THE ESSENTIAL FAITH OF THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH. (continued 2)

This relation, being thus arbitrary, fails of the object for which it was established. Their belief in the efficacy of penance is thus stated by Catholics. (We copy from the universally accredited work, entitled 'Roman Catholic Principles in reference to God and the King,' first published in 1680, and ever since acknowledged as a faithful exposition.) 'Though no creature whatsoever can make condign satisfaction, either for the guilt of sin, or the pain eternal due to it, this satisfaction being proper to Christ our Saviour only, yet penitent sinners, redeemed by Christ, may, as members of Christ, in some measure satisfy by prayer, fasting, alms-deeds, and other works of piety, for the temporal pain which, in the order of Divine justice sometimes remains due, after the guilt of sin and pains eternal have been remitted. Such penitential works are, notwithstanding, no otherwise satisfactory than as joined and applied to that satisfaction which Jesus made upon the cross, in virtue of which alone all our good works find a grateful acceptance in the sight of God.'

As we have already stated our opinion respecting the nature of the sacrifice of Christ, we have only to inquire, in our examination of this passage, into the meaning of the words temporal pain. If they be intended to signify the natural evil consequences of sin in this world, it is clear that no penance of human institution can avert them; since the very efficacy of this penance would prove these consequences not to be natural but arbitrary. A man who has defrauded his neighbor cannot preserve or recover his character for honesty, or secure the confidence of those around him 'by prayer, fasting, alms-deeds, or other works of piety.' The means are not adapted to the end. The method he must pursue, and the only one which can be used with effect, is to restore that which he had unjustly obtained, and to persevere in a course of integrity till the rectitude of his motives becomes unquestionable. If in the meanwhile he employs prayer, fasting, and alms-deeds as means of rousing his highest affections and confirming his virtuous resolutions, he may find them so far efficacious; but the removal of the temporal pain, the stain upon his reputation, is not ascribable to them, but is the consequence of his well attested repentance.

But it appears doubtful whether we have rightly interpreted the words temporal pain; since the being obnoxious to this pain is one of the qualifications for the discipline of purgatory. We wish that an exact account could be obtained of its real nature: though, be it what it may, it is clear to us that no natural penalty can be averted by so arbitrary an institution as that of penance. The clause on indulgences is as follows. We quote the doctrinal part of it, that we may avoid the danger, of which it warns us, of charging on the Church such abuses or mistakes as have been sometimes committed in point of granting and gaining indulgences, through the remissness or ignorance of individuals.

'The guilt of sin, or pain eternal due to it, is never remitted by what Catholics call indulgences; but only such temporal punishments as remain due after the guilt is remitted: these indulgences being nothing else than a mitigation or relaxation, upon just causes, of canonical penances, enjoined by the pastors of the Church on penitent sinners, according to their several degrees of demerit.'

Our conviction of the absolute inefficacy of canonical penances to obtain the end for which they are practised having been stated, we proceed to consider the legitimacy of the power by which such acts are imposed, and a remission from them granted. We shall ground our arguments on some of the subordinate principles, which are clearly deducible from the primary principles of doctrine and morals which we have already stated and arranged.

One of these principles, whose claim to admission is seldom unequivocally denied in theory, though too often practically disallowed, is Christian Liberty,—the indefeasible right of every man to freedom from all human control in spiritual concerns. This comprehends the right of entire privacy of conscience, of exemption from all inquiry and interference in spiritual matters, of examining, interpreting, comparing and understanding the sacred records under a responsibility to none but God; and of forming, changing, and announcing opinions without hinderance or molestation. We are aware that this principle is seldom carried out to its utmost length, even in speculation; and as seldom is it absolutely rejected. But, as we have said with respect to another principle, and as we would say of all, let it be put to the test of reason and experience; and if sound, let it be fully admitted with all its consequences; if unsound, let it be discarded. The process of attestation which we have instituted obliges us to receive it unhesitatingly, and to act on it unreservedly.

The primary spiritual relation of men is to God; their highest subordinate relation is to each other. Their conduct in the subordinate relation is to be regulated by a regard to the primary; but the primary relation is not to be invaded by any influences from below. The relations between man and man are established by God and guided by Him to the fulfilment of purposes known only to Him, except in so far as it has pleased Him to reveal them. The relation of the mind of man to its Maker is, on the contrary, so intimate as to admit of no intervention; and of a nature which cannot be affected by any influence whatever. This relation may be unperceived; (though there is perhaps no instance on record of its being so) it may be heedlessly forgotten; it may be, as alas! it too often is, obscured by the shades of vice or the influences of spiritual tyranny; but it can never be usurped or changed; and the time must come when this indissoluble relation shall be recognized and claimed as comprehending all the manifold privileges of existence. The course of nature seems designed to lead men to its perception, and the grand object of revelation is to blazon it forth; while every intimation of its nature describes it as sacred from all invasion. Every manifestation of the Divine will must, therefore, be made to each individual mind as exclusively as if no other mind existed. The religion of nature, though adopted in various countries, and amidst its different aspects among different nations, embraced by myriads under every form, is yet a bond between God and every individual man as complete as if that man alone had been created. In like manner the Gospel is a covenant between God and the human race only as it is a covenant between God and every individual of that race who shall embrace it: and there can be two parties only to the transaction,—he who offers the conditions, and he who accepts or rejects them. To no one has the Author of this covenant deputed the power of imposing the conditions, or of judging how far they have been fulfilled, or of passing; sentence accordingly. To none could he depute this power without making him, in fact, the only person with whom the inferior party has to do, i. e. the God of the inferior party. It may be objected that we argue upon a metaphor; but, let the Gospel be regarded under every possible aspect, the same truth will still be demonstrable,—that between the Creator and the created no created power can, without the Divine concurrence, interfere; and that in the spiritual creation, the powers requisite for interference being above those of humanity, such concurrence never can have been, and never can be granted.

If the nature of Christian obedience had been different,—if it had been ritual instead of spiritual, it may be conceived possible that God might have committed to man the power of judging and sentencing; but the things of the heart, the desires, the struggles with temptation, the silent conflicts, the unapparent defeats and victories of conscience, are known and can be known by none but God. Through the medium of confession alone can one man gain any insight into the spiritual state of another; and no medium can be more deceptive. It is perhaps impossible for the most conscientious mind to communicate to the most congenial fellow-mind a faithful detail of the thoughts, wishes, hopes, and fears of any single hour; and if it were possible, the fellow-mind would still be incapable of forming an estimate of the spiritual state, or of directing the necessary discipline; because the apparent results of operations which he does not understand are all the materials that he has to judge from; whereas the object of discipline is to rectify the operations themselves. If a man confesses to his bosom friend that his devotional feelings have been for some time past sensibly weakening; that he looks on the beautiful world of nature with apathy, and thinks on the perpetual presence of God without awe or delight; that his spirit is dead in the public offices of devotion, and roving when it ought to be fixed in prayer; his friend may mourn with him over so painful an experience, and suggest, more or less wisely, methods of arousing the sleeping faculties, and kindling anew the failing fires of devotion. But he does this as an adviser, and not as a judge; for the power of judging is not given to him. He knows not whether the origin of the distemper be bodily or mental: he knows nothing of the thousand influences, from within and from without, which have of late modified the delicate processes of the intellect and the soul. He cannot therefore know what restorative influences are most needed; whether mute converse with nature or busy intercourse with men; whether the terrifying or the alluring appeals of the Gospel; whether the awful claims of the Divine holiness, or the mild persuasions of the Divine compassion; whether any or all of these, or of the manifold influences besides which are perpetually dispensed by Him who knoweth our frame, but have never been confided to the empirical disposal of man.

If, as is evidently the case, all human judgment of sin and holiness is comparative instead of positive, and therefore ever changing as the means of comparison become more ample and the faculty stronger, it is manifestly impossible for any one mind to form an exact estimate of the qualities of another by any but its own imperfect and varying measure: and since to God alone are the principles of morals present in their complete development, to Him alone can their infallible application belong. The agency of men on each other is appointed accordingly. They may confess their sins one to another for their mutual relief and guidance; but such confession must be strictly voluntary, and carefully disconnected with all inclination towards spiritual usurpation on the one hand and subservience on the other.

There is no subject on which the sacred writers are more explicit than this, and none on which their practice exhibited a more eloquent commentary. Hear what the Apostle of the Gentiles asserts in defence of the spiritual liberty of the least enlightened members of the Church, who were, as he believed, in error respecting some modes of practice which were very important at that time. 'Him that is weak in the faith, receive ye; but not for doubtful disputings. One believeth that he may eat all things; but another who is weak eateth herbs only. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth; for God hath received him. Who art thou that judgest the servant of another? To his own master he standeth or falleth. But he shall be established, for God is able to establish him. It is written, 'As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.' So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. Let us not therefore judge one another any more.' (Romans xiv.) This was the rule which the Apostle observed in all his transactions with the infant churches which referred their spiritual concerns to him, as their father and guardian in the faith. He denounced guilt, expounded the faith, guarded against error, and used every method of argument, persuasion, and entreaty, with which his head and heart could furnish him to establish them in righteousness; he set before them every motive of hope and fear, and faithfully declared the whole counsel of God, as bound by his office, and privileged by his unequalled qualifications; but he throughout abstained from intermeddling with any man's conscience, not only by direct interference, but by indirect influence. Let us see how scrupulous was his regard to liberty of conscience. 'I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence. It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything by which thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak. Hast thou faith? Have it to thyself before God.' (Romans xiv.) A yet more eminent example is on record, whose conduct bears a reference to a case of still more awful responsibility than that instanced by the Apostle. 'If any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father who sent me, he gave me a commandment what I should say and what I should speak. (John xii. 47-49.) How, in the face of these declarations, can men impeach the faith and pronounce sentence on the practice of their brethren, assuming their own judgments as the standard of truth, and their own conceptions as the measure of holiness? How, in the face of these declarations, can ministers of the Gospel have ever grasped, as a right, the power which Christ himself disclaimed; not leaving judgment till the last day, but delivering over to reproach and death those who were 'weak in the faith,' or perplexed with 'doubtful disputations'? How, in the face of these declarations, can priests of any church have denied that to his own master every man stands or falls, and have made close inquisition into the secrets of the soul, pretending to understand its errors, and presumptuously undertaking to cleanse its secret faults by methods which no voice from above has sanctioned as lawful, and no sign from on high has shown to be efficacious? Could such inquisitors and such priests (and they are to be found in every Church) have mingled with the followers of Jesus, they would have cried out for fire from heaven on the Samaritans, notwithstanding every prohibition; they would have questioned the sinful Mary, not satisfied with her loving much, till they had ascertained how much; they would have pronounced the young lawyer very far from the kingdom of God unless he could have made a fuller profession of faith; and, meeting the adulteress in the outer courts of the temple as she left the mild presence of Jesus, would have prescribed her penance with a rigor well pleasing to the accusers, who were themselves too modest to cast the first stone. Since Jesus, who knew what was in the hearts of those around him, forbore to condemn, much more ought they to forbear who have no such knowledge. If he awarded no punishment to those who rejected the Gospel he understood so well, much less should they who are themselves but learners inflict pain of body or mind on their fellow-disciples who understand differently, or the unbelievers who cannot understand at all. If he who spake as his Father commanded him left it to the Father to enforce these commands, it ill becomes those on whom the Spirit has not descended to assume an authority which inspiration itself could not sanction. It becomes them to learn what they themselves are, before they judge how little their brethren are what they ought to be. It becomes them to ascertain their own superiority over the Apostles, before they claim an authority with which no Apostle ever believed himself to be invested; and which, if he had so imagined, he would have prayed for permission to resign. Far less perilous, far less burdensome would be a commission from on high to guide the seasons, to dispense showers and sunshine, and regulate the produce of the fields, than to control the spiritual movements, and administer the fertilizing influences under which the fruits of holiness are to spring up unto everlasting life.

That any such commission was ever given, is as true in the one case as in the other; and the belief of any individual that to himself it was ever confided, is a proof of unsoundness in heart or brain. To any man it is honor enough, as it was to Paul and Apollos, to plant and to water. To God alone it belongs to give and to measure the increase.

We therefore disapprove of the practice of confession as adopted by Catholics, for one reason among many, that it infringes liberty of conscience, by making man practically accountable to man, and countenancing an assumption of that power to judge and punish which belongs to God alone. The punishments of canonical penances are, it is true, of human institution; but they are awarded to spiritual guilt, of which no one has a right to take cognizance but God. We therefore deny the right of any man to impose penances, or, in consequence, to issue indulgences; and we hold that wherever such a right is claimed, the prerogative of God is invaded and the cause of his Gospel injured.

Christian liberty secures to every man the right, not only of reading the sacred records for himself, but of interpreting them for himself; of ascertaining by his own unbiased judgment what they teach, and of holding the opinions thus formed without being accountable to any man or to any body of men. In advocating the free perusal of the Scriptures and the formation of individual opinions from them, we shall be careful to avoid any bias from the popular and false impression, that the faithful pastors of the Catholic Church would prohibit their flocks from reading the Bible: and we shall enter on no discussion respecting the comparative fidelity of Catholic and Protestant English translations of the Scriptures. On the latter point, much must be said, if anything; so much, that no room would be left us for matters of greater importance. Important as it is that the sacred books should be faithfully rendered, that it should be shown how long-prevalent errors, supposed to be countenanced by them, are not so countenanced; important as it is, for instance, to decide whether the sacred teacher said 'Repent,' or 'Do penance,' it is yet more important to develop the principles to which all modes of expression are subservient: to attend to the spirit rather than the letter, to establish truths and explode errors to the perception of which every intellect is adequate, than to debate matters to which, though of inferior moment, peculiar qualifications are requisite.

We willingly accept the following testimony of Fenelon to the fact of the unrestricted use of the sacred writings in the early times of Christianity; though we dissent from the concluding remark. The passage is translated from a letter from Fenelon to the Bishop of Arras. ([OE]uvres Spirituels de Fenelon, 8vo. tom. 4, p. 241.) 'I think that much trouble has been taken in our times very unnecessarily, to prove what is incontestable, than in the first ages of the Church the laity read the Holy Scriptures. It is clear as daylight, that all people read the Bible and service in their native languages; that as a part of good education, children were made to read them; that in their sermons, the ministers of the Church regularly explained to their flocks whole books of the sacred volume; that the sacred text of the Scriptures was very familiar to the people; that the clergy exhorted the people to read them; that the clergy blamed the people for not reading them, and considered the neglect of the perusal of them as a source of heresy and immorality. But in all this the Church used a wise economy; adapting the general practice to the circumstances and wants of individuals. It did not, however, think that a person could not be a Christian, or not be well instructed in his religion, without perusing the sacred writings. Whole countries of barbarians, innumerable multitudes of the faithful were rich (to use the words of St. Paul) in words and science, though they had not read the sacred writings. To listen to the pastors of the Church who explain the Scriptures to the faithful and distribute among them such parts as are suited to their wants, is to read the Scriptures.'

This last proposition is in perfect accordance with the creed which declares that 'to the holy Mother Church it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures,' but inconsistent with the principle held by us, that no man has the power of judging for another or the right to prescribe the opinions of another. 'What then is to be done,' it is asked, 'with those who cannot read for themselves?' They must take what they can obtain from their pastors, or from any other medium of communication. If the medium be as faithful as human fallibility allows, much truth may be learned and the means of holiness may be abundantly afforded: but yet the learner is precluded by his ignorance from the full enjoyment of his Christian liberty; and to hang on the lips of his instructor is far, very far from being the same thing as reading the Scriptures for himself.

Such a 'wise economy' as Fenelon speaks of seems to us but a fleshly wisdom, a narrow policy originated by men, discountenanced by God, and available to perpetuate, not the Gospel itself, but the corruptions which were early mixed with it, and which will not stand the test of examination. Who was to decide what 'parts were suited to their wants?' Who knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man which is in him? Who gave the power of prohibition to read the Scriptures over such as 'were not disposed to read them to their advantage?' Who was to judge of the disposition; who could discern the tendency of inquiry; who could estimate the advantage and disadvantage of the results? How dared the Church to 'withhold from the laity the perusal of the Bible without permission of their pastors,' from the assumption that it was 'unsafe to allow the people at large to read the sacred text?' How unsafe? For the Gospel itself? The Divine care would have provided a preventive or a remedy, if the danger had been real. For the honor of God? He would have made provision for its vindication. For the spiritual welfare of the people? It could not have been injured by the free use of the means ordained to perfect it: nor was it ever the province of pastors to promote that welfare by other means than the Gospel authorizes. And where is the patent for the monopoly of the Scriptures to be found? But it is alleged that there are many passages in the sacred volume which, being hard to be understood, are wrested by the unstable and the ignorant to the destruction of the purity of their faith. True. But the case was the same in the days of the Apostles; and did Peter ever desire that Paul's writings should therefore be kept back from the unlearned and unstable? Or did he enjoin an explanation of them from the wise, to which the foolish should be required to assent? No; he recommended caution in giving heed to other men's errors, and growth in the knowledge of Christ Jesus; both which must be better promoted by independent thought and judgment than by subservience to any mind, however pure and enlightened. Christ himself, though he knew what was in man, never required this subservience from any one of his followers. He gave his instructions in as many different forms as we have them in now: in discourses, in parables, in familiar dialogue, and by actions; and invariably he left to the hearers the application of the principles thus conveyed, except when pressed by his immediate followers for an interpretation. He took no pains to preserve his Gospel from 'the rash criticisms of the vulgar,' as the piety of Fenelon erroneously advises. He did not act upon the belief that previous instruction was necessary to the comprehension of the word of life, or that 'the people should be full of the spirit of the Gospel before they are entrusted with the letter.' The letter of the Gospel now is the same as the letter of the Gospel then; the spirit now, as then, is only to be got at through the letter; and the letter now, as then, is only valuable as it communicates the spirit. Christ did not think that 'it should only be permitted to the simple, the docile, and the humble; to those who wish to nourish themselves with its divine truths in silence; and withheld from those who merely seek to satisfy their curiosity, to dispute, to dogmatize, to criticize.' This doctrine of Fenelon is, we are told, and ever has been, the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Were the disciples to whom Christ spoke of the bread of life and who therefore forsook him, 'docile and humble?' Yet what saying was more 'hard to be understood?' When he declared the nature of his Gospel, and the authority under which he proposed it, were the Pharisees in the temple 'simple and docile?' Was there no disposition 'to dispute, to dogmatize, to criticize' among the elders, the scribes, the Sadducees whom he referred to his works, assured of the temporary nature of the Jewish covenant, and besought to listen to the truth which should make them free? The glad tidings of salvation were then preached, as they ought to be now, to the poor and ignorant without fear that what is truly the Gospel can be dangerously misapprehended, and without intimation that the faith needs the interpretation of fallible understandings, or the guardianship of human wisdom.

If we believed (which we do not) that error in matters of faith could of itself endanger salvation,—i. e. exclude from the happiness of a future state,—we should be convinced that those were much more liable to error who adopted the faith after it had passed through a fallible mind, than those who received it from Christ himself, speaking directly, as in fact he does, in the faithful records which the Bible presents. And the more feeble and ignorant the recipient mind, the more liable will it be to admit the errors of others, as well as to originate some of its own. While, if referred to the sacred volume itself for his faith, a man is in danger of entertaining no errors but his own. However imperfect his mental vision may be, he is thus more likely to behold the object in its true form and colors, than by the interposition of a faulty medium. If it be objected that the medium, so far from being faulty, corrects the imperfections of the natural faculty, we ask for the test of its possessing this quality, and for the proof that it was ever conferred.

But, being convinced, for reasons given before, that the possession of the true faith is not an indispensable requisite for future happiness, and that the non-possession of it is not to be followed by eternal misery, or by any arbitrary infliction whatever, we cannot admit the plea of care for the souls of men as any reason or excuse for trenching on the natural liberty of the mind, or prescribing opinions which Christ himself only administered the means of forming, and which his Apostles presumed not to impose. Purity of faith is the most exalted attainment of the most exalted mind,—the richest of the myriads of rich blessings which the Father of our spirits has placed within our reach. It should be sought as the most precious of all treasures; it should be guarded as the most sacred of all trusts: but though it may be won by any, it can be communicated by none. It is the especial reward of individual search, and loses its very nature by being transferred: for that which is truth to a man who has discovered it for himself, can be truth to another man only so far as his faculties are exercised upon it, apprehend, and adopt it. This, which may be justly said of all truth, may be especially declared of religious truth, which is of no value unless made a vivifying principle, and can never become a vivifying principle unless perceived by the understanding and recognized by the heart.

The true office of the pastors of the Church (and likewise of all believers) is to lead others to that knowledge of the truth which can never be imposed. Their concern for the spiritual welfare of their brethren can never be too earnest; their diligence in guidance and guardianship, too eager; their value for purity of faith, too high; or their apprehension of spiritual danger, too ready or too ardent. But all this concern and apprehension should be justly directed, and this guidance and guardianship exercised with a regard to the rights with which God has invested every man. The first object to be desired is spiritual advancement, to which intellectual rectitude is subsidiary. The first object of dread is moral corruption, and not mental error. The guidance to be exercised is that of an experienced over an inexperienced person. The one points out to the other the snares and dangers into which he is liable to fall, the labyrinth in which he may lose himself, and the various tendencies of different paths; but he has no lawful power to insist upon a particular path being pursued, or to condemn his companion to destruction for interpreting differently the invitation on which they both proceed. The guardianship is faithful as long as it consists in warning off the attacks of temptation, declaring the threats and promises of the Gospel, and educating for independent action; but it becomes tyranny when restraints are imposed on the exercise of the faculties, and any impediments are thrown in the way of a free range through the spiritual world of which God has made every man an inhabitant. It is the office of Christian pastors to study the sacred records with all diligence, striving to ascertain by the help of learning and philosophy, and every other help, what the true faith is, and how other minds may be best disposed for its apprehension; to place before those minds whatever may best tend to enlighten, convince, and establish them; to excite them to activity and stimulate them to further action when aroused. But further than this they must not go. The mind must work out the results for itself; and for those results none but itself can be answerable. Its safety or peril rests with God, who hath given into no man's hand the souls of his brethren.

It is justly observed by Catholics, that many of the very persons who complain of the discouragement by them thrown in the way of the general perusal of the Scriptures, circulate the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England 'as a safeguard against the misinterpretation of the Bible,' and by their doubt and dread of the consequences of making the Bible common, seem to admit the probability and danger of such misinterpretation. It is very true that such inconsistencies obtain among Protestants, and such inconsistencies will exist as long as there is any dread of carrying out a good principle to its full extent. If all Protestants adhered to the grand principle of the Reformation, that the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants, there would not only be no damnatory clauses in their creeds, but no creeds,—no embodying in an unchanging form of words principles which were given in no such form, which cannot be received under the same aspect by minds differently prepared, and which are too expansive in their nature to be long confined within arbitrary limits of human imposition. The Church of England forsakes its fundamental principle of dissent from the Roman Catholic Church when it would secure uniformity of faith by framing articles of faith, by keeping back the Bible from the feeblest intellect, or appointing 'a safeguard,' or interfering in any way between the Bible and the minds which are to derive their religion from it. If uniformity of faith cannot be thus obtained, it is a necessary consequence of the Protestant principle that uniformity of faith is not necessary to salvation. This consequence, which we fully admit, the Church of England, in the letter and spirit of her articles and creeds, inconsistently denies.

It is manifestly absurd to exhort a man to derive his faith from the Bible, if it is declared to him beforehand what he is bound at his eternal peril to believe. Yet this is in fact done, when the Book of Common Prayer is circulated as a safeguard to the Bible, and also when a Catholic is made to declare on his admission to the Church, 'I also admit the Sacred Scriptures according to the sense which the holy Mother Church has held and does hold,' &c. For purposes of faith, all use in reading the Bible is over when this declaration is made. The disciple can only, while striving to learn his duty from the sacred pages, wonder at what he finds there;—at the appeals to individual judgment; at the addresses to the intimate consciousness of every man; at the freedom allowed and encouraged among the first Christians; at the absence of all pretension to authority in matters of opinion, of all wish to prescribe, of all tendency to domineer. If he be intelligent, it will occur to him as surprising that no creed, if creeds be good things, was given by our Saviour to his Apostles before he left them, weak and divided in the faith as they at that time were. And again, when they were strong and united, but when doubt and disagreement were creeping into their churches, it must seem strange that Christ, who manifestly watched over the interests of his Church, should not have authorized and communicated a profession of faith more ample and particular than that which had hitherto accompanied baptism; viz. that Jesus was the Christ, and that remission of sins came by repentance.

Finding no trace of the Apostles' Creed among all the sacred books, he will inquire into its origin, and discover that it was not composed by the Apostles,[A] and that when, in an evil hour, it was proposed for general adoption, its main purpose was to exclude the Gnostics, who would have mixed up their false philosophy and vain deceits with the simple faith in Christ which then, as now, constituted a man a Christian. Having gone thus far, the disciple begins to doubt whether he has hitherto possessed and exercised the spiritual liberty which is his birthright. If he pursue the inquiry he will, undoubtedly cast off the restraints which man's wisdom has imposed on his faculties, and interpret, judge, and believe for himself. If he look back to his promise to admit the sense of Scripture only as the Church declares it, and renews that promise, he must lay aside every hope of purifying and strengthening his faith by his scriptural studies. Henceforth it will indeed be, as Fenelon declares, the same thing to him to read the words of Christ, and to hear an explanation of them from his pastor. Not for this were the Beræans cited as an example by Paul; not by these means was Timothy prepared for his extensive labors; not thus did Apollos learn how to apply his vigorous talents to the service of the infant churches. All these men searched the Scriptures, knew the Scriptures from their youth up, were learned in the Scriptures, from which they ascertained for themselves the promise of Christ's coming, and themselves applied the tests which proved that Jesus of Nazareth was this Christ.

Every man has a natural right, not only to form his opinions for himself, but to change them as frequently as he shall believe himself led to do so. This natural right is not only sanctioned, but its exercise is approved, by the Gospel. As long as the opinions of men are not absolutely right, as long as they fall short of the truth as it will be perceived in heaven, there is room and occasion for a change; and such a change, wherever recorded in the New Testament, is recorded with approbation. Where was there ever a more extensive change of opinion than in Apollos on his conversion? Yet in his youth, Apollos was as orthodox, as undoubtedly correct in his religious opinions before the introduction of Christianity, as any Christian who now subscribes all the creeds of the Catholic Church. But what would have been the consequence if he had engaged never to 'take and interpret the Scriptures otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of the' Rabbis; or if he had promised, vowed, and sworn most constantly to profess his present faith whole and entire, with God's assistance, to the end of his life? It is true that no revelation is likely to supersede the faith of Christians; but it is, at the same time, as little probable that no developement of the principles of Christianity should cause gradual changes of opinion in the course of a lifetime, as it then was that Judaism should not be expanded into the fuller revelation of the Gospel. If, like Apollos, we believe rightly now, it is impossible to answer for no change of opinion being necessary to enable us to believe rightly twenty years hence. The view which we have already taken of the expansive tendency of the eternal principles of Christianity authorizes our declaring that a gradual enlargement of views, i. e. change of opinions, is a necessary consequence of the correct apprehension of religious truth.

Creeds are intended to be permanent and universal professions of faith; and are the instrument by which a uniformity of faith is to be secured, if such a thing be yet possible. But creeds never have fulfilled, and never can fulfil, any one of these purposes. No uniformity of faith has existed since the first creed was framed; no one formulary has been universally received among Christians; and experience already indicates, what the lapse of time will prove,—that no creed will be permanent. If the most ancient of creeds, commonly called the Apostles', be named in answer to the last remark, let it be remembered that the first version of this formulary given by Irenæus, and the subsequent ones by Tertullian, Cyril of Alexandria, and others, were as widely different from those now in use as from each other. Widely different versions of this creed are used in the Catholic Church and the Church of England; and those who subscribe to the same form of words understand those words variously. The permanence of this most ancient of creeds is in name only; and the name itself is a false assumption.

Creeds cannot be permanent and universal, unless the language of which they consist is also permanent and universal; which no language has ever been. There is no test by which it can be proved that any two minds affix precisely the same meaning to the commonest terms; while we have abundant evidence that very abstract terms (such as abound in creeds) convey very different notions to different minds. Thus, if the terms of a language were absolutely immutable, and if one language prevailed over the whole earth, there would still be room for a variety of interpretations of anything expressed in that language. But the mutations which time occasions in every tongue, and the necessity of translation and re-translation, increase a thousandfold the chances of such a variety, and indeed render it absolutely unavoidable.

It is well, therefore, that the truths of religious doctrine cannot be made one with the language in which any age or nation chooses to clothe them, as that language is necessarily mutable. And it would be well if believers were henceforth and for ever to desist from the attempt to connect what is mutable with what is immutable, that which is perishable with that which is immortal, by requiring the present age to adopt the language of the past, and providing for a similar adoption by the future. If they wish the spiritual conceptions of former ages to be perpetuated, this may best be done by changing the terms as their meanings become modified, and not by retaining them the more pertinaciously, the more varied are the conceptions they originate. If the Gospel itself had been inseparably connected with any form of language, or embodied in anything but facts, it would ere now have passed away, or have been so far transformed as to be a different religion. It would have been untranslateable; it would have been untransferrable to any country beyond that in which it originated; it would have been unintelligible to succeeding generations of even native inhabitants of that country. It is only in so far as Christianity is disencumbered of formularies of faith, and emancipated from the guardianship of Councils, that it becomes the religion of mankind. The metaphysical clauses of the Apostles' Creed, and the canons of the Council of Trent, may contain the belief of a few, a very few, speculative minds. The declaration that God sent Christ Jesus into the world to save sinners, contains the substantial belief of Christendom, which will be the faith of the whole world,—because it is Christianity.

It is as impossible for a man to prescribe to himself the faith of his future years, as for one age to prescribe the faith of a succeeding age: and for the same reasons. He may in his youth state an opinion in unambiguous terms, and with perfect sincerity, which, if he still hold, he cannot state in the same terms ten years after. The opinion may be substantially the same, and yet have such a bearing upon some other opinion, or may be so modified by some other opinion that the same form of words may not express it fully, or perhaps correctly. It is yet more probable that the conceptions which are now attached to the terms are enlarged by his improved experience; so that, if he would declare the same truth, he must change his terms; or if he can conscientiously retain the terms, he must have modified his opinion. What enlightened, reflecting Christian understands exactly the same by any one parable, any one axiom, any one fact of Scripture that he did when he first admitted its truth? He believed it then; he believes it now; but how differently since science has brought new evidence to light, since philosophy has developed its origin and tendencies, since experience has tested its truth, and faith invested it with a hallowed interest and an indestructible beauty! How, therefore, is it possible for any one faithfully to engage that his views even of eternal truth shall never be modified! Witnessing, as every reflecting man does, the gradual evolution of truth from the vicissitudes of human experience, and from the successive dispensations and the progressive course of Providence, he may with safety declare that Gospel truth is immutable and divine; but he will avoid the presumption of supposing that all her riches are already shed into his bosom, that her brightest light is poured upon his feeble eye. He will rather hope that his apprehension will continually become clearer, his powers invigorated, and his capacities enlarged, till his views of religious truth become as unlike what they were when first admitted, as the fair face of nature appears to the new-born infant and to the mighty poet. He will reject, as an infringement of his inalienable rights, every attempt to bind him down to engagements which it may not be in his power to fulfil. He will refuse to promise that his intellect shall remain stationary; and to permit that any individual, any council, or any church, shall usurp that spiritual influence which he trusts shall be immediately dispensed from the fountain of grace and truth. Desiring wisdom, he asks of God; not profaning and annulling his prayer by engaging to receive it only in certain measure; and if any church on earth interfere to prescribe the measure, he rejects the interference as unauthorized by the letter of the Gospel and condemned by its spirit.

Christian liberty comprehends an entire freedom from restraint in the publication of opinions. To his own master every man standeth or falleth, not only in the formation of his opinions, but in the use he makes of them when formed. According to his conscientiousness in seeking for truth, and not according to the accuracy of his judgment, will he be judged by God in forming his opinions; and when formed, he will be responsible, not for the rectitude of his influence, but for the rectitude of his intentions in exerting it. What a man believes to be the truth, it is his duty to declare in the method and degree which benevolence and prudence may point out to be the best. For what but this do we venerate the heroic Stephen, and every other martyr who bore witness to the truth in the early days of Christianity? Yet for what but this have Christians been led to the stake by Christians, age after age, under the pretended sanction of a religion of liberty and brotherly love? For what but this have Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in torturing in body and mind men whose conscience was omnipotent over the love of liberty and life, and who thus showed that, whether their intellects were or were not unfaithful, their souls were true to God? For what but this are the lovers of truth even yet too often punished, directly or indirectly, for inviting others to participate in the benefits which they believe they have gained. Stephen was stoned because he was a heretic; Paul worshiped the God of his fathers according to a way which was then called heresy, and for which he was persecuted through life and unto death. Peter and John were brought before the high priest and rulers for publishing their heresy, and punished for refusing to cease to publish it. Yet has this their heresy prevailed; and thus shall every new truth prevail, and its promulgators be honored, in despite of the wrath of man; while the more freely errors are canvassed, the sooner will they be exposed. What was once said with truth in relation to the Gospel of truth,—'If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it,'—may be said with equal wisdom of every other kind of truth and the test of investigation is a much surer one than that which is furnished by the prejudices and the passions of men. There is no natural, no Divine law which sanctions the infliction of pain for the exercise of the intellect, or for communicating the results of that exercise; and that any human law or custom should have existed by which injury of mind, body, or estate is made the consequence of the formation and publication of opinions, is a proof that the natural rights of man have not been understood, and that the spirit of Christian liberty has not pervaded Christian society. As long as reproach is attached to the act of promulgating opinions (independent of the manner,) as long as the holder of opinions is treated with the same reprobation as the opinions themselves, as long as he is prospectively consigned over to perdition as they are to detestation, as long as ideas of merit and demerit are associated with the convictions of the understanding, or blame is attached to the act of making those convictions known, not only will the subordinate principles of the Gospel remain in part unrecognized, but its essential principles will be violated; for it is clearly a duty of piety to reveal all that is believed to have been discovered of the works and ways of God;—and of benevolence to communicate what, being conceived to be truth, is conceived to be intended for the universal benefit of the race.

It may excite surprise that we have not here examined the claim of the Holy Catholic Church to spiritual supremacy: but it will better accord with our plan to take that claim into consideration while treating of the temporary institutions of Christianity.

From the essential principles of the Gospel we derive our belief that Christianity, is not designed for any union, permanent or temporary, with worldly power and grandeur; that it is incapable of such a connexion; being injured instead of confirmed by the support of temporal authority, and impaired instead of adorned by the adjuncts of worldly pomp. This principle is asserted in words by every Christian Church in existence; but violated, in fact, by almost as many. Christianity is acknowledged to be a religion of poverty of spirit, of self-denial, of looseness from the world and its possessions. If this principle were carried out into each individual case, it is plain that the pomp and ambition which have despoiled the Gospel of its purity could no longer exist. It is remarkable that this poverty and self-denial are most insisted on in those Churches where the temporal power and luxury are the most excessive. We hear of them above all from Catholics, whose popes, cardinals, and bishops have, in every age, exceeded all temporal princes in the enjoyment of splendor and luxury. We hear of them from the Church of England, whose superior officers revel in unbounded wealth, and especially prize the connexion with the State which their office occasions. While we Unitarians, who hold that Christianity is of a purely spiritual nature, and therefore dishonored by the pretended support of powers inferior to its own, insist much less earnestly than the Catholic Church on the duty of self-mortification and voluntary poverty. Our Church, were it as extensive as the Catholic, would contain no ecclesiastical princes, and no friars; no potentates clothed in purple and fine linen and faring sumptuously every day from the revenues of the Church, and no believers whose piety is testified by a vow of poverty. We believe that our religion ought to be exerted in controling the passions, exalting the desires, and equalizing the affections, not so much by regulating the external manifestations of those passions and desires, as by influencing the heart. Self-denial is taught much better by inspiring the love of our neighbor, than by the prohibition of innocent comforts and pleasures. Spirituality is much better taught by making spiritual things the objects of supreme desire, than by commanding an ostentatious avoidance of the enjoyments of life. But while the Gospel thus leaves men free to follow the bent of innocent desires,—to decide, each for himself, what is lawful and expedient,—it lays a powerful restraint on all the passions, and curbs all propensities which are inconsistent with its purity and spirituality. All worldly ambition, all selfish luxury are utterly incompatible with the faith of the Gospel, which disallows every claim founded on itself to distinctions of rank, to abundance of wealth, to power over the possessions of other men, to the indulgence of earthly desires. The Gospel affords no sanction to the accumulation of wealth, or to the assumption of authority. It affords examples, on the contrary, of submission to temporal authority, of the endurance of voluntary poverty in hardship, not because poverty and hardship are in themselves spiritually desirable, but because they were necessary to the attainment of some benevolent end. From the Gospel we learn that Jesus utterly disclaimed all pretensions to authority, except in those matters where his authority was supreme. 'Who made me a judge or a divider over you?' was his remonstrance with those who referred the disposal of an inheritance to him: and his reply respecting the lawfulness of paying tribute was such as ought to have obviated all doubt whether temporal and spiritual power could ever be properly united; 'Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's.' What could be meant by the declaration 'My kingdom is not of this world,' but that his authority was of a spiritual nature only? Why did he strenuously oppose every attempt to make him a king? Why did he send forth the seventy disciples without gold and silver and changes of raiment? Why did he recommend to the rich man to sell his possessions, if wealth and power can be made the means of serving the interests of the Gospel? Why was his indignation so perpetually roused by the spiritual assumptions of the Pharisees, but because religion was in them disgraced by its connexion with worldly greatness? Yet not a few Christians have loved the chief seats in public assemblies, and homage in the streets; not a few have made proclamation when they dispensed their alms, and prayed in the high ways; not a few have taken on themselves to appoint places in the Messiah's kingdom which the Messiah himself refused to promise, because such power belonged to God alone. While he declined all interference in matters of temporal concern, and rejected all support to his Gospel from magisterial authority, and all benefit from the resources of wealth, it is clear that such support must ever be needless and such resources unhallowed.

How does it happen, it is perpetually asked, that while the right to temporal power is abjured in words by every Church, the State religion of every country affords an instance of its assumption? It happens, as many other strange and inconsistent things happen, through the misuse of terms. What we call temporal power, the advocates of a State religion call spiritual power; and thus have all ecclesiastical abuses been justified from the day that ecclesiastical domination was established. By spiritual authority have kings been enthroned and deposed; by spiritual authority have tributes been raised, wars been originated and conducted, properties been confiscated, and lives forfeited! By spiritual authority were the Crusades begun and carried on; by spiritual authority have popes divided and distributed kingdoms, have cardinals negotiated and priests intrigued! By spiritual authority did Wolsey amass his treasures, and rule his sovereign at home, and the agents of his sovereign abroad! By spiritual authority does the Church of England demand tithes, and under the same sanction do her bishops legislate. What then is temporal power? What are worldly pomp and wealth?

The abuses which have deformed every State religion in turn are evident to all,—even to those who still help to support them; but the origin of those abuses is not generally ascertained. We ascribe them to the error of mixing up the permanent principles of Christianity with its temporary institutions.

Spiritual principles can only be recognized by means of external manifestations; but the principles and the manifestation are not the same thing; nor can they have a lasting connexion, as every thing external is mutable, while the principles of truth are immutable. As long as mind is connected with body, as long as the intellect can only be reached through the senses, and the heart through the intellect, truth must be invested with a form, and realities be accompanied by shadows. But that form is changeable, and those shadows are fleeting: the proximate cause of which is the constitution of all material things; and the final cause, the ultimate universal recognition of the principles of truth. We have already described how these principles were communicated to the Israelites by means of ordinances which the mind of man has long since outgrown. The principles of Christianity were, in like manner, embodied in institutions, some of which are obsolete, while others remain; but, since Christianity is destined not to be superseded by any other scheme, it appears to follow necessarily from the principles on which we have been reasoning, that none of its institutions were, like the Jewish, positive, but avowedly adopted from motives of expediency. It is therefore the belief of a portion of the Unitarian body, that Christ himself appointed no ordinance for permanent adoption, and that those which were appointed by the Apostles, and sanctioned by their practice, were established on the ground of expediency alone. They were not therefore the less obligatory upon their disciples in those times, nor upon us, as far as the original ground of the ordinances remains; but as some apostolic practices have, through the revolutions of human affairs, become obsolete, it is desirable to to search into the foundation of all.

Baptism cannot be called a Christian institution, since the rite was practised long before the mission of the Baptist; but some of our body adopt it as a Christian ordinance, because it was countenanced by Jesus and administered by his followers: while other Unitarians, deeming the practice of baptism inexpedient in their circumstances of age and country, decline the rite themselves, but recommend its use in cases analogous to those in which it was first adopted, i. e. in cases of conversion from Paganism. There are others who wish to abolish it altogether, from a fear of encouraging superstition by an ungrounded attachment to external observances.

The ordinance of the Lord's Supper is considered a positive institution of Christianity by almost the whole of the Christian world, the great majority of Unitarians included. The Society of Friends, and the Free-thinking Christians, are perhaps the only sects who positively decline, from principle, the practice of the rite; while some Unitarians deem it inconsistent with their principles to believe that Christ designed the ordinance for permanent and universal adoption. It is practised by many as a means, a very important means, of increasing love and exciting to obedience, while they yet cannot plead a Divine sanction in its favor, or much less suppose that any peculiar quality resides in what is eaten and drank, or any peculiar virtue in the act of eating and drinking by which any peculiar privilege can be attained. In these last suppositions all our body are agreed, since no intimation can be found in the Scriptures that the sacramental bread and wine were at any time used otherwise than as merely emblematical of the sacrifice of Christ. It was the practice of the early Christians to assemble for the supper, each carrying his portion of the feast, which was eaten like any other feast, and frequently with excess on the part of the rich, while his poorer neighbor hungered. 'When ye come together,' says the Apostle (1 Cor. xi. 20-23,), it is not to eat the Lord's Supper; for in eating, every one taketh before another his own supper, and one is hungry and another is drunken. What? Have ye not houses to eat and drink in? Or despise ye the Church of God, and shame them that have not?' (v. 33.) 'Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, wait one for another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation.'—It is not conceivable that these Christians had any notion that what they ate and drank was in itself sacred, or that the Apostle was aware of any other purpose of the rite but that of 'showing forth the Lord's death till he came.'

This rite was usually practised on the first day of the week, when the disciples met to commemorate the resurrection of their Lord, and to worship together. The custom of meeting on a stated day for worship has been continued ever since; and the day has been wisely set apart for purposes of rest and refreshment to body and mind. An institution so simple for purposes so salutary will probably, however abused, be of very long standing, even after it is more generally allowed than at present, not to be a Divine appointment. The Jewish Sabbath was a Divine ordinance for the use of the Jews; and by them alone has the last day of the week been regarded as sacred. The Lord's Day, or, as it sometimes called, the Christian Sabbath, is a totally different institution, and one which is professedly arbitrary, though subservient to very important objects. If the Jews were encouraged by their Messiah to look to the final purposes of their sabbatical institution, much more ought we, the subjects of a more enlarged dispensation, to bear in mind that all external observances are but means to ends; ordinances of which it is certain that they were made for man, and not man for them.

Whatever may be the diversity of opinion among Unitarians respecting the ground of the three ordinances just referred to, there is none with regard to those institutions whose period appears to have been determined at the moment of their origin.

The institution of Apostolic Ordination, which the Roman Catholic Church holds to be of a permanent nature, we believe not to have been designed to outlive the Apostles. We perceive no intimation in the various instructions given them which can lead us to imagine that their office was intended to be or could be bequeathed. They were chosen to be witnesses of the circumstances of the life and death of Christ, and the depositaries of miraculous powers after his ascension; but as the assistance of the Holy Spirit, that is the power conferred from on high, was only a temporary sanction, the peculiar office with which it was connected could also be only temporary. The evidence which we possess on this very important subject consists of the words of Christ himself, addressed to his Apostles respecting their mission, their own incidental observations, and the facts which ecclesiastical history presents. From all these sources of evidence we derive our belief that the office of witnessing, which is absolutely untransferrable, was the peculiar office of the twelve Apostles; that they were especially qualified by it for the task of preaching and establishing the new Gospel, and that to enable them to do so with sufficient effect, among the many and great difficulties which the state of the world then presented, the miraculous gifts of the Spirit were granted to them, with power to impart them to whomsoever they would, and that this miraculous power was coexistent with the apostolic age,—with what is variously called 'the age,' 'the kingdom of God,' 'the kingdom of Christ,' 'the kingdom of heaven;' that is, from the descent of the Holy Spirit to the abolition of Judaism on the overthrow of Jerusalem. We find no evidence of miracles after that time which is at all to be compared with that on which we rely respecting the apostolic gifts; none which allows us to hesitate in our opinion, that with the apostles expired the power of communicating miraculous privileges; and that on them alone were such privileges immediately conferred. These gifts of the Spirit served as a Divine sanction to their testimony, and were therefore coexistent with that testimony; and the same evidence which recorded their testimony after their death, recorded the Divine sanction likewise; and upon this broad and immutable foundation is built the Christian faith, against which, according to the Saviour's promise, no opposition has prevailed or can prevail. When some who could not deny the peculiarity of his mission, but would not admit his pre-eminent claims, supposed him to be John the Baptist, others Elijah, and others Jeremiah or another of the prophets, Simon Peter, who was not blinded by prejudice, and who believed for the works' sake in opposition to the opinions of men, boldly declared him to be 'the Christ, the Son of the living God.' Jesus pronounced him blessed, because he believed what the power of God made manifest, and not what men declared; and promised that on such testimony as his should the Gospel be established, so that no opposition should prevail against it; and further declared that it should be in the power of Peter to admit men into the privileges of the Gospel, and to have extensive influence over their spiritual state. 'Blessed art thou, Simon; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I also say unto thee that thou art Peter (a rock,) and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of death shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.' This promise was fulfilled. Peter bore testimony far and wide, with all the zeal and energy by which he was characterized, to the life, teachings and death of his divine master; and from this testimony, in conjunction with that of his brethren, is derived the evidence on which Christianity is received to this day. Peter had also pre-eminent power in the infant Church, converting three thousand persons on the day of Pentecost, and afterwards preaching, baptizing, and adding multitudes to those who were pressing into the kingdom of God.

No record exists of any attempt on his part to delegate any portion of his power; none of which could be transferred but such authority in the Church as he possessed under the mode of church government which then subsisted. That which constituted the chief glory of the Prince of the Apostles belonged to him as the follower of Jesus and as an eminent recipient of the gifts of the Spirit. It appears exceedingly improbable that Peter ever was Bishop of Rome, though he suffered imprisonment and perhaps martyrdom there. The authority of the Apostles was general, and seems to have been exercised generally, instead of being fixed in any one congregation. At all events it is clear that the Bishops of Rome did not lay claim to any preeminence over the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, (further than as they all claimed precedence of one another on account of the dignity of their several cities, and the superior wealth of their sees,) till the Arian controversy afforded them various opportunities of extending their power. When remonstrances were offered by the sixth Council of Carthage, in A. D. 426, and by many other assemblies, against the encroachments of the Bishops of Rome, the pleas which are now brought forward in support of their claim to supremacy had never been heard of; and they were in fact never adduced till many centuries after the death of Peter. It was not till the beginning of the seventh century that the title of Pope was appropriated by the Bishops of Rome; it being applied to all bishops at first, and afterwards to those who held the larger sees, as when Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, called Cyprian the Pope of Carthage. The assumption of the title of Universal Bishop by John of Constantinople, towards the end of the sixth century, was condemned by Gregory the Great, then Bishop of Rome, as presumption and even blasphemy; and he further showed his sense of the presumption by investing himself with the humbler title of Servus Servorum Dei. Yet so soon after as A. D. 606, Boniface III. obtained of the Emperor Phocas that the Bishops of Rome alone should henceforth call themselves Universal Bishops: the claim being founded on the dignity of the city and the wealth of the see, and not on the transmission of the apostolic office from Peter, of which not the slightest hint appears to have been given till Leo complained that the Council of Chalcedon had granted his claim to preeminence on no better ground than the importance of the city where he presided. Even he, however, had no thought of advancing pretensions to infallibility, as the successor of an infallible Apostle; this additional claim being reserved for Agatho, who, in 680, brought forward the novel doctrine 'that the chair of Rome—never erred, nor can err in any point;' and that 'all the constitutions of the Roman Church are to be received as if they had been delivered by the divine voice of St Peter.' So that there is an utter absence of proof that 'the Catholic or Universal Church has been visibly continued through all ages in one uniform faith, being guided and preserved from error in matters of faith by the assistance of the Holy Spirit.' On the contrary, there is every kind of evidence to prove that the supernatural influences of the Spirit ceased with the close of the apostolic age; that divisions of various kinds and degrees existed in the Christian Church, over which the Bishops of Rome for five or six centuries exerted no pre-eminent control, and which the decrees of Councils were of no avail to soothe and unite. We therefore hold apostolic ordination to have been a temporary institution, and at the time more universally understood to be so than perhaps any other provision for the spread of the Gospel.

Of any such institution as a Church, permanent or temporary, established by Christ, and distinct from the simple exhibition of his Gospel, we find not the most remote hint in any records but those of the vain imaginations of men. A Church means literally an assemblage; and the Church of Christ signifies, everywhere in the sacred writings, those who believe in Christ. Where the term is limited, it signifies assemblages of Christians in different places, as the Church at Corinth, the Church at Ephesus, &c. By the universal Church it is impossible to understand any thing but the total number of Christian believers: nor can we conceive of any means by which it can be shown that the primitive Christians understood otherwise, or that the term can admit of any other interpretation. We hold, therefore, that the propositions we are about to quote from the document to which we have before referred ('Roman Catholic Principles,' &c.) are founded on an unauthorized and erroneous conception of the nature of the Christian Church. 'The way or means by which man may arrive at the knowledge of the mysteries of the Gospel' are declared to be 'not by the reading of Scripture, interpreted according to the private judgment of each disjunctive person or nation in particular; but by an attention and submission to the voice of the Catholic or Universal Church, established by Christ for the instruction of all; spread for that end through all nations, and visibly continued in the succession of pastors and people through all ages. From this Church, guided in truth, and secured from error in matters of faith by the promised assistance of the Holy Ghost, every one may learn the right sense of the Scriptures, and such Christian mysteries and duties as are necessary to salvation. This Church, thus established, thus spread, thus continued, thus guided, in one uniform faith and subordination of government, is that which is called the Roman Catholic Church: the qualities just mentioned, unity, indeficiency, visibility, succession, and universality, being evidently applicable to her. From the testimony and authority of this Church it is that we receive the Scriptures, and believe them to be the word of God; and as she can assuredly tell us what particular book is the word of God, so she can, with the like assurance, tell us also the true sense and meaning of it in controverted points of faith; the same Spirit that wrote the Scriptures, directing her to understand both them and all matters necessary to salvation.'

As we believe ourselves included in the universal Church, i. e. in the number of Christian believers, we acknowledge no authority but that which thus included us,—the authority of Christ himself: to no other voice but his, as delivered in Scripture, do we listen with submission; and to none do we commit the office of interpretation; believing that God has given to every man the inalienable right and sufficient power to ascertain for himself what doctrines and duties are necessary to salvation. What the Romish Church may be which, so far from being 'universal' expressly assumes the power of guiding and informing Christian believers, we profess not to understand, having received no evidence of its origin and no attestation of its claims; but we know that in the Christian Church there has never been, since the apostolic age, 'one uniform faith and subordination of government;' nor do we believe that such subordination is designed by Providence, or that such uniformity is compatible with the present nature of man, or essential to his safety and peace. Believing that the Scriptures contain the word of God, and that the natural faculties of man are its appropriate interpreters, we dare not commit to others the task of receiving a message which we know to be addressed immediately to ourselves; especially as we are convinced that, since the apostolic age, no peculiar gifts of wisdom or of tongues have been conferred on any man. The same Spirit which dictated the Gospel we believe to pervade the whole spiritual universe, giving wisdom liberally to all who seek it, and enlightening those who do the will of God respecting the doctrine which is of God.

Since the Roman Catholic Church cannot find a basis for its claims in the Scriptures, those claims must be founded on the 'apostolical and ecclesiastical traditions' which she requires her members 'most firmly to admit and embrace.' The question between the Catholic and Protestant Churches on this subject is,—what traditions are to be received and what rejected; for the one Church would be as unwilling to receive all that have been current, as the other to reject all that have been substantiated. It is evident, as the Protestant Church admits, that the Christians who were not converted by the Apostles themselves, and who lived before the publication of the canonical Scriptures, could have had no other foundation for their faith than tradition; and on the same ground we establish our belief in the genuineness of the Scriptures; i. e., we declare them canonical.

When we reject traditions therefore, it is not as traditions, but in proportion to their evidence. If they appear inconsistent with the sacred writings, incompatible with the convictions of reason, or disagreeing with the circumstances of the age, we feel that the balance of evidence is against them. If they be merely vague and inconsequential, and not contradictory to each other or to any known truth, we hold them loosely, without firm conviction and without positive disbelief. If they be, not only consistent with, but corroborative of ascertained truth, clear in the origin, and early and extensively held, our faith in them is willing and steadfast. Of the first class are those traditions which were pleaded before the second Council of Nice, A. D. 787, on behalf of the worship of images, which we reject on all the grounds mentioned above; viz. because they are inconsistent with the spirit and letter of the sacred books; because they are incompatible with the convictions of our reason, and because they are perfectly irreconcileable with the practice of the Apostles and the discipline of the primitive Church. Of the second class are those which relate the various fate of the first followers of Christ, and which we admit in the absence of all other evidence, though on such slight grounds as to have no firm conviction of their truth. Of the third class are those by which we receive the sacred books as genuine, and which command belief from their universal prevalence, their strong inherent probability, and perfect consonance with the contents of the books themselves. It will be easily anticipated from what we have said, that we reject those traditions which corroborate the claims of the Roman Catholic Church to a special divine commission; since such traditions are in opposition to what we recognize as the spirit of the Gospel, and unsanctioned by the conduct of the Apostles, especially of Peter. Rejecting these traditions, we hold the opinion suggested by the record of the Acts of the Apostles, that their special commission expired with themselves; that apostolical ordination was a temporary institution; and that the special influence of the Holy Spirit was designed to be a temporary sanction.

The church of England appears to us to merit the censure and even the ridicule cast upon her by the Roman Catholic Church for the inconsistency of her institutions with the principle on which she professes to act,—the principle of the Reformation,—that the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants. Catholics and protestants Dissenter join in challenging her to produce from the Bible the grounds of the practice, among others, of episcopal ordination; including, as it does, the declaration of the regular transmission of the office, with its peculiar gifts of the Spirit, from the times of St Peter till the present day. Rejecting, as she does, the ecclesiastical traditions on which the Catholics depend, and unable as she is to adduce authority from the Scriptures to which Dissenters appeal, she has no alternative but to own the practice ungrounded, or to adduce some third authority, hitherto unheard of.

Some of the most objectionable forms of ordination for Christian pastorship were, notwithstanding, retained by various denominations of Dissenters long after their separation from the Church of England, and are still partially held; but Unitarians have altogether relinquished the conception that the teachers of the Gospel are peculiarly qualified for their office otherwise than by their voluntary devotion to it, and by those natural means of study, reflection and prayer which their duty requires them strenuously to employ.

We conceive that the Church of England has been led into the inconsistency mentioned above by conceiving in common with the Catholics, and as we think erroneously, that the institutions of Church government established in the apostolic age are a part of Christianity, and therefore destined to be permanent. Her Church government is, it is true, not the same, because it cannot, by possibility, be so, the lapse of ages having wrought unavoidable changes; but this mutability, which ought to prove to her the temporary nature of the institution, only makes her cling the more eagerly to the points of resemblance which she conceives to have been preserved between her own constitution and that of the primitive Church; forgetting that such supposed resemblance is immediately derived from that very Catholic Church whose superstitions inspired her with so much horror at the Reformation. Whatever resemblance the two Churches bear to the primitive Church in its external offices, they bear in common.

This resemblance, however, is but slight. In the primitive Christian Church, regulated by elders chosen from the people, and in no way distinguished from them in rank or learning, and served by deacons, whose office was to distribute the funds held by all in common, we can scarcely recognize the original of the pompous establishments in which religion is now believed to be preserved in its purity, till, on examining the history, we trace the degrees by which spiritual domination was secured. The most distinguished of the elders served the office of moderator in the assemblies which met for the transaction of business. In time, the office became permanent, and the 'constant president' was allowed to appropriate the title of 'bishop,' which had before been common to all the elders. When numbers increased so that smaller congregations were separated from one larger, each colony had an elder at its head, and the chief of the parent Church became a diocesan bishop. Large country congregations were, however, empowered to choose a complete set of officers for themselves, consisting of bishops, elders, and deacons, and were independent of the city Churches, till the Council held at Antioch A. D. 341 forbade country bishops to ordain priests or deacons, and allowed them the power of choosing only the inferior officers of the Church. The next step was to abolish the order of country bishops; country deans and arch priests being substituted. At length, synods were held, at which the bishops met as deputies of the people, to communicate concerning affairs of common interest, forgetting from time to time the character in which they appeared, and venturing to make decrees by their own authority, and even to claim a power of prescribing in matters of faith and discipline. The principal bishop in a large district was employed by his brethren to convoke these assemblies; and as the choice usually fell on the chief officer of the metropolitan Church, the title of metropolitan bishop or arch-bishop was applied to him; which term became common in the Church after the year 430. The patriarchs were of a higher rank still; and there were only five of them, belonging to the sees of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. They were not called Primates till the time of Leo I. The ambition of the clergy found extensive means of gratification in the changes made by Constantine, who adapted the government of the Church to that of the State, which he had newly divided and ordered. As the superior clergy grasped at greater power, the inferior clergy pressed upon their steps; and we soon hear of arch-presbyters and arch-deacons, and of the occasional union of the offices of priest and deacon in the same individual. Thus did the servants gradually become the masters of the Church; and thus, in four centuries, was the constitution of Christian congregations so entirely changed, that scarcely a shadow of their original institutions remained.

This brief detail (the truth of which is so well known that it is needless to give as our authority every accredited ecclesiastical history) affords the best argument for the temporary nature of the institutions of Church government, and sanctions the declaration of those who are charged by either Church with schism, that before they can again be required to join the Establishment, that Establishment must be reduced to the simplicity of government and discipline which characterized the primitive church. The bishops must assume nothing over their brethren, and be superior in no respect but in holiness; they must be stewards of God, not given to lucre, but eminent in faith, in temperance, in charity. The deacons must administer the common revenues of the church for the benefit of those who have need, appropriating nothing themselves nor suffering others to appropriate. The church itself must be, in all its views and objects, not of this world; having no respect of persons, not awarding to the man in goodly apparel a better place than to the poor man in vile raiment, rejecting every inducement to the usurpation of secular power, and leaving to the conscience of every man, as Peter referred to the conscience of Ananias, the obligation of contributing to the common revenue. 'While the land remained, was it not thine own? And after it was sold, was not the price in thine own power?' is not the language of ecclesiastical tax-gatherers in the present day: and till all contributions to the churches become strictly voluntary, till the churches abjure all temporal authority, and free their discipline and ritual from the encroachments of spiritual tyranny and the defilements of superstition, neither the one nor the other can advance any claim to spiritual allegiance, and men who dissent from both may hold themselves innocent of the sin of schism.

Thus much we say on the supposition that it might be possible or desirable to restore the ancient constitution of the Church. But we make such a supposition only for the sake of meeting the views of those who, feeling that the ecclesiastical establishments of the present day are unchristian, would fain substitute for them the simple institutions of the primitive Church. Believing as we do, that all such institutions must be classed among the non-essentials of Christianity, we would have them modified according to the circumstances of the age and country in which they are to be used. It is not possible that some of the original Christian ordinances can be advantageously employed in every country and through every age. The first Christians belonged, for the most part, to the middling and lower classes of society, and consequently had few possessions. These possessions, with whatever was voluntarily offered by the few rich men among them, were gathered into a common stock, in order that all might be so far freed from secular cares as to be able to devote their minds and hearts to the furtherance of the cause of the Gospel. It is obvious that the same reasons for establishing a community of goods do not exist in a Christian country, where the faith has no longer to maintain a struggle with the powers which opposed its first promulgation. Nor could such a community of goods answer the same purposes in a wealthy commercial state and among the cantons of Switzerland, among the nobles and boors of Russia, and the back-woodsmen of America; in states where civilization is most advanced, and in regions where the rights of property are almost unrecognized.

The same may be said of the external modes of worship. Granting that the complex ceremonies of Roman Catholic worship, so nearly resembling the rites of Paganism, might, by possibility, admit of a connexion with pure Christian faith, it cannot be supposed that the cross, wax lights, and incense can ever form a ritual appropriate to the customs of Arabs or Indians, or that they will help the devotion of the fiftieth generation from the present. Primitive modes of worship have, by a singular ordering of circumstances, been preserved among the Vaudois, and are still consonant with their secular state: but men who dwell amidst ravines and mountain forests think and feel differently, and therefore worship differently from those who inhabit the cities of the plain; while the faith of all is essentially the same. It is, therefore, unreasonable of the Catholic Church to require of all her members, dwell where they may, in the north or in the south, in the metropolis or the wilderness, the vow, 'I also receive and admit the ceremonies of the Catholic Church, received and approved in the solemn administration of all the seven sacraments.'

Far more reasonable is the Gospel in its requisitions, the sole condition of whose promises is, that men shall 'worship the Father in spirit and in truth.' We have said that the essence of Christian faith is the same through all varieties of manifestation. It has ever been so, and it shall ever be so, for these varieties of manifestation are ordained for the very purpose of preserving the essence. They are ordained, lest men, too much regarding things seen and temporal, should confound with them things unseen and eternal; should not only incorporate religion in material forms, but identify it with them. They are ordained that men may learn what Christianity really is, what the Lord God requires of them concerning it, what He promises them in it, what He purposes to effect by it; and furthermore, that men may mutually recognize the new bond of brotherhood which the Gospel discloses, by which all are made heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ Jesus. This recognition must take place as soon as the nature and design of Christianity are understood, be it here or hereafter, in this world or in the next; and surely the sooner the better.

That mode of belief which encourages the closest investigation into the principles of Christianity; which discovers the most clearly all spiritual relations; which affords the most distinct apprehension of the permanence and universality of the Gospel; which discerns how its promises are ratified, its threatenings confirmed, its truths corroborated by all other spiritual influences, by all the results of human experience, and all the developments of Providence,—must be the best adapted to the needs and capabilities of an ever-expanding and immortal spirit. That mode of belief which adapts itself to all times and circumstances, and which is independent of all influences but those which are unfailing, must be the truest and best: and such a faith actually exists in those views of Christianity under which it appears as simple and diffusive as natural religion.

The Greenlander, who sees how rapidly all natural influences combine to enhance the bloom of his transient summer, recognizes the same attributes of Providence as the philosopher who marks the expansion of mind under the vicissitudes of events: both are natural religionists. The great truths of Christianity may be also common to both. The Greenlander loses the wife of his bosom, and wanders on the icy shore to watch if any skiff traverses the horizon, to bring him tidings from the world of spirits; he listens to the sullen roar of the waves and the moaning of the wind, in the intense hope that the voice of a spirit may mingle with their murmurs. The philosopher who has suffered bereavement feels a similar want, though his yearnings are differently expressed. His reason is adjured, and not his senses, to yield evidence of a life beyond the grave; and the intellect of the one is as intently fixed as the eye and ear of the other on whatever may bring a solution of his doubts. Is not the main fact of Christianity that which is preeminently fitted to afford consolation and hope to both? To each in the proportion in which he is able to receive it? The Greenlander, who believes that there has been an actual resurrection in proof that all men shall live after death, is soothed and cheered by hope. He is brave when tossed by the storms of the ocean or half-buried in a snow-drift, because death is no longer the fearful thing it was. He is patient when his winter store of provisions is exhausted and his children ask him for food, because his faith teaches him that he who can restore the dead from the grave can preserve the living, though the means may not be immediately apparent. This faith is the same with that on which the philosopher reposes his trust, when he sees things that yet are not as though they were,—the revelations of the grave, the spiritual and intellectual communion of a higher state, and the blessed results of the trials and privations of the present. And a similar congeniality prevails respecting every other essential doctrine and principle of the Gospel; and even respecting its minor details. The universal spread of Glad Tidings is a fit subject for universal rejoicing. The moral beauty of the Saviour's character is recognizable by all; the spirit of his teachings is congenial to all; and the very illustrations in which they are set forth are of a universal nature. Storms everywhere beat on human dwellings, and in all regions flowers spring, and the lights of heaven shine and are obscured. The filial and fraternal relations subsist everywhere; widowed mothers mourn over the bier of a son, and rejoicings are witnessed at marriage feasts. The parables of the Gospel are the most appropriate elementary teachings for all minds from pole to pole; and the principles which Christ proposed command the assent of every intellect, from that of the child whom he set in the midst of his followers, to that which, exalted by all holy influences, is surrounded on its release from the grave by a throng of perfected spirits. It is for man to beware how he limits what God has thus made universal; how he monopolizes what God designs to be diffused; how he encumbers by human inventions that truth which Divine wisdom has made free to all.

By the Gospel, a new relation is established between Him who gives and him who receives it; and it is for man to beware how he attempts to modify this relation, or to intrude on the special communion which it establishes. It is not in the power of man to take away any thing from the Gospel, though he may narrow the capacity of its recipients; but he must beware how he adds to it the teachings of his own low and vain imaginations. He can do nothing to impair Divine truth, for it is made invulnerable by God: but he may impair and destroy its efficacy for himself and his brethren, by mistaking its nature and perverting its influences; by transferring to others the task which he may not delegate, of admitting its evidences and interpreting its commands. It is not in the power of man to silence the voice of God speaking on earth through Christ; but he must beware of listening to any other exponent of the Divine will, whether or not he refer his claim to St Peter; whether or not he appeal to human wisdom throned in the papal chair or attested by the unanimity of Councils; whether or not he entitle himself the Vicar of Christ on earth.

It is not in the power of man to restrict the influences of the Gospel. What they have been, they will be; what they have done, they will continue to effect. They will bless the spirit in its wanderings and in its retirements, making the universe the record of its history, and its inmost recesses the dwelling-place of Deity. They will restrain the excesses, chasten the emotions, and ennoble the sympathies of humanity. They will bless life, and hallow the grave. They will develope themselves perpetually as ages roll on, till it shall be their lowest office to still the sighings and subdue the conflicts of the spirit; while their highest shall still be, so to direct its pursuit of ultimate objects, so to invigorate its natural and moral powers, as to evidence to itself its ever-growing resemblance to its Maker. It is for man to beware lest he exclude himself from these influences or impair their operation by mistaking superstition for religion, and by supinely relinquishing the intellectual and spiritual liberty with which Christ has made him free.