rather two points of view, from which they contemplated this company of believers,-the one collective, the other individual.

"They loved to collect in idea - the members of Christ, as they styled them, under one idea, and present them in this relation of unity to their readers. Thus viewed, the Church became the emblem of Christian influences and Christian benefits. It expressed all Christ had lived for, or died for. He had loved it, and given himself for it. It was 'the pillar and ground of the truth.' It was 'the body' of which he was the head."

p. 79.

This unity, however, is purely ideal. The only unity really existing consists merely in the similar sentiments, hopes, and aims of the individual members. But

"There was another idea on which the Apostles insisted still more strenously, that of the individual soul. They taught the importance of the individual soul. Around this, as the one object of interest, were gathered the revelations and commandments of the Gospel. Personal responsibleness-in view of privileges, duties, sins, temptations was their great theme. They preached the Gospel to the soul in its individual exposure and want. It is the peculiarity of our religion, its vital peculiarity, that it makes the individual the object of its address, its immediate and its final action. Christianity divested of this distinction becomes powerless, and void of meaning. It contradicts and subverts itself."- Ib.

Here, then, are two ideas, the idea of the company, and the idea of the individual; and the first idea is to be held subordinate to the second; which, we suppose, means that the end of Christianity is the redemption and sanctification of the individual soul, and that the Church is to be valued only in so far as it is a means to this end, a doctrine which we do not recollect ever to have heard questioned. The place of the Church is, therefore, below the individual, and being only the effect of the operation of Christianity in the hearts of individuals, as the writer further on tells us, its importance must consist solely in the reaction of the example of Christians on those not yet converted, and in the aid and encouragement union among professed Christians gives to one another in their strivings after the Christian life. This, as near as we can come at it, is the Examiner's doctrine.

The writer throws in one or two remarks, in connexion with his general statement, to which we cannot assent. "It has been maintained," he says, "that the Church is the principal idea in the Gospel. It has been generally supposed that the individual exists for the Church. Ecclesiastical writers have

contended, and the people have admitted, that the rights of the Church were stronger than the rights of the members, that the prosperity of the Church must be secured at the expense of the believer's peace and independence; that, in a word, every thing must be made to yield to the Church." p. 80. The writer must have drawn on his imagination for this. Ecclesiastical writers have never contended, nor have the people admitted, any such thing. Certainly, so far as our reading extends, the doctors of the Church have always and uniformly taught that the Church exists for the individual, not the individual for the Church, and that she is to be submitted to solely as the means in the hands of God of redeeming and sanctifying the individual soul. This is wherefore Churchmen so earnestly contend for the Church, so willingly obey its commands, and so cheerfully lay down their lives in its defence.

The question of a conflict of rights between the Church and the individual, which the Examiner regards as the great question of the age, is no question at all; for there never is and never can be a conflict of rights. It has never been held by any one of any authority in the ecclesiastical world, that the rights of the Church are stronger than the rights of the members, and that the rights of the members must yield to those of the Church. Rights never yield; claims may yield, but not rights. Establish the fact that this or that is the right of the member, and the Church both respects and guaranties it; nay, the Church goes farther, and presumes the rights she cannot vindicate to herself to be the property of the individual. But where the Church has the right to teach and command, she does not come in conflict with individual rights by demanding submission, for there the individual has no rights. To hold him, within the province of the Church, to obedience, is only holding him to obedience to the rightful authority. When the law says to the individual, "Thou shalt not steal," it infringes no right; because the individual has not, and never had, any right to steal. It is sometimes a convenience to be acquainted with the views of those we wish to oppose.

But, passing over this, we may say, the Examiner holds, that, in the usual sense of the term, our blessed Saviour founded no church; he merely taught the truth, and, by his teaching, life, sufferings, death, and resurrection, deposited in the minds and hearts of men certain great seminal principles of truth and goodness, to be by their own free thought and affection developed and matured. The Church is nothing but the mere effect

of the development and growth of these principles. "It is but a consequence" of the effect of Christianity upon those who are "separately brought under its influence." These, taken collectively, are the Church. These organize themselves in one way or another, adopt for their social regulation and mutual progress such forms of worship or internal discipline as are suggested by the measure of Christian truth and virtue realized in their hearts. This is all the Church there is. If you ask, What is its authority? the answer is, "A fiction, a fiction which has cheated millions and ruined multitudes, but a fiction still.". p. 83. This, in brief, is the church theory of Liberal Christians, and, in point of fact, the theory virtually adopted by the great body of the Protestant world, and the only theory a consistent Protestant can adopt, if not even more than he can adopt without losing his consistency. The insuffiency of this theory it is our purpose in the following essay to point out, by showing that with it alone it is impossible to elicit an act of faith. We shall begin what we have to offer by defining what it is we mean by the Church, and what are the precise questions at issue between Catholics and No-Churchmen. We do this, because the Examiner and its associates do not seem to have any clear or definite notions of what it is Catholics contend for, when they contend for the authority, infallibility, and indefectibility of the Church, nor what it is of which we really predicate these important attributes.

The word church, it is well known, is used in a variety of senses. The Greek xxλnoia, ecclesia, rendered by the word church, taken in a general way, means an assembly, or congregation, whether good or bad, for one purpose or another; but is for the most part taken in the Sacred Scriptures and the Fathers in a good sense, for the Church of Christ. The English word church, said to be derived from Kúgios and oixos, the Lord's house, would seem to designate primarily the place of worship; but as oixos, like our English word house, may mean the family as well as the dwelling or habitation, the word church may not improperly be used to designate the Lord's family, the worshippers as well as the place of worship; in which sense it is a sufficiently accurate translation of the Greek Exxinoia, as generally used by ecclesiastical writers.

1. By the Church we understand, then, when taken in its widest sense, without any limitation of space or time, the whole of the Lord's family, the whole congregation of the faithful,

united in the true worship of God under Christ the head. In this sense it comprehends the faithful of the Old Testament, not only those belonging to the Synagogue, but also those out of it, as Job, Melchisedech, &c.,-the blest, even the angels, in heaven, the suffering in purgatory, and those on the way. As comprehending the blest in heaven, it is called the Church Triumphant; the souls in purgatory, the Church Suffering; believers on the way, the Church Militant; not that these are three different Churches, but different parts, or rather states, of one and the same Church. But with the Church in this comprehensive sense we have in our present discussion no concern. Our question obviously turns on the Church Militant.

2. The Church Militant is defined by Catholic writers to be "The society of the faithful, baptized in the profession of the same faith, united in the participation of the same sacraments, and in the same worship, under one head, Christ in heaven, and his vicar, the sovereign pontiff, on earth." But even this is too comprehensive for our present question,— to indicate at once the precise points in the controversy between Catholics and their adversaries.

3. We must distinguish, in the Church Militant, between the Ecclesia credens, the congregation of the faithful, and the Ecclesia docens, or congregation of pastors and teachers.

The Church, as the simple congregation of believers, taken exclusively as believers, is not a visible organization, nor an authoritative or an infallible body. On this point we have no controversy with the Examiner; for we are no Congregationalists, and by no means disposed to maintain that the supreme authority in the Church, under Christ, is vested in the body of the faithful. The authority of the Church in this sense we cheerfully admit is "a fiction," "a mischievous fiction," as the history of Protestantism for these three hundred years of its existence sufficiently establishes.

When we contend for the Church as a visible, authoritative, infallible, and indefectible body or corporation, we take the word church in a restricted sense, to mean simply the body of pastors and teachers, or, in other words, the bishops in communion with their chief. We mean what Protestants would, perhaps, better understand by the word ministry than by the word church, although this word ministry is far from being exact, as it designates functions rather than functionaries, and, when used to designate functionaries, includes the several orders of the Christian priesthood, not merely the bishops or

pastors, who alone, according to the Catholic view, constitute the Ecclesia docens. Nevertheless, to avoid the confusion the word church is apt to generate in Protestant minds, we shall sometimes use it, merely premising that we use it to express only the body of pastors and teachers, by whom we understand exclusively the bishops.

Now, the question between us and the No-Churchmen turns precisely on this Ecclesia docens. Has our blessed Saviour established a body of teachers for his Church, — that is, for the congregation of the faithful? Has he given them authority to teach and govern? Has he given to this body the promise of infallibility and indefectibility? If so, which of the pretended Christian ministries now extant is this body? These are the questions between us and No-Churchmen, and they cover the whole ground in controversy. On each of these questions they assert the negative, and we maintain the affirmative. To show that the negative cannot be maintained, and that the affirmative must be, and can, is our present purpose. is now no mistaking the points to be discussed.

There

I. We take it for granted that the writer in the Examiner admits, or intends to admit, the divine origin and authority of the Christian religion, and that the name of Jesus is the only name "given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved." We shall take it for granted that he holds the Christian religion to be not merely preferable to all other religions or pretended religions, but the only true religion and way of salvation. We are bound to do so, for he is a doctor of diviniity, a professedly Christian pastor of a professedly Christian congregation, and it would be discourteous on our part to reason with him as we would with a Jew, Pagan, Mahometan, or Infidel. We are bound to assume that he holds, or at least intends to hold, that the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is the only law of life, without obedience to which no one can be saved; and, since he makes Christianity and the Church coextensive, that out of the pale of the Church, as he defines it, there is no salvation. The Church, he says, comprehends and is composed of all the followers of Christ. No one, then, who is not in the Church is a follower of Christ. If the Gospel of Christ be the only law of life, no one not a follower of Christ can be saved. Consequently, no one not a member of the Church of Christ can be saved.

To deny this is to reject Christianity altogether, or to fall