appearing within the church, and therefore at that time called, or bearing the name of a brother, and therefore a proper object of the apostolic judgment, he repeats and enforces his command, that they should put him out of their body, and abstain from all companionship with him, even in the convivial intercourse which they were allowed to hold with heathens. O yes, says Miss H's argument in effect-obeying one part of your injunction in removing him from our Christian fellowship, we may, in opposition to the other part, hold as much good fellowship with him as we please, in the social intercourse of this life; for he is then without, and you say that you have nothing to do with judging those that are without. Really, such pitiful special pleading would be ludicrous in common matters; but, on a scriptural subject, it is very profane. Admitting that the Apostle had nothing to do to judge them that were without, yet Miss H- - might allow it to be within the apostolic province to instruct and command those that were within; and what she calls the dealing ordered with the fornicator, Cor. v. 11, is simply a prohibition to the disciples against eating with him. A little more modesty might have made her pause before she virtually denied his authority for this.

If Miss H, by the words "not even to eat with such an one," understands eating the Lord's supper with him, combining this with her assertion, that the " dealing ordered" could only have been so long as he was within, she must imagine that there was some such practice then, as what has since been called suspending a person from the communion. If she mean that while he was still within the body, and therefore joining the body on the first day of the week in all Christian ordinances, the church were yet forbidden to eat an ordinary meal with him, I would ask Miss H- how long she conceives a fornicator is to be retained in the church? I would tell her that he is to be put out forthwith, as soon as his wicked character has appeared.

CXXXIV.

TO THE SAME.

April -, 1829.

BELIEVE me, dear Miss F., it went to my heart last Sunday to be obliged to call you to such a trying interview in the present weakly state of your health. I fear the very sight of my handwriting must now be painful to you. But can you wonder that I am unwilling to omit any effort for averting the sad result which seems so fast approaching? Allow me, therefore, to return to one point, which is capable of being put so as must command your assent, unless the

Lord has said-"Let her eyes be holden;" or (what I consider perfectly equivalent with this) unless you are left to shut your eyes wilfully against the clearest light. The point I mean, is this—that the English phrase no not, is exactly of the same import with not even, and therefore that it does not require, as you intimate, any knowledge of the Greek, to be satisfied that the eating, mentioned in the 11th verse, is not the eating of the Lord's supper. I have sometimes attempted to illustrate the force of no not," by supposing that I told you of a person from whom I had expected a legacy, that he left me nothing, NO NOT sixpence. I have appealed to you, whether you, and every one acquainted with English, would not understand by that expression-not even so small a sum as sixpence. It is discouraging enough that this appeal has not carried conviction with it. But perhaps, if I pursue the illustration in a somewhat different form, it may strike you more. Suppose you asked me how much has he left you? and I replied-" nothing-no, not two thousand a-year." I now call on you to think whether you would not be disposed to say, why that is strange language; as if 2,000 a-year would have been a small legacy ;-whether you would not at once feel that the phrase "no not"-in connexion with the mention of a legacy so great-was improper and absurd.

There are one or two other remarks which I would offer; but yet, if you still conceive that the words in the 11th verse "no, not to eat with such an one," refer to the highest act of Christian fellowship, there is obviously no use in saying anything more.

CXXXV.

TO MR. W. C

May 7, 1829.

DEAR BROTHER,-I need scarcely say that your letter afforded me joy, and matter of thanksgiving to Him, who maketh men to be of one mind in an house-in that house which is indeed his building. I should make very little of the intelligence that the W brethren had ceased to be baptized, had it not appeared that this change is connected with one much deeper,—with a clearer perception of that glory of the Lord, which confounds and lays low all the fancied glory of man at his best estate, Ps. xxxix; (Mark the emphasis of the Psalmist's language in the passage referred to; Every-not some, or many, or most men-but every man ;—not in some circumstances and unfavourable conditions, but-at his best estate;-not-is beset with much vanity-but is altogether vanity.) which at once furnishes us with an infinitude of substantial glorying in His redeeming mercy, and

faithfulness, and power, and at the same time discovers to us our own utter vileness at all times, the utter contrariety to God of all our own thoughts and ways, and willings and workings. The salvation, wherewith he saves us from ourselves, is great and wonderful indeed. Bent to backsliding from me," is the character which he gives of his people; not the character (as so many think) which was theirs, but which is theirs unvariedly to the end. Yet in such rebels he accomplishes that word of his promise-"I will not turn away from them to do them good; and I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me." The various and gross corruptions of the revealed truth of God throughout Christianity, in those days of the Gentiles, present an awful display of human wickedness, as just similar to that of the Jewish people. But there is a still blacker display of it, and of crowning malignity. It is this. Let us only be left to ourselves to make our own use of the gospel of the grace of God, in the purest form in which words can convey it, and there is no one of us that would not abuse and pervert that glorious gospel, into an occasion to the flesh in any of its most loathsome forms; talking perhaps most excellently about the truth of God, and at the same time walking after our own lusts, led blindfolded by the father of lies with a lie in our right hand. Well, how blessed is that hope, which, even this view of the malignity of our own hearts, does not shake or in the least affect. Any hope is false, that would be shaken by the conviction that we are fully capable, even of the wickedness last described; not only capable of it, but that it is one of the forms of ungodliness, to which our own hearts continually tend: the hope, which such a conviction would shake, must be a hope that we are not quite so bad. But blessed be God, the way into the holiest is so made manifest for such sinners, that we can at all times come boldly unto God, with full boldness, confessing our sin, without any attempt or wish to cover it; loathing ourselves, but giving thanks to his holy name, and glorying in it; satisfied with his goodness, and looking to him confidently to fulfil in us all his good pleasure, even to the end. But I must check myself, in order to add one or two remarks. You introduce the phrase, "workers together with God," which is borrowed from our translation of 1 Cor. iii. 9. In the original, it is not-" labourers together with"-but fellow-labourers, and not "with God"-but "of God"—in the employ of God; and happily a little attention to the context will be sufficient to satisfy any disciple of this, though wholly ignorant of Greek.

The apostle had sharply reproved the Corinthians for the schisms and parties that were among them. They classed themselves under different leaders, according to the different instruments through whom they had been called to the belief of the Gospel, as Paul, Peter, Apollos, &c., and some, no doubt, thought they stood on much higher ground, as having been called under the personal ministry of Christ himself. The Apostle strikes at the root of this carnal glorying. "Who is Paul, and who is Apollos," but mere instruments in the work which is exclusively God's, and in which the instrument employed is nothing, but that God, who works by

any he pleases, is all; and how unreasonable to make any difference between Paul and Apollos, &c. the occasion of divisions among you, when we all possess one common character, are all FELLOWservants of the same Lord. I believe I need not say more to satisfy you that the idea in the passage, is-not "workers together with God"—as if God and the Apostles were fellow-workers, but fellowlabourers one with another, employed by the same God in the same work. It is the more needful, however, to insist on this correction of our translation, as we know what a handle the Wesleyan Methodists and others make of the text, for giving a countenance to their profane atheistic idea of a sinner's co-operating with God in the work of his salvation; and indeed it is an idea which is at the bottom, not only of the Arminian blasphemy, but of most of the Calvinistic orthodoxy-in short, of the creed of all who would reject the sentiment, that every work and thought of the mind, and motion of the will, that springs from the believer's own heart, is from first to last opposed to the only true God-so far from being in any cooperation with him. Blessed be God! in such HE worketh both to will and to do, and his mercy reigns victorious unto eternal life. To his faithful care and keeping I commit you, and all the dear brethren at W, to whom, though unknown in the flesh, I desire my affectionate salutation.

CXXXVI.

TO R. L. C

June 8, 1829.

P need not endeavour to enlist feelings on his side. It is unnecessary, and the attempt is unscriptural. He really writes like one utterly ignorant of the nature of Christian admonition and scriptural reproof. He talks of them throughout as an exercise of jurisdiction on the side of those who offer them, over those to whom they are offered. He takes for granted that a Christian Church has the right of exercising jurisdiction over its own members, and that we attempted to exercise it over the body in Dublin. The whole of this idea is monstrous. The only jurisdiction over Christians, either collectively or individually, in matters relating to the kingdom of God, belongs to the king of Zion; and the moment any church, or any member of a church, thinks of exercising jurisdiction in the affairs of His kingdom, there is indeed an usurpation of Christ's authority.

Take the last act of discipline in a church,-the removal from among them of an unreclaimed offender. It is an act which their king commands, and in taking which they but obey his authority, but exercise not the slightest authority themselves. In obedience to his commands, they cease to walk with that wicked person;-they cease

to hold him in their fellowship. But let us look a little closer at the nature of Christian admonition and reproof. To udmonish a person is to put him in mind of something: and this implies that the person has before known, or professedly known, that of which we put him in mind. In doing this, do we exercise any jurisdiction over him? For Christian admonition there is always room from a church or an individual disciple towards any other disciple or church: there is always room and ground for it, on account of the continual tendency of our hearts to let slip the things which we have been taught; and therefore the apostles speak of it as an exercise of brotherly love, in which it is well that disciples should always be engaged. Col. iii. 16. Rom. xv. 14. And when they are thus blessedly engaged in admonishing one another, are they exercising jurisdiction over each other? But when any one, with whom we are in Christian connexion, appears to have let slip, or to be letting slip, any of the Christian principles he has professed, then there is a more special call on those who observe this, to admonish him, to put him in mind of what he is forgetting; but not a whit more exercise of jurisdiction or authority over him. Now, suppose that I send a letter of Christian admonition to a brother in those circumstances, with whom I have not an opportunity of a personal interview, what should we think of him, if, instead of meeting my brotherly labour of love in a similar mind, he were to throw my letter unread into the fire, and manifest that he was affronted and irritated at my officious interference? What should we think of this, if he even tried to vindicate it, by saying that, indeed, before the arrival of my letter he was beginning to recollect the principles, to which I aimed at recalling him? Nay, I will give P--- more advantage. I shall suppose that I wrote my admonitory letter under misinformation or mistake; and that my brother was really at the time kept in full remembrance of the principles, of which I put him in mind;-if it were really so, would he be more likely to burn my letter, or to be affronted at the receipt of it? Indeed, he would not.And what I have to say of one individual Christian writing to one, I say of twenty associated, writing a common letter to twenty others associated; whatever mystic meaning P― may annex to the term church. But of this more hereafter. But is not the exercise of jurisdiction implied in any attempt to reprove? Not at all necessarily, according to the scriptural import of the word, any more than in the attempt to admonish. The Greek word, commonly translated to reprove, is the same which in Matth. xviii. 15. is translated "tell him his fault" in which passage all idea of the exercise of jurisdiction or authority is excluded by the whole spirit, in which the disciple endeavours to gain the brother who has trespassed against him. The strict and literal meaning of the term is-to prove the character of a thing (generally its evil character)-by bringing it to the test by which it should be tried. In scriptural reproof, that test, by which we show the evil that we reprove, is the divine word. We exercise no jurisdiction or authority by referring to that tribunal, to which all the authoritative decision belongs. But where the reproof is scriptural, it constitutes one of the highest exercises of brotherly love, in that family where all are brethren" on one common level: and