The holy catholic church; or, The communion of saints, in the mystical body of Christ: a sermon, preached in the Church of the Epiphany, in the city of Philadelphia, on Sunday, September 6th, 1844

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The holy catholic church

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THE

HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH;

OR THE

COMMUNION OF SAINTS,

IN THE

MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST:

A SEEMON,

PREACHED IN THE CHURCH OF THE EPIPHANY, IN THE CITY OF
PHILADELPHIA, ON SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6TH, 1844,

BY CHARLES PETTIT M'lLVAINE, D. D,

BISHOP OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
IN THE DIOCESE OF OHIO.

WITH AN APPENDIX.

PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.

PHILADELPHIA :
H. HOOKER, CHESNUT STREET.

1844.

Enlered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, by
CHARLES PETTIT M'lLVAINE,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District
of Pennsylvania.

KING AND BAIRD, PRINTERS, 9 GEORGE STREET.

To Peter G. Stuyvesant, Esq.,

This discourse is affectionately inscribed,
as an humble expression of regard for one, who
in his efforts to promote the best interests of
sacred learning, and gospel truth, in the Protes-
tant Episcopal Church, has merited the warmest
gratitude of her members, and has laid under
special obligation,

His humble servant,

And brother, in Christ,

THE AUTHOR.

Philadelphia, October 8th, 1844.

Rt. Rev. Charles P. M'Ilvaine,

Bishop of the Diocese of Ohio.

Rt. Rev. and Dear Sir—

The undersigned heard with profound attention and respect,
the Sermon which you delivered last evening at the Church
of the Epiphany, and they take this opportunity to express to
you the sense of their obligation for this addition to the treasures
of the Holy Catholic Church, and to ask that you will have the
goodness to furnish them with a copy for publication, that they
may be enabled to impart to their Brethren in the Lord, a portion
of the satisfaction and pleasure which they have themselves
received.

With great Respect and Esteem,

We remain yours, &c.

C. G. Memmingek, J. B. Gallagher,

Wm. H. Macfarland, Wm. H. Barnwell,

A. Williams, Jr. H. Anthon,

John P. Convngham, H. Hooker,

J. W. Macph. Berrien, Edward A. Newton,

Lewis Morris, Edward S. Rand,

Alexander Hamilton, F. S. Winston,

Wm. Appleton, J. Smyth Rogers,

James Potter, P. G. Stuyvesant,

Stephen H. Tyng, Stewart Brown.

1*

Philadelphia, October 9th, 1844.

Messrs. C. G. Memminger,

Wm. H. Macfarland, and others.

Gentlemen—

I have just received your kind request that I would furnish
a copy of the discourse which I preached last Sunday night, for
publication. In reliance upon your opinion, as well as that of
many others of my friends and brethren, clergymen and laymen,
(who have severally expressed the same desire,) that the publi-
cation of the discourse may be of use to the great cause which
we love, and seeking the blessing of our Lord thereon, I cheer-
fully accede to your request.

Very truly and respectfully,

Your friend and brother,

CHARLES P. M'lLVAINE.

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH.

II CORINTHIANS, vi. 16.

Ye are the temple of the living God ; as God hath said, I will

dwell in them and walk in them ; and I will be their

God and they shall be my people.

These words were addressed, by St. Paul, to
the collective body of the Christians at Corinth.
The same, he said, to the whole body of christian
Jews and Gentiles; addressing them as "the
household of God" — " builded together in
Christ," "a habitation of God," and " growing
unto an holy temple in the Lord."* Hence we
understand in what sense the christians in Co-
rinth were called the temple of God ; not as if
God had as many temples as there were sepa-
rate communities of christians ; but that all
christians, Jews and Gentiles, wherever found,
composed one holy temple, "built upon the
foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus
Christ himself being the chief corner-stone."

* Eph. ii. 19-22.

8 THE HOLY

We shall consider the text therefore as ad-
dressed to all members of the Church of Christ.
All are " the temple of the living God"

The Church of God, in all the world, is the
Temple of God.

That we may the better realize the propriety
with which the Church of God, composed, not
of visible walls, but of invisible minds, is called
His Temple, we must divest ourselves of the
habit of thought arising out of the almost exclu-
sive application of that name to visible struc-
tures of man's workmanship, for the worship of
God. The temple of Solomon, built under di-
vine direction, — a wonder of the world for gran-
deur and magnificence, — and inhabited by that
visible and miraculous glory, which was the
supreme expression of the divine presence, is
supposed, very generally, to have been the high-
est, as well as the most literal, idea of a temple
of the living God. Any departure from the ma-
terial and visible character of that structure, under
the name of a Temple, is supposed to be a de-
parture from the literal to the figurative ; and
when we come to speak of a collective body of
the people of God, as His Temple, and especially
when the scriptures speak of every true child of

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 9

God, as His Temple, the supposition is that the
expression has departed very far from a literal,
and has taken on a very figurative or accommo-
dated sense.

Now this, we apprehend, is an entire misap-
prehension. The house erected by Solomon was
the Temple of God, not because of its walls, and
courts, and apartments, and altars, but because the
Schechinah of God's presence, appeared therein,
indicating that God dwelt among his people
Israel. Suppose those walls and altars all cast
down, and every stone removed, but that glory
still there, and there would still have been, as
much as ever, the Temple, the habitation of the
mighty God of Jacob. It was simply that glo-
rious appearing of His presence which made the
tabernacle in the wilderness as much the tem-
ple of God, as the statelier and more permanent
habitation in Jerusalem. It was the same pre-
sence that made the place where Moses stood on
Mount Horeb, when God appeared to him in a
name of fire, out of the midst of the bush, the
temple, for a time, of the living God.* God was
there. Jacob found the temple of God in the

* Exod. iii.

10 THE HOLY

way from Beersheba to Haran, where no house
was, nor altar ; nothing but the ground he lay on
to sleep, and the stones he placed for his pillow.
But God appeared to him there. And Jacob
awakejd and said : " Surely the Lord is in this
place." And, because the Lord was there, he
said : " How dreadful is this place ; this is none
other but the house of God." " And he called
the name of the place Bethel"* And had he
surrounded that place with courts and buildings
as noble as those of the temple in Jerusalem, it
could not have been more really, however it
would have been more visibly, "the temple of
the living God."

Let us keep it distinctly in our mind, that it is
not a visible building, but the special presence of
God, that makes any place the temple of God ;
and then we shall see the strictly literal propriety
with which every true servant of God is called
His Temple. God dwelleth in Mm by His
Spirit. And hence the whole community of
God's true people is His Temple, because, saith
St. Paul, they are "the habitation of God,
through the Spirit."t And in the same way, St.

* Gen. xxviii. 10-22. j- Eph. ii. 22.

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 11

Paul says to the Corinthian christians, in the text :
"Ye are the temple of the living God;" giving
for explanation, the promise, " I will dwell in
them and walk in them ;" wherein, you perceive,
the dwelling of God in His people is taken as
equivalent to making them His Temple. And
hence the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, or his
human nature, is called " the temple of his body,"
because in that nature, dwelt " all the fulness of
the Godhead bodily."*

And now we get the highest and most literal
conception of the temple of God. In the hu-
man nature of our Lord, dwells, in inseparable
union therewith, without distinction of person,
or confusion of essence, the whole nature of the
Godhead. He is " God manifest in the flesh. "t
Nothing was ever the habitation of God, as was,
and is, and ever shall be, that once crucified, now
glorified body of our Lord and Saviour. That,
therefore, is the perfect temple. Hence, St.
John, describing the New Jerusalem, which he
saw, in vision, coming down from God out of
heaven, said: " I saw no temple therein, for the
Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the tem-
ple of it."J The divine nature of the Lord
* Col. ii. 9. f 1 Tim. iii. 16. * Rev. xxi. 22.

12 THE HOLY

God, dwelling in the human nature of the Lamb
that was slain, makes it the glorious temple of
that commonwealth of Israel, in, and through,
which, all the fulness of the Godhead, and all the
riches of grace and glory, will be made manifest
to the saints, forever and ever.

The nearer we approach, in likeness, to that
habitation of God, in Christ; the nearer we come
to be each the temple of God. Now, in every
true christian, there is the indwelling of God,
by his Spirit, as none but spiritual and immortal
beings can possess it. God's Spirit is in him as
an Inhabitant, — He is made a " partaker of the
divine nature;" not indeed, as Christ was, by
oneness of essence, but by communication of per-
sonal, indwelling, holiness. " I will dwell in them
and walk in them," is the promise of God to his
people. Here then, next to the human nature of
our Lord, is the most literal and perfect temple
of the living God ; the man who has, abiding in
him, God's Holy Spirit.* Compare with this,

* "What resemblance, (asks Bishop Andrews,) is
there between a bod)'- and a temple] Or how can a body
be so termed] Well enough ; for I ask what makes
a temple. Is it not a temple because it is the house of

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 13

the temple at Jerusalem, in which appeared
rather the symbol, than the power of His indwell-
ing ; and you will see that that was not so much
the true temple, as its type. In all its glory, it
was not arrayed like one immortal soul which
halh received the Holy Ghost, and in whom God
manifests the power of His presence by daily
renewing and sustaining him in His own image
and likeness. What is the noblest edifice of
man's workmanship, for a habitation of God,
compared with an immortal mind, in the beauty
of holiness ? "God is a spirit!"

We are now prepared for a nearer contempla-

God? because God dwelleth there 1 For as that where-
in man dwells is a house ; so that wherein God dwells
is a temple properly, be it place or be it body. « Know
ye not (saith the Apostle) that your body is the temple
of the Holy Ghost.' A body, then, may be a temple,
even this of ours. And if ours, in which the Spirit of
God dwelleth only by some gift or grace, with how
much better right his body, in whom the whole Godhead in
all the fulness thereof dwelleth corporally, by nature, by
personal union, not (as in us) by grace, by participation
of it only. Alas, ours are but tabernacles under goat
skins ; His, the true, the marble, the cedar temple in-
deed."— Bishop Andrew's Sermons, No. 10.
2

14 THE HOLY

tion of the Church, as the Temple of the living
God. Let us begin at its foundation.

The Church, or Temple, of God is built on
Christ as its corner-stone.

" Behold (saith the Lord) I lay in Zion a chief
corner-stone, elect, precious, and he that believ-
eth on him shall not be confounded."* " In
whom (saith St. Paul) all the building fitly framed
together, groweth unto an holy temple in the
Lord." "To whom coming (saith St. Peter)
as unto a living stone, ye also as lively stones are
built up a spiritual house. "t Let us take care
that we get the whole literal reality of this doc-
trine. There is a figure of speech in calling our
Lord a stone, a corner-stone ; but there is no
figure in making the whole Church just as lite-
rally and immediately dependent on him, person-
ally, for all its being, as a house is dependent on
its foundation. Christ is the very being of the
Church. Not only did he found it; not only
does he sustain it, and enlighten it, and defend
it ; but he is personally and directly the life there-
of. Because he is such to each individual be-
liever, therefore is he the same to the whole

* 1 Pet. ii. 5, 6. f Eph. ii. 21 : 1 Pet. ii. 5.

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 15

fellowship of believers. Does the single chris-
tian say, " for me to live is Christ ?" The whole
mystical union of true christians, composing the
Church of God, must say the same. It is only
because all the building is, in every individual
part, "framed together in him," — in him as its
righteousness, in him as its sanctification, in him
as all its strength and life, that it " groweth unto
an holy temple in the Lord." "He that abideth
in me and I in Ann," — that is the true descrip-
tion of what Christ is, as the corner-stone of His
Church, to every part thereof. All of it, in every
least part, abides in him. He, by his sanctify-
ing Spirit, abides in every part. Its oneness is
the oneness of its life in Christ. Hence our
Lord is called a "living stone;11 not so much
because he lives — " the Lamb that was slain,
and is alive again for evermore;" as because he
is the source, and centre, and power of life, to
give, and to sustain, it in his people ; to make
every soul that is built up in him, a living temple,
a spiritual house. When, on a certain occasion, a
dead body was laid in a prophet's grave, as soon
as it touched the bones of the man of God, it
lived. But the life came not from the bones.
Not so when the dead carcass of man's ruined

16 THE HOLY

nature, dead in sin, is brought into contact, by-
faith, with the elect, corner-stone of the Church
of God, and immediately is alive unto God, — a
new creature in Christ Jesus. The life cometh
from that stone. It is a living stone, and has
life in itself, to give life to the dead. " Our life
is hid with Christ in God." It is all there, in
the infinite depths, in the inexhaustible riches,
in the inviolable security of that divine nature
which is in him. The gates of hell cannot pre-
vail against the Church, because the seat, and
source, and power of its life are not in the world,
not in man, not in any community of men, not
in the body of the Church, not exposed to any
of the infirmities of our nature ; but in that living
stone, that mysterious union of God and man;
"hid" out of the reach of Satan, beyond the
grasp of the creature's enmity, where no convul-
sions of this world can affect it, in the deep of
the wisdom, and power, and grace of God.

Let us next consider the materials of the
Church and Temple of God.

They are none but the true people of God.
Thus in the text, " Ye are the temple of the liv-
ing God ; as God hath said, « I will dwell in
them and walk in them, and I will be their God,

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 17

and they shall be my people." Does this mean
that they in whom God will dwell, are his peo-
ple exclusively ; or that He dwells also in those
who are only professedly his people? None
can hesitate. He dwells in none but those who
love Him, and have received His Spirit. None
but these, therefore, are addressed in the text as
the temple — none else are the Church of God.
True, the words of the text were addressed to
all the professed christians of Corinth, among
whom were the false as well as the true. But
they were all addressed as " sanctified in Christ
Jesus"* because all professed to be sanctified,
and only as their sanctification ivas as professed,
were they the Temple of God.

But St. Peter settles this matter, once for all.
He calls the several parts of the temple, " living
stones," as he calls the great Head of the corner
"a living stone." " To whom coming, as
unto a living stone, ye also, as lively stones,
are built up a spiritual house."^ What is the
doctrine here? Evidently that none but living
stones compose that house — that the stones of
the walls must be conformed to the stone of the

* 1 Cor. i. 2. f 1 Pet. ii. 5.

2*

18 THE HOLY

corner. Because he lives, they must live also.
In other words a dead christian — a mere profes-
sor of religion, a mere thing of ordinances, with-
out Christ dwelling in him by His Spirit, — what
Bishop Taylor calls the mere "outsides" of the
church, — can have no membership in Christ's
true Church, can make no part in God's Tem-
ple. The mind of Christ must be also in us —
we must be like Him. "If any man have not
the Spirit of Christ he is none of His." If none
of his, then none of his body, none of his Tem-
ple. Each of us must be himself "the temple
of the Holy Ghost," before he can be built up in
that spiritual house which is the Church of God,
" the blessed company (as our communion office
defines it) of all faithful people." " Others,
(says Augustine,) are so said to be in the house
of God, that they do not pertain to the structure
of the house, but are as chaff in the wheat. * *
Those who are condemned by Christ, for their
evil consciences, are not in Christ's body, which
is the Church, for Christ hath no damned mem-
bers."* " If Christ's quickening spirit be want-

* Quoted by Bishop Taylor, Dissuasive from Pope-
ry. P. ii. 1. 1, § 1.

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 19

ing in any, no external communion with Christ
can make him a true member of Christ's mysti-
cal body, this being a most sure principle, that
he which hath not the Spirit of Christ is none
of His."*

But how are the dead stones out of the quarry
of our ruined nature made alive in Christ? By
what means? By what instrumentality ? Simply,
answers the Apostle, by being brought unto
Christ. "To whom coming as unto a living
stone,'1 &c. "Ye will not come unto me that
ye might have life. These words of St. Peter
and of our Lord, teach the whole lesson on this
subject. It is the coming of each soul, in a per-
sonal application directly to Christ, by which
he obtains life ; and in obtaining life by this ap-
plication, he becomes united to the living stone,
Christ Jesus, and by that union he is built up as
part and parcel of the spiritual house. His coming
to Christ is his life ; his deriving life from Christ
is his union unto him ; and in that very union
unto Christ is contained and involved his being,
built up in His true Church. "This union to
Christ maketh the church to be the church ; and

* Usher's Sermon before the House of Commons.

20 THE HOLY

by it the members thereof, whether they be in
heaven, or in earth, are distinguished from all
other companies whatsoever."* What is meant
by the communion of saints, is simply that com-
mon union with that common centre of the life of
all and of each. They are one spiritual body, be-
cause they have one living head, by which they
all have life. That which makes the several
parts of the human frame one body, is not that
they are joined one to another by bones and liga-
ments, and enclosed in the same integument; but
that they have all vital union with the life of one
head. Communion in the life of that one head,
constitutes them one body. And in the spiritual
house of God, communion of the several stones
in the life of the one living head of the corner,
constitutes them one holy temple — the one true
Church of God.t

Before we leave this part of our subject, it is
of great importance to the whole view we have
taken, that we be very clear upon one point — I
mean that act by which, instrument ally ', we are
built upon Christ. We have mentioned it inci-

* Perkins' Works, vol. I. p 277.

•}■ See on Immediate Union to Christ, App. A.

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 21

dentally before. It is well to speak of it more
directly now. "To whom coming, &c, (saith
St. Peter,) ye are built up," &c. Coming to
Christ is then the act of being built up in him.
But what shall we understand by that coming?
The answer is given by St. Peter immediately
after: "Wherefore also, (he says,) it is con-
tained in Scripture — 'Behold, I lay in Sion a
chief corner-stone, elect, precious ; and he that
believeth on him shall not be confounded.' "
Hence there can be no question that believing
on Christ is of the same meaning with the pre-
vious expression, coming unto him. Hence the
apostle proceeds in the next verse to say : "Unto
you, therefore, which believe, he is precious."
The act of faith, then, is that which puts us in
possession of all the preciousness of Christ ;
which builds us upon that elect, living stone;
which makes us alive in him, and members of
his own living Church. " Faith, (says our
Hooker,) is the ground and the glory of all the
welfare of this building."* "That which link-
eth Christ to us, is his mere mercy and love to-
wards us. That which tieth us to him, is our

* Hooker's 2d Sermon on Jude, § 14.

22 THE HOLY

faith in the promised salvation revealed in his
word of truth."* "No work of ours, no build-
ing of ourselves in any thing, can be profitable
unto us, except we be built in faith. "t We may-
be brought nigh, in a certain sense, to the one
foundation ; ordinances and sacraments may set
us down, as it were, immediately by it, and may
put us into visible connection therewith, as visi-
ble members of the Church; but after all we
shall be but as so many loose stones, without
bond, without life — having no real union with
the church, or with Christ, until we begin to ex-
ercise a living faith in him as all our life. It
is a good sentence of holy Leighton: "This
union is the spring of all spiritual consolations ;
and faith, by which we are thus united, is a di-
vine work. He that laid this foundation in Zion
with his own hand, works likewise, with the same
hand, faith in the heart, by which it is knit to this
corner stone.J

* Hooker's 1st Sermon on Jude, § 11.
f 2d Sermon on Jude, § 19.

* On 1st Peter, c. ii: 6. § 3. — "Faith is that spirit,
ual mouth in us whereby we are made partakers of
Christ, he being, by this means, as truly and every
way as effectually made ours as the meat and drink

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 23

I have thus enlarged on this part of our sub-
ject, because, however great the value and neces-
sity of visible ordinances and sacraments to the
visible form of the otherwise invisible house of
God ; and however important their uses as
divinely appointed instruments in leading sinners
to Christ, and in helping them to abide in him ;
we cannot keep too distinct the great truth, nor
urge it too plainly, that it is not these which con-
stitute the true Church of God, whatever their
office as parts of, and as essential to, its visible
form ; that the great constituent act on which the
whole being of the true Church depends, is just
that on which all true piety in each soul depends
— the coming of sinners, each for himself, unto
Christ, by faith; that in proportion as this indi-
vidual exercise of faith, immediately upon Christ,
increases in strength, and thus draws more and
more life from him into each soul, so increases
the life and holiness of the Church — in other
words, that the spiritual life of the Church is not a
sort of corporate investment in something called
the body of the Church, independently of the

■which we receive into our natural bodies." — Usher's
Sermon before House of Commons. Jj

24 THE HOLY

spiritual character of its several members, from
which body, as a fountain, theirs is drawn, and
which continues ever the same in fulness, whe-
ther they severally be holy, more or less : but
that it is simply the aggregate of the spiritual life
and holiness of all individual believers, severally
united to, and drawing life immediately from,
Christ; that to facilitate this individual deriving
of life directly from Christ all the way of our
pilgrimage, each for himself, drinking of that rock
which follows us, and gathering of that manna
which, to the believer, daily cometh down from
heaven, is the great object of all the external
institutions of the Church ; and that whenever
they become so employed or regarded that they
perform not this subordinate office, especially
when placed so high in dignity that they stand
as evidences of the possession of grace, instead
of only signs and seals and means of grace; that
they intercept, instead of aiding the soul's direct
looking unto Jesus for righteousness and life,
rendering access to Him less simple, less per-
sonal, less immediate, and more vicarious — more
by intervening and intercessory agencies; when
they become themselves the objects of faith in-
stead of its auxiliaries— assuming, in any degree,

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 25

to stand as vicars of Christ to the soul, inviting
reliance in themselves instead of glorying, like
John the Baptist, to point the sinner away from
them to the Lamb of God ; whenever thus used,,
(we cannot say it too strongly,) they are griev-
ously perverted and dishonored.

Never did the forerunner of our Lord appear
more truly great than when retired most behind
his message, and endeavoring to centre all atten-
tion upon Him who was to baptize, not with
water, but with the Holy Ghost. Never do the
visible ordinances of the Church appear in their
real beauty and dignity as when their signs are
most retired behind the great truths they signify,
and most effective in fixing the hearts of those
who come to them on the person and offices of
that Saviour whose inward grace they pledge,
and to faith convey.

How prone are christian men to lose sight of
the real adorning of the house of God ; to think
of the type more than the reality; to dwell on
the outward appearance which, however costly
and magnificent, like the most fine gold of the
temple of Jerusalem, is temporal ; instead of the
glorious jewelry of the spiritual sanctuary which
is unseen and eternal. How prone we are, while
3

26 THE HOLY

estimating very highly, as we ought, the assem-
bling together of the many to the solemnities of
the sanctuary, to make a low practical estimate,
comparatively, of the value of the coming of one
sinner to Christ, by a living faith. Angels, in the
presence of God, rejoice over one sinner that
repenteth ; and all the worth they see in our out-
ward things, is their tendency to advance the
repentance and faith of sinners. But we — how
prone to take the means for ends, satisfying our-
selves too much with the dignity and propriety
of the visible array — zealous to gather about our
altar the tributes of wealth and taste — the sculp-
ture, the architecture, the robe, the chaunt, — all,
it may be, as is well befitting the courts of the
Lord's house ; but looking too little beyond these
swr/ace-things, to inquire how far it may be hoped
the inward adorning of faith that worketh by love,
and hath fruit unto holiness, is keeping pace.—
Alas ! let us not forget what emptiness and no-
thingness are in the one, but as it is met at each
point and filled out with the reality of the other;
that dead materials, wood, hay, stubble, however
covered over with the sacramental robe of a chris-
tian profession, are stubble still ; that the spiritual
death of a merely professing christian, instead of

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 27

being made less dead by being arrayed in the cir-
cumstance of life, is only made the more awful by
being thus laid out in state. The painted corpse,
dressed as in life, is the most revolting form of
death. But there is a way to be adding ever in-
creasing beauty and glory to the house of God.
Oh ! that we may prize it more and more ! Go
out into the lanes and highways ; find some out-
cast wretch, some stray fragment of the univer-
sal wreck of man, some trampled stone in the
miry clay— sound aloud the word of the Lord —
that harp of blessed music, by which the Spirit
draws dead stones to Christ. By and by, under
the power of God, blessing the word, that soul
is led, in the strong captivity of the truth, to
Christ. No sooner does he touch that rock, than
the virtue of a new life comes unto him, and he
lives. The love of God is shed abroad in his
heart. The beautiful garniture of inward graces,
more precious than the most fine gold, adorns him.
He is united to Christ, and through him to God.
What a miracle of Grace ! How wonderful that
communication of life — that resurrection from
the dead — that ascension of the regenerated soul
to "sit in heavenly places in Christ." Look
unto the rock whence he was hewn, and the hole

28 THE HOLY

of the pit whence he was digged ! How is God
glorified in such an addition to His Church !
What joy is it to the angels that do His will !
By such additions, is the Church a building of
God. Thus does it rise towards heaven. These
are thy jewels, daughter of Zion ! Thy " walls
salvation, thy gates praise !'

In all that we have now said, we have scarce-
ly hinted at what is called the visible Church,
as distinguished from the invisible. We have
spoken exclusively of that Church which, in the
words of the Martyr Ridley, "standeth only of
living stones, and true Christians, not only out-
wardly in name and title, but inwardly in heart
and truth."* This we have spoken of as the
only real Church, because the only " household
of faith." All are of it who are living a life of
faith on the Son of God ; none are of it, who are
not living that life.

But we do not deny that the name of Church
is also applied in Scripture to the whole mul-
titude of those who, by participation in the
ordinances of the gospel, profess the faith of
Christ, and hence are called Christians. This

* Bishop Ridley's Work's, (Parker Soc. Ed.) p. 126.

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 29

is what is called the visible Church. But
what do we mean by this language ? Because
we call all professing Christians, the visible
Church, and only real Christians, the invisible
Church, is it meant that there are two real
Churches ; or only that the real Church, which
we term " a body mystical, because the mystery
of the conjunction of the several members in
Christ, is removed altogether from sense;" and
which we call also the invisible, " because the
parts thereof are some in heaven with Christ, and
the rest that are on earth, (although their persons
be visible) no man can infallibly tell who they
be;"* is it that this only true Church is made
visible, (so far as at present it can be,) under the
visible ordinances, the visible profession, and the
wider amplitude of the other ? Certainly this is
the true view. The visible Church is the
Church, as seen of men, in the mixed mass of the
true and the false, the genuine and the coun-
terfeit, people of God. The invisible Church is
the same Church, as seen only of God, in the un-
mixed company of all His faithful people. The
one is that great flock, gathered together by the

* Hooker's Eccl. Pol., b. iii. § 1.
3*

30 THE HOLY

call of the Gospel, from all parts of the earth to
the professed following of the Good Shepherd,
in which the sheep of his pasture are mingled
with the goats that know him not, and are none
of his ; all, however, visibly, that is, professedly,
his flock. The other is simply so much of that
mixed multitude as do truly hear the voice of the
Shepherd, and follow him, and unto whom he
giveth eternal life.

To call all the visible Church, the Church of
God, when it is not all really the Church, but
only contains it, and when indeed a very great
part is really of the kingdom of darkness, is only
consistent with a mode of speech common in the
Scriptures, and in ordinary life. We speak of
the husk, while it contains the corn, as the corn,
though in itself fit only to be burned. All the
stately structure at Jerusalem was called in
Scripture the Temple, while the sanctuary, far
within, and making only a small part of the
whole structure, but distinguished from all the
rest by having within it, the mercy-seat and the
glory of God, was really the Temple. All the
people of Israel were called "the people of
God," "the Israel of God," "the circumci-
sion," " the congregation" (or Church) of the

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 31

Lord, because all were visibly so, by the profes-
sion which all made in the visible ordinances of
the Jewish Church. But, said St. Paul, " all
are not Israel, that are of Israel ;" neither be-
cause they are all the seed of Abraham are they
all children of the promise made to Abraham*
" He is not a Jew that is one outwardly, neither
is that circumcision which is outward in the
flesh. But he is a Jew which is one inwardly ;
and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spi-
rit, and not in the letter ; ivhose praise is not
of men but of God"\ Thus did St. Paul draw
the distinction between the visible or professing
Church, andthe real but invisible Church, under
the Mosaic dispensation. All the children of
Abraham, according to the flesh, all the children
of the external covenant, all that were Jews by
birth and sacrament, were of the visible congre-
gation or professing Church of Israel. But all
were not " of Israel," the true Israel. The true
Church of God was only of those who were
Jews inwardly; who had received the circumci-
sion " of the heart, in the spirit,'''' and were
thus known to the searcher of all hearts, however
unknown in that respect to men. To them only
* Rom. ix. 6, 7, 8. f Rom. iii. 28, 29.

32 THE HOLY

belonged the promises, because they only were
the children of faithful Abraham. St. Paul found
no fault with the usual mode of speech in which
all were said to be of the circumcision who had
received the sign or sacrament of circumcision ;
but he thought it highly important to be very
distinct in his instruction on the point that the
sign was not the thing ; that the sacrament of
circumcision was not the circumcision. It was
the thing only sacrament ally, or in the sign ; not
in the reality. It was the visible rite ; not the
invisible grace. It made a visible or professed
Israelite, not " an Israelite indeed ;" for circumci-
sion (said he) is that of the heart, in the spirit,
and not in the letter.11

Precisely the analogous use of language extends
to all that is visible of the Church under the
Gospel. There is but one real baptism, " not
the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but
the answer of a good conscience towards
God;11* not the outward washing, but the in-
ward sanctiflcation — for Baptism, precisely as cir-
cumcision, is that of the heart, in the spirit, and
not in the letter, ivhose praise is not of men but
of God. Still that outward washing is called
* 1 Pet. iii. 21.

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 33

baptism, just as the outward Jewish sacrament
was called circumcision. But it is important
now, as in St. Paul's time, to keep it very dis-
tinctly in mind that it is only sacramental bap-
tism, only the sacrament or sign of baptism — not
the thing. The real baptism is invisible, "whose
praise is not of men but of God." The sign or
sacrament is not depreciated in this ; but the thing
signified is relatively honoured above it.*

* "All receive not the grace of God (says Hooker)
who receive the sacraments of his grace." — Eccl. Pol.,
b. v. § 17.

" External baptism and the waters of Noah are types
of the same rank ; both types or shadows of that inter-
nal baptism by the Holy Ghost, by which we are in-
corporated into the body of Christ and become more
undoubtedly safe from the everlasting fire, than such
as entered into Noah's Ark were from the deluge of
water." — Dr. Jackson's Treatise on the Church. — Goode's
Edition. Lind. p. 97.

"Although baptism be a sacrament to be received
and honourably used of all men, it sanctifieih no man.
And such as attribute the remission of sin to the ex-
ternal rite, doth offend *** Such as be baptized must
remember that repentance and faith precede the ex-
ternal sign ; and in Christ, the purgation was inwardly
obtained, before the external rite was given. So that
there are two kinds of baptism — the one interior which

34 THE HOLY

Again, there is but one real communion of the
body and blood of Christ, that of those who feed
on Christ, in their hearts, by faith, with thanks-
giving. And yet in Scripture the visible sacra-
ment is called the communion. " The bread
which we break, is it not the communion of
the body of Christ?11* But in strictness of
speech it is not the communion of the body of
Christ, but only the sacrament, or divinely insti-

is the cleansing of the heart, the drawing of the Father,
the operation of the Holy Ghost; and this baptism is
in man, when he believeth and trusteth that Christ is
the only author of his salvation. **** So it is in the
Church of Christ : man is made the brother of Christ,
and heir of eternal life, by God's only mercy received
by faith before he receive any ceremony to confirm
and manifest openly his right and title.*** Thus as-
sured of God, and cleansed from sin in Christ, he hath
the livery of God given unto him, baptism, the which
no Christian should neglect; and yet not attribute his
sanctification unto the external sign, as the King's
majesty may not attribute his right unto the crown, but
unto God and unto his father, who have not only given
him grace to be born into the world, but also to govern
as a king in the world ; whose right and title the crown
confirmeth and sheweth the same unto all the world." — Works
of Hooper, Bishop and Martyr. (Parker Soc. Ed.) pp. 74, 75«
* 1 Cor. x. 16.

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 35

tuted sign, of that communion. It is the visible
communion. The real is invisible.*

It is an old saying of St. Augustine, quoted in
our Homilies,! and very common in our old writ-

* Art. XXVIII.

f Homily on Common Prayer and Sacraments.

"The thing itself in this sacrament (the Eucharist)
that is the precious body of Christ broken, and his
innocent blood shed, be absent ; yet be the bread and
the wine called the body broken and the blood-shedding
according to the nature of a sacrament, to set forth,
the better the thing done and signified in the sacra-
ment. There is done in the sacrament the memory and
remembrance of Christ's death, which was done on the
cross, where his precious body and blood was rent
and torn, shed and poured out for our sins.

" With this agreeth the mind of St. Augustine. — id
Bonifacium, Epist. xxiii. — Si enim sacramenta quandam
similitudinem earum rerum quarum sacramenta sunt, non
haberent, omnino sacramenta non escent : — that is to say,
1 If sacraments had not some proportion and likeness
of the things whereof they be sacraments, they were
no sacraments at all. And thus rather of the simili-
tude and signification of the thing which they repre-
sent and signify, they take the name, and not that indeed
they be as they be named.'

So after the manner is the sacrament of Christ's body
called Christ's body ; and the sacrament of Christ's
blood called his blood ; and the sacrament of faith is

36 THE HOLY

ers, for the illustration of this precise point, that
" sacraments do, for the most part, receive the
names of the self-same things which they sig-
nify." In this application of terms, the Sacra-
ment of Communion is called the Communion;
the Sacrament of Regeneration is called the Re-
generation. By analogous terms, the receiver of
these sacramental signs and visible notes of a
Christian, is called a Christian, whether he be a
Christian inwardly or not; and the vast multitude,
in the whole earth, united into one professing
community, under the same signs, are called the
Christian Church ; though it is no uncharitable-
ness to suppose that an immense proportion of
them have not the Spirit of Christ, and so are
none of his, and consequently are no more his
Church, than a merely professing Christian is a
true Christian, or than a merely external commu-
nicant is a real communicant of the body and blood
of Christ. The visible or professed Church of God
they all certainly are ; because they are the com-
pany of the visible or professing people of God.

called faith. As St. Augustine learnedly and godly
saith in the same argument, ' Let the word come unto
the element, and then is made the sacrament.' " — Bishop
Hooper's Works, (Parker Soc. Ed.) p. 515, 16.

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 37'

But the true Church of God, to which belong
all the glorious titles and privileges and promises
of God, in Scripture ; which is " the pillar and
ground of the truth," and against which the
gates of hell cannot prevail, that company cannot
be but in proportion as it consists (as our good
Hooker says on this head) " of none but true
Israelites, true sons of Abraham, true servants
and saints of God."*

Now we find no fault with this use of lan-
guage. It is scriptural. Much less, when we
speak thus of the visible form of the Church, do
we mean to diminish aught from your deepest
sense of the duty and importance of those seve-
ral divinely appointed signs and forms by which
the invisible Church, like angels of old, when
they appeared to man, puts on a body that she
may stand confessed before the world, and by
which the invisible God, as when He spoke to
Moses out of the burning bush, gives sensible form
to His presence among His people — "dwell-
ing in them and walking in them," under the signs
of sacraments, as He dwelt in the camp of Israel,

* For a further view of the doctrine of our Church
on this head, see App. B.

4

38 THE HOLY

under the sign of the cloud by day, and of fire
by night.

The evil is, when, through fault, not of the
thing, or the language, but of men's want of
spiritual discernment, the spiritual signification
is lost in the relative misplacement of the sign ;
when the right outward use of church ordinan-
ces is confounded with union to Christ by faith,
in the one communion and fellowship of the
spiritual house of God ; so that we get to feel a
sort of security that in carrying on the former,
with all regularity, we are necessarily attaining
the latter; and thus the communicant becomes
negligent of the great question, ' am I a living
stone of the House of God, built by faith upon
Christ the head of the corner?' and the minister
becomes negligent of that great instrument, in
the hand of the Spirit, of gathering the scattered
stones of the fallen temple of the first creation,
into the more glorious temple of the new crea-
tion in Christ Jesus — the preaching of the Word
of God.

The tendencies to this are stronger at some
times than at others. Under some circumstan-
ces, we feel called to preach, with chief enlarge-
ment upon the visible institutions of the Church.

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 39

Under others, upon the invisible structure of
the Church ; and thus we have, at this time,
confined our attention so much to its only foun-
dation, Christ; to its only materials, sinners
made alive in Christ, through faith uniting them
to him ; to its essential unity and communion,
as found in the vital relation of each to Christ,
as the common life, and the joining together of
all in Him, so as to be members one of another,
in his one mystical body.

This church, whether great or small, is the
only true host of God on earth, for true service
in that great battle, which is yet to be fought, be-
fore Satan shall go into bonds for a thousand
years — and which draweth nigh — perhaps is at
the door. When Gideon went against the host
of Midian, then encamped against Israel, his
apparent force was two and thirty thousand.
But it was only his visible strength. The num-
ber was diminished, by tests of divine appoint-
ment, until all that were not to be relied on when
faith in God was to be all the strength, had de-
parted. Three hundred only remained. But
the Lord said : " By the three hundred men, I
will deliver the Midianites into thine hand." All
the strength of the original thirty and two thou-

40 THE HOLY

sand, for that fight of faith, was in those three
hundred that remained. Such is the Church.
Visibly, the host is a multitude without number,
comprehending the whole professing people.
Really, the whole strength for the battle with
the rulers of the darkness of this world, is in
the inner, the smaller, and apparently so much
weaker, company of those who live by faith.
Should a separation of these be made from all
the rest, surely they would appear a very small
band in comparison with the whole array, a lit-
tle flock, and a great part of them consisting of
the poor of this world, the unlearned, the sim-
ple, the widows, the fatherless, the men of no
might, but nevertheless the praying, the believ-
ing, the wrestling, the hoping, the contrite ones,
the people that have the hope of salvation for a
helmet and the word of God for a sword. These,
however, are the living ones, whether few or
many, unto whom the word of the Lord has
come, saying, " Fear not little flock, for it is
your Father's good pleasure to give you the
kingdom. " These are that true body of Christ,
which is indeed His "fulness — the fulness of
Him that filleth all in all."* This comparatively
* See Hooker on Eph. i. 23, b. 5, § 56.

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 41

little flock is that church, that " blessed company
of all faithful people;" that "elect" people,
" knit together in one communion and fellowship
in the mystical body of Christ," (as our Prayer
Book describes it,) unto which alone pertaineth
the promises. " Whatsoever we read in Scrip-
ture concerning the endless love and saving mer-
cy which God showeth towards His Church, the
only proper subject thereof is this Church. Con-
cerning this flock it is that our Lord and Saviour
hath promised : 'I give unto them eternal life,
and they shall never perish, neither shall any
pluck them out of my hands.' "*

"Therefore is the strength of this Church great
indeed. It prevaileth against Satan, it conquer-
eth sin, it hath death in derision, neither princi-
palities nor powers can throw it down ; it leadeth
the world captive, and bringeth every enemy
that riseth up against it to confusion and shame,
and all by Faith ; for ' this is the victory that
overcometh the world, even our Faith.' "t

But when I speak of the Church of God as
comparatively a little flock, it is only one sec-

* Hooker, b. 3, § 1.

f Hooker's 2d Sermon on Jude, § 15.

4*

42 THE HOLY

tion of it that we mean — that which is militant
here on the earth. We must not forget that the
Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of
Saints, the General Assembly and Church of the
First Born, whose names are written in heaven,
has only one of its thousand generations here
on earth. Here we have but the nursery of that
great household of God, now sitting in heavenly
places, in Christ Jesus. Generation upon ge-
neration, ever since the world began, has been
flowing into that great congregation of white-
robed, blood-washed, glorified spirits of just men
made perfect. Oh ! the multitude there that
cannot be numbered, with which we have com-
munion, as brethren together in Christ Jesus,
our common portion and life. Glorious temple
of the living God ! It isgrowingstill in breadth,
and length, and height, and glory. "All the
building fitly framed together" in Christ, "groio-
eth unto an holy temple in the Lord.19

Nothing can stop that growth. In troublous
times, or the opposite, this House of God must
grow. Its Maker and Builder is God. All
things work together for its good. The world
is preserved but that its walls may be completed,
and when they are done, the time of the world

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 43

will be ended. It grows in height, in the spirit-
ual, heavenly graces of christians, as well as in
amplitude, in the number of those who have
the spiritual grace of true christians. It grows
in the constant addition of more and more souls
joined unto Christ. It grows in the continual
ascension of thousands upon thousands, from the
feeble state of saints on earth, to the established,
perfected state of those in heaven. Who can
measure its rapid increase by all these modes,
toward " the measure of the stature of the ful-
ness of Christ?" True it " cometh not with
observation." This growth is little visible to
man. As in the temple of Solomon, its type,
" there was neither hammer, nor any tool of iron
heard in the house, while it was building," so
the hand of God carries up this spiritual struc-
ture, as he carries on his work in the heart of
each of his people, by a progress which little
engages the notice of the world. Upon the
outer courts, upon the visible temple, the sound
of man's working is heard. Upon the inner
sanctuary, the growth is as silent as was the
creation of the heavens and the earth, because
" the builder and maker, now as then, is
God."

44 THE HOLY

r

It was a striking feature in the building of
the temple of Solomon that the materials came
from so many different and distant regions.
The isles of the sea, the mines of Ophir, the
forests of Lebanon, the quarries of Tyre, all
conspired. Thus has risen, thus will be com-
pleted at last, the temple of God. The ministry
of the gospel, in all lands, is gathering souls of
men to be joined unto the Lord. The time
cometh — probably is nigh at hand — when " the
abundance of the sea shall be converted, and the
forces of the Gentiles shall come" unto Zion ;
when " the sons of strangers shall build her walls,
and kings shall minister unto her." The Lord
hasten the time ! At last the work will be done.
The Church will be spotless — her walls perfected
— the two companies on earth and in heaven,
will be one with Christ in his glory ; the scaffold-
ing of ordinances will be taken down ; the human
builders will have no more to do ; the ministry
of men will pass away before the personal min-
istry of the great Prophet, Priest and King, as
that of planets, when the sun arises. Then will
cease the frailties that dishonour, and the conten-
tions and divisions that disturb the peace of, the
present militant portion of the Church. With

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 45

the endless separation of all who have not the
mind of Christ, will cease the distinction between
the Church visible and invisible. All the visible
of that finished Temple will be spiritual ; all the
spiritual will be perfect. The work of redemp-
tion will be complete. The new creation will
be finished. The everlasting Sabbath will then
begin; Jesus, resting from his work, and seeing
of "the travail of his soul," and satisfied : all his
people satisfied in him as their infinite portion ;
He satisfied in his people ; their rest glorious
"in the holy Catholic Church; the communion
of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrec-
tion of the body, and the life everlasting."

Alas ! we cannot think of that unruffled peace,
thatceaseless harmony, that great harp of countless
strings, that vast choir of perfect saints, all full of
the same joy, without thinking with deep sorrow
and humiliation, of the sad contrast in the church
as it now is on earth. How much is there to make
us mindful that this portion of the church is yet,
in regard to what it ought to be now, and will be
hereafter, precisely as each of her members on
earth is, as to his " ripeness of age in Christ."
The whole body has yet need to grow in grace,
just as, and because, each single christian has

46 THE HOLY

need to grow. How painfully is the bond of
peace among christians broken by incessant and
numberless controversies about points of faith
and order, so that, outwardly seen, there appears
little else than conflicting parties striving for the
mastery, each with its own distinct profession
and altar and ministry and interest and church,
making the house of God seem a Babel of jar-
ring tongues, and the brotherhood of christians a
den of strife. But deeply as this is to be sor-
rowed over, we must not let it possess our minds
so much as to make us forget the difference be-
tween "the bond of peace" and "the unity of
the Spirit ;" and how much the former may be
broken, while the latter remains undivided. —
"The bond of peace is the common use of
creeds and sacraments," and belongs to all that
name the name of Christ in truth or not. " The
unity of the spirit is the peculiar of the saints,
and is the internal confederation and conjunction
of the members of Christ's body in themselves
and to their head."* The one is external, easily
invaded ; the other is internal, laid up in the ark
of the covenant; it is our life — "it is hid with

^* Bp. Taylor, Dissuasive from Popery, p. 2. c. i. § 1.

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 47

Christ in God." Nothing can break it but what
can break the bond between Christ and his peo-
ple. It is the unity of one Lord — one sanctifying
Spirit, one bread of life, " one God and Father of
all." It is essential to the church in its real,
invisible being. Wherever there is a soul under
the whole heaven who is united to Christ by a
living faith, he is in that spiritual union with all
his true church. Assemble together from all
parts of the earth, all that call themselves chris-
tians ! They are not all united by the Spirit, in
a living faith, to Christ ; then they may have
" thebond of peace" unbroken, but they are not
all in "the unity of the Spirit." Gather out of
them as many as are truly in Christ, living stones
built together in him ; then however divided as
to contents of creeds and doctrine of sacraments
and order and form, and however the bond of
peace among them be broken, they are one in
Christ Jesus : they are in that unity of the Spirit
which makes them one holy temple in the Lord,
the one universal church, the one communion of
saints.* To have a common head and life, a

* " The holy Catholic Church consists, (says Bishop
Taylor,) by comprehension and actual potential enclo-

48 THE HOLY

common hope and obedience; to be sanctified
by the same Spirit of holiness ; to feel the same
spiritual wants ; to contend with the same spir-
itual enemies ; to worship at the same throne of
grace ; to eat of the same spiritual meat, and
drink of the same spiritual rock that follows us ;
thus to be one, and thus to have community in
everything pertaining essentially to the love of
God and the following of Christ : — this is to
have the unity of the Spirit — this is the com-
munion of saints; and the more the bond of
peace is broken among real christians of different
names, the more should we love to recognize
this which can never be broken, but by the utter
destruction of the spiritual house of God.

And after all, brethren, how little is the dis-
cord, compared with the harmony of the church !
In the fiercest tempests that rage upon the ocean,
it is but the mere surface — the visible form of
the great deep that feels their power. A very
little way beneath, and thence all down to the

sure, of all communions of holy people. — Dissuasive
from Popery, p. 2, c. i. § 1. Bishop Ridley says;—
"The holy Catholic Church, which is the communion of
sainto."— Ridley's Works, (Parker Soc.,) p. 122.

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 49

unfathomable depths, is a perfect calm. To the
eye, looking on the outward and visible of the
ocean, all seems confusion and rage. To the
thoughts of the mind, reaching within to the
great heart of the ocean, and comparing the vast
magnitude of the invisible body of waters un-
moved, with the mere covering that is tossed in
the storm, it seems that almost all is peace.

Thus it is with the great communion and fel-
lowship, the mystical body, of all God's faithful
people. It is a great deep — a boundless ocean. It
is " the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." The
storms of controversy, the strifes of conflicting
divisions, are all over that little bay which is
visible to us out of the whole wide sea. You
stand low — a single wave bounds your sight. It
seems to you a mountain : — You feel as if all
were convulsed to the very centre. Could you
measure how much of all this confusion is about
matters which, however important, affect not the
fixed settlement of all christians upon the one
Saviour of all ; — could you look down into the
inner life of the people of God, and see how all
that is spiritual and eternal is unmoved ; — could
you compare, at one view, the infinite magnitude
and preciousness of those great interests in which
5

50 THE HOLY

all who are in Christ must, in the very nature of
that living union with him, agree, with the rela-
tive inferiority of those about which they differ;
could you see how small is the portion of the
great Catholic Church which so much as hears
the sound of the waves of strife, compared with
all those of that church who are at rest with
God, in the peace that passeth understanding;
you would then see that the temporary and visi-
ble confusion and distraction are as nothing to
the present spiritual harmony of the Temple of
the living God. You would see that the present
state of the redeemed church is truly symbolised
in that vision of St. John, wherein he saw the
four-and-twenty elders, as representatives of the
whole communion of saints, falling down before
the Lamb, " having every one of them harps and
golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers
of saints." "And they sung a new song, say-
ing, Thou art worthy, for thou wast slain and
hast redeemed us to God, by thy blood, out of
every kindred and tongue and people and nation,
and hast made us kings and priests unto God."
And now, if you will allow me to take any
more time, comes the important question, which
must have arisen in many minds, what are the

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 51

consequences of the views, now delivered, as to
the importance of those great features of the visi-
ble church in which we, as members of a Pro-
testant Episcopal Church, so widely differ from
a multitude of professing christians around us ?
Are the importance and duty of contending ear-
nestly for what we believe to be of apostolical
institution in the visible body of the church, in
any wise diminished by this wide distinction
between the outward and visible form, and the
inward and invisible being of the church ?

We answer — in no wise; no more than to
draw an equally broad distinction between man,
as he is an immortal spirit, and man's body, depre-
ciates the importance of defending the latter
against all mutilations.

There is a pregnant passage of Hooker, which
could be enlarged into a volume: "As those
everlasting promises of love, mercy and blessed-
ness belong to the mystical church, even so, on
the other side, when we read of any duty which
the Church of God is bound unto, the church
whom this doth concern is a visible and
known company."* Now each true christian

* Eccl. Pol. c. iii. § 1.

52 THE HOLY

is God's temple. When you speak of that
christian, as God's temple, in his spiritual rela-
tions to God, as the receiver of his promises,
and united to him, through Christ Jesus; you
speak with reference to him as an invisible
and spiritual being. He worships God "in
the spirit." "But when you speak of that
temple, that christian, with reference to what
God has given him to do in the ivorld, and for
the world, you mean that man, in his visible
body — because, though he can live out of the
body, he cannot come into contact with the
world without that body. So the Church — the
fellowship of all true people of God — when you
speak of what God has given it to do in the
world, you speak of it as visible, under the form
of a "sensible known company," with all the attri-
butes of an ecclesiastical body. It cannot come
into contact with the world without them. Con-
sequently, the importance of the visible form, or
body, of the spiritual church, and therefore of
maintaining it as God hath appointed it, is pre-
cisely measured by the importance of all that
mighty and glorious work which God has com-
mitted to his people for the salvation of all
mankind.

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 53

Again, the question has probably arisen in
your minds, what is the bearing of the views we
have given on the relations we bear, as true
christians, to believers in any other ecclesiastical
connection. Surely it is a most interesting and
important question ; and I have no disposition to
shun it. It is precisely the question of our
Lord : " Who are my brethren ? He that doeth
the will of my Father which is in heaven, the
same is my mother and sister and brother." —
We ask the same — Who are our brethren?
Who belong to the communion of saints, that
Holy Catholic Church, which we believe in, as
the mystical body of Christ? We answer:
Every soul of man that hath a living faith in
him, wherever found, whatever called. There
is no difference here. Diversity of outward and
visible church-institutions, doubtless makes a
great difference of privilege, and of benefit. But
it makes no difference in the reality and per-
fectness of spiritual union to Christ, and to His
Temple — His living Church, among those in
whom, is "like precious faith," in Christ.

I beg to say that it is not because I am forced
by the necessary result of the views we have
taken of the true Church of God, to make this
5*

54 THE HOLY

concession. It is no concession. It is simply,
the^glad profession of a blessed truth which we
love, and love to declare and embrace. And the
more we have to be separated by difference of
institutions and doctrines ; the more must we love
to remember that true believers in Jesus Christ
are one in him, and will be one with him for-
ever. I cannot allow the partition walls which
divide the courts of the Lord's visible house, to
prevent me from the precious enjoyment resulting
from the thought that wherever my Lord has a
true believer, I have a brother; that if a poor
sharer in the fall is also a blessed sharer with me
in the saving grace by faith in Jesus Christ, no
matter how he may stand afar off, by departing
from visible institutions, which I consider of great
price, and which ought to be held at any earthly
cost, he is still united to me, and I to him, as bone
with bone, in that living, invisible, body of which
Christ is head, and no member of which shall
ever die.

So far from being the less disposed to recog-
nize our union with all penitent believers in
Jesus, as being one with us in the unity of the
Spirit, because of the wide and lamentable
breaches in the bond of peace, we ought to be the

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 55

more desirous of doing so, precisely in propor-
tion as those bonds are broken. As distributed
into separate ecclesiastical organizations, we
may become hereafter more and more separated
— " we know not what we shall be" in that re-
spect. The great adversary may succeed in
widening us yet more powerfully. I am not dis-
posed to give up, or diminish, our firm attachment
to any one of our great distinctive church peculi-
arities, for the sake of filling up the sad interval,
in such respects, between us and others. Those
peculiarities seem to me to involve great interests
of truth and order which cannot be compromised.
But the more I stand on this ground, with respect to
separate ecclesiastical organizations, the more I
love to believe that in those separated and conflict-
ing visible churches, there are individuals, (a great
multitude, I trust) who are alike, with us, united to
Christ, my Lord and Life, by a living faith ; and
therefore united to me, as brethren in the family
of God, and united to the whole Catholic Church
and Communion of Saints, as members of Christ
and his kingdom. Do those churches contend
with ours, and we with them ? I take refuge
from the affliction of such controversy (for how-
ever necessary it may be, it is an affliction to a

56 THE HOLY

Christian mind) ; I take comfort under all such
tribulations, in the precious truth professed in that
article of our Creed, "I believe in the Communion
of Saints." — The sweetness of that truth was
never greater to a Christian heart than now, when
the visible Communion of Christians seems to be
becoming more and more broken, and their real
Communion in Christ more and more to be
known only as a matter of faith in God's pro-
mises to make and hold the true people as one
in Christ Jesus. The trials of believers, in this
respect, I do not suppose have reached their
height. When the prophet was surrounded with
armed forces to take him, and his servant trem-
bled at the danger, the prophet prayed, and the
eyes of his servant were opened, and he saw a
great army of the hosts of God, come down from
heaven, surrounding the man of God, and ready
to do battle with his enemies. The compara-
tively little flock of God's true people may in a
few years find themselves in a similar peril, when
it will be more felt than it is now, how comforting
it is to be able to lift up the eye of faith and see,
under all the conflicting elements of the visible
Church, a brother in every true believer, and in
all the people of God, a holy Church, the unity

CATHOLIC CHURCH. 57

of which, in Christ, cannot be broken, and against
which the gates of hell can never prevail.

In conclusion. All that we have said, preaches
most solemnly to every soul the necessity of
seeing that, whatever else he may be, he is in
Christ Jesus, and will be found in him, when
the separation of the great day shall be made
between the true flock of Christ, and all that only
name his name. Oh ! to be in the ark of Christ,
when the flood cometh ! Oh ! to have, besides the
handwriting of ordinances upon us, when God's
inquisition shall be made, the hand-writing of the
Spirit of God upon our souls, witnessing that we
are His people ; that seal, whereby the Holy
Ghost seals " unto the day of Redemption." St.
Paul understood this, and counted all things but
loss, all externals as worthless, compared with
being "found in Christ,'' by having on "the
righteousness of God by faith." Let us feel his
spirit ! Let us press on in his race ! Let us,
with him, bow our knees " unto the father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in
heaven and earth is named, that he would grant
us to be strengthened with might by his Spirit, in
the inner man, that Christ may dwell in our hearts
by faith ; that we being rooted and grounded in

58 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH.

love may be able to comprehend, with ail saints,
what is the length, and breadth, and depth, and
height, and to know the love of Christ, which
passeth knowledge, that we may be filled with
all the fulness of God. Now unto Him that is
able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we
ask or think, according to the power that work-
eth in us, unto Him be glory, in the Church, by
Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without
end. Amen."*

* Ephes. iii.

$

APPENDIX A.

Immediate union by faith to Christ. It is a ques-
tion of vastly greater consequence than at first appears
to many, whether the sinner comes by faith imme-
diately to Christ, or intermediately only, through the
sacraments of the Church ; whether he is privileged
to come nigh, and draw life directly, from Christ the
Head ; or whether he can only come to His visible
body, (the visible Church) and get life through its
sacramental channels and ministrations ; whether
we are allowed to receive the precious anointing of
the Holy Ghost, directly from the head of our Great
High Priest, on whom, as Man for us, it was poured
out u without measure," each believer receiving as
directly from Christ as if he were the only member of
Christ; or whether the several believers can only re-
ceive that anointing of grace when it has first flowed
down to something called Christ's body, abstractedly
from the several members comprising Christ's people,
and thence down to the skirts of his clothing.

The docrrine is maintained by many, who sympa-
thise with the Tractarian writers, that Christ has
given the whole administration of his grace to His
Church — which, in this sense, is called "His ful-
ness;" that the Church, by Priesthood and Sacra-
ments, gives to every man the grace purchased by

60 APPENDIX.

Christ, as each has need ; that to this end, when the
Church was established, on the day of Pentecost,
all the fulness of Christ, all his grace for his people
was invested in that Church, as a corporate spiritual
institution, to hold that sacred property and use it as
Christ's steward ; consequently that when a sinner
is said to come to Christ, the meaning is that he
comes to Christ's Church, as his representative and
agent. He does not touch Christ by faith; but only
the hem of his garment, the visible signs of the
Church's ordinances. He is made a living stone, not
by being brought directly to that great living corner-
stone which is (i lain in Zion ;" but to a building
erected on that stone which itself has all its life and
represents it ; and from which, life is received by
every new addition ; so that the passage of St. Peter,
" To whom coming as unto a living stone, ye also as
lively stones are built up" &c. does not mean coming
unto Christ, except as it may be considered to be a
coming unto Christ, when we come unto those who
having come to him before us, and have been already
built up in him.

Now this is an awful perversion of the Gospel,
and denial of the most precious privileges of the be-
liever. It is one of the grand fictions of Rome,
which lies at the base of her Anti-Christian system.
It is nothing less than taking the sinner to man,
instead of God. It is the precious birth-right of the
believer, in his secret exercises of communion, by
faith, with God, to cease from man, to look above ordi-

APPENDIX. 61

nances, to see, without any intervening cloud, or
medium, the Lamb of God ; to come as directly to
him as if there were not a sacrament, or ordinance,
or ministry, on earth, and be built up in him as im-
mediately as if not a soul had ever been built up in
him before. In other words, precisely as the first
souls that were united by faith to that living corner-
stone, could have had none between them and Christ,
no row of intervening stones ; so all believers, to the
end of the world, are united just as immediately.
The mere incidental difference that some are con-
verted in one century, some in a later, makes no
difference as to the privileges of any. All are alike
built immediately on Christ. All are equally in the
head. All have the same directness of communion
with him. All receive alike out of his fulness.

This is not only illustrated, but typically proved
by the history of the Manna in the wilderness. The
Church of God in the wilderness was sustained, as
to bodily food, exclusively by the Manna which came
down from heaven. Our Lord, in the sixth chapter
of St. John, expressly points to that Manna as a
type of Himself. As that supplied the bodily wants
of the people Israel ; so is he the bread of life for
the spiritual wants of God's true Israel. But was
the Manna laid up in some depot of the Church
in the wilderness ; was it invested in the hands
of some stewards, at the beginning of the jour-
ney, to be kept and dealt out during all the forty
years; was the prerogative of its administration

6

62 APPENDIX.

given to the Priesthood, and were the people to go
to them, day by day, to get as much as they needed 1
No such thing ! The Priesthood had nothing to do
with its distribution. It was a matter of direct, daily
communication between the Head of that Church
and every individual member. There was no supply
laid up in certain hands. When this was attempted,
the bread corrupted ,• just as when the Anti-Christian
doctrine, against which I am arguing, took posses-
sion of the Church, and the attempt was made to
interfere with the direct, daily intercourse between
Christ and each of his people, every thing in the
Church corrupted. The simple mode by which each
man of Israel was fed, was his going out, day by
day, whether he was Priest, Levite, or any thing
else, Aaron or Moses, or the least of the host, and
gathering/or himself. There was no vicarious work
on the part of the Church, or any representative
body. It wras an act of faith for each man daily
to exercise. The supply was all held in the hands
of the Great Head of the Church, from begin-
ning to end. No stewardship was appointed. It
was He who gave to every man ; and he gave only
for the day, lest the sense of constant, individual,
entire dependence on Him should be impaired.

So are we taught by Him, every day, to ask our
Manna — " Give us this day our daily bread." The
Church is still on its pilgrimage. The people of
God live by faith ; their bread comes down from hea-
ven. Each soul looks for it directly unto Christ,

APPENDIX. 63

who himself is that bread. He only knows what
each wants. He only can give as each needs.
Prayer of faith is the hand by which each receives
out of his fulness. He has never given his glory,
in this respect, to another. Corruption must enter
into the Church that attempts to interfere with the
immediate, continual application of his people, for all
grace, to their one, only, and glorious Head and Life.

I have not set out to write an essay on this part
of our subject. If the views exhibited in the sermon
concerning the invisible Church, be true, the theory
of the visible Church being the depository of grace,
&c, cannot stand. I will allude to one passage
which is often used, as if there could be no doubt
of its sustaining that theory.

I refer to the 23d chapter of the Epistle to the
Ephesians, and 23d verse.

St. Paul speaking of the Church, says, " which is
his (Christ's) body, the fulness (rtta^wfia) of him that
filleth all in a//."

This passage is often treated, as if the Church
were Christ's fulness, in the sense of being, corpo-
rately, in possession of all the grace which Christ
has purchased for his people, independently of his
indwelling, by his Spirit, in the heart of each. It
will be seen, from the following references, that
such is in no sense the understanding of the passage
by our old divines, and others. It will appear that
the passage is understood as meaning that the
Church is Christ's fulness, simply as the completion

64 APPENDIX.

of Him, in his officers head of the mystical body — his
Church ; j ust as a king is relatively incomplete with-
out a kingdom, and thus a kingdom is the fulness,
or complimentum, of a king.

Hooker says, " It pleaseth Christ, in mercy, to
account himself incomplete and maimed without us.
(Note of Hooker's to this. Eph. i. 23, Ecclesia
complimentum ejus qui implet omnia in omnibus.)

" But most assured we are, that we all receive of
his fulness, because he is in us as a moving and work-
ing cause. — Hooker 6 v. § 56, near end.

Archbishop Usher comments on the same passage
as follows : " As it hath pleased the Father, that in
Him should all fulness dwell ; so the Son is pleased
not to hold it any disparagement, that his body, the
Church, should be accounted the fulness of Him that
Jilleth all in all', that, howsoever, in himself, he is
most absolutely, and perfectly, complete, yet in his
Church, so nearly conjoined with him, that hehold-
eth not himself full without it; but as long as any
one member remaineth ungathered and unknit into
this mystical body of his, he accounteth, in the
meantime, somewhat to be deficient in himself." —
Sermon before the King — in Usher's Jlnswer to a
Jesuit, p. 694.

Beveridge gives the same. " The Church is so
Christ's body that it is his rfK^ioua, His Fulness,
that whereby he is full and complete, which other-
wise he would not be, no more than a head is with-
out a body. * * And therefore the Epistle here truly

APPENDIX. 65

calls the Church his fulness or complement. Beve-
ridge^s Sermons, No. 32, vol. 1, p. 385.

McKnight gives the same view, on Eph. i. 23,
and on Rom. xi. 12 — " If the diminishing of them be
the riches of the Gentiles how much more their fulness,
" rtto^w^a" — see the same word in 3Ialthew ix. 16.

The same view is given in Poole's Synopsis, and
in Schleusner's Lexicon. Art. rt^w^a.

There is a very important and solemn sense, in
which each Christian may be "filled with all the ful-
ness of God." St. Paul prays for the Ephesian
Christians — Eph. iii. 19 — that they " may be filed
with all the fulness of God" — not " the fulness of
the Godhead" as Christ was and is ; but " the fulness
of God ;" the fulness of that sanctifying grace which
God has promised to his people, as the purchase
of Christ in their behalf. But in this passage
it is the individual believer, and not any corporate
body that is prayed for. The context shows that, as
St. Paul prays for the Ephesians, individually, that
Christ may dwell in their hearts, by faith ,- so he prays
for the same individuals that they may be severally
filled with the fulness of God. In one sense indeed,
the Church may be spoken of in the same way, but
only as it is the aggregate of all in whose hearts, as
individual believers, Christ dwells by faith.

The passages below from those great divines of the
17th century, Dr. Jackson and Archbishop Usher,
will show how giants in divinity of those days were
wont to speak of union to Christ.

6*

66 APPENDIX.

" All that believe, as Peter and the other Apostles
did, or shall so believe, unto the world's end, are
immediately laid on the same foundation stone, not
one upon another, their union or annexation unto
Christ is as immediate as Peters was, and is or shall
be as indissoluble as his was to Christ, albeit, their
growth be not so great, nor for quality so glorious.
The best description of this edifice, thus immediately
erected upon the same stone, would be that of the
poet, Crescit crescentibus illis. As the number of liv-
ing stones which are laid upon the foundation stone
increases, so the foundation or corner stone, which
God did promise to lay in Zion, doth increase. As
every particular living stone increaseth or groweth
from a stone into a pillar of the house of God, unto
a temple of God ; so this foundation stone, that is,
Christ as man, still groweth, still increaseth, not in
himself, but in them. For they grow by his growth
in them, or by diffusion of life from him into them. —
Jackson's Works, vol. III. b. II. c. IV. § 22.

"Our Apostle's words are express that all the
building is fitly framed together in Christ, and so
framed together groweth up unto an holy temple
in the Lord. He saith not, we are builded one upon
another, but builded together in him for an habita-
tion of God through the Spirit. The Spirit by which
we are builded together in Christ, or through which
we become the habitation of God, is not communi-
cated and propagated unto us as from intermediate
foundations or roots. We and all true believers receive

APPENDIX. 67

the influence of the Spirit as immediately from Christ,
or from God the Father and the Son, in the same
manner as St. Peter did. — Ibid, § 6.

" Christ is not the foundation only, but the temple
of God. * * * That we then become living stones
in this edifice, it is from our immediate union with
this chief corner-stone ; being united to him he is
fashioned in us ; we become living stones, growing
stones, &c." — Ibid, § 9.

" The mystery of our union to Christ, (says Arch-
bishop Usher) consisteth mainly in this ; that the
self same Spirit which is in him, as in the head, is
so derived from him into every one of his true
members, that thereby they are animated and quick-
ened to a spiritual life. * * *

" The formal reason of the union of the membeis
of our bodies consisteth not in the continuity of the
parts, though that also be requisite to the unity of
a natural body, but in the animation thereof by one
and the same spirit. * * And even thus it is in
Christ, although in regard of his corporal presence,
the heaven must receive him until the times of the
restitution of all things ; yet he is here with us
always, even unto the end of the world, by the pre-
sence of his Spirit. — Sermon before House of Com-
mons.

APPENDIX B.

FURTHER REMARKS ON THE RELATIONS OF THE
VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE CHURCH.

If the reader, unaccustomed to such subjects as
are treated in the sermon, would rightly appre-
ciate the views therein given, he must keep
clear in his mind the distinction between the uni-
versal visible church, and all particular ecclesias-
tical organizations. The visible church, universal,
is not the comprehension of all separate eccle-
siastical organizations, such as the particular con-
stitutions of parishes, dioceses or national churches,
but of all professing- christians, united in the bonds
of common sacraments, and the common funda-
mental faith, into one community, however scat-
tered in place, however diversified in other ecclesi-
astical relations.

It may seem at first sight that the views of the
discourse are incompatible with the 19th Article,
entitled — " Of the Church" — which is as follows:

"The visible Church of Christ is a congregation
of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God
is preached, and the sacraments be duly minis-
tered, according to Christ's ordinance, in all those
things that of necessity are requisite to the same."

This is a description of the Visible Church. At
first view it seems to identify the bounds of the

APPENDIX. 69

visible church with those of the company of all
God's true, believing, obedient people ; for no one
acquainted with the language of the writers of the
days when the articles were written, can doubt that
il a congregation of all God' 's faithful people ," means
the community or society of all God's true people ;
in other words, all who are living "a life of faith
upon the Son of God."

Now, can it be for a moment supposed that our
Reformers intended to say that the visible, or pro-
fessing church, embraces none but such faithful
people ? in other words, that all professing chris-
tians are true christians? This were impossible.
The Reformers, we all know, held no such views ;
but loudly contended against all approach to it in
the Church of Rome.

What then does the article mean 1 A little con-
sideration will show that it speaks to two points.
1st. What is the Church? for it is entitled — "Of
the Church.'''' 2d. What is the visibility of the
Church, or in what is it visible?

To the first, it says, The Church is "a congre-
gation" or, society, of God's faithful people, pre-
cisely according to the doctrine of the sermon. To
the second, it says, The Church is a visible church
in this, viz: — In it "the pure Word of God is
preached, and the sacraments be duly ministered
according to Christ's ordinance, &c. In other
words, the essential notes of the church, by which
it is made visible, are the administration of the

70 APPENDIX.

sacraments in all things essential to them, and
the preaching of the pure word of God. Where-
ever these are, is the visibility of the church : —
Wherever there is, under them, a community of
God's true people, there the true church not only is,
but is visible, as far as it can be,"to those who cannot
search the hearts.

The views, given in the sermon, of the invisible
church, are beautifully expressed, not only in the
communion office, where it is called — " the blessed
company of all God's faithful people" — but in the
collect for Ml Saints Day, as follows : — " Oh, Al-
mighty God, who hast knit together thine elect in one
communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy
son Christ, our Lord; Grant us grace so to follow thy
blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living," $rc.

This leads us to some remarks on what are ealled
" Notes of the Church."

Precisely as visible sacraments are spoken of, as
if they were the invisible grace which they signify
— (see the discourse,) so the whole visibility
of the church is spoken of as if it constituted the
church which it indicates. Thus what are called
" Notes" of the true Church, which, in protestant
doctrine, are simply the profession of the funda-
mental christian faith, in the right use of the christian
sacraments and ministry, are often spoken of as if
they were constituent elements of the church. All
this language is correct, precisely in the sense in
which it is correct to speak of the sacramental re-

APPENDIX. 71

ceiving the communion, as the communion of the body
of Christ ,• or the sacramental receiving of baptism,
as the baptism of the Holy Ghost ; or that the sa-
cramental receiving of circumcision was the cir-
cumcision ; or that the man who has the notes of
being a christian, in having the profession of the
fundamentals of the faith, joined with the recep-
tion of the sacraments, is thereby a real christian.
He has the notes, or signs, of a christian, and
therefore is called a christian; but those notes or
signs do not make him a true christian, nor prove
him to be such. They only prove that he has the
divinely appointed visibility of a christian. Thus,
as to the notes of the true church. They do not
belong to the being of the church in the sight of
God; but only to its being in the sight of man —
that is, to its visibility, its form. That form may
be supposed all laid aside, and a new mode of pro-
fession put on, under another dispensation ; and yet
the church may continue essentially the same. Its
notes, or signs, indicate ,• they do not constitute its
being. They are marks, not properties. Thus the
whole divinely appointed visibility of thechurch is
the one sign of the church, indicating, as the light
upon the dwellings of the Israelites in Egypt,
amidst the deep surrounding darkness, the existence
in this dark world, of a church which otherwise
would be invisible; but it does no more. It is not
the church, any more than that miraculous light
wherewith God marked off his people Israel, and

72 APPENDIX.

made his church visible in the night of Egypt, was
that people.

The church has no more right to dispense with
the visible form, under which God has appointed it
to be in this world, than a man has a right to divest
himself of the body which Gcd has given him to
wear. We consider the body of sacraments and
ordinances, by which the true spiritual church is
made visible, to be quite as necessary to the church
for its office in this world, as the body of flesh, by
which the true man is made a visible man, is ne-
cessary to his duty on earth. But the question,
what constitutes the church, is as independent of
what makes it the visible church, as the question,
what is the intelligent man, is independent of what
makes the body of a man.

For ordinary purposes, no harm may arise from
confounding, in common speech, the visibility of
the church with the being of the church, and speak-
ing of the one, as if it were identical with the
other. Thus we speak of man. The visible man,
his body, is spoken of as the man. We say the
man is dead, when we mean only that his body,
the visible form, or sign of the man, is dead. The
man himself is living still, but invisibly. But
when the great question comes — what is it to be a
christian, to be of the communion of saints — in
other words, what is it to be a member of the holy
Catholic Church, the body of Christ; what is that
society to which belong exclusively the promises

APPENDIX. 73:

of the Gospel, the life of Christ, and the heritage
of God ; then, as we say of every individual person
who has been baptized, and is a communicant, that
he is not a christian, except he have received the
inward baptism of the Holy Ghost, and does feed
upon Christ in his heart by faith ; so we must say
of all the baptized and the communicating, that
while they all have the visibility of the church,
none of them have any part in its reality, except
they be joined by a living faith to Christ.

If the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, in the
sense of the Church of Rome, and of Tractarian di-
vinity be true, namely, that baptism is invariably
accompanied by, and efficacious in producing, all the
inward and spiritual change which is necessary to
the spiritual life, then every man that is a chris-
tian outwardly, is a christian also inwardly — then
the rites of the church, or its visible marks, are co-ex-
tensive with its spiritual being; then also the distinc-
tion between the church mystical or invisible, and the
church visible, is but a fancy ; then all the visible
is the spiritual and the true ; all are of Israel that
are called Israel; and the holy Catholic Church, as
it stands before God, is essentially the Catholic-
visible church as seen of men.

Such is the doctrine of the papal system. Popery

cannot abide the doctrine of an invisible church, as

exhibited in this discourse, and as we shall show in

this appendix, was the teaching of the great divines

7

74 APPENDIX.

of the Church of England, from the Reformation
downward.

The effect of this doctrine upon the Romish
claim of infallibility, will illustrate the cause of
Romish enmity thereto, as well as that of systems
of divinity more or less approximating to the Ro-
mish faith. The church, according to Rome, is, by
some representative or other, an infallible guide of
faith and determiner of controversy . This she can
only be, if at all, because to her the promises of God
are made. It becomes then a great question for
Rome to settle what is that church to which are
given the promises of God, and which thus becomes
" the pillar and ground of the truth ;" and is, there-
fore, by Romish inference, the infallible indicator of
truth. It must be either what protestants call the
invisible church, consisting only of those who are
in the exercise of a living faith; or it must be what
protestants call the visible church, as embracing the
merely nominal as well as the true people of God.
If the former be exclusively the church which pos-
sesses the promises, then because, while the per-
sons of the members of that church are visible,
their distinctive character, as true Israelites, is invi-
sible, Romanists can never see their guide; the
oracle is of no use, since its whereabouts is not
known; and so infallibility, if it exist, is of no
tangible use. The necessity of escaping this con-
sequence, by denying the premises, was perfectly
understood by Cardinal Bellarmine. Therefore

APPENDIX. 75^

he said : " It is necessary it should be infallibly
certain to us, which assembly of men is the Church,
For since the Scriptures, traditions, and plainly all
doctrines, depend on the testimony of the church;
unless it be most sure which is the true church, all
things will be wholly uncertain. But it cannot
appear to us which is the true church, if internal
faith be required of every member or part of the
church.''''*

Here is precisely the point. If none can be a
member of that mystical body to which pertain the
promises, unless he have internal faith — that is,
living faith — the infallibility of the church, as a
determiner of controversy, perishes. Hence, of
course Rome must deny that necessity, and main-
tain that those who have not living faith, are not
only professedly, but really, members of the true
church, and therefore sharers in the promises. —
Hence, in her use, the expressions, mystical body
of Christ, temple of God, communion of saints,
holy Catholic Church, visible church, are precisely
of the same application. Most of the later Romanist
writers " take all those glorious titles or promises
made to the church in its most ample or exquisite
signification, to be exactly and entirely fulfilled of
the visible church throughout all ages. The visible
church, in their language, is a society or body ec-

* Lib. iii. de Eccl. Milit. cap. 10 sect. Ad hoc ne-
cesse est, &c; quoted by Bp. Taylor.

76 APPENDIX.

clesiastic, notoriously known by the site or the place
of its residence, or by their dignity, order and
offices, which are the perpetual governors of it." In
support of their doctrine, that this visible church is
the true, universal, holy church, "never did the Jew
doat half so much on external circumcision and legal
sacrifices, or the canonical priesthood, as the mo-
dern Romanist doth on the sacraments of the gospel,
and on his imaginary priesthood, after the order of
Melchizedeck, or other like notes or sensible cogni-
zances of the visible church."* Cardinal Bellar-
mine makes an argument against Calvin's view of
the invisible church, " which being drawn into
form, (says Dr. Jackson,) stands thus : " The word
{church) in Scripture doth always import a visible
company of men ; therefore it doth not belong to an
invisible congregation" The argument, (proceeds
Jackson,) is no better than this : The holy ointment
did bedew or besprinkle Jar on' s garments ; ergo, it
was not poured upon his head, or it did not mollify
or supple some other parts of his body; whereas, the
truth is, unless the ointment had first been plenti-
fully poured upon his head, it could not have run
down his neck unto the skirts of his vesture. An-
swerable to this representation, we say that all the
glorious prerogatives, titles or promises, annexed
to the church in Scriptures, are in the first place,

f * Dr. Jackson's Treatise on the Holy Catholic
Church, (Goode's ed., Lond.,) pp. 68, 34,98.

APPENDIX. 77

and principally meant, of Chist's live mystical
body. But being in abundant measure bestowed
on it, they descend by analogy or participation,
unto all and every one that hath put on Christ by
profession, without respect of person, place or
dignity. All the difference in the measure of their
participation or manner of their attribution, ariseth
from the divers degrees of similitudes or proportion
which they hold with the actual live-members of
Christ's mystical body in matter of faith or conver-
sation. Such as have the true model or draft of
that Catholic faith, without which no man can be
saved, imprinted on their understandings, albeit not
solidly engrossed or transmitted into their hearts
and affections, are to be reputed by us, (who under-
stand their external profession better than their in-
ward disposition,) true Catholics — true members of
Christ's body and heirs of promise; although in
very deed, and in His sight that knows the secrets
of men's hearts, many of them be members of
Christ's body only in such sense as a human body
shaped or organized, but not yet quickened with the
spirit of life, is termed a man.

" The conclusion, touching this point, which
Bellarmine and his followers are bound to prove, is
this : that under the name and titles of that church
whereunto the assistance of God's spirit for its
direction or other like prerogatives, are, by God's
word, assured, the visible church, taken in that

78 APPENDIX.

sense in which they always take it, is either literally
meant, or necessarily included."*

Until the Council of Trent constructed the pre-
sent fixed creed of the Church of Rome, out of
what before were, in a great degree, floating,
unfixed opinions, more or less prevalent among her
writers, there were not wanting those who wrote
with sufficient clearness in support of the distinc-
tion between the church invisible and visible, as
exhibited in this discourse. It was not until some-
time after the Council that such writers quite
ceased. Jackson says: "Until Bellarmine, Valentia,
Stapleton, and some others, did trouble the stream
of God's word," the doctrine here shown "was
clearly represented to the adversaries of our church."
Bishop Taylor, in his Dissuasive from Popery,
quotes several Romish doctors, as Aquinas, Petrus
a Soto, Melchior Canus, &c, as holding that
wicked men are not true members of the church,
but only equivocally. Mali quidem sunt in ecclesia,
sed non de ecclesia ; quia mali non sunt de regno
Dei, sed de regno diaboli." Bellarmine confesses
that such is the declaration of those writers, but
tries to evade it by saying that the wicked are not
in the church in the same sense as others, while he
contends that they nevertheless do truly constitute a
true part of the true church.

Nothing can be more satisfactory to a protestant,

* Jackson lb. pp. 32, 33, 34.

APPENDIX. 79

on this head, than the language of the Provincial
Council of Colon in its Enchiridion of Christian
Institutions, where it speaks of the Article of the
Creed in the Catholic Church, after dividing the
church into triumphant and militant. Of the latter,
it says : "The church militant is to be regarded
under two aspects; first, more strictly, as con-
sisting of those who are so in the Church of
God, that they are themselves the Church of God,
or the Temple of the Holy Ghost, built of
holy stones. The Church in this sense is known only
to God. But such is not the sense in which the
word Church is to be taken, either where Christ
gives command concerning hearing the church, or
the fathers, after the Apostles speak of the autho-
rity of the Church."*

But such is not the doctrine of the Church of
Rome, as the Council of Trent has decreed it, and
as its expositor and vindicator, Bellarmine, exhibits
it. That the visible Church, with all its mixture, is
the one holy, Catholic, living, Church of God, to
which belong all the promises which belong to
Christ's living, mystical body; and that every bap-
tized person who is neither excommunicate, a here-
tic, infidel, or schismatic, is a true member of that
Church, is a doctrine essentially involved in her
whole system. By Baptismal Regeneration, and
Justification, as held in the Church of Rome, the

* Enchirid. Christian. Institut. fol. 65, quoted by
Jackson.

80 APPENDIX.

baptism of water and the inward renewing of the
Holy Ghost are so identified, that all who have
received the former are declared to have received,
ex opere operato, the latter, and to have thus become
spiritually the children of God by adoption and
grace. Then, for that part of the baptized who have
fallen into mortal sin, and thus lost their baptismal
purity, and who have not taken advantage of the
sacrament of penance to reinstate them in the favour
of God, and are therefore continuing under deadly
sin, their faith dead, she kindly pronounces that they
have true faith and are true Christians still ; she
pronounces anathema on any who shall say " that
when grace is lost by sin, faith is lost together with
it ; or that the faith which remains is not true faith,
though it be not living; or that a man is not a chris-
tian who has faith without love."*

The Catechism of the Council of Trent declares
accordingly, as the authentic interpreter of the coun-
cil, that " however wicked and flagitious men may be,
it is certain that unless they be infidels, heretics and
schismatics, or excommunicate," (which would cut
them off from the visible church) " they still belong
to the Church."-)- This expansive pale takes into
the true membership of the true living Church of
true Christians, the very worst as well as the best,
if only they be neither heretics, schismatics, infidels

* Council of Trent, Can. XXVIII. Sess. VI.
f Catechism, pp. 94, 95 Bait. Ed. 1833.

APPENDIX. 81

or excommunicate. Thus is obtained a visible body
for the deposite of infallibility, as well as of all the
other gifts and graces of God's true Church; — this
same terribly permixta ecclesia, which we call the
visible Church, and which the Scriptures liken to
a great net which catches the good and the bad.
All now that remains for the Church of Rome to
do is to settle the representation of this Church, so
as to fix the definite, accessible seat of the oracle,
and at what points the grace given to the whole body
can be drawn out by the individual applicant. The
latter she readily arranges between the Sacraments
and the Priesthood, multiplying the Sacraments for
the sake of increasing the prerogatives of the Priest-
hood. The former is yet vexata qusestio, between
General Councils as representatives of the Church,
and the Pope as the Vicar of Christ ; and both united
as the combined representation of the Head and the
members. The settlement of that question is not
necessary to the practical working of the system.
General Councils are not likely soon again to appear
for their claim. — Meanwhile the Pope is the eccksia
docens, the practically conceded depository of infalli-
bility. He is holder of the keys, and the ultimate
controller of the several agencies, by which the grace
committed to the Church is dispensed to the several
members of the whole body, whether on earth or in
purgatorial pains. Take away from beneath his feet
these two props —first, the pretence that every bap

82 APPENDIX.

tized person is spiritually and internally renewed,
ex opere operato ; secondly, that to be a true christian
and have true faith, and so to be a true member of
God's Church, does not require that a man should
have " faith that worketh by love," or be else than
" most wicked or flagitious ;" in other words, estab-
lish the Scriptural doctrine that the Church of the
promises, " the pillar and ground of the truth," the
communion of saints, the holy Catholic Church, the
living, mystical body of Christ is composed only
of those who are " in Christ Jesus" by a living,
fruitful faith, and the foundations of that whole city
of abominations will become as quicksand.

Hence the pains taken by our old Anglican divines,
of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, to make
plain the distinction between the church visible and
invisible, " for lack of diligent observing of which
(says Hooker) the oversights are neither few nor
light that have been committed."

The present writer has observed in many ministers
of our Protestant Church of these United States,
a great lack of the diligent observing of that differ-
ence ; and he thinks that the oversights which have
ensued, and do still increase, are neither few nor
light, but so many and weighty as to affect in a very
important degree the great interests of gospel truth.
The whole matter concerning Regeneration and Jus-
tification, as connected with the Sacraments, and all
the language of the Scriptures, the early Fathers,
and the early Anglican divines, would be mnch

APPENDIX. 83

more correctly and easily understood, were that dif-
ference well seen and forcibly fixed in the mind.

Peculiar circumstances have tended so much to
draw the minds of the Protestant Episcopal ministry
in this country, to the study and defence of those
visible institutions of the Church which we believe
to be apostolic in origin, and important enough tojbe
sustained by any earthly sacrifice, that it is appre-
hended there are not a few minds, otherwise strongly
imbued with evangelical truth, that have become so
unused to the old Anglico-Protestant views of the
Church as it is invisible or mystical, that the undis-
guised exhibition of them in this discourse will seem
almost new and dangerous. Such minds, on a little
reflection, will come to their true bearings. The
slightest effort to controvert these views from Scrip-
ture, or in consistency with other great truths of the
gospel, will convince them that nothing else can be
true, and that the whole doctrine is as well Anglican
as scriptural. The tendency in the present day
among many, in the precise direction by which the
Romish Church arrived at its present doctrine, has
suggested the importance of giving those views the
prominence they occupy in this discourse. And
that no reader of these pages may be at a loss to
know how entirely the doctrine they contain is
identical, in every particular, with that which our
Hookers, and Taylors, and Ushers, &c. most ear-
nestly taught, a series of extracts from such autho-

84 APPENDIX.

rities is here added, to which the reader's careful
attention is requested.

We have taken Cranmer and Ridley for the times
of the Reformation — Hooker for the days immedi-
ately succeeding — Bishops Taylor and Hall, Arch-
bishop Usher, Drs. Jackson and Perkins for the
trying times of the early part of the 17th century —
and Dr. Barrow for those immediately succeeding.

In this selection we have, as holding what are
now called Calvinistic views of the doctrines of
grace, Hooker, and Hall, and Usher, &c. On the
opposite side, we have the golden-mouthed Bishop
Taylor ; a little less Arminian, Dr. Barrow — still
less, Dr. Jackson. Thus we have representatives of
all classes of English divines, of the ages above
mentioned, in regard to what is supposed so much
to modify one's views of questions, like those treated
in this discourse. Nevertheless it will be seen, from
the extracts here subjoined, that among these great
writers there was not the least difference of opinion
in the points now in view. That the true Catholic
Church is composed only of the true children and
people of God, who are united by a living faith to
Christ ; that none others have any real membership
in God's Church, however they may be externally
associated with it in visible ordinances ; that this
Church is the Holy Catholic Church, and Commu-
nion of Saints ; having all its being in the union of
its several members, by faith, immediately to Christ;
that this is the mystical body of Christ, as nothing

APPENDIX. 85

else can be, and invisible, because while its members
on earth are personally visible, their distinction as
such members is invisible ; that this and no other is
the Church to which all the promises are given, as
the real believers among the children of Abraham
were the only Church to which the promises then
made, belonged; finally that this Church, mystical
and invisible, is "the pillar and ground of the truth,"
against which "the gates of hell shall not prevail,"
to which belongs essentially the Unity of the Spirit,
however the bond of peace, in the common use of
creeds and sacraments may be broken, the reader
will find to be the concurrent testimony of those
unquestionable witnesses of the doctrine of the
Protestant Episcopal Church in their respective
times.

Archbishop Cranmer, on the Apostles' Creed.

" I believe the Holy Catholic Church ; that is to
say, that ever there is found some company of men
or some congregation of good people, which believe
the Gospel and are saved. * * * For this word,
Church, signifieth a company of men lightened with
the Spirit of Christ, which do receive the gospel,
&c. And this Christian Church is a communion of
Saints, that is to say all that be of this communion,
or company, be holy, and be one holy body under
Christ, their head. And this congregation receiveth
of their head and Lord, all spiritual riches and gifts

8

86 APPENDIX.

that pertain to the sanctification and making holy
of the same body. And these ghostly treasures be
common to the whole body, and to every member of
the same"

Crammer's Catechism of 1548, Fathers of the Eng. Ch.,
pp. 235, 6.

"But the holy Church is so unknown to the
world that no man can descrie it, but God alone,
who only searcheth the hearts of all men, and know-
eth his true children from others.

" This Church" (the invisible) " is the pillar of
truth, because it resteth in God's word ; * * but as
for the open, known Church," (the visible) " and
the outward face thereof, it is not the pillar of truth,
otherwise than it is (as it were) a register, or trea-
sury, to keep the books of God's holy will and
testament, and to rest only thereupon. * * For if
the Church" (the visible) "proceed further, to
make any new articles of the faith, besides the
Scripture or contrary to the Scripture, or direct not
the form of life according to the same ; then it is not
the pillar of truth, nor the Church of Christ, but the
synagogue of Satan, and the temple of Antichrist.''

Crammer's Answer to Dr. Smith, Fathers of the English
Church, pp. 544, 545.

Bishop Ridley.

" The name, Church, is taken in Scripture some-
times for the whole multitude of them which profess

APPENDIX. 87

the name of Christ, of the which they are also
named Christians. But, as St. Paul saith of the
Jew, ' Not every one is a Jew outwardly, &c. Neither
yet all that be of Israel are counted of the seed.'* Even
so, not every one which is a christian outwardly, is
a christian indeed. For ' If any man have not the
Spirit of Christ, the same is none of his.' Therefore,
that Church, which is his body, of which Christ is
the head, standeth only of living stones and true
christians, not only outwardly in name and title, but
inwardly in heart and in truth."

Ridley's Works, (Parker Soc. Ed.) p. 126.

Hooker.
The Visible and Invisible Church.

" For lack of diligent observing, the difference
first between the Church of God mystical, and
visible, then between the visible sound and corrupted
— the oversights are neither few nor light that have
been committed."

He proceeds to show the difference between the
Church visible and invisible, as follows :

" The Church of Christ which we properly term
his body mystical, can be but one, neither can that
be sensibly discerned by any man, inasmuch as the
parts thereof are some in heaven already with Christ,
and the rest that are on earth (albeit their natural
persons be visible) we do not discern under this
property whereby they are truly and infallibly of
that body. Only our minds, by intellectual conceit,

88 APPENDIX.

are able to apprehend that such a real body there
is : a body collective, because it containeth a huge
multitude; a body mystical, because the mystery of
their conjunction is removed altogether from sense.
Whatsoever we read in Scripture, concerning the
endless love and saving mercy which God showeth
towards his Church, the only proper subject thereof, is
this Church. * * * They who are of this society,
have such marks and notes of distinction from all
others, as are not objects unto our sense; only unto
God who seeth their hearts, and understandeth all
their secret cogitations ; unto him they are clear
and manifest."

Having thus defined the mystical or invisible soci-
ety, Hooker proceeds to do the same for the visible.

" As those everlasting promises of love, mercy and
blessedness belong to the mystical Church ; even so,
on the other side, when we read of any duty to which
the Church of God is bound unto, the Church whom
this doth concern is a sensible and known company.
— And this visible Church, in like sort, is but one,
continued from the first beginning of the world, to
the last end. * * * The visible Church of Jesus
Christ is one in outward profession of those things
which supernaturally appertain to the very essence
of Christianity, and are necessarily required in every
particular Christian man. * * * If by external pro-
fession they be christians, then they are of the visible
Church of Christ: and Christians, by external pro-
fession, they are all whose mark of recognizance hath

APPENDIX. 89

in it those things which we have mentioned; (one
Lord, one Faith, one Baptism) yea, although they
be impious idolators, wicked heretics, persons ex-
communicable. * * * Such we deny not to be imps
and limbs of Satan, even as long as they continue
such. Is it then possible that the self-same men
should belong both to the Synagogue of Satan, and
to the Church of Jesus Christ? Unto that Church
which is his mystical body, not possible; because
that body consisteth of none but only true Israelites,
true sons of Abraham, true servants and saints of God.
Howbeit, of the visible Body and Church of Jesus
Christ, those may be, and oftentimes are, in respect
of the main parts of their outward profession, who
in regard of their inward disposition of mind, yea,
of external conversation, yea, even of some parts of
their very profession, are most worthily both hate-
ful in the sight of God himself, and in the eyes of
the sounder parts of the visible Church most execra-
ble."

Eccl. Pol b. iii. § 1.
The True Temple.
" The multitude of them which truly believe
(howsoever they be dispersed far and wide, each
from other) is all one Body, whereof the Head is
Christ; one building, whereof he is corner-stone, in
whom they, as the members of the body, being
knit, and as the stones of the building, being cou-
pled, grow up to a man of perfect stature, and rise
to an holy temple in the Lord. That which linketh
8*

90 APPENDIX.

Christ to us is his mere mercy and love towards
us. That which tieth us to him, is our faith in the
promised salvation revealed in the word of truth.
That which uniteth and joineth us amongst ourselves,
in such sort that we are now as if we had but one
heart and one soul, is our love. Who be inwardly
in heart the lively members of this body, and the
polished stones of this building, coupled and joined
to Christ, as flesh of his flesh, and bones of his
bones, by the mutual bonds of his unspeakable love
towards them, and their unfeigned faith in him, thus
linked and fastened to each other, by a spiritual,
sincere, and hearty affection of love, without any
manner of simulation ; who be Jews within, and
what their names be ; none can tell, save he whose
eyes do behold the secret dispositions of all men's
hearts."

Hooker's 1st Sermon on St. Jude.

William Perkins, D. D.

This eminent English divine of Christ's College, Cambridge,
died 1602. His works have been translated into Latin, Dutch,
Spanish, &c. He connects the age of the Reformers with that
of the writers of the 17th century.

The Militant Catholic Church.
" The number of believers, dispersed through the
whole world, who are effectually called, and sancti-
fied and preserved unto life everlasting * * for
however in the Catholic Church there be two sorts
of men professing religion, the one of theui that do
unfeignedly believe and are sanctified ; the other of

APPENDIX. 91

them who make show of faith, but indeed believe
not, but remain in their sins ; of the former doth the
Catholic Church consist, and not of the latter, who
are no members set into the head of this body, though
they may seem to be.

" This confuteth the Romish Church, who teach and
hold that a reprobate may be a member of this Church.

" This Catholic Church is invisible, and cannot
by the eye of flesh be discerned * * for who can
infallibly determine the things that are within a
man 1 which again overthroweth that Romish doc-
trine which teacheth that the Catholic Church is
visible and apparent upon earth. Yet some parts
are visible, as in the right use of words and sacra-
ments appeareth.

" This Catholic Church cannot utterly perish and
be dissolved. All other congregations and particu-
lar Churches being mixed may fail, yet this cannot
be overcome."

Works, Vol. III. p. 482.

" To this assembly and no other belong all the
promises of this life and the life to come. It is the
ground and pillar of truth ,• that is the doctrine of
true religion is always safely kept and maintained
in it.

" In visible Churches are two sorts of men ; just
men and hypocrites, who although they be within
the Church, yet the Church is not so called of them,"
(i. e. is not called the Church on account of them)

92 APPENDIX.

" but in regard of them only who are truly joined
unto Christ.

" Adversaries hereof are Papists, who frame not
the Church by these true properties, but by other
deceitful marks, as succession, multitude, antiquity,
consent."

Works, Vol. III. p. 504.

Bishop Hall.
The Visible and Invisible Church.

"The word Church is not more common than
equivocal : whether ye consider it as the aggrega-
tion of the outward, visible, particular Churches of
Christian professors ; or as the inward, secret, uni-
versal company of the Elect ; it is still one.

" To begin with the former. What Church hath
one Lord, Jesus Christ, the righteous, one Faith in
that Lord, one Baptism with that Faith, it is the one
Dove of Christ ; to speak more short, one Faith
abridges all. But what is that one Faith ? What
but the main fundamental doctrine of religion neces-
sary to be known, to be believed unto salvation. It
is a golden and useful distinction that we must take
with us, betwixt Christian Articles and Theological
Conclusions. Christian Articles are the principles of
religion necessary to a believer; Theological Con-
clusions are school-points fit for the discourse of a
divine. Those Articles are few and essential, these
conclusions are many and unimportant (upon neces-
sity) to salvation either way.

APPENDIX. 93

"But if from particular visible Churches you shall
turn your eyes to the true inward, universal company of
God's elect and secret ones,- there shall you see more
perfectly the one Dove ; for what the other is in profes-
sion, this is in truth ; that one Baptism is here the
true Laver of Regeneration ,• that one Faith is a saving
reposal upon Christ; that one Lord is the Saviour
of his body. No natural body is more one than this
mystical ; one head rules it ; one spirit animates it ;
one set of joints moves it; one food nourishes it,
one robe covers it. So it is one in itself, so one
with Christ, as Christ is one with the Father :
" That they may be one, even as we are one ,• / in
them and them in me." — John xvii. 22.

Bp. Hall's Sermon on the Beauty and Unity of the Church.

The Reformed Churches of the continent, because
holding the fundamental faith of the gospel, though
non-episcopal in order, Bishop Hall calls the Church
of England's " dearest sisters abroad" — and with re-
gard to them makes this passionate lament — "Oh,
how oft, and with what deep sighs, hath this most
flourishing and happy Church of England wished
that she might, with some of her own blood, have
purchased unto her dearest sisters abroad, the reten-
tion of this most ancient and every way best of
governments."

Bp. Hall's Sermon on Noah's dove.

The Unity of the Church.
" It is not the variety of by-opinions, that can ex-

94 APPENDIX.

elude them from having their part in that one Catho-
lic Church, and their just claim to the Communion
of Saints. While they hold the solid and precious
foundation, it is not the hay or stubble (1 Cor. iii.
12), which they lay upon it, that can set them off
from God or his Church. But, in the mean time, it
must be granted, that they have much to answer for
to the God of Peace and Unity, who are so much
addicted to their own conceits, and so indulgent to
their own interest, as to raise and maintain new
doctrines, and to set up new sects in the Church
of Christ, varying from the common and received
truths ; labouring to draw disciples after them, to
the great distraction of souls, and scandal of Chris-
tianity. With which sort of disturbers I must needs
say this age, into which we are fallen, hath been,
and is above all that have gone before us, most
miserably pestered : what good soul can be other
than confounded, to hear of and see more than a
hundred and fourscore new, and some of them dan-
gerous and blasphemous, opinions, broached and
defended in one, once famous and unanimous, Church
of Christ? * * *

" But, notwithstanding all this hideous variety
of vain and heterodoxal conceptions, he, who is the
Truth of God, and the Bridegroom of his Spouse,
the Church, hath said, My dove, my undefiled is
one ; Cant. vi. 9 : one, in the main, essential, funda-
mental verities necessary to salvation ; though dif-
fering in divers mis-raised corollaries, inconsequent

APPENDIX. 95

inferences, unnecessary additions, feigned traditions,
unwarrantable practices. The body is one, though
the garments differ ; yea, rather, for most of these,
the garment is one, but differs in the dressing;
handsomely and comely set out by one, disguised by
another. Neither is it, or ever shall be, in the power
of all the fiends of hell, the professed make-baits of
the world, to make God's Church other than one :
which were indeed utterly to extinguish and reduce it
to nothing; for the unity and entity of the Church
can no more be divided than itself. * * *

" The whole church is the spiritual temple of God.
Every believer is a living stone laid in those sacred
walls. * * There is no place for any loose stone
in God's edifice : the whole Church is one entire
body. * * In case there happen to be differences in
opinion concerning points not essential, not necessary
to salvation ; this diversity may not breed any aliena-
tion of affection. * * In all the main principles of
religion, there is an universal and unanimous consent
of all Christians : and these are they that constitute a
Church. Those that agree in these, Christ is pleased
to admit, for matter of doctrine, as members of that
body whereof he is the Head ; and if they admit not
of each other as such, the fault is in the uncharita-
bleness of the refusers, no less than in the error of
the refused. And if any vain and loose stragglers
will needs sever themselves, and wilfully choose to
go ways of their own, let them know that the union
of Christ's Church shall consist entire without them:

96 APPENDIX.

this great ocean will be one collection of waters,
when these drops are lost in the dust. In the mean
time, it highly concerns all that wish well to the
sacred name of Christ, to labour to keep the unity
of the Spirit in the bond of peace ; Eph. iv. 3 : and
to renew and continue the prayer of the Apostle for
all the professors of Christianity — Now the God
of patience and consolation grant you to be like-
minded one towards another, according to Christ
Jesus : that ye may, with one mind and one mouth,
glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ ; Rom. xv. 5, 6.

Bp. Halfs Treatise of Christ Mystical, c. vii. § 2.

Faith the Instrument of Union.
" As there are two persons between whom this
union is made, Christ and the believer ; so each of
them concurs to the happy effecting of it : Christ by
His Spirit diffused through the hearts of all the
regenerate, giving life and activity to them ; the
believer laying hold by faith upon Christ ; so work-
ing in him ; and these do so react upon each other
that from their mutual operation, results this gracious
union whereof we treat. * * 0 the grace of faith
justly represented to us by St. Paul, (Eph. vi. 16)
above all other graces incident unto the soul, as
that, which if not alone, chiefly transacts all the
main affairs tending to salvation. For faith is the
quickening grace; Gal. ii. 20 — Rom. i. 17: the di-
recting grace ; 2 Cor. v. 7 : the protecting grace ;
Eph. vi. 16 : the establishing grace; Rom. xi. 20 —

APPENDIX. 97

2 Cor. i. 24 : the justifying grace ; Rom. vi. ; the
sanctifying and purifying grace ; Acts xv. 9. Faith
is the grace that assents to, apprehends, applies,
appropriates Christ ; Heb. xi. 1 ; and hereupon the
uniting grace, and (which comprehends all) the
saving grace"

Bp. HalVs Treatise of Christ Mystical, c. vi.

Bishop Taylor.
The Church Visible and Invisible.
The Church is a company of men and women
professing the saving doctrine of Jesus Christ. This
is the Church 'in se?isa forensi^ and in the sight of
men, but because glorious things are spoken of the
city of God, the professors of Christ's doctrine are
but imperfectly and inchoatively the Church of God ;
but they who are indeed holy and obedient to Christ's
laws of faith and manners — these are truly and per-
fectly ' the Church: * * These are the Church of
God in the eyes and heart of God. For the Church
of God are the body of Christ; but the mere prof es-
sion of Christianity makes no man a member of Christ
— nothing but a new creature, nothing but ' a faith
working by love ;' and keeping the commandments
of God. Now they that do this are not known to
be such by men ; but they are known only to God ;
and therefore it is in a true sense, 'the invisible
Church ,•' not that there are two churches, or two
societies, in separation from each other. * * * No,
these two churches are but one society: the one

9

98 APPENDIX.

is within the other — but yet though the men be
visible, yet that quality and excellency by which
they are constituted Christ's members, and distin-
guished from mere professors and outsides of chris-
tians, this, I say, is not visible. All that really and
heartily serve Christ in abdito, do also profess to do
so ; * * the visible Church is ordinarily and regu-
larly part of the visible, but yet that only part that
is the true one ,• and the rest, but by denomination of
law, and in common speaking, are the Church — not in
mystical union, not in proper relation to Christ; they
are not the House of God, not the temple of the Holy
Ghost, not the members of Christ ; and no man can
deny this. Hypocrites are not Christ's servants, and
therefore not Christ's members, and therefore no part
of the Church of God, but improperly and equivocally,
as a dead man is a man, all which is perfectly sum-
med up in these words of St. Augustine, saying,
that " the body of Christ is not ' bipartitum,1 it is not
a double body — ' all that are Christ's body, shall
reign with Christ forever.' And therefore they who
are of their father, the devil, are the synagogue of
Satan, and of such is not the kingdom of God ; and
all this is no more than what St. Paul said : ' They
are not all Israel, who are of Israel,"1 and ' He is not
a Jew that is one outwardly, but he is a Jew that is one
inwardly? Now if any part will agree to call the
universality of professors by the title of ' the Church,''
they may if they will ; any word by consent may sig-
nify any thing } but if by a Church we mean that

APPENDIX. 99

society which is really joined to Christ, which hath
received the Holy Ghost, which is heir of the pro-
mises and of the good things of God, which is the
body of which Christ is the head ; then the invisible
part of the visible Church, that is, the true servants
of Christ only, are the Church ; that is, to them only
appertain the Spirit and the truth, the promises and
the graces, the privileges and advantages of the
gospel ; to others, they appertain as the promise of
pardon does ,• that is when they have made themselves
capable. The faithful only and obedient are beloved
of God. Others may believe rightly; but so do the
devils, who are no parts of the church, but princes
' ecclesia malignantium? and it will be a strange pro-
position which affirms any one to be of the church,
for no other reason but such as qualifies the devil
to be so too.

Bp. Taylor contends that the Article in the Creed
— "Holy Catholic Church,'1'' and the next, "the Com-
munion of Saints," refer to the same thing, and mean
only what before he has defined as the invisible
Church, viz. the society of the true followers of
Christ. " If it be asked (he says) what is the
Catholic Church ? — the Apostles' Creed defines it ;
it is ' communio sanctorum'' — ' I believe in the Holy
Catholic Church,' that is, the Communion of Saints,'
the conjunction of all them who heartily serve God
through Jesus Christ ; the one indeed is exegetical
of the other, as that which is plainer is explicative
of that which is less plain ', but else they are but

100 APPENDIX.

the same thing : which appears also in this, that in
some creeds the latter words are left out, and par-
ticularly in the Constantinopolitan, as being under-
stood to be in effect, but another expression of the
same article. * * St. Augustine spends two chapters
in affirming that only they who serve God faithfully
are the Church of God. For this is in the good and
faithful, and the holy servants of God, scattered
every where, and combined by a spiritual union in
the same communion of sacraments, whether they
know one another by face or no. Others, it is cer-
tain, are so said to be in the house of God, that they
do not pertain to the structure of the house. * * *
Those who are condemned by Christ (continues St.
Augustine) for their evil and polluted consciences,
are not in Christ's body, which is the Church ; for
Christ hath no damned members.'

" But I need not be digging the cisterns for this
truth — Christ himself hath taught it very plainly :
4 Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command
you, not upon any other terms ; and I hope none but
friends are members of Christ's mystical body,
members of the Church whereof he is head * * to be
united to Christ, and to be members of his body ;
these are the portions of saints, not of wicked per-
sons, whether clergy or laity. * * As all the prin-
ciples and graces of the gospel are the property of
the godly, so they only are the Church of God of
which glorious things are spoken, and it will be vain
to talk of the infallibility of God's Church; the

APPENDIX. 101

Roman doctors either must confess it subjected
here, that is, in the Church in this sense, or they can
find it no where. In short, this is the Church, (in
the sense now explicited) which is ' the pillar and
ground of the truth ,•' but this is not the sense of the
Church of Rome" nor (we add) of those who are
now endeavouring to bring us so near to Rome, but
on the contrary is the sense which their whole sys-
tem, as much as that of Rome, requires them to
oppose. Hence the necessity of keeping it distinct,
and holding it fast. * * *

" The word ' church,' I grant, may be, and is
given to them by way of supposition and legal pre-
sumption, as a jury of twelve men are called ' good
men and true' — that is, they are not known to be
otherwise, and therefore presumed to be such ; and
they are the church in all human accounts — that is,
they are the congregation of all that profess the
name of Christ, * * * in which are the wheat
and the tares ; and they are bound up in common
by the union of sacraments and external rites, name
and profession, but by nothing else. This doctrine
is well explicited by St. Austin. lC Not only in
eternity, but even now, hypocrites are not to be said
to be with Christ, although they may seem to be
of his church. jJut the Scripture speaks of them
and these, as if they were both of one body, propter
temporalem commixtionem et communionem sacramen-
torum. They are only combined by a temporal

9*

102 APPENDIX.

mixture, and united by the common use of sacra-
ments. * * * So that which we call the church,
is lpermixta ecclesia^ and for this mixture's sake,
under the cover and knot of external communion,
the church — that is, all that company, is esteemed
one body ; and the appellations are made in com-
mon, and so are the addresses and offices and min-
istries. Therefore it is no wonder that we call this
great, mixture by the name of ' the church ;' but then
since the church hath a more sacred notion, as it is
the spouse of Christ, his body, his temple, &c. * *
therefore, although when we speak of all the acts
and duties, of the judgments and nomenclatures, of
outward appearances and accounts of law, we call
the mixed society by the name of the Church ; yet
when we consider it in the true, proper and primary
meaning * * all the promises of God, the Spirit of
God, the life of God, and all the good things of God,
are peculiar to the Church of God, in God's sense,
in the way in which he owns it, that is, as it is holy,
united unto Christ, like to him, and partaker of the
divine nature. The other are but a heap of men
keeping good company, calling themselves by a good
name, managing the external parts of union and
ministry ; but because they otherwise belong not to
God, the promises no otherwise belong to them, but
as they may, and when they do, return to God.
Here then are two senses of the word ' Church ;'
God's sense and man's sense; the sense of religion,

APFENDIX. 103

and the sense of government; common rites, and
spiritual union."

Bp. Taylor's Dissuasive from Popery, Part II. B. I. Sect.
I. §§ L & II.

Having laid his foundation in the position that
none but the true servants of Christ make the true
Church of Christ, and have title to the promises;
and having observed that the Romish church relies
upon the church under another definition, Bishop
Taylor proceeds :

" Of the church, in the first sense, St. Paul
affirms, it is "\he pillar and ground of truth" He
spake it of the church of Ephesus, or the holy
catholic church over the world ; for there is the
same reason of one and all ; if it be, as St. Paul
calls it, "Ecclesia Dei vivi," if it be united to the
head, Christ Jesus, every church is as much the
" pillar and ground of truth" as all the church ;
which, that we may understand rightly, we are to
consider that what is commonly called the "church,"
is but " domus ecclesiae verae," as the " ecclesia
vera" is " domus Dei :" it is the school of piety,
the place of institution and discipline. Good and
bad dwell here ; but God only, and his Spirit, dwell
with the good. They are all taught in the church;
but the good only are " taught by God," by an
infallible Spirit — that is, by a Spirit which neither
can deceive, nor be deceived; and therefore by
him the good, and they only, are led into all-saving

104 APPENDIX.

truth ; and these are the men that preserve the
truth in holiness. Without this society, the truth
would be hidden, and held in unrighteousness, so
that all good men, all particular congregations of
good men, who, upon the foundation, Christ Jesus,
build the superstructure of a holy life, are " the
pillar and ground of truth ;" that is, they support
and defend the truth — they follow and adorn the
truth, which truth would in a little time be sup-
pressed, or obscured, or varied, or concealed, and
misinterpreted, if the wicked only had it in their
conduct. That is, amongst good men we are most
like to find the ways of peace and truth, all-saving
truth, and the proper spiritual advantages and love-
liness of truth. Now, then, this does no more
relate to all churches, than to every church. God
will no more leave or forsake any one of his faith-
ful servants, than he will forsake all the world.
And therefore here the notion of catholic is of no
use: for the church is the communion of saints,
wherever it be or may be; and that this church is
catholic, it does not mean by any distinct existence,
but by comprehension and actual and potential en-
closure of all communions of holy people 'in the
unity of the spirit, and in the bond of peace' —
that is, both externally and internally : ' exter-
nally' means the common use of the symbols and
sacraments, for they are the bond of peace ; but
the unily of the Spirit is the peculiar of the saints,
and is the internal confederation and conjunction of

APPENDIX. 105

the members of Christ's body in themselves, and
to their head. And by the energy of this state,
wherever it happens to be, all the blessings of the
Spirit are entailed ; every man hath his share in it ;
he shall never be left or forsaken ; and the spirit of
God will never depart from him as long as he
remains in, and is of, the communion of saints.'
Dissuasive from Popery, supra.

Archbishop Usher.

" What is meant here (in the Creed) by the Cath-
olic Church?"

" That whole universal company of the elect that
ever were, are, or shall be gathered together in one
body, knit together in one faith, under one head,
Jesus Christ. For God, in all places, and of all
sorts of men, had from the beginning, hath now,
and ever will have, an holy church, which is there-
fore called the catholic church — that is, God's
whole or universal assembly, because it compre-
hendeth the multitude of all those that have, do, or
shall believe unto the world's end. Part are already
in heaven triumphant, part as yet militant here upon
earth.

" What is the Church militant ?"

" It is the society of those that being scattered
through all the corners of the world, are, by one
faith in Christ, conjoined to him and fight under
his banner against their enemies, the world, the
flesh and the devil ; continuing in the service and

106 APPENDIX.

warfare of their Lord, and expecting in due time,
also, to be crowned with victory, and triumph in
glory with Him.

" Who are the true members of the church mili-
tant on earth]"

"Those alone who, as living members of the
mystical body, Eph. i. 22, 23 ; Col. i. 18, are, by
the Spirit and Faith, secretly and inseparably con-
joined unto Christ, their head — Col. iii. 3 ; Ps.
lxxxiii. 3. In which respect, the true militant
church is both invincible — Mat. xvi. 18 — and invi-
sible— Rom. ii. 29 ; 1 Pet. iii. 4.

"Truly and properly none are of the church saving
only they which truly believe and yield obedience ;
(1 John, 2, 19,) all which are also saved. How-
beit, God useth outward means with the inward for
the gathering of his saints ; and calleth them as
well to outward profession among themselves, as
to inward fellowship with his Son ; (Acts ii. 42 ;
Cant. i. 7,) whereby the church becometh visible.
Hence it cometh, that so many as partaking the
outward means, do join with these in league of
visible profession; (Acts viii. 13,) are therefore in
human judgment accompted members of the true
church and saints by calling; (1 Cor. i. 2,) until
the Lord, who only knoweth who are his, do make
known the contrary, as we are taught in the para-
ble of the tares, the draw net, &c ; (Mat. xiii. 24,
47.) Thus many live in the church, as it is visible
and outward, which are partakers only outwardly

APPENDIX. 107

of grace ; and such are not fully of the church that
have entered in but one step ; (Cant. iv. 7; Eph. v.
27; John ii. 19.) That a man may be fully of the
church, it is not sufficient that he profess Christ
with his mouth, but it is further required that he
believe in him in heart.

Usher's Body of Divinity, 187, 189.

"The communion of saints consists in the union
which we all have with one Head. For Christ,
our head, is the main foundation of this heavenly
union.

Ushers Sermon before the House of Commons.

Dr. Jackson.

"Of all terms used in Scripture, this word Church,
as was observed before, hath the greatest variety of
signification or importances. And by consequence
it must have one, the principal object, of which all
the principal attributes or titles of the church are
punctually and actually verified; and other objects
less principal, to which notwithstanding, the same
name or titles are in some measure often commu-
nicated— (Treatise on the Church, Goodes"* Ed., Lond.
p. 32.) " The visible church is a transcendent, and
doth neither exclude the members of the holy church
triumphant or militant, nor doth it consist only of
them — but of them and of others called only by a
mere external vocation. * •* * The church

108 APPENDIX.

militant is visible to God and to the several mem-
bers of it; but what members of this visible and
militant church be live members of the one holy
and catholic church, is known only to God or to
men's private consciences, &c. — p. 48.

" All God's promises to the church belong to the
principal members of it, who are distinctly and
individually known to Himself only — not so to us,
to whom, notwithstanding their persons are visible,
their profession of faith is also visible. The sin-
cerity of their hearts or faith, is, to us, invisible;
and therefore invisible it is to us whether they be
live members of the holy catholic church or no.
— p. 31.

" Though the church be sometimes, by good
writers, entitled as well invisible as visible, we are
not, from this opposition of words or terms, to con-
ceit an opposition or distinction of churches, as if
some were visible, others altogether invisible. Such
as most use these terms, mean no more by them
than we have said, to wit: What persons of the
militant and visible church be true denizens of the
heavenly Jerusalem, or city of God, is to us invisible
or unknown. I cannot say whether it were igno-
rance or malice in the Romanists to construe these
terms of visible and invisible, whilst they found them
in some of our writers, as if they had constituted
two contra-distinct, or opposite churches, when as
it is plain that they are, for the most part, subordi-
nate and co-incident. Ordinarily, the live-mem-

APPENDIX. 109

bers of the holy Catholic Church, or of that part
of it which is to us invisible, are members of some
visible church — but not e contra ; for neither all,
nor most part of any visible church, in latter ages,
are true and live members of the holy and catholic
church, part of which we believe to be here on
earth, though it be to us invisible. * * * Many
there be which are no members of the visible
church, and yet better members of the true church
than the members of the church-visible, for the pre-
sent, are. — pp. 48, 49.

" This church, (the true, holy and catholic
church,) is a true and real body, consisting of many
parts, all really (though mystically and spiritually)
united unto one head ; and by their real union with
one head, all are truly and really united among
themselves. Every one is so far a member of
Christ's Church, as he is a member of Christ's
body. He that is a true live-member of the one,
is a true live-member of the other. He that is but
an equivocal, analogical, hypocritical or painted
member of the one, is but an equivocal, hypocriti-
cal, painted, or analogical member of the other.
As Christ is the true Temple, because the Godhead
dwelleth in him, so all. they, and only they, in whom
he dwelleth by faith, are true temples of God,
and live-members of the Catholic Church. —
pp. 18, 19, 20.

" The Catholic Church, in the prime sense, con-
sists only of such men as are actual and indisso-

10

110 APPENDIX.

luble members of Christ's mystical body, or of
such as have the Catholic faith, not only sown in
their brains or understandings, but thoroughly
rooted in their hearts. In a secondary, analogical
sense, every present, visible church, which holdeth
the holy Catholic faith, without which no man can
be saved, pure and undefiled with the traditions
and inventions of man, may be termed a holy Cath-
olic Church. When we say a man may be a visible
member of the holy Catholic Church, and yet no
actual member of any present visible church, we
take the Catholic church in the latter or secondary
sense. Who are indissoluble members of Christ's
body, is only visible or known to Him. Many
thousands are, and have been, true members of it,
which are, and have been, altogether invisible to
us. But who they be that possess the unity of that
faith which the Apostles taught, and without which
no man can be saved, is visible and known to all
such as either hear them profess it viva voce, or can
read and understand their profession of it given in
writing. — p. 152.

These last extracts are from a Treatise on the
Church, by the learned Dr. Jackson, one of the
most distinguished of those divines of gigantic
learning, who fought the fight of the protestant
faith against the church of Rome, in the seven-
teenth century. His Treatise on the Church is
part of a great work, unfinished, on the Apostles'

APPENDIX. Ill

Creed. The Rev. Mr. Goode, of London, has re-
vived attention to it, because of its decided oppo-
sition to those views of the church which the
Tractarian writings have re-produced out of what
were once considered, among us, the worn-out
errors of Romanism. From the edition by Mr.
Goode, a re-print has been made in this country by
Mr. Hooker. I cannot abstain from earnestly recom-
mending that little book to the study of all who
wish to know what is the Holy Catholic Church
and Communion of Saints, in which they profess to
believe.

The account given by the great Dr. Isaac BarTow,
of the Visible and Invisible Church, in his " Dis-
course on the Unity of the Church," agrees per-
fectly with the above. I shall quote from vol. vi.
of the Oxford edition of his works, 1818.

He defines the one as u the society of those who
profess the faith and gospel of Christ, and under-
take the evangelical covenant in distinction to all
other religions."

The other he defines as "the whole body of God's
people that is, ever hath been, or ever shall be, from
the beginning of the world, to the consummation
thereof, who having (formally or virtually) believed
in Christ, and sincerely obeyed God's laws, shall
finally, by the meritorious performances and suffer-
ings of Christ, be saved."

The latter he calls " the Catholic society of true

112 APPENDIX.

believers and faithful servants of Christ," the " true
universal church, called the Church mystical and
invisible." — pp. 497 and 500.

To this invisible church, composed only of such
as shall finally be saved, belong, he says, "all the
glorious titles and excellent privileges attributed to
the church in holy Scripture." " This is the body
of Christ," "the spouse of Christ," "the house of
God built on a rock, against which the gates of hell
shall not prevail '," " this is the elect generation," &c.

" To this church, belongs peculiarly that unity
which is often attributed to the church."

" This is that one body into which we are all bap-
tized by one Spirit; the members whereof do hold a
mutual sympathy and complacence; which is joined
to one head, deriving sense and motion from it ;
which is enlivened and moved by one Spirit."

"This is the society of those for whom Christ
did pray that they might be all one" — pp. 497,
498, 499.

The essential unity of this invisible, catholic
church, to which only belong the promises of God,
according to the above, is thus described :

" All christians are united by spiritual cognation
and alliance, as being all regenerated by the same
incorruptible seed, being alike born, not of blood nor
of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of
God, whence, as the sons of God, and brethren of
Christ, they become brethren one to another. * *

" The whole christian church is one by its in-

APPENDIX. 113

corporation into tho mystical body of Christ, or as
fellow-subjects of that spiritual, heavenly king-
dom, whereof Christ is the sovereign head and
governor, whence they are governed by the same
laws, are obliged by the same institutions and func-
tions ; they partake of the same privileges, and are
entitled to the same promises, and encouraged by
the same rewards. So they make one spiritual
corporation or republic, whereof Christ is the sove-
reign Lord." — p. 597.

Then in what sense the Visible church, the mixed
society, may be considered as partaking in the
titles, privileges, &c, which belong of right to the
invisible only, Dr. Barrow thus teaches :

" The places of Scripture which do represent the
church one, as unquestionably they belong (in their
principal notion and intent) to the true Universal
Church, (called the church mystical and invisible ;)
so may they by analogy and participation, be under-
stood to concern the visible church-Catholic here on
earth, which professeth faith in Christ and obedi-
ence to his laws." — p. 501. For because the visi-
ble church doth enfold the other, (as one mass doth
contain the good ore and base alloy, as one floor
the corn and the chaff,) * * * because, pre-
sumptively, every member of this (the visible) doth
pass for a member of the other, (the invisible,) the
time of distinction and separation being not yet
come ; * * * therefore, commonly the titles

114 APPENDIX.

and attributes of the one are imparted to the other.
All (saith St. Paul,) are not Israel who are of Israel,
nor is he a Jew that is one outwardly ,• yet in regard
to the conjunction of the rest with the faithful Isra-
elites, because of external consent in the same pro-
fession, and conspiring in the same services, all the
congregation of Israel is styled a holy nation and
peculiar people.

" So likewise do the Apostles speak to all mem-
bers of the church (visible) as to elect and holy
persons, unto whom all the privileges of Christi-
anity do belong, although really hypocrites and bad
men do not belong to the church, nor are concerned in
its unity, as St. Austin doth often teach." —
pp. 499, 500.

The places of St Austin, which Barrow cites
and makes his own, are such as these : Non ad
earn pertinent avari, raptores, fxnatores. Videntur
esse in Ecclesia, non sunt. Ecclesiam veram intelli-
gere non andeo, nisi in Sanctis et justis. Multi sunt in
sacramentorum communione cum Ecclesia et tamen jam
non sunt in Ecclesia. " The covetous, &c, do not
belong to the church. They seem to be in it, but
are not. I dare not understand the true church
to be but among the holy and righteous men." —
" There are many who communicate in sacraments
with the church, and yet they are not in it." —
p. 500.

H. HOOKER,
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