those who have to our sorrow abandoned us here, we find their newly-acquired zeal for a creative authority in doctrine, accompanied with an inclination to perplex or disturb all which they had themselves most desired to settle before. Who can but grieve bitterly to see that great moral disorder of our present intellectual world, the idolatry of power as such, so apparently exemplified even here; when in the single aspect of what is collectively strong, imposing, and influential, the sense is thus deadened and obscured of what is simply and permanently true?

But after thus surveying the answers which persons intent on favorite theories, or at best, partial views of truth, have offered to the question,--What is the idea of Christianity? it is now assuredly time. to ask whether the Church of GOD has any answer to the question. It were wrong to say that no such answer had been given: when the earliest care of the Church was to define against heretics that essential verity of Christian faith, without the possession of which, all professed belief in the sources of revelation was pronounced inadequate and unavailing. And yet in the sense in which many now expect the question to be resolved, it is certain no answer is or can be returned by the Catholic Christian; I mean that what he considers as the essential truth of CHRIST's religion, will never be allowed by him to be resolved into any other truth more general and comprehensive than itself. But let me now unfold and demonstrate this point:

and let the Holy

Scriptures be, as they ever should, the main support, and groundwork of our argument.

What then says the beloved disciple of JESUS CHRIST in my text, as to the truth by which alone men are joined to the Apostolic fellowship, and by which in that fellowship they are saved? He distinctly declares this to be the believing reception of that Eternal Life, which once hidden in the bosom of the Eternal FATHER from all created sight, was in the later ages manifested to mankind in the person of the Eternal SON. The Life thus manifested-the Word of Life in S. John's discourses is no Ens Rationis, no ideal conception of the higher faculties exclusively it was what he and his followers had seen and looked upon, and handled : it was in other words a true and visible, and palpable Incarnation of the Eternal Word,-very Man of man, even as He was very GOD of GOD. And that we may not mistake the importance of this; not only does the holy Apostle thus present it with singular reiteration of speech as certain matter of fact, but he makes it also inseparable from the ideal conception of that truth by which alone we are sanctified and saved.

:

Every spirit that confesseth that JESUS CHRIST is come in the flesh is of GOD and every spirit that confesseth not that JESUS CHRIST is come in the flesh is not of GOD:" and this, as he continues to state, is that spirit of Antichrist which was then already in the world-the antichristianism in his view, lying in this, that in denying the Son, i. e.,

the Son as actually Incarnate-this spirit did in effect deny the FATHER also.

The truth therefore which the Apostles called on every one to confess, was not an opinion, or a conclusion, or a sentiment, but a fact: the fact that HE Who was in the beginning with GoD and was God, was made flesh and dwelt among us: that it was HE, the Son of GoD and principle of eternal life, that lived and suffered, that died and rose again as the Gospels tell, for our salvation from sin and death that it is HE Whom now seated in the glory of the FATHER we expect to come again to judgment. A fact which received as a truth, necessarily makes all other facts insignificant in comparison, which as a fact, and as a fact only is the object of what is properly termed faith or belief, and which cannot, without altering the whole nature of that belief, be taken as the mere expression of any general ideal truth, this fact it is which Christian faith is required to receive, and which, thus received, becomes the centre and principle of Christian love and purity and righteousness. And while to pursue this to its consequences in the Christian life, was the concern of the individual believer, the prime concern of those who watched for their souls, the ministers and stewards of Divine mysteries, was to preserve inviolate the belief of this great fact. Nor is there any zeal for its correct statement and reception, any anathema of those who would remove or invalidate its meaning, in the records, now so frequently cen

sured and condemned, of subsequent Christendom, which has not its approved precedent in the words of this Apostle, the specially beloved of his Lord, the incessant inculcator of Christian meekness and charity.

If this then be the great fact of revelation which, dimly shadowed forth in the preparatory dispensations of religion, was at length fully brought to light in the Christian,—if in this final dispensation explicit faith in this great object holds the place which was before supplied by implicit and believing submission to the inferior tutorage then afforded to the people of GOD, the question which I once before proposed to your notice, now recurs upon us, and demands resolution. Is the development which was thus plainly applicable to the religion of the patriarchal believer, or of the Jew, equally applicable to the religion of the Christian? Is that process of improvement and perfection capable of being continued, either in the same direction as before, or in a different one? And our answer to this question is distinctly negative. Development of a certain kind there doubtless may be, and is, even in Christian doctrine; I mean development in the strictest sense of the word, of which the limits are immoveably fixed, and may readily be understood by all men but development in any way analogous to that by which the undisclosed germ of things under the covenant of Adam, of Noah, or even of Abraham, of Moses, or David, sprang up to what was

in form and kind unknown before, such development implying improvement and actual change, cannot possibly be predicated of the faith of the Gospel, without impeaching the perfection and the finality which are its attributes. And whether the development be conceived to be, like the former admitted one, an accretion of new fact and dogma, constituting a creed more accurate in substance, and more varied in extent than what formerly existed, or whether on the contrary it be conceived to be a retreat from all particularities of creed to what is alone universal, invariable, and eternal,the development under either view is alike inadmissible, its pretence of legitimacy unfounded and demonstrably untrue.

For take first the notion of an enlarged development of doctrine, by which it is now imagined that there may be an indefinite expansion of the Faith once delivered to the Saints, as the mind of the Church is exercised on its topics, and by meditation. moulds and shapes them continually. Now, as I have first stated, it were idle to deny that developments in the proper and strict sense have their place even in the articles of Christian faith; when they encounter fresh modes of thought in the same subject matter, or fresh forms of evasion and virtual denial. Under these circumstances a statement of doctrine may be made widely different in form from that in which the self-same doctrine was originally propounded, being framed for the distinct purpose

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