divine wisdom and mercy have been so eminently displayed, as in the great scheme of human Redemption; what standard can be so proper for the purpose, as that which has been set up by the Deity himself. Whilst it is in consequence of that deviation from this revealed standard, which has by degrees. taken place in the Christian world; that all correct knowledge upon a subject, which made the strongest impression on the minds of the primitive Christians; appears at this time to be so lost amid that confusion of religious persuasions, which from long prescription have derived a certain imposing authority: as to render an attempt to replace the subject in question, on the ground on which it stood in the early days of the Church, an almost hopeless undertaking.

Still it must be remembered, that no human authority, how respectable soever from circumstances it may be, can stand against the divine ordinance. It remains only therefore, it might at least in reason be concluded, that such divine ordinance be ascertained, for all Christians, as sinners

redeemed by Grace, to conform themselves to it in dutiful submission. Such, I conceive, is the conclusion which every serious thinking mind must draw from the present subject.

But although, with the proper documents fairly placed before him, no unprejudiced Christian competent to appreciate them, can, it is presumed, entertain much doubt with respect to that particular form of administration, by which Christ intended that the affairs of his kingdom should from time to time be conducted in the world; and though we have unhappily lived to see an almost endless deviation from that standard both of doctrine and discipline, originally set up by Christ himself under his Apostles; as if it were a judgment entailed upon SCHISM; that its votaries, in their progress from separation to separation, should be ultimately carried into extremes destructive, in a great degree at least, of the object they profess to have before them; still we derive some satisfaction from the observation, that all the different branches of Christian separatists from the Church, have, each in its re

spective way, borne decided testimony to the wisdom of that establishment; by acting on the same principle of unity, of order, and of subordination, for the purpose of keeping together in one body the several component members of each religious association, which the Saviour of mankind judged essential to the preservation of his Church in the world.

For on entering only into the annals of our own Church History, we find that when those two organized bodies of professing Christians heretofore distinguished among us, considered themselves to be in possession of the true Church of Christ; they failed not to not to regard separation from them in the same schismatical light, in which separation from the communion of the Apostles, and their more immediate successors, was seen in the early days of Christianity. Whence it appears, that the difference of opinion among Christians on the subject of the Church, has not been so much with respect to the object to be secured by it, namely, unity of faith and worship; for on this point all Christians, however divided from each other, have

been equally zealous; as with respect to the means to be adopted for the security of the object, which each Christian Association professed to have in view. And on this principle Separatists from the Church, have been to the full as decided in judgment, and unqualified in expression, as the warmest advocates for the Establishment ever were, or ever can be. For there is not stronger language on record, with respect to the pernicious consequences of Schism, than was from time to time made use of by those zealous introducers of a new system of Ecclesiastical Polity into this country; and by those determined partisans for nonconformity to our established ordinances; who were themselves at the time chargeable, in the eyes of the Apostolic Church of Christ, with that very sin, against which they so vehemently declaimed. The two instances referred to, cannot fail to occur to any one conversant with the writings of the Scotch Presbyterian Divines, as occasionally employed against the seceders from their ecclesiastical establishment; and with the writings of their covenanting brethren, in those days of rebuke and

blasphemy in this kingdom, against those who could not be brought to place our national Church on their newly constructed platform. When, in fact, both these religious parties, or, perhaps it should rather be said, both these branches of the same party, were in an actual state of schismatical separation from the long confirmed Episcopacy of the Christian Church; which, at different times, they unhappily succeeded in levelling with the ground, for the purpose it an ecclesiof erecting upon astical form of government, better suited to the political views, and private prejudices of its self-directed builders. So that in both these cases, an evidently divine institution was made to give way to an human one; whilst that spirit of independance which constitutes so prominent a feature in the character of the natural man, was in both cases gratified at the expence of the revealed will of God.

The preceding circumstances, though sufficiently established, are not brought forward for the purpose of leading the reader into those paths of controversy, which have long since been trodden bare;