their too evident lapse from sound faith and from scriptural practice, they assuredly cannot be said to have enjoyed the promised perpetual presence of Christ*.

I beg it to be here understood: that, in strict accordance with what the nature of my subject requires, I speak of Churches collectively, not of Church-members individually. Corruptions, which shut out the very idea of Christ's approving spiritual presence with an apostatic Church collectively, and which (it is to be feared) operate as deadly poison upon the great bulk of the erring members of such a Church, may, nevertheless, through the mysterious agency of God's grace, prove innocuous to particulars, who, in the midst of superstitions sincerely though mistakenly received, have been sanctified by the Blessed Spirit, and who thence are animated by a living principle of interior religion. With these holy persons individually, Christ is spiritually present: though, from their Church collectively, his spiritual presence has been withdrawn.

If, in this view of the matter, I be inconsistent, as some may think I must even be content to symbolise with the inconsistency of our judicious Hooker. See Disc. of Justificat. § 9-20.

The true rationale of the remarkable fact before us (for I venture to style it a fact) I take to be this.

Christ declares, that he will build his Church upon the Rock of Peter's Confession. He declares, therefore, that he will build it upon the Doctrine of the united Divinity and Humanity of the Messiah. Such being the case, a departure from evangelical truth in subordinate particulars constitutes nothing more than a corruption more or less intense: but a departure from the Rock of Peter's Confession is an absolute digging up of the very foundation of the Church. Hence, wherever the Foundation is held, grievous as may be the apostatic declension of the collective Communion which holds it; still, in such Communion,

Therefore the second promise must inevitably be interpreted with the limitations which have been specified.

Its import, consequently, will be this: that,

God, through his own mighty working and in harmony with the very principle of a Foundation, has never ceased to have a people individually.

They are not all faithless, says the wisely discriminating Hooker, that are weak in assenting to the truth or stiff in maintaining things opposite to the truth of Christian Doctrine. But, as many as hold the FOUNDATION which is precious, though they hold it but weakly and as it were with slender thread, although they frame many base and unsuitable things upon it, things that cannot abide the trial of the fire: yet shall they pass the fiery trial and be saved, which indeed have builded themselves upon the ROCK which is the FOUNDATION of the Church.—If the name of FOUNDATION do note the principal thing which is believed, then is that the FOUNDATION of our Faith, which St. Paul hath to Timothy; God manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit: that of Nathanael; Thou art the Son of the living God, thou art the King of Israel: that of the inhabitants of Samaria; This is Christ, the Saviour of the world. He, that directly denieth this, doth utterly raze THE VERY FOUNDATION OF OUR FAITH.-Forasmuch, therefore, as it may be said of the Church of Rome; she hath yet a little strength, she doth not directly deny the FOUNDATION of Christianity: I may, I trust, without offence, persuade myself; that thousands of our fathers in former times, living and dying within her walls, have found mercy at the hands of God. Disc. of Justificat. § 14, 16, 17.

This view of the matter will, I apprehend, teach us the true principle and full import of the language, which St. John has employed respecting Antichrist and the Spirit of Antichrist.

The precise and accurately distinctive characteristic of Anti

With one Branch or other of the Catholic Church, so that, either singly or severally, a succession of witnesses to the truth may be kept up, Christ will be present alway, even to the very end of the world; providentially precluding a total lapse into gross and deadly error either of faith or of practice; though not interfering to such an extent, as to produce a perfect agreement at all times in points

unessential.

christ and the Spirit of Antichrist is A DENIAL OF THE FOUNDATION whether such denial be heightened, it may be, into absolute Atheism; or whether it be variously modified, in different ages and societies, by a formal rejection, sometimes of the Humanity, and sometimes of the Divinity, of Christ. This, then, is explicitly stated and defined to be the badge or characteristic of Antichrist.

He

Whosoever

Now the very name of Antichrist imports a direct and formal opposition to Christ: and, accordingly, the Apostle carefully limits that opposition to a DENIAL OF THE FOUNDATION. is Antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.-Every spirit, that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God and this is that spirit of Antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world.-Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.- We know, that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is true: and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This person (Gr. Ouros) is the true God and eternal life. 1 John ii. 22, 23. iv. 2, 3, 15. v. 20.

No Communion, therefore, which holds the FOUNDATION, can be legitimately deemed a Branch of Antichrist, as the character of Antichrist is defined by St. John. And, thence, in a

C

This incapability of falling universally into mortal error, which is promised by Christ to his Church, and which in truth of necessity enters into the very idea of a Church in the legitimate acceptation of the term, Bossuet, we may note, would transmute into perfect infallibility, vesting it exclusively in the single Church of Rome*.

Communion which does hold the FOUNDATION, grossly corrupt in doctrine as such a Communion may be collectively, there is no moral impossibility, that God should have, individually, a holy and salvable people.

Here, we are encountered by no contradiction. But to say, that A member of the Foundation-denying Antichrist can also be, at the same time, a member of the Foundation-laying Christ, strikes upon my own apprehension, as something very like a contradiction in terms.

* Hist. des Variat. livr. xv. § 3.

CHAPTER II.

THE POSITION, RESPECTIVELY, OF THE

ROMANIST

AND OF THE REFORMED, AS PRODUCED BY THE TENOR OF CHRIST'S PROMISES.

The promises of our Lord to his Church place both the Romanist and the Reformed in a situation of some difficulty or at least of some delicacy: for, upon each party alike, they impose the necessity of shewing, in some Visible Church or Churches from the primitive ages down to the present, a perpetuity of sound doctrine and of sound dependent practice such as may warrant the belief of Christ's continual approving spiritual presence.

I. On this point, the Romanist usually displays a considerable measure of triumphant confidence.

1. His own Church, he urges, has stood forth, confessedly and notoriously, as a Visible Church, from the time of the Apostles down to the present time.

Now, to this Church was promised, specially and peculiarly, an exemption from any taint of