members of Christ by virtue of their being members of a visible Church of Christ, and continue so, unless excommunicated, to the last moment of life, why should they not, in a future state, still be members of Christ? Death, it will perhaps be replied, separates them from that Church of Christ which is His body. But why should death do so? Death effects no essential change in men's spiritual condition: as the tree falls so does it lie. If, then, they who are destitute of the Spirit of Christ may yet be members of Christ and of Christ's body here, why should they not continue to be so hereafter?* In a word, if the Church of God upon earth is, in its true idea, a body of mixed composition, there is no reason why the Church in paradise should not be the same: a conclusion which, however inevitable on Romish principles, is too much opposed to Scripture to be openly maintained.

It is no alleviation of the difficulty to urge that even in those who constitute the body of Christ upon earth-that is, according to Protestant views, true Christians-there is a contest going on between the Spirit and the flesh, and, consequently, a mixture of

"

The degree of indistinctness which most students of Pearson must have felt to pervade his article on the "Holy Catholic Church" proceeds entirely from his setting out with the position that the Church, in its idea, comprehends both good and bad, and is called "holy" only "as St. Matthew calls Jerusalem the holy city, when we know that there was in that city a general corruption in manners.' (On the Creed, p. 578. Oxford. Edit. 1833.) Immediately afterwards he proceeds to remark that "of those promiscuously contained in the Church, such as are void of all saving grace while they live and communicate" (outwardly he must mean) "with the rest of the Church, and when they pass out of this life, die in their sins, and remain under the eternal wrath of God; as they were not in their persons holy while they lived, so are they in no way of the Church after their death, neither as members of it nor as contained in it." Assuming Pearson's original position to be correct, we ask, why are such persons not members of the Church after death as well as before? If, notwithstanding their personal unholiness, they were true members of the body of Christ while they lived, what is there in death which should all at once deprive them of this privilege? Pearson supplies no answer to this obvious question. What is evidently wanting to justify his statement is the Protestant doctrine, that those who "are not in their persons holy" do not, even in this life, properly belong to the Church; for if this be so, we can then understand how death deprives them, not of real church-membership, for that they never enjoyed, but of that mere external connexion which they here had with the body of Christ. At death they do not cease to be members of the Church; but their never having been so, is then manifested; death does not sever them from the Church, but proves that they were never really of it. Elsewhere, however, in the same article, Pearson fully adopts the Protestant view, and, in fact, answers himself: "If I have communion with a saint of God, as such, while he liveth here, I must still have communion with him when he is departed hence: because the foundation of that communion cannot be removed by death. The mystical union between Christ and His Church- the spiritual conjunction of the members to the head-is the true foundation of that communion which one member hath with another. But death, which is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body, maketh no separation in the mystical union- -no breach of the spiritual conjunction and consequently there must continue the same communion, because there remaineth the same foundation."- Pp. 600, 601.

good and evil, which is not the case with the Church of the departed:* so that, even on their own ground, Protestants cannot make the two coalesce into one communion. For to admit that the Christian is not perfect, is by no means to admit that he is under the dominion of sin; and the objection proceeds on the supposition that we have no alternative but to maintain the one proposition or the other. It is true that Christians never in this life attain a perfect freedom from sin: it is true that there is ever going on within them a conflict between good and evil; and that, at best, their holiness is imperfect. But the distinctive feature of the Christian is, that he struggles successfully against sin; that sin is no longer dominant in him: he is a real saint, though an imperfect one. His inward man is emancipated from the thraldom of evil, though the traces of his former state of slavery are yet visible. This is the light in which Scripture always represents the Christian. It seems not to recognise the sin that yet cleaves to him as properly part of himself, or, at any rate, as essentially interfering with the present enjoyment of his spiritual privileges. Imperfect as he is, he is actually risen with Christ: he has within him the earnest of the inheritance, the commencement and pledge of eternal life itself. The remnants of an evil nature which still cleave to him belong not to him as a Christian, any more than the decaying husk out of which the butterfly is evolving itself is part of the insect itself. The Christian life here is as essentially one with that of the glorified saints as the bud with the flower, the child with the man. The saint here is not a different being from the same saint in paradise, but one and the same person in different stages of spiritual growth. Hence there can be a real communion between that part of the body of Christ which is upon earth and that part which is in the place of separate spirits; the Spirit of Christ, the true foundation of their communion, reigning equally in both, though in the former His reign is not so undisturbed as it is in the latter. Augustin, as quoted by Bishop Taylor (Dissuasive, &c.), touches upon this flaw in the Romish theory, when he remarks:-non reverâ Domini corpus est, quod cum illo non erit in æternum," that is not truly the body of Christ which is not to reign with Christ eternally.

It is only the Protestant that assigns to the Church a place among the articles of the Christian faith. Faith is the evidence of things not seen, and, as such, is opposed to sight. Faith dis

Gladstone's Church Principles, &c. p. 115.

cerned what to the eye of sight was invisible- in Jesus of Nazareth the Only begotten son of God. Were the Church primarily a visible institution or system, there would be no more need of faith now to realize its existence than there was need of it to assure the Jew of the existence of the Mosaic institutions. The authors of the Romish Catechism, unable in any other way to explain why the Church should form an article of the Creed, refer us to the "mysteries" or sacraments therein celebrated, the nature of which, we are told, is beyond human comprehension.* But this is faith in the sacraments, not faith in the Church. Nor is Bellarmin more successful in extricating himself from the difficulty, when he urges that, whereas the Church is a society of those who profess the doctrines of Christianity, and what the Christian. doctrines are is matter not of sight, but of faith, this is sufficient to account for the Creed's containing the article in question; † for this, again, is only faith in the Christian faith. It is the Church itself that is presented as an object of faith; and why it is so, is, on Protestant grounds, easily understood. The visible Church, in its ordinary state, so little answers to its true idea, that the Christian, looking upon the outward appearance only, might well be tempted to doubt whether the gates of hell had not, contrary to Christ's promise, prevailed against Christ's mystical body. What is the history of the Church but a history of the heresies, divisions, and scandals, which have ever deformed the face of visible Christianity? To the Christian the aspect of visible Christianity is perplexing in the extreme; and were it not for the sure word of promise, his hasty conclusion would resemble that of Elijah under analogous circumstances. But here faith, in its proper office, interposes, and realizes to the believer what we cannot see. The promise of Christ assures him that, although this or that visible Church may become corrupt, and finally perish, the true Church never can fail: the same promise enables him to believe that, notwithstanding the sins, divisions, imperfections, and changes incident to the Church visible, the Church, in its eternal and unchangeable attributes of unity, truth, and holiness, is not the less in being, and not the less secure against the assaults of every enemy. Comparing the two theories in a philosophical point of view, we must assign the superiority to the Protestant. A religious society the distinctive being of which consists in its ritual, or polity, is

....

"Etsi quivis ratione et sensibus percipit ecclesiam . . . . tamen illa mysteria quæ in sancta ecclesia contineri declaratum est, mens fide tantummodo illustrata intelligere potest." Cap. x. s. 21.

† De Eccles. Mil. 1. iii. 15.

obviously in a lower stage of progress than one which has its true characteristic in the inner spirit that pervades it; for no one surely will deny that religion has not attained its proper end until it has become a disposition of the heart. If there be two religious com. munities, of one of which it is the characteristic to work from without inwards, as a mould impresses its likeness upon the passive clay; while in the other the mode of working is from within outwards, the visible institutions being, as in all forms of organic life, the result and the manifestation of the spirit within; there can be no doubt that the latter alone fully answers to the idea of a religious society. The former may have its use and its value, but it can only be as introductory to the latter, which is exactly the relation in which Judaism stands to Christianity. The Law, imperfect as it was in itself, had its use in preparing the way for the Gospel; but it is an abuse of it—a misconception of its place in God's dispensation -to reproduce it under the present dispensation. Moreover, if the question were proposed, how can we best secure the visible extension of the Church, and a vigorous development of church life in polity, discipline, the use of the Sacraments, and spiritual exercises, common sense, as well as Scripture, would dictate the reply: first form and strengthen the spiritual life within, which, if it exist in a healthy state, will inevitably throw itself out into a corresponding energy of action: whereas, to begin from without to aim in strengthening the life within by multiplying outward observances, in which the act done is more regarded than the spirit in which it is done can end in nothing but disappointment: it may produce a semblance of religious activity, but this activity will be mechanical, not the spontaneous energy of a living being. Bodily vigour is better promoted by strengthening the central functions than by carefully cherishing the extremities of the system. A religious system which has its true being within possesses a substantial ground of permanent visibility; for life and feeling struggle for outward expression, and rest not until they have attained their suitable manifestation: but a religion, the essence of which lies in its visible institutions, tends, by an inevitable process, to its own dissolution: unsustained by a living energy within, the husk decays, and at length drops off. Just in proportion, then, as Protestantism, as compared with Romanism, takes the inward view of the Church, does it place the legitimate expansion of the various elements of visible church life upon a surer and more permanent basis.*

In reference to this point, Moehler has a remarkable passage: "It is not to be doubted that Christ maintains His Church in vigour by means of those who live in faith, belong to

It is not indeed to be denied that Protestantism, inasmuch as it does not profess to be absolute truth, but truth as opposed to Romanism, may, like all systems which have arisen from reaction, and have been framed in opposition to strongly felt evils, give birth to tendencies which, when carried out, are destructive of the conditions under which Christianity was intended by its divine Founder to exist in the world. The temptation either to undervalue the external means of grace or to regard the inward fellowship of the Spirit, not only as, what it is, the real basis of the visible unity of Christians, but as, of itself, compensating for the absence of such unity where unhappily it does not exist, is that to which the Protestant is exposed, and against which he must be on his guard. He may be tempted to forget that the sacraments, if they do not work ex opere operato, are yet special and effectual seals of our union with Christ; yea, are ordinarily necessary to salvation; and that apostolic, or even ecclesiastical, regulations of polity, if they cannot be proved to be of the essence of the Church, are not on that account to be regarded as of no importance. He may not sufficiently bear in mind that the spiritual life in the hearts of Christians must necessarily be in a feeble condition if it does not succeed in producing visible results in the way of unity and organization; and that the Church can only operate upon the world by means of its visible ordinances, and its visible corporate life. It must be admitted, in short, that there is an affinity between Protestantisin and mysticism, or gnosticism, which renders it possible for the former to degenerate into the latter. But it should be remembered that the Romish theory also has its evil tendencies, and those of a more pernicious character than belongs to the extreme of ultra-Protestantism. Fanaticism, superstitition, and the practices of the ascetic discipline, are the perversions of religious life which the Romish doctrine of the Church has a tendency to produce, and in fact has produced: perversions which are less susceptible of correction than those connected with spiritualistic tendencies. It should seem, too, that that theory must, when its natural results are not neutralised by other influences, operate injuriously upon the standard of Christian practice: to say the least, its tendency is to keep out of sight the important truth

Him in spirit, and hope for his appearing: these, unquestionably, are the true supporters of the visible Church. As for the wicked in the Church- that is, the unbelieving and the hypocrites, the dead members of Christ's body, - they would not for a single day maintain the Church, even in its visibility; as far as in them lies, they divide it and expose it to contempt.” — Symbolik, p. 431. The wonder is how, from such an admission, he was not le to question the soundness of the Romish theory.