the liberty of testing, and, if need be, reforming existing ecclesiastical customs, by a reference to apostolical tradition-i. e. Scripture. A divinely prescribed polity and ritual, like that of Moses, cannot, without sacrilege, be altered; but no such sanction is claimed by the Apostles for their own regulations; much less can it be claimed for those of their uninspired successors. On the other hand, as long as the distinction between what is divine and what is human; between what is essential to the being and what may be necessary to the well-being of the Church is carefully observed, the Catholic Protestant-Catholic in the genuine sense of the term-will be as reluctant as his opponents needlessly to "break the traditions and ceremonies of the Church, which be not repugnant to the Word of God, and be ordained and approved by common authority," or to "offend against the common order of the Church:" he will assign to historical Christianity its just value, as long as it is not employed to impose fetters where Scripture leaves us free. But when points of order are put forward as divine enactments, he will resist the pretension, well aware that it involves the essential principle of Romanism: he will protest, not so much against the practice or institution itself, which may or may not be a salutary one, as against the dogma sought to be connected with it.*

CLOSELY connected with, though distinct from, the attribute of internal, or organic, unity, is that of the oneness, or oneliness, of the Church, which, according to the plan laid down, is the next to be considered.

Chemnitz well states the Protestant rule regarding rites and ceremonies:-"Ritus, qui Scripturæ consentanei sint, recte retineri, qui vero cum Scripturâ pugnant justo judicio, et nulla temeritate, rejici et aboleri. Quod si de adiaphoris ritibus qui cum Scripturâ non pugnant, quæstio est, simplex et plana est responsio; - Si non proponantur cum opinione necessitatis, cultus et meriti, sed tantum ut ordini, decori, et ædificationi serviant, et cum Christiana libertate non pugnent, posse de illis statui prout ecclesiæ videbitur conveniri."- Examen Conc. Trid. loc. ii. s. 8.

That there is but one holy Catholic Church is almost a selfevident proposition; two universal Churches being a contradiction. in terms. Moreover, both Romanists and Protestants agree in the abstract proposition, that out of the Catholic Church there is, ordinarily, or by virtue of the covenanted promise of God, no salvation. Those who shall be saved are, in the ordinary course of things, added to the Church (Acts, ii. 47.). Neither party, again, denies that persons may be saved to whom the message of salvation has never been brought. For if, on the one hand, such persons must be pronounced "strangers to the covenants of promise," on the other, both recorded instances, such as that of Job, and certain general declarations of Scripture, encourage us to hope that the mercies of God may, in their exuberance, pass beyond the limits which He Himself has prescribed, and be extended to many to whom the way of salvation through Christ has not been explicitly declared. In all such cases, however, it is to be remembered that it is not "by," but in "the law, or sect, which every man profess eth," that he is saved, if saved he be; for "there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved but the name of Christ: +" those, therefore, who, without the light of revelation, have been delivered from the consequences of the fall must have been so, not by virtue of the religion which they professed, if they did profess any, but by the merits of Christ imputed to them in some way accordant, doubtless, with the divine wisdom, but unknown to us. With respect to those to whom the Gospel has been explicitly propounded, the question admits of no doubt: they reject it at their own everlasting peril.

No sooner, however, do we proceed to ask what is that Catholic Church out of which there is no salvation? than the fundamental difference between the Romanist and the Protestant conception of the Church comes into view, and begins to operate. Out of that Church, which is the body of which Christ is the Head, which consists of those who are in living union with Christ and are led by His Spirit, the Protestant readily admits that there is not, and cannot be, covenanted salvation. For the true Church consists of those who are in a state of salvation; and a state of salvation is the state of those who by faith in Christ are exonerated from the penalty, and emancipated from the power, of sin. This, however, is very far from being what the Romanist means by the exclusiveness of the Church. Since, in his view, the body of Christ is that † Acts, iv. 12.

See Art 18., with Burnet's remarks upon it.

visible community which acknowledges the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff, the proposition in his mouth amounts to this:that, beyond the pale of this visible body, there is, ordinarily speaking, no salvation; the federal mercies of God being absolutely limited to those in communion with the bishop of Rome. It matters not how sincere may be the faith which derives its nutriment from the very words of Christ and His Apostles, or how fruitful that faith may be in all the graces of the Spirit; if the individual in whom it appears to exist be not in communion with the see of Rome, he is, in theoretical strictness, cut off from Christ, and consigned to the uncovenanted mercies of God. On the other hand, however destitute a man may be of saving faith, how barren soever in the visible evidences of the indwelling of the Spirit, if only he be externally within the consecrated pale, he is a member of Christ, and, as such, a participator in the privileges of Christ's body (Hoc quidem bono non privantur (mali), ut hujus corporis membra esse desinant. Cat. Rom. p. 1. c. 10.). Such are the conclusions to which the Romish theory, when fully carried out, leads. In this, however, as in other instances, that Christian feeling which no theory can wholly extinguish interposes to mitigate the rigour of the dogma; and various charitable pleas-such as that of invincible ignorance, &c. --have been devised, with the view of rendering it possible to believe that salvation may be had outside the pale of the Romish communion.

The readers of the early fathers will not need to be reminded that the doctrine of Rome upon this point is nothing but the mature development of principles which had long been germinating in the Church. The startling dogma that one visible Christian communion is the spiritual ark out of which there is no salvation required, as might be expected, centuries to bring it to maturity. It grew up in the following way:-The first contests in which the Church was engaged were with heretics rather than schismatics, -deniers of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, rather than violators of the Church's unity. Hence the early polemical writers-Irenæus and Tertullian-insist chiefly upon the historical continuity of doctrine in the chief churches from the Apostles' times downwards, and the contrariety therewith which the heretical novelties exhibited: a line of argument which, before the canon. of Scripture was fixed, or easy access could be had to the inspired writers, it was both natural and allowable in them to adopt: they were perfectly justified in appealing from the subjective fancies (aigéous) of individuals, to the objective, historical, faith of the

Church, as it had been always held. In process of time the arena of strife changed; and the Church had to deal with communities which were schismatical rather than heretical, or professed essen. tially the same faith with the Catholic Church, while they renounced her communion. Such were the Novatian and the Donatist schisms, the former of which occurred at Rome while Cornelius was bishop of that Church, and Cyprian presided over the see of Carthage: the latter in northern Africa during the episcopate of Augustin. Neither of these sects appear to have denied any article of the common Catholic faith; and, what was still more embarrassing, they retained the same episcopal form of government which prevailed throughout Catholic Christendom. Novatian procured himself to be ordained bishop by the laying on of episcopal hands; while the Donatist bishops of Africa were a numerous and powerful body. The consequence of this change in the state of things was that Cyprian and Augustin- the two great founders of the Church system-were compelled to shift the argument from the ground of doctrine to that of polity, and polity not in the abstract merely, but as transmitted in a certain historical line: they were driven to maintain the position, not merely that there only where certain doctrines are held, or even a certain form of polity is retained, does that form of religious life which we call Christian exist, for this would have left no distinction between them and their opponents who, equally with themselves, were orthodox and episcopal, but that genuine Christianity is only to be found amongst those who, besides being orthodox and epis copal, were in communion with the Catholic bishop, -the bishop, that is, whose title rested upon an unbroken line of succession from the Apostles' times. By both these fathers this is affirmed in the strongest language. Some of their remarkable expressions in reference to schismatics will be hereafter cited: meanwhile the sum of their doctrine may be thus briefly stated:-To the Church -or, to speak in the concrete, to the Catholic bishop, who, in fact, is the Church personified (scire debes episcopum in ecclesiâ esse et ecclesiam in episcopo)*-has been committed the exclusive prerogative of dispensing forgiveness of sins, and the saving grace. of the Holy Spirit, the Catholic episcopate being the sole organ through which the merits of Christ are applied to the souls of the faithful: consequently no one who is not in communion with the Catholic bishop can have any saving fellowship with Christ, or be

Cyprian, Epist. 69. Ad Florent. Pup.

a partaker of Christ's Spirit. That which in the separatist bodies appears to be faith, or love, or holiness, is not really so: the graces of the Spirit cannot grow save within the one consecrated enclosure. It is not the object (Christ) upon which faith fixes that gives that faith its distinctively Christian character, but the communion in which it is exercised-viz. the Catholic Church. On this latter ground Cyprian rests his famous assertion, that he who suffers death for Christ's sake outside the pale of the Church has no claim to the title of Martyr. Cyprian, as is well known, held that the ordinances of the Gospel when administered by schismatics are wholly invalid, and that those, therefore, who had been baptized by persons in schism should, on their reconciliation with the Church, be re-baptized: this opinion found a strenuous and successful opponent in Augustin, who, however, while he maintains that the sacrament, wherever and by whomsoever administered, remains a sacrament because of its institution by Christ, and is therefore in no case to be repeated, is quite as decided as his predecessor in declaring it to be useless as regards salvation, while the person baptized continues in a state of schism. Those who are acquainted with the works of these fathers will be ready to bear witness that this is no exaggerated statement of their sentiments on this subject; so completely, even at that early period, had the life of the Church come to be identified, not with apostolicity of doctrine, but with the external transmission of a certain form of polity.

In proportion as the organization of the Church grew into form in the manner before described, so did the idea of its exclusiveness; and when at length the abstract notion of the unity of the Catholic episcopate had become clothed with flesh and blood in the person of the Roman pontiff, nothing more was needed than to apply the principles which Cyprian and Augustin had centuries before inculcated to the new development of the papacy, in order to arrive at the tridentine dogma,- that beyond the pale of the Roman obedience there is ordinarily no salvation. None of the distinctive doctrines of the church theory took its place more naturally in the dogmatical system of Trent.

The Protestant, with his views of the relation in which the polity of the Church stands to its true being, must reject not only the Romish, but the patristic idea of its oneness. That "where the Spirit of God is, there" and there alone "is the Church," is an obvious truism; the question is, by what external means does the Spirit of God work, from the presence of which, therefore, we may