CHAPTER VIII.

CHURCH PRINCIPLES-ADVANCED VIEWS-ESTABLISHMENT OF THEM-EN

LARGED SYMPATHIES.

In a brief sketch of my Father's Church principles, I would make only a condensation of what has been already written. Imbued with them, himself, they appear in *all his writings, so that none could ever mistake, or misplace them. And I speak of those distinctive features of the Church, which in the earlier day of his ministry were in abeyance, hidden under vague and weak acts of compromise and conciliation. Of the great fundamental spiritual doctrines of the Gospel, I need not speak of course. Swelling the fulness of the Church's ancient universal voice her faithful sons must utter them through the trumpet which they blow. The channels through which they run; the means of their application; the creeds in which the truths are crystallized; the Sacraments through which the grace is conveyed; the Apostolic ministry, in whose possession are the twelve baskets, that gathered and keep and must dispense the fragments of the Saviour's teachings and the miraculous means of feeding human souls; the Church herself, the Ark of God's eternal and immediate presence; these are the points without which the holding of theoretical truth is alike unprofitable and impossible; these are the points which are as the body to the soul, externally powerless in themselves, but essential to the keeping of life and truth, as truth and life are essential to their quickening. And these my Father guarded with a jealous care, as of old they kept the ark. He was one of those who brought the ark up from its concealment in the house of Obed-edom to the hill of public, open sight, that all men might look to it.

THE GOSPEL IN THE CHURCH.

The Church of the Gospel is that which Jesus Christ established. It was not until He had died for our sins, and risen for our justifica

* In a recent catalogue of the Church Book Society, the letter D, meaning dis tinctive, stands, before the only one of my Father's writings, they have published. And that one, a child's sermon. It might stand, before every thing he ever wrote, for children or for adults; for he wrote always, distinctly and "distinctively," as a Catholic Bishop, teaching Catholic truth.

tion, that the work of our salvation was completed, and the faith of the Gospel ready to be revealed. This done, the Saviour's next transaction was the organization of the Church now purchased by His blood. The twelve, and the seventy, had before gone out, to proclaim that the Kingdom of God was nigh. The proclamation was now to be, the kingdom of God has come! The forty days, therefore, that intervened between the resurrection and the ascension, the Saviour passed with His disciples, speaking, St. Luke expressly says, of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God,-instructing them in all those duties which were soon to devolve upon them in the promulgation of His Gospel, and edification of His Church: and accordingly, of all the conversations which were recorded, as held at this most interesting period, the commission and duties of the Christian ministry, the establishment, direction, and preservation of the Christian Church, are the continual theme. When he was just about to ascend to heaven, He issued His commandment to the eleven, All power is given unto me in Heaven and in Earth, mark the authority on which the ministerial commission is placed by Christ Himself.-All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and make disciples, or Christians, of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them, being first by baptism made disciples, to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you ; and lo I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Having thus instituted the ministry of reconciliation; commanded them to call men out of all the world, by baptism, into the Church; ordained in it a principle of self-perpetuation, in the succession of the Apostolic office as my Father hath sent Me, so send I you-and given assurance that the ministry in that succession should never be interrupted, always should be accompanied with the divine blessing, everywhere should enjoy the divine protection,-lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world-the blessed. Saviour, having finished the work which His Father had given Him to do on earth, ascended up on high and that to all the world the warrant of the Godhead might be clear and plain, and that the Church might be endued with grace and power to bear the high responsibilities, and to discharge the blessed functions, which, as the mystical body of the Lord, were to be fulfilled in her, until the end of the world, He sent from heaven the Holy and Eternal Spirit, to illuminate, to sanctify, to abide with her forever. From that time, what the Apostles did, they did according to the mind, and in the name of Christ. Peter, on the same day, preached, for the first time that it was ever heard on earth, the full and perfect Gospel.-The preaching of the full and perfect Gospel pricked the hearts even of them who had conspired to slay its Author; and when to their inquiry, what shall we do?-the answer of the Apostle was, repent and be baptized, every one of you, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, then they that gladly received the word,-they that believed in Him Whom Peter preached, Christ crucified, the Prince and Saviour of His people, and, so believing, repented of their sins,-were baptized, were made members of the Church of Christ, receiving in it, remission of

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sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost. And the same day were added to them about three thousand souls. Thus, on the very same day that the Gospel of Christ was first preached, the Church of Christ was first established. The record of that day was the record of all that followed. Thousands believed, and all that believed were added to the Church. Admitted to it by baptism, they continued steadfastly in the Apostle's doctrine, and in fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers; and believers were the more added to the Lord, both men and women. Thus were the faith of the Gospel, and the Church of the Gospel, united, at the first, by Him from whom they both proceed; never, as we believe,—and, since the converse none can prove, ours is at least the safer side-never to be disjoined; the one, the visible body, in which the other, as the life-giving spirit, is to exist and operate, the one as the keeper divinely authorized, the other as the divinely authenticated deposit, the one as the pillar and ground, the other as the truth, to be set up upon it for the light of the world; their mutual and united agency in the design of saving souls, as benevolent as it is beautiful, the perfect work of Him, who doeth all things well. The same Jesus who is declared to be "the author and finisher of our faith," is also declared to have "purchased" the Church with His blood." The Apostles, who were sent to preach the Gospel to every creature, were at the same time bidden, to admit all nations into the Christian Church by baptism. Upon the declaration of our Lord, recorded by St. Mark, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved," the historic comment of St. Luke is, "the Lord added to the Church daily the saved." The Gospel was nowhere preached by the Apostles, that the Church was not also planted by them. The Epistles of St. Paul are written "to the Church of God which is at Corinth," "to the Churches in Galatia," "to the Church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ; and to enumerate no more, the Epistle from which the text is taken, was directed, and the exhortation of the text itself addressed by the hands of Epaphroditus, whom Paul calls the Apostle, and whom all antiquity concurs in calling the Bishop of the Philippians, " to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the Bishops," (then the appellation of presbyters) " and deacons." Of Philippi I know not whether a vestige now remains. Macedonia, a province then of Rome, has passed from hand to hand, and been by turns the battle ground of tyrants, and the skulking place of slaves, till the bare name alone is left. And even the Roman Empire, then shadowing over, in her high and palmy state, the subject world, has shed long since her branching honours, and bowed down her towering trunk, and perished from the root. While here, to-day, in a new world, of which no poet then had dreamed, after the lapse of seventeen ages, and at the distance of five thousand miles, the Gospel which Paul preached is proclaimed, the sacraments which Paul transmitted are administered, and a council of the Church, with their Epaphroditus at their head, is assembled, in the name of God, and in his service, in precisely the same orders, laymen, deacons, presbyters, which Paul addressed at Philippi. Let there a man rise up, now, that can give, on human

principles, a satisfactory solution of this strange exception from human change and dissolution! Let there a Christian man come forward, and, in the sight of God, declare his clear conviction, that this thing could be so, but by the special and immediate interposition of the Providence of God,-the same divine assurance that he has kept the Gospel of Christ, from extinction or corruption, also preserving the ministry and the sacraments of the Church of Christ, in their original character and form! The Gospel is but a book;—and yet, while the writings of the most distinguished authors, contemporary with its composition, have perished wholly, or remain in few and scattered fragments, its sacred contents are still held by us entire and unimpaired. The sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper are outwardly but ceremonies-and yet while all the gorgeous rites and glittering apparatus of the false religions, with the pomp, and pageantry, and splendour of kingdoms and of empires that controlled the world, have vanished like the clouds at sunset, these simple offices-the sprinkling of the new-born infant's brow with the pure water of the baptismal font, the meek, unostentatious banquet of the bread and wine, which the Lord once brake and blessed and commanded to be received-still hold their place in every land where Jesus is proclaimed; are still received by countless millions as pledges of their salvation, and emblems of the love that bought it. The distinction of the ministry in three orders, with the exclusive power of self-perpetuation in the highest, if it be not ordained of God, is but the arrangement of human skill, or the device of human ambition. And yet, while all the governments on earth have changed in form, once and again, within the Christian era; while revolution has succeeded revolution, and emperors, consuls, kings, dictators, come like shadows, so departed, the arrangement which we claim as Apostolical, the arrangement which we find in the Philippian Church, is still, under all forms of civil government, preserved; has never in the tract of ages, suffered interruption; against all adverse circumstances,-pride, prejudice, poverty, indifference, treachery, is still maintained by more than nineteentwentieths of all that bear the Christian name; and by none who do maintain it, into whatever other corruption they may have fallen,—I mention it as an incontestable fact, and full of matter for deep contemplation, have the great doctrines of the Gospel, the proper divinity of Jesus Christ, and the atonement for all sin by His blood, ever been denied. Now, in the wonderful preservation of the Scriptures there is no pious man who does not recognize the express hand of God. Who shall refuse to own it, then, in the preservation of the Church? Springing from the same divine source, tending to the same gracious end, the God who joined them will preserve them, let us rest assured, together, till all his purposes on earth are accomplished, and the dim types and shadows of the Church on earth be lost in the perfect and glorious realities of the Church triumphant in heaven!

THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH.

God acts, in all things, by a ministry or delegated agency. He made the worlds, the Apostle tells us, by His Son. The Law was

given, He tells us, by the ministry of angels. It was by the ministration of the Spirit, that the Apostles were prepared for their great work in the construction of the Church, as is related by St. Luke. And Bishop Atterbury finely says, "He directs the affairs of this world by the ordinary ministry of Second Causes." He did not save the world but by the blood-stained ministration of the Cross. And for the knowledge and the grace, by which Salvation shall be realized in individual hearts, He makes the ministry of men available. "All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;" and again, "Let a man so account of us as of the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God."

That the ministry, in question, is divine these texts sufficiently establish the ministers of Christ; ""Stewards of the mysteries of God; " "who hath given unto us the ministry of reconciliation." But we need not seek for it, by inference. We have it, by express historic statement. In the midst of his own brief ministry, Jesus Christ chose men, to be His ministers. At the last supper the Twelve received commandment to celebrate the Holy Eucharist for His commemoration. On the night after His resurrection, He said unto them, "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." When He was just ascending into Heaven, He said, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth: go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." And when the Holy Ghost, which He had promised, came from heaven, it fell upon the Twelve, and gave them power to speak with tongues: and from that moment they began to preach the Gospel unto every creature; and to baptize all believers in his name.

A ministry implies exclusiveness. Much more a divine ministry. To select certain persons, for a trust, is to exclude all other persons from it. To appoint men to do an act is to limit the doing of it to them. When Korah, Dathan, and Abiram intruded on the office of the priests, they perished in their intrusion. No man lawfully or safely took that honour upon him, but he that was called of God, as was Aaron. Only to the Twelve, did Jesus say, on the night in which he was betrayed, "Do this in remembrance of me." Only to the Twelve, did Jesus say, on the night of the day on which he "As rose, my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." Only to the Twelve, did Jesus say, on the morning of the Ascension, Go ye and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them." Only the Twelve stood up, upon that memorable Pentecost, and said, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ." Only of the Twelve, the sacred nucleus of the Church, about which its whole mass has gathered, is it written, "And the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls." There was, and, therefore, can be, but one ministry of Jesus Christ; and that, the Apostolic.

The Apostolic ministry was meant to be, and so was made, per