which you live. Now first is the church. showing herself in her real freedom and power; now have men learned to combine, for the promotion of great spiritual objects; the barriers which superstition and prejudice raised to the progress of the Gospel, the notions of a particular sanctity in places, forms, and offices are gradually disappearing, and all that machinery which has been found so useful in forwarding secular purposes, is converted to the service of the sanctuary. We have failed to secure uniformity of opinion, but we are beginning to secure uniformity of purpose; all is not yet as it should be, for a number of inconvenient usages and antiquated restrictions stand in our way; but all is becoming right. We have at last got into the true line and scheme of action; the church is approaching every day nearer to the condition of a great co-operative society, aiming at the conversion of the world, and certain, at no distant time, to accomplish its aim."

"Look forward, say a third party; every

thing behind you, except in the days of the apostles, is dark; everything around you is cheerless; the church began to decline when its first preachers left the earth; it has been degenerating ever since, and has reached its lowest point of degradation now. But a new dispensation is at hand; the prophecies, which, by one class of critics, have been supposed to be fulfilled in the first coming of our Lord and the establishment of the church, by another have been turned to mere private and personal uses, all point to its arrival; then, indeed, a kingdom will be set up on earth, then, indeed, Christ will reign among His ancients gloriously. Our present duty is to wait and wish for the time; to keep aloof from all institutions and societies, by whatever name they may be called, whether confessedly of human origin, or claiming apostolic derivation, which have been defiled by earthly sin. In due time a church will appear; the new Jerusalem will descend from above, as a bride adorned for her husband; and, by terrible judgments,

the earth shall be purged of the enemies of her and of her Lord, and shall thenceforth be the obedient subject of those over whom she has been the cruel tyrant.

Now, for those who do not feel the necessity of examining into the nature of Christ's church and kingdom, I do not write; for those who are perfectly contented with any of those views which I have described, I do not write; lastly, for those who want some new and startling view to set them all aside, I do not write. But in saying this, I believe that I do not exclude any very considerable number of readers. I have explained why I think that

very few considerate men are indifferent to the subject. I am persuaded that almost as few are so content with the system which they prefer, that they are not at times ready to abandon it as untenable, and at times to see a reasonableness in each of the others; and I feel quite sure that most men are sufficiently weary of systems and schemes, to resist the intrusion of any new one, affecting to displace its

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predecessors.

PREFACE.

What remains? I answer, to look at the facts of the case as they are presented to us by these disputants, and to see whether they do not give us some hints of an older and simpler doctrine, which excludes neither the Respice, the Circumspice, nor the Prospice; but declares that, only in the union of the three can we find a church which shall satisfy the wants of a creature who looks before and after, shall present the image of an order abiding from generation to generation, and be a mirror of the glory of Him which was, and which is, and which is to come.

2. My object, then, is only to trace the "Hints" of this doctrine. A learned treatise is necessary for the justification of either of those particular views on which I have commented; a learned treatise would be necessary to expound some original, view which should set them aside; but what seems to me most necessary, for the circumstances of our time, and the wants of our minds, is, that we should be taught how to profit by the writings of

men who have seen certain sides of truth very strongly; how we may be prevented from rejecting what they rejected. At present, most of our books are written against some past or prevailing notion; Papists write against Protestants, Protestants against Popery; the supporters of the Via Media against both. It is impossible for men holding one view, to read the works written on the opposite hypothesis, except for the purpose of finding fault with them. It is impossible for those who adopt none of the views, to gain quiet and comfortable instruction from the writers who have defended them. Thus three-fourths of our time for reading is spent in finding out what we may abuse; and numbers seem ready to abandon reading altogether, because they find so little with which they may agree. Surely this state of feeling is most mischievous; surely there must be that in the writings of all the three classes which I have described, from which we might derive a blessing; and there may be a blessing in each one, which the other