So, too, if Protestants (at least in the second generation after the Reformation) had gone back to primitive principles, and had never persisted in their attempts, each to compel the others into an exact agreement with itself, upon points not indispensable to the great end of the Church-the preservation and extension of gospel truth, and the conforming of Christ's disciples to His image-there never would have been the divisions which have sullied the lustre of Protestantism. countless and conflicting sects of an age in other respects free are the immediate products of the same false conception of unity. Each sect is not a united, but a consolidated Church.

The

Is it too late to return to first principles? Is there no wisdom in the history of the past which we may apply to the benefit of the present age? Ought not the effort at consolidating the Church to be immediately and forever abandoned, when the experience of ten centuries of Papal supremacy, and that of three centuries of Protestant dissension, have given their common and conclusive testimony that the effort is not only abortive but ruinous? Cannot the Church once more have true unity, and, in its future experience, be ever warned to its safety by the two-fold teachings of the past?

In the view of the writer there is a fundamental difficulty, which, it would seem, needs only to be exposed in order to be removed; and it is that the idea of a Comprehensive Church is, in our day, a new idea. We have been so much in the habit of looking at churches through the medium of sectarian prepossessions, that the idea seems complicate and difficult of apprehension. The habit of the whole community,

through the influences of sectarian education, is invariably to associate contractedness with the mention of a church; to suppose that there can be no such thing as an ecclesiastical organization except it be exclusive and arbitrary. This is a bad habit; and it is not one of the least evils of sectarism that it has wrought such a mistake upon the public mind. We wish our readers to lift themselves above this habit, to form in their minds clearly the thought that there can be a Comprehensive Church.

What is a Church? It is an association of all the true disciples of Christ, acknowledging His gospel for their rule of faith and practice, of every variety of personal opinion and talent and temperament and condition. To our mind the very name of a Church suggests the most comprehensive idea. But the habit of the public thought is different, and we lament the fact. The object of a Church is the continuing and extending of the worship and service of God, according to the gospel; and when this, the only object of an ecclesiastical system, is effected, all other things should be left in the liberty of nature. A Church founded upon these principles is the only one, we confess, which commends itself to our sympathies; and we cannot acknowledge one which rests upon a narrower foundation as illustrating the true idea of a Christian Church. We believe there is truth as well as beauty in the pious philosophy (partially quoted on our title page) of the eloquent Lactantius, where he writes: "The only Catholic or universal Church is that which retains the true cultus. This is the fountain of truth, this is the home of faith, this is the temple of God. But, since

there are many associations of separatists, who all think that themselves are especially Christians, and each of whom thinks that his own is the Catholic Church, let it be known that only that is the true Church in which are confession and penitence, and which is able to cure the manifold sins and sufferings to which the imbecility of the flesh is subject."

One mark of a true Church must always be its comprehensiveness. This is the prominent idea in that old maxim familiar to controversialists that, one of the marks of a true Church is its catholicity; and for this characteristic, which qualifies it for the accomplishment of Christian unity, we love the ecclesiastical system to which the patient attention of the reader will be presently solicited.

CHAPTER II.

The Church described in the New Testament as one-proved by Ephesians 4: 4.

It is proper to remind the reader, in the very beginning of our reasonings, that there is but one Church recognized in the Scriptures, and that in the apostolic age there was no such person known as a Christian who was not a member of this one Church; the terms were then synonymous. When, at the very first, the doctrines of Christ were preached, and men became converts to his faith, we learn that "the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved" (Acts 2:47); and, at the close of his long and laborious life, St. Paul writes to the Christian believers: "We are all baptized into one body" (1 Cor. 12:13); and he tells us, in many passages of his epistles, that "the Church is the body of Christ" (Eph. 1:23; Col. 1:24; 1 Cor. 12:27). It is clear enough, from these and other similar passages, that St. Paul and the other writers of the New Testament did regard the Church as one external society in the midst of the world, testifying to the one Christ and Lord; and that they never contemplated but one, except as it consisted of local congregations in the unity of one external fellowship.

To dwell upon only a single passage, which is de

cisive, and is enough, as the Word of God, to compel our assent, we refer to that which is our motto: "There is one body" (Eph. 4:4). St. Paul was exhorting the Ephesian disciples to Christian unity: "I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you, that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.' This exhortation he enforces by several powerful considerations: "There is one body, and one spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." Here are no less than seven reasons, supposed to be familiar and admitted, for the enforcement of Christian unity. At the head of these stands our motto, " There is one body."

There was, then, but one Church recognized by these Ephesian disciples, and in this fact was a constraining motive to unity. The phrase "one body" has reference to the external organization of the Church, its outward unity and discipline; for the word "body" is never employed in reference to any internal emotion or affection; and, besides, it is followed by the assertion, "there is one spirit," as a separate and independent idea. For still another reason, it cannot mean one body" in respect of affection, because the fact of there being "one body" is adduced for the very purpose of recommending a unity of affection, and there would be no argument at all, if the apostle is supposed to say: "Be ye all united in affection, because ye are all united in affection." St. Paul was never so weak, so

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