 1 
 
 kept steadily in view by all that is still purely Protes- 
 tant: — 
 
 1. To draw a clear line between itself and this pecu- 
 liar error; not to listen when men suggest that the differ- 
 ence is all in words, but rather to remember that there 
 must be some insidious charm by which so notorious an 
 evil has every where yet succeeded in stealing in, and that 
 these very suggestions may be part of it, and, therefore, 
 to fix the boundary, and keep it visible, and to hold all 
 that is yet untainted aloof from the first symptoms of the 
 error, with the same necessary care that we would shun 
 leprosy. 
 
 2. To arrange fundamental arguments against the 
 heresy ; I mean by that, arguments reaching in for their 
 proof to the very vitals of the gospel. They are quicker 
 and surer. Every thing that prolongs debate between so 
 strong a thing as Christ's religion, and so weak a thing 
 as this corruption of it, subtracts respect from the former, 
 and adds it to the latter. The errorist knows the fact, 
 and, therefore, is ever busy in dealing with minor evi- 
 dences. The advocate of truth ought to know it, and to 
 be ever drawing his opponent back to what is chief and 
 central ; remembering that he is not meeting the untried 
 perplexities of something new, but trying to despatch, 
 with the strongest hand, and with the clearest head, and 
 as briefly as he can, an error so old and thoroughly ex- 
 ploded, as that the hardest effort of intellect in it, is not 
 to prove it false, but to know how, after it has been proved 
 so a thousand times, it still manages to appear again. 
 The minor evidences, among which may be instanced 
 isolated texts of Scripture, are as strong as any other, if 
 we can make them positive, for proof is proof, no matter 
 how trivial its subject-matter; but there precisely is the 
 
12 PREFACE. 
 
 difficulty. In trying to make them positive, we spend 
 time that might have been enough, perhaps, for deahng 
 ■with the whole circle of higher proof. Poor as its cause 
 may be, we throw ourselves down on a level with the 
 error we oppose, and, in the end, rather increase than 
 abate the confidence of the people in its claims. An 
 isolated text, if positive, is conclusive, and there is an 
 end of all strife ;; but the moment it is proved to be not 
 so, as, perhaps, most single texts may be, and by that is 
 meant to be not shut up to a single meaning, and no 
 more ; that moment a debate over it proves itself to be 
 interminable, and every step further in it is but a sacri- 
 fice of the truth, by how much it is made to seem no 
 better than error, when at issue with it in a debate, of 
 necessity, endless. It should be one of the practical 
 marks, therefore, of pure religion, that she makes her 
 appeal from the very first to the broader principles of 
 the gospel. 
 
 Such must be her chosen ends. 
 
 To the two, the book that follows is intended as a 
 respectful contribution, and it is humbly consecrated to 
 God, the God and Father of our common Protestantism, 
 the one only pure and primitive religion, with the prayer 
 that it may be useful ; but with the more especially fer- 
 vent prayer that, if not useful, it may, at least, be kept 
 from the list of cases in which that religion has been 
 most deeply wounded by its sincerest friends. 
 
 J. M. 
 
 Frederick, Md., Dec. 30th, 1845. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I. Where is the spirit of ancient paganism ? If the 
 Scripture be true, " as in water, face answereth to face ; 
 so the heart of man to man ;"^ what has become of that 
 corruption of the heart which once filled the world with 
 idols'? From the Bible, and from uninspired history, 
 and from the accounts that come to us of heathenism as 
 it lasts on to our own time, it has given ample proof that 
 it is one of the chief of human sins. It has shown itself 
 not to be the creature of circumstances, or superinduced 
 only by external causes ; but to be that which springs 
 up naturally, and cherishes itself in the heart, even 
 against influences from without. 
 
 Where is it? what shape has it taken among our- 
 selves? That which, in all other times and among 
 every other people, has been the crying fault of these 
 hearts of ours — the most prolific in judgments upon our 
 race, and the strongest in ripening the seeds of general 
 corruption — cannot be altogether dead and ended among 
 us now. 
 
 Its main element, too — the elevation of the external 
 to the place of the spiritual— the endowment of matter 
 with such a relation to deity as that body may do the 
 work of soul,— however not to be expected to appear 
 
 * Prov. xxvii. 19. 
 
 2 
 
14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 again, on the ground of its folly, and its often detected 
 folly, still might be confidently expected to appear again 
 in every land, whether pagan or Christian, on that best 
 of all grounds, the ground of experience. Each sepa- 
 rate page in the annals of the world, being, as all history 
 is, but the history of the human soul, gives w^arrant to 
 this as no presumption. The spirit that framed the old 
 mythologies, and then gave them such iron power over 
 the hearts of men — that debased itself so low in searching 
 for its deities among the very meanest of the works of 
 God ; — the spirit that gave our own fathers their lesson 
 in Druid rites and human sacrifices, and that still carves 
 its idols, and rears its altars among the heathen, and 
 lights their funeral fires, and guides their cruel pilgrim- 
 ages, must have something to answer to it here among 
 ourselves. 
 
 What a call for searching into the purity of our 
 churches ! expressly, too, with our eye upon that which 
 is the peculiar province of the evil — the visible part of 
 our religion. 
 
 It will not do to say that idolatry is the impiety of an 
 ignorant age, and that therefore the call for jealousy 
 over ourselves in the use of what is outward is set aside 
 by the light which the church possesses. For if the 
 secular intelligence of men is the light that is intended, 
 experience will make it a question, whether it do not 
 increase the danger. " The world by wisdom knew^ not 
 God,"'' and He has seen fit to bring this to the proof by 
 making the wisdom of the world but a tool in debasing 
 its religion. It is a notorious fact that in most countries 
 the advancement of letters, and the degrading of w^or- 
 ship have gone hand in hand. Egypt became the cradle 
 » 1 Cor. i. 21. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 of science, only to fasten upon her popular faith the 
 worst absurdities — that leeks and onions, cats and dogs 
 and crocodiles, must be adored as deities. The idolatry 
 of Greece seems to have kept pace in vileness and 
 obscenity with the advance of her philosophy; and 
 Rome, through the progress of her arms and under the 
 growing light of her Augustan age, only learned, by 
 borrowing from abroad, and by inventing at home, to 
 multiply and, so, degrade the modes and objects of her 
 worship. 
 
 The fact is, an ordered system of mythology, in its 
 more minute and, of course, more degrading detail, seems 
 to require some degree of light to give it birth and sta- 
 bility. Oar own aborigines and most other savage 
 tribes approach nearer a low form of natural religion than 
 the most cultivated nations, not evangelized. The Great 
 Spirit of the American Indian, and He is but a type of 
 the God belonging generally to that grade of civilization, 
 may be looked upon as a noble conception of the Al- 
 mighty, when contrasted with the faith of more en- 
 lightened races. 
 
 No ; learning, though of right and by legitimate ten- 
 dency the handmaid of religion, yet has proved herself, 
 under the force of depravity, its frequent and worst 
 seducer. 
 
 If, however, it be pleaded that the true religion — that 
 kind of intelligence — when once it secures a foothold, 
 must preclude for the time the revival of idolatry, it may 
 be asked, how was it in the land of Israel? There, 
 clearly, the two dwelt together upon the same soil, the 
 light of the one, bright as it was, scarcely ever dispel- 
 ling the gross darkness of the other. Perhaps it would 
 not to be too strong to say that idolatry was the dominant 
 
16 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 religion of the people, through their whole history, from 
 Egypt to Babylon. The high-places, and the house of 
 Baal, stood, generation after generation, hardly beyond 
 the shadow of the house of God, while the best consola- 
 tion found for Elijah, and that, probably, not at the worst 
 time in the history of the tribes, was : " I have left me 
 seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not 
 bowed unto Baal and every mouth which hath not 
 kissed him."^ Then, if the Israelites, with miracle, and 
 " the cloudy presence" and the " open vision" still among 
 them, could find in their hearts a principle strong enough 
 to seduce them to the lowest image-worship, either 
 human hearts have changed, or that principle must still 
 be looked for counterworking our own religion. 
 
 Men may say that it now takes the form of spiritual 
 idolatry, i. e., the worship of time and sense, such, for 
 example, as that " covetousness which is idolatry f^ but, 
 let it be remembered, this form existed then, as now, 
 and yet did not supplant the other. They were pointed 
 at and rebuked together. They are difterent evils, be- 
 gotten of different principles. One looks at present 
 good ; the other at final safety ; the last a positive wor- 
 ship, the first only figuratively so. The one then will 
 answer badly for the other in meeting the calls of the 
 heart. They are mutually necessary. Literal idolatry 
 is good to quiet conscience, that spiritual idolatry may 
 be undisturbed; for only set up a false worship, and 
 God and mammon can be best served together. 
 
 Let me notice one more objection to the idea that 
 there are the strongest a priori grounds for anticipating 
 the infection of our churches with idolatry. The Chris- 
 tian religion does not furnish that hold for the evil that 
 
 » 1 Kings xix. 18. ^ Col. iii. 5. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 the Jewish religion did. Their ritual was full, and 
 therefore more exposed than ours. The ceremonial law 
 presented a hundred points where temptation might 
 attack it. While the gospel is so thoroughly spiritual, 
 and clothes itself in so httle that is fleshly, that idolatry 
 has scarce any thing on which to fasten. 
 
 In reply, the question occurs at once, has God left 
 any rites to the Christian system '? If not, we look else- 
 where for the evil. If He has, there is the point to 
 which suspicion must be directed. The Jew exalted his 
 own rites till they became idolatrous ; do we the same 1 
 The Jew added to his own the rites of Baal ; is it so at 
 all with us? The burden of ceremony laid upon the 
 church in the days of her novitiate has left scarcely any 
 thing behind it, but two plain, unostentatious obser- 
 vances ; for Christ, as if at once to rebuke and prevent 
 the hope of salvation by external means, has brought 
 down the ritual binding upon us to the very lowest ex- 
 treme of familiar simplicity. Still here, however less 
 excusable superstition has become — here is sphere 
 enough for the temptation. The spirit that turned God's 
 rite of sacrifice into an idolatrous channel, and made 
 the perverted rite the pervading idolatry of the world, 
 bringing so much heathenism out of so small a reve- 
 lation, might easily find in these enough for like unhal- 
 lowed purposes. The two sacraments, of baptism and 
 the Lord's supper, and, associated with these, the ex- 
 ternal order of the church, might be anticipated as ral- 
 lying points of superstition; about which idolatrous 
 regards would always cluster, and to which new rites 
 and vain appendages would be added to help out the 
 system of delusion. 
 
 II. What, in these days, is the force and use of the 
 
 9* 
 
18 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 second commandment 1 Certainly not to meet merely 
 that one narrow superstition — image-worship. This 
 idea is forbidden as well by the analogy of the second 
 with the rest of the ten, as by the common habit of 
 scripture. One overt act of sin stands as the type of 
 many, and represents that whole principle of evil from 
 which it is seen to spring. What is the province, then, 
 of this commandment in its bearing upon us 1 That 
 God has thought it constant enough in application to 
 make it one of a decalogue so framed as to meet all duty 
 and to forbid all sin, warrants us in two conclusions — 
 first, that it occupies the whole ground of false worship, 
 and challenges in every form the superstitious misuse of 
 ordinances ; and second, that the very space it fills in the 
 law declares a tendency to this misuse to be one of the 
 cardinal corruptions of our nature. 
 
 Here, therefore, coming up in another shape, is more 
 evidence for the need of jealousy over our souls in set- 
 tling that part of our faith which regards the rites and 
 order of the visible church. 
 
 The fact is, a reliance upon external ordinances has 
 in it all the moral elements of idolatry strictly defined, 
 i. e., image-worship. An intelligent advocate of the 
 error may tell you that none of his adoration terminates 
 on the ordinance, and that its necessity is only as a 
 channel of grace from God ; but so will an intelligent 
 idolater explain what he does before his idol. It is not 
 his deity, but only the shrine that hides the real object of 
 his worship. Many heathen have been wise enough to 
 see in the wide polytheism of their countrymen, only 
 varied forms for shadowing forth one Infinite Spirit. 
 Does this excuse the system? Talk with the ignorant 
 in either case, and you will find that matter, whether as 
 
INTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 rite or image, if looked upon as supernaturally endued, 
 or invariably accompanied with the power of God, 
 gathers upon itself some at least of the adoration that it 
 engages to hand on to Him. 
 
 That much of the essence of the Gospel goes with 
 these abuses, cannot so sanctify them as to change their 
 nature. A mixture of truth cannot erase the strong 
 lines of their resemblance to pagan ceremonies. They 
 are alike in this very feature, aside from others, viz., that 
 there is present with them only partial error. What 
 superstition can you find, not grafted upon some truth? 
 for, in the nature of things, none can be purely false. 
 The meanest idol has clustering around it many just 
 ideas of God — His power — His ability to save or to 
 destroy — the hope of his rewarding those that diligently 
 seek Him. 
 
 The common mode of ministering to the idol, i. e., by 
 sacrifice, is but a truly primitive rite perverted. In many 
 diverse forms, on the smoking altar, on the funeral 
 pyre, in the lacerating scourge, in rack and cell and 
 pilgrimage, it ever points to the idea of atonement sha- 
 dowed forth in that divinely appointed and earliest cere- 
 mony. So of the rites of cleansing ; the Hindoo, wash- 
 ing away his sins in the holy Ganges, is but toiling in 
 the distance in dim traditionary light after the fountain 
 opened for sin and uncleanness ; and whether he bor- 
 rows what he does from the " divers washings" of the 
 Jews, or invents it from his own sight of its appropriate- 
 ness, still there is truth in it. Indeed, there must be 
 truth in error, to make it possible that it be believed, or 
 just to punish it; " for the wrath of God is revealed from 
 heaven against all ungodliness, and unrighteousness of 
 men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; because 
 
20 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 that which may be known of God is manifest in them ; 
 for God hath shewed it unto tliem" — " so that they are 
 without excuse. Because that when they knew God, 
 they glorified him not as God," — " but became vain in 
 their imaginations" — " and changed the glory of the 
 uncorruptible God into an image made like to corrupti- 
 ble man, and to birds and fourfooted beasts and creep- 
 ing things."* 
 
 The path of this idolatry, therefore, starts from the 
 very door of the Christian church. The Christian who 
 clothes matter, or men in holy office, with the power of 
 God, beyond all scripture warrant, making them divine 
 vehicles or channels of salvation, when scripture does 
 not make them so, is not only wrong, but wrong like the 
 heathen. No matter how he wraps up with mystery the 
 grand doctrines of our creed, his heresy has the great 
 features of idol-worship ; the brutal pagan, whose spi- 
 ritual lot he pities, and whose folly he abhors, is his 
 brother, by a birth less disgraceful, because less guilty, 
 in the same family of error. 
 
 III. But a still louder warning to look well how we 
 settle our faith as to the externals of religion, rises from 
 the fact that the suspicions on whose weight we have 
 been insisting, have actually been realized. Those re- 
 flected from the idolatry of other races, showing how 
 invariably every where else the soul has been betrayed, 
 and those reflected from the table of the law, showing 
 how the Creator of the soul foresaw the danger of pre- 
 cisely such betrayal, yield in strength, perhaps, to those 
 made necessary by the appearance of the evil in the 
 bosom of the church. 
 
 And by this it is not meant to take for granted 
 
 ^ Rom. i. 19—23. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 21 
 
 charges which it is our very work to prove, or at all to 
 build any thing upon the extent to which superstition 
 has grown among us, or the number of points around 
 which it has centred. Appeal shall go no farther than 
 confession as made by all, viz., that the visible church 
 has been infected by idolatry. Where,— may be a 
 matter of controversy ; but the fact itself scarce any 
 one will deny. 
 
 For example, take out the single class of ultra Ro- 
 manists, and all others will admit that that church is 
 more or less infected. The sincere and thinking part 
 of her communion will point to many practices, if not as 
 sanctioned by her ghostly head, yet as indulged in by 
 her more corrupt and ignorant members, especially in 
 new stations among races newly reclaimed from heathen- 
 ism, which they will willingly give up as amenable to 
 the charge that has been made ; while all other churches, 
 grade after grade in departure from Rome, will accuse 
 her as wide from the simplicity of Christ, or as wholly 
 given up to idolatry. Nay, it would seem that no ex- 
 ception need be made even of the blindest and most de- 
 graded under the papacy. For, bring all the eastern 
 churches into the account, with the mutual recrimina- 
 tions of the whole in the west and east, and there seems 
 little risk in saying that corruption, somewhere, by ido- 
 latry, is a charge from which there will be no dissent. 
 
 To all true-hearted Protestants, however, the appeal 
 is most direct and forcible. A system of enormous 
 superstition has been feeding for ages upon the strength 
 of the church. Before our very eyes we see it ; her 
 decay and death in that member of her body where the 
 poison has been longest working ; her ordinances quite 
 forgetting their old design, and turned to that of seducing 
 
22 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 men away from what, is pure and spiritual in worship ; 
 her officers betraying the worst folly of man, in the 
 very act of claiming the high honours of God ; and her 
 v/hole system squared as with studied art to cherish the 
 evil to which the soul has so amply proved its tendency. 
 
 Here, therefore, in the deep and long apostacy of this, 
 the largest society of men that ever bore the name of 
 Christ, we, who by sovereign grace have come out 
 from her communion may find our strongest reason for 
 a wise jealousy over each other. How does it stand 
 with us? Is that current of corruption that carries 
 every thing before it in the Roman church, unfelt by 
 Protestants? If it is, few problems in the spiritual 
 w^orld would be harder to explain than the cause of this 
 exemption. Does superstition break off at the door of 
 the Papacy ; and are all without untainted by it ? Is 
 there a chasm fixing a clear boundary between pure 
 worship and false? or, as in other cases, do truth and 
 error but half renounce their fellowship, and throwing 
 out their arms towards each other, depart from either 
 territory only in lingering degrees, leaving at each 
 grade of separation some portion of their strength to 
 parley for new alliances ? Is it a common thing at all 
 for that clear bright line marking between wrong and 
 right, whether in faith or worship, so totally to divorce 
 their respective adherents as to deny all mutual ap- 
 proaches ? If it be not, then in the case before us, it is 
 plain where our suspicions must rest. 
 
 If Rome be false, against whose influence can we be 
 more wisely guarded than theirs who are looking to- 
 wards Rome? Above all, that damning sin of the 
 Papacy, — man arrogating the claims of God, — the 
 water and the bread and the wine in his hands hiding 
 
INTRODUCTION. 23 
 
 Christ and the atonement, — things visible in his wor- 
 ship, vanities that perish in the using, overshadowing 
 and causing him to forget the claims of a true devotion, 
 — this sin, so far as the reader will confess it one, may- 
 be his index in judging, if at all, and where, the church 
 is losing her integrity. If in any one of her branches 
 the simple rites or offices of our religion are gathering 
 again about them those meretricious honours of which 
 it was the chief labour of the Reformation that they 
 might be shorn, let here be our mark against that 
 branch ; and let our pity be turned upon it, and our 
 watch be set against it, not only for the measure of its 
 likeness to its apostate mother now, but for the peril in 
 which it stands of returning fully to her embraces. 
 
 IV. It is time for the Reformed church to grow cor- 
 rupt. Happy will it be for her if one branch will draw 
 off upon itself all she has to fear — one loathsome issue 
 satisfying the disease, and leaving a measure of health 
 in the other members of her body. 
 
 Three centuries from the death of Christ, evidence 
 in every shape warrants the belief that the primitive 
 church had strayed far from the truth. We are now 
 three centuries from the dawn of the Reformation. If 
 there be any sign in this, the time has come for our 
 corruption, and if the path downward be as steep as in 
 the patriarchal, the Jewish, or the early Christian age, 
 God only knows with what rapid strides our corruption 
 may advance. 
 
 What were the circumstances of the last apostacy ? 
 Was the Man of Sin the creature of rising ambition in 
 the clergy, and of waning self-respect and Christian 
 liberty among the people ? Look well if like influences 
 are begetting no such results among ourselves. Did 
 
24 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the church most rapidly decline, wherever it was ear- 
 liest and best supported by the secular power ? Where, 
 next to Rome, does the modern church receive its 
 richest governmental endowments t Were the seeds of 
 corruption thus matured, transplanted from under the 
 smile of kings to take root in other lands ? then so it 
 may be now. We may have planted among us a court 
 religion, bringing with it all its corruptions, without the 
 patronage for which it sold itself. Once more : did the 
 ancient church court the favour of the Pagans by a base 
 adultery with their superstitions 1 Did mere externals 
 and new externals become prominent in her preaching 
 that the heathen mind might find something congenial 
 in what she offered ? then the same policy may rise 
 again ; let us watch the first signs of sympathy with 
 Rome, meeting as it may the prurient appetite of the 
 people by yielding to her blandishments, and taking at 
 her hand, without the stint of fresh invention, or the toil 
 with which she toiled through the seed-time and harvest 
 of error, the fruits of her ripe degeneracy. 
 
 On all these grounds of strong suspicion let us build, 
 not prejudice, but caution. No partiality is asked, but 
 simply that direction, which admitted truths like these 
 must give to candid study. Certainly the least amends 
 that can be won back from superstition for all her mis- 
 chiefs in the heathen world and in one scarcely less 
 heathen church, is, that they give warning against them- 
 selves, so that we may have forecast enough to set a 
 double guard upon them. For " these things were our 
 examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil 
 things, as they also lusted ; neither be idolaters, as were 
 some of them."* 
 
 » 1 Cor. X. 6, 7. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 25 
 
 The object of the chapters that follow is, by going 
 down to the lowest principles on which the institution of 
 the church is founded, not only to show how thoroughly 
 the foregoing suspicions are realized by existing viola- 
 tions of those principles, but also to erect a lest, by 
 which the plausible beginnings of idolatry, which have 
 periodically and so easily deceived the church, and are 
 beginning, for the fourth time, again to deceive her now, 
 may be detected and shunned. 
 
 It is useless to attempt this, however, till the hollow- 
 ness of a certain popular and ready argument, wielded 
 in behalf of more than one sect of modern Protestants, 
 be shown in the light of what has been already said. 
 In whatever language it is given, it will be recognised 
 as familiar. " You admit the validity of our ordi- 
 nances ; we deny the validity of yours. Is it not better 
 at once to take that ground as to whose safety we are 
 both agreed?" 
 
 As illustration, take the mode of baptism. A branch 
 of the church believe that the command in Christ's com- 
 mission to the apostles, "Go teach all nations ; baptizing 
 them," &c., is obeyed by no other mode of the rite than 
 immersion, i. e., the dipping of the whole person under 
 water ; and that one undergoing any other ceremony is 
 not initiated into the visible church. The rest adopt 
 sprinkling as the valid rite, but with widely different 
 views of the importance of the mode, without making it 
 a test of membership, or valid to the exclusion of the 
 other. The first, then, we are told have plainly the ad- 
 vantage as to popular choice. If, so far as concerns 
 validity, all agree in immersion, and but a part in sprink- 
 ling, respect for the giver of the rite should determine 
 
 3 
 
26 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 US to that in which we can have the testimony of both 
 parties, that we are obeying Him. 
 
 This logical formula becomes still more potent where 
 men's fears can be assailed. The advocates of that error, 
 in any of its phases, which makes valid church orders or 
 ordinances the only channel of God's covenanted mercy, 
 easily construct upon it an argument that tells directly 
 upon a certain class of minds. " You acknowledge us 
 to be a true church of Jesus Christ; we are constrained 
 to withhold any such acknowledgment from you. To 
 the validity of our communion, therefore, witness is 
 borne by both ; therefore, care for your own salvation 
 demands that you should make sure of being within the 
 true pale by this twofold testimony. Come to our 
 ground, and you risk nothing on your own, while you 
 gain all on ours." 
 
 Certainly, if this has weight, it is quite unnecessary 
 work to discuss the intrinsic claims of either system. 
 The least shade of doubt that might be left, must deter- 
 mine to the safe side. Let opinion ever so much forbid, 
 still the doctrine of probabilities must constrain compli- 
 ance ; for if the exclusive claim have any, the remotest 
 chance at all, of being right, since we venture nothing 
 by abandoning the other, better yield at once, that the 
 benefit of that chance may be gained. 
 
 Against such fearful odds the truth could in no single 
 instance be maintained. The least vestige of doubt on 
 one side, would be the utmost triumph on the other. 
 Those minds — -and where in our dark world could they 
 be found — only those that could banish all misgiving, 
 and clothe their creed in perfect light, would dare prac- 
 tically to acknowledge the weight of any evidence that 
 
INTRODUCTION. 27 
 
 the less pretending party could accumulate. Indeed, 
 carry out the principle, and a moderate party must 
 always practically be wrong. Exclusive claims would 
 be by set rule a passport to success. No church need 
 do more than rise above her sisters in any form of ar- 
 rogant assumption — retaining ev^ery thing they have and 
 adding some one thing more — to challenge by this very 
 act the adherence of all the rest. The papacy is the 
 only body worth communing with. Especially for any 
 sect who thinks well of her essential soundness as a 
 church of Christ, it is the utmost rashness to be one mo- 
 ment out of her pale. How can we but yield to her sole 
 catholicity 1 for that common possibility of salvation, 
 which few question in her, she denies to all. 
 
 As the first fallacy of this whole argument, and a 
 good evidence besides of the mischief of that trust to 
 externals which it contributes to uphold, look at this one 
 result. Here are God's holy ordinances offered to meet 
 an intention in which the recipient has by his ow^n con- 
 fession no faith. Remember he is invited to them as 
 a matter of safety, aside from his predominant opinion. 
 The very call by which he has been won over, w^as to 
 make provision for a chance, not to bow to usual reasons. 
 How clear, then, the first lesson that his new mother 
 teaches, that the sacraments are precious, irrespective of 
 his belief Bad as it is to make their necessity absolute 
 luith faith, here that worse deformity of the error is un- 
 veiled — a necessity apart from faith — nay, against it. 
 This lesson is inwrought into the very texture of the ar- 
 gument ; for as the office of the argument is to set con- 
 siderations of safety against predominant belief, disen- 
 gaging men from their proper communion at a presup- 
 posed sacrifice of opinion and feeling, it is clear that the 
 
28 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 chance for which they have left all, is nothing, if the out- 
 ward sacrament will not do its work or be pleasing to 
 God in the face of what they beheve. 
 
 So that the advocate of immersion, deeply as he may 
 abhor such teaching, does in fact endorse it, whenever 
 that most unhappy argument is on his lips. He offers 
 baptism, whose preciousness he, beyond others, insists is 
 in the faith of the baptized, to one the whole tenor of 
 whose mind forbids that mode and sense, without which 
 he counts it no ordinance. It is true that all parties be- 
 lieve in much that is essential to the rite ; but that is 
 nothing, so long as those very points on the ground of 
 which a change of church relation is invited, are not 
 believed, but must be yielded to mechanically, and not 
 from the heart. 
 
 Let us keep this plea in sight hereafter, as a good ex- 
 ponent of the system whose corruption it so effectively 
 upholds, a clear recommended example of form divorced 
 from faith, or of grace promised if the body will meet a 
 condition for which the mind is known to be unprepared. 
 
 But to hasten on to the grand fallacy of the argument, 
 it urges sin as a step to safety. 
 
 When it is assumed that we admit the validity of in- 
 stitutions for which these exclusive claims are indulged, 
 let that word be kept to its true limits. It is wide enough 
 from the sense of the admission, that the use of our own 
 or those is a matter of indifference. A church may be 
 far gone in corruption, and yet hold fast to so much es- 
 sential truth as will warrant us to invite its members to 
 our communion, and to acknowledge its ecclesiastical 
 acts. But there is a vast diflerence between a true 
 church, and a sound one, and between a valid and a pure 
 ordinance, and you might see abundant reason to give 
 
INTRODUCTION. 29 
 
 the right hand of fellowship to a body of Christians, un- 
 der the influence of whose creed you would not for a 
 moment live. So a baptism may have been so loaded 
 with superstition that nothing could have tempted you to 
 countenance it, and yet, should the exigency occur, you 
 may be quite right in refusing to ask its repetition. 
 
 In judging of private Christians, it would never do to 
 make supposed piety a sanction for all the opinions and 
 practices with w^hich it is seen associated. 
 
 Then our judgment of churches must bear with it the 
 same reserve. Usages that we think corrupt, though 
 they do not destroy validity, must forbid conformity ; 
 for it seems to be forgotten, that such a thing as false 
 worship is possible, and is a grievous wickedness. If I 
 consent to sacraments administered in a sense in which 
 I believe from my heart God never gave them, can I 
 be innocent in his eyes ? and have I any right to com- 
 promise my duty to guard against a distant chance ? 
 If, when rightly explained ordinances are within my 
 reach, I, of set purpose, choose those that I believe cor- 
 rupt, and choose them, too, on the very ground of the 
 superstitious claim that makes them corrupt; — or, to 
 descend to the lower ground, if I submit to a 7node of 
 administration repulsive to my faith, and a snare to my 
 mind in discerning the meaning of the rite, who will 
 dare to say I can be approved of God ; when always, 
 but especially in a case like this, " whatsoever is not of 
 faith is sin ?"' 
 
 Look at the effects of such a step. He who thus 
 resorts to foreign ordinances both gives and takes — 
 gives countenance and the influence of his name to that 
 
 » Rom. xiv. 23. 
 3* 
 
30 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 which he prevalently believes is error ; and takes a 
 moulding impression from the new alliance. Beyond 
 the sin of tempting others, he has brought temptation 
 upon himself, and grace only can secure his creed from 
 sinking to the level of the one to which it already 
 ostensibly belongs. 
 
 Then, no matter though superstitious fear may say 
 that a system, though it looks towards idoktry, may yet 
 be right, and thence, of course, be vital, if you do 
 violence to better faith and yield, the act is much more 
 a sign of peril than a step toward safety. Few as 
 plausible Christian acts could so call in question Christian 
 character ; or leave more room to fear that, like him 
 who, in the apostles' day, sought with sinister views the 
 benefits of the church, you have " neither part nor lot 
 in the matter," your heart being " not right in the sight 
 of God."^ 
 
 The Hindoos, at least so far as numbers give weight, 
 deserve to have their views of truth somewhat con- 
 sidered. There is shut up under their peculiar creed a 
 good proportion of the living mind of our race, and that, 
 too, in their better castes by no means uncultivated 
 mind. Shall it have no voice in our spiritual councils? 
 The word of their proverbially acute and subtle Brah- 
 mins might surely go for something in balancing our 
 chances ; why not listen, and satisfy its claims ? If ever 
 afterward we could stand aloof, and devote ourselves 
 to our own religion, could it be wrong to give one day, 
 for example, to such devotions as might make us safe 
 by theirs ? Would not security in both be better than 
 in one ? and if a bath in the Holy River would so meet 
 
 * Acts, viii. 21. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 31 
 
 their faith that should it prove the true one, our souls 
 would be found cleansed by that single washing, could 
 it be amiss to leave our proper worship for a day to get 
 the whole benefit of the chances of the truth of the 
 testimony of this respectable part of men 1 
 
 The analogy is no distorted one. It is a strange 
 policy in religion. While it betrays the creed that 
 invites it, it can be resolved into nothing else than the 
 principle : — Let us do evil and good may come. 
 
 The reader, therefore, whatever sympathy he may 
 have, whether much or little, with the conclusions to 
 which we may hereafter come, cannot refuse us the 
 open field and equal footing, which the following maxim 
 will secure : — 
 
 All church claims must appeal to their own intrinsic 
 merits. The question of safety coincides with the ques- 
 tion of truth. 
 

 
 RtCWH 
 
 DESIGN OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 
 
 Thouuh God is not the father of truth, it being as 
 eternal and necessary as Himself, still His mouth is its 
 only oracle, and His mind is its perfect gauge. Pretended 
 truth, not gotten in some way from Him, is no truth ; 
 but gotten in any way from Him, it stands good, past 
 all possibility of mistake or wrong, and is imperative 
 at once upon his creatures. The opinions, therefore, 
 that divide mankind, all defer to the question, what 
 would God have us believe'? and conflict between them, 
 however wide the interest it involves, and however keen 
 the interest it excites, has no colour of excuse for lasting 
 beyond the time when it shall have been shown, either 
 that no truth has come from God on the subject in dis- 
 pute, or precisely what truth has come from Him. So 
 that the grand end in studying any question is to bring 
 the mind of God, whether by reason, which is His voice, 
 
34 PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 
 
 or by nature, which is His work, or by the Bible, which 
 is His word, in contact with our own minds. 
 
 By whichever of the three, however, this contact may 
 be formed, it is of yjrime importance to settle the office 
 of reason, for it has work to do, no matter how God 
 may open Himself to man. 
 
 This work has been obscured and thrown into doubt 
 by a favourite mutiny of reason — a desertion of its pro- 
 per office and a usurpation of another. Its proper office 
 is to stand and weigh evidence for the truth, and to 
 give sanction to faith as soon as that evidence reaches 
 a sufficient height. Its mutiny has been in insisting that 
 it shall see through a truth as well as see its evidence, 
 in intruding its own power to understand into the list of 
 necessary proofs, and so in refusing to believe what it 
 cannot comprehend. Or, a little differently, for error 
 has never only a single phase, it is a withholding of be- 
 lief from every thing that reason cannot argue out from 
 common principles. How grossly it is bred of preju- 
 dice may be seen in the fact that it is not for a moment 
 tolerated any where else than in religion. Natural 
 science does not wait to record her acquisitions till she 
 has robbed them of all mystery. Reason does not com- 
 prehend the union of soul and body; yet believes it. 
 Reason cannot argue out the attraction of the earth and 
 sun from any principle not gathered from the fact itself. 
 Indeed the only principle that seems to touch the case, 
 •* nothing can act where it is not," seems all against it ; 
 yet reason submissively believes. Let it get within the 
 circle of religious truth, however, and its tone changes. 
 Men's feelings, then, are with it in its errors. We like 
 it to doubt and cavil. The trinity we do not believe, 
 and the incarnation we do not believe, and miracles we 
 
PRINCirLE OF DESIGN. 35 
 
 do not believe, because reason, not acting as she always 
 does, but instructed by our prejudices, revolts at the 
 method by which they are reached and at the mystery 
 in v^hich they are wrapped. This error of the mind 
 has gotten the name of Rationalism. 
 
 Winning a pretext from it, but still for an interested 
 end, i. e., to shield false doctrine from the scrutiny of 
 reason, another school of religionists have passed over to 
 the opposite extreme, and held, that in all questions of 
 faith, reason must be silent, for that " where faith begins 
 reason ends." 
 
 This is no escape from Rationalism, except as from 
 one folly into a worse. The curse of Rationalism lies 
 not in the use of reason in religion, nor even in the too 
 great use of reason, a thing impossible, as much so as 
 for an eye to gaze at a distant object too keenly to see 
 it, or for a judge to look into a cause too closely to de- 
 cide it. It lies in a total misdirection of reason. The 
 man who denies the force of gravity, because he cannot 
 understand it, is not bowing to reason, but making reason 
 bow to prejudice. Let him reason farther, and his faith 
 will return to him. So of the Rationalist. He does not 
 reason enough, or else not well enough ; for in admitting 
 evidence for mysteries he would stand on a far higher 
 level even of intellect, than in suffering his faith to go no 
 farther than his sight. Indeed his principle carried out 
 would strip us of all knowledge ; for where is the truth 
 that does not trace its root deeper than our eye can fol- 
 low it? Simply then because what is rationalistic is not 
 rational, does it brand itself as error. 
 
 Let it be remembered that reason in common and 
 popular discourse denotes that power by which we dis- 
 
36 PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 
 
 tinguish truth from falsehood and right from wrong,* or 
 striking out the last words, inasmuch as wrong and right 
 are but different modes of truth, that power by which 
 we distinguish truth from falsehood. Now, who dare 
 say that contact may be formed between the divine 
 mind and ours, and truth pass from one into the other, 
 without the use of this power ? Must we not " know of 
 the doctrine whether it be of God V-^ God's being the 
 oracle cannot discharge reason from being the judge; 
 for let any one attempt to conceive, how thought of any 
 kind could get into his soul without passing the tribunal 
 of reason. It may be received superstitiously on the sole 
 authority of the church, or reverently on the sole au- 
 thority of God, but authority itself in either case offers 
 itself as a reason. So that, to say nothing of our duty 
 to "prove all things and hold fast that which is good," 
 there is a mental necessity upon us. Faith cannot be so 
 implicit, or authority so supreme, as neither to give, or 
 be, or seem a reason for itself. The fact is, credulity is 
 never so servile as to cast from it all private judgment. 
 It may degrade the judgment of reason, but cannot re- 
 sign it ; for dismiss reason from its office, and man has 
 nothing more to do with truth, nor, actively, with God. 
 Under no circumstances of divine communication 
 does reason seem to have less to do than where truth is 
 imprinted on the mind by direct inspiration. Then there 
 seems to be nothing needed, but to listen, — " I will hear 
 what God the Lord will speak." Better reflection, how- 
 ever, will convince us that reason has an office here, 
 much the same as in any other mode of learning. First 
 of all it is cast upon us to judge whether God is speak- 
 
 * Stewart's Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 10. ^ John vii. 17. 
 
PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 37 
 
 ing. All truth that enters the mind is not inspired truth. 
 We must " try the spirits whether they are of God."» 
 Then close upon this follows another work, of telling the 
 meaning of what he speaks. If the inspiration has been 
 one of words alone, as was probably the case with 
 Balaam, then the prophet has the same labour with his 
 hearers to decipher and explain. If it has been an im- 
 printing of the thought itself, as it was perhaps with 
 holier men than Balaam, still a sanctified reason must 
 again come in to unfold and connect and apply the 
 thought. 
 
 Inspiration, however, is rare. Only one mortal among 
 millions has enjoyed it, and he for the benefit of the 
 rest. To us truth out of the mind of God must come at 
 second hand, through those few favoured men, and though 
 God guides them in receiving it, and makes them in- 
 fallible in deHvering it to us, still w^e get it not in the 
 shape it came to them. Poor forms of matter, when 
 most refined, but a rough way of conveying thought, are 
 the only media of communion between man and man, 
 and therefore the only way w^hich inspired men have 
 had to hand down their oracles to us. 
 
 Obscured, divided, and broken up as truth necessarily 
 must be in descending from God's mind into no better 
 vehicle than dull material signs, language as we call 
 them, it may readily be imagined how greatly the labour 
 of reason must be enhanced when it descends from the 
 simple work of receiving an inspiration from the mind 
 of God, to the less honourable but more complex work 
 of interpreting it from out of the lips, or from under the 
 pen of man. This last is our work. Thought, which 
 
 * John iv. 1. 
 
 4 
 
38 PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 
 
 going forth from its infinite source, has poured itself into 
 rude signs, we must gather back and identify and store 
 away for our spiritual uses. Our creed, in this age of 
 the world, must be got by reading ; and reading must 
 necessarily task all the faculties of the mind. It implies 
 at each step a judgment of evidence and of meaning ; 
 and what other power have we for this than the sanc- 
 tified power of reason? 
 
 The doctrine that sways all private judgment to the 
 authority of the church, and that would withdraw the 
 written word from the people, would not, should we 
 grant it, vitiate our conclusion. Some one must read. 
 If not the people for themselves, then the Church for 
 the people : and the minds that make up " the Church," 
 no matter who they are, if we trust them to get for us 
 the sense of Scripture, must get it by interpretation, and 
 by that only conceivable mode of right interpretation — 
 the exercise of an enlightened and divinely -directed 
 reason in the work of judging. 
 
 This is no easy work. Preparation for it came by 
 our earliest and longest studies ; and though the Bible, 
 now that education has furnished us with a knowledge 
 of its grammatical signs, seems to give up its meaning 
 to us with little trouble, yet how much it still withholds ! 
 The Bible still grows with all of us in size and riches 
 by the careful sifting of its language. It admits and 
 rewards all degrees of toil and exactness ; and he must 
 rest content to starve his faith with but half a revelation, 
 who does not put all his powers under task for inter- 
 pretation. Those translations of the sacred text in 
 which so many make it an act of piety to confide, at the 
 very time when they would depose reason from any 
 office in religion and even ridicule its claims, are the 
 
PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 39 
 
 fruits of long years of closest and most various exercise 
 of reason. The fact is, call reasoning Rationalism, and 
 brand it as an evil, and the Bible is at once shut up and 
 sealed. Make trust in the mind's decision heresy, and 
 you shut up the only path to trust in God ; you have set 
 your name to the most thorough scepticism. That cor- 
 rupt reason breeds error infallibly, calls not that it be 
 renounced, but that it be renewed ; not at all that we 
 seek some other avenue to truth ; there is no other ; but 
 that we call down the Spirit to open and widen and 
 straighten that which God himself has appointed. 
 
 These remarks will bring the mind of the reader to 
 the right point for introducing a principle which is to 
 be the radical one in all that follows. 
 
 The mere recognition of grammatical signs, is not 
 the whole of reading. Were language an exact picture 
 of thought, then the will of God would sufler nothing in 
 clearness and fulness from being committed to such a 
 medium, but could be gathered by an act of mind as 
 near to simple apprehension as the act by which ancient 
 prophets saw what " the spirit within them did signify." 
 Absolute precision, however, is no attribute of language. 
 Signs, whatever their mode, are essentially ambiguous. 
 The shades of thought are so much finer and more 
 endlessly varied than the modes of matter, that one can 
 never find a true expression in the other. 
 
 This is most true, of course, of the ruder signs— forms 
 of motion, or, as we call them, gestures ; a method of 
 making matter the utterer of mind, the vagueness of 
 which^is extreme. If the principle we are about to 
 notice, did not furnish us a key, it would be a mys- 
 tery how men impart to them, or see in them, so 
 much significancy. Still, though in these lower modes 
 
40 PRINCIPLE or DESIGN. 
 
 the obscurity is greatest, we do not wholly get out of it 
 in reaching the very highest level of artificial refine- 
 ment, and in adopting signs most narrow in meaning 
 and best defined. Language, though by far the most 
 transparent medium of thought of which we have any 
 conception, is thoroughly ambiguous. Not only so, but 
 in a thousand cases, read as it stands, each word in its 
 strictest definition, it is worse than ambiguous, — false. It 
 is the necessary habit of writers, trusting to a principle, 
 distinct from mere grammar, for finding the sense, to 
 compose sentences whose natural, downright meaning is 
 palpably untrue. The Bible is full of such sentences. 
 Nay, we know not that it would be going too far to 
 say, that if nothing could come in, as a basis of herme- 
 neutics, but bald definition, scarcely any part of scripture 
 but would be so far ambiguous as to teach less truth 
 than error. 
 
 Let some remarkable instances illustrate what is 
 meant. The tenth commandment is, " Thou shalt not 
 covet." Take these words as they stand in their simple 
 sense, and they bring discord into the whole moral law. 
 The mad faith of the Stoic might be built upon them, or 
 any system absurd enough to forbid the exercise of 
 one of man's inborn and necessary emotions ; but true 
 religion would contradict them at every point. Desire, 
 (and the same word in the original has elsewhere this 
 translation) the strongest desire is a Christian duty and 
 a grace of the Holy Spirit. " Covet earnestly the best 
 gifts." There can be no love of God without it. It is 
 plain there must be some clue in the mind of the plain 
 unlettered reader to a sense much narrower than the 
 word, self-interpreted, would justify. 
 
 So with another of the decalogue : " Thou shalt not 
 
PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 41 
 
 kill." Definition alone is not all that must interpret it. 
 Appeal to nothing else, and you would have a precept 
 that would meet well enough the conscience of a Brah- 
 min, but would contradict the duty no less than the 
 practice of every Christian. 
 
 " It repented the Lord that He had made man on the 
 earth, and it grieved Him at his heart."* Shall we 
 take this as it stands; just as our dictionaries would 
 define it? Could there be better evidence that in read- 
 ing, the mind is called to an office beyond mere telling 
 the common force of words, and the current use of 
 sentences ; and must be furnished beforehand with some 
 governing principle, on the strength of which, it may feel 
 authorized to depart from that force and use 1 We 
 have quoted marked instances to make the truth more 
 prominent, but deeper examination of any written book 
 would show it to be general ; inasmuch as all language, 
 in its strictness, either falls short of the shade of thought 
 committed to it, or else wanders from it. 
 
 Revelation, then, is worth nothing to us without the 
 aid of what we shall call the principle of design. The 
 humblest reader of the Bible uses it ; if unwittingly, 
 still, of course, and constantly. 
 
 As we have seen, the only end of the reader is to 
 bring himself in contact with the mind of the writer — 
 to discover his will, or his intention in the language he 
 has chosen. We assume the hypothesis, that that inten- 
 tion harmonizes in all its parts. Especially in reading 
 the Bible, each leaf is turned with faith in the oneness 
 of its Author's will. This harmonized will is his design. 
 
 Now what was it in respect to the passages just 
 
 * Gen. vi, 6. 
 
 4* 
 
42 PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 
 
 quoted, that convinced us they would not bear the strict 
 meaning of their own words 1 Plainly, previous know- 
 ledge, on our part, of what God would have us believe. 
 The sense was at once swayed to its proper bearing, 
 by the discord any other would occasion with the truth 
 already in the mind. The manifest design changed and 
 fixed the sense. 
 
 So it must in each step of interpretation. The words 
 alone do not give the meaning to us, but the words cor- 
 rected and modified by light from other quarters. Our 
 former knowledge must digest our new acquisitions; just 
 as the food of the body can be assimilated to it only by 
 the warmth and strength of its previous nourishment. 
 
 To brand this as "philosophy and vain deceit," is 
 idle. There is a deep and radical necessity in such a 
 course. It is not a license ; it is not a privilege ; it is 
 the very life and soul of reading, in its simplest forms — 
 that which each mind adopts at once, without choice or 
 doubt. The Bible was never meant to work its ends 
 without it. It would have been no more impossible for 
 Galileo to read the sentence, " Sun, stand thou still upon 
 Gibeon,"^ in its directed sense, or, ex animo, to recant 
 before it on the charge of vain philosophy, than for the 
 least sophisticated reader to go counter to his own 
 sense of design in reading the plainest scriptures. 
 
 That principle is much the same to which, in the legal 
 profession, there is such constant appeal, and in neglect 
 of which such endless injustice has been done : we mean 
 intention, a principle not safely or even sanely lost sight 
 of in any kind of writing; for, indeed, insanity could 
 hardly bring together such strange and incoherent 
 thoughts as any book would present without it. As 
 a Josh. X. 12. 
 
PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. ^ 43 
 
 examples, take Matt. iii. 10, 12; v. 29, 30. All figura- 
 tive passages are more or less in point. 
 
 What would naked grammatical interpretation do for 
 such sentences as these 1 " If any man come to me and 
 hate not his father and mother and wife and children 
 and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he 
 cannot be my disciple."'' " Whosoever is born of God 
 doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him; 
 and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.'"" " Pray 
 without ceasing."*^ " It pleased God by the foolishness 
 of preaching to save them that believe."*^ Let any 
 reader ask himself what such sentences would be worth 
 to him as forms of truth, if he were forbidden to task 
 his already acquired store of kindred truth to render 
 them intelligible. Let him go deeper, and by watching 
 his own mind in all reading, and the poverty and way- 
 wardness of language in all writing, see if he can read 
 at all, without shaping and limiting and enlarging the 
 ideas that words offer to him. The line of the intended 
 thought, and the line of simple definition, often and 
 widely diverge, but seldom strictly coincide. 
 
 The fact is, we have spoken of natural grammatical 
 interpretation, but the idea is a mere figment. Language 
 was never given for such self-limitation. The principle 
 of design is essentially a part of grammar; for until it 
 can be shown that without a miracle words can point 
 with perfect singleness of indication to one shade of 
 meaning, this principle must determine our choice be- 
 tween many shades. Call grammar that which gives 
 the intention and rules of language, and we read gram- 
 matically only when we feel free to depart, as occasion 
 asks it, from the common sense of words. 
 
 * Luke xiv. 14. ^ 1 John iii. 9. « 1 Thess. v. 17. ^ 1 Cor. i. 21. 
 
44 PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 
 
 How, on any other principle, are we to give faith to 
 the exact verbal contradictions of the Bible? "Answer 
 not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like 
 unto him. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he 
 be wise in his own conceit."^ Compare also (Rom. iii. 
 28, and iv. 2), " A man is justified by faith without the 
 deeds of the law." " If Abraham were justified by 
 works, he hath whereof to glory;" with (James ii. 21, 
 24), " Was not Abraham, our father justified by works, 
 when he had oflfered Isaac," &c. " Ye see then, how 
 that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only." 
 And yet these passages, in strict letter so opposite, are, 
 in the intention of their writers, simply and beautifully 
 consistent, a little previous knowledge brought to the 
 reading of them being enough to bring the utmost logical 
 harmony out of the utmost verbal discord. 
 
 Again, what clue but that of which we are speaking, 
 , can help to fix in their proper places the various means 
 by which men are said to be saved, so as not to contra- 
 dict the fact of one salvation. " There is none other 
 name under heaven given among men w^hereby we can 
 be saved."'' " If by any means I (Paul) might save some 
 of them."'' " In doing this, thou shalt save thyself."^ 
 " Baptism doth now save us,"^ &c. " We are saved by 
 hope."^ " Receive the engrafted word which is able to 
 save your souls."^ It is cast upon the mind in each case 
 to shape the meaning, that the unity of God's saving 
 work may not be broken. 
 
 Our Lord's discourses are somewhat remarkable for 
 the degree in which he takes for granted, in those who 
 listen to them, this prompt perception of design. " Joy 
 
 * Prov. xxvi. 45. ^ Acts iv. 12. c Romans ii. 14. ^ 1 Tim. iv. 16. 
 e 1 Peter iii. 21. f Rom. viii. 24. 6 James i. 21. 
 
PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. ' 45 
 
 shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more 
 than over ninety and nine just persons which need no 
 repentance."^ " Think not that I am come to send 
 peace on earth; I came not to send peace but a sword. 
 For I am come to set a man at variance against his 
 father,'"' &c. "Take no thought for your life,"*= &c. 
 "The maid is not dead,"*^ &c. He questions the people 
 as to its possession. "What think ye of Christ ? How 
 doth David in spirit call Him Lord ?" &c. He rebukes 
 them for the want of it. " O ye of little faith ; why 
 reason ye among yourselves because ye have brought 
 no bread ?' " How is it that ye do not understand, that I 
 spake not to you concerning bread ?' &c. 
 
 His disciples, too, and other inspired writers, have left 
 on record hundreds of such mistakes, in which we see the 
 mischief of losing sight of the principle of design, and by 
 which, therefore, that principle is set in the clearest and 
 most striking light. We beg the reader to notice, as we 
 mention some of them, how uniformly the persons who 
 make the mistake, fail to get hold of the design by car- 
 nal, external views of what the writer or speaker means 
 — in one word, by a tendency to literalism — that wide 
 and general form of literalism, which is the offspring of 
 a mind devoted to externals. 
 
 From what source but this, came that interpretation 
 of the scribes, which made all the Old Testament pro- 
 phecies of the Messiah, point to an earthly king, who, in 
 a long personal reign should restore the kingdom to Je- 
 rusalem 1 " We trusted that it had been he, which should 
 have redeemed Israel"^ 
 
 By taking narrower cases, they may be multiplied to 
 
 » Luke XV. 7. ^ Matt. x. 34. ^ Matt. vi. 25. 
 
 d Matt. ix. 24. • Luke xxiv. 21. 
 
46 
 
 PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 
 
 almost any extent. " If thou knewest the gift of God, 
 
 thou wouldst have asked (of me) living water. Sir, thou 
 
 hast notJiing to draw with, and the loell is deep;'"" &c. 
 
 "I have meat to eat that ye know not of. Hath any 
 
 man brought him aught to eat V'^ It is vv^onderful how 
 
 these mistakes, in every way so unique, cluster together 
 
 in some chapters. " Whither I go ye cannot come. Will 
 
 he kill himself? The truth shall make you free. We be 
 
 Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man ; 
 
 how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free 1 Ye do that 
 
 which ye have seen with your father. Abraham is our 
 
 father. If a man keep my saying, he shall never see 
 
 death. Now, we know that thou hast a devil Art thou 
 
 greater than our father, Abraham, which is dead ; and 
 
 the prophets ? &c. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see 
 
 my day, and he saw it and was glad. Thou art not yet 
 
 fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Before 
 
 Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones,'"" &c. 
 
 Could there be more signal proof of the emptiness of 
 
 mere words to minds unfurnished with the key to their 
 
 design ? 
 
 A similar train of misconceptions occurs in John vi., 
 in many points more interesting to us, because, notwith- 
 standing Christ's repeated explanations,—" It is the spirit 
 that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing,"— the very 
 same misconceptions are persevered in till the present 
 day. The reader will mark that the error is still literal- 
 ism— a refusal to see a figure, where the speaker meant 
 one. "The bread of God is he which cometh down 
 from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. Lord, 
 evermore give us this bread. I am the bread of life. The 
 
 "^ John iv. 10, 11. b joiin iy. 33^ 33. c John 
 
 viii. 
 
PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 47 
 
 Jews then murmured at him, because he said, I am the 
 bread which came down from heaven. Is not this Jesus, 
 the son of Joseph ? &c. He that believeth on me hath 
 everlasting Hfe. I am the hving bread that came down 
 from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live 
 for ever ; and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which 
 I will give for the life of the world. The Jews, there- 
 fore, strove among themselves, saying, How can this man 
 give us his flesh to eat 1 Except ye eat the flesh of the 
 Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. 
 This is an hard saying, who can hear it 1 It is the spirit 
 that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing ; the words 
 that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and^^they are life." 
 The whole (and it should be read together, for many of 
 the tokens of a spiritual meaning which Christ held out 
 to render the mistake of his hearers inexcusable, are seen 
 in the sentences we have omitted) may stand as a type 
 of the many superstitious interpretations to which the 
 words of Christ and his apostles are still subjected, help- 
 ing carnal men to exalt the externals of the church at the 
 expense of what is spiritual. 
 
 Let us be satisfied now, however, with this inference 
 from our quotations. There is a partial knowledge of 
 design which is an essential element of reading. Each 
 sentence, as it stands by itself, presupposes, in the mind 
 of its reader, light to define its meaning, which the bare 
 language does not in all cases furnish. 
 
 Strong objection, we know, will at once array itself. 
 The principle in question is open to the most dangerous 
 abuse. Give up reliance on the self-defining power of 
 language, and let each man's reason set its limit, and 
 what unity or safety will be left in revelation'? Where 
 is the ofi^ice of grammar, what is the end of words, 
 
48 PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 
 
 where is the good of Scripture, if nothing precise or de- 
 finite is given to the mind 1 
 
 The difficulty might be met by casting upon those 
 who urge it the responsibihty of its solution. Our 
 argument was from experience, supporting itself at each 
 point on fact — the fact that men actually do, and that 
 involuntarily, call in to their help in reading, more than 
 mere definition of words. First explain away the fact, 
 and then you have a right to the objection. Look into 
 any commentary, or hear any plain Christian expound 
 the Scripture, and tell us why appeal is so often made to 
 "what makes good sense," or "what would be consistent 
 for the inspir^ man to say," or " what would meet his 
 purpose." We stand on the safest of all grounds, fact 
 and necessity. 
 
 Waiving this right, however : does not the weight of 
 the difficulty bear only upon the extravagant use of de- 
 sign ? While the argument had in view the folly of trust- 
 ing in mere grammar to the neglect of design; does not 
 the objection meet only the opposite extreme — trust to a 
 knowledge of design to the neglect of grammar? The 
 fact is, in arguing this whole question, men have falsified 
 both sides of it, by choosing either of two equally wrong 
 positions. The so-called philosophical method of inter- 
 pretation and the grammatical method have been held 
 up as essentially distinct, and as able, either, as chosen, 
 to stand alone. There never was a greater misconcep- 
 tion. There never was a more sure result than the 
 fastening of error on both antagonist parties. The phi- 
 losophical method is well enough as the name of the 
 extreme on that side, and the grammatical method of 
 the extreme there; but no amount of practical error can 
 divorce them wholly. Each must include the elements 
 
PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 49 
 
 of either, however wrongfully one may predominate. 
 The true method, moreov^er, lies between them, and is 
 true only in proportion as it blends both in harmony. 
 
 You say, this license as to design will destroy all cer- 
 tainty of language. But have we not seen (in case of 
 the Jews) the license of language destroy all justness of 
 design? There must be some accommodation between 
 the two, and it lies in this — we have no right to depart 
 from a common or possible usage of words. There is 
 our limit on that side. Language is certain up to that 
 degree of precision which its known usage gives it. If 
 its usage could in the nature of things be single, as was 
 said early in this paper, no consideration of design would 
 be needed. But to meet its ambiguities and its shaded 
 and varied meanings, direct and metonymical, exact and 
 exaggerated, literal and figurative, something else is 
 loudly called for; and the principle of design, if it but 
 restrict itself to the limit of this variety, makes interpre- 
 tation actually more sure and safe. One is a check 
 upon the other. Language limits the design; this defines 
 the language. 
 
 It is time, however, now to ask whence this previous 
 acquaintance with design is gathered ; for it must be 
 got legitimately, or we have no right to use it. What 
 has been pronounced a real, necessary, and instinctive 
 act of the mind in reading, must be only a perversion 
 and a prejudice, unless it traces itself back to a foothold 
 in the truth. The moment, too, it does trace itself back, 
 it becomes available orally to defend, as it was mentally 
 to discover the meaning of the passage, in the reading 
 of which it has been enlisted; it becoming possible, as it 
 does with all instinctive acts of the mind, to dissect and 
 set it down, step by step, in writing, and then to use it, 
 
 5 
 
50 PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 
 
 as we wish to do hereafter, as a Hnk in logical argu- 
 ment. 
 
 Now, for that general acquaintance w^ith design with 
 which we come to the reading of a text in scripture, 
 three sources may be given. The list might be length- 
 ened. Experience and testimony might be added to it ; 
 indeed, any source of certain knowledge. 1. The intui- 
 tive truths of the mind. 2. Other scripture. 3. Deduc- 
 tions from other scripture. 
 
 1. As to the intuitive truths of the mind, no fear need 
 be had of giving in to the idea that they sway the sense 
 in reading, however cautious men ought to be in doing 
 homage to the human mind by setting it as judge 
 over revelation. For to intuitive truths every thing 
 must bow. It is on intuitive truth that all faith in a 
 Bible, or even in God's being is pillared. The mind's 
 intuition is the first and highest voice of God to man ; 
 so that it is but a light honour to put upon it to say that 
 it helps men to honour God's design in sentences of 
 scripture, when all scripture and all faith must in the 
 nature of things acknowledge it as their last appeal. 
 
 If a text should appear in the Bible in letter com- 
 manding us to blaspheme God, the intuitive principle 
 would just as promptly revolt against a literal meaning, 
 and force the mind to recognise some other design, as 
 it would revolt against Berkeley's notion that matter 
 has no real existence, or Pyrrho's doctrine of the certain 
 existence of nothing. So when a text does appear 
 saying, that, " the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both 
 with wrath and fierce anger"^ or that " God hardened 
 Pharaoh's heart,'"' or that " this cup is the New Testa- 
 
 * Isaiah xiii. 9. ^ Exodus x. 20. 
 
PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 61 
 
 ment in my blood,"* the same inward voice cries out 
 against the blasphemous or absurd rendering in either 
 sentence, and turns the mind in search after another. 
 Some previous acquaintance with design, then, is had 
 by intuition. 
 
 2. Much more is had by scripture previously read. A 
 clear revelation on any page, the mind at once seizes as 
 a standard for every other. These standards multiply 
 and gather in the mind as we read on, so that we cannot 
 be reading long without forming something like a system 
 in our minds, — God's harmonized will, as it has appeared 
 to us; and this goes with us in after reading, a test, as it 
 grows, of all additions to itself. 
 
 3. This would be quite enough to meet the ambiguities 
 of language, if they w^ere its only imperfection. But 
 language lacks in fulness, as well as in precision. The 
 Bible reveals all truth that it is necessary for us to know, 
 virtually, but not verbally. Thought is a plane ; lan- 
 guage touches its surface only at scattered points ; and 
 all the intermediate spaces, where it fails in contact, the 
 mind must supply. The world itself could not contain 
 the books that should be written if every shade of neces- 
 sary truth were formally expressed in revelation. The 
 lack of this is no evil, if the mind be set to the work for 
 which God made it: by legitimate deduction to fill up 
 the chasms of scripture. Revelation, in effect, includes 
 all doctrines that by sound reasoning are drawn from 
 it ; they were in the mind of God when He gave the 
 parent truth from which they are deduced. The exact 
 thought of revelation is but the framework of our faith, 
 
 » Luke xxii. 20. 
 
52 PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 
 
 — the seeds of things intended for growth and increase 
 in the soil of the mind. 
 
 If this be not so, why do nnen resort to homiUes and 
 expositions to fill out and enlarge upon the word ? Let 
 its letter be enough, if study can gain from it no addi- 
 tional instruction. It is unquestionably a perfect rule of 
 faith, but only so, when viewed in that office for which 
 it was given, as a guide and basis of evidence to intelli- 
 gent and reasoning minds. God meant it to bring into 
 act every faculty of the soul, in weighing, discrimi- 
 nating, enlarging, balancing, in all intellectual exercise 
 by which one truth seeks its sanction in another. 
 
 As illustration we quote again, " Thou shalt not kill." 
 It is not a little remarkable what varied action of the 
 mind this httle text requires. 
 
 First, other scripture occurs to narrow down its 
 meaning. It cannot be God's design to say, clear of 
 all reserve, " Thou shalt not kill," or else he would 
 not have enjoined animal sacrifices upon Abel, or have 
 granted animal food to Noah. Nor, imagining human 
 life to be alone referred to, could it yet be his design to 
 say, positively, " Thou shalt not kill ;" for cases^of sanc- 
 tioned war,^ and the law of capital punishment^ prove 
 the contrary. 
 
 Then when direct scripture has gone so far, fair de- 
 duction must go still farther. A thousand minor cases 
 require settlement. When may life be sacrificed for 
 great national ends? When, in the various instances 
 that may occur, may one life go for the rescue of many 1 
 How far may life be jeoparded, and for what ends 1 We 
 
 * Joshua viii. 1. ^ Genesis ix. 6. 
 
PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 63 
 
 meet all such questions virtually by appeal to scripture, 
 yet not to the letter of scripture, but to the design ; and 
 the task to gather this is thrown upon the judgment of 
 the reader. 
 
 But now still another step : the command is one of the 
 decalogue, and must have its wide and spiritual mean- 
 ing ; for it has its place to fill in that moral law which 
 is exceeding broad. Here opens an illimitable field on 
 which the bare command, "Thou shalt do no murder," 
 is but the starting point. All the language ever spoken 
 cannot cover it, we mean specifically and in every 
 minute application. The mind, taking with it such ex- 
 amples of interpretation as that in Matt. v. 22, where 
 Christ brings causeless anger under this commandment, 
 must by just inference fill out the spiritual sense, letting 
 this command like the rest of the ten grow wide and 
 long before its eye, till together they embody the whole 
 of morals, engrossing in their comprehensiveness, that 
 all engrossing law — the Law of Love. 
 
 Thus our view is finished of that system of ways and 
 means by w^hich God's mind is opened to his creatures. 
 Now the v/hole meets a beautiful analogy in nature. 
 God's mind is the sun of the spiritual world. Man's 
 mind is the eye, without which the light is wasted. It 
 has nowhere else to impress itself. Man's reason is 
 the judge to discriminate the shape and colour of what 
 is seen, and to divide between the light and the dark- 
 ness ; misused, if it judge farther than its judgment lies ; 
 as much so as if an eye should labour to discern the 
 centre instead of the surface of surrounding objects, or 
 refuse to own them to be there unless it could see through 
 them ; but totally abused, if it imagine that it has not 
 some judgment on every truth that the mind receives, as 
 
 5^ 
 
54 PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 
 
 certainly as sensation has on every shade or shape that 
 the eye takes in. Language is the medium that conveys 
 the light, dark in itself, bright only as the carrier of those 
 transnnitted rays. But where is the analogy for what 
 we have claimed in design. 
 
 Philosophers tell us that if the diffusion of light de- 
 pended solely upon the direct rays of the sun, every thing 
 would be in darkness, that did not stand in those rays. 
 The sun would have to shine immediately upon an object 
 to render it visible at all, and even then we could see it 
 only on its illuminated side. That light which is now 
 poured over all nature, which penetrates the forest, which 
 bathes the mountain, which goes down into the cavern, 
 which visits us in our houses, awakening us before the 
 sun and cheering us after its going down, all diffused 
 light, would vanish. Day and night would be alike any- 
 where but under direct solar power. 
 
 What principle is that, beyond direct illumination, that 
 orders the system as it is 1 Reflection. One object, when 
 illuminated, lights up the rest. The air, the clouds, the 
 earth throw back the rays and scatter them, and thus 
 fill the spaces which otherwise they could not reach. A 
 thousand objects that have never seen the sun, borrow 
 his 1'ght from those right under bis beams. 
 
 The analogy could scarcely be more complete. Re- 
 flection does not create light. It only scatters it. It 
 makes one illumination do the work of many ; carrying 
 the ray shed on one point, and diffusing it over a thou- 
 sand others. Mark, too, it not only extends, but corrects 
 our vision. Objects, of which, without it, but one side 
 w^ould be revealed, and which hence, in many positions, 
 would send us a distorted outhne, horned or cusped, this 
 would unfold in their true form and colouring, giving us 
 
miNCIPLE OF DESIGN. 55 
 
 the advantage in our judgment of their perspective and 
 their shade. 
 
 But we hasten on from mere illustration to reach again 
 a point of absorbing interest, which from the first has 
 been kept anxiously in view. Is there not danger in this 
 whole matter 1 Can any man be safe in the use of such 
 a key to revelation 1 
 
 We need not hesitate. Certainly there is the utmost 
 danger. So long as the human mind is not only fal- 
 lible, but prone to falsehood, how could we dream of 
 safety in its judgments 1 Nay, give it up to itself, and 
 we might be sure that it would judge wrong, nor gather 
 one spiritual truth from the whole of revelation.^ 
 
 But then, while this is sober fact, it is wild argument. 
 Each step in thought that the unconverted mind takes is 
 perilous ; shall it take none? All uses of the mind in in- 
 quiry after God are fraught with danger ; are they there- 
 fore false or vain uses ? The fact is, the objection lies as 
 much against the whole of reading as against this part 
 of it. Mind must be appealed to ; if not for design, then 
 for grammar itself. Who knows not how words are 
 warped and changed under the pretence of strict philo- 
 logy ; how the dearest articles of our faith are taken 
 from us sentence by sentence, under the sanction of 
 alleged usage ? Germany, where the varieties of lan- 
 guage have been most deeply studied, is witness enough, 
 that if danger must condemn, then all interpretation 
 must be given up. 
 
 Even inspiration asks for mind, and, therefore, argues 
 danger. Those visions of Balaam, the sceptre rising 
 out of Israel and the star out of Jacob, did not so write 
 
 * 1 Corinthians ii. 14. 
 
56 PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 
 
 their truth on the heart of the seer, that he could not 
 pervert them. Is, therefore, the use or worth of inspira- 
 tion nothing? Prove that man can deal with truth, 
 without help from mind, or prove that apostate mind 
 can walk in any path to truth, and be infallible, or else 
 confess that danger alone proves nothing in the matter. 
 But let us not dismiss this fact. There is danger. 
 The position which it cannot overthrow, it may favour 
 and confirm. Set over against it another fact, for which 
 we have appealed to consciousness and accumulated 
 proof, that no man can read a sentence without the help 
 of preconceived notions of design, be they true or false, 
 and we have, first of all, the explanation of a noted 
 problem in religion. How is so brief a book as the 
 Bible made to speak so many languages, in becoming 
 the basis, as it has, of so manifold, nay, and opposite 
 systems of belief? The truth is notorious, that all forms 
 of obliquity in faith or morals profess their own warrant 
 in this single volume, a truth pointing plainly on the one 
 hand to the slenderness of the self-limiting power of 
 language, and on the other, to the potency of that mental 
 instinct, if we may call it so, which brings the precon- 
 ceived ideas of the mind to mingle in the work of read- 
 ing. A scrupulous man, possessed with a corresponding 
 notion of God's design, opens the book only to find the 
 spirit of his own bondage copied there. " Resist not 
 evil : but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, 
 turn to him the other also."^ " Give to him that asketh 
 thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not 
 thou away."^ The Universahst strengthens himself there 
 in his doctrine. " Who (God) will have all men to be 
 
 * Matt. V. 39. b Matt. v. 42. 
 
PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 57 
 
 saved," &c. " Who gave himself a ransom for all," &c.* 
 "Not willing that any should perish," &c.^ So the Per- 
 fectionist : " Whosoever is born of God doth not commit 
 sin ; he cannot sin, because he is born of God."*= " Be 
 ye, therefore, perfect as your Father which is in heaven 
 is perfect.""^ And the Antinomian : *' Now we are de- 
 livered from the law,"^ &c. And lastly the superstitious 
 man, pleading for all literal senses and exalting every 
 thing external. " This is my body which is broken for 
 you."*" "Except a man be born of water and of the 
 Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."= 
 
 Now, it will not do to say, the very fault is, that these 
 preconceived notions should be allowed any voice ; so 
 it is, if you refer to their error, but by no means, if you 
 refer to the whole fact of preconception. It is necessary 
 — they will enter ; if not falsely coloured, they would be 
 vital to the discovery of truth. If an eye be jaundiced, 
 the way to provide against false judgments is to cure it, 
 not to put it out. Then here : until you prove that you 
 can digest fresh truth with no help from what has been 
 taken into the mind before ; that, empty of every thing 
 but the mere machinery of words, you are fit for the 
 work of reading ; that thought asks nothing from former 
 thought, but increases wisdom by accumulation and not 
 by growth, you must rest contented in making safe and 
 sure, what you cannot abandon. 
 
 Can it be made sure ? Certainly : just as any other act 
 of the mind. How can it be made sure ? To the extent 
 of speculative soundness, just as any other act of the mind 
 may be made so — by a sound and wise preconception, 
 resting on a sober previous study of the truth. It is the 
 
 * 1 Tim. ii. 4, 6. ^2 Peter iii. 9. <= ] John iii. 9. ^ Matt. v. 48. 
 
 * Romans vii. 6. ^ 1 Cor. xi. 24. § John iii. 5. 
 
58 PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 
 
 " Qiilearned and unstable that wrest the Scriptures to 
 their own destruction."'' To the extent of spiritual 
 soundness, however, and a saving apprehension of the 
 truth, and, indeed, we may say, to the point of entire 
 safety, either speculatively or spiritually, it can be made 
 sure only by the special guidance of the Holy Ghost. 
 For " the natural man receiveth not the things of the 
 Spirit of God,"^ &c. 
 
 The analogy of faith, as framed in the mind of an 
 unconverted man, is valuable in proportion as it is 
 rationally well considered ; but, since it can be only an 
 intellectual system, it must fail to introduce him to any 
 saving truth, and may shape itself in the grossest specu- 
 lative error. What can make us sure ? A sense of 
 design framed under the influence of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 To establish this Principle of Design as a test in con- 
 troversy, is that for which this chapter has been made 
 the first step in our discussion. We need it specially in 
 studying the nature of the visible church. Who is not 
 tired of hearing controversy on this head, turning end- 
 lessly on one or two narrow ambiguous scriptures, which 
 God never meant as our chief light in shaping the order 
 of His church, which may be proved to be susceptible 
 of debate indefinitely, and, therefore, over which men 
 may battle till the end of time, and still read them each 
 in their own tongue wherein they were born. A pattern- 
 ing after nature, by a simple watching of the instincts, 
 or native impulses of the mind, would totally cure men 
 of such waste discussion. How does the mind, in its 
 earliest and most unbiassed movement, meet such a text 
 as this, " I have said, ye are gods."« Not by long in- 
 
 * 2 Pet. iii. 16. ^ I Cor. ii. 14. ^ Ys. Ixxxii. 6. 
 
PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 59 
 
 ward contention over the words themselves, but by in- 
 stantly and briefly referring them back, for limitation, 
 to the general truth, there are no more Gods than one. 
 So of the church and all externals. We cannot help 
 framing for ourselves w^ide gospel principles in regard 
 to them, and on them the mind instinctively falls back 
 when any language jars with them. " This is my body," 
 for example. It is artificial and opposed to nature for 
 the mind to debate over mere grammar, in a case like 
 this, when it has once appeared, that it can mean some- 
 thing else than its baldest, briefest sense. That moment 
 the mere verbal controversy has pronounced itself in- 
 terminable, and the mind is longing to cast herself back 
 upon broader principles, and the grander and better wit- 
 nessed doctrine of the gospel, thereby to digest and 
 decide the passage. This is nature — the instinct of the 
 mind, and as with all natural instinct, it is logical and 
 true. The mind, fresh and not yet touched by prejudice, 
 will follow it ; and we have but to observe our minds, 
 and copy their working, to get upon our paper the briefest 
 and strongest mode of settling Bible questions, the most 
 certain to convince, because the mind intuitively resorts 
 to it to convince herself, and the least open to a challenge, 
 because appealing back at once out of the reach of lesser 
 and more entangled questions to the broad and high 
 ground of the gospel. The fact is, we talk about it as 
 wise to bring out orally and in writing, that method to 
 which the mind secretly and of herself resorts ; but it 
 is more than wise. It is necessary and universal. Most 
 arguments virtually use it. And only because it is not 
 more distinctly recognised and stated, does it so seldom 
 do what in many a private mind it has often done, ?'. e., 
 seal and settle controversy. 
 
60 ' PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN. 
 
 Our only choice is, whether to use it unwittingly and 
 wath but half effect, — for even in canvassing one verse, 
 we must use it — or to give it such depth and prominence, 
 that we may mould whole arguments upon it. 
 
 What is the design of all religion ? Included in this, 
 what is the design of all externals in religion? In- 
 cluded in this, what is the design of an external church ? 
 Such thorough carrying out of our own principle will 
 be the business of the remaining chapters, and will fur- 
 nish us, we trust, with tests for a whole circle of refuted 
 errors as to the sacraments and power of the church. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE DESIGN OF RELIGION. 
 
 The word religion, in comnaon with others bearing a 
 like relation to the mind, has two meanings. It means, 
 the service of God ; or it means, any system of faith and 
 duty, in conformity with which that service shapes itself. 
 These two meanings are recognised in Scripture. " If 
 any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth 
 not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's 
 rehgion is vain. Pure religion, and undefiled before 
 God and the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless and 
 widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted 
 from the world."^ " Ye have heard of my conversation 
 in time past, in the Jew's religion, how I profited in 
 the Jew's religion above many my equals in mine own 
 nation."^ 
 
 These meanings, too, respectively exhaust the word. 
 Religion, in the first sense, or, as some might call it, 
 (though it would seem not logically) subjective religion, 
 cannot be more than the service of God — service of course, 
 we mean, whether corporeal or mental — either " in body 
 or in spirit, which are God's." For what can a man do 
 religiously other than move his body in work or wor- 
 ship, or exercise his soul in faith and love as the servant 
 
 a James i. 26, 27. ^ Gal. i. 13, 14. 
 
 6 
 
62 THE DESIGN OF RELIGION. 
 
 of his maker 1 " Fear God and keep his command- 
 ments, for this is the whole duty of man."^' " What doth 
 the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love 
 mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God f^ 
 
 Objective religion, on the other hand, cannot be more 
 than a system of faith and duty ; for what else can the 
 Holy Spirit reveal to man besides a creed of tenets to 
 be believed, and a circle of acts to be performed. We 
 said, " any system," because not only are there false 
 religions as well as true, but true religion admits of 
 plurality. The religion of Adam, before he fell, was not 
 the religion of his children. The religion of Enoch 
 and Noah, of Melchizedek, and Job, and Jethro, dif- 
 fered widely from that of Aaron; while our religion 
 has come from under the hand of Christ, with still new 
 differences. 
 
 They differ; but let it be remembered they do not 
 disagree. They do not bear that mark of error — mutual 
 contradiction. They change only to meet correspond- 
 ing changes in God's will, as to worship — and in man's 
 history, as to faith. Not only one law and one Deity, 
 but (with all but that first mentioned, — the religion of 
 man in innocence) one atonement and one regeneration 
 are common to them all. However many their points 
 of difference, therefore, they may be regarded as one in 
 our present inquiry. What is their design ? (Of course 
 it is only to objective religion that this question is now 
 pertinent.) What is the mind of God in framing a re- 
 hgion for man ? 
 
 The design of objective religion is to lead men to 
 subjective religion, or piety. Or, using the definitions 
 
 * Eccles. xii. 13. ^ Micah vi, 8, 
 
THE DESIGN OF RELIGION. 63 
 
 that have been given, the design of any right system of 
 faith and duty, is to lead men to the service of God. 
 
 Let it not be objected that this statement is not full 
 enough, and that the service and love of God would be 
 a truer expression ; for love is one form of service : nor 
 that knowledge and service would be better; for, though 
 this would be even more plainly to our purpose than the 
 briefer statement, still there would be tautology ; for, 
 viewing body and mind together, as it has been said we 
 must, knowledge is as much a form of service as love. 
 
 Nor let it be objected that religion is for man's salva- 
 tion, as well as to lead him to the service of God. This 
 is only mentioning the end of an end ; service, the end 
 of religion, and salvation, one end of service. Religion 
 can be conceived to contribute to the last in no way else 
 than by contributing to the first. 
 
 It is true there are acts bearing on salvation which 
 make no part of man's service, but they are the acts of 
 God, and therefore not religious acts ; so there are truths 
 relating to salvation w^hich stir up no service and are 
 no objects either of love or knowledge, but then they 
 are truths shut up in the mind of God, and therefore not 
 religious truths. True religion is that revealed system 
 of faith and duty, the only immediate design of which 
 is to lead men to the service of God. 
 
 Thus we have fixed the design. 
 
 But now out of the design we wish to frame a test. 
 " I rather think," says Calvin, " the word (religion) is 
 opposed to a liberty of wandering without restraint; 
 because the greater part of the world rashly embrace 
 whatever they meet with, and also ramble from one 
 thing to another; but piety, in order to walk with a 
 steady step, collects {relegit) itself within its proper limits. 
 
64 THE DESIGN OF RELIGION. 
 
 The word superstition also appears to me to import a 
 discontent with the method and order prescribed, and 
 an accumulation of a superfluous mass of vain things." 
 Whether Calvin's derivations be good or not, they indi- 
 cate very aptly just what we wish to effect. We wish 
 to make religion (religere) gather itself within its true 
 limits, by help of a test gotten from its own design, which 
 shall detect at once whatever {superest) is superstitious, 
 so that a clear circle of separation may be drawn. 
 
 Now the sentence already fallen upon: the design of 
 any system of faith and duty is to lead men to the service 
 of God, though it does not yet show such a test, yet does 
 in fact involve one. As yet, men of all religions would 
 agree in it, for the lowest idolater, except, perhaps, one 
 given up to demon worship, or mere exorcism, would 
 agree that a religion, whether invented or revealed, can 
 have no other use to him than to lead him to the service 
 of his deities. It is evident, however, that there is one 
 expression in the sentence that admits of further defini- 
 tion, and which, when so defined, will take the sentence 
 out of the mouth of the idolater, and make it draw a 
 line between us and him. That expression is, the ser- 
 vice of God. The idolater agrees to the sentence, be- 
 cause he can define this " service" as he will, making 
 his own foul rites, and vain gestures and attitudes, apart 
 of it. The moment, however, the ample testimony of 
 the Bible is brought in, to limit the service, and show 
 what it must always be, the religion of the Bible, and 
 superstitious departures from it, can no longer hold the 
 sentence in common, but will find in it a convenient 
 and remarkably clear dividing mark between them. 
 
 A single text^ will do this work for us. We choose 
 ^ John iv. 24. 
 
THE DESIGN OF RELIGION. 65 
 
 it for its comprehensive simplicity) and we use but one 
 for the sake of brevity and singleness in the application, 
 only taking care not to fall into the mistake we have 
 condemned, of trusting for authority to an isolated text, 
 but to throw down into a note, below, a full list of con- 
 current testimonies.^ 
 
 " God is a spirit : and they that worship Him, must 
 worship Him in spirit, and in truth." 
 
 Let it be premised, that the circumstances in which 
 these words were uttered do not change, but entirely 
 
 * John iv. 23 . " But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true wor. 
 shippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth ; for the Father 
 seeketh such to worship Him." 
 
 Psalm li. 16, 17 : " For thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give 
 it : thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a 
 broken spirit ; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not de- 
 spise." Psalm 1. 13, etc. 
 
 Matt. XV. 8 : " This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, 
 and honoureth me with their lips : but their heart is far from me. But 
 in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments 
 of men." Isaiah xxix. 13; Ezra, xxxiii. 31. 
 
 Acts xvii. 25 : " Neither is God worshipped with men's hands, as 
 though he needed any thing ; seeing he giveth to aU life, and breath, and 
 all things." Acts vii. 48. 
 
 Rom. i. 9 : " God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the 
 gospel of his Son," etc. 
 
 Rom. ii. 28, 29 : " For he is not a Jew which is one outwardly ; nei- 
 ther is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh : but he is a Jew 
 which is one inwardly ; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the 
 spirit, and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God." 1 
 Cor. vii. 19 ; Heb. ix. 9. 
 
 Rom. xii. 1 : " Reasonable service" {xoyiKnv). 
 
 Phil. iii. 3 : " For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the 
 spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." 
 
 Acts xvii. 23 : " Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, him declare 
 I unto you." 
 
 6* 
 
66 THE DESIGN OF RELIGION. 
 
 confirm their apparent and simple meaning. Christ is 
 speaking, at the well, with the woman of Samaria. Halfj 
 perhaps, to turn off the conversation from a more deli- 
 cate subject, the woman introduces the vexed question be- 
 tween Mount Gerizzim and Jerusalem, as places " where 
 men ought to worship." Christ, aware that much of 
 the importance of this question was borrowed from the 
 superstitious reliance of the rival worshippers upon their 
 sacred places, and that in the mind of this woman it 
 won its interest from her care for the place, and words, 
 and rites of worship, rather than for its intelligence and 
 truthfulness, replied by uttering two predictions : — first, 
 that these hostile sanctuaries should be forsaken, for the 
 hour should come in which neither in that mountain, nor 
 yet at Jerusalem, should men worship the Father ; and 
 second, that a race of intelligent worshippers was even 
 then springing up, for the hour was coming, and had 
 already come, when the true worshippers should wor- 
 ship the Father in spirit and in truth. Then follows 
 what stands above, its force made obvious by that trust 
 to outward forms that it was intended to rebuke — " God 
 is a spirit : and they that worship Him, must worship 
 Him in spirit and in truth." 
 
 Here are two defining rules for subjective^ religion, 
 or the service of God. 
 
 1. It must be " in spirit." Now the reason prefixed 
 to this, places its meaning beyond a doubt. " God is a 
 spirit ;" that is, an immaterial being ; " and (so) they 
 that worship Him, must worship Him," not spirit with 
 matter, but spirit with spirit, i. e., " in spirit." The 
 simple sense, therefore, of this half of the rule must be,. 
 
 * We use this word for its convenience and intelligibleness, rather than 
 for its exact appropriateness. 
 
THE DESIGN OF RELIGION. 67 
 
 that the whole of worship must be done by the imma- 
 terial part of man ; and that if material forms come in 
 at all, such as attitudes, or words, or motions, — such as 
 rites or sacrifices, — such as times or places, it must be 
 just as instruments for the soul, of no worth in them- 
 selves, and of no worth at ali, but as the soul is in them. 
 
 Though the rule is brief, therefore, it is clear and 
 wide, rebuking not only the viler superstitions, as where 
 a heathen offers food to his idol, or gives his own body 
 to appease him, nor only rebuking the higher form in 
 which the Samaritan and the Jew transgressed, by 
 thinking a prayer on Gerizzim, or an offering at either 
 temple, good out of all proportion to the heart that might 
 be in it, but equally rebuking the no more refined nor 
 rational idolatries of our age and church. 
 
 At first glance it might seem that here already is the 
 promised test. " The design of any system of faith and 
 duty is to lead men to such ' a service of God' as is 
 strictly ' in spirit' — a service of mind to mind — of the 
 spiritual part of man to God, who is a Spirit." But the 
 reply of opponents, against whom this test might be 
 used, would soon convince us that it is not enough. If 
 religion were altogether an isolated and private thing 
 between God and one soul, it would do ; exposing ad- 
 mirably, as it must, the folly of men who hope to please 
 God by outward sacrament or prayer, or any bodily 
 attitude or change, any farther than the heart goes out 
 in them in spiritual worship. But then religion is not 
 an isolated thing, but social, not only between God and 
 one soul, but between one soul (or the church, which is 
 an aggregate of souls) and another. So that this test, 
 though it may condemn a man for expecting blessing 
 on prayer, when his own mind is not in it, does not 
 
68 THE DESIGN OP RELIGION. 
 
 condemn a man for expecting blessing on prayer for 
 others, when their mind is not in it; for prayer and 
 preaching, and disciphne, and all other social acts, may 
 do infidels and blasphemers good, though at the time 
 they may be not only unassenting, but hostile. So, too, 
 then, errorists may say, it may condemn ministers for 
 administering sacraments with the hand alone, and not 
 the heart, — but it does not condemn the idea of direct 
 and mystic efficacy from those sacraments to others 
 whose bodies only receive them. 
 
 In one word, this first defining rule, " m spiuit," will 
 serve us admirably where, in religious acts, the agent 
 only is in view, but not so well if used directly, in what 
 concerns the subjects of such acts. The second rule, 
 however, will cover the whole ground, and three sepa- 
 rate tests may be argued out of it, each of them com- 
 plete for every case. 
 
 2. God's service must be " in truth" — that is, to take 
 the simplest paraphrase, it must be true service, or that 
 which truly serves the Being to whom it is directed. It 
 must harmonize, therefore, with the nature of God.^ 
 Now, what is that nature ? I shall be content with three 
 cardinal attributes, and one of them repeated from the 
 text, 
 
 1, "God is a spirit;" and, therefore, the design of 
 religion is to lead men to the service of God as a spirit. 
 
 This single test of the three includes the last rule alto- 
 
 * This rule is virtually im^YieA in the other; for if service to God must 
 be " in spirit," i. e,, an intellig-ent service, it must be, therefore, by easy- 
 inference, an appropriate service. Besides, (to add a third confirmation 
 to the rule,) the text itself argues from the necessity of such appro- 
 priateness : — " God is a spirit, and (therefore) they that worship Him 
 must worship Him in spirit," &.c. 
 
THE DESIGN OF RELIGION. 
 
 69 
 
 gether. If God must be served as a Spirit, then to 
 serve him *' in spirit," is the most natural and simplest 
 requisite. The test, however, includes more. 
 
 If the design of religion be to lead men to the service 
 of God as a Spirit, then it cannot be the design of reli- 
 gion to teach any doctrine, or ordinance, that obscures 
 the spirituality of God. 
 
 All that is cared for now is to establish the truth of 
 the tests. Their application to particular heresies will 
 come in the sequel. 
 
 The two remaining ones are derived from those dis- 
 tinguishing features of true religion— the offices of the 
 Second and Third Persons of the Trinity. 
 
 2. God is our Redeemer— Christ Jesus. Therefore 
 the design of religion is, to lead men to the service of 
 God our Redeemer. 
 
 Before using the test that is drawn out from this, it 
 might at first sight seem necessary to define exactly 
 what Christ's redemption is. But it will at once seem 
 not necessary when it is avowed that the argument does 
 not depend upon the soundest views of that much-debated 
 doctrine, and therefore spending time in making good 
 such views, when they are really not indispensable in 
 the way of argument, would only unnecessarily perplex 
 and delay, besides giving a handle to cast off the whole, 
 to those whom we wish, on this very account, to meet 
 as far as possible on their own ground. 
 
 All who have the shadow of a title to the name of 
 Christians, believe that something that Christ did was 
 necessary in the eye of God (if not by eternal right, yet 
 by God's will) for the salvation of men ;^ and that the 
 
 =^ Where truth stands so confessed, and is so rife in all scripture, it 
 is scarcely worth while to multiply proof texts ; but as we wish to base 
 
70 THE DESIGN OF RELIGION. 
 
 recognition of this by men is a nnatter of such moment 
 in practical religion, that unless in some way they be- 
 lieve it and trust in it, they cannot be saved. Then, 
 we are ready for the test. 
 
 If the design of religion be to lead men to the service 
 of God our Redeemer, the« it cannot be the design of 
 religion to teach any doctrine or ordinance that obscures 
 the work of Christ as our Redeemer. 
 
 Again, 3. God is the Holy Ghost, our Sanctifier. 
 Therefore the design oi religion is to lead men to the 
 service of God, our Sanctifier. 
 
 Asking, as before, only the most general acknow- 
 ledgm.ent of the doctrine of the Holy Ghost, viz., that 
 this power is somehow exerted, and that necessarily, in 
 sanctifying the soul,^ and that a recognition of this is a 
 part of His worship ; then we say, — 
 
 all regularly on the Bible, we quote a few. If they are familiar, and 
 acknowledged in the sense we give them, it is what the very design of 
 this treatise claims that all its texts should be, aiming as it does to get 
 back to the higher and less contested ground of revelation. 
 
 1 Tim. ii. 5, 6 : " There is one Mediator between God and men, the 
 man Christ Jesus ; who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in 
 due time." Matt. xx. 28 ; Is. liii. 5, 8, 11. 
 
 Heb. ix. 28: "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many." 
 Dan. ix. 24, 26 ; Tit. ii. 14. 
 
 Rev. i. 5 : " Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in 
 his own blood," &c. 
 
 Gal. vi. 14 : " But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 ' John vi. 63 : " It is the Spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth 
 nothing." 
 
 Rom. viii. 9 : " If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his." 
 
 1 Cor. iii. 13 : " Know ye not that ye are the temple of the Holy 
 Ghost, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ?" 
 
 Matt. iii. 31:" He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost." 
 
 1 Cor. vi. 11 : "Ye are washed, ye are sanctified, ye are justified, in 
 the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God," 
 
THE DESIGN OF RELIGION. 71 
 
 If the design of religion be to lead men to the service 
 of God, our Sanctifier, then it cannot be the design of 
 religion to teach any doctrine or ordinance that obscures 
 the work of the Holy Spirit, as our Sanctifier. 
 
 Thus this chapter has established criteria, both posi- 
 tive and negative, to which every thing in religion may 
 be brought. The positive shall be used in the two chap- 
 ters that follow ; the negative in two that are beyond 
 them. 
 
CHAPTER III. • 
 
 THE DESIGN OF EXTERNALS IN RELIGION. 
 
 Let us recapitulate. Starting with what is almost a 
 truism, The design of religion is to lead men to religion, 
 and substituting for the word, in these two w^ell-known 
 senses, definitions that no one can dispute, we reached 
 the sentence, The design of any system of faith and duty, 
 is to had men to the service of God. This sentence was 
 confessed to be so indefinite as to be readily adopted as 
 his own by any religionist whatever; but we fixed upon 
 one of its words — the word service, which, when defined 
 out of the Bible, took away much of its indefiniteness, 
 and left it thus. The design of religion is to lead men to 
 such a service of God as is " in spirit" and " in truth." 
 
 Now we are ready to take out and change another 
 indefinite word — the word to lead. 
 
 Only in regard to externals can this give any trouble. 
 Religion is a system of faith and duty. Religion, as a 
 system of faith, can lead to the service of God only in 
 one way, i. e., by teaching, and if a system of faith (or 
 truth) were the only thing in question, the word teach 
 might at once go down upon our page instead of lead. 
 But rehgion is also a system of duty, and of duty part of 
 which is external ; and on this word to lead, when ex- 
 ternals are in question, the widest differences of opinion 
 turn. 
 
 Certain externals lead men to the service of God, a 
 
THE DESIGN OF EXTEP.XALS IN RELIGION. 73 
 
 school of professed Christians assert, by a supernatural 
 power lodged in thenn, a power which enlightens the 
 mind, and nourishes up the heart to holiness, and so leads 
 men to serve God. That service they may admit must 
 be " in spirit," /. e., terminating in the mind, and not the 
 body; and "in truth," that is, toward no mistaken ob- 
 ject ; but men are led to it, they say, by the mystic 
 pow^er of external sacraments. \f, therefore, the extent 
 to which we have defined already will help us to define 
 further, and to fix narrowly the meaning of that word 
 " lead,-'' it will draw a line where we most need one, and 
 remove the last indefiniteness from the test we are pre- 
 paring. , 
 
 Precisely this may be done. There is a certain form 
 of influence of external things upon man's service of 
 God, more definite than is expressed by the word " /o 
 Ze<2<i," which all agree exists, and which many believe 
 is the only form of religious influence that any external 
 can exert. To exhibit this in detail shall be the work 
 of the present chapter; and then to sh )W that other 
 alleged forms are imaginary and false, shall be under- 
 taken in the sequel. 
 
 In looking for a w^ord to express this single form of 
 influence, none more apt occurs than the word teach. 
 The design of externals in religion is to teach^ men in 
 
 ^ Paradoxical as it may seem, it is true in a striking sense that, the 
 body is the teacher of the soul. How true it is, the mind will be thrown 
 into tlie best attitude for discerning, by the question, What v/ould the 
 soul lose if created without a body ? Take nothing from it in faculty 
 or nature that now belongs to it; make it just what it is, a human soul, 
 entering existence as it always does in perfect emptiness of thought, only 
 imagine it born unclothed — a mere spirit — what would it lose by being 
 without a body ? An infinite spirit loses nothing, because fleshly organs 
 could not add to its direct and perfect intercourse with matter and mind. 
 
 7 
 
74 THE DESIGN OF EXTERNALS IN RELIGION. 
 
 tlie service of God. The word, however, will not an- 
 swer; it must be very carefully said, unless we include 
 
 An angelic spirit, nothing- ; because, created totally different from ours, its 
 organs of sense, in itself placed, like its Maker, in immediate communica- 
 tion with other beings, and independent (at least so is the popular belief) 
 of all outward senses. A disembodied human spirit, that is, one that has 
 passed a probation in the body, and put it off, might lose little — nay 
 might live and act and feel with greater intensity than before, because 
 the senses, in its past state, have already fed it with knowledge, and 
 memory now fills the office of present sense ; or because, perhaps, God 
 changes it at death, and endows it with some of the attributes of angelic 
 natures, for that state between death and resurrection. But the infant 
 spirit, as it is, what would it lose, if born without the body ? 
 
 A follower of Locke would answer, — every thing. The mind, born 
 barren of all ideas, he would say, receives them first and so is started in 
 thought by the senses. Reflection afterwards digests this food, and 
 greatly multiplies the store of knowledge, thus begun ; but the senses, at 
 birth, and always, arc the doors by which simple ideas first win their 
 entrance. 
 
 An inference from this would seem to him to be, that the soul, if 
 ushered into her theatre of knowledge without such material avenues of 
 connexion with it, would lie, as to all mental action, dead, unthinking, 
 and unfeeling. At least no one can show how the mind could reach any 
 idea or emotion, if not linked by fleshly organs v^ith other beings. Con- 
 sciousness alone, so far as he could see, could furnish nothing, for where 
 would be an object to call forth that antecedent act or feeling that could 
 become matter of consciousness ? Therefore, the " breath of life" or that 
 human spirit of which God is the Father, must be breathed into the 
 nostrils of a body, before it can become a living or, at least, active soul. 
 
 What discoveries, he would argue on, does the soul make now, beyond 
 itself? Plainly none, in which sense is not its minister — none, not trace- 
 able, as the fruit of reflection, to former discoveries, which the eye or the 
 ear or some other organ has made. Yet there is no reason why the soul 
 now might not make such independent discoveries, as well as if born a 
 naked spirit. The body is no veil over it, It is as near God and his 
 works, and could hold as direct intercourse with them in its fleshly co- 
 vering, as if never in the flesh. So that the fact that the soul does not 
 make such direct discoveries now, measures our loss if born without a 
 body. 
 
 Thus a disciple of Locke might reason. This imagined language is 
 
THE DESIGN OF EXTERNALS IN RELIGION. iO 
 
 in it, as notice is here given that we constantly shall, 
 the idea of discipline as well as of instruction. Such 
 compass for the word is, perhaps, not without sanction,^ 
 but whether so, or not, will not affect the truth of what 
 is said, if the reader is clearly advertised how we use it. 
 Externals in religion are designed as natural and intelli- 
 gible means of teaching {i. e., of instructing and disci- 
 pHning) men in the service of God, in distinction from 
 supernatural and mystic means of baptizing or nourish- 
 ing them into that service. 
 
 Now, there are, it is believed, but four ways in which 
 this influence in teaching is carried on ; even when we 
 include the influence not only of church externals, tech- 
 njxially so called, but (that our view may be complete) 
 of all external things as bearing on religion : 
 
 I. They teach (instruct), by revealing God and our- 
 selves. 
 
 II. They teach (discipline), by pain and pleasure. 
 
 III. They teach (instruct), by intercourse with other 
 beings. 
 
 IV. They teach (discipline), by exercise in moral 
 action. 
 
 introduced, not to make common cause with a system of human philo- 
 sophy, nor at all, by linking them in one, to endanger what is intended to 
 be quite another argument. We introduce it, not to hold fast or trust 
 any thing to its extreme position, The soul learns every thing (mediately 
 or immediately) through the body ; but, simply, by the depth to which 
 this philosophy goes, to deepen the reader's view of a much more easily 
 acknowledged truth. The soul learns through the body ; or changed into 
 a sentence of corresponding drift, The body is the teacher of the soul. 
 We turn to it, not to borrow evidence, but thought, that may open and 
 enlarge our conception of the religious design of externals, as proposed 
 above. 
 
 * Judges viii. 16. 
 
76 THE DESIGN OF EXTERNALS IN RELIGION. 
 
 I. Externals teach by revealing God and ourselves. 
 These two objects of knowledge are singled out because 
 all others, intrinsically, matter nothing in religion. Re- 
 ligion (the service of God) is a thing between God and 
 ourselves. 
 
 Now, putting the two by for a moment, it is safe to 
 say that external things tell us all we know of the rest of 
 the universe. They are the universe, so far as it is ma- 
 terial ; and they are the only ordinar}^ media of commu- 
 nication with the universe, so far as it is spiritual. For 
 that one external, each man's own body, with its senses, 
 is his sole means of knowing that there is such a thing 
 as a surrounding world. He would be alone with God, 
 did not external sense link him with his fellow-existences. 
 
 Though this solitude need not, in itself considered, de- 
 stroy religion, yet, indirectly, it must deeply affect it, and 
 that, by keeping us much in ignorance of those two ob- 
 jects of knowledge which we put aside from the rest, 
 and which might be imagined not to need externals to 
 reveal them to us. I mean God and ourselves. 
 
 Worldly philosophy goes so far as to say that, apart 
 from some supernatural path not now open,'and, there- 
 fore, not here to be considered, no manner of simple idea 
 of any thing whatever, could first enter a mind without 
 being introduced by external sense — ^that God would re- 
 main unknown, and a man's own spirit would lie mo- 
 tionless and unconscious of itself, till it were started in 
 thought by outw-ard sensation. Now, though we should 
 cast out the theory, still there is Bible truth enough in its 
 foundation, to make this much certain — that what could 
 be known of God (granting that any thing could), or that 
 might be seen in one's own dark, empty spirit (if any 
 
THE DESIGN OF EXTERNALS IN RELIGION. 77 
 
 thing might), would be wonderfully narrowed down by 
 the lack of these outward sources of knowledge. 
 
 As we can know matter solely by its properties, so we 
 can know mind, whether our own or another's, solely by 
 its acts and feelings. Now, how many of the acts and 
 feelings of the Infinite Mind could we know without an 
 external world ? Where else has He acted and felt visi- 
 bly or sensibly so that man could know it, than towards 
 His works 1 "For the invisible things of Him from the 
 creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood 
 by the things that are made, even His eternal power and 
 Godhead."^ " The heavens declare the glory of God, 
 and the firmament showeth His handiwork."^ The part 
 that revelation takes in teaching us does not rob outward 
 things of this importance, but confirms it ; for revelation 
 itself has become an outward thinoj — a matter of sisjns 
 and words addressing itself to external sense ; so that 
 whether God write upon the face of nature or upon the 
 sacred page, the eye must read in either case. 
 
 Go over the attributes of God (certainly the basis of 
 all piety) ; His immensity and eternity, moving our ado- 
 ration ; His justice and holiness, exciting our awe ; His 
 love and mercy, warming our gratitude, and judge how 
 far your picture of each is drawn by what you see and 
 hear and feel of the perfections of God by the senses. 
 Reflection does indeed order and enrich the picture, but 
 sense must take the lead, and originate the form.s and 
 colours; for the sinjple question, what has it taught me? 
 may lead the plainest mind to see how much it must 
 have to do with all that can be known by man of the 
 glory of God. 
 
 » Rom. i. 20. b Ps. xix. 1. 
 
 7* 
 
78 THE DESIGN OF EXTERNALS IN RELIGION. 
 
 Then, on the other hand, how many of the acts and 
 feehngs of our own nnind could we know without an ex- 
 ternal w^orld ? or rather, how often would it act or feel? 
 That outward body of which we have the use, and those 
 outward objects on which we use it, are the grand means 
 of showing us to ourselves, because they are the grand 
 things with which we act, and for which we feel. Dis- 
 embodied and alone with our Maker, grant that mental 
 exercise could originate at all, how much more dull and 
 narrowly than when in contact, at a thousand points, 
 with other existences. 
 
 It is of main importance to know ourselves morally. 
 But without external sense that half of morality which 
 regards love to other men would lie dormant in our na- 
 ture, for it is only by sense that we are niade av/are of 
 the being of other men ; while the other half of morality 
 not being able to define itself by outward act, imagining 
 it to be felt at all, could only be felt in the vaguest and 
 most narrow way. 
 
 Externals, therefore, teach by revealing God and our- 
 selves. 
 
 II. They teach by pain and pleasure. 
 
 Of pain and pleasure there are two varieties; of the 
 body and of the mind ; or, rather, as the mind is the seat 
 of the emotion, in either case, those which do and those 
 which do not spring from the body. 
 
 Now, interrupted by the disorders of our present state, 
 yet sufficiently regular to work many salutary ends of 
 government, is the law that pain shall follow sin, and 
 pleasure, right doing. They are the marks soonest seen 
 and most respected of moral good and evil, and they 
 bring all men under some degree of discipline in the 
 school of virtue. 
 
THE DESIGxV OF EXTERNALS IN RELIGION. 79 
 
 Which of the above varieties is strongest for this end, 
 might be matter of doubt ; but that the discipHne of the 
 last would be sadly crippled without the first, it is believed 
 no one will question. There is something in bodily pain 
 that gives vividness to fear and definiteness to punish- 
 ment; and how truly soever men may say that simple 
 pain of mind is worse, certain it is that it does not ter- 
 rify so much nor discipline so well. Besides that, simple 
 pain of mind would be less if there were no such thing 
 as bodily pain. The idea of this mingles with the other, 
 and gives distinctness to the punishment. Remorse, for 
 example, must be much more intense where associated 
 with the memory, or the sense, or the fear of outward 
 tokens of displeasure, and despair much more fearful 
 where the desolateness of the mind is or has been con- 
 nected with the more tangible sufferings of the body. 
 III. Externals teach by intercourse with other beings. 
 However souls hereafter in their disembodied state 
 may by some new faculty know each other and hold 
 mutual communion, it is certain that they are strangers 
 to one another as to any such direct communion now. 
 We trust wholly to the body to tell us of the presence of 
 our fellow men, and to learn their thoughts ; and this 
 not because the body like a curtain hides our spirits from 
 each other, but because we are conscious that our 
 spirits altogether lack the power of independent inter- 
 course. 
 
 Then, judge how important, in this new aspect, the 
 office of external sense. Other men, as ministers of 
 God for our good, give us vastly the larger part of all 
 the knowledge and discipline that we enjoy. Take the 
 word examj)le in its widest sense, as left in the history 
 of the past, or as witnessed in the actions of the living, 
 
80 THE DESIGN OF EXTERNALS IN RELIGION. 
 
 and imagine yourself divested of all the influence ithas had 
 in moulding your character; and then the word, language, 
 in a like widest meaning, writing, speech, signs, all con- 
 ventional media of intercourse, and put away every thing 
 ever learned by these, and you may measure how much 
 you owe to the body in this office of interpreter. It is 
 true, God by direct inspiration might more than meet the 
 deficiency so created, but we are asking for what he 
 does, not for what he could do ; to what specific func- 
 tion of a spiritual kind he actually has appointed our 
 animal senses. His whole revelation comes to us by 
 them ; all his ordinances, each method of grace, not 
 wholly private and purely mental, — every ministry of 
 whatever kind, in w^ord or act or symbol, set up as " the 
 power of God unto our salvation," use our fleshly or- 
 gans as their media to the heart. The common remark, 
 that God, in condescension to our weakness in this 
 carnal state, addresses truth often to the senses, falls 
 short of the fact. He addresses it always to the senses, 
 and must change the nature of our hearts, or begin to 
 deal with them by direct inspiration, to reach them in 
 any other way. The meaning of the remark is, that he 
 often uses outward emblems or significant riles to con- 
 vey his will ; but these are nothing more than a sym- 
 bolic or scenic form of language, instead of language 
 written or spoken ; and both alike reach the soul through 
 the avenues of sense. In such case the rite bears much 
 the same relation to the word that the hieroglyphic pic- 
 ture of the Egyptians bore to their alphabetic writing, 
 both seeking the mind through the eye, but the truth in 
 the one seen at a glance under a figure, that in the other 
 deciphered from a scries of conventional signs. 
 
 A sacrifice, for example, to the eye of an Israelite 
 
THE DESIGN OF EXTERNALS IN RELIGION. 81 
 
 was nothing more than a dense, brief, yet rude form of 
 language — a prophecy ; itself and the written prophecies 
 uniting at once to interpret and impress each other ; 
 both foretelling what we, by clearer words and by other 
 rites, more fully understand as Christ's personal atone- 
 ment. 
 
 Externals, therefore, are the social link that connects 
 one spirit with another. 
 
 IV. They teach by exercise in moral action. 
 
 Who has not observed how the uttering of thought by 
 the lips or by the pen clears it in the mind 1 Up to the 
 very moment when the ideas of a thinker come from 
 him in audible words, or on the paper before him, they 
 are very generally misshapen, or but half-conceived. 
 In the stimulus that either method of composing gives 
 by its call at the moment to precise conception, and 
 still more, perhaps, in the reimpression upon the mind 
 itself of its own last step in thought, by the sound or the 
 sight of the language that it has just been framing, may 
 be mainly traced the secret of the improvement — that 
 marked superiority to w^hich many men have learned to 
 trust, — of what they say over what they premeditated 
 to say. 
 
 Now, what the tongue does for thought, the whole 
 body does for moral feelings; it utters or acts them out; 
 and in the very act elevates their tone, and reimpresses 
 them upon the soul. If conscience could only feel and 
 not do, one chief means of cherishing strong and definite 
 principles would be gone. Its ideas of duty — grant 
 that they could be as numerous, and, by internal reflec- 
 tion simply, could be exercised as frequently as now — 
 still could not be as high and vivid. 
 
 And, in proof of this, we need but mention the actual 
 
82 THE DESIGN OF EXTERNALS IN RELIGION. 
 
 advantages in moral culture that the body can be seen 
 to secure. An external act, is a scenic display — a sign 
 
 a symbol of the virtue that prompts it — a symbol, too, 
 
 each element of which speaks back eloquently and with 
 invariable effect to the heart. Do an act of charity for 
 example — let your benevolence utter itself in making 
 over a part of your fortune to a distressed neighbour. 
 The whole scene together speaks to you, and stirs you 
 up ; the tears of the sufferer suing for mercy — the in- 
 convenience of the gift fortifying your generous principle 
 — the pleasures of giving enlisting still further every 
 thing kind and noble in your nature— the whole stimu- 
 lating you, before the act is over, to a far higher level of 
 moral feeling, than any silent contemplation of the 
 abstract grace, benevolence. Mental acts themselves 
 must by like cause differ in elevation. Where they are 
 purely mental acts of thought and will, not using the 
 body, they must be, other things being equal, less clearly 
 seen, less definitely done, and less thorough in enlisting 
 the feelings. 
 
 A further evidence of an incidental kind occurs to 
 me in the promises made to external actions. Why are 
 they specially rewarded ; — " the deeds done in the 
 body ?' Not of course for any merit in the physical 
 motion itself, but because that motion marks, and hasj 
 so to speak, drawn out a strong exercise of love and 
 will and virtuous principle. The exigency of an ex- 
 ternal kind has awakened the heart, and shown it the 
 way to a high moral emotion, and then that emotion is 
 the thing rewarded. 
 
 This would be giving the body a most important 
 office, even if the present glory of God and the good 
 forthcoming from each single act in reward to ourselves 
 
THE DESIGN OF EXTERNALS IN RELIGION. 83 
 
 and charity to others were the only good. But when 
 we remember that the heart, after one of these sudden 
 weaves of virtuous feehng that a hard effort or a gene- 
 rous gift for the relief of others has stirred up, does not 
 sink again as low as its state before, but settles at a 
 hif]rher level, and so rises wave after wave accordino; 
 to the frequency and height of its moral emotions, 
 being thus exercised to what men call a higher habit of 
 virtue, we must do honour to the body as wielding a 
 still nobler influence in the rapid and permanent forma- 
 tion of character. 
 
 Just as the words of an orator speak back to his mind, 
 and impress it, and store themselves in it, far more 
 thoroughly than his thoughts before ; so the acted virtues 
 of men reimprint themselves upon their consciences far 
 more deeply than w^hen latent or abstractly reflected 
 over, with no summons to exertion from the outward 
 senses. To sentence a heart with a human constitution 
 to pass a season of virtuous discipline, and yet forbid it 
 ever to use the body to give shape and order to its habits, 
 would be worse than sentencing a mind to trace out 
 within itself a long and intricate system of truth, with 
 no use of the voice or the pen. In all this it will be ob- 
 served, however, that we rest satisfied in claiming for 
 the body only what is needed to show its definite office 
 in religion. Pushed to the extent of metaphysical truth, 
 it might (for before-mentioned reasons) well become a 
 question, whether a human heart, left from the first with- 
 out a body, could have any exercised or felt morality 
 at all. 
 
 If there is added now a third good result of bodily 
 acts — special rewards — the view of their benefit will be 
 complete. The soul is instigated in them to a high and 
 
84 THE DESIGN OF EXTERNALS IN RELIGION. 
 
 definite exercise of its moral feelings, and then, apart 
 from the recompense it has in its own virtuous disci- 
 pline, it makes sure, in exact proportion to that exercise, 
 a promised recompense from God. The external act 
 has awakened and drawn out the heart to a certain kind 
 and strength of will and feeling, — then, according to 
 that strength and kind, will be the reckoning of its 
 reward. 
 
 Now, the ground that this treatise will endeavour to 
 defend, is, that in the three benefits thus carefully de- 
 scribed, the whole personal advantage of external duties 
 is exhausted. No matter what they are — acts for man, 
 or for self, or for God — worship, or charity, or self-sup- 
 port — ordinance, or rite, or sacrament — no matter — 
 advantage of a moral or religious kind to the actor in 
 them, exhausts itself in these three particulars. 
 
 Take, for instance, the ordinance of external prayer. 
 The kneeling posture — the earnest gesture — the audible 
 requests, are an exhibition before the senses of the man 
 of the whole spirit of prayer. They rouse him to the 
 work with clearness of desire and intensity of feeling. 
 Thought, simply, could not pray so. In his own words 
 he hears his wants, and learns and feels them better. 
 Like a speaker, aided by the very act of oratory in 
 pouring out his thoughts and feelings to the people, so 
 this man can make known far better by words and orally 
 his requests to God. This is the first benefit, — a height- 
 ened exercise of devotion. 
 
 The second is an improved habit of devotion. 
 
 The third is that special promise which God makes 
 to prayer, viz., an answer ; a promise, not to the voice, 
 or the attitude, or externally to the act, but to that kind 
 
THE DESIGN OF EXTERNALS IN RELIGION. 85 
 
 and degree of devotion, to which all these, simply, and 
 by known means, have ministered. 
 
 Now let us go deeper, and take a sacrament; pre- 
 cisely kindred benefits occur. The Lord's Supper, for 
 example, is a scenic display, in the midst of which, and 
 by whose aid, the actor is to go forward to certain lead- 
 ing duties of our religion. As, in the exercise of bene- 
 volence, w^e have a natural ceremonial* to assist the 
 duty, — the sufterer, — as an external object, to call it out, 
 and the gift, or charitable effort, as an external act, to 
 stir it up ; so, in hke relation, the Lord's Supper is an 
 artificial ceremonial, that, through symbols, in default of 
 any thing more direct, faith and fellowship, our cove- 
 nanting and vows may have the stimulus of bodily acts 
 and external exhibitions.^ We have faith to exercise. 
 Therefore, as the grand object of faith, Christ, our sacri- 
 fice, is invisible, we have a memorial of him, an em- 
 blematic object, in the wine and the bread of the supper. 
 And as the exercise of faith is abstract, we have an 
 external act, the receiving of the bread and wine, to 
 suggest it, and draw it out. So, too, we have commu- 
 nion with God to maintain. Therefore, His altogether 
 unseen communications are freshened upon our memo- 
 ries and definitely offered in the emblematic food upon 
 his table, while our participation in them is more easily 
 
 * We would not say, even figuratively, this is the sacrament of bene- 
 volence, because we should be confounding- a distinction which exists 
 between baptism and the eucharist, and all other forms of duty ; but we 
 do say, that sense has a like office in either performance. 
 
 ^ Let the reader bear in mind, I am not begging the question by 
 assuming that there is no other design in the eucharist. I simply give 
 an intelligible and natural office, that it, certainly, does fulfil, and shall 
 show that it fulfils no other, afterwards. 
 
 8 
 
86 THE DESIGN OF EXTERNALS IN RETJGION. 
 
 and eagerly realized through the emblematic act of out- 
 ward feasting. Again, communion with the church is 
 to be assisted. How, better, than by sitting at the same 
 table, and, through appointed symbols, eating of the same 
 spiritual meat and drinking of the same spiritual drink? 
 A seal is to be set ; a vow is to be given. Therefore, as 
 the act, itself, is, exclusively, mental, and hence, too, 
 likely to be vague, and, too certainly, difficult, a token 
 is offered by either party; God gives the holy supper, 
 under the hands of his minister, and man, in the time 
 marked, and under the impression made by the solemn 
 act of eating, may accept the token of God, and so, defi- 
 nitely affix his own. 
 
 Now, in some minds, and for a change, in all minds, 
 the whole ceremony enforces and assists the chief duties 
 of the gospel far better than any abstract thought. If 
 entered upon worthily, and without superstition, as the 
 humble instrument, not the supplanter of the Holy Ghost, 
 it stirs up the soul, at the time, to higher exercises of 
 Christian grace. This is the first benefit of the three. 
 
 The second is a permanently improved habit of Chris- 
 tian exercise, after each well-celebrated sacrament. 
 
 The third must be given with care. 
 
 It was said that the third benefit of prayer was its 
 special reward, viz., an answer. No other than a kin- 
 dred benefit (in addition to the two already noticed) 
 follows the sacrament — its special reward, viz., a reci- 
 procation, on the part of God, corresponding to each act 
 of his guests at the table ; a reciprocation, let it be pre- 
 mised, however, not to the external act, itself, but, as in 
 prayer, to that exercise of grace which the external act 
 has stirred up. If we feed upon Christ, by faith, as we 
 feed upon the bread, he will nourish us. If we take 
 
THE DESIGN OF EXTERNALS IN RELIGION. 87 
 
 his gifts, in communion, as we take the bread, he will 
 communicate them to us. If we give our blessing, in 
 communion, to our brethren, theirs, or a better, shall 
 return to us. If we set our seal (with new devotedness) 
 to the covenant, God will set his (with new blessings) 
 there. 
 
 Of no other form of real presence, but this, does the 
 Bible ever dream. There is grace in the sacrament, in 
 a guarded sense; and it is around this nucleus of truth 
 that a legion of errors has grown ; there may be in- 
 stantaneous growth in grace, at the moment of eating ; 
 but it is grace /b?' grace — grace promised to the height- 
 ened exercise of grace, which the outward symbol has 
 enhsted. Just as, without grace, a man may " eat and 
 drink judgment" in the very act ; so, in proportion to 
 his grace, pardon, strength, or peace, in the very act. 
 
 We are free to say, too, " There is special grace in 
 the sacrament." We are not willing that error should 
 lay exclusive claim, even to this mode of speech, or reap 
 from it exclusive credit. Just as the fruits of prayer are 
 richer, because the duty is by special appointment, and 
 the reward by special promise, so, the benefits of the 
 eucharist are richer, because of its special institution by 
 the Saviour. If the church, granting she have the right, 
 were to invent another sacrament, for like uses, to those 
 that we have mentioned, from the lack of special pro- 
 mise, it would be inferior in benefit to its fellows. God's 
 rite w^ould be the more richly blessed. But this, let it 
 be carefully guarded (and here is the secret of the diffe- 
 rence), not because there is an increase of reward in it, 
 over and above an increase of attending faith, but be- 
 cause the known fact of appointment prompts and en- 
 courages a higher exercise of faith. The uncommanded 
 
88 THE DESIGN OF EXTERNALS IN RELIGION. 
 
 ceremony is undertaken for one object only — exercise 
 in piety ; the commanded ceremony for another, also, — 
 obedience. The one has only an imagined seal; and is, 
 therefore, rather the symbol of a symbol — the emblem 
 of a sacrament. The other has a seal set and consented 
 to by God himself; hence its better influence and re- 
 ward. 
 
 . One clear, sufficient office in religion, the body has 
 thus marked out for itself We shall, therefore, stand 
 on a vantage-ground, when, in the sequel, we try its 
 claim to certain other offices. For though, of course, 
 the idea of totally another is not, in the statement itself, 
 absurd, nor, in this chapter, directly refuted, yet, so com- 
 pletely does the one already given cover the whole field 
 of church externals, justify their imposition, plead for 
 their necessity, enter into the meaning of each appoint- 
 ment ; so entirely does it relieve the worshipper in his 
 search after some sufficient reason for the labour to 
 which he submits, that the instructive presumption is 
 against the existence of any other. 
 
 If you saw a misshapen piece of metal lying by the 
 bedside of a sick man, from the total want of other ex- 
 planation, you would listen, with much credulity, to one 
 who should tell you that it was designed, for the sake 
 of some hidden virtue in it, to be applied as a cure. 
 But, if you saw a spoon with a phial at its side, know- 
 ing, as you might, at a glance, a use quite sufficient to 
 bring it there, your credulity would measure itself much 
 more nicely by the amount of proof, if told that there 
 was a second use intended from some virtue in the 
 spoon. Or, to come nearer the case in hand, suppose 
 you saw an orator, with clear words and impassioned 
 gestures, exhibiting the truth before the people. Know- 
 
THE DESIGN OF EXTERNALS IN RELIGION. 89 
 
 ing, as you might, that the excitement visible in his 
 audience has quite enough to explain it in his fervent 
 oratory, how would you meet the assertion of a friend, 
 that the main effect was produced by a mystic influence 
 from the person of the man, directed by his will and 
 assisted by his gestures? You would have no right, 
 before evidence in the case, to deny, but every right to 
 doubt. You would believe only after the very clearest 
 proof; sifting the evidence through, with a jealousy that 
 no common case could possibly enlist. 
 
 Let such be the attitude of the reader toward the 
 assertion of a second and mystic office of externals* 
 which subsequent chapters w^ll bring before him. Or, 
 rather, let him prepare himself candidly to judge whether 
 the presumption may not be realized, on still higher 
 grounds, by showing that no manner of evidence can 
 prove it, inasmuch as it indirectly contradicts itself, and 
 impugns the character of God. 
 
 * Some other way by which they " lead''' to an intelligent and true ser- 
 vice of God, for, that far, we have defined and limited already. 
 
 8* 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE DESIGN OF AN EXTERNAL CHURCH. 
 
 Conspicuous on the list of externals, stands an external 
 church. In narrowing down our view still further, it 
 will be well to single this out from the rest, and look at 
 it alone, since its ritual embraces every thing that is 
 matter of dispute ; and if the design of a whole be the 
 design of all its parts, then just as the design of religion 
 must be the design of all externals in religion, so the 
 design of all externals must be the design of an external 
 church. 
 
 Now, as we have shown that teaching, (instruction 
 and discipline) in the service of God, is a design of ex- 
 ternals in religion, and have laid it by for proof, in the 
 sequel, that it is the design, it will be well to question 
 experience and admitted fact, to show that it is a design 
 of an external church, and, moreover, that it seems 
 sufficient to be the design. 
 
 Imagine the world without a church. 
 
 Aside from those mystic benefits in which some believe, 
 it is admitted that individual men might do every thing, 
 in kind, that the church can do. All that is now the 
 essential work of the church might be the duty of isolated 
 believers. A revelation might be received by any man, 
 as by Adam, before there were a plurality of believers, 
 
THE DESIGN OF AN EXTERNAL CHURCH. 91 
 
 to form a church. That revelation might be studied, as 
 by the Ethiopian eunuch, or by the wise men of the 
 East, with, perhaps, no notion of a church. It might 
 be dispensed to others, as by "Noah, a preacher of 
 righteousness," wdth, so far as w^e can tell, no license by 
 a church. The truths of that revelation might be con- 
 fessed before the world, as by the first believer, with no 
 manner of register in a church. Its rites might be ad- 
 ministered, as by Cain and Abel, with no known com- 
 mission from earth, or heaven. The mischief, therefore, 
 to the world, of being without a church, would be, not 
 so much the lessening of the number of the means of 
 grace, as in lessening their efficiency. 
 
 Still, its mischief would be tremendous. 
 
 To judge of it, imagine its effects in detail. Revela- 
 tion — if no custody of a church body were at hand to 
 which to commit it, how wretchedly would it be wasted. 
 Pure as it might be at first, w^hat quick alliances would 
 error make with it, as it passed from mouth to mouth ; 
 and, more than this, how rapidly, in such an unsheltered 
 state, would its evidences (in an external view, of as 
 much moment as its truth) sink and disappear. The 
 study of the truth — how obviously would it lack its 
 present facility and confidence. That grandest, hardest, 
 most perilous work of man, the merchandise of truth, 
 carried on in all the various ways of writing and speak- 
 ing, ordinance and ceremony — how would it be crippled 
 by the want of what secular men instinctively enlist in 
 all heavy enterprises — that potent helper — union. Pro- 
 fession would be made at random, and, therefore, bring 
 out clearly, neither the self-impression, nor the example, 
 now incident upon confessing the faith. Rites, as they 
 would become endlessly common, would be endlessly 
 
92 THE DESIGN OF AN EXTERNAL CHURCH. 
 
 profaned, and so would directly reverse their intended 
 influence upon the people. It nriight well be made a 
 question whether piety, if it could ever rise so high as to 
 feel its own wants, would not invent a church, in default 
 of God's appointment. 
 
 Virtually, the experiment has been tried, of a world 
 without a church. From Adam to Abraham, so many 
 of the features of any subsequent ecclesiastical body 
 are absent from what several soundly-judging divines 
 still see evidence to call a church, that, even in their 
 opinion, it must approximate the case of a total absence 
 of the institution. Without, therefore, discussing the 
 question, whether, for the first two thousand years after 
 the creation, there was a church on earth (a discussion 
 scarcely otherwise than nugatory, inasmuch as the men- 
 tion that must preface it of things necessary to a church, 
 must, on one side, or the other, be a begging of the 
 question), we may infer the simple purpose for which, 
 when fully organized, it was meant, from the pecuUar 
 evils resulting from what some men call its absence, 
 and others, its incompleteness. Certain it is, that we 
 hear of no initiatory rite, fencing off*, in ordinary cases, 
 the church from the world, — of no commissioned officer,* 
 giving up his whole time and strength to the interests of 
 religion, — of no wide communion, or any settled co- 
 operation among large companies of believers. And 
 then, side by side with this, we have the natural 
 consequence — the children of God mixed up with the 
 children of men, and, therefore, few and scattered, and 
 their families, like the families of Lot and Laban, soon 
 losing the truth in idolatry. The giving of an exclusive 
 
 * Unless some one will stand out for the fact of a regular commission 
 to each father, as prophet, priest, and king, in his own family. 
 
THE DESIGN OF AN EXTERNAL CHURCH. 93 
 
 seal to Abraham, and, still more, the commissioning of 
 priests and the framing of a ritual under Moses, recom- 
 mend themselves to reason, as means necessary, so far 
 as means can be, for the rescue of the truth. Their 
 simple efficiency was seen, at once, in greatly multiply- 
 ing the pious; so that, while religion under the old 
 principle of isolation seems to have made its experiment 
 most conclusive by completely dying out among the 
 gentiles, Israel grew a peculiar treasure unto God — a 
 kingdom of priests — a holy nation, so that, in one of 
 their darkest times, when, organized as they were, they 
 seemed almost gone over to the darkness of the heathen, 
 still, even in that small province, — nay, even without 
 Judea, there were " seven thousand men that had not 
 bowed the knee to the image of Baal ;" more believers, 
 perhaps, than the whole world had furnished, through 
 the first two thousand years of her history. 
 
 " The vineyard of the Lord of hosts was the house of 
 Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant." The 
 whole analogy of nature might suggest that the plants 
 of grace would flourish in health and numbers beyond 
 com.parison more, if brought together and cultivated, 
 than if left to scatter their own seed, and take root 
 where they may, amidst briers and thorns. Corn that 
 will yield a hundred-fold, when hedged in by itself in a 
 cultivated field, if left in its native woods to contend 
 with the affinities of other plants, and to strike its roots 
 where it can, amidst a ranker herbage, will be found 
 scattered and dwindled, its fruit positively nothing in 
 contrast with what husbandry would make it yield, and 
 the grain scarcely known by the farmer as the same 
 that his field produces. 
 
 What is easier, therefore, than by the good the church 
 
94 THE DESIGN OF AN EXTERNAL CHURCH. 
 
 is actually seen to do, to tell a sufficient design for its 
 institution. 
 
 Let us go into still more detail. As its benefits come 
 up in order, a glance will show that each resolves itself 
 into one, already proposed as the sole design of what- 
 ever is visible in religion — teaching — the ministration of 
 the truth, whether for instruction, or discipline. 
 
 I. The church stores up the truth. If truth were 
 dear to men, perishable and easily corrupted as it is, its 
 revelation might be risked through any private channel, 
 trusting that the mind that heard it first, would be at 
 the pains to give it over exactly to others, and that the 
 word would scrupulously keep it, and hand it down. 
 We know not that in heaven any organized society is 
 needed to preserve entire the new discoveries God 
 makes of himself to men. 
 
 But, so long as the truth is regarded as man's worst 
 enemy, the whole world being in league against it, 
 hating the light, neither coming to the light, lest their 
 deeds should be reproved ; and so long as any man, as 
 it passes from hand to hand, is at perfect liberty to hand 
 on to his neighbour a total counterfeit of what came to 
 him, and so long as this counterfeit, if the whole cur- 
 rency of truth were in random circulation, would stand 
 on much the same foot as the original, it is plain that 
 any revelation would be wasted, if sent individually to 
 private men. The spirit that now fills the world with 
 spurious rehgions could then reach its end by a shorter 
 path, in framing its imposture out of the ruins of the 
 true. A gospel could scarcely last beyond its own 
 generation, for the world would lose its hold of ii by its 
 concealment, or disappearance under a mass of errors. 
 
 We take this to be the reason why God talked so 
 
THE DESIGN OF AN EXTERNAL CHURCH. 95 
 
 often with men in the infant period of the world. He 
 kindly kept up reh'gion by fresh truth from himself; and 
 we take the varied idolatries of the earth, traced back, 
 indefinitely, by ancient and distant heathen, to be the 
 wrecks of that early, oral religion, in its successive 
 renewals among the fathers of our race. Constant 
 revelations kept a scattered few in the light, but at a 
 fearful expense. God's words, altogether unstored, and, 
 therefore, turning quickly into error, passed off from them 
 to sow the earth with heathenism. At the very time 
 w^hen the nations were dividing in the earth, after the 
 flood, this fatal want existed ; no organized band of pious 
 men in each to see that a pure faith w^ent with them. 
 Hence, an oral faith carried away from the places 
 where God frequently appeared — unrenewed — unguard- 
 ed — unwritten — passing into the corners of the earth, 
 there became the perverted centre around which the 
 heathen heart wove busily its dark mythologies, a 
 melancholy monument of whose high origin remains in 
 those atoning rites of sacrifice and penance that are 
 found in all of them. 
 
 What would have become of revelation, w^ithout the 
 church, is best told by what has become of all revelation, 
 except that kept by the church. Since the world began, 
 God has revealed vastly more than those few books — 
 the Bible. By the Urim and Thummim — by the open 
 vision — by the thousand prophets of Israel, vastly more 
 was spoken and heard and written, just as true, and, at 
 the time, as binding, than was given to the church to 
 keep. By Christ, much, not down in the gospels, was 
 uttered, just as true, of course, and at the time as binding 
 as any thing recorded ; much was done — so much that, 
 if written, the world itself could not contain the books 
 
96 THE DESIGN OF AN EXTERNAL CHURCH. 
 
 that should be written. But yet, from the priest, the 
 prophet, or the seer, from Christ, or his apostles, what 
 well-attested revelation has come down to us through 
 private hands'? What more have we of all, than the 
 little that was measured out for the church to keep? 
 Tradition, even where that, too, for centuries, has been 
 taken up and written out by a church, and enjoyed her 
 care, comes to us mongrel and corrupt, pretending to 
 bring down to us but little, and that little stamped all 
 over with marks of modern origin. The cheerful ad- 
 mission of this, as it touches the Jews and all Old Tes- 
 tament tradition, will sufficiently screen me from the 
 charge, on the part of any Christian sect, of assuming 
 the failure of tradition. For even the Romanist, talk as 
 he may of the preserving of tradition since the time of 
 Christ, will confess it failed through the greater part of 
 the world's history. 
 
 Inspired truth, that would have filled many volumes, 
 seems to have been uttered by the prophets — but one 
 volume has come down to us. Of all that was left in 
 private hands, nothing has been saved ; of the little 
 committed to the church, nothing has been lost. The 
 five books of Moses have had two distinct preservations 
 - — by Israel — by Judah — each attesting the other; and 
 all the rest, under the care of officers expressly set apart 
 to write out and keep the scriptures, have come down 
 to us, though in many MSS., yet with scarce an essen- 
 tial syllable of difference. And to show, still more 
 signally, the wisdom, and, so to speak, the self-censor- 
 ship of such organized custody, here are the Jews, still 
 keeping every letter of their testament inviolate in the 
 face of all the taunts and jeers and controversies which 
 have been moved against them, on the ground of pas- 
 
THE DESIGN OF AN EXTERNAL CHURCH. 97 
 
 sages which they cannot explain, and which a few 
 strokes of the pen nnight expunge ; clear testimonies to 
 Jesus, thus preserving themselves by his own institution 
 — the church — in the very mouths of his enemies. 
 
 We leave this point, however, not without carefully 
 exonerating ourselves from the charge of robbing God's 
 providence of the honour of having wonderfully pre- 
 served the Bible, and specially confounded and silenced 
 traditions. But Providence works by instruments, and 
 may specially smile upon any well-chosen instrument (as 
 the sacrifice of Abel), or frown upon any ill-chosen (as 
 the sacrifice of Cain), and yet not forbid us to see fitness, 
 or unfitness in their relative success. The very fact of 
 a smile, or frown, where, as in the official, or private 
 treasuring of God's words, the effort, either way, is 
 equally praiseworthy, is a virtual decision, by Provi- 
 dence itself, that one way is efficient, the other not 
 so. Precisely thus, Providence specially blesses public 
 preaching, not from arbitrary choice, or that other 
 means are intrinsically wrong, but from the fitness of 
 things, and that this means is intrinsically best. 
 
 II. The church stores up evidence for the truth. No 
 religion can prove itself externally, but by something 
 supernatural. All external evidence, therefore, looks for 
 its basis to miracle, or prophecy. To bring this proof 
 in contact with the mind, however, a second link in 
 evidence is needed — either sense, or testimony. Of 
 these, how far testimony predominates, in practical use, 
 over the senses, will be answered by this question, how 
 many miracles we have actually seen performed, or 
 prophecies actually seen fulfilled. The whole store of 
 past miracle would go for nothing, were it not for testi- 
 mony, bringing it to us over thousands of years, and all 
 
 9 
 
98 THE DESIGN OF AN EXTERNAL CHURCH. 
 
 accomplished prophecy, too, if not for testimony to 
 prove the prophecy older than its accomplishment. 
 Testimony, therefore, covers nearly the whole field of 
 evidence, and is vital to the outward claim of any 
 religion. 
 
 Now, testimony is, peculiarly, the foster child of the 
 visible church. It could scarcely live without her. In 
 two ways her cherishing influence over it is felt. 1. Her 
 own annals are its main form ; her own person — the 
 church herself — is its chief monument. Just as you 
 cannot separate the history of a nation from its fables, 
 until it begins to shape itself into a settled government, 
 and chronicle itself in its own public oflices ; so you 
 would be hopelessly puzzled with the alliances of fiction 
 with fact in religion, if, for thousands of years, a well- 
 organized church had not been striving, for the sake 
 of her own existence, to keep them separate. Then, 2. 
 The church attracts notice ; strangely little, to be sure, 
 especially, in its earlier age, but far more than isolated 
 believers would ; and hence, in that notice, and by its 
 means, multiplies a second and, in some respects, a richer 
 store of testimony — the testimony of indifferent specta- 
 tors and enemies. We owe much to our organization 
 for a place, at all, on the pages of secular history. 
 
 Thus, by its own heightened care and by the greater 
 scrutiny of the world, religion can better prove itself, if 
 it dwell united in an external body. 
 
 III. The church dispenses the truth. In union is 
 strength. Where man's heaviest work is to be done, 
 viz., the actual teaching of religion — the good of concert 
 is too plain for argument. 
 
 Piety and malignity — the followers of Christ and the 
 emissaries of Satan — must not stand on the same footing 
 
THE DESIGN OF AN EXTERNAL CHURCH. 99 
 
 as religious counsellors. Let dying men have at least 
 the poor shield of a wide Christian sanction for ^vhat 
 they hear, and not be left to a random, lying, discordant 
 teaching ; let ihem have a steady pressure of the truth 
 upon their minds — a full instruction, and not be given 
 up to the fitful efforts of private charity. 
 
 Division of labour, a principle almost instinctively 
 obeyed, in secular work, might be expected to rule in 
 this. If one man can teach a thousand, then let one be 
 disengaged from the business of the thousand, and be set 
 apart for religious labour and high accomplishment; and 
 let the thousand band together to support and hear him. 
 
 The truth of all this has been signally tested by spu- 
 rious gospels. Where a church has been framed to 
 spread them, they have taken root and lasted. Where 
 they have passed privately from mind to mind, they have 
 died at once. 
 
 Remember, too, the grander enterprises of the cross ; 
 that the merchandise of wisdom is not a domestic trade, 
 alone, but a wide commerce, that seeks its market through 
 the w^orid. Only glance at the question, whether the 
 heathen — wretchedly served even by the church — might, 
 without cruelty, be given up to private effort, and we 
 need say no more. 
 
 IV. The church gives exercise in the truth. Profes- 
 sion, worship, liberality — these three duties would amply 
 repay its institution. Profession — by keeping riveted 
 on the mind the fact that it has renounced the world ; 
 worship — by placing the soul, weekly, in the happiest at- 
 titude for high spiritual exercise ; liberality — by securing 
 regular appeals to the heart, for generous sacrifice in the 
 noblest cause. 
 
 V. The church enforces the truth. With no such in- 
 
100 THE DESIGN OF AN EXTERNAL CHURCH. 
 
 stitution, discipline would be a thing unknown ; except, 
 perhaps, the weak rod of public opinion, which, as no 
 faith could be formally professed, would be but lightly 
 used. 
 
 Now, we know that discipline, at best, is but an indi- 
 rect means of grace. The pain or fear that it produces 
 gives nothing in itself to piety ; not even where God, by 
 Providence, chasteneth His people. No surer, however, 
 is the good result of this divine chastening, than where 
 man, not overstepping the limit of moral penalties, nor 
 using the sword instead of the simple excommunication 
 that Christ has put into his mouth, stands in the place of 
 God, to punish an apostate brother. Direct or indirect, 
 the tendency is to humble the offender and turn his soul 
 in thought, upon his sin, and to foreshadow a day more 
 melancholy, a sentence infinitely sterner, and a banish- 
 ment eternal and not to be revoked. 
 
 To make evident this good of organized religion, you 
 need but contrast the piety of a church so lax as that its 
 judicial function is steadily neglected, with that of one 
 so inflexible as that it is steadily performed. The me- 
 lancholy difference will show the meaning of the church, 
 at least, as a judicial body. 
 
 Now, accordant, to the very letter, with the offices thus 
 given in detail, is the plan on which the church is organ- 
 ized. Just so — given the above-mentioned purposes for 
 the institution — we would, ourselves, have framed it a 
 priori. Who shall be its members? Certainly, if truth is 
 to be kept, and its evidence loved and cherished ; if 
 truth is to be taught, and its power exemplified and acted 
 forth ; if discipline is to mean any thing, or worship to 
 be other than an empty name ; not mankind in mass, but 
 the pious of mankind. Will the visible church and the 
 
THE DESIGN OF AN EXTERNAL CHURCH. 101 
 
 invisible agree in boundary? No. As membership will 
 be simply by profession and outward character, some 
 men of weak faith will be afraid to seek it, and many 
 men of no faith will seek and gain it; so that, by this 
 natural and common sense view, membership or its want 
 will be certain security for nothing ; a man may be in 
 either church visible or invisible, and not in the other. 
 Will the visible church be divided into branches f Yes. 
 Because, as perfect unity of opinion is the fruit of perfect 
 sanctification, the doctrine of which she is the store- 
 house, will differ as to minor points in different minds; 
 so that her members, still nourished from a common 
 root and holding free communion with each other, will 
 find it wise to act and teach and worship in different 
 branches. 
 
 All other fellowships have officers ; will the church 
 need them ? Certainly ; if she is to teach and rule and 
 give efficiently, over each duty of the three, qualified 
 members must preside. Secular offices are entered upon, 
 not by intrusion, but appointment; if of august character, 
 not informally, but by solemn rite ; how shall it be with 
 this ? By all reason the same; some mode of choice — 
 some ceremony of entrance — marked and impressive 
 according to the solemnity of the work. 
 
 Thus the church has explained herself throughout on 
 the plain principles of common sense. She has given 
 ample reason for her existence, in a list of obvious and 
 sufficient benefits — for her rule of membership in the 
 folly of any other — for her officers, their call and ordi- 
 nation, in her own essential worthlessness without them 
 — all explained under that one design — to teach, instruct, 
 and discipline, without resort to any thing mystic, or 
 aside from natural laws — no miracle in her work — no 
 
 9* 
 
102 THE DESIGN OF AN EXTERNAL CHURCH. 
 
 charm in her membership — no wielding of God's power 
 in the rite of ordination, or by the men whom it invests ; 
 leaving unclaimed in the hands of the Holy Spirit (this 
 own best depositary) all the power that is to bless her 
 simple, human, though divinely-appointed and especially 
 successful instrumentahty. 
 
 If any man can break this beautiful simplicity, and 
 introduce a totally distinct design, let it be only by strict- 
 est evidence. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 DANGER OF ATTRIBUTING TO EXTERNALS CERTAIN SPURIOUS 
 DESIGNS. 
 
 One, whole, symmetrical design has been found in 
 the last two chapters, for externals and an external 
 church, w ith no necessity, or place, as concerns the 
 completeness of that one, to interweave other designs 
 which learned men have defended, and which large de- 
 nominations have embraced. And we have promised 
 an attempt to show that these other designs lack proof, 
 and contravene the gospel, and must, therefore, give 
 place and leave the first unmarred in its simpleness and 
 unity. If, by devoting a chapter in advance, however, 
 a natural origin for just such spurious notions in the 
 church can be pointed out, and it can be made to appear 
 that precisely these might have been predicted from the 
 known laws of man's depravity, it may be obviating 
 prejudice based on the wdde currency they have had, 
 and will be further clearing the way for that final argu- 
 ment. The notion of a power of magic enchantment in 
 an orator would, as we have seen, be rendered highly 
 improbable, in that the spell evident upon the people 
 finds a sufficient cause in his impassioned eloquence; 
 but still more improbable, in advance of direct evidence, 
 if an origin can be found for the notion in some well- 
 known idiosyncrasy of those who wish us to believe it. 
 
104 DANGER OF ATTRIBUTING TO EXTERNALS 
 
 Now, that there is such a thing as superstition, an 
 original and main corruption of our nature, we have 
 never heard denied. It is either creative, or alterant 
 It may be defined to be that vice of the soul which busies 
 itself, either in originating new modes, or objects of w^or- 
 ship, or in turning the natural into the supernatural. 
 The Hindoo is led by superstition when he creates a 
 god of evil. The Parsee is led by superstition when he 
 turns the sun into a god. It is with this last operation 
 of the vice that we have now to do. 
 
 Our religion, with all its array of natural means, is 
 revealed to minds, by confession, superstitious. What 
 might we predict as the result 1 That superstition would 
 be, at once, at work, turning each natural m.eans into its 
 corresponding supernatural means, or (to change the 
 name so as to meet the extreme result of this tendency) 
 into its corresponding supernatural cause. As an expe- 
 riment, to see whether this is actually done, let us take 
 the list of means already given under the heads of " ex- 
 ternals" and " an external church," and let us, ourselves, 
 definitely make the changes which the above rule of the 
 vice prescribes. We shall get a corresponding list of 
 products, which will be, partly, acknowledged supersti- 
 tions (so plainly got by this rule, and yet so foul in their 
 nature, as to throw the utmost suspicion on all brought 
 into company with them, by a like deduction), and, partly, 
 those very pretended offices, whose spuriousness the 
 next chapter is to prove. 
 
 I. Externals. 
 I. They teach by revealing God and ourselves. The 
 " natural means" in this case are the externals them- 
 
CERTAIN SPURIOUS DESIGNS. 105 
 
 selves ; as works of God and objects of the thought and 
 action of man. 
 
 a. As works of God, they are the means of teaching, 
 by the marks of design that they contain and by the 
 beauty, complexity, and benevolence of that design, the 
 power, wisdom, and goodness of the Great First Cause. 
 Superstition, therefore, would hasten to mistake (if the 
 " means" for the " cause," then) God's works for himself — 
 the instruments of this bright display for its author — 
 " worshipping and serving the creature more than the 
 creator." 
 
 By whatever means God's glory was most displayed, 
 — by the sun, the moon, earth, fire, — those means would 
 be first turned into deities, and then the lower orders of 
 creation, one by one, would find their place in an easily 
 satisfied and growing mythology. Rivers and fountains 
 — plants and animals — showing, by apt design, special 
 kindness in God toward the countries where they are — 
 men gifted with high strength, wisdom, or virtue — any 
 thing, indeed, that vividly manifests its creator, would 
 be deified, at once, without the trouble of looking through 
 it to a higher divinity. 
 
 We may go farther. If man, in his fondness for 
 aiding all his conceptions by sense, should carve an 
 emblem of God, this symbolic " means" of reminding 
 him of the divine perfections, though, at first, innocently 
 made, might usurp the place of the " Cause," and at last 
 arrest in itself the regards it once cherished for the Deity. 
 So far might this be the case, as to render it highly dan- 
 gerous to use such symbols in worship, and to make a 
 prohibition, in this respect, a part of God's revelation to 
 men. 
 
 The rule, so far, is true to fact. Its product is precisely 
 
106 DANGER OF ATTRIBUTING TO EXTERNALS 
 
 that error which man's mind has reahzed in looking 
 upon outward nature — that deep and desolating curse — 
 idolatry — that has reigned, the most crying enormity of 
 our nature, all over the world — that child of superstition, 
 by a birth confessed and palpable, which, in one age or 
 other, has turned all nature into gods — which worshipped 
 in Persia fire and the host of heaven ; in Egypt, the plants 
 of her gardens, the beasts of the land, and the monsters 
 of the river ; in Greece, her countrymen, those wise in 
 council, or brave in war, or cunning in the arts ; in 
 India, the emblems that her fathers chose, her grim idols 
 and her holy river. 
 
 h. As objects of the thought and action of men, exter- 
 nals are the means of revealing us to ourselves, in that 
 exercise of our nature in varied thought and action 
 which would be impossible without an external world. 
 The mistake of superstition here would be (if the " means" 
 for the "cause," then) the externals themselves for the 
 exercise of which they are the means, i. e., the outward 
 for the inward act, leading us to value and regard our- 
 selves as though the body w^ere ourselves, not the soul, 
 and, therefore, its motions were to be the mark of cha- 
 racter, not the motions of the soul which are back of 
 them — leading us, in fine, to imagine merit in mere 
 words of the lips and actions of the hand, when the heart 
 is not in them. 
 
 How far this result is true to nature, w^e need not stop 
 to show.^ 
 
 2. Externals teach by pain and pleasure. 
 
 The natural means in this case are, on the one hand, 
 pain. Just as its physical office is, to protect the body 
 
 * Is. xxix. 13. 
 
CERTAIN SPURIOUS DESIGNS. 107 
 
 from injuries, by making it feel their touch, so, its 
 rehgious office is to keep the soul from sin, by reminding 
 it of the displeasure of God. Taking the corresponding 
 cause, the mistake of superstition would be, to imagine 
 an efficient virtue in pain itself, tending to drive out sin. 
 Asa practical result, we might look for ascetic life 
 and all forms of voluntary wretchedness, courting, for 
 the extirpation of depravity, this direct powder of pain. 
 And then the realized fact is notorious among ancient 
 and modern heretics and heathen. 
 
 But, in this instance, the mistake occurs in a second 
 form. Pain is the natural means of punishment, as well 
 as of discipline. Superstition might clothe it with a 
 supernatural power to punish — to punish more than its 
 own severity would naturally count — more than as so 
 much pain and so long— might give it an efficiency 
 which it can only have when a divine person endures 
 it, to exhaust justice and make expiation for the sinner. 
 The practical result would be all forms of self-inflicted 
 punishment ; and the realized fact is at hand in the knives 
 and lancets of the priests of Baal — in the fires of Moloch 
 — in the rack and the hook, and the car andthe pyre, of 
 the Indian devotee, and (the presumption at least is over- 
 whelming) in the knotty scourge— in the iron bed — in 
 the hair garment — and the whole catalogue of penances 
 of the Roman church. 
 
 Pleasure, on the other hand, passing through a like 
 hypothetical change, yields a product still more notori- 
 ously agreeing w^ith man's actual experience, and which, 
 though in common speech, not brought under the head 
 of superstition, but found wide enough to have a name 
 alone, will only serve to show a feature of common 
 
108 DANGER OF ATTRIBUTING TO EXTERNALS 
 
 kindred in superstition with that general depravity of 
 which it forms a part. 
 
 Pleasure, as the body wins it for us through the 
 avenues of sense, is a means intended to keep men re- 
 minded of the goodness and all-satisfying riches of its 
 Cause. The error, here, w^ould be, to mistake the channel 
 for the fountain, letting pleasure arrest in itself the hopes 
 and desires and affections that it should send up higher 
 — and claim a supernatural power to make us happy, 
 which can be realized only in God. 
 
 How far this result is answered by reality, men's 
 strongest temptations may bear witness. " The lust of 
 the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life," all 
 finding their centre in this one mistake, seem to fill up 
 half the measure of the soul's corruption. 
 
 3. Externals teach by intercourse with other beings. 
 
 As before, let us say, by example — by language. 
 
 a. Example is a "means" intended to bring before the 
 soul a living model of virtue, thereby winning an influ- 
 ence that abstract description could never win. Of 
 course, example is imperative, only so far as it is 
 virtuous, and, as a judge of this, whoever suffers its in- 
 fluence, is held responsible. 
 
 Now, the hypothetic mistake here would be, to suffer 
 example to be the deciding cause-of our moral judg- 
 ments, and not simply the means of judging; giving it a 
 primary influence, simply as example, and not a repre- 
 sentative influence, merely, as showing itself to be 
 virtuous. 
 
 At a glance, this will be recognised as an actual and 
 wide-spread delusion, so strong as to deceive some into 
 the belief that it alone, and no inborn depravity, is the 
 
CERTAIN SPURIOUS DESIGNS. 109- 
 
 reason why all men, since the fall, are sinners, so strong, 
 certainly, as to lead to one result, as strange as it is 
 melancholy, that the .examples of wickedness should 
 have the ascendency over those of virtue. 
 
 h. Language (speech, writing, signs, &c.) may seem a 
 term scarcely wide enough to exhaust all the rest that 
 social intercourse does for us in religion, when it is 
 remembered that it may be auxiliary to all the other 
 spiritual uses of the body, (as where a fellow-man leads 
 us to the study of nature, or brings upon us pleasure or 
 pain, or stirs us up to moral action), and that it is, of 
 course, primary in all the uses of the church. Give it an 
 office, however, as wide as we have given both ex- 
 ternals and the church, and it wull submit itself to our 
 experiment, just as happily. Social intercourse is a 
 means of teaching and discipline, in order to grace in the 
 soul. The usual mistake, here, w^ould be, to give it a 
 causal influence in the more direct imparting of grace, 
 making our fellow-man not the exhibitor, or furtherer of 
 truth, in order to salvation, but, in analogy with all the 
 other changes, the dispenser of salvation. There would 
 be room, here, for an endless number of intermediate and 
 lesser degrees of change, but this would be the point of 
 ultimate tendency — to give to means a supernatural 
 power to do that to which they were only meant to 
 minister. 
 
 Think a moment, and you will perceive a double con- 
 sequence from this — that it would take, on the one hand, 
 prerogative out of the hands of God, and, on the other, 
 work out of the hands of man — building up, on the one 
 hand, an idolatrous religion, and, on the other, one 
 thoroughly vicarious. Because, just so far as a means 
 ascends toward the position of a cause, by arrogating to 
 
 10 
 
110 DANGER OF ATTRIBUTING TO EXTERNALS 
 
 itself more immediate power, will it, not only, trench 
 upon the province of God, but save the labour of man. 
 Means must he used, with labour proportioned to their 
 character, as merely means ; power need be only felt. 
 We might anticipate, therefore, a twofold result from 
 the mistake in question — an idolatrous reverence for 
 certain men, and a vicarious trust to what they do in 
 works of general obedience, or in official acts. 
 
 How far this precisely has been realized, must be con- 
 fessed in the ascendency won by priests over the homage 
 and spiritual confidence of men, endlessly, among the 
 Pagans and, measurably, among the Jews — and, also, 
 (unless, by direct proof, established as an exception,) in 
 the works of supererogation, the absolution, the saving 
 rites and ghostly power of the Church of Rome, as well 
 as in kindred reliances in nominally Protestant com- 
 munions. 
 
 4. Externals teach by exercise in moral action. 
 
 a. Outward action is the spoken language of virtue, 
 intended to exhibit to the senses of the body the exercises 
 of the soul, that these may be drawn out in the act and 
 by the exigency. Briefly, then, it is a means intended 
 to enlist the soul in a higher exercise of piety. Here 
 superstition, by its unchanging rule, would give to the 
 outward act a causal power, and say that it directly pro- 
 cured piety — that such acts as might be seized upon as 
 fit subjects of the error would, of themselves, (with more, 
 or less, demand of previous grace, according as the error 
 is less or more advanced) bring grace into the soul ; — 
 that payment of a certain sum, or submission to a cer- 
 tain rite, or endurance of a certain pain, would, all ex- 
 ternal as it is, be anointed by God with strength to 
 affect our spiritual condition ; of course, as in former 
 
CERTAIN SPURIOUS DESIGNS. Ill 
 
 cases, by itself, dropping off any consideration of its 
 success as a means in naturally stirring up, or evidencing 
 the exercise of grace. 
 
 Paganism, with its shouts and dances; Judaism, with 
 its fasts^ and washings; Popery, with its crossings and 
 bowings, and professed Protestantism, so far as it has 
 learnt any thing akin to these, will give abundant ex- 
 amples, either confessed, or suspected, of this, as no 
 imaginary change.'' 
 
 h. But, closely allied with the above result, and, per- 
 haps, on the side of superstition, not to be distinguished 
 from it, is the construction put upon the special rewards 
 to which outward action ministers. It ministers to them, 
 we have seen, as a "means" of higher moral exercise in 
 the soul, and so, as a means (though, of course, one step 
 further off) of higher reward to the soul. Now the 
 usual mistake would be (to exalt the " means"), to count 
 the act and not the exercise, and hence, too often, the 
 act, without the exercise, as winning the reward. The 
 practical operation of which would be, endless attention 
 to outward effort and ceremonial, and the promise of 
 
 * Fasting might seem a curious exception to the common office of 
 external acts, and something akin to penance. When, however, in its 
 influence on piety, it is placed side by side with temperance, or a care of 
 health, its true design is evident, not, indeed, primarily, to exercise in 
 piety, but to lighten and clear the mind for it, by well-known natural 
 principles. Of this singularity in means, however, superstition, in making 
 her change, takes little note, but gives fasting a direct office, like her 
 whole list of other acts. 
 
 '' The corresponding account that superstition would give of habits 
 mentioned before, as the second benefit of external acts, is so obvious 
 that it need not be noticed. What sound religion would call the result, 
 through grace, of constant exercise, superstition would call the aggregate 
 of frequent direct impartings of grace by externals. 
 
112 
 
 DANGER OF ATTRIBUTING TO EXTERNALS 
 
 ^reward for that, with insufficient regard to the state of 
 the heart that prompts it. 
 
 To nnake incontestable something more than theory 
 here, the whole religious history of man would load our 
 pages with examples. Indeed, we need not search par- 
 ticular mythologies, or creeds ; each heart will plead 
 guilty to the error. The earliest religious mistake of 
 childhood, and the persevering mistake of the maturest 
 piety, is to make the body do for it a vicarious worship, 
 the mere w^ords of prayer expecting the reward of 
 actually conceived petitions, and a mere presence in a 
 church, the reward of devotion there, and the mere 
 reading of the word of God, the reward of gathering and 
 remembering its truths. 
 
 Having seen how untiringly superstition follows the 
 body through every turn of its religious duty, and that, 
 too, without caring to depart from one single rule of 
 deception, and how, in all Romanism, and in much Pro- 
 testantism, things are found bearing a most unhappy 
 likeness to the confessed and foulest fruits of this decep- 
 tion, so much so, that, before hearing of their sanction 
 by pretended revelation, we might have anticipated 
 them among us as from the same mother, and by the 
 same law of birth, let us enter upon the other half of our 
 proposed experinient. 
 
 II. The Church. 
 
 1. It stores away the truth. The " natural means," 
 and, therefore, the great advantage, that an associa- 
 tion of Christians has to keep the parts of a revelation 
 together, and to transcribe each copy, strictly, under 
 niutual supervision, a glance has already made apparent. 
 Handed about and copied at random, by good men, or 
 bad, it would soon be dissipated. 
 
CERTAIN SrURIOUS DESIGNS. 113 
 
 Superstition, however, would hasten to change the 
 "means" into a "supernatural power." Not satisfied 
 with regarding the church as intended, from the sim- 
 ple advantages of her position, and from that special 
 blessing that any of God's faithful servants has, to hold 
 fast a sound revelation, as successive ages rise to 
 take it at her hands and form their judgment of it, it 
 would regard her as anointed with a species of divine 
 wisdom, not to keep and know and judge like private 
 men, but to say, by a kind of holy intuition, lodged 
 somewhere in her body, what precisely God's revelation 
 is; then to comment upon it and tell its meaning, so 
 that the comment, on the very ground of its origin, shall 
 be as necessarily true as the text ; — in one word, to keep 
 the Bible, not by means alone, and, therefore, in a way 
 subject to error, but by infallible power, a power much 
 like that of its first inspiration, deciding, with equal cer- 
 tainty, what it is, and what it signifies. 
 
 Perfectly of a piece with all this, would be the notion 
 that the church, in every respect, is not the minister, but 
 the master of revelation, with power to tell the people 
 how much of it may be read, or whether any; or to 
 seal it to all but herself, and make her own word, at 
 second hand, the people's revelation ; or to add to it, not 
 her glosses only, but matter quite additional, inventing 
 new rites and ceremonies, and laying new claims upon 
 the service of her members. 
 
 That precisely these things have been realized in the 
 Christian church, is of course notorious. That precisely 
 these, if not of God, would issue from the working of 
 superstition, only prejudice we think could persist in 
 questioning. 
 
 2. The Church stores up evidence for the truth. 
 10* 
 
114 DANGER OF ATTRIBUTING TO EXTERNALS 
 
 Turning the means into a cause, the mistake, here, 
 would be, to consider the church as originating, or con- 
 stituting evidence, rather than as simply gathering it, or 
 in her own history making a part of it. Men would 
 learn to count her word as intrinsically proof — taking 
 the sentences from her lips as self established, without 
 the necessity of independent evidence. An authority 
 not even claimed by inspired apostles^ would be granted 
 her, to have all right of private judgment merged in her 
 decisions. And, indeed, this would be but a consequence 
 of the last mistake that we considered ; for the same 
 argument that could maintain the necessary infallibility 
 of the Church, would fully cover and justify her claim 
 to belief for her own sake, as incapable of erring. 
 
 That superstition has actually led to such a result, it 
 need not be pointed at in the creeds of churches to help 
 you to suspect; but we may assert the fact, at once, from 
 the personal experience of all men, who, while they may 
 reject in theory the authority of their church, yet in 
 practice detect in themselves a constant tendency to 
 build their belief upon it. Indeed, if men would 
 thoroughly examine how they first comeby their creeds, 
 and how much well-investigated evidence, at the very 
 best, they have for them, those who hate most the prin- 
 ciple of blind adhesion, would be often startled at the 
 strength with which it practically governs them. Birth 
 in this church, or that gives more men their speculative 
 creeds, than all the study ever elicited in the choice. 
 
 3. The Church dispenses the truth. The means which 
 her associated strength gives her so much facility to use, 
 
 " " Though we, or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto 
 you than that which we have preached unto 3'^ou, let him be accursed." 
 Gal. i. 8. 
 
CERTAIN SPURIOUS DESIGNS. 115 
 
 would pass the usual metamorphosis, and be turned into 
 hidden virtues, placed at her disposal for the immediate 
 salvation, or reprobation of men. Her language would 
 be less of preaching than of infusing and imparting ; and 
 whereas these virtues could be treasured nowhere else, 
 the notion would soon be started, that want of visible 
 church membership, apart from any wilful contumacy 
 in declining it, must cut a man off from any but un- 
 covenanted and extraordinary provisions for hope or 
 pardon. The church, which seemed but as an instrument 
 made for man, and not man for it, — but as a servant to 
 store and spread a gospel truth, itself, only the instru- 
 ment of an all-giving and all-determining Spirit — but a 
 help, therefore, which a man might totally decline and 
 shun, and yet expose himself to nothing but the guilt of 
 rejecting an ordinance of God, and the loss of its bless- 
 ing as a means, — would be erected into a great secondary 
 cause, and so into a deciding test. The simple union 
 that God had given to the labour of Christians, with its 
 train of still simpler ordinances, would be made to 
 embosom a mystic charge, a flaw, or failure, or neglect 
 in w^ielding which would cost a soul perdition. 
 
 How far such a mistake has been realized in some 
 religions, and how well it may be suspected in others, 
 four denounced victims of a principle, in each case, appa- 
 rently the same, may serve in all brevity to show — the 
 Gentile of Judaism, the infidel of Mohammedanism, 
 the heretic of Popery, and the Dissenter of English 
 Prelacy. 
 
 4. The Church gives exercise in the truth. Her means 
 ■for this are the strong restraints of public profession, the 
 high advantages of public worship, and the warm 
 appeals of pubhc charity. Turning the natural into the 
 
116 DANGER OF ATTRIBUTING TO EXTERNALS 
 
 supernatural, the usual mistake would be, to attribute a 
 mystic good to each of these, altogether beyond the 
 blessing of God upon simple means. 
 
 Gifts to the church would be thought to redound to 
 the profit of the giver in a way not to be estimated ex- 
 clusively, by the strength of his motive in them, nor to 
 be compared with the common gifts of private benevo- 
 lence. 
 
 Church ordinances would assume a ghostly meaning. 
 Sacraments, from being simple memorials, seals, and 
 symbols, occasions of communion, or initiatory rites, 
 bearing with them a special blessing, only in view of the 
 special exercise of piety that they stir up, would clothe 
 themselves with divine efficiency, actually embosoming 
 the agency they were intended to represent, themselves 
 setting the seal they were to teach foith to set, them- 
 selves constituting the communion to which, by obvious 
 influences, they were meant only to minister. 
 
 Sacred places would be idolized. The church, in-, 
 stead of merely answering a rational design, as a conve- 
 nient place of worship, would become, mystically, favour- 
 able to it, to the prohibition of other places. Prayer 
 there would be thought to tell better upon the soul than 
 prayer elsewhere of equal piety and by equal numbers ; 
 and that, not as the simple answer of some early petition, 
 like Solomon's, that God would always meet with his 
 people there and hear them, but by virtue of its use and 
 consecration as a house of God. 
 
 Time would gather to itself the same power with 
 place. Certain set hours of prayer, and certain set days 
 of fasting, would promise better answers and results than 
 others. 
 
 Words would become holy, so as to be retained for 
 
CERTAIN SPURIOUS DESIGNS. 117 
 
 their mystic value, even with embarrassment and incon- 
 venience, nay with seeming absurdity, when they have 
 become no longer the vernacular tongue. 
 
 I might fill out the mistake more completely, by 
 writing a complete list of every thing prominent in 
 worship — official dress and gesture, church furniture and 
 arrangement, &c., &c. — but my end is already answered. 
 
 Now, to the realization of all this, it is a little strange 
 with what well-yoked agreement Paganism and nominal 
 Christianity unite to contribute. Let me run over briefly 
 a list of actual, or suspected instances. 
 
 As to sacred gifts — we have the Corban of the Jew, 
 that well-known sentence, claiming, in alms sent to the 
 temple, virtue above all other charities, and excuse from 
 the most holy debts of gratitude or kindred ; we have 
 the money of the Hindoo on the altar of his idol, as a 
 propitiation against what he fears, or a price for what 
 he hopes ; and we have the varied forms of mass, in- 
 dulgence, and absolution, in which the Papist buys a 
 pardon for himself, or for the dead. 
 
 As to sacraments, we hav^e the reliance upon circum- 
 cision of the Mohammedans and Jews, upon a bath in 
 the Ganges by the Indian devotee, and upon the " opus 
 operatum" of baptism and the eucharist by professed 
 branches of the modern church. 
 
 As to words, w^e have liturgies and forms of prayer, 
 held fast from an imagined sacredness, after their lan- 
 guage has become dead, — the Hebrew liturgy of the 
 Jew — the Syriac of the Greek — and the Latin of the 
 Roman, with many additional instances in the obsolete 
 languages of Eastern heathen. 
 
 Then as to place, time, dress, &c., we have the groves, 
 and temples, and churches; the matins and vespers, and 
 
118 DANGER OF ATTRIBUTING TO EXTERNALS, ETC. 
 
 the "new moons and appointed feasts," the fasts and 
 saints' days ; the phylacteries and bordered garments, 
 the tonsure and cowl and cassock ; the mitre and sur- 
 plice ; not all, of course, nor, always, idolatrous, but of 
 whose likeness, in the reverence and importance they 
 have claimed to the result we have imagined, the reader, 
 in each instance of their use, will be able to decide. 
 
 5. The church enforces the truth. 
 
 The means in this case is discipline, a rational instru- 
 mentality, which, by censure and excommunication in 
 the visible church, humbles the offender, and reminds 
 him of corresponding evils, which, if the discernment of 
 the ecclesiastical court has been true, he is in peril of, 
 in his relations with the church invisible. Now, the mis- 
 take of superstition would be, to drop the idea of natural 
 instrumentality, and give a ghostly power over those 
 evils, themselves, into the hands of the church. Its mere 
 declarative censures would be exchanged into efficient 
 curses; its sentence of visible excommunication into 
 effective banishment from the hope of life. 
 
 Having thus found in the prolific mother of all idolatry, 
 and in her varied progeny, got by one law of birth, 
 parent and kindred for the whole class of alleged church 
 abuses, to whose catalogue they must go the moment 
 proof against them is complete, let us attempt its com- 
 pletion, at once, by resuming, again, our main line of 
 argument. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 The uses in religion, as we understand them, of every- 
 thing that presents itself to sense, have been seen beauti- 
 fully to harmonize in one design : — 
 
 Externals teach (instruct and discipline) in piety; 
 that piety being the only condition, on man's part, of 
 salvation. 
 
 Error has never the singleness of truth, and it is, there- 
 fore, hard to express all the spurious uses under a 
 second, general design. The nearest expression to this, 
 however, of which language is capable, is, perhaps, the 
 following : 
 
 1. Certain externals directly impart grace; and 2, 
 are, themselves, essential conditions of salvation. 
 
 This sentence, too, is practically correct, as it gives 
 the precise doctrine of our opponents as to " certain 
 externals." It only fails by asserting too much of cer- 
 tain others, which, though they claim a supernatural 
 efficacy, forbidding them to be ranked (as we rank all) 
 as mere natural means, still, offer their efficacy, under 
 some condition, on the one hand, or assert their necessity 
 as not totally absolute, on the other. 
 
 How often and how far — under what exceptions and 
 with what reserves those who differ from us on these 
 
120 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 points will adopt the sentence, can be best judged by 
 glancing over some of the rites of their religion. 
 
 Roman Catholics believe that the soul of an infant 
 receives direct grace in baptism — in such sense as that, 
 dying without baptism, it shall fail of heaven, but, with 
 it, shall be received there.^ In this case, of course, the 
 sentence holds good, unconditionally, in both its members. 
 
 They say, again, that the baptism of adults " remits 
 original sin, and actual guilt — however enormous,"^ and 
 " with it, all the punishment due to sin ;"•= that it " re- 
 plenishes our souls with divine grace ;"'' that it " unites 
 us to Christ, as members to their head ;"° that it " seals 
 us with a character that can never be effaced from the 
 soul,"^ and '' opens to us the portals of Heaven ;"s all 
 this, however, only on condition, beforehand, of " faith, 
 compunction, and a firm purpose of avoiding sin ;'"' and 
 that it is essential,^ with a very narrow exception, (in 
 case of martyrs, " and adults, who, not being able to 
 have the sacrament administered to them, die with a 
 sincere desire of receiving it, accompanied by, and inclu- 
 ded in perfect charity ,"J) to the salvation of the soul. 
 
 They teach that the sacrifice of the mass " is not less 
 
 * " Infants, unless baptized, cannot enter heaven, and, hence, we may 
 well conceive how deep the enormity of their guilt, who, through negli- 
 gence, suffer them to remain without the grace of the sacrament longer 
 than necessity may require." Catechism of Council of Trent, p. 164, 
 (American edition.) 
 
 ^ Catechism of the Council of Trent, p. 167. (Baltimore edition.) 
 <= Ibid. p. 169. d Ibid. p. 172, « Ibid. p. 173. 
 
 f Ibid. p. 174. s Ibid. p. 175. ^ ibid. p. 233. 
 
 * " Unless they are regenerated through the grace of baptism, be their 
 parents Christians, or infidels, they are born to eternal misery and ever- 
 lasting destruction." Ibid. p. 162. 
 
 J Catechism of the Christian Doctrine, (2d ed.) p. 86. 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 121 
 
 available when offered for them," (the dead,) " than when 
 offered in atonement for the sins, in alleviation of the 
 punishments, the satisfactions, the calamities, or for the 
 relief of the necessities of the living ;"* and that some 
 such sacrifice, under the hand of the living, is indispensa- 
 bly necessary to the relief of the dead. 
 
 They believe that the eucharist " imparts grace to the 
 soul,"^ only, however, on condition of certain acts and 
 exercises of preparation.'' 
 
 The doctrine of certain Protestants approaches these 
 in all degrees of nearness. They believe that the sacra- 
 ments, — we need not stop to particularize, — are in such 
 sense efficacious to life; that the soul excluding itself 
 from them must be given over to God's " uncovenanted 
 mercies.'"^ Opinions of this kind, in churches once pro- 
 testing against Rome, are not yet sufficiently matured 
 to be definitely, or harmoniously, or at all, authoritatively, 
 (by any concordant act of council or convention), enter- 
 
 » Catalogue of the Christian Doctrine, 2d ed., p. 166. ^ Ibid., p. 220. 
 
 <: Ibid., p. 223. 
 
 ^ " Baptism gives life." Pusey^s Sermon, p. 6. " Baptism containeth 
 the remission of sins, and hath the germ of spiritual life." Ibid., p. 5, 
 N. Y. ed. " In baptism two very different causes are combined : the 
 one, God himself; the other, a creature" (water) " which He hath thought 
 fit to hallow to that end." Ox. Tr., vol. 2, p. 26. " This miracle." Ibid., 
 vol. 2, p. 68. In baptism " the old man is laid aside, the new taken ; he 
 entereth a sinner, he ariseth justified." Vol. 2, p. 47. " According both 
 to the declaration of our Lord and our faith, it is truly flesh and truly 
 blood. And these, received into us, cause that we are in Christ and 
 Christ in us." Pusei/s Sermon on the Eucharist (N. Y.), p. 7. " His 
 flesh and blood in the sacrament shall give life, not only because they 
 are the flesh and blood of the incarnate Word, who is life, but also 
 because they are the very flesh and blood which were given and shed 
 for the life of the world." Idem, p. 10. 
 
 11 
 
122 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 tained ; we, therefore, present them in language only 
 not too general to meet our purpose. 
 
 It appears, then, that the first member of our proposi- 
 tion : — Certain externals directly impart grace, is a true 
 expression in every instance of the class of opinions that 
 are in question ; Baptism, Eucharist, or Confirmation — 
 Unction or Penance, all being thought directly to confer 
 grace, only, some under a condition, some uncondition- 
 ally. 
 
 It appears, moreover, that the second member, — And 
 are themselves essential conditions of salvation, is 
 avowed in some instances, and disavowed in others. 
 From which, of course, we gather, that in principle it 
 is maintained, that an external may be absolutely essen- 
 tial to salvation, one or two, actually, being so. 
 
 Now, it shall be our aim to show, that neither member 
 of the proposition can be true, no external being, either, 
 directly efficient, or absolutely necessary ; — that the first 
 member is false, even when conditional — still more pal- 
 pably false when unconditional ; and that it gathers to 
 itself a still higher measure of evident falsehood, when 
 associated with the last member. 
 
 I. " God is a spirit." * Certain externals (i. e. matter 
 in some form or change) directly impart grace.' Be- 
 tween these is the first inconsistency. 
 
 If God has ordered it so, that certain externals shall 
 directly secure grace. He has done it necessarily, as in 
 the nature of things indispensable to man's salvation; or, 
 He has done it of choice, as better than other, possible 
 arrangements, i. e. as tending best to His design. 
 
 He has not done it necessarily, as indispensable to 
 man's salvation, for that would be absurd, on two 
 
 I 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 123 
 
 accounts ; 1st, That man was saved (as all but apostate 
 Jews admit) without such direct efficacy of externals 
 under a former dispensation; and 2d, That it would be 
 a blank denial of the spirituality, either of God, or of 
 man, or of both, by making matter, in its changes indis- 
 pensable, and that, not in any intelligent or intelligible 
 way, as a medium of influence between one and the 
 other — i. e. between an infinite and a finite mind, in 
 working the one upon the other a spiritual change. 
 The idea is out of the question, and we believe is never 
 entertained. 
 
 Then He must have done it in choosing between dif- 
 ferent expedients, and as best matching His design. 
 Now His design in all religion, and, therefore, in these 
 parts of it among the rest, is to lead men to the intelli- 
 gent, hearty, and truthful service of God, a spirit. The 
 step pertinent to our inquiry, then, would be, how far 
 such a law of externals would tend to this design? If a 
 priest in due form sprinkle a little water upon the head 
 of a child, and it dies, it will go to heaven ; if he does 
 not, and it dies, it will be shut out for ever ; and that 
 not, in nature, a necessary arrangement, but one chosen 
 out of others to serve a plan, that plan being to lead 
 men to the spiritual worship of a spiritual God. How 
 do these things agree ? 
 
 Were such ceremonial acts — the act of baptism for 
 example — an isolated thing, a thing between one soul 
 and God, the reader might see, without the least confu- 
 sion of mind, that they could not be valuable in them- 
 selves, but only because of the heart that might be in 
 them. For this much is already made sure, that mind 
 must worship mind ; for " God is a spirit, and they that 
 worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." 
 
124 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 But an opponent would claim, and we dare not but 
 admit a difference between church benefits and the 
 heart's obedience — that there are private acts of service 
 to God and official acts of influence upon men, — that a 
 man, or an aggregate of men (the church), stand in two 
 aspects toward externals, using them, either, as turned 
 toward heaven, in the way of obedience, or upon the 
 earth, in dealing with the souls of others ; and that in 
 the latter use of them, the rule "in spirit and in truth" 
 has not the same authority. For example, a man may 
 stand up and preach the gospel, with his heart quite 
 alien from his work ; and yet the words he utters, and 
 the tones and gestures that impress them, may reach 
 their end and save the people. So a man may admi- 
 nister the sacraments, and without discerning the Lord's 
 body himself, may exhibit it to others; and without 
 sealing one vow himself, may administer many vows. 
 
 An opponent, then, might argue, — I admit that an act 
 of simple obedience to God must be " in spirit," but an 
 act of official ministry to men may be not " in spirit," 
 and yet work its end. 
 
 The difference between his opinion and our own is 
 nothing, if he goes no farther. But should he go on to 
 argue that the subject of that ministerial act might be 
 directly benefited by it, at the time, in any other mea- 
 sure, or by any other rule, than as his heart went after 
 it, so that neither minister, nor subject, nor auditor, 
 should proportion the benefit by his faith at the time, 
 and yet that benefit immediately flow, we join issue with 
 him at once; there can be no benefit of externals in 
 themselves, and none, except as some heart is in them. 
 
 One would suppose that the law of value in church 
 administrations would be the same as in private acts of 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 125 
 
 obedience, because we see not but that the reason, " God 
 is a spirit," is as pertinent in one case as in the other. 
 If God, in asking obedience from man, sees fit to say 
 that it shall consist in exercises of mind, and not (for 
 their own sake) motions of body, we see not why, for 
 Uke cause, in asking conditions for such a thing as salva- 
 tion, He should not ask exercises of mind, and not (for 
 their own sake) motions of body. If God must be 
 served by man " in Spirit," i. e. Spirit serving spirit, 
 God not being pleased, nor man impressed with any 
 other service, and if, when externals come in at all, 
 they must come in inteUigibly, to help, and not mysti- 
 cally, to supersede (an argument which the Bible plainly 
 gives into our hands"), then, by like reasoning, it would 
 seem that if man must be saved by God, it must be " in 
 spirit," i. e. spirit saving Spirit, and externals, where 
 they come in at all, must come in inteUigibly, to dis- 
 play, and not mystically, to hide the working of a spirit. 
 
 But something more than supposition is within our 
 reach. 
 
 Recurring to Chapter II., we find this test prepared 
 for us : — It cannot be the design of religion to teach any 
 doctrine, or ordinance that obscures the spirituahty of 
 God. 
 
 If God plans religion to meet its ends ; above all, if 
 God plans religion to meet the peculiar necessities of 
 men, He must plan it so as to keep up before their eyes 
 His own spirituality. The most superstitious person 
 that calls himself a Christian, will admit, that there has 
 been a heavy downward tendency of man, from exalt- 
 ing God as' a pure spirit, to degrading Him into the 
 
 * John iv. 24. 
 11* 
 
126 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 lowest forms of matter. The idol proves it — and the 
 beast and the bird,'— in every quarter of the world taking 
 the name of gods ; the carcass on the altar proves it — 
 and the knife of circumcision and the water of the river 
 — all over the world doing the work of God ; so that if 
 God intended for man the directest temptation to his 
 strongest sin, He would give him some form of matter, 
 which, for its own sake, as so appointed, and not for the 
 piety that went with it, should secure divine benefits. 
 
 Besides, the most superstitious person believes that, 
 every where, men have left too much to the body and 
 too little to the soul in acts of private obedience, and 
 that the hardest labour of a man, whether spent upon 
 himself or others, is to keep the hands, or the lips, or the 
 knees from confounding their part in worship with the 
 worship of the mind. So that if God intended the di- 
 rectest temptation to man to one of his strongest sins, 
 He would let that highest human good, the soul's salva- 
 tion, depend upon a form — some uttered mass, or sprin- 
 kled baptism, or kneeHng penance, — the outward act of 
 one man for another. This then is our naked argument. 
 It cannot be the design of God to teach that any ex- 
 ternal, whatsoever, directly imparts grace, because, with- 
 out answering the great design of religion, which is to 
 lead men to the truthful and spiritual worship of God, a 
 Spirit, it directly tempts them to clothe Him in a mate- 
 rial form, and to worship Him in a material way. 
 
 II. God is our Redeemer. " Certain externals are 
 essential conditions of salvation." Between these is the 
 second inconsistency. 
 
 Let me premise, — The ground of any blessing must 
 necessarily be a condition of that blessing ; but a condi- 
 
 * Rom. i. 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 127 
 
 lion need not necessarily be the ground. The death of 
 Christ is the ground of a sinner's pardon, and, therefore, 
 must be a condition of that pardon ; but baptism might be 
 a condition without necessarily being its ground. This 
 fact only casts the more upon us, in the way of argu- 
 ment. 
 
 We might have brief despatch with the error, if it 
 would narrow itself down to the position, that notwith- 
 standing it is for the sake of Christ, and on the ground 
 of his redemption, that grace is given, yet, that it is 
 given for the sake of the sacraments, and on the ground 
 of their administration, they being in some sort an expia- 
 tion for sin, or a propitiation of favour. The two posi- 
 tions might be seen so evidently to clash, that we might 
 well afford to dismiss them with the simplest statement. 
 And we know not that any intelligent man would stand 
 up to defend them as ideas that could ever blend to- 
 gether in the same system. 
 
 As conditions, merely, the sacraments are best held 
 up by errorists — conditions made such by God's special 
 appointment; and it is in this less manageable shape 
 that w^e must meet the error. It is the shape in which 
 it is most plausible for them, and hardest for us to over- 
 throw, but then, in which, if overthrown, d, fortiori, it is 
 overthrown in its less plausible and more repulsive 
 forms. The infant, for example, is saved by baptism, 
 not because baptism atones for any guilt lying at its 
 door, but because God has chosen to make the rite the 
 indispensable channel of His grace. So the adult is 
 pardoned under its administration, by the like sovereign 
 pleasure enduing it with power, mystically, to seal and 
 sanctify, and not because there is sufficient merit, either 
 in his preparation for it, or submission to it, to earn its 
 efficacy. 
 
128 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 Let me, at the outset, be clearly understood in saying, 
 that there is nothing directly absurd, or unjust in such a 
 condition. The infant is in God's hands. He may suffer 
 it to expand its depraved intellectual and moral powers 
 in another world, with the same justice that he may in 
 this. There is nothing in the principles of rectitude to 
 decide that He may suffer it to live, and grow up de- 
 praved here, but must not suffer it to die and be de- 
 praved elsewhere. To save it, or not, therefore, after 
 death, is a question that might be left, with no answer 
 from justice, for His good pleasure to decide. Then to 
 save some and abandon some, and to make baptism or 
 any thing else the distinguishing condition, may, indeed, 
 be proved inconsistent and unwise, but not, in itself, 
 unjust or palpably absurd. So, too, of adults ; God 
 would be righteous, if all of them had been left to perish. 
 To make any thing then a condition, whether it be a 
 piece of money, or the motion of a hand, or the most 
 trivial thought or look, could not be unrighteous, — 
 simply, because, where God has an unconditional right 
 to give, He may set what condition He pleases to His 
 gift. There could be nothing intrinsically absurd or 
 unjust in the promise that if, this moment, I should write 
 the name Jehovah on the paper before me, my soul, for 
 Christ's sake, should pass in an instant from death to 
 life ; and more than this, that I should never be con- 
 verted unless the name was wa'itten. 
 
 Many things, however, not, at first blush, absurd, may 
 yield to very brief and very simple argum.ent, and this 
 seems to be one — the idea that any external could be 
 singled out by a wise and consistent God, and made 
 essential, or in any sort directly efficient, to salvation. 
 
 The end of religion stands confessed to be to lead man 
 to the intelligent service of God. Nothing in rite or tenet. 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 129 
 
 not conducive to this end, can be admitted ; still less, that 
 clashes with it. Now Christians will speak still more 
 definitely, and exclude every thing not conducive to the 
 intelligent service of the three Persons of the Godhead ; 
 and will thence adaiit, that to lead the minds of men up 
 to Christ in duty and regard, is comprised in the whole 
 intention of that religion, visible or invisible, that God 
 hath revealed. All the lines of revelation may be ex- 
 pected to meet in Him, and certainly nothing, the direct 
 tendency of which is to lead men to nnisjudge or forget 
 Him, can form a part of His religion. By reasoning 
 akin to this, before, w^e framed our second test. It can- 
 not be the design of religion to teach any doctrine or 
 ordinance that obscures the work of Christ as our Re- 
 deemer. 
 
 Observe, before we offer to condemn by this test 
 those few misinterpreted ceremonies, how beautifully 
 every thing else in religion passes it. Not only the 
 negative fact, that it does not obscure, but the positive 
 fact, that it illustrates, is manifest of the whole circle 
 of Christianity besides. Its scriptures teach; and its 
 churches teach; and its clergy teach; and its sacra- 
 ments teach (we mean when construed as seals and 
 emblems) ; and much of all their teaching is the testi- 
 mony of Jesus. Every thing has some eye to that; 
 nothing goes counter to it through all religion, except 
 that part where the opinion of our opponents touches. 
 If an external be insisted on as efficient or essential, and 
 yet it cannot be shown — as it will be seen it cannot — 
 how God, by ordaining it so, furthers an intelligent ser- 
 vice of Himself,— Father, Son, and Spirit,— the case 
 would stand alone, a strange exception in the circle of 
 divine enactments. 
 
 "The word" — "the truth" — "wisdom and instruc- 
 
130 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 tion" — " exhortation" and " preaching" — " correction" 
 or " chastisement," are the language that comes at once 
 to the pen of the inspired writer whenever the means of 
 salvation form the matter in question. Where sacra- 
 ments, which some bid us call the chief channels of 
 grace, are mentioned once, the truth, in some mode of 
 its natural and simple dispensation, is mentioned many 
 times ; and for a single instance wdiere the abuse of a 
 sacrament is rebuked, and its evil results depicted, may- 
 be shown a thousand denouncing the perversion of the 
 word of God, and perdition as its consequence. 
 
 But let us hasten on. We would not denounce the 
 mystic rites that are in question, merely, because they 
 fail to do what all rehgion besides contributes harmo- 
 niously to do, i. e., to lead men by natural means (of 
 course, under a supernatural efficiency of the Holy 
 Spirit) to Christ ; but because they do just the opposite 
 — by direct tendency, leading souls away from a recog- 
 nition of Christ as their Redeemer. 
 
 If a man be told that the sprinkling of w^ater upon his 
 infant child, in orderly baptism, will work a change upon 
 its soul, and that if it die in infancy, that sprinkling is 
 the settled condition of its salvation, it is affirmed that 
 the direct working of the doctrine is to obscure in his 
 mind the idea of pardon for the sake of Christ. (1.) It 
 makes that idea complex. It adds to it a second, which 
 must be grasped with it, making it much easier for our 
 weak and hostile minds to misconceive and abuse it. 
 (2.) It misleads by resemblance. Christ's death is one 
 condition; the child's baptism is another; we grant very 
 different in their nature ; we grant not absurd in their 
 union ; but so far alike as to usurp each other's ground 
 before the ignorant and prejudiced minds of the mass of 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 131 
 
 fallen men ; both essential ; — the visible and carnal thing, 
 on that very account, most conspicuous of the two ; 
 Xilso in the order of nature, the antecedent of the other, 
 and decisive of it in the way of occasion and result. 
 The temptation would be too much for man. Souls 
 wishing, as all originally do, to push Christ out of sight, 
 would seem to see in it far too direct sanction to trust 
 to that condition of the two which is more peculiarly in 
 their power. Precisely so with adult baptism ; just so 
 far as men hope for grace through the rite itself, and 
 not simply from Christ by that faith w^hich the rite stirs 
 up; and just so far as they hold the rite essential to 
 remission, will they be in danger of confounding the 
 arbitrary condition of baptism w^th the fundamental and 
 eternal condition of Christ's atonement. 
 
 If it be said, the fear that men would ever exercise 
 the wrong kind of faith in such simple rites is absurd, 
 inasmuch as the weakest intellect would revolt at the 
 idea of withdrawing trust from Christ to place it on a 
 little water, or some simple form, we answer, the 
 strongest intellects have not revolted at it. How was 
 it with the Jews ? Trust due only to Christ, taken off 
 from Him and reposed in circumcision and descent from 
 Abraham, and in divers washings and sacrifices, was 
 not too revolting for the Jews, even though without the 
 temptation, as all confess, of a sovereign act of God 
 making any of their rites inseparable from salvation* 
 If, without this temptation, therefore, they fell so griev- 
 ously into the folly of trusting to Christ's emblems rather 
 than to Himself, — so that a whole epistle had to be writ- 
 ten to those of Gallatia, dealing with this single error, — 
 d, fortioriy would no strength of man be a safeguard 
 against the folly, now, if those emblems have given 
 
132 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 place to others, which are to superadd the share of their 
 own direct efficiency and necessity. 
 
 Now, we say, nothing can be religion which contra^^ 
 venes the very object of religion, and nothing can be of 
 God whose direct tendency is to lead from God. There- 
 fore, by no sovereign good pleasure of His, or at all 
 with his approval, are externals to be, in themselves, 
 essential, or in any degree directly efficacious to salva- 
 tion. 
 
 And to fortify this conclusion, let us state three facts, 
 never known to be denied. (1.) There is an "offence 
 in the cross," which makes the idea of free redemption 
 abhorrent to unconverted men. There is a stupidity in 
 the heart, which renders it easy to be deceived, espe- 
 cially in the vital truths of religion. No quality in 
 God's revelation, then, could be a greater blessing to 
 man than earnest plainness in telling him the truth, and 
 care to put away all confusion. (2.) That ordination of 
 God, by which it is pretended that certain externals are 
 clothed with mystic power, is arbitrary (in the innocent 
 sense of that word), and cannot be indispensable to reli- 
 gion, for the simplest of all reasons, that religion once 
 flourished without it. (3.) No grand cardinal advantage 
 can be discovered in it, no wide-reaching influence to 
 be expected from it, pointing the careless world, or 
 Christians, more happily, to the knowledge of God — no 
 one thing of an important kind, to make it seem better 
 to God than the plan we assert, of holiness as the sole 
 condition, of the Spirit as the sole supernatural effi- 
 ciency, and of rites as the mere natural means, acting 
 on obvious principles. We know trivial advantages 
 will be invented, but nothing cardinal, nothing at all to 
 counterbalance the amazing evil of the system. Then, 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 133 
 
 we say, here is positive evidence that it is not from 
 God. 
 
 It will be argued in reply, that church-membership 
 and the sacraments are by express command of God, 
 and are, therefore, necessary, inasmuch as no Christian 
 can wilfully neglect them. Close to that sentence if an 
 opponent will stand, and will plead for no other neces- 
 sity, we perfectly agree with him ; but he will observe 
 that by that sentence the sacraments are no more neces- 
 sary than any other known duty which the Christian 
 may not wilfully neglect, — alms-giving, or patriotism, 
 or what you please, from the list of virtues. 
 
 He does not plead for the value of the sacrament, 
 simply as a good work; — that properly understood (i. e., 
 the blessing, moral exercise, &c., of a good work) is 
 our ground, — but for its value to the infant, and to the 
 man in purgatory, with no goodness in it, and for its 
 value to the living believer in itself, and not propor- 
 tioned to his goodness in it. The sacrament with him 
 is a God-given channel of grace ; not in every case, nor 
 merely in any, a God-rewarded good work. 
 
 If it be put on that ground, however, it is argued, 
 with still more force, absence from the sacraments is 
 not always wilful, nor, with deluded heretics or ignorant 
 men, ever so. Then shall an error in faith about exter- 
 nals, as to which, from their very nature, there can be 
 no internal evidence, no self-witness of the Spirit, cost 
 me more than an error in grave questions in doctrinal 
 theology 1 May I err as to predestination, or persever- 
 ance, the Sonship of Christ, or man's ability to repent, 
 and keep my place, as many by confession do, in the 
 true communion of the genuine church, but be cast out 
 and perish for misjudging the necessity of an outward 
 
 12 
 
134 A sruRious design of certain externals. 
 
 ceremonial ; that, too, when, in the first case, piety alone 
 might lead me right, and in the other, only special and 
 sovereign enactments of God? And, on the other hand, 
 may I commit all kinds of outrageous and self-condemn- 
 ing sins, and be forgiven, but for failing to place my 
 body in certain positions, under certain officers, and 
 that not wilfully, but from believing otherwise, be cast 
 off for ever 1 The idea on this ground is, what we have 
 confessed it is not on the other, — openly and, at first 
 glance, absurd. Then I may blaspheme Christ, and be 
 pardoned, but, dying without baptism, by a certain line 
 of ministry, shall carry up to judgment an unpardonable 
 sin. 
 
 No ; it cannot be from holiness in the act, or sin, 
 merely in its neglect, that salvation is made to depend 
 on baptism, but simply that in God's good pleasure he 
 has chosen to make it the vehicle of grace. We fall 
 back then upon our former ground of refutation. There 
 is no tribute to the grand purpose of religion in such a 
 doctrine, but, on the contrary, direct temptation in it to 
 abandon Christ. It is, therefore, not from God. 
 
 We cannot have done, however, without meeting our 
 ov^m argument turned against itself. 
 
 Why is faith ordained by God as necessary and effi- 
 cacious to salvation 1 If the design of religion be to 
 make Christ's work stand forth as the grand procuring 
 cause, why is it ordered that we must be saved by be- 
 lieving? Grant that Christ's righteousness and our faith 
 occupy totally diflferent positions, one being the ground, 
 the other the means, of our salvation, still they are both 
 conditions; and so long as the latter, beyond, question, 
 obscures in many minds the glory and the fulness of the 
 former, why should not our Saviour's righteousness, by 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CEP.TAIN EXTERNALS. 135 
 
 itself, avail, with no additional condition? Does not this 
 instance to the contrary vitiate the argument, that Scrip- 
 ture cannot design to teach what by direct tendency 
 obscures the atonement 1 
 
 In reply, let it be freely admitted that faith is liable to 
 the abuse with which it is charged. Superstition is 
 often busy on it, working her usual change, making 
 faith forget itself as an instrument, and stand as the 
 ground of pardon ; " God, for Christ's sake, has lowered 
 the demands of His law, and now faith is our obe- 
 dience, and in its own right wins the favour that we 
 need." That this error is a serious and actual one, it is 
 out of our power to question. The force of the case, 
 however, as setting against ourselves, may be met by a 
 few plain distinctions, showing that, as to exposure to 
 mistake, the doctrine of faith is not at all on a level with 
 the exceptionable doctrine of sacraments. 
 
 1. Faith is, in its own nature, indispensable to salva- 
 tion. God might make provision to show^ favour to his 
 people without their believing. He does it. Every 
 infant that is saved by dying, and every adult believer, 
 before his conversion, afford instances of such antici- 
 pated favour. But that saving act which gives present 
 blessings under the covenant, actually beginning the 
 good that has been held in store, cannot do it in the 
 absence of faith, because holiness is the essence of that 
 good, and faith is the leading element of holiness. To 
 save, then, without faith, so far as such an act might 
 terminate on the sinner, would be nothing, working no 
 change, and bringing no relief. The condition of the 
 redeemed soul would be as good before as after it. 
 Man could not be saved with any present blessing to 
 himself, in this life, without faith ; nor, indeed, in any 
 
136 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS, 
 
 life, without, either faith, or that direct, spiritual sight 
 which shall hereafter answer to it. 
 
 How different those mystic instruments which men 
 would make co-ordinate to faith ! So far from being in 
 themselves indispensable, their most idolatrous supporters 
 admit that for ages they were unused and unknown in 
 the church. There is nothing in their own nature essen- 
 tial or even kindred to the gift of pardon, or to the bless- 
 ings of holiness. So far as any thing intrinsic can 
 decide, men might be saved before, after, or without 
 them, with absolute indifference. The appointment 
 claimed for them, therefore, as inseparable instruments, 
 since it must be altogether arbitrary, places the evil to 
 which they tend in a totally different light from that evil 
 which our depravity draws from the doctrine of faith. 
 
 2. Faith is itself a fruit of salvation. Therefore, only, 
 metonymically, is it a means at all. It looks to Christ's 
 atonement as its own procuring price. " For by grace 
 are ye saved through faith ; and that not of yourselves : 
 it is the gift of God."^ 
 
 In the order of time faith and salvation coincide.^ In 
 the order of condition, faith is first and salvation after- 
 ward.'' But in the order of nature, salvation is first, 
 and faith is its earliest benefit.'^ 
 
 Of course, there is a wide difference in this point be- 
 tween faith and a regenerating sacrament. 
 
 3. Faith, in its very -nature, honours Christ as the only 
 
 ^ Ephes. ii. 8. 
 
 ^ " He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life." John iii. 36. 
 
 c " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Acts 
 xvi. 31. 
 
 •^ " For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe 
 on Him, but also," &c. Pliil. i. 29. 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 137 
 
 foundation of trust. If its office then subserve the ends 
 of unbelief, it naust be precisely in the face of its defini- 
 tion ; because the very elements that constitute it are a 
 renunciation of self, and an exclusive reliance upon Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 It need not be said that no other instrument can be 
 conceived that so completely directs the adoring regards 
 of man, away from itself. This leads me to a fourth 
 distinction. 
 
 4. It is not the direct tendency of the doctrine of faith 
 to lead men to superstitious error. That it is liable to 
 perversion, has been cheerfully granted. But so are all 
 doctrines in the whole circle of revelation. The atone- 
 ment itself, i. e., free pardon by the blood of Jesus, has 
 had grafted upon it countless heresies. Universalism 
 has professed to grow out of it, and all antinomian 
 error; but is not its legitimate tendency quite opposite 
 from these? To speak definitely, is not the doctrine 
 calculated to do more good than harm, presenting more 
 truth tending to piety, than truth tempting to sin? If it 
 is, |hen therein it ditfers from the doctrine of the absolute 
 necessity of sacraments. 
 
 Any manner of mistrust of the whole argument, thus 
 brought to a close, may perhaps be best removed by 
 placing, side by side with its results, the results of a kin- 
 dred argument by an inspired apostle. Indeed, so 
 clearly does the apostle Paul first reason against, and 
 then pronounce against, the idea of the absolute effi- 
 ciency, or necessity of rites, as to make one fault of 
 every oiher argument a fair matter of question, the 
 fault of imagining itself of any use after his ample testi- 
 mony ; so plainly does he speak to the very point we 
 
 12* 
 
138 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 have in hand, and settle it by a twofold sanction— in- 
 spired argument and inspired assertion. 
 
 Paul was led to write to the church of Galatia by 
 hearing that it was tainted with Jewish heresies. Some 
 of its members, leaving the pure doctrine of Christ, had 
 resorted to the rites of the ceremonial law, under an 
 assurance, on the part of their teachers, that it was indis- 
 pensable to their salvation — precisely the counsel and 
 the claim of teachers among ourselves. The whole 
 epistle is shaped by these circumstances. Its drift is 
 this, " that a man is not justified by the works of the 
 law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ."* " If righteous- 
 ness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain ;"^ 
 meaning " by the law," in either case, not, as a stranger 
 to the usages of speech among the Jews might imagine, 
 the moral, but the ceremonial law, and meaning by " the 
 works of the law," not perfect moral obedience, but 
 attention to just such ceremonial rights as w^e are con- 
 sidering. That such is the meaning, the apostle has left 
 us ample means of proof. Observe what he calls " the 
 works of the law," when he comes to speak more defi- 
 nitely, — " the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto 
 ye desire again to be in bondage. Ye observe days and 
 months and times and years. I am afraid of you," &c.*^ 
 Indeed, he puts it past all question that ceremonial works, 
 and not perfect obedience, w^ere his mark, by himself 
 urging the necessity of perfect obedience, in case the rites 
 his opponents contended for were necessary, presup- 
 posing, of course, that this was a consequence that they 
 would not at all like to recognise. " Behold, I, Paul, say 
 
 *Gal. ii. 16. bGal. ii. 21. <= Gal. iv. 9, 10, 11. 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 139 
 
 unto you, that if ye be circumcised Christ shall profit 
 you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is 
 circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law."'' 
 
 It seems they mingled, as many now do, grace with 
 ceremonies as grounds of salvation — some hope in 
 Christ with much hope in their own ritual observances. 
 Indeed, Paul uses the fact that they were not willing 
 w^holly to abandon a reliance upon Christ, to impress 
 them with the folly of the rest of their belief. " Christ 
 is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are 
 justified by the law ; ye are fallen from grace.'"* 
 
 Lest any one should say, however, that he excludes 
 from our ground of trust only the old Jewish rites, by 
 no means the new Christian sacraments ; he makes his 
 argument one of principles, not merely of specific cases ; 
 that wherein it touches circumcision, touches baptism 
 and the eucharist. It admits of no confinement to any 
 form, or law, or age of external worship, but cuts oflT 
 the whole of it, in all times and lands, from any share 
 in what is of absolute necessity to salvation. That 
 closing declaration, " For in Christ Jesus neither cir- 
 cumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a 
 new creature,"*" is uttered in support of a sentiment as 
 general and as exclusive as any that Paul could choose 
 as the sum and ending of his argument. " God forbid 
 that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ."d 
 
 III. God is our Sanctifier. " Certain externals di- 
 rectly impart grace." Betw^een these is the third in- 
 consistency. 
 
 » Gal. V. 2, 3. b Gal. v. 4. <= Gal. vi. 15. ^ Gal. vi. 14. 
 
140 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 Our argument is cumulative. Though the first and 
 second steps were false, this last is distinct and new, 
 and by itself would serve our purpose with quite inde- 
 pendent proof 
 
 No conception can be had, we think, of more than 
 three general ways in which the idea of the efficacy of 
 externals can be interpreted. It must either be (1), that 
 the external has intrinsic power to renew the soul, ex- 
 clusive of the Spirit; or (2) that it has instrumental 
 power to renew, in the hand of the Spirit ; or (3) that it 
 has summoning power, by promise to mark the time of 
 the Spirit; in shorter words, that it is either (1) the 
 whole, or (2) the help, or (3) the signal of renewing 
 influence. 
 
 (1.) It is not the whole; that would revolt both par- 
 ties. Pretended Christians may err in the doctrines of 
 grace as they may, they cannot give up the opinion that 
 the Holy Ghost does something in the renewal of the 
 soul, and that that something, too, must be of a primary 
 kind, since nothing could be more complex in absurdity 
 than the idea of a spiritual Creator acting as auxiliary 
 to a material creature in renewing a spirit. That God 
 wills it so, and purposely stands aloof, and delegates to 
 matter spiritual powder ; or that they are both primary — 
 God and matter — working together and doing the same 
 things, is absurdity quite as great, only turned over in 
 another view. 
 
 Let it be clearly understood, therefore, that opinion 
 like this is not charged upon any educated advocate of 
 sacraments in the Popish form. However well con- 
 vinced that the error tends to something much like it in 
 the minds of the lower orders of the people, still we 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 141 
 
 hurry on, without caring to stop and argue formally, for 
 we are sure that no thinker will take me to task for it 
 as any omission. 
 
 (2.) But neither can an external be the directly effi- 
 cient auxiliary of the Holy Ghost in imparting grace. 
 What kind of efficacy does it borrow ? How does He 
 use it? Take what is substantial in a rite, whether it 
 be water or oil, or the person of the priest — for here the 
 efficiency must lie if any where, — let us know what 
 form of efficiency it assumes. Do you say, the water is 
 the channel of the Spirit? What do you mean, — that 
 He is present in it? He is every where. That He 
 moves with it, entering the soul as it touches the body ? 
 This is nothing different from the third form of the error, 
 asserting only an attendant influence of the Spirit, — 
 that by promise, though altogether detached essentially 
 from the rite. He makes its administration the signal of 
 what He does. Do you say the water is the helper of 
 the Spirit? Surely, no; not dumb matter the helper of 
 the Almighty in dealing with the soul. Do you say it 
 is the essential instrument of the Spirit ? Not so, cer- 
 tainly, if for the first four thousand years of the history 
 of our redemption, by all admission. He had no such in- 
 strument. Do you say not the essential instrument, but 
 a temporary one, endued with mystic virtue, under the 
 hand of the consecrating priest, by God's good pleasure, 
 during this dispensation? Then, we say, sift this idea; 
 try to find some resting-place for thought upon it, and 
 see if such mystic virtue can, in the nature of things, be 
 given to the water, so as to be any thing else than an 
 attending influence of the Spirit. The water is applied, 
 and, in the very act, by preconcerted covenant, the 
 Spirit is applied. The Holy Ghost docs not store him- 
 
142 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 self in the water, except metonymica%, by promise, 
 nor does He lend His own attributes to the water; for 
 this last idea is blasphemous, and the first is no idea at 
 all. The intelligent Papist, therefore, as soon as he 
 begins to think, must be driven to the third form of the 
 error ; and on that account this form has been, perhaps, 
 the most generally received — (except in the anomalous 
 case of the eucharist) — with all the reasoning class in 
 that communion. 
 
 (3). As the priest baptizes with water, or imposes 
 hands, or anoints with oil, sins are remitted by God, and 
 grace is imparted by the Holy Ghost." This, the hardest 
 to set aside of the three, inasmuch as it has nearest 
 affinity with reason, shall discover to us now its utter 
 falsehood. We have narrowed down the error to one 
 definite form, that we may have something single before 
 our minds ; not at all to escape the others, because, 
 a fortiori, if our reasoning proves this false, it will esta- 
 blish the same of them. 
 
 ' The doctrine thus worded differs totally from ours, in this. We te- 
 lieve that remission is given in view of faith, stirred up by the sacra- 
 ment ; they believe that it is given in view of the sacrament, in some 
 cases, without faith, as of infants, &c. ; and, in others, not at all in closest 
 connexion with faith, or by means of it, or in proportion to it ; but simply 
 in reference to it, as a minor condition, or there being no bar in the total 
 want of it. In our case, faith is the grand means, and the sacrament of 
 value, only so far as it enlists faith. In theirs, the sacrament is the 
 means, and faith — (and that in some cases only) — a mere collateral 
 condition. 
 
 " This may even be set down as the essence of sectarian doctrine, to 
 consider faith, and not the sacraments, as tlie proper instrument of justi- 
 fication, and other gospel gifts ; instead of holding, that the grace of 
 Christ comes to us altogether from without, (as from Him, so through 
 externals of His ordaining), faith being but the sine qua non, the neces- 
 sary condition on our parts, for duly receiving it." Oxford Tracts, Am, 
 Ed., Advert, p. 5. 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTALN EXTERNALS. 143 
 
 Let it be said frankly, there is no prima facie absur- 
 dity in the opinion. We have chosen the form above 
 given, mainly on this account, that we cannot despatch 
 it, as we might the others, by help of contradiction borne 
 on its very face, but must let its refutation rest back on 
 fundamental principles. The Spirit can renew the soul 
 when He pleases, and, therefore, can make any, the most 
 trivial act of man, or change of matter, the signal of His 
 work. The inconsistency is great, but must be sought 
 deeper than the surface. 
 
 What if the Almighty should command me to carve 
 a marble statue, and set it in a niche in my study wall, 
 and go through my daily devotions before it ? What 
 though He promise special presence in the marble — not 
 actual presence specially, for that is absurd ; He is pre- 
 sent every where ; but such a presence as, that every 
 where else, He would be a dumb and deaf God, careless 
 of my prayers, but there all attention and mercy t At 
 first view there would be no self-contradiction in the 
 offer. As God is bound to hear nowhere, He might hear 
 any where, and I should have cause for gratitude that, 
 though in this little space of all the globe, and before this 
 single stone among the thousand other possible media 
 of worship, still I am admitted at all to an audience with 
 God. 
 
 The impossibility of such an offer, however, would be 
 apparent on a little closer reasoning. What is the whole 
 end of religion, whether in doctrine or worship? To 
 lead men to the service of God. Is service accepted by 
 him, any farther than it is intelligent? No; " God is a 
 Spirit," &c. Then would the statue bear any tribute to 
 the great object of religion? Plainly not; this binding 
 
144 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 necessary relation would tell nothing of the attributes 
 and ways of God, — no, but degrade, and obscure them ; 
 while, by a known law of the huaian heart, the 
 worshipper, and still more his children and his children's 
 children, would more and more merge the Deity in the 
 marble of the image. This would be a direct tendency ; 
 stamping the whole as not from God. 
 
 Precisely a like argument sets aside, even in its mild- 
 est form, the Popish idea of sacraments. Were God to 
 make them indispensable concomitants of grace, he 
 would be giving over to them, so far as the strongest 
 temptation can do it, man's reverence for the Holy 
 Ghost. The statue, as bearing on God, and such sacra- 
 ments, as bearing on the Spirit, stand in exactly kindred 
 relation. No one can pretend that they are indispensable 
 in the nature of things, or on any other ground than 
 God's special enactment. No one can see any cardinal 
 advantage in a rule that should make them indispen- 
 sable. No one can deny that man's dependence upon 
 the Spirit is one of the most odious to him of all those 
 that are vital in our creed. No one can make it seem, 
 therefore, any thing but false, that God, by an enactment 
 bearing no conceivable tribute to the truth, should frame 
 for man a direct temptation to a favourite error. 
 
 If it be urged, that the idea is preposterous, that 
 rational men could be put in peril of any such mistake 
 as to repose in water, or some carnal rite, trust due only 
 to the Spirit, we are content simply to point to what has 
 been done. A world that has worshipped leeks and 
 onions — cats and crocodiles — stocks and stones and 
 men, ought to be modest in singling out the blunders 
 against which it shall declare itself secure. God cannot 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 145 
 
 be the minister of crimes into which Jews and Christians 
 and Pagans have ahke proved themselves capable of 
 falling. 
 
 Not only does the vital necessity attributed to the rite 
 tempt men to view it with idolatrous regard, and aftbrd 
 them an easy method of deluding themselves away from 
 the burdensome task of striving after the Spirit, but the 
 man who administers, presents himself a still more 
 perilous object to the people. His will claims a deter- 
 mining power of life or death. The soul of the dying 
 infant, and the soul tortured in purgatory, both rest for 
 their happiness upon his decision. And measurably in 
 respect to all his living flock, eternal destinies are made 
 or marred — not mediately by his pious labours, but 
 directly at his official pleasure. If he refuse to baptize 
 the child, it fails of heaven ; if he neglect the mass for 
 the dead, they suffer on in purgatory ; if he withold 
 church ordinances from the living, he starves their souls 
 of grace. 
 
 Now, we are willing again to repeat, the absurdity of 
 this is not direct. God may make either nothing, or 
 dumb matter, or huinan act, mark the time of his grace ; 
 simply because, grace or no grace, grace now, or then, 
 or never, is a matter, in itself considered, altogether at 
 his own sovereign option. We may go farther, and tell 
 instances where human act is really decisive of grace. 
 A slight motion of my hand might plant a dagger in the 
 heart of some man already regenerate, and summon the 
 Spirit that moment to finish his sanctifying work. So 
 we might murder an infant, and our blow, w^e firmly be- 
 lieve, would be the signal for an instantaneous and per- 
 fect change upon its soul. No, such connexion of man's 
 act and God's power, is itself absurd ; and where death 
 
 13 
 
146 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 is at once the interpreter and the rite, no ulterior incon- 
 sistency or damage appears. But an authoritative act, 
 in which a man is empowered, officially to decide 
 whether a soul shall live or die, presents an overwhelm- 
 ing temptation to the people. A God, who knows the 
 iron strength of superstition on our minds, and in how 
 many instances it has conquered all counter motives of 
 envy and pride, and led us to make deities of weak men 
 like ourselves^ could not, from the very end for which 
 he designs religion, and from the want of all tribute here 
 to such an end, could not ordain temptation so direct. 
 
 The argument may be ended, then, by quoting our 
 formal test :— It cannot be the design of religion to teach 
 any doctrine or ordinance that obscures the work of the 
 Holy Spirit as our Sanctifier ; a test that may be left 
 still more confidently with the reader, if he will go over 
 the commonly acknowledged facts of his religion, and 
 its externals, in that harmonious sense in which we have 
 explained them, and see how beautifully it answers to 
 them all. 
 
 But it does not, it will be said. It conflicts with the 
 office of the truth in sanctifying. If every thing should 
 point to the Spirit, why is it ordered that faith shall 
 come by hearing? One party says that the sprinkled 
 water of baptism is necessary to salvation, so that no 
 one, in any common way, is saved without it. Another 
 party says, that the carrying of the outward word, and 
 the motion of the lips, or of the pen in teaching, are ne- 
 cessary to salvation, so that no one, in any common 
 way, is saved without this. Now, both are externals ; 
 where is the difference? Why not let the work of the 
 Spirit stand out alone with no auxiliary ? 
 
 In reply, it may be said, — the lack of baptism would 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 147 
 
 not imply an absurdity, because, to give one reason out 
 of many, there was once a time when there was no such 
 ordinance. But the absence of the truth would imply 
 absurdity. What is the end of the Spirit's work 1 The 
 new birth of a nature, the main attribute of which is 
 thought. Now, before thought, as in the case of an 
 infant, we can conceive of a soul regenerated without 
 the truth. The Spirit's agency in the work is so direct 
 that we see not that it can be shown that where thought 
 is not active at the time, the work cannot go on for lack 
 of truth ; and it is not in that way that truth seems to 
 me to be necessary. For imagine a case. A man is 
 asleep. There is a heart there; and a heart in a 
 certain state ; and that state is such, that w^hen the cur- 
 rent of responsible thought begins again at waking, it 
 will be a polluted current. Now, to say that the Pow er 
 that makes the heart could not take that one in its dor- 
 mant condition and change it from one moral state to 
 another (of course without the truth), strikes me as 
 utterly without reason. It is not said. He might do it 
 consistently with this plan ; that does not touch the prin- 
 ciple ; but that He might do it, in the nature of things, 
 and consistently wnth the constitution of men, and that 
 He probably may do it in the cases of those infants who 
 die, or who are sanctified to God, if any be, from the 
 womb. 
 
 But when that sleeping heart wakes up, or the infant 
 comes of years, and is thinking and feeling at the time, 
 the case is different. He cannot be sanctified without 
 the truth. 
 
 He cannot be sanctified and remain as he is; for as 
 he is, he is thinking and feeling error. If he thinks on, 
 after the change, as he must, he must think truth ; for 
 
148 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CEPv-TAlN EXTERNALS. 
 
 that only is now consistent with his state. If he thinks 
 falsehood, pride, and prejudice, as before, he is not sanc- 
 tified, therefore he must be sanctified by, in, or accord- 
 ing to, the truth, as you may please to call it. The 
 heart imagined to be changed in its sleeping and un- 
 thinking hours, must wake up to behold the truth. The 
 heart changed in its thinking hours must be changed in 
 beholding the truth ; for the state and the current, i. e., 
 the heart and the thought, must grow clear and pure 
 together. 
 
 But this is not enough, it will be argued. It shows 
 the necessity of the presence of the truth, but not of its 
 instrumentality. It shows that when the eyes of a mind 
 are opened in conversion, the truth that it already pos- 
 sesses must appear before them in a new and spiritual 
 light, but not that truth must come in as a means in open- 
 ing those eyes. The Spirit does not convert so indis- 
 criminately in respect to time, as just to enlighten men's 
 minds to see spiritually the truth that chances to be in 
 them, without preference of this truth, to that of much 
 truth, to little, or of much attention to the truth, to no 
 attention, but He converts decidedly by the truth : that 
 is, He converts a man who is reading, or thinking, more 
 probably, than one who is ploughing, or trading, and 
 one who is hearing the Gospel in a church, more likely 
 than one who is pleading law, or casting up accounts. A 
 hardened man is made less so, generally, by something 
 that he hears, or reads, or thinks, and less and less so in 
 each stage of approach toward conversion by successive 
 entrances of truth. If converted, it is more likely to be 
 under some powerful sermon, than in a listless, unthinking 
 hour. If rapid in his growth in grace, it is apt to be by 
 much commerce with the truth ; and if ever cold and 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 149 
 
 backslidden, some visit of the truth will have more or 
 less to do with his recovery. In one word, conversion 
 is not only an opening of the eyes to the truth, but it is 
 truth opening the eyes. How, and why is this ? 
 
 In reply, let it be premised. Truth is not an indepen- 
 dent existence. It is a mere quality, neither spirit nor 
 matter. It is the law to which, under the Spirit's in- 
 fluence, the dispositions of the soul conform themselves, 
 like those vegetable laws of texture and colour, in which 
 a plant grows up. To say, as gross errorists do, that 
 the truth regenerates without the Spirit, is either boldly 
 metonymical, or absurd ; for the truth is nothing, and, 
 therefore, to attribute to it actual power, and that highest 
 power, too, of moulding a spirit, is quite in the face of 
 reason. No better sense can come out of it than this, 
 that man regenerates himself, in conformity with the 
 truth. 
 
 So, on like accounts, when men say that truth is, in 
 any common sense, the instrument of the Spirit in re- 
 generation, they speak metonymically, or falsely. Seek- 
 ing warrant for the language, in the idea that there can 
 be nothing like direct impact of one free spirit upon 
 another, and that, therefore, God cannot reach the soul 
 without the intervention of a third agent — truth. Some 
 have called truth the point, with which God pierces the 
 spiritual ear, or the couching instrument with which he 
 moves away the film from the spiritual eye ; figures 
 quite as unhappy, when so strictly meant, as the idea 
 from which their warrant is to come. How is God to 
 push or wield or drive the truth ? Truth is nothing. 
 How is He to grasp or press it home ? Spiritually, as 
 you please to view it, how is He, in default of His own 
 direct impact upon a spirit, to handle such a nonentity 
 
 13* 
 
150 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 as truth, and with it touch and move. He may make 
 men preach better, and write clearer, but that is not the 
 thing ; where does that power impinge that makes like 
 truth melt at one time, when it hardens at another ? 
 Not upon the truth ; for truth is truth ; the same (if the 
 same truth) at one time as another ; not sharper, not 
 stronger, not sweeter ; incapable of borrowing energy ; 
 no, not upon the truth, but directly upon the heart itself. 
 The Spirit that had impact on a Spirit in creating, had 
 impact on it, still, in creating it anew. He comes di- 
 rectly up and opens the heart, that the truth may shine 
 in, and so, only, in a metonymical sense, gives power to 
 the truth. He uses His own genial energy, and melts 
 the heart, that the truth may pierce and enter, and so, 
 only, metonymically, is the truth " the sword of the 
 Spirit." 
 
 This is the spirit opening our eyes to the truth. But 
 now, too, we are ready to see how it is that the truth 
 opens our eyes — how, precisely, the truth is a means of 
 sanctification. We are satisfied that in this matter the 
 minds of men have suffered themselves to be unnecessa- 
 rily bewildered. 
 
 All living creatures grow by the exercise of their own 
 faculties. It seems a law of the universe. A tree grows 
 only when the mouths in its roots are drinking, and the 
 veins in its boughs are running, and the lungs in its 
 leaves are playing. An animal grows only with the 
 action of its nerves and glands and muscles. More 
 than this, it is by peculiar exercise of various organs, 
 that it grows well, if sick, or sick, if well. So, precisely, 
 with a living spirit. It grows by exercise : whether 
 stronger, or holier, or more depraved. 
 
 Adaai was born in depravity by an exercise, i. e., by 
 
A SPUillOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 151 
 
 a sin. He grew in depravity by exercise in sinning/ 
 If saved, he was born in holiness by an exercise, i. e., 
 by faith, and he grew in holiness by exercise in faith. 
 This will explain how truth operates. The Holy Spirit, 
 always moving more or less upon the hearts of men, 
 moves upon a heart that is reading, or hearing, or think- 
 ing of serious truth. That influence opens the heart, and 
 the truth shines in a little, at first only in a common 
 way ; and the heart exercises itself in seeing, and feel- 
 ing, and, perhaps, admiring the truth. The Spirit, in the 
 very act of that exercise, opens it still more, and moves 
 it still higher, and so on from act to act, till saving in- 
 fluence begins and the heart is born again ; and then 
 on from act to act, the heart, under the influence of the 
 Spirit, still " exercising itself unto godliness."^ 
 
 Two things are then necessary in sanctification, ac- 
 cording to the law by which God has chosen to bless 
 us; (1) The Spirit to move upon the heart, and (2) 
 the truth to give it exercise. If the Spirit be there, and 
 not the truth, God may, indeed, waive his law and sanc- 
 tify, as in the case of infants ; or call into Hfe, as He 
 did the trees of Paradise, full grown at once, but not by 
 His common rule of working, which asks exercise, and, 
 therefore, truth, as the only thing that can give exercise 
 to mind. If the truth is there, and not the Spirit, there 
 will be no sanctification, any more than growth in a 
 tree, if the principle of life be stricken from it. If much 
 truth be there, and strong truth, it is better than weak, 
 or little truth, because a better opportunity for the Spirit 
 
 » Of course, it is not meant by this, that sin consists of nothing but 
 exercise (i. e., voluntary act), but that evil disposition, that other part of 
 sin, grows in the heart by exercise. 
 
 b 1 Tim. iv. 7. 
 
152 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 in moving the heart to exercise. It will be seen, then, 
 in how modified a way truth is an instrument in sanc- 
 tification. 
 
 Still, it will be argued, it " obscures the work of the 
 Spirit ;" and that, when its necessity is not absolute in 
 the nature of things ; for the Spirit might stand out 
 alone and sanctify without it. We reply by denying 
 the charge. It does not obscure, but manifests the 
 Spirit. 
 
 Why was not the world created in an instant, instead 
 of in six days ? Because, as it rose in successive wonder 
 and beauty, the roar of an awakening chaos — the out- 
 bursting of the light — the gathering of the waters — the 
 garnishing of the heavens — the clothing of the earth — 
 the unveiling of the stars — the teeming births of the sea 
 and of the land, and then the Creator's finger upon a 
 human spirit, moulding its ethereal essence, and linking 
 it in strange union with the dust, were a far richer 
 lesson to the universe in the glory of God than had the 
 world stood up at once created. 
 
 Again, another question : Easy as working is to God, 
 there is no waste of work ; cheap as being is to God, 
 there is no waste of being. Why then does not a grand 
 frugality of both reign through His dominions, casting 
 out the long chain of intermediate causes with which 
 His working is delayed, and emptying away the mass 
 of subordinate means by which the universe is crowded 
 full? Why? Because He knows that whereas no man 
 can see him personally, these declare Him. To speak 
 and have it done, disdaining any thing between the word 
 and the w^ork, w^ould be. noble in a society of gods, but 
 delay and detail are necessary in the lessons of finite 
 men. The drama of Providence He will not shorten ; 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 153 
 
 the frame-work of means must stand as it is ; for though 
 briefer work might be more natural to God, precisely 
 this work is most useful for His creatures. 
 
 So of sanctification. To sanctify by natural power, 
 rather than in the train of the heart's own exercise in 
 seeing and loving the truth, while it would not rid us of 
 the temptation of putting aside the Spirit, or of imagin- 
 ing that the flashing in of light, and a sudden effort of 
 the will, were all the power that wrought each succes- 
 sive change in us ; would rob us of those long-continued, 
 happily-presented, leisurely-regarded, manifestations of 
 Him that we have, as " the flesh lusteth against the 
 spirit, and the spirit against the flesh." 
 
 Exhausted so far, objection becomes wearisome. 
 Two points remain, that we do not like to omit ; but the 
 statement and reply shall be as brief as they can be 
 made. 
 
 (a.) Why gospel truth 1 Why does God tempt men 
 to imagine some mystic powder in the truth itself, by 
 choosing a certain kind of truth as positively essential 
 to salvation ? Take a pagan, let him see the folly of his 
 worship, and throw away his idols ; why may not the 
 Spirit, in default of any news of Christ, open his mind 
 to common moral truth, and save him? It is not so 
 powerful or melting as the truth as it is in Jesus ; but 
 why may not the w^eaker truth sometimes sanctify? 
 
 Because the temptation of this plan would be worse 
 than the temptation of the other. Because a man awak- 
 ened simply by moral truth, i. e., by the law of God, 
 would be plunged at once into the depths of despair. 
 Strange discord would be brought into the heart born 
 again of the Holy Ghost ; and the brighter half of Chris- 
 tian character — peace, and joy, and hope — would be 
 
154 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 supplied by the blackness of darkness of remorse and 
 fear ; no sense of pardon — no peace with God — no 
 motive of reward in heaven; a state which, if tho- 
 roughly converted, the sufferer could not endure, but, 
 by a melancholy death, would fill the minds of his 
 neighbours with the conviction that he had fallen under 
 some heavy curse, and with horror at the thought of a 
 like visitation. This is one reason on a list of many. 
 
 {b.) Why external truth? That is the very thing 
 argued against above — an external, absolutely essential 
 to salvation. The Holy Ghost might inspire truth in 
 any heart, just as well as impress it. Why has God 
 ordered it so, that we must write, and speak, and send, 
 so that as, according to some, if men withhold an exter- 
 nal baptism, an infant perishes, so, if we withhold an ex- 
 ternal word, the heathen perish ? Would not the Spirit's 
 work be less obscured, if He carried the truth as well as 
 used it? 
 
 Crediting the objection as it is given in, without 
 affirming or denying that some heathen may be saved, 
 we say, it makes the necessity of the external word no 
 parallel case in obscuring the Spirit, to an external 
 Popish sacrament. The first is an intelligible necessity, 
 and one growing out of the nature of things, because, as 
 we have seen, man has no intercourse with man, nor 
 God (naturally) with man, saving by the avenues of 
 sense. The last, if a necessity, is just made such, — for 
 a certain age, and for no certain purpose. As to the 
 gift of the truth at once into the heart by inspiration, in- 
 stead of its entering there by teaching, we know not, if, 
 in the present age, it ever happens so, but, if it does, it is 
 no escape from temptation. It is still truth, and truth 
 still liable to arrogate the work of the Spirit. Especially, 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 155 
 
 if this mode became the common one, and the impres- 
 siveness of miracle were lost from it, truth just rising in 
 the heart, instead of being gathered in by sense, would 
 be, perhaps, more likely to share with the heart the 
 honours of its own impression, and forget the Spirit, than 
 ordered as it now is. 
 
 Truth, then — and truth as a means — and truth as just 
 such a means — giving out tribute, as it does so intelligibly, 
 to the intelligent service of God, cannot be made to 
 stand on the same level with the mystic sacraments, in 
 obscuring the work of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Serious objections to the reasoning, under each of the 
 foregoing heads, shall now come up to be answered at 
 once for the three. 
 
 The three rest on one foundation — the doctrine that 
 the design of religion would be frustrated, if, by any of 
 its ordinances, God should directly tempt men away 
 from the intelligent service of himself. 
 
 1. Is this doctrine true? Is it not notorious that God 
 actually does try the faith of men? And may he not, in 
 full memory of our superstition, still make outward 
 sacraments inseparable from salvation, in order to put 
 his people's faith in Christ and the Spirit to the proof? 
 If not, what is the meaning of such passages as these : — 
 
 Gen. xxii. 1. " And it came to pass, after these things, 
 that God did tempt Abraham." 
 
 2 Chr. xxxii. 31. "God left him (Hezekiah) to try 
 him, that he might know all that was in his heart." 
 Deut. viii. 2. 
 
 2 Sam. xxiv. 1. " Again the anger of the Lord was 
 kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them 
 to say, Go, number Israel and Judah." 
 
156 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. ^ 
 
 Job vii. 18. " That thou (God) shouldest visit him 
 every morning, and try him every moment." 
 
 In reply, it might be asked whether any advocate of 
 the system that has been opposed, would be willing to 
 stand by this, as its grand benefit, viz., that it tries the 
 faith of men. Sacraments, with the powder in which he 
 clothes them, form a most conspicuous part of his 
 religion, as the great channels of grace ; now, when we 
 ask after some adequate good that is to flow from 
 making them such, will he venture to say that that good 
 is temptation — the ordeal it secures for faith. Recollect, 
 they are not casual events, like the trial of Abraham, 
 but permanent and wide-reaching ordinances ; will he 
 stand to it that temptation is benefit enough to make 
 them what he says they are ? 
 
 Passing by, however, all lighter considerations, as has 
 been the aim throughout, let us go, at once, to the root of 
 the objection. To give it its utmost weight, and, so, to ex- 
 haust it, as far as possible, when we come to reply, let 
 there be added to it a second, quite as serious, and often 
 urged in independent form. 
 
 God knew that man was superstitious. Why, in the 
 infancy of the world, did he ordain sacrifices only to 
 have them perverted into idolatry ? When, for two 
 thousand years, they had been perverted, and God was 
 about to choose from a whole race of abandoned 
 heathen one nation for himself, why did he deliberately 
 renew, with more detail, and, so far, with higher temp- 
 tation to idolatry, a circle of sacrificial rites ] Lastly, 
 and most wonderful of all, and most conclusive, it will 
 be argued, against our attempt to settle what does or 
 does not frustrate the design of religion — when the Jews 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 157 
 
 had most shamefully abused external ceremonies again, 
 God does not spare us the temptation, by sweeping away 
 the rites, but actually invents two new ceremonials for 
 the modern church. No matter, now, it will be urged, 
 whether these new sacraments are mysteriously efficient, 
 or, like the old sacrament of circumcision, not so. Why 
 are they revived at all ? Our whole argument will be 
 denounced, as having proved too much, and charged in- 
 consistency upon God for what all parties grant he has 
 unquestionably done, i. e., for reviving forms of worship, 
 in which, notoriously, temptation has been found to turn 
 away from Christ, and from his Holy Spirit. 
 
 With this whole argument distinctly in view, and 
 bowing, as, of course, we must, even to its strongest 
 instance, — " God tempted Abraham," — still, we answer, 
 God tempteth no man. To meet the charge of contra- 
 diction, therefore, it must be shown, as it easily may be, 
 that there are two kinds of temptation, one consistent 
 w^ith the revealed purpose of rehgion, the other not so. 
 
 (1.) Temptation may be a direct soliciting of the soul 
 to sin — a crime not to be dreamed of on the part of 
 God. " He cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempteth 
 he any man ; but a man is tempted when he is drawn 
 away of his own lust and enticed."^ This kind w^e do 
 not charge upon the system of our opponents, only one 
 practically like it. Two other kinds must, therefore, 
 still be mentioned. 
 
 (2.) Temptation may be an exposure of the soul to 
 sin, by institutions having no one cardinal advantage 
 over simpler institutions, but having every thing in them 
 to bewilder and invite mistake — institutions so easily 
 
 ' James i. 13. 
 14 
 
158 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 misconceived, that though the mind of a perfect angel, 
 with however much amazement at their conflict with 
 all the rest of God's arrangements for us, might yet 
 hold them to their proper place, the mind of a fallen 
 man could scarcely escape the open snare of an idola- 
 trous interpretation. This is the kind we have been 
 attacking. This is not the kind that has furnished the 
 instances just quoted from the Bible. (3d.) Temptation 
 may be an opportunity for the soul to sin, afl?brded by 
 things ordered as they are for very great and very evi- 
 dent advantage, and whose misconception must be 
 through strange perverseness, in the face of a direct 
 and benevolent tendency the other way. Examples of 
 this, we grant, most cheerfully, are found every where 
 through all the Bible, in the central and most interesting 
 parts of the Christian system. Precisely so the cross is 
 a " stumbling block," and the Almighty sacrifice Him- 
 self " a stone of stumbling and rock of ofl^ence." In a 
 like sense, He who came expressly to bring peace on 
 earth came not to send peace, but a sword. So, too, 
 every single doctrine and ordinance in our religion (for 
 not one can plead exemption) has bitterly tempted the 
 souls of men, — by known intention good, but, by man's 
 perversion, prostitute to evil. Very different is the case 
 with those pretended institutions, whose far more direct, 
 and, beyond all contrast, less easily avoided, temptation 
 is balanced by no good intention, that any but the most 
 minute and prejudiced ingenuity can discover or devise. 
 Emblematic worship was, indeed, revived in the 
 family of Abraham, after it had tempted the world for 
 two thousand years, and revived again by Jesus Christ, 
 when it had tempted worse for two thousand more; 
 but then emblematic worship bears immediate tribute to 
 that intelligent service of God for which all religion is 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 159 
 
 intended; and something akin to emblematic worship, 
 and liable to like abuses, is necessary to man. Truth, 
 as sent down from God, must reach us through the 
 senses. This we have seen long ago ; that as sense is 
 our only link with other minds, those whom God has 
 inspired, can tell us his will, only through some outward 
 channel ; and only so can we be kept reminded and re- 
 impressed. That channel may be any system of signs, 
 conventional or natural. Minute symbols may serve 
 us, as the letters of an alphabet, or the sounds of a 
 voice ; or briefer and more comprehensive symbols, as 
 sacramental or sacrificial rites. To say, then, that God 
 deliberately revived emblematic worship, is, simply, to 
 say that he revived what one prime necessity of the 
 soul demands. To say that He revived it in the face of 
 the fact that it had always been abused, is, simply, what 
 may be said of any useful or necessary provision He 
 has made. To say that He revived it when alphabetic 
 symbols or language might have served alone, is, in the 
 first place, to forget that this method has been abused, 
 no less than that, — men trusting to the word without the 
 spirit; and, in the second place, that rites and sacra- 
 ments have met ends of impression and moral exercise, 
 that mere writing could never meet. To urge, as a last 
 resort, that God, in degree, might have abated the temp- 
 tation, by making the sacrament less formal or less pro- 
 minent, is, in fact, to forbid him to draw the fine at all, 
 since, wherever he might draw it, the same objection 
 w^ould occur. Religious externals, therefore, in our 
 sense of them, take their places clearly under the third 
 kind of temptation. 
 
 Nor can any of the scattered instances quoted above, 
 or, indeed, any thing that shall be, by both parties, 
 
160 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 confessed to be from God, identify itself with the second 
 kind ; not the tempting of Abraham (to suffer the most 
 difficult case to stand for all). Let it be granted, that 
 unbelief is a main corruption of our nature. Let it be 
 granted, that a command to kill his son, after so glorious 
 a covenant as God had reiterated respecting him and 
 his seed, and after so recent a promise that in this very 
 Isaac should his seed be called, was a sore trial to the 
 faith of Abraham ; still, the temptation fails, in respect to 
 evil tendency on the one side, and the absence of good 
 design on the other. Abraham lived in an age of mira- 
 cles ; he had spent a life of strange interpositions ; to 
 doubt God now, would have been the height of ingrati- 
 tude. One who had ushered in the birth of his son by 
 miraculous signs, and who had delayed that birth till it 
 became itself a miracle, might well be trusted here, 
 since, even if the sacrifice were accomplished, a word 
 from God he knew would restore the life that he had 
 taken. This, therefore, was the very form that his faith 
 assumed, " accounting that God was able to raise him 
 up even from the dead, from whence also he received 
 him in a figure.''^ Such w^as the degree and nature of 
 the temptation, — a simple trial whether he v,?ould trust 
 God in an easily anticipated and very possible exercise 
 of this power. Now, balanced against this, we have a 
 general fact, and a very obvious good intention. 
 
 We have the general fact, that all that was essential, 
 in the tempting of Abraham, every believer is called 
 through life to feel. Abraham was promised glorious 
 posterity from Isaac, and then called to high trust in 
 God's power in direct prospect of Isaac's death. The 
 
 » Heb. xi. 19. 
 
A spuraous design of certain externals. 161 
 
 believer is promised that all things shall work together 
 for his good, and then often called deliberately to expose 
 himself to the most forbidding and seemingly mischiev- 
 ous providences. The case is, by no means, a singular 
 one ; Israel, at the waters of Meribah, after his glorious 
 hopes in Egypt, — Hagar, in the wilderness of Beersheba, 
 after the promise to Abraham of Ishmael's power, — the 
 disciples at the cross of Jesus, after all'the prophecies of 
 the glory of his kingdom, and all men, who pass on to 
 the fulfilment of the words of God, through strangely 
 adverse histories, endure, in all essential points, a kin- 
 dred temptation. 
 
 The case, thus associated with a wide class of provi- 
 dences, will, very readily, disclose its good intention. It 
 taught Abraham a lesson of immediate reliance on God, 
 rather than on outward circumstances. Jehovah-jireh 
 was the precious moral of the whole. The same lesson 
 was taught at Meribah, and through all that wilderness. 
 Means are the mere servants of God, and hope must be 
 graduated, not by their appearance of failure or promise, 
 but by the word of the Almighty. To state the moral in 
 the very language of Moses : " He humbled thee, and 
 suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna (which 
 thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know), that He 
 might make thee know that man doth not live by bread 
 only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the 
 mouth of the Lord doth man live."^ Such was the de- 
 sign in Abraham's case, to turn his reliance directly 
 upon God ; and the gracious issue of the trial quickly 
 cleared up every thing that was perplexing in it, and 
 sealed its good intention. 
 
 * Deut. viii. 3. 
 11* 
 
162 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 How different the trial that must ensue upon giving 
 external things immediate efficiency, or in any sense in- 
 separably linking them with pardon. The influence 
 must be precisely contrary — to turn man's reliance 
 directly away from God. The temptation, in itself 
 totally different from the other, would be redeemed by 
 no great lesson. Some honour might be shed on the 
 sovereignty of God, by showing that man may be saved 
 independently of means ; but casting away one set of 
 means (faith, prayer, &c.) and choosing others (rites 
 and sacraments), and making these last just as essential 
 in one creed, as the first are in ours, would, of course, 
 have nothing to do with such a lesson. It might do good 
 to show men that God can save them by any, or difler- 
 ent means, but surely this is not shown by a salvation 
 that attaches itself inseparably to one. The only possible 
 lesson, as we conceive, that can be asserted for the 
 system, is, — that God may save with distant and inap- 
 propriate means — a lesson true as to his power, but 
 most false as to his wisdom, a wisdom which could 
 never deliberately betray the souls of men by things 
 carnal, instead of things spiritual, or even by things 
 dumb, instead of things significant, away from the true 
 nature of Christ's salvation. Thus, all unbalanced by 
 good design, by useful lesson, or even by humbling, 
 mortifying influence, we see obtruded upon us, as a thing 
 from God, the naked snare ; of which may be mentioned 
 one other fatal difference from the hard command to 
 Abraham, and the heavy curse at Meribah, that while 
 both these were cleared up and reversed, and made 
 speedily and triumphantly useful to the sufferers, this 
 beclouds and bewilders endlessly, with no dawning of 
 better light, — a planet always turning an evil phase — a 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 163 
 
 spell without a talisman — a puzzle without a key — a den, 
 that never sees the light, harbouring, in the very bosom 
 of our religion, the wildest excesses of man's only too 
 eager superstition. 
 
 2. But a second and more formidable objection may 
 be framed out of the resemblance of a sacrament, in the 
 Popish sense, to any Bible miracle, and the alleged equal 
 applicability of the arguments that have been used, to 
 either of the two. 
 
 One minister of God fixes his eyes upon a man, and 
 at a word heals his body ;'' another minister of God 
 lays his hands upon a man, and at a word confirms his 
 spirit. One minister stretches himself upon the corpse 
 of a child, and raises it from physical death ;^ another 
 sprinkles water upon the head of a child, and raises it 
 from spiritual death. Both are wielding, instrumentally, 
 the power of God. Where is the difference as regards 
 the temptation of the people 1 Moses, at the word of the 
 Lord, rears a brazen serpent upon a pole in the camp of 
 Israel, and the bite of fiery serpents that are infesting 
 the camp, is cured by looking at it. Seven centuries 
 afterward, the people are burning incense before that 
 piece of brass as their God.*" The.apostles Barnabas and 
 Paul saw a man at Lystra, who had been " a cripple 
 from his mother's womb ;" and Paul, perceiving " that 
 he had faith to be healed, said with a loud voice. Stand 
 upright on thy feet. And he leaped and walked. And 
 when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up 
 their voices, saying. The Gods are come down to us in 
 the likeness of men. And they called Barnabas Jupiter, 
 and Paul, Mercurius. Then the priest of Jupiter, 
 
 - - ■ Acts iii. 4—8. ^ 2 Kings iv. 34, 35. • 2 Kings xviii. 4. 
 
164 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 which was before their city, brought oxen and garlands 
 unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the 
 people."^ This is not the only instance of the kind that 
 Paul's history furnishes, — *' Howbeit, they looked when 
 he should have swollen, or fallen down dead, suddenly ; 
 but after they had looked a great while, and saw no 
 harm come to him, they changed their minds, and said 
 that he w^as a god.'"' Now where is the difference, it 
 will be asked, between this temptation and that which 
 w^e have been trying to show cannot be ? 
 
 Difference enough radically to distinguish them, may 
 be stated, it is thought, in a single sentence. Miracles 
 are necessary ; those mystic sacraments are not so. That 
 men must be saved by faith, or sanctified by the truth, 
 are arrangements in the kingdom of God, full of tempta- 
 tion to carnal men, but then they are necessary arrange- 
 ments, and, therefore, the fact of their indirectly tempting, 
 loses its power as an argument against them. They are 
 necessary. Now, so are miracles. 
 
 The design of religion is to lead men to the intelligent 
 service of God. First in order of all mere means, as 
 conducive to this design, is revelation ; and one of the 
 next, as the mainstay ^of revelation in respect to its ex- 
 ternal evidence, is miracle. God first talked to men ; 
 and then, under the hand of the minister by whom He 
 spake, broke the laws of nature, and gave the sanction 
 of something supernatural, to prove that he had talked 
 to them. Miracle must be the groundwork of all out- 
 w-ard evidence for religious truth ; and testimony is of 
 value only when it reaches back to miracle ; and that 
 miracle, too, must be an external thing. That it is 
 
 "■ Acts xiv. 8—13. h Acts xxviii. 6. 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 165 
 
 necessary, therefore, is just as certain as that a revela- 
 tion is of no value to man until something tells him that 
 it is a revelation. 
 
 We might expect, we know, that God w^ould abate 
 the snare of miracles as much as is consistent with his 
 plan ; and might predict, therefore, facts like these ; — 
 that miracles would be but temporary ; that each part 
 of revelation would be certified by them, and then their 
 time would end ; that some appeal to God, a prayer, or 
 an invocation of His name, should be just as apparent in 
 the miracle, if wrought by man, as the miracle itself; 
 and that, in case temptation did result, care would be 
 taken to remove it ; as Hezekiah did when he " brake in 
 pieces the brazen serpent;"^ as Peter did, when he said, 
 " Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this ? or why 
 look ye so earnestly on us, as though, by our own power 
 or holiness, we had made this man to walk t"^ or, as 
 Paul did, when he said to the men of Lystra, " Sirs, we 
 also are men of like passions wath you ?"= 
 
 If we turn now to those mystic sacraments, their case 
 is quite another one. To say nothing of the fact, that 
 they claim supernatural power over spirit, i. e. of things 
 outward over things inward ; while all other miracles 
 claim it only over matter, or of externals over exter- 
 nals ; — to say nothing of the fact, that they reach to the 
 destinies of another world ; — to say nothing of the fact, 
 that they are not grand exceptions to a general law, 
 occasionally admitted for an extraordinary end, but 
 form a law in themselves, settled and lasting for 
 thousands of years ; — their great condemnation is, they 
 
 * 2 Kings xviii. 4. ^ Acts iii. 12. « Acts xiv. 15. 
 
1G6 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 are not necessary. The mischief to which they tend, is 
 not balanced by any essential good. 
 
 They do not the good even of common miracles, 
 granting that miracles were needed now. For the 
 strength of a miracle, in the way of proof for any thing, 
 is, of course, that its result be open to public gaze, or, 
 at least, that it come in some way or other to the cog- 
 nizance of men. But the result of these miracles is 
 buried. The baptismal regeneration of a child, or the 
 delivery of a soul from purgatory — the more unembar- 
 rassed, unconditional, direct results of sacraments, trans- 
 pire behind that curtain that hides us from another 
 world; while sacramental influences upon adult men 
 are so w^isely mixed up in the theory of the errorist 
 with the conditions of " compunction and faith," &c., 
 that when they fail, we cannot say, it was the sacra- 
 ment; and when they succeed, he cannot say, it was 
 not the " faith." It is God only that searcheth the 
 heart. Certainly a poor subject-matter for a miracle 
 (which, if it is to be proof for any thing, should make a 
 bold and plain impression upon the people), the change 
 wrought by ghostly hand, or sacred font, or consecrated 
 bread, must be, if, to see any miracle at all, we must so 
 nicely dissect away what must have been the fruit of 
 sacrament and faith together, from what might have 
 been the fruit of faith alone. 
 
 3. But the grand protest against our reasoning will 
 be, it is presumptuous ; it dictates to God. What right 
 have we to ask what God might or might not do ? or, if 
 He makes an appointment, to say how or how not it 
 may be conditioned and arranged 1 This naked ques- 
 tion is enough : What do the words of God, simply and 
 aside from prejudice, direct? Nay, is not here a clue 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CEP.TAIN EXTERNALS. 167 
 
 to the much asked for design of mystic sacraments, — 
 that they are intended for this very thing, i. e., to be a 
 lesson to man in the matter of implicit obedience ? All 
 God's other commandments bring reasons with them, 
 and may be seen to work out the honour of Himself, and 
 the benefit of His creature. Might it not be well that 
 some few should be, without ostensible reasons given, 
 with no other meaning in them than this, that God has 
 a right to command and condition, sovereignly, as He 
 pleases? Is not "the tree of knowledge of good and 
 evil,"* in point, as an example of some such design ? It 
 was an external. It was made " directly efficient" upon 
 the soul, in bringing ruin, and " absolutely essential," 
 negatively, as respects salvation ; that is to say, refrain- 
 ing from it, though a mere outward thing, was essential 
 to spiritual life. Yet, to teach the lesson of his own 
 sovereignty, God ordained it ; and why not a kindred 
 sacrament at the present day ? 
 
 Now, in reply, as to the two foundation sentences of 
 all this, " Man has no right to ask, what God might, or 
 might not do," but, " What do His w^ords, simply and 
 aside from prejudice, direct;" we think argument, long 
 since gone into, shows, pretty conclusively, that the two 
 do not agree. Man cannot, simply and without preju- 
 dice, find what God's words direct, without asking what 
 He might or might not do. Christ bids us " hate" 
 " father and mother,"^ and tells us he came not to send 
 peace, but a sword.'' In either case, cautious and reve- 
 rent thought of what he might or might not do, is a 
 thing of course. To say that a reader may indulge it, 
 is half untrue ; he must, and ivilU by one of the most 
 
 * Gen. iii. »> Luke xiv. 26. « Matt. x. 34. 
 
168 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 imperative of all mental necessities. The charge of 
 presumption may lie against it, just, precisely, when it 
 may against any other laws of reading, i. e., when they 
 miss their aim, or are pressed too far. 
 
 As to the idea, that a lesson in implicit obedience is 
 the great design of making baptism and other rites ab- 
 solute terms of pardon, it would be plausible enough, if, 
 in the opinion of those who might advance it, the good 
 of the sacrament were at all proportioned to any one's 
 implicit obedience in it. That would be coming near 
 our own ground. It is not proportioned to the obe- 
 dience of the subject; for he maybe an infant, or a 
 man in purgatory. It is not proportioned to the obe- 
 dience of the actor, for he may be a graceless hypocrite, 
 and yet, as we, and they, and all, admit, his administra- 
 tions may be valid. No, if men were " washed, and 
 justified, and sanctified," under ordinances, in any pro- 
 portion to their implicit, resigned obedience, under them, 
 or to any other holy exercise or grace, and not by the 
 external itself, as appointed of God, that would be more 
 our doctrine, than the one we are controverting. 
 
 And, as to the tree of knowledge in the garden of 
 Eden, we are happy to close this chapter, by leaving on 
 the reader's mind the points of difference between sacra- 
 ments in the Popish sense, and this, the thing ostensibly, 
 perhaps, most like them of any thing recorded as real, 
 in the word of God. 
 
 Of course, it was an external, as they are. Of course, 
 it had a decisive bearing on eternal life, as they profess 
 to have. Of course, that bearing was direct and prompt ; 
 the moment Adam ate, he died ; just as the moment the 
 infant is baptized, it lives. So we seem to have all that 
 our opponents ask, and all that will crush our argument, 
 
A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 169 
 
 i. e., an external, linked inseparably with the question of 
 life, or death. Here, however, the resemblance ends. 
 
 The tree of knowledge might have been (so far as 
 any principle is involved), and, probably, was, only a 
 natural means ;* any tree in the garden might have an- 
 swered just as well. It could work no mischief in itself. 
 Had Adam eaten of its fruit by accident, we have no 
 reason to believe it would have done him harm. It was 
 just an object singled out by God, to try the obedience 
 of our parents with, and the wrong decision of a tempted 
 mind in them, and no poison in its fruit, began and ended 
 the work of death. Adam was cursed, just in proportion 
 as the sin, bred in him, deserved, and might have been 
 cursed the same before any object that God might have 
 chosen to forbid. 
 
 Here, then, precisely, is the difference: the Papist 
 will not say, it is not the baptism, but the faith. We 
 will say, it is not the baptism, but the faith. Both will 
 say, it was not the apple, but the sin. Then, to which 
 party the force of the example belongs, is evident at 
 once. 
 
 The point of seeming resemblance the other way was 
 that the tree was inseparable from death, just as the 
 mystic sacrament is said to be from life. But that in- 
 separableness was of a natural kind in the way of 
 templing and discipline ; this, of a supernatural kind, in 
 the way of divine and mystic virtue. If it be asked, 
 why a " tree of knowledge" at all 1 why not leave Adam 
 to choose, (so to speak,) his own sin ? We answer, 
 
 * See, in the different commentaries, the usual arguments', to show that 
 neither this, nor the " tree of life," were any thing but symbolic sacra- 
 ments, or had in them any inherent virtue, even for physical life, or 
 death. 
 
 15 
 
170 A SPURIOUS DESIGN OF CERTAIN EXTERNALS. 
 
 because the arrangement bore upon the great design of 
 religion, " the intelhgent service of God ;" the universe 
 would have lost a lesson in the mingled littleness and 
 enormous folly of sin, which no other arrangement could 
 have furnished — millions of spirits cast into eternal 
 chains (whether by transmitted guilt, or by natural con- 
 sequence, need not be debated), to gratify the desire of 
 one, after an object as trivial, in itself, as any that God 
 could have chosen to prohibit. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION, ARGUED FROM 
 THE DESIGN OF AN EXTERNAL CHURCH. 
 
 The last chapter has proved that no external can be 
 directly efficient, or absolutely essential to salvation, the 
 argument itself making it appear what was meant by 
 direct efficiency, on the one hand, and absolute necessity, 
 on the other. Till, therefore, some third design of ex- 
 ternals is imagined, we are shut up to the first: — The 
 sole design of externals is to teach (i. e. instruct and 
 discipline) in the service of God ; and then, too, looking 
 at one external separately, — The sole design of an ex- 
 ternal church is to teach (instruct and discipline) in the 
 service of God. 
 
 It is our purpose now, from this design of an external 
 church, to argue the True Doctrine of Church Commu- 
 nion. 
 
 Four doctrines have been proposed : — 
 
 I. There is a visible church, conformed to a certain 
 primitive model, beyond the pale of which there is no 
 salvation, and, therefore, no rights or duties of church 
 communion. 
 
 II. There is a visible church, conformed to a certain 
 primitive model, beyond the pale of which there is no 
 church, and, therefore, no rights or duties of church com- 
 munion. 
 
172 THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 
 
 III. The visible church is made up of various 
 branches, between which there are certain rights and 
 duties of church communion. 
 
 IV. The visible church is made up of various 
 branches, between which there are, not only, certain 
 rights and duties of church communion, but an interest 
 and an obligation to come together into one, upon some 
 liberal and general platform. 
 
 I. There is a visible church, conformed to a certain 
 primitive model, beyond the pale of v\^hich there is no 
 salvation, and, therefore, no right or duties of church 
 communion. 
 
 This doctrine cannot be the true one, because it 
 teaches, that without external membership in a church, a 
 man is not saved, whereas, " no external can be abso- 
 lutely essential to salvation." 
 
 It may be said. The case is an exception to the 
 general rule ; it is replied, the argument that esta- 
 blished the rule, admitted no exception. 
 
 It may be said, One exception must be admitted. The 
 truth is absolutely necessary to the salvation of adults ; 
 and externals are absolutely necessary to convey the 
 truth ; it is replied, the case is no exception. The propo- 
 sition, external things are absolutely necessary to salva- 
 tion, or, some external is absolutely necessary, is by no 
 means at variance with the proposition, no external is 
 absolutely necessary. The first is a statement of the 
 natural fact, that, constituted as we are, w^e cannot dis- 
 pense wdth the intelligence in religion brought to us by 
 external sense ; the last is a statement of the fact, that no 
 one object of sense, or set of objects, has been supernatu- 
 rally or Providentially erected into a condition, sine qua 
 71071, of salvation. 
 
THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 173 
 
 Externals may be essential in an intelligible way, to 
 convey the truth, but no one external is essential. And 
 though that one external, the church, embodies in itself 
 a whole circle of religious means, so that most of God's 
 people are converted by its labour, still it does not 
 follow that all are, or that a man, not in the church, may 
 not hand the Bible, or give the word, or send the tract 
 that leads to a soul's conversion. 
 
 Besides, the doctrine condemned is not, that there is 
 no salvation without the church, but no salvation with- 
 out jomzT?^ the church, making that narrow external — 
 membership in a church, and that, too, membership in 
 one particular body, claiming that name, in contra- 
 distinction to every other, absolutely essential to sal- 
 vation. 
 
 And, as it is not true that a man must join a certain 
 church to be saved ; so neither is it true that a man will 
 join a certain church, if saved ; — another form of natural 
 necessity that may be pleaded for the doctrine. 
 
 Christ, we grant, has framed a church ; and Christ, 
 by clear precept, has bound every soul to join it. Christ, 
 we grant, has framed a church after a certain model ; 
 and Christ, by inferred precept, has bound every soul to 
 join a church after that model. In any common circum- 
 stances, he who joins no church, errs, and so does he 
 who joins one not duly modelled. But then there is no 
 manner of foothold here for the doctrine that no man 
 will err so, if saved. 
 
 Error is of two kinds, practical and speculative. In 
 practical error, as, for example, in theft or drunkenness, 
 a man, if he is saved, will not wilfully persist; so that it 
 becomes true, that "drunkards shall not inherit the 
 
 15* 
 
174 THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 
 
 kingdom of God,"^ or that there is a limit of common 
 honesty, " beyond the pale of which there can be no 
 salvation, and, therefore, no rights or duties of church 
 communion." But speculative error is a thing widely 
 different. It is sin; but do Christians never sin? It 
 cannot be directly wilful in its maintenance, and, there- 
 fore, Christians may persist in it till their dying day. For 
 it is supposed, the best advocates of the doctrine under 
 review will confess, as cheerfully as we will, that good 
 men may fall into many speculative errors, and that no 
 man. Christian or unconverted, has a perfectly unsullied 
 creed, at any one moment of his history. 
 
 Now, it is speculative error that breaks up the church 
 into branches. Error in pure doctrine, our opponents 
 confess, may exist among good men; but then, they say, 
 it must not divide the church. Error in church order, 
 in the nature of things, must divide the church ; there- 
 fore, they say, it may not exist among good men. But 
 both. are speculative error, yes, and error in church 
 order is less culpable than error in pure doctrine. Doc- 
 trine, being an internal thing, appeals to native con- 
 science ; order, being an external, never can. Doctrine 
 may carry with it the witness of the Spirit, w^hich will 
 serve the most unlettered in lieu of outward evidence ; 
 order, in its own nature, never may. Doctrine is dwelt 
 upon in the Bible, and turned over in many shapes, and 
 is linked together by natural connexions ; order is briefly 
 noticed, and stands alone. To confess false doctrine, 
 then, and give over to reprobation for a mistake in order, 
 is monstrously absurd. 
 
 * 1 Cor. vi. 10. 
 
THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 175 
 
 Only natural necessity, it will be remembered, is the 
 plea that we have been meeting. The moment any 
 thing supernatural is objected, as, for instance, the 
 sacraments, as being only found in the church, so that 
 a man must join it to be saved, we are thrown back 
 again upon our general position. It cannot be true, that 
 without external membership in a certain church, a man 
 is not saved, because, " No external can be directly effi- 
 cient, or absolutely essential, to salvation." 
 
 II. There is a visible church, conformed to a certain 
 primitive model, beyond the pale of which there is no 
 church, and, therefore, no rights or duties of church 
 communion. 
 
 Here are two unchurching phrases, — " no church," 
 and " no rights or duties of church communion." The 
 last is the important one ; the first has no significance, 
 as it stands alone. 
 
 A common argument, to establish the first, is essen- 
 tially as follows : — Jesus Christ framed a certain orga- 
 nization of men, and called it The Church ; therefore a 
 different organization of men, whatever else it may be, 
 is not The Church, or any part of it. 
 
 Now, the premises are sound ; and, if they be counted 
 on all hands as fixing for us a strict definition, the con- 
 clusion is a perfect truism. The moment it is agreed, 
 by consent of parties, that precisely that thing, in form 
 and order, that Christ called The Church, shall still bear 
 the name, and that nothing else shall, then, certainly, " a 
 different organization is not The Church, or any part of 
 it." But, then, this is no argument, but only the state- 
 ment and restatement of a definition. 
 
 If it be asked, Would not such a strict definition be 
 the right one ? it is answered, certainly, if all will agree 
 
176 THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 
 
 on it ; and then it would be perfectly right for each man 
 to pronounce his own religious body The Church (if he 
 believes it to be of primitive model), and to find some 
 other name for all the rest. If it be further asked, But 
 is not the word so confined in the New Testament ? we 
 answer, certainly, it is. Aside from other uses, which 
 are matters of indifference here, the apostles applied it 
 to one body, framed in one way. But, then, how else 
 could they apply it ? The infant society was yet one, 
 no varieties of organization having occurred, to divide 
 the name. If it be asked. Ought it not to be confined to 
 one 1 we answer, that is a question for philologists and 
 grammarians. Did not Christ mean it to be applied but 
 to one? We are not aware that the use of words is a 
 matter that He aimed to settle. Has it not been con- 
 fined to one? Certainly not; for why, then, the com- 
 plaint, that it has been applied to several? 
 
 Turn the thing over as we will, the question of 
 church or no church, canvassed in this naked form, is 
 no question. It becomes a question, only when linked 
 in with another, thus : Is a certain body no church, in 
 the sense, that we may not hold communion with it? 
 The name is a matter of human convention ; the privi- 
 lege, of divine command. 
 
 It makes no difference to us, if pious men call our re- 
 ligious society no church of Jesus Christ, in case it is 
 agreed, that that only shall be called His church, that is 
 after the model that he gave ; for we know they must 
 think their society that one, just as we think that ours 
 is. But it makes great difference to us, if they refuse 
 fellowship with us, or if we are to be bound to refuse 
 fellowship with them. 
 
 The vitality of the question, then, whether the doc- 
 
THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 177 
 
 trine, above set down, be the true one, is this ; Ought a 
 body of professing Christians, organized after the primi- 
 tive model, to refuse communion with a body organized 
 differently ? 
 
 Communion is of three kinds ; invisible communion, 
 or the communion of truly pious men, in the gifts of the 
 Holy Ghost; private communion, or the communion of 
 apparently pious men, in common Christian intercourse ; 
 and church communion, or the communion of profes- 
 sedly pious men, in certain public ordinances. The 
 first, it is impossible to refuse ; God regulates it ; and 
 finds its subjects, as we have seen, in no one external 
 church. The second, it is absurd to refuse ; for piety 
 must respect piety, across any church lines. The last 
 must be the thing in question : Ought not a body, that 
 feels itself to be the truly primitive church, to refuse ex- 
 ternal church communion with one after another model ? 
 An arrogation, let it be granted, at the worst, of a much 
 milder kind than any these chapters have yet considered; 
 making externals bear upon externals, irregularity in ex- 
 ternal order suffering the forfeit only of external privilege. 
 
 Now, there never was a question that appealed more 
 directly to the " principle of design." New Testament 
 example will do nothing for it ; for Peter and Paul 
 knew nothing of any Christian society but their own. 
 The divisions they denounced, were in doctrine, and 
 had not gone to the length of separate organization. 
 New^ Testament precept will do as little. It tells us 
 how to deal with ministers of another faith, — " Though 
 we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel, 
 than that which w^e have preached unto you, let him be 
 anathema;"^ but nowhere how to deal wdih ministers 
 » Gal. i. 8. 
 
178 THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION.- 
 
 of another church. We are not aware, that any one 
 has ventured to show a passage, as speaking at all upon 
 the matter. 
 
 What, then, is the design of the church ? To teach 
 (i. e., instruct and discipline) in the service of God, to 
 more advantage, by the union of believers. 
 
 What would be the result of the unchurching rule? 
 Speculative error, we have seen, must be endless, and, 
 especially, in the detail of external order, where so small 
 a book as the Testament treats of it, and so small a part 
 of that. Each point, in the detail, would be subject- 
 matter for mistake — each sacrament, each rule, each 
 office; so that, out of the varied combination that 
 this would give, a hundred sects would spring, each 
 after a model of its own. And, then, if it be the duty 
 of that one which is truly primitive, to unchurch all the 
 rest, then all, believing themselves that one, would be, 
 mutually, unchurched, and the result would be, complete 
 disunion of believers, to the extent of this speculative 
 difference. The second doctrine in the list, therefore, 
 cannot be the true one, because, the design of religion 
 is, to teach men in the service of God, to more advan- 
 tage, by the union of believers. 
 
 If it be said, God, who has promised to be with His 
 church, even to the end of the world, might interfere to 
 keep the mass of his people right on these external 
 points : the reply is, it must be by miracle. Minds end- 
 lessly astray on plainer points, and always right on 
 these, would be kept so only by supernatural power. Now% 
 remembering that the design of the church is to teach, 
 and to teach men, and to teach with reference to the 
 peculiar temptations of men, we ask, would God per- 
 
THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 179 
 
 form the only miracle of the present age, or, if you 
 choose, one of His few only miracles, in tempting men 
 by exalting externals, i. e., while they are left to err in 
 much more vital, because much more spiritual matters, 
 interposing, by miracle, or by special Providence, if that 
 be a better name, to keep them right in the matter of ex- 
 ternals ? 
 
 Besides, God has not interfered. The advocates of 
 the particular doctrine before us, confess that multitudes 
 of good men are out of the true communion. 
 
 If it be said, the true church fences herself round, as 
 an act of discipline ; for as departure from the primitive 
 model is an evil, making her weak and crippled in her 
 teaching, she refuses fellowship with those who are 
 guilty of it, as a check upon the evil ; I reply, then she 
 is a tempter of the world. 
 
 Some amount of practical error she tolerates, and a 
 great amount — in all her members — of pride, and envy- 
 ing, and covetousness. Yet they cripple her teaching 
 much more than diversity of order. Some amount of 
 doctrinal error she tolerates, and a great amount in 
 many of her members — error on points as vital, as the 
 grace of God, and Christ's atonement. Why not refuse 
 fellowship for them ? How more direct the lesson of 
 temptation, that externals after all are the great thing for 
 the soul, than to tolerate a distorted faith, and draw 
 church lines fondly and indulgently about it, but to cut 
 off and count alien, at once, for a flaw in external order. 
 
 To sum up the argument, then, if the object of organ- 
 izing a church, at all, be union, in order to teaching ; 
 this doctrine would thwart it in two directions. (1). It 
 would defeat union, by separating men, confessedly the 
 
180 THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 
 
 children of God, in the noble efforts of gospel enterprise, 
 and in the high acts of gospel worship ; and (2), it would 
 defeat teachhig, by tempting men precisely in the path 
 of favourite error, viz., to believe that those externals 
 Vv'hich are thus to take the precedence of purity of heart 
 and evangelical behef, as a test of fellowship, must cer- 
 tainly be the vital things of religion. 
 
 The second doctrine, therefore, is not the true one. 
 
 III. The visible church is made up of various 
 branches, between which there are certain rights and 
 duties of church communion. 
 
 The establishment of this doctrine is a result of the 
 refutation of the last. 
 
 As. to the wording in the early part of the sentence, it 
 is, intrinsically, of httle moment. It has been said, the 
 visible church is made up of various branches, because 
 we get language by use, and most writers seemed to 
 speak so. If the New Testament gives to us no prece- 
 dent, it is because there w^as no chance for it ; the church 
 in its infancy being homogeneously organized. 
 
 But though, philologically, we prefer speaking as we 
 have done ; theologically, we would be quite willing to 
 speak differently. For if all would agree, it might not 
 be as safe, but it would be as true, to say, — The churchy 
 (after the primitive model,) finds herself in company with 
 a number of other organized bodies of pious men, with 
 whom she has certain rights and duties of visible com- 
 munion. 
 
 The really debateable and vital half of the sentence is 
 the last, — " with whom she has, &c.," and the truth of 
 that is ours already, without any further argument. If 
 she has no right to refuse all, she is bound to hold some, 
 visible communion with them. 
 
THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 181 
 
 The only question that remains is, what, in manner 
 and extent, must that communion be? 
 
 It cannot be perfect, for that is inconsistent with the 
 idea of different organizations. Communion is perfect 
 only when the body is homogeneously one. How and 
 what must it be, between divided sects ? 
 
 Now, a very easy, a very adequate, and, so far on in 
 the argument, a very evident rule of communion is, that 
 it is the right and duty of every ecclesiastical body to 
 hold communion with every other, in any institution of 
 the church, in all degrees not inconsistent with the 
 design of that particular institution. 
 
 Let us look separately at the institutions in v*'hich 
 communion is held, and draw out the rule in detail. 
 
 Communion is of four kinds: (1) Communion in 
 ministry, (2) Communion in sacraments, (3) Commu- 
 nion in membership, (4) Communion in government. 
 
 (1.) The rule as to the first would be, it is the right 
 and duty of every ecclesiastical body to hold commu- 
 nion in ministry with every other, in all degrees not in- 
 consistent with the design of the ministry. 
 
 Now, the design of the ministry is, to secure proper 
 men to instruct and discipline in the service of God. In 
 this, three things are vitally requisite, by a necessity 
 growing out of the nature of things ; (a.) piety, know- 
 ledge, and certain natural accomplishments; (b.) office, 
 singling out the men for support and acknowledgment 
 by the people ; (c.) separation to that office, by an ordain- 
 ing choice or rite. 
 
 Suppose, therefore, a case occurs — a minister of one 
 branch of the church is in a position officially to serve 
 another branch; how far may his labour be accepted? 
 
 Recollecting the rule, it must be asked, how far does 
 16 
 
182 THE TRUE DOCTPv-INE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 
 
 the man meet the design of the gospel ministry? (c.) How 
 far was his ordination, in its source and manner, a suffi- 
 cient guaranty of a proper choice? and (b.) how far is 
 his office hke the one the duties of which he is to do, so 
 as to be a guaranty that he is (a) fit to do thera? And 
 then it will be the right and duty of the church to be 
 served by him, in the degree which the answer to these 
 questions warrants. 
 
 It is gratifying to observe, with how few and widely- 
 condemned exceptions, the Protestant world use virtu- 
 ally this very method. Whole classes of ministers are 
 disowned from all communion, but only because their 
 ordination in some fatally apostate church, or by some 
 rule that defeats itself, is a pledge that they are quite 
 unfit or unsafe as labourers. Again, whole classes are 
 received into all communion, with scarcely more restric- 
 tion than by their own assemblies, because the doctrine 
 on either side is found the same, and the order but 
 slightly diflferent. Then, between these extremes of total 
 corruption, and of near agreement, are all degrees of 
 acknowledgment and interchange. 
 
 If a minister belong to a church, organized amiss, and 
 fallen into grave error, he may not be settled as pastor 
 by a sounder body, nor go among its people, officially, 
 and by their request, to preach and govern, as he may 
 among his own ; but if, vitally, his creed is good, he may 
 safely be called to preach those occasional sermons, in 
 which the peculiarities of his creed are not likely to 
 appear, or in which, if they do, a regular pastor may be 
 at hand to observe and correct them. In fine, it should 
 be the rule, and practically it will be, and is, among all 
 good Protestants, that just so far as the good done by 
 the ministry of an erroneous church overbalances the 
 
THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 183 
 
 evil, the whole circle of purer churches should acknow- 
 ledge them by using their assistance, and by wishing 
 them God speed in their own enterprises among the 
 people. • 
 
 This is all that is vitally of any moment. Whether 
 they shall be acknowledged specifically, as bishops, 
 presbyters, or deacons, is too often a question of words. 
 Precisely in the Bible sense they may not deserve to be ; 
 or, having given up the Bible names, they may not ask 
 to be. The grand question for us to settle, as we keep 
 close to the idea of design, is, how far do they meet the 
 design of that office, be it what it may, in which they 
 have a chance to serve us? It is unfortunate that they 
 bear ill-chosen names, and still more unfortunate that 
 they bear office that is even slightly changed, and they 
 should be discountenanced to the extent of that misfor- 
 tune ; but if they have held fast to the main idea of 
 the ministry, they must be countenanced to the extent 
 of that. 
 
 (2.) Next in order is, communion in sacraments. 
 
 When may we accredit the baptism.s of another 
 church ? and when, in the absence of its own ministry, 
 may we consent to baptize its children or its members ? 
 When may we sit down at the Lord's table, in another 
 church ? and when may we invite its members to com- 
 mune in ours 1 
 
 Giving the rule as directed, we answer, — Always, 
 when the design of the sacrament has been or will be 
 answered, in this particular administration of it. And 
 by this we do not mean, only when the sacrament meets 
 its end, and its spiritual benefit is actually had through 
 the faith of its recipient ; for of that we are not to judge, 
 and no sacrament is to be repeated for default of that. 
 
184 THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 
 
 But we mean only when the sacrament is suitable to its 
 end, and agrees with the design for which God gave it. 
 
 For the application of this rule, in detail, we are not 
 furnished : for it will require a separate treatise to esta- 
 blish, specifically, the design of the sacraments. 
 
 The mode of its application, however, may be happily 
 illustrated by a question lately revived in this country. 
 Is baptism in the Papal Church to be counted valid? 
 
 1. Baptism, to meet its design, must be by the minis- 
 try.* The question, therefore, must be settled, whether 
 the Papal Church is pure enough to have a ministry. 
 2. Baptism, to meet its design, must be not too far aside 
 from a certain form. The question, therefore, must be 
 settled, whether the Papists, by the mode and meaning 
 that they give it, do not turn it too far aside. 3. Bap- 
 tism, to meet its design, must not be renounced by the 
 party that has been the subject of it.^ The question, 
 therefore, is of weight, whether that party has irremov- 
 able scruples in regard to it, and desires the ordinance 
 to be administered anew. 4. Baptism, to meet its 
 design, need only be pure in its particular instance of 
 administration, and is not to be implicated with corrup- 
 tions that may exist in the same church, in other 
 countries. The question, therefore, is of interest, how far 
 the Papal Church is to be acknowledged as a unit, and 
 whether it is not m.uch broken up into dissenting 
 branches, and far purer in some corners of the world 
 
 ^ These points are assumed, as the paragraph is simply for illustration. 
 
 t* Of course it is meant where a sounder administration of it is in 
 view. To renounce a baptism, and ask it again in the same form, would 
 be absurd, for if it has been wickedly attended on, faith should go back 
 even after the lapse of years, and conform and embrace it, and not be 
 baptized again. 
 
THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. ] 85 
 
 than in others ; the Catechism of the Council of Trent 
 not being, as, in all consistency, it would be, the uniform 
 creed of all, but, there actually being wide departure 
 from it in purity and gospel light. 
 
 Without so far anticipating the minuter data with 
 which a separate treatise would furnish us, as to attempt 
 an answer to the question here, it is maintained that this 
 general issue is the only one to which it can be legiti- 
 mately brought. 
 
 In case of the other sacrament — the Lord's Supper — 
 the Baptist Churches afford us a singular example of the 
 refusal of communion. 
 
 In rejecting the baptisms of other churches, they are 
 unquestionably consistent. If, agreeably to their opinion, 
 baptism is designed only for adult believers, they are 
 right when they say that baptism, administered in 
 infancy, not meeting that design, is no baptism. And if 
 the design of baptism is only met by immersion, they are 
 right in what they say of affusion and sprinkling. So 
 that they cannot consistently accredit any administration 
 of the rite by other churches. But that which has gotten 
 the name of " dose commiimon^'' is by no means as harm- 
 less, nor as harmonious with a svstem of doctrine other- 
 wise so evangelical. 
 
 Their reasoning, however, has at least that semblance 
 of truth — brevity, {a.) The Lord's Supper is only for 
 those who are members of the church, {h.) Baptism, 
 being the initiatory rite, is necessary to church member- 
 ship, (c.) That only is baptism which is by immersion 
 after a profession of the faith, {d.) Therefore, the Lord's 
 Supper is only for those who are so baptized. Certainly 
 here is something plausible, and yet every instinct of 
 piety revolts at the conclusion. The dearer the table 
 
 16* 
 
186 THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 
 
 of the Lord, and the more sacred that carefulness with 
 which it is fenced around, and the stronger the tie that 
 binds one good man to another, the more abhorrent, at 
 first thought, at least, must this principle appear. The 
 richest and rarest piety this earth has ever seen, must 
 then keep aloof from communion in a church one of the 
 highest on the list in evangelical purity ! Vastly the 
 minority of pious men must denounce the majority of 
 pious men, as fallen utterly short of the outward covenant 
 and visible kingdom of Jesus Christ, and that, too, in the 
 very act of acknowledging their piety, and, strange to 
 say, their ministry too, in the performance of some of 
 its highest functions ! That instinct is just. There must 
 be some flaw in a train, leading to such confusion. 
 
 The flaw occurs in the second position of the four. 
 (h.) Baptism, being the initiatory rite, is necessary to 
 church membership. It is the initiatory rite, and yet is 
 no more necessary to church membership, than it is to 
 salvation. The proof of this, however, will come best 
 under the next head. 
 
 (3.) Communion in membership. 
 
 Rule. — It is the right, and duty, of every ecclesias- 
 tical body, to hold communion, in membership, with 
 every other, in all degrees not inconsistent with the 
 design of membership. 
 
 What is the design of church membership ? To unite 
 piety, for greater advantage in instruction and disci- 
 pline. 
 
 What is the great requisite of membership, then? 
 Unquestionably, piety; and no other requisite must be 
 suffered to drive off" some of the little piety in the world, 
 unless of moment enough to overbalance the loss, by the 
 greater effectiveness it gives the rest. 
 
 i 
 
THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNIOxV. 187 
 
 Our simple test of membership, then, is piety (the ap- 
 pearance of it), and no other will be acknowledged, till 
 shown to be by direct command of scripture, or to be 
 inferred, as this has been, from the higher principles of 
 the gospel. 
 
 If it be said, Baptism is the initiatory rite, and its ad- 
 ministration is, therefore, one test of membership ; it is 
 answered. Baptism is the regenerating rite, and yet, its 
 administration is not a test of regeneration. And, 
 though the two cases are not precisely parallel, baptism 
 being to membership, what it is not at all to regenera- 
 tion, that is, really a part of the process of induction, 
 still, it is not the whole, nor at all an absolutely vital 
 part. 
 
 The first step toward membership, is the vital one, 
 viz., admission by an authoritative vote. Baptism is the 
 initiatory rite, in that a part of its intention, as a sacra- 
 ment, is, symbolically, to declare that vote, and, cere- 
 monially, to carry it out. Just so the first step towards, 
 the ministry, is the vital one, viz., appointment by an 
 authoritative vote. Imposition of hands is the initiatory 
 rite, in that the whole of its intention is, symbolically, to 
 declare that vote, and, ceremonially, to carry it out. 
 Therefore, as no good Protestant church, by the voice 
 of its council, would reverse its vote, setting apart a fit 
 man as a minister, simply because, when the imposition 
 of hands is proposed, he has conscientious scruples, and 
 declines it; so no good Protestant church ought to 
 reverse its vote, admitting a man as a member, simply 
 because, when baptism is spoken of, he must decline it, 
 from conscientious scruples. Both, the laying on of 
 hands, and the sprinkling of the water, are precepts of 
 Christ; but precepts, the neglect of which, through 
 
188 THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 
 
 speculative er'or, is so much lighter an enormity than 
 a mistake of the purer doctrines of the gospel, that, to 
 cast out for the first, and not for the last, is an idolatrous 
 exalting of externals, and a direct snare to souls. 
 
 But, now, let us guard what has been said. A man, 
 admitted to the church without baptism, would not be a 
 full member, and for a very simple reason. 
 
 Membership is membership, only so far as it holds 
 communion. As it is hy an authoritative act, so it is 
 for an external fellowship, and it is nothing without it. 
 Of what account would membership be, with no part in 
 ministry, sacraments, or government? Baptism, there- 
 fore, being one of these, the man who, through specula- 
 tive error, has declined it, has impoverished his mem- 
 bership. This should be borne in mind. The disap- 
 proving eye of the church should be upon him. He 
 should be warned, that he is living in neglect of one of 
 his Saviour's precepts, and, as soon as instruction and 
 exhortation can convince him he is wrong, his relation 
 to the church should be perfected. 
 
 Just so, if a devotedly pious Christian should fall into 
 the Quaker error, of declining both the sacraments; and, 
 though the only privilege of membership, in his case, 
 would be, recognition by the church, still, should he 
 ask it, we see not but that we must carry out the prin- 
 ciple. If he is disorderly, in spreading his errors, let 
 him be refused, as an act of discipline, and to defend the 
 church. But, if not, let him be admitted. Piety is the 
 main concern. To exclude him, for these mistakes, 
 when we would admit him, with much sadder mistakes, 
 in the purer doctrines of his creed, is as unsafe, as it is 
 uncommanded. Let him be admitted ; only, let the 
 care of the church be directed, to show him how, 
 
THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 189 
 
 unhappily, his membership is crippled, and to recover 
 him from an opinion, by which his piety is so much 
 wronged. 
 
 (4.) Communion in government. Less of this is 
 practicable, it is imagined, than in either of the other 
 cases ; — though we word the rule as before. 
 
 The first open result of church difference, either in 
 faith or order, is separate jurisdiction, and this sepa- 
 rateness of jurisdiction is but little relieved, formally, — 
 however much it may be virtually, — by the usual plans 
 of friendly intercourse, — for instance, by the plan of 
 delegated or corresponding members, in the council of 
 a sister church, or, by general convention of all the 
 churches, in union, upon some plan of Christian en- 
 terprise. 
 
 How liberal this necessary exclusiveness must be, 
 however, a question, that may be adduced, will finely 
 illustrate. 
 
 May a member, or, especially, a minister, who is out 
 of the reach of his own church, or w^io conceives a 
 church model to be scriptural, which no existing body 
 possesses, adopt and join any evangelical church, 
 most like his own, within the bounds of which it 
 may be necessary for him to live? How shall we 
 answer? 
 
 Church government is, certainly, jure divino, and 
 some model of it, too ; for all is of divine right, that is, 
 of divine command; and that church government ex- 
 isted in primitive times, and that Christ framed it, and 
 that he framed it harmoniously, in a certain way, and 
 that he meant it to be kept harmoniously one, and said 
 so, it is hard not to believe. And positive proof is 
 
190 THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 
 
 given below to that effect.^ But, then, there are two 
 kinds of precept in the Bible, — natural and positive, — 
 and two kinds of divine right, springing from the two. 
 
 The first must be obeyed, without any possible excep- 
 tion ; for we ought not to blaspheme God, or to hate our 
 enemy, if it were to save us from the most horrid death. 
 The right, then, of God to our adoration, and of man to 
 our benevolence, is of the most absolute and unyielding 
 nature. 
 
 But the last kind are altogether different. While the 
 
 ^ Phil. i. 1. "Paul and Timotheus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus 
 which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons." 
 
 1 Tim. iii. 1. "If a man desire the office of a bishop," &c. 
 
 1 Tim. iii. 2. " A bishop must be blameless, the husband of one v/ife," 
 &c. 
 
 Tit. i. 5-7. " For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest 
 set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, 
 as I had appointed thee. If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, 
 having faithful children, not accused of riot, or unruly. For a bishop 
 must be blameless, as the steward of God ; not self-willed, not soon angry, 
 not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre." 
 
 Acts XX. 28. " Take heed to all the flock, over the which the Holy 
 Ghost hath made you bishops." 
 
 1 Tim. V. 17. "Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of 
 double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine-" 
 
 Acts vi. 1-6. (Ordination of deacons.) 
 
 1 Tim. iii. 8. "Likewise must the deacons be grave, not double- 
 tongued," &c. 
 
 1 Tim. iii, 12. "Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife," &c. 
 10. " Let these, also, first be proved ; then let them use the office of a 
 deacon, being found blameless." 
 
 2 Tim. ii. 2. " The things that thou hast heard of me, the same com- 
 mit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also." 
 
 Acts xiv. 23. " Ordained elders in every church." 
 
 Rev. ii. 1. " To the angel of the church of Ephesus, write," &:,c., &c, 
 
 James v. 14. "Let him call for the elders of the church." 
 
THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 191 
 
 first grow out of the nature of virtue, and are right, in- 
 trinsically, and by themselves, these are positive, i. e., 
 by special appointment of God, to meet certain designs. 
 They admit of endless exception. It is, often, absolutely 
 sinful to obey them ; and, when such cases are, it is cast 
 upon us to learn, by settling the question, When do they 
 defeat their own, or some higher design ? 
 
 " Have ye not read what David did when he was an 
 hungered, and they that were with him ; how he entered 
 into the house of God, and did eat the shew-bread, which 
 was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which 
 were with him, but only for the priests.""" The design 
 of this rule, as to the shew-bread, was to carry out a 
 certain symbolical meaning. The design of David, was 
 to save his own and his servants' life. He soon made 
 up his mind which was the most important ; and, we 
 see, Jesus Christ sanctions the conclusion to which he 
 came. But if the chance for life, had been in profaning 
 the Lord, instead of the Lord's table, he must have de- 
 cided very differently. 
 
 So of the sabbath, in respect to which David's ease is 
 quoted by our Saviour ; its observance is by precept ; 
 its claim is jure divino; and, yet, Christ never mentions 
 the day, except to rebuke the superstitious strictness of 
 the Pharisees, and to show in what various cases men 
 may " profane it, and be blameless ;" building his posi- 
 tion, too, upon the principle of design — " The sabbath 
 was made for man, and not man for the sabbath."^ 
 
 Our answer, then, to the question before us, is an 
 easy one. There is precept for the church. There is 
 preceptive model for its form. There is divine right for 
 
 » Matt. xii. 3, 4. ^ Mark ii. 27. 
 
192 THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 
 
 its claim. And yet, there maybe grievous sin in observ- 
 ing either. If extraordinary circumstances in any land 
 make another model better, it is sin to prefer our church 
 to that. If the mistake of those with whom we hve 
 make another model necessary, it is sin to prefer no 
 church to theirs ; unless, indeed, it can be proved that 
 their church is worse than none. 
 
 We know^ these are delicate matters. The model that 
 Christ has left must not be lightly departed from, any 
 more than there may be a departure lightly from the 
 observance of the sabbath day; but some departure, 
 sometimes, is absolutely necessary, from either, and here 
 is the wisdom of the saints, to tell how and when. 
 
 IV. The visible church is made up of various branches, 
 between which there are not only certain rights and 
 duties of church communion, but an interest and an obli- 
 gation to come together into one upon some liberal and 
 general platform. 
 
 The corner stone which this last doctrine claims, is a 
 noble truth. Certainly, the beau ideal of the church is, 
 one homogeneous body all over the world. And though 
 the reigning system of denominations has been overruled 
 by God for incalculable good, yet for good which, like 
 the crucifixion of Jesus, has come through the path of 
 evil, a path which no good man dare ever, intentionally, 
 use. Christian union is precious. And, great as the 
 growth of our cause has been under existing divisions, it 
 is firmly believed that the day of most growth will be 
 the day of most union. 
 
 But then Christian union, even of an outward kind, 
 must be twofold — not union in church alone, but union 
 also in church creed. The man who blends the two 
 before his eye, and prays for them, and toils after them 
 
THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 193 
 
 for his country and for the world, is a patriot and a 
 benefactor. But the man who separates the two, and 
 labours after union in church, in spite of discrepance in 
 creed, is an enthusiast; and it is this last kind of end 
 that the doctrine above stated has in view. 
 
 The truth is, that, pious as some of the men have been, 
 who have thus wished to bring the branches of the 
 church together, its errors and dissensions remaining as 
 they are, their idea, savouring, as it does, of homage to 
 outward unity, on its own account, and aside from its 
 design, is one of the entering steps toward superstition ; 
 and we were not surprised recently to hear that pre- 
 cisely the same idea was a favourite one in the early 
 studies of one of the modern heresiarchs of England.'' 
 
 It is true the plan now agitated in Germany, and by 
 one, or more good men in this country, professes to pro- 
 vide for union in creed, as well as in church relation. It 
 would take the grander doctrines of the cross, in which 
 evangelical sects agree, and build out of them a liberal 
 and general platform on which all might stand. But that 
 such a union in creed as this — one effected by striking 
 out, not by abating, differences — w^ill not answer, may 
 be made evident, we think, by considering the objects in 
 which the contemplated union is to be. 
 
 (1.) There is to be union in ministry. 
 
 Now, how^ever possible it might be to have a creed 
 that should deal in generals, i. e. the mere skeleton of a 
 creed, for each private Christian to clothe with flesh as 
 
 ' Dr. Pusey. A friend who not long since made his acquaintance at 
 Oxford, after speaking of his suavity of manner, and bonhomie, as con. 
 trasted with the monkish sternness of one at least of his fellow Tracta- 
 rians, added, in substance, that the attractive idea of one united church. 
 appeared to have been the first that allured him into the path of error, 
 
 17 
 
194 THE TRUE DOCTPaNE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 
 
 he might choose; it would be exceedingly hard to have 
 a ministry that should deal in generals; especially, if that 
 ministry is to be " evangelical," and those generals are 
 to be " the grander doctrines of the cross." 
 
 And hard for two reasons : — that an evangelical 
 ministry (a) could not, if they would, and (b) would not, 
 if they could, deal in generals. 
 
 (a.) They could not do it, because the points in which 
 sister churches differ, though called minor points, so 
 touch the vitals of the gospel, that no minister could 
 long preach that without preaching them. He could not 
 always dissect them away. AbiHty or inability — perse- 
 verance or falling from grace — original guilt or original 
 innocence, are points on which a constant preacher must 
 speak his mind, that is, if he have creed enough to tell, 
 and warmth and clearness enough to tell it, so as to do 
 his people any good ; and many a hearer would be 
 obliged to bring his children and his friends, and to come 
 himself under the influence of teaching, the tendency of 
 which he might seriously fear. 
 
 (b.) But furthermore, an evangelical ministry icould 
 not deal in generals. Their orders are " to declare all 
 the counsel of God ;"^ and that loss of power and pun- 
 gency in preaching which the hiding of the pecuHarities 
 of their faith would cause, they would never consent to, 
 if for no other reason than that the sacrifice would be 
 vastly greater than the end to be attained. 
 
 It is no more true, however, that an evangelical 
 ministry must preach their mind, than that, if they do, 
 the evangelical churches cannot be united. Let the creed 
 be as general as it might, a pointed preaching would ruin 
 
 » Acts XX. 27. 
 
THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 195 
 
 the plan of union. It would cause collision between 
 pastor and people. The people, however docilely dis- 
 posed, would not consent to the mischief of hearing 
 error. It would cause collision between pastor and 
 pastor, not only in the ecclesiastical council, but in the 
 public arena. It would cause collision between people 
 and people, in choosing a pastor, and in sustaining one 
 after he is voted in. Therefore, as the very design of 
 the church is, " union, in order to naore advantageous 
 teaching," this concord most of all discordant, is neither 
 her " interest," nor her " obhgation," for it can be 
 neither, to adopt a plan that frustrates her own design. 
 
 (2.) Union in sacraments. 
 
 Evangelical churches differ as to the mode and mean- 
 ing of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Multitudes would 
 be unable to sacrifice the difference, believing the dying 
 command of Christ, and the seal of regeneration given 
 by the Father were matters too holy to be left to human 
 convention. These must so far dissent from the plan of 
 union. 
 
 Others might yield. But when we remember that the 
 good of a sacrament is by faith, it is easy to see how 
 they would be destroying this wdiole department of 
 worship, receiving sacraments which are explained con- 
 trary to their faith, and administered contrary to their 
 faith, and which their faith challenges as really not the 
 sacraments to which the promises of God are given. 
 How could a Baptist countenance the solemn mockery 
 of infant baptism, or one not a Baptist the half-idolatry 
 of insisting upon immersion 1 Even supposing all human 
 passion to be held in check, the whole matter would be 
 one of inextricable difficulty. 
 
 There could not be union in sacraments. 
 
196 THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUKION. 
 
 (3.) Union in membership. 
 
 This of course would have no obstacles peculiarly its 
 own ; but would find more than enough to render it 
 impracticable in each of the other three. 
 
 (4.) Union in government. 
 
 One church out of the many would have to be chosen, 
 and its government given to all the rest, the rest having, 
 in their own judgment, to exchange a scriptural for an 
 unscriptural form. 
 
 Now, many would believe their government in such 
 sense jure divino, that no possible reason is enough to 
 change it ; while many more would beheve theirs in such 
 sense jur^e divino, that this particular reason (outward 
 union) is not enough; of course neither class could have 
 anything to do with the plan. 
 
 Grant, however, that after these were stricken from 
 the list, a few should remain, and two or three churches, 
 or parts of two or three, should come together, sober 
 proof, and proof taken from what quarter you please, — 
 from church history, or from church experience, or from 
 self-inspection, would warrant the belief that they would 
 have less actual concord, and that, too, on the score of 
 government, when one, than when two or three. The 
 Christian world would gain in harmony less than it would 
 lose. 
 
 That spirit of innovation which most of all breeds de- 
 bate, is hard enough to hold in check even under the 
 present system, where the doors of the churches are open 
 from one into the other, and men are free to find a 
 govern n:ient precisely right, but vastly harder under a 
 system of constrained, artificial oneness and difiicult con- 
 cession. So, too, that impatience under the arm of dis. 
 cipline which most of all breeds disorder, is hard enough 
 
THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF CHURCH COMMUNION. 197 
 
 to awe down, even under the sanction of a divine right, 
 but vastly harder under a government confessedly the 
 fruit of human convention. 
 
 An honest summing up of the argument, therefore, 
 must, we are sure, decide for the third doctrine, and re- 
 ject the fourth. To excommunicate beyond what the 
 design of the church requires, is idolatrous. To unite 
 beyond what the design of the church requires, is idola- 
 trous. And both, though it may seem a paradox, may spring 
 from the same source — idolatrous regard for an external 
 unity. The Protestant churches, as they are, stand, the 
 mass of them, in an admirable medium — kept from dissen- 
 sion by being divided, kept from alienation by communion 
 — agreement and disagreement, in that measure which the 
 case may show, having found for themselves naturally 
 their point of equilibrium. 
 
 True, as has been admitted all along, perfect union is 
 devoutly to be wished, but it must be a union beginning 
 in the creed, and working out to the externals ; any thing 
 else will be like the healing of the surface over a fester- 
 ing wound. Speculative error is the sin ; speculative 
 error, then, is the subject-matter for repentance ; there 
 let it begin. There must be unison, or there cannot be 
 union ; all of us speaking the same things, if there are to 
 be no divisions among us.^" For should one triumph of 
 the Millennium be a church harmoniously one, it will be 
 no triumph over the principle that the church must not 
 be one, any farther than she can be one harmoniously. 
 
 » 1 Cor. i. 10. 
 THE END. 
 
 17* 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Page 60, line 10, for *' refuted" read reputed. 
 
 Page 88, line 19, for "instructive" read instinctive. 
 
 Page 102, line 3, for " this" read His. 
 
 Page 115, line 21, for " charge" read charm. 
 
 Page 132, line 1, for '* share" read snare. 
 
 Page 147, line 21, for " this" read His. 
 
 Page 155, line 8, erase " out," 
 
CHEAP EDITIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 VALUABLE THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, &c. 
 
 Travelling Colporteurs wanted, with whom liberal 
 terms will be made. 
 
 JAMES M. CAMFBELL, 
 
 NO. 98 CHESTNUT STREET, PHII^ADErPHIA, 
 
 PUBLISHES 
 
 O'AIJBIIiN^'S HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION IN 
 
 Germany and Switzerland. Complete in one volume, 8t'o, 
 with all the Notes and References. — In cloth, $1 ; half-cloth, 
 75 cents ; paper cover 50 cents. 
 
 (IIj^'Also, a new a3*^d beautiful edition of the same tvork, in 
 three volumes, 12mo,tvith Portraits of Luther, Melancthos-, and 
 Tetzel.— Half-cloth, $1. 
 
 "We wish that a copy of the History of the Reformation could be 
 placed in the hands of every family in the United States." — New York 
 Observer. 
 
 "When we first read D'Auhign^'s History of the Reformation, we 
 felt an earnest desire that it might be spread broad-cast through the 
 land, that the mass of our population everywhere might be familiar 
 with the price at which that glorious disenthralment was purchased, 
 and the time-honoured names that shared the struggle. We have now 
 a prospect of realizing our wish. The American Tract Society is en- 
 gaged with it. But the greatest effort yet made is found in the follow- 
 ing notice : (The advertisement of J. M. Campbell's fifty centedition.) 
 Let it be bought by the lovers of the Reformation, and given to every 
 person in the land willing to read it and not able to buy it." — Episcopal 
 Recorder. 
 
 " This History is one of the most interesting and important works 
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 server. 
 
 " D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation is a work which, to the 
 importance of truth, adds the interest of the most stirring romance.'" — 
 Berks ^- Schuylkill Journal. 
 
 1 
 
(2) 
 
 THE ORIGIN, PRINCIPLES, AND RESULTS OP THE 
 BRITISH REPDRMATION. % the rt. Rev. john Henry 
 
 Hopkins, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Dio- 
 cese of Vermont^ l2mo, — Cloth, $1. 
 
 " This admirable work is valuable to all true Protestants, and im- 
 portant to all religious thinkers— a sound work, arranged by a master 
 hand: one who, if he were not a bishop, would deserve, for this pro- 
 duction alone, to wear the crown of distinction. Bishop Onderdorik s 
 prohibition that these lectures should not be delivered from the pulpit 
 m Philadelphia, has done a sure good to the reading public at large, 
 affording them an opportunity to 'read, mark, and inwardly digest 
 them in their own closets, and substantially to profit by that full tide 
 of thought which solely carries us to the right haven. Clear Chris- 
 tian truths, aided by the light of history, are enforced and exemplified, 
 and a careful examination instituted between the principles of the 
 actual British Reformation and that effected by those eminent men 
 on the continent, Calvin, Luther, and Zuinghus. Each lecture is, 
 as it were, a rule of faith, unity, and doctrine. In short, the entire 
 work is prepared with consummate judgment, thoughtful investigation, 
 and in a Christian spirit. To use the words of a contemporary, it is 
 full of the clear thought, the kind spirit, and the easy style, which we 
 never fail to find in the authors productions.' Those who purdiase a 
 copy and read it slowly and surely, will be essentially benefited by 
 the strengthening knowledge they receive:'— Boston Trans. 
 
 <' These lectures discuss the ensuing topics: 'The Reformation 
 and its Results— The Rule of Faith— Roman Doctrine of Tradition 
 and Infallibility Disproved— Papal Supremacy— Romish Anathemas 
 and Persecution— Celibacy and Monachism— Worship of the Virgin 
 and Saints, and Rehcs, and Images— Purgatory, Satisfaction, and In- 
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 is Babylon the Grea^— that the Pope is Antichrist— ih^t Babylon 
 must fall — and that Antichrist will be destroyed — 'For the mouth oj- 
 the Lord hath spoken it /' The statements and quotations from anti- 
 quity are of great value, and critically correct as far as we couJd ex- 
 amine them ; and the whole volume is a contribution to our series of 
 antipapist works, which will convince and edify all those who have 
 not devoted much time to the investigation of Vo^ery:'— Christian In- 
 telligencer. 
 
 " No Episcopalian, who takes an interest in the current religious 
 discussions, should pass this volume by."— tJ. S. Saturday Post. 
 
 AN EXTRAORDINARY DISCOURSE ON THE RISE 
 
 AND Fall of Papacy. By Robert Fleming, V. D. M. 
 Quo. — Paper cover, 25 cents. 
 
(3) 
 
 THE ERRORS OF ROMANISM traced to their origin 
 
 IN Human Nature. By Archbishop Whately. 8fo. — 
 
 Paper cover, 25 cents. 
 
 " The author of this work stands among the most learned and able 
 theologians of his age. Though he wears the episcopal mitre, he is 
 the unflinching opponent of High Churchism wherever it is found; 
 and in the treatise before us, traces Romanism to the deeply-seated 
 principles of fallen nature, instead of any accidental causes. Of course 
 it is highly philosophical." — Congregational Journal. 
 
 " We are gratified to see this able work in the handsome form be- < 
 fore us — a form adapted for general and extensive circulation. Those 
 who have read the author's book on ' The Kingdom of Christ,' will 
 need no argument to persuade them to read this learned and lucid 
 exposition of the origin of the most subtle as well as the most gross 
 errors which have ever been amalgamated with Christian truth." — 
 Christian Observer. . , ^., -u- ^ j„ 
 
 " It is a calm, dispassionate, argumentative and philosophical dis- 
 cussion of the errors of Romanism, displaying intimate knowledge of 
 the deceitfulness of the human heart, combined with a discriminating 
 mind, prepared to distinguish between things that are peculiarly Ro- 
 mish and such as are common to professed Christians of every sect, 
 who exalt the human above the divine. • ^ ^ • 
 
 " We venture to say that no candid reader will be disappointed m 
 the perusal of this book." — Protestant Banner. 
 
 A VOICE FROM ROME, answered by an American Citi- 
 zen ; or, A Review of the Encyclical Letter of Pope Gregory 
 XVI. , A. D. 1832. The Bishop's Oath and the Pope's Curse, 
 ^c, 127710. Paper cover, 12^ cents. 
 
 " The documents mentioned in the title are given in full and from 
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 these transcripts from the laws and records of the Roman Catholic 
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 potism. This is just the sort of testimony which is wanted, and which 
 is above impeachment. We have referred heretofore at some length 
 to the incongruities between the liberal professions of Roman Catho- 
 lic bishops in the United States, and their oath of allegiance to a povver 
 which denounces, and, as far as it can, prevents by force, the exercise 
 of every man's natural right to believe what his conscience dictates. 
 We wish heartily that this pamphlet could be in the hands of every 
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 been reared to trust in the purity and justice of the Church of Rome, 
 would read these documents and judge for themselves, whether their 
 civil liberty could be secure were tliat church ascendant; whether the 
 privileges which Americans profess to hold dear would not all be 
 crushed under its influence. -, . • j 
 
 "An able hand has collected the materials of this publication, and 
 connected them with lucid and forcible comments." — North American. 
 
(4) 
 
 HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION OF SPAIN, FROM 
 
 THE Time of its Establishment to the Retgn of Ferdinatvp 
 VII. Composed from the Original Documents of the Archives of 
 the Supreme Council, ^c. By D. Juan Antonio Llorente. 
 One volume, 8vo. — Half-cloth, 50 cents ; paper cover, 37| 
 cents. 
 
 " Don Juan Antonio Llorente is the only writer who has succeeded 
 in completely lifting the veil from the dread mysteries of the Inquisi- 
 tion. It is obvious how very fev/ would be competent to this task, 
 since the proceedings of the Holy Office were shrouded in such im- 
 penetrable secrecy, that even the prisoners who were arraigned before 
 it were kept in ignorance of their own processes. Even such of its 
 functionaries as have, at different times, pretended to give its transac- 
 tions to the world, have confined themselves to an historical outline, 
 with meager notices of such parts of its internal discipline as might be 
 safely disclosed to the public. 
 
 " Llorente was Secretary to the Tribunal of Madrid from 1790 to 
 1792. His official station consequently afforded him every facility for 
 an acquaintance with the most recondite affairs of the Inquisition; 
 and on its suppression, at the close of 1808, he devoted several years 
 to a lawful investigation of the registry of the tribunals, both of the 
 capital and of the "provinces, as well as of such other original docu- 
 ments contained within their archives as had not hitherto been con- 
 fided to the light of day. It is entitled to the credit of being the most, 
 indeed S^ The onln authentic History of the Modern Inquisition .-.^Jl 
 exhibiting its minutest forms of practice, and the insidious policy by 
 which they were directed, from the origin of the institution down to 
 its temporary abolition. It well deserves to be studied, as the record 
 of the most humiliating triumphs which fanaticism has ever been able 
 to obtain over human reason, and that, too, during the most civilized 
 periods, and in the most civilized portions of the world." — Prescotfs 
 Ferdinand and Isabella. 
 
 FATHER CLEMENT, a Roman Catholic Story. 12mo. 
 
 Paper cover, 25 cents. 
 
 " This book, by a lady whose name is deservedly celebrated, con- 
 tains, fictionary as it is, more valuable truth than many elaborate vo- 
 lumes against Popery. We perused it many years ago, not only with 
 interest, but with a sense of foscination and profound feeling. It is the 
 ablest of Miss Kennedy's striking works. The Papists have been so 
 much galled by it, as to produce a tale on their part ; a most lame and 
 impotent affair." — Princeton Review. 
 
(5) 
 
 FOX'S BOOK OF MARTYRS, illustrated. Onc volume, Svo. 
 In cloth, $1 50. 
 
 (JIj* Also, a new and cheap edition, Illustrated luith 54 En- 
 gravings. — In half-cloth, §1. 
 
 " It is one of the remarkable things of the day, that this book can be 
 sold at ONE DOLLAR. So neat and even beautiful in its appearance, so 
 plain in its typography ; 650 octavo pages of close print, for the sura 
 that the most common labourer gets in a single day ! Here the reader 
 may become acquainted with many of the most remarkable characters 
 in the Church's remarkable history, and study the gospel in the lives 
 and deaths of its martyrs." — Episcopal Recorder. 
 
 " Fox's Book of Martyrs is a work which ought to be in every Pro- 
 testant family. The present edition is offered at the extremely low 
 price of one dollar per copy, and is probably, next to Mr. Campbell's 
 edition of DAubigne, the cheapest book in the American market. 
 The publication of such standard works as the History of the Refor- 
 mation, and the Book of Martyrs, at a rate which places them within 
 the means of every class of the community, is an enterprise which 
 commends itself to the favour of every Christian." — Southern Church- 
 man. 
 
 " A republication of this work at this peculiar crisis, when the coun- 
 try is agitated upon the Catholic question, is exceedingly appropriate. 
 Mr. Campbell has performed his part in direct reference to the public 
 taste. The work is embellished by fifty or more engravings, strikingly 
 illustrative of those dark scenes of depravity which have drenched the 
 earth in the purest blood which has ever flowed in human veins. 
 
 "The persecutions of the Protestants by the Papal Church, which 
 are here faithfully recorded, are enough to chill one's blood in their 
 recital, and quite enough to awaken a fearful anxiety lest the same 
 awful scenes should be repeated in the future history of the Church 
 and world." — Olive Branch. 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE SIE&E OF LONDDNDERRY, 
 
 AND Defence of Enniskillen in 1688 and 1689. Bi/ ike 
 Rev. John Graham, A. M., Rector of Tamlaghtard, in the 
 Diocese of Berry. l2mo. — Cloth, 62^ cents. 
 
 " This is a thrilling narrative of an event in the history of the un- 
 happy times of Ireland, when religious and civil animosities engen- 
 dered feuds of the most savage character. There is much at the pre- 
 sent time to revive interest in the perusal of a book of this sort, and 
 we doiibt not it will have an extensive sale."' — Phila. Gazette. 
 
 " It is full of interest. The sufferings of the Protestants during the 
 siege are almost incredible. The enumeration is sickening, j-et it is 
 true. It shows how much human nature can endure when conscience 
 and religion demand the sacrifice." — Richmond Christ. Advocate. 
 
(6) 
 
 PAPAL ROME AS IT IS. ByaRoman.theU^y.h. Gius- 
 TiNiANi, D. Jy.^ formerly a Roman Priest, now minister of iht 
 Evangelical Lutheran Church. Duodecimo. — Paper cover, 
 25 cents. 
 
 "Much as we have heard of this volume and its author, it has but 
 lately fallen into our hands. And it is due to the public, more than 
 to the publisher, to say, that we regard it as worthy of all confidence, 
 and as forming a rich though sad treasury of facts, illustrative of the 
 character of ' Babylon the Great.' Dr. Giustiniani is a Roman by birtJi 
 and education; a man of learning, and, so far as we can judge, of 
 sound evangelical piety. Once a Roman priest, he is now a minister 
 of the Evangelical Lutheran church in this country, labouring with 
 zeal and strong affection for the conversion of deluded Romanists. As 
 a stranger he needs credentials ; and they are modestly furnished, from 
 the highest sources. Whoever reads his "work will be satisfied at once, 
 that he is an honest, able, and faithful witness, who ' sets down naught 
 in malice,' but writes in the fear of God, and with an eye to his final ac- 
 count. ' Papal Rome as it is,' ought not to be overlooked by any man 
 who lies under the solemn responsibilities of an American citizen, to 
 God, his country, and the world." — Boston Recorder. 
 
 "This little volume of 132 pages should be read by every Protes- 
 tant. Here, ' Popery as it is,' is brought out and exposed, not with 
 malevolence, but in a Christian spirit ; not by a Protestant, but by a 
 Roman; not by a stranger, or a looker-on, but by one born in Rome, 
 educated a priest, and who actually officiated in the abominations he 
 portrays. 
 
 " This book, if read, will do good, and we are glad to see such truth- 
 ful expositions of the errors and corruptions of the Papal church, 
 brought before the public by one fully competent to the task, and in 
 whom they may have entire confidence." — Baptist Record. 
 
 " This volume contains an account of the author's conversion to Pro- 
 testantism. In developing the different stages of this slow but gradual 
 process of Divine illumination and sanctiification, the writer presents 
 to the reader, in a spirited and apparent candid way, much of the 'ini- 
 quity' of Romanism, indicating that Rome never changes, and not a 
 few arguments of powerful logic to the overthrow of some of its most 
 unscriptural and absurd errors. We hope it will be extensively circu- 
 lated." — Southern Churchman. 
 
 ** This work seems to be written in a spirit of great kindness, and at 
 ^ this time, when the attention of the world seems distracted by ques- 
 tions in which Papacy exerts a prominent influence, it will be found 
 useful for both Catholic and Protestant." — Phita. Gazette. 
 
 "The value of this little volume consists in the authentic testimony 
 which it gives of the corruptions of the Church of Rome, by one who 
 has been behind the scenes. It is truly marvellous that such a system 
 should ever be embraced vinder the name of Religion." — Presbyterian. 
 
(7) 
 
 THE LIVES OF POPE ALEXANDER VI., AND HIS 
 
 Son, Cesar Borgia. By George Gordon. One volume^ 
 
 Svo. — Paper cover, 37^ cents. 
 
 " These are notorious characters, ' condemned to everlasting fame,' 
 or infamy. To read of their intrigues, their lust, their simony and 
 cruelty, while professing to guide and govern the church, is to be pain- 
 fully oppressed with a conviction of the dreadful lengths in wicked- 
 ness to which a human being can proceed under devout pretences ; 
 and to feel that God is indeed slow to anger, and of great forbearance, 
 that he can endure so long, while wretches so vile breathe his air. 
 Look at this flagrant wickedness, and say if Luther was premature in 
 his attempt at reformation, or too indignant at abominations which 
 must have been intolerably loathsome and revolting to a decent mo- 
 ralist." — Christian Mirror. 
 
 " The persons whose biographies are here presented, stand forth 
 prominently in Ecclesiastical and Civil History, and their lives present 
 much incident of the deepest interest. The times in which they lived 
 were filled with stirring events, and the men themselves, from their 
 personal character, and the infamy with which their career was stained, 
 must long excite general curiosity. The book is large, handsomely 
 printed, and will doubtless be very generally read." — N. Y. Courier. 
 
 "It comprises the lives of perhaps two of the most depraved and 
 desperate ministers that ever boasted of succession from the Holy 
 Apostles of the blessed Redeemer. The lives of these infamous men 
 were filled with every species of iniquity. But for the fact that they 
 exhibit the spirit that pervades the headship of a false and apostate 
 church, such enormities as are here revealed ought to be buried in the 
 deep and gloomy oblivion of the dark ages.'' — Richmond Christian 
 Advocate. 
 
 A NARRATIVE DF THE INIQUITIES AND 
 
 Barbarities practised at Rome in the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury. By Raffaele Ciocci, formerly a Benedictine and 
 Cistercian Monk, Student and Hon. Librarian of the Papal Col- 
 lege of San Bernardo, .Bile Terme Biocleziane, in Borne. Second 
 American, from second London edition. With an .American In- 
 troductory Notice, showing the Existence of Similar Practices 
 in the United States. V2mo. — Paper cover, 25 cents. 
 "Among the authentic narratives of modern Jesuit colleges, semi- 
 naries, and monastic institutions, this history is one of the highest 
 rank and value ; for it is a development of their true character, as is 
 proved by two facts ; American youth, male and female, are prohibit- 
 ed from seeing their family relatives and friends ; and letters are rob- 
 bed and forged in every papist school and college in the United States, 
 exactly as Ciocci describes the felonious practice in Rome. Every 
 citizen should read and ponder this affecting volume. We earnestly 
 call upon all the lovers of the Bible, and the friends of our public 
 schools, to study this narrative."' — Christian Intelligencer. 
 
(8) 
 
 " We invite attention to this work as an exceeding interesting and 
 important narrative. We have here unveiled the machinations of 
 Jesuit priests in the nineteenth century. It is a dark picture of fraud 
 and cruelty, and shows that the historic mirror yet reveals Rome as 
 she is." — Episcopal Recorder. 
 
 " It abounds with startHng revelations on the subject indicated by 
 its title. The book ought to be read by every Protestant. — N. Y. 
 Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 " A narrative of thrilling interest, detailing numerous instances of 
 deceit, falsehood, and fiendish cruelty, practised by the Jesuits and 
 monks of Rome at the present time. Romanists will no doubt accuse 
 him of falsehood; but his narrative carries internal evidence of its 
 truth, in the record of his own errors, and his numerous references to 
 persons of distinction now living." — Christiaii Observer. 
 
 " A simple, truth-like narrative, which makes the blood of an Ameri- 
 can boil. It cannot be read but with strong emotion. 
 
 " This ' Narrative' contains an account of the most outrageous decep- 
 tions and atrocious cruelties practised at Rome on the author himself 
 from his thirteenth year, when he entered the Pontifical College. It 
 should be read by every one who imagines that the character of the 
 Church of Rome has essentially changed, and that the bloody persecu- 
 tions of the Vatican have ceased ; and by all who need any testimony 
 to the barbarity and tyranny of the religious system of that church at 
 the present time, where it is allowed to develope itself untrammeled 
 by the restraints of public opinion or legislative enactments." — 
 Southern Churchman. 
 
 EOME'S POLICY TOWAROS THE BIBLE; 
 
 or Papal Efforts to Suppress the Scriptures in the 
 LAST Five Centuries. Exposed by an American Citizen. 
 l2mo. Paper cover, 15 cents. 
 
 "'A Voice from P^ome,' and 'Rome's Policy towards the Bible,' are 
 tvi'O very instructive and interesting publications from the press of 
 Mr. Campbell of this city. To this publisher the Christian public is 
 greatly indebted for the impulse which he has imparted to the circu- 
 lation of cheap religious literature. For this, he has certainly entitled 
 himself to the gratitude and the patronage of all who desire to see the 
 press an ally to the pulpit. The publications which we have just 
 named afford an illustration of this remark. They present some of 
 the strongest arguments against popery, in the shape of a simple 
 statement of facts, or exhibition of authentic documents; and they 
 exhibit aspects of the subject which cannot often be presented with 
 convenience from the sacred desk. They present an array of evidence 
 against the papal power, which is deemed sulTicient to convince any 
 reasonable man, that popery in the nineteenth century is as utterly 
 incompatible with the enjoyment of civil and religious freedom as it 
 was in the sixteenth. Out of the mouth of the canon law, by bulls 
 of popes, the decrees of CEcumenical councils, and their own solemn 
 oath of installation, the bishops of the Church of Rome are convicted 
 of implacable hostility to free institutions. We commend these vo- 
 lumes to all who feel an interest in the topics of which they treat." — 
 Episcopal Recorder. 
 
(9) 
 
 SPIRITUAL DIREGTION, AND AURICULAR 
 
 Confession ; their History, Theory, and Consequences. Being 
 a translation of " Du Pretre^De la Femme, De la Famille.''^ By 
 
 M. MicHELET. \2mo Price 50 cents, in cloth. 
 
 " This work has created an immense sensation in Paris, and has 
 
 doubtless been one of the principal causes of the late expulsion of the 
 
 Jesuits from France. 
 
 Notices of the American Press. 
 
 "Michelet is one of the ablest writers of the age, and he has thrown 
 his whole strength into this work." — Neiv York Tribune. 
 
 *' The work is intended for his countrymen, but its truths are im- 
 portant in this. The ghosts of the papal regime are gliding about in 
 our streets. They betray our humanity into giving them a refuge, too 
 often in our hearts. But the veil must be hfted from them. Their 
 hideousness must be exposed, and this Michelet has done most tho- 
 roughly. He shows that the ignorant priests of our day, instead of 
 doing less mischief than those of old, do more." — Christian Intelli- 
 gencer. 
 
 " This work is likely to excite considerable attention. It contains 
 some startling revelations in relation to the almost universal though 
 secret influence of the Jesuits, even in the privacy of domestic life. 
 The author asserts that the invisible Jesuit sits in the family circ'e and 
 boldly denounces the order as ' enemies of the modern mind, enemies 
 of hberty and of the future.' " — Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 " This is emphatically a great book, full of thought ele2:antly ex- 
 pressed, portraying, in vivid light, the secret intrigues of Jesuitism. 
 No one can read the work of Michelet without rising from its perusal 
 alarmed at the power exercised in the confessional over women, and 
 thus over the family." — Protestant Banner. 
 
 " We earnestly hope that the high character of the author, the vigour 
 and interest of the work, and the importance of the discussion, will 
 secure for the work a wide circulation and a careful and attentive pe- 
 rusal. It is just the boolc that is needed on this subject in our country 
 at the present time." — N. Y. Evangelist. 
 
 " This volume owes its origin to the controversy now existing be- 
 tween the Jesuits and some of the colleges of France. Its develop- 
 ments of the nature and effects of Auricular Confession are striking 
 and fearful, and demonstrate, that, as practised in the Roman church, 
 it is a horrible source of vice and iniquity." — Southern Churchman. 
 
 THE LITTLE STONE ANB THE GREAT IMASE; 
 
 or, Lectures on the Prophecies Symbolized in Nebu- 
 chadnezzar's VISION OF the Golden-headed Monster. 
 By Rev. George Junkin, D. D., President of Miami Univer- 
 sity, Ohio, 8vo. — In cloth, f 1 50. 
 
( 11 ) 
 
 THE FROTESTANT GIBLINA FRENCH NUNNERY; 
 
 or, School Girl in France. 18mo. — Cloth, Price 37i cents. 
 " They have digged a pit to take me, and hid snares for my 
 feet.'''' — Jer. xviii. 22. 
 
 " This is a narrative founded on facts, intended to point out the al- 
 leged ' evils attendant on the too common practice of sending young 
 persons to Romish schools,' thereby 'sapping and undermining the 
 foundation of a Protestant education.' The work possesses much ge- 
 neral interest, and induces reflections which are all-important in a 
 country where an entire separation of church and state is considered 
 as one of the strongest bulwarks of republican liberty." — Phila. Gaz. 
 
 " Those of our readers who wish to know what a Roman Catholic 
 nunnery is, and what kind of influences are exerted upon Protestant 
 girls who are placed in them, may profitably consult this little book. 
 It is written in a fascinating style, and the interest of the narrative is 
 well sustained." — Vrotestant Banner. 
 
 " An aflfecting history, developing the arts of Romanism and the 
 power and influence of its numerous attractions. The Christian pa- 
 rent or guardian, who is tempted to intrust the education of his chil- 
 dren to institutions professedly established for the extension of learn- 
 ing, but really for the propagation of Popery, would do well to read 
 this book, and learn what he may reasonably expect. It bears the 
 stamp of truth. We have seldom been more interested in a narrative ; 
 but we have higher objects than merely to interest them, when we 
 cordially recommend its perusal to others." — Baptist Advocate. 
 
 " This book might be profitably read by all Protestant parents, too 
 many of whom are insensible to the snares and dangers to which they 
 expose their children by intrusting their education to those whom we 
 believe to be in serious error, and whose proselyting spirit ought to 
 be so well known." — Banner of the Cross. 
 
 " Those Protestant parents who believe that no harm will follow 
 from intrusting the education of their children to Roman Catholic 
 teachers, would do well to read this book, and there learn the various 
 means resorted to by Catholics in order to make proselytes. It em- 
 braces many points of thrilling interest in regard to the arts and ma- 
 chinations of the Pope, which are well-calculated to4raw in the young 
 and unwary. 
 
 " It will be extremely useful in Sabbath-school libraries." — Baptist 
 Record. 
 
 THE GIPSIES IN SPAIN: with an original collection of 
 their Songs and Poetry. By George Borrow. 8^0. — Paper 
 cover, 3H cents. 
 
 " A strange book this ; a strange subject, written by a strange man ; 
 the only living man competent to write such a book. The volume 
 contains fine materials for romance, and some even for history ; in- 
 formation collected from the ends of the earth, and exhibited without 
 pretensions or parade."- — Westminster Review, 
 
( 12) 
 
 NEANSER'S HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 
 Religion during the First Three Centuries. &vo. pp 48. 
 —Cloth, $1 50. 
 
 '* This is a work of established and high reputation. Neander has 
 been termed the great ecclesiastical historian of the age." — Christian 
 Intelligencer. 
 
 "We are gratified to find that this valuable and cheap publication 
 is presented t-o the public on good paper and legible type ; thus prov- 
 ing that convenience and cheapness may be combined. 
 
 " We commend this work to our readers of all ages : it is a subject 
 of which none should be ignorant. Who does not wish for accurate 
 knowledge of the history of the Christian religion and church, during 
 the first three centuries! The grain of mustard-seed, planted in the 
 apostolic age, has become a mighty tree, on whose fruit the nations 
 live, and by whose branches they are sheltered. The reader will find, 
 in the recital of the early history of the Christian church, an argument 
 in support of the divinity of its origin. It was introduced into the 
 world without the attractions of pomp, or the support of power ; and 
 did not constrain the judgment of men by offering them ' the tribute 
 or the sword.' Wrapped at first in swaddling-clothes and laid in a 
 manger, it gradually developed the vigour of manhood, and the purity 
 of heaven. 
 
 " The worshippers of the late false gods of Greece and Rome opposed 
 the progress of the new religion. But the results of every succeeding 
 persecution, armed with imperial power, affording additional proof 
 that the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the church, the reli- 
 gion of Greece and Rome were buried beneath the ruins of their civil 
 and political institutions. The religion of Jesus of Nazareth survived ; 
 and when the sign appeared in Heaven, ' By this thou shalt conquer,' 
 it ascended the throne of the Csesars. Genius and learning have con- 
 spired for its overthrow ; and the rock remains unshaken. The insidi- 
 ous pen of the historian has seemed to praise while it aimed to destroy ; 
 but the simple histories of the ' Fishermen of Gahlee' will be received 
 by the world, after existing empires shall have declined and fallen, 
 and new dynasties shall have arisen. In vain did Voltaire proclaim to 
 the world, ' Crush the wretch.' Every opposer of this Divine Teacher 
 shall be brought to acknowledge, with the dying apostate Julian, ' O 
 Galilean ! thou hast conquered.' 
 
 "The work of Dr. Neander, which is translated from the German, 
 has never before been republished in the United States, and is very rare. 
 Its character may be inferred from a general view of its contents, viz. : 
 the introduction ; the history of the persecution of Christianity ; the 
 history of Church discipline and of Christian life and worship ; the his- 
 tory of Christian sects and doctrines, and an account of the chief 
 fathers of the Church. Dr. Neander has attained high reputation as a 
 scholar ; and the discussion of such subjects by an eminent writer 
 cannot fail to possess high interest, and to contain valuable informa- 
 tion." — Baltimore American. 
 
(13) 
 
 THE HISTORT OF THE GHURGH OF EMUNS, 
 
 TO THE Revolution of 1688. By the Rt. Rev. Thomas Fow- 
 ler Short, D. D., Bishop of So dor and Man. First Ameri- 
 can^ from the third London edition. 8vo. pp. 380. — Cloth, 
 $1 50. 
 
 " This is a book as interesting to the general reader as to one speci- 
 ally interested in the remarkable history it develops and extends. It 
 is written, as far as we can judge from a hasty glance at it, in a liberal, 
 comprehensive, and Christian spiiit, not sparing the defects of the 
 Church of England, and not failing to give credit to other sects where 
 the Vi^riter has thought it was due to them. The typography and gene- 
 ral appearance of the book are creditable to the taste of the enter- 
 prising publisher." — -Philadelphia Gazette. 
 
 " We welcome this elaborate and valuable work as a most important 
 addition to the series of Protestant publications from the press of J. M. 
 Campbell." — North American. 
 
 " We feel grateful to Mr. Campbell for his handsome reprint of this 
 learned, impartial, and valuable work. The publisher of such books 
 deserves to be liberally sustained and encouraged by the Christian 
 public, and especially by churchmen. It is the fruit of many years' 
 reading and immense labour and research ; and, though its professed 
 object is ' to facilitate the studies of young men who are preparing 
 themselves for the offices of the church,' there is no class of readers 
 who will not find in it pleasure and profit." — Banner of the Cross. 
 
 " There is a degree of candour and impartiality in this work, which, 
 for a churchman, is as unusual as it is commendable. The author has 
 a justifiable partiality for his own church and the tory party, of which 
 it has been a prominent section in all periods of English history; but 
 this preference is not allowed to interfere with a candid and honest 
 statement of facts, whether they bear against the interest and charac- 
 ter of his friends or are favourable to that of his opponents. With a 
 just admiration of excellence, wherever found, and a love of fre-edom 
 and popular rights, he looks upon the whole field of history with the 
 impartial comprehensiveness of an historian, rather than with the jeal- 
 ous zeal of a partisan, or the exclusiveness of a sectary. He eulogizes 
 the Reformation; does something like justice to the character of the 
 Puritans, of Cromwell, and the Presbyterians; admits the tyranny of 
 Laud, the weakness and selfishness of Charles, and the violence and 
 irreligion of the royalists at the period of the revolution." — New York 
 Evangelist. 
 
 " An octavo volume of 352 pages, accompanied by a chronological 
 and genealogical table and very full index. It is a work of real merit, 
 written by one strongly attached, of course, to the church of which he 
 is a member, but apparently no bigot. We will not pretend to vouch 
 for all his opinions; but such a perusal as we have been enabled to give 
 to his writings, convinces us that he is sincere in them, and that he is 
 honest in the statement of facts. His references are numerous. The 
 religious sentiments which he expresses in the progress of the work 
 are evangelical in their character ; and the views which he entertains 
 of Christians of other persuasions evince a charitable spirit." — Baptist 
 Advocate. 
 
( 14) 
 
 " This book has particular claims on the attention of the intelligent 
 laity, theological students, eind the younger members of the clergy, and 
 will not be without claims on the elder members of tliat honourable 
 profession. 
 
 " The fact that this work embraces the history of the English church 
 from the earliest period of English history down to the glorious revo- 
 lution of 16SS, is all that need be urged in favour of its importance. 
 The style is easy and chaste ; and the arrangement of numerical sec- 
 tions enables the reader, by looking over the contents of a chapter, to 
 find at once the particular subject of his inquiry. As a book of refer- 
 ence, its value is much increased by the chronological tables and a co- 
 pious index. The spirit of the author is liberal and Christian. It is 
 printed in double columns ; and the paper, type, &c., are in the best 
 style of the publisher.'' — Baltimore American. 
 
 NEANBER'S HISTORY OF THE PLANTIN& AND 
 
 Training of the Christian Church by the Apostles. 
 
 Translated from the third German edition, by J. E. Ryland. 
 
 Svo. pp. 335.— Cloth, $1 50; Sheep, $1 75. 
 
 [" The author has gained so high a reputation for his learning in the 
 History of the Church, that it is needless to say his works may always 
 be read with interest and profit. His peculiar notions as to Church 
 government, though hostile to Episcopacy, should not deter from the 
 perusal of a treatise which contains much sound Biblical criticism, and 
 presents the history of the Apostolic age jn that full detail which is so 
 necessary to its just comprehension. Almost every page bears the 
 mark of unwearied research, careful thought, and profound piety, 
 and while it can be expected of few that they will acquiesce in the 
 correctness of all his conclusions, yet it will be hard to rise from its 
 perusal without having exercised useful reflections on the history of 
 the development of Christianity ; an unbounded theme for philosophi- 
 cal and religious contemplation." — Protestant Churchman. 
 
 " This is a true history of a very important period in the Church. 
 Its author is one of the most celebrated of living theologians, and his 
 book will doubtless be heartily welcomed by theological readers.'' — 
 N. Y. Courier. 
 
 " In issuing an American edition of this celebrated work, the enter- 
 prising publisher has rendered an important service to the public, 
 the value of which is enhanced by the excellent style in which it ap- 
 pears." — Christian Observer. 
 
 " Some of the author's views do not accord with our own, but, in the 
 main, we are much pleased with the work, and cheerfully recommend 
 it" — Baptist Advocate. 
 
( 15) 
 
 THE HUGUENOT CAPTAIN; or, the life of Theodore 
 
 Agrippa D'Aubigne, during the Civil Wars of France^ in the 
 reigns of Charles IX., Henry IIL, Henry IV.^ and the majority 
 nf Louis XUL One volume^ 8vo. — Paper cover, 25 cents. 
 "This is a handsome pamphlet of 120 octavo pages. It contains 
 the autobiography of Theodore Agrippa DAubign^, with an account 
 of the most remarkable occurrences during the civil wars of France, 
 in the reigns of Charles IX., Henry III., Henry IV., and the minority 
 of Louis XIII. It forms a highly interesting narrative, which, by 
 those who can appreciate the character of a brave and honest man, 
 maintaining his integrity and his principles of piety, amid contentions, 
 in the face of all the arts and blandishments of courts, and at the 
 hazard of every interest and life itself, will be read with pleasure. 
 D'Aubigne was one of the heroic Huguenots, whose memory it is but 
 an act of justice to rescue from oblivion. Their character and deeds 
 are worthy of an imperishable record. Many of their descendants, in 
 the Southern states, are distinguished for intelligence and piety, and 
 exert an important influence in sustaining the best interests of so- 
 ciety." — ChrMiari Observer. 
 
 A CHARSE, BELIVEKEB TO THE GLEHBY 
 
 OF THE United Dioceses of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin, 
 AT his Primary Visitation in September, 1842. By .Tames 
 Thomas O'Brien, D. D., Bishop of Ossory, ^'c. 8vo. — 25 
 cents. 
 
 "To all interested in the Tractarian Controversy; and what intelli- 
 gent Protestant is notl this charge of Dr. O'Brien will be invaluable. 
 The author is well known to be one of the most learned divines of the 
 day, and ' the Charge' fully sustains the high reputation which Dr. 
 O'Brien had acquired by his earlier publications. It is a standard work, 
 and is worthy of the careful examination of all who are interested 
 in the ditTusion and success of Protestant or Scriptural principles.'' — 
 Protestant Banner. 
 
 "Charge to the Clergy. — "We have received from James M. 
 Campbell, of Philadelphia, a lucid and elaborate exposition of the na- 
 ture and dangerous tendencies of Pu^eyism, in a charge delivered by 
 James Thomas O'Brien, Bishop of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin. The 
 pubUsher deserves the thanks of the community for republishing this 
 pamphlet. The Bishop speaks like an Episcopalian ; but he never- 
 theless adopts the languai^e of our common Christianity, not that of 
 the bigoted Puseyite and Papist. This work contains the best history 
 of the gradual and stealthy introduction of Puseyism which we have 
 Been. Its advocates seem" to have deeply studied the ' pious frauds' 
 of Jesuitism.'' — Preshjjcriun A'lvocatc. 
 
(16) 
 
 THE BIBLE IN SPAIN: or,THE journeys, adventures, 
 AND Imprisonments of an Englishman, in an attempt to 
 Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula. By George 
 Borrow. One volume, 8yo. — In cloth, 62^ cents ; paper cover, 
 37^ cents. 
 
 " So great has been the demand for this work, that the present edi- 
 tion has been stereotyped. It has been pronounced by all the review- 
 ers as one of the most charming books of the day ; and we must cer- 
 tainly agree with them in this particular. It is written in a style of 
 the most perfect ease and elegance, and is full of recountals of thrilling 
 adventures and picturesque descriptions. Though imbued with ge- 
 nuine religious feeling, there is nothing of a sectarian character in 
 this work; but it is rather a narration of the authors residence and 
 travels in all parts of Spain, during the five years in which he was the 
 agent of the English Bible Society for the circulation of the Scriptures 
 in the Spanish Peninsula. 
 
 " We consider Mr. Borrow as an author of the highest rank, and not 
 merely as an adventurer. His book seems to us to be one of the most 
 extraordinary that has appeared in our own or any other language for 
 a long time past. Indeed, we are more frequently reminded of 'Gil 
 Bias,' in the narrative of this pious, single-hearted man, than in the 
 perusal of almost any modern novelists pages. We may add, that 
 Mr. Borrow has an almost irrepressible love of humour, great enjoy- 
 ment in the observation of character, and a liking for adventure ap- 
 proached only by the knights of fairy tale. Thus sifted, armed, and 
 accomplished, he wanders through the wildest scenery of the most ro- 
 mantic of all lands, Spain ; living with such as he may chance to meet 
 in the village or forest; or on barren sierra, on lonely heath, or in her 
 Moorish halls ; and amidst the lowe^ grades of her crowded but im- 
 
 {)overished cities; and gathering from all, he brinijs before us such 
 iving groups as few of us have seen, even in pictures. 
 
 " The former work of Mr. Borrow, 'The Gipsies of Spain,' although 
 it received our highest praise, and however much we had reason to ex- 
 pect from any subsequent effort of the writer, we were certainly not 
 prepared for any thing so striking as this work. Apart from its ad- 
 venturous interest, its literary merit is extraordinary. Never was a 
 book more legibly impressed with the unmistakeable marks of genius. 
 W^e cordially recommend this book to the public, and feel sure that 
 they will agree with us in classing it as one of the most agreeable, en 
 tertaining, and instructive works ever published." — Athenae^um. 
 
 MILNER'S CHURCH HISTORY. The His- 
 TORT OF THE Church OF Christ. By thc Rkv. Joseph Milxer, 
 A. M. ; with Additions and Corrections, by the Rev. Isaac Mil- 
 der, D. D., F. R. S., Dean of Carlisle, and President of Queeyi's 
 College, Cambridge. From the last London editian. Two volumes, 
 8t'o.— Sheep, §4 50. 
 
(20) 
 
 CONVERSATIONS ON THE PARABLES 
 
 OF THE New Testament. By the Rt. Hon. Lord Stanley, 
 From iht Fifth London edition. — In Cloth, 37^ cents. 
 
 " This is a small work designed to assist parents in the religious 
 education of their children. It is written in a free and easy style, and 
 contains a very just delineation of the parables of Christ, happily 
 adapted to the capacity of children. It is related as a singular evidence 
 of the general appreciation of the book, that it passed through several 
 editions before the public knew any thing of its autlior." — Richmond 
 Christian Advocate. 
 
 THE ABBEY OF IKNISMOYLE. a storv 
 
 OF ANOTHER Century. By the author of " Father Clement,''^ 
 " The Decision,'''* '^ Profession not Principle^'' ^c. \%mo. — 
 Price, 37^ cents, cloth. 
 
 "I love to linger in the narrow field 
 Of rest ; to wander round from tomb to tomb, 
 And think of some who silent sleep alone." — Orahame. 
 
 " The authorship of this little volume is a sufficient passport to pub- 
 lic favour. Those who have read the former works of the gifted au- 
 thoress, will not be disappointed in this." — Presbyterian. 
 
 " The author of " Father Clement" is well known as an able advo- 
 cate of truth, and an interesting writer, whose name will attract the 
 attention of many readers to the new and handsome volume which 
 Mr. Campbell has just issued." — Christian Observer. 
 
 " This is an exceeding interesting little book. It is by the author of 
 * Father Clement ;^ and when we say this, we give to all who are ac- 
 quainted with that work the strongest proof the present one is marked 
 with uncommon ability. We have often said that we consider ' Father 
 Clement' unrivalled in that line of composition." — Episcopal Recorder. 
 
 THE CURATE OF LINWODD : or, The Real strength 
 OF the Christian Ministry. First American edition. 18mo. 
 —Cloth, 37i cents. 
 
(23) 
 
 IE GOBMENIN'S HISTORY OF THE POPES, 
 
 From the first to the nineteenth Century. Publishing 
 in numbers of 96 pp. 8vo., to be complete in eight or nine num- 
 bers. — Price, with two coloured plates, 37^ cents ; without 
 plates, 25 cents per number. 
 
 "De Cormenin's work gives us in a popular and condensed form, a 
 continuous history of that long succession of Pontitfs who have filled 
 the 'Holy See.' As a work of mere chronological reference, it will be 
 found to be one of great value. The author is liimself a Roman Catho- 
 hc; we are therefore to presume that he has written such a work ao 
 cannot be accused of any prescriptive feeling. We therefore feel great 
 
 gleasure in having this translation laid before the American public, 
 efore it has appeared even in England, except in its original lan- 
 guage. Its pages will be found full of startling incident, narrated with 
 graphic force; it not only affords a comprehensive history of the Chris- 
 tian Church, but necessarily involves the pohtical history of the world, 
 for the power of Rome was at one time interwoven with the state 
 policy of every nation in Christendom. As its narrative emerges from 
 the darkness of primitive times it gathers strengh and interest; it is 
 invested with all the attributes of the author's genius, and has Ihrouirh- 
 out a healthy tone of republican fcelins:, which must commend it to 
 the attention of every American."' — Phita. Gazette. 
 
 "The History of the Popes is a history of crime in its highest forms, 
 and is the best commentary which can be furnished on the true charac- 
 ter of Popery ; for surely we may judge of the system by its head. 
 De Cormenin is a Roman Catholic, and his testimony therefore may be 
 relied on, and awful are the disclosures he makes. The edition of 
 Mr. Campbell will commend itself to favour." — Presbyterian. 
 
 " This work is to be issued in numbers, illustrated with engravings, 
 and contains a terrible story of the crimes that constitute so large a 
 part of the history of the Church of Rome. It will doubtless be widely 
 circulated, and will aid essentially in opening the eyes of the people 
 to the mystery of iniquity." — New York Observer. 
 
 " The want of a history of the Popes of Rome, at once complete, 
 concise, and at the same time written in a popular style, has long been 
 felt as a desideratum in our language. That void is now supplied ; 
 and at this juncture, when the struggle of the Church of Rome for fu- 
 ture power has been transferred from Europe to our own land, it is 
 desirable that such a book be placed within the reach of all." — CAm- 
 tian Intelligencer. 
 
(33) 
 
 PUBLISHING IN NUMBERS. 
 
 SCOTT'S COMMENTAKY ON THE HOLY BIBLE. 
 
 Ji quarto edition. From the London Standard edition, with the 
 
 author'' s last corrections and improvements. To he completed in 
 
 fifty numbers. — Price 35 cents each. 
 
 "We have seen no edition of Scott equal to this in typographical 
 execution ; it is admirably adapted for a ' Family Bible,' to last through 
 a generation, and as it is expected to make fifty numbers, the cost will 
 be $12 50, when the old coitions cost from $18 to $25. Some other 
 commentators may be superior to Scott in a knowledge of Eastern 
 languages and an application to the laws of interpretation ; while he 
 will be read for generations for his sound sense, reverence for the di- 
 vine authority of the scriptures, and his unequalled 'Practical Obser- 
 vations.' " — Congregational Journal. 
 
 " We regard it as superior to any preceding edition." — Preshijterinn. 
 
 "As a convenient readable book, for the aged as well as the young, 
 it is superior to every other edition with which we are acquainted." — 
 Christian Observer. 
 
 " We are reioiced at the publication of this great work, not only be- 
 cause of its excellence, its sound theology, and practical piety, but 
 also because the style of the work is just what it should be. It is such 
 a satisfaction to have the Bible in large, clear, eleiiant pages; such as 
 the copy before us. Then the notes too, are not crowded and confused 
 that no one but a proof reader can follow them ; on the contrary, they 
 are so clear and plain, that any one, the oldest people, that can read 
 at all, may read them with ease and pleasure. We rejoice most 
 heartily at this publication." — New Orleans Protestant. 
 
 " It is almost superfluous to speak of the character and merits of 
 Scott's Commentary, so widely known and so highly approved by the 
 various evangelical denominations both in our own country and in 
 England. It gives us pleasure, however, on this^rs^ occasion pre- 
 sented to us by the appearance of a new edition of the work, to express 
 our opinion of its value, formed after an extended and familiar ac- 
 quaintance with English commentators on the Holy Scriptures; that 
 for all purposes which christians in general demand of a commentary 
 on the sacred writings, Scott's stands as yet unrivalled in our language. 
 The present edition, for which the public will be indebted to the en- 
 terprize of Mr. Campbell, is in a large quarto form, on excellent paper, 
 and on large and clear type, which, as regards the notes and practical 
 observations, is of no little importance, in a work of daily use. We 
 hope Mr. C. will receive a patronage for his meritorious enterprize, 
 which will justify the issue of a large edition." — Richmond Christian 
 Advocate. 
 
Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
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