the Christian Church is against the evil results only, and not (directly, at least, or by primary intention) against the defective institutions that may have caused or aggravated them.

But on the other hand, by virtue of the second character, the Christian Church is to exist in every kingdom and state of the world, in the form of public communities, and is to exist as a real and ostensible power. The consistency of the first and second character depends on, and is fully effected by, the third character of the Church of Christ; namely,―

The absence of any visible head or sovereign, and by the non-existence, nay the utter preclusion, of any local or personal centre of unity, of any single source of universal power. This fact may be thus illustrated. Kepler and Newton, substituting the idea of the infinite for the conception of a finite and determined world, assumed in the Ptolemaic astronomy, superseded and drove out the notion of a one central point or body of the universe. Finding a centre in every point of matter and an absolute circumference no where, they explained at once the unity and the distinction that co-exist throughout the creation by focal instead of central bodies: the attractive and restraining power of the sun or focal orb, in each particular system, supposing and resulting from an actual power, present in all and over all, throughout an indeterminable multitude of systems. And this, demonstrated as it has been by science, and verified

by observation, we rightly name the true system of the heavens. And even such is the scheme and true idea of the Christian Church. In the primitive times, and as long as the churches retained the form given them by the Apostles and Apostolic men, every community, or in the words of a Father of the second century, (for the pernicious fashion of assimilating the Christian to the Jewish, as afterwards to the Pagan, ritual by false analogies was almost coeval with the Church itself,) every altar had its own bishop, every flock its own pastor, who derived his authority immediately from Christ, the universal Shepherd, and acknowledged no other superior than the same Christ, speaking by his spirit in the unanimous decision of any number of bishops or elders, according to his promise, Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.*

Questions of dogmatic divinity do not enter into the purpose of this work; and I am even anxious not to give it a theological character. It is, however, within the scope of my argument to observe that, as may be incontrovertibly proved by other equivalent declarations of our Lord, this promise is not confined to houses of worship and prayermeetings exclusively. And though I cannot offer the same justification for what follows, yet the interest and importance of the subject will, I trust, excuse me if I remark that, even in reference to meetings for divine worship, the true import of these gracious, soul-awing, words is too generally overlooked. It is not the comments or harangues of unlearned and fanatical preachers that I have in my mind, but sermons of great and deserved celebrity, and divines whose learning, well-regulated zeal, and sound Scriptural views are as ho

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Hence the unitive relation of the churches to each other, and of each to all, being equally actual

nourable to the Church, as their piety, beneficence, and blameless life, are to the Christian name, when I say that passages occur which might almost lead one to conjecture that the authors had found the words, "I will come and join you," instead of, I am in the midst of you,-passages from which it is at least difficult not to infer that they had interpreted the promise, as of a corporal co-presence, instead of a spiritual immanence (ὅτι μένει ἐν ἡμῖν) as of an individual coming in or down, and taking a place, as soon as the required number of petitioners was completed; as if, in short, this presence, this actuation of the I AM, (εîμi ¿v μéoqavтõv) were an after-consequence, an accidental and separate result and reward of the contemporaneous and contiguous worshipping --and not the total act itself, of which the spiritual Christ, one and the same in all the faithful, is the originating and perfective focal unity. Even as the physical life is in each limb and organ of the body, all in every part; but is manifested as life, by being one in all and thus making all one: even so with Christ, our spiritual life. He is in each true believer, in his solitary prayer and during his silent communion in the watches of the night, no less than in the congregation of the faithful; but he manifests his indwelling presence more characteristically, with especial evidence, when many, convened in his name, whether for prayer or for council, do through him become one.

I would that these preceding observations were as little connected with the main subject of this volume, as to some they will appear to be. But as the mistaking of symbols and analogies for metaphors has been a main occasion and support of the worst errors in Protestantism; so the understanding the same symbols in a literal or phenomenal sense, notwithstanding the most earnest warnings against it, the most express declarations of the folly and danger of interpreting sensually what was delivered of objects super

indeed, but likewise equally ideal, that is, mystic and supersensual, as the relation of the whole

sensual-this was the rank wilding, on which the prince of this world, the lust of power and worldly aggrandizement, was enabled to graft, one by one, the whole branchery of Papal superstition and imposture. A truth not less important might be conveyed by reversing the image ;-by representing the Papal monarchy as the stem or trunk circulating a poison-snap through the branches successively grafted thereon, the previous and natural fruit of which was at worst only mawkish and innutritious. Yet among the dogmas or articles of belief that contra-distinguish the Roman from the Reformed Churches, the most important and, in their practical effects and consequences, the most pernicious I cannot but regard as refracted and distorted truths, profound ideas sensualized into idols, or at the lowest rate lofty and affecting imaginations, safe while they remained general and indefinite, but debased and rendered noxious by their application in detail: for example, the doctrine of the Communion of Saints, or the sympathy between all the members of the universal Church, which death itself doth not interrupt, exemplified in St. Anthony and the cure of sore eyes, St. Boniface and success in brewing, and other such follies. What the same doctrines now are, used as the pretexts and shaped into the means and implements of priestly power and revenue or rather, what the whole scheme is of Romish rites, doctrines, institutions, and practices in their combined and full operation, where it exists in undisputed sovereignty, neither repressed by the prevalence, nor modified by the light, of a purer faith, nor holden in check by the consciousness of Protestant neighbours and lookers-on ;—this is a question which cannot be kept too distinct from the former. And, as at the risk of passing for a secret favourer of superannuated superstitions, I have spoken out my thoughts of the Roman theology, so, and at a far more serious risk of being denounced as an intolerant bigot, I will declare what,

Church to its one invisible Head, the Church with and under Christ, as a one kingdom or state,

after a two years' residence in exclusively Popish countries, and in situations and under circumstances that afforded more than ordinary means of acquainting myself with the workings and the proceeds of the machinery, was the impression left on my mind as to the effects and influences of the Romish (most un-Catholic) religion,—not as even according to its own canons and authorized decisions it ought to be; but, as it actually and practically exists. This impression, and the convictions grounded thereon, which have assuredly not been weakened by the perusal of Mr. Blanco White's most affecting statements, and by the recent history of Spain and Portugal, I cannot convey more satisfactorily to myself than by repeating the answer, which I long since returned to the same question put by a friend, that is to say,—

When I contemplate the whole system, as it affects the great fundamental principles of morality, the terra firma, as it were, of our humanity; then trace its operation on the sources and conditions of national strength and well-being; and lastly, consider its woeful influences on the innocence and sanctity of the female mind and imagination, on the faith and happiness, the gentle fragrancy and unnoticed everpresent verdure of domestic life,—I can with difficulty avoid applying to it what the Rabbins fable of the fratricide Cain, after the curse : that the firm earth trembled wherever he strode, and the grass turned black beneath his feet.

Indeed, if my memory does not cheat me, some of the mystic divines, in their fond humour of allegorizing, tell us that in Gen. iv. 3-8. is correctly narrated the history of the first apostate Church, that began by sacrificing amiss, impropriating the fruit of the ground or temporal possessions under spiritual pretexts; and ended in slaying the shepherd brother who brought the firstlings of his fold, holy and without blemish, to the Great Shepherd, and presented them as new creatures, before the Lord and Owner of the flocks.