men are members as men and not as Christians, to disturb the Christian in his duties towards God, or to interfere with him in the performance of those duties, or to refuse protection of him from the violence of others, in such performance. God does not permit Cæsar to arrogate to himself the things that are God's, or to set up his own authority over those things, or over the arrangements by which Christians choose to render those things to God. God has given to Christians a directory and charter separate from and above the directory of all civil governments, in regard to the duties which Christians owe to God. Civil governments are bound to protect Christians in their observance of the duties laid down in that directory, and bound to do this on precisely the same grounds on which they are bound to protect their citizens in the peaceable pursuits of trade and commerce. But there is no rule from God, by which Christians have a monopoly in civil governments, or any right, even if they could, to exclude men who are not Christians from a voice and share in the civil policy, no more than men in the pursuits of agriculture have a right to exclude men in the pursuits of commerce from such common voice and share. These are things that belong to all, irrespective of employment and belief, for all belong equally to Cæsar's government. But the duties and privileges of Christians are also things that belong to all, if they choose to receive them, and all have an equal right to their undisturbed possession and pursuit, for all belong to God's government. And Cæsar's government, as appointed of God, is bound to take care of those duties and privileges, bound not to interfere with them, bound to secure them from violence for all who choose to appropriate them, and to secure those who thus choose, from any violence, or intrusion, or oppression on the part of those who do not.

But if Christians have no right as Christians, as men under God's paternal government, under the rule of rendering unto God the things that are God's, to monopolize the civil powers and arrangements of the State, much less have they any such right merely as members of the Church on earth, as members of a National Church. Here, then, on the commonest, plainest principles of civil government as ordained of God, a National Church, which by church-membership gives its citizens a power in the State over and above that which all the subjects of the civil government of right possess, or ought to possess, is an intrusion upon, and despotism over, the rights of the whole. It is just as much such an intrusion as it would be if the agricultural part of the community were allowed, by virtue of their embodiment and membership in an agricultural society, to monopolize the lawmaking power for those engaged in the pursuits of trade and commerce, and not members of that society. It would make no difference, even if the members of the said National Church were all

true Christians, all members of the invisible, holy Church of God; for God has given that church no authority as such, or monopoly as such, over the things that are Cæsar's, or the arrangements which men choose, with due respect to the things that are God's, and to the privileges of all, as under God's government, to make for themselves in civil society. But where the said National Church is a society bound together only by a religious sacrament, and cannot certainly assert even of any, much less of all its members, that they are regenerated persons and true Christians, then and there by virtue of the form and sacraments of a Church to instal it into a superiority of power over other classes in the State, or to unite it to the State and make it a special co-ordinate authority, is just as outrageous a despotism and injustice, just as great a contravention of the principles of civil society as ordained of God, as it would be to give to a company of wealthy bankers, or an association of prosperous tanners and shoemakers, the same monopoly of power.

Nothing can well be plainer than these principles, viewed not from a side position, nor from within the entrenchments and monopolized privileges of a class, but from the bosom of the Word of God. The things that are Cæsar's belong equally to all, who behave themselves as "well-doers." The things that are God's belong also equally to all, who choose to avail themselves of them. But they are as clearly distinct and separate, in themselves and in their provinces, as the oxygen and hydrogen gases in our atmosphere; although in another view as clearly one and the same, and as little to be distinguished or divided. They are one and the same, mingled in their due proportions as an atmosphere of life and action; appointed for life by the Being who mingled and composed them. They are not to be separated, and the monopoly given to one, or to either. If to the oxygen, which may stand as the symbol of the Christian Church in civil society, then that would kill us by a super-sublimation of element, too intensely refined and ethereal for our earthly state, and passing into a despotism over the forces of life, instead of being a sustenance and support for them. If to the hydrogen, which may stand as the symbol of Cæsar separated from God, and of an earthly government unmodified and unmingled with any regard to heaven, that again would kill us, much the sooner, and with infinitely the grosser and more detestable death, by the suffocation of the spiritual life, by the despotism of the corruption of depravity, the putrefaction and poison of sense forced upon the soul, gasping and expiring in it.

life

They are not to be separated, for the one derives its true, sustaining power from the other, and they are both equally from God; but they are to be mingled, not united, by God alone, not man; and let not man dare contrive to make them interfere one

with another. Let man respect the progress of the Church, as a power which God infuses into society for its salvation; let man give free course to that power, and leave God to glorify it; but let not man take it up and confine it in a State machinery, to be condensed and let off as steam for State purposes. Let not man grasp a monopoly of it, or the pretence of its sole possession, for the purpose of a party, or even for the glorification of a State. It is not the state's thing, but man's; it is not for the State, but for humanity. It must reach the State, must be in the State, must penetrate and imbue the State, through the man, the citizen, the individual; through humanity, through the organization of the elements of a sanctified humanity in society, and not through the installation of a sect. It must mingle in and through the State in spirit, not be united to the State in form. Till it does this, all attempts to unite it otherwise will prove a disastrous despotism; but let it have its free course, and it will be glorified; it will transfigure the State by the spirit of the Church, the Spirit of Christ, without changing the state into a Church, or putting a Church over the State, or a State as the head of the Church. By so much the more as it is a spiritual element, so much the more hideous and abominable is the incongruity and despotism of putting an earthly or State head upon it. By so much the more as it is a spiritual element, so much the more inconsistent is the compulsion of the State into it by form merely, a process which inevitably delays, hinders, and even effectually prevents that free transfiguration which by the Spirit is destined to take place.

In either of these incongruities religion becomes a monopoly instead of a free element; it becomes a strife-stirring, cancerous, vitriolic ingredient, instead of the gentle, healthful, hidden, but pervading, life of society. It is a life, the free development of which should be secured by the civil society to all; and men should be left as free to get out of error in that life, and not be forced out, if they are in it, as others are to make progress in the truth. An Arius should be as much under protection, and in the enjoyment of freedom, in civil society, as an Athanasius; a Servetus, as a Calvin. Tyndale had as much right to protection and freedom, with his work of translations, his Bibles, and his faith, as Wolsey, or Cranmer, or More in their State offices. Cartwright should have been held as fully protected by the State from Christian or Protestant persecution, and as free to publish his opinions, as Whitgift. Barrow, Greenwood, and Penry had as much right from God to the civil protection in their work, as Walsingham, Cecil, and Elizabeth herself in theirs. These are mere truisms; but the moment the Church is united to the State they are flung to the winds as so many lies, and the State religion, under particular conjunctures, becomes the most remorseless,

hardened, unappeasable, implacable, imperious essence of per secution on earth.

It was in and for the working out and realization of this principle, My kingdom is not of this world, that our Blessed Lord raised up, educated, and disciplined the band of Puritan Pilgrims, our ancestors, and brought them out from their captivity in the Old World into their freedom in the New. They themselves did not understand fully this principle, though in suffering for the privilege of worshipping God according to their own conscience they were taking the first step towards learning it; but it was necessary, in order for their descendants to understand it, in order for it to be worked out thoroughly, and set in clear light before the world, that they themselves should be removed from under the pressure, and from the example, of a politico-religious establishment; from under a monarchy, which headed the Church, into a wilderness, where Christ's authority alone could be supremely regarded. It was necessary that the taint of prelacy should be left, and that they should be planted in a place, where the pride and severity of prelacy could not persecute them. The attempts to realize and set up the kingdom not of this world had been gradual and imperfect; the greatest advancement towards it had been at Geneva, where the world saw a Church without a Bishop, and a State without a King. But further than this it seemed as if in the Old World the Church of Christ could not go, and the Church was still united with the State. And even in the New World, though the experiment was to begin where at Geneva it left off, still the process was to be gradual and tentative, that it might be perfect and lasting. Men were still to learn, by slow degrees, and through many mistakes and some failures, what was true religions liberty, what was a kingdom not of this world. It was still to be more than the passage of one generation, and the filtration of the principles of truth and liberty down through the societies of 200 years, before the true separation of the spiritual from the temporal would be accomplished, before the world would see an example of the water of life in the Church of Christ cleared, as at the first, from extraneous mixtures, and held up to view with the sun shining through it.

For this purpose the republican colonies of this country formed a cradle for the Church, or a political frame-work of society, more favorable than any in the Old World for the expansion, development, and proof of its principles. And in the change of those colonies into an independent State under a republican form of government, we cannot but believe that God had the growth and perfection of his Church in view. This belief is our great encouragement and hope that he will continue to bless us as a nation, to keep our government pure and free,

and to pour out his Spirit upon us. It is because we are sure he has his Church's advancement and perfection in view; and all things that take place in the world are entirely subservient to that. In the formation of the government of this country, it was done with us as with nature, in the formation of the kernel and the shell together. The kernel is not formed, and then put into the shell, nor the heart of the tree, and afterwards put into the bark, but both grow together. So it was here; freedom in the Church and freedom in the State grew on together, though the one, indeed, was the soul of the other.

We believe that God designed to prepare men for civil governments in this country by disciplining them in the government and constitution of the Church. In the primitive purity of the Church they are members of a heavenly republic, a family of love, yet a representative arrangement. They all have a voice, they all bear a part, each is for the whole, and the whole is for each; if one member suffers, all are grieved; the whole system of government and obedience in the House of God goes on in quiet and harmony, there being at once freedom and subjection, independence and control. This system, taking the mind from childhood, and training it up under such discipline, prepares men for what is called self-government in the State, prepares them to be citizens and not mere subjects, to have and to exercise a part in the affairs of State, and not thereby be elated with pride or spoiled of humility. It is like a bracing atmosphere, which, breathed from childhood, prepares the man for exercises and climates, for which otherwise his constitution might have been wholly unfitted.

Hence the Constitution of the Church of Christ, without human additions, pure from the hierarchical imitations of monarchies and despotisms, is the model and the cradle of a well-ordered, wise, and heavenly liberty. The Church of Christ, in her primitive purity, is the Mother and Nurse of Freedom; not of licentiousness, but freedom; freedom in civil governments, representative freedom. In our civil state it seems to have been intended that we should "serve unto the example and pattern of heavenly things."

III. The discipline and experience of our Puritan Fathers, combined with that of the Church as it has grown on from them, have taught us as much concerning the unity as the freedom of the Church of Christ. Some writers are laboring after what they call a Catholic Unity in the Church with as much vagueness and indistinctness as some pretended philosophers are laboring after a kind of Transcendentalism, which may be suspected to be no better than Pantheism. What do they mean by it? What is the Catholic Church, any more than the Church? And what is the Church except it be the Catholic Church? It is the merest tau