determine whether a society, calling itself Christian, deserves that title or not. The patristic, or Romish, theory which makes polity instead of doctrine the essential note of a Church, leads, among other evils, to the assumption of a power of pronouncing upon the state of individuals; and while the Protestant only ventures to say that that is not a true Church where neither is the pure Word of God preached nor the Sacraments duly administered, the Tridentine fathers, following in the track which Augustine had marked out for them, pronounce every individual not in commu nion with the Roman pontiff to be out of the pale of salvation. THAT a somewhat different conception of the sanctity of the body of Christ-the only attribute that remains to be consid ered-should be entertained by Romanists and Protestants respectively, is, from the principles of each party, inevitable. Since, according to the Romish definition, the Catholic Church is a visible corporation, having its true being in its outward characteristics, and comprehending, according to the idea, both the evil and the good, the sanctity which belongs to such a body can, of course, be a merely external one, or a sanctity which does not necessarily imply the personal holiness of those who compose the body. The statements of the Romish Catechism to this effect have been already adduced. The Church, we are told, is called holy, because, as a body, it is separated, in the same sense in which the vessels of the tabernacle were, or, the Catechism might have added, as the Jewish people was, to the service of God, the instruments and signs of separation being a profession of the true faith and the sacrament of baptism; because in the Church the means of sanctity, the sacraments, &c. are to be found; and because Christ, the Head of the body, is holy. Such, according to the doctrine of Rome, is the only sanctity which is predicable of the body of Christ; the individual members of which, therefore, may be, for anything to the contrary in the theory, destitute of per sonal holiness. For we must not suffer ourselves to be misled by the ambiguity of some of the expressions of the Catechism respecting the union of the Church with Christ, from which we should naturally infer that she must be under the dominion of Christ's spirit. By those who "believe and have been baptized into Christ" are meant, not true believers, but all who, whatever may be their inward state, profess the Christian faith and receive the sacrament externally. Hence, as this is all that is necessary to make men true members of the true Church, the latter may, according to the theory, consist of such as the Apostle had in view when he declared of certain who bore the Christian name that they were "the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose god is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things;" the characters of whom Augustin says that cum gemitu intus tolerantur. It is only their instinctive Christian feeling which has withheld the Romish theologians from openly maintaining this revolting doctrine. If internal—that is, real-sanctity be, in the eyes of the Romanist, a separable accident-an opus supererogationis-with the Protestant it is, on the contrary, an essential characteristic of the body of Christ. He cannot conceive such a thing as a union with the Head which is not, and may never have been, productive of any sanctifying effects: a branch of a tree, though it may be now decaying, or even dead, must once have partaken of the sap, and given evidence that it did so. Indeed, the statements of the Romish theologians on this point carry with them their own refutation. Affirming, as they do rightly, that the holiness of the members is a consequence of their union with the Head, from whom all holiness is derived, they had only to inquire further in what sense is the Head holy? for it will be admitted that there must be a congruity, if not in degree, yet in kind, between the holiness of the Head and that of the members. This would have led them to see that, since the holiness of Christ the Head consists in actual freedom from all sin, that of the members must consist, at least, in deliverance from the dominion of sin. Further observations in support of the Protestant doctrine upon this point seem to be unnecessary: for all that has been previously urged in support of the position that the true idea of the Church is, that it is a community of those in whom the Spirit of God dwells, goes also to prove that the proper sanctity of the Church * Phil. iii. 18, 19. is its internal sanctity, apart from which the external acts or signs of consecration lose all their value. They only are in Christ, in the full sense of that expression, who receive from him quickening grace; and they who receive quickening, receive at the same time sanctifying, grace. It may, however, be proper, with the view of obviating objections, to remark that, in maintaining that the sanctity of the true Church is a real and not a nominal one, it is not meant that it is, or ever can be, in this life, perfect: at best, it is but an approximation to the perfect standard exhibited in Christ. It is not, however, on that account the less a real, present, work of the Spirit. When the Apostle describes the Church as being "a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, holy and without blemish," he speaks, indeed, rather of what it will be than of what it actually is; but it must never be forgotten that its future state of perfection is but the consummation of a work which is begun here. In a real, therefore, and important sense the Apostle's language is applicable to the Church even in its present condition: it describes what she will be by virtue of what she is; what the seed of holiness now implanted will issue in hereafter: it describes what even now she aims at, though she can never say that she has attained, or is already perfect. For if the sanctity of Christ's members be imperfect, it is yet continually progressive. It possesses, like all life, a principle of growth; and the "new man," after the analogy of the human body, advances through the several stages of infancy, youth, and manhood, until "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" is in the life to come attained.* In proportion as spiritual illumination, and power of holiness, increase, the discrepancy between the Christian's present state and the ideal which is before his mind becomes more vividly felt; and this feeling, again, prompts him to fresh efforts; and thus, through the reciprocal action of obedience upon knowledge and knowledge upon obedience, "the path of the just" becomes "like the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day." And who can affirm that this progressive advancement in sanctification is to terminate with the present life? In a negative sense, indeed, the Christian will, in a future state, be at once perfected; he will be, that is, completely released from "the body of sin and death" which he here bears about with him: but, as regards positive advancement in holiness, there may be before him a field of pro * 1 Pet. ii. 2.; 1 Cor. iii. 1.; 1 John, ii. 13.; Ephes. iv. 14. gress as unlimited as eternity itself, and the measure of sanctity with which he commences his career above may bear but the same proportion to what it is destined to become, as his present attainments do to that incipient stage of his heavenly existence. Since the proper sanctity of Christ's body is, according to the foregoing observations, not corporate merely, but personal, the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of Christians, it is, of course, as such, invisible: we have, in the next place, then, to inquire in what manner it gives visible evidence of its existence. The Spirit of God, by purifying the fountain, makes the streams sweet; so that where the heart is truly under the influence of divine grace, the fruits of the spirit will be, in greater or less measure, exhibited. In this respect, the Church of Christ ought to be, and in fact is, whenever, by the agency of persecution, purging off from her the foreign elements with which she is in external conjunction, she is brought to correspond more closely with the idea, "a city set upon an hill" which "cannot be hid." The history of modern civilization is a record of the mighty practical influence exerted upon a world which naturally lies in wickedness by the measure of visible sanctity, imperfect as it is, which the Church is enabled to bring forth. It is a perilous mode of reasoning, and likely to lead to universal scepticism, to maintain, for the sake of theoretical consistency, that the visible fruits of the Spirit do not possess a sufficiently distinctive character to enable us to pronounce where they are and where they are not: not to mention that the sin of denying the evident operation of the Holy Spirit is spoken of by our Lord in terms far too awful not to make us tremble at the thought of verging towards it. The fruits of the Spirit, whether they be produced within our own inclosure or beyond it, are always the same, and always to be recog nized; otherwise our Lord would never have given us the simple test whereby we are to distinguish false from true prophets,"by their fruits ye shall know them." He does not deem it necessary to explain further what is good, and what evil, fruit; for He supposes his hearers not to be destitute of common sense, and ordinary moral perceptions; He presumes that they are capable of distinguishing between the works of God and the works of Satan. If men profess not to be able to do so, they simply profess that they have neither conscience nor moral sense. In short, to maintain that we cannot distinguish the genuine fruits of the Spirit from those which appear to be so, but are not, is on a par with maintaining that we cannot be sure that the miracles of Christ were the work of God because Satan also may produce supernatural effects. The practical holiness of Christians, wherever it appear, cannot, we may be sure, come of what is evil. One visible manifestation, then, of the sanctity of the Church is the holy walk and conversation of individual Christians: but there is another, and more formal, mode in which she professes herself to be holy, and that is, by the exercise of discipline. The personal holiness of the Christian is a property of the individual, not of the society as such, hence a professing Christian society, however large a proportion of holy men it may contain, does not predicate of itself that it is a part of Christ's holy Church as long as it exercises no formal official act, implying that assumption. The exercise of discipline is the true and legitimate expression of the sanctity of a visible Church, considered as a society. Hence the great importance of discipline. It is not merely that the absence of it operates injuriously upon the tone and standard of piety within the Church; it affects the claim of the society as such to be a legitimate member of the visible Church Catholic. A Christian society which should openly profess to dispense with discipline, and tolerate, on principle, open and notorious evil doers within its pale, would thereby renounce its title to one of the essential attributes of the Church: it would sever all ostensible connexion between itself and the true Church, of which sanctity is an inseparable property: in short, it would unchurch itself. For every particular church is so called on the supposition of its being a manifestation, more or less true, of the one holy Church, -the body of Christ. It is on this ground that some of the Protestant confessions- e. g. the Scotch, and our own homilies*. make discipline one of the essential notes of a true Church: nor does it appear they are far wrong in so doing. The power of ecclesiastical correction is one of the few which have been conferred upon each Christian society by Christ Himself (Matt. xviii. 17.); it is that which distinguishes a Church from a mere casual assemblage of Christians; as indeed it is evident that a commu nity which does not possess the power of admonishing, and, in the last resort, expelling an unworthy member, cannot be called a society in any proper sense of the word. It is true that ecclesiastical censures, being applicable only to overt transgressions, partake of the imperfection which belongs to the Church in all its visible organization and corporate acts: secret unbelievers, or - Second part of the Sermon for Whitsunday. |