testimony of all who have maturely considered the subject, and arrived at definite results. This is no time for unreflecting acquiescence in commonly current propositions, no time for angry abuse of well-meaning though mistaken friends, no time for apathetic silence or shrinking retirement; it is a time in which, as he that hath ears to hear is called upon to hear, so he that hath a voice to lift up, called upon to lift it up in support of God's holy truth against all the enmity by which it is assailed, and all the confusion in which it is enveloped.

is

That there are certain points round which all are bound to rally, certain positions which all ought to maintain, not only all the members of our church, but many beyond her pale, are at once ready to admit; that our rallying around these points is, humanly speaking, our only chance of safety, our only sure mode of defence against the inroads that have been made, and are daily making, upon the territory of truth, is what few at least in our own communion will deny; and the question therefore obviously suggests itself, "what are those rallying points which at this time require to be lifted up as a standard of union in the camp of the church militant, for the gathering together of her straggling soldiers, and at the same time for an ensign to the armies of her enemies, inviting them to forsake the false banners under which

they are fighting, and to range themselves under the true Labarum to which alone belongs the promise of victory?" The answer which obviously suggests itself to this question is, that the rallying points of the church of Christ at this day can be no other than those around which she was gathered at the very first, and which, we might add without fear of contradiction from the great majority at least of the members of our church, were revived and accurately defined at the period of the Reformation. But whatever may, upon this latter point, be the abstract theory and profession of churchmen of the present day, it is quite certain that practically there is amongst them little conformity of sentiment with the great principles, which were not, as they are commonly called, the principles of the Reformation, but the great principles of Christianity, brought to light again by the Reformation, after having lain buried and concealed from the mass of mankind during the lapse of ages. While one portion of the members of our church are inclined to a certain extent to disavow the Reformation, and anxious to retrace their steps as far as possible, and to re-establish much that was then put down as dangerous or abandoned as unprofitable, another portion of them are equally disposed to quarrel with the Reformation for having stopped short of what ought to have been accomplished,

and eager to carry the Reformation further, by demolishing much of what was then carefully preserved, and relinquishing much of what it was then deemed profitable to retain. Hence it is evident, that supposing the Reformation to have been ever so happy and faultless in determining the essential characteristics of Christianity, yet a simple appeal to the Reformation, and to the voice of those whom God raised up as his instruments for accomplishing it, will not in any degree tend to produce unanimity in our days; but that in any event we are called upon to prove, de novo, the Christianity of the Reformation to have been truly the primitive Christianity. And as the Christianity of every period antecedent to the Reformation is liable to impeachment on the ground of adulteration and corruption; as there is no point of ecclesiastical history upon which we can lay our finger and say, "up to this point the church was preserved in purity and simplicity of doctrine and discipline;" as, on the contrary, the seeds of many corruptions, acknowledged to be such in their mature developement, are clearly discernible in the earliest ages of the church; it follows, that no valid appeal can lie to any of those antecedent periods, whatever might be conceived, in comparison with the corruption or the lukewarmness of later times, to have been their merits. Nay, it can be

с

proved from the canon of Scripture itself, that even in the apostolic age, perversions and corruptions of every kind not only crept into the churches, but in some of them actually obtained the ascendancy; so much so, that the vaunted rule of faith of Vincentius Lirinensis must, even in St. Paul's days, have been pronounced chimerical, and if attempted to be practically applied, must have been superseded by the simple and sound rule of the Apostle himself: "Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." Upon this, then, THE GosPEL WHICH WAS PREACHED BY THE APOSTLES OF OUR LORD, we must necessarily fall back, if we wish to make a last and a valid appeal from the controverted opinions, the vague and incongruous notions of the present day, and to ascertain what is that standard around which we are called upon to rally, and under which alone we can hope to

conquer.

But here a difficulty presents itself at the very threshold of our inquiry; and a question is forced

See Appendix, No. I.

Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est: "that which has every where, ever, and by all been believed." If this be the rule, we may well ask with Pilate, "What is truth ?"

d Gal. i. 8.

upon us, which has kept Christendom in a state of agitation ever since the lethargic sleep of superstition in which it was sunk, was first interrupted by the Reformation; the question, namely, what are the means of knowing at the present day, at this distance of time from the ministry of the Apostles, what that Gospel was which they preached? Two opinions, not more opposite to each other than they both are to the truth, not only notoriously divide the suffrages of the great bulk of Christians, taking that term in its most comprehensive and purely nominal sense, and are embodied respectively by the systems of Popery and Dissent; but they have in a less offensive form, and under a kind of disguise, found access to the minds of many members of the church, and so warped their right judgment, that if consistency alone were to be the rule of their conduct, unchecked by the modifying influence of sounder convictions, they must cease to be members of the church, and join either the one or the other of the above-named systems. On the one hand it is maintained, that however great may be the authority of Scripture in matters of faith, that authority cannot be brought to bear upon the minds and consciences of men, unless Scripture be rightly understood; and that therefore the intervention of the church for the right interpretation