been wrought; but we ought not, I contend, to examine them with a view to discover the true church; more especially as it does not appear, that any of those miracles which have the slightest pretension to credibility, were wrought to determine controversies of faith or discipline between the existing communities of professing Christians.

OBJECTIONS.

I. The church can only comprise perfectly holy men; for Christ gave himself for the church, "that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish " (Eph. v. 27).

Answer. The church is here spoken of, as consisting of those who alone are its essential and permanent members, and who are known to God only; but this does not infer, that there may not also be men who are only imperfectly members, but who are, together with the righteous, in the external communion of the church.

II. According to Christ's will, none but saints and the regenerate ought to be admitted into the church, therefore those who are not saints, cease to be members of it.

Answer. (1.) I deny that none but visible saints are to be admitted into the church, as I have before proved. (2.) Assuming that visible saints only are admitted, yet their sanctity alone does not make them members of the church. They must be admitted by the ministry of others; and so, in like manner, their departure from visible sanctity does not, ipso facto, deprive them of external church-membership, but they must be separated by others, or by a formal act of their own.

III. The reformers held the church to consist only of the elect and holy. For instance, the Confession of Augsburgh (Art. vii.)

Answer. They only meant the church considered in its permanent, internal, perfect character; for they admitted, in the Apology of the Confession, that the church comprises both righteous and sinners in her external communion.

CHAPTER VII.

ON THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE CHURCH.

UNIVERSALITY, of course, could not have been a characteristic of the church at its commencement, when it only existed at Jerusalem; but the testimony of Scripture and history, and general opinion, oblige us to believe, that it was afterwards to become universal, and to remain so always. It is not necessary for us to suppose a physical and absolute universality, including all men: this would be inconsistent with the predictions of the existence of antichristian powers. All that is here contended is, that the church was to possess moral universality, to obtain adherents in all the nations of the world then known, and to extend its limits in proportion as new nations and countries were discovered: and that it was never to be reduced again to a small portion of the world, though always subject to persecutions, fluctuations, and losses.

1. I argue from Scripture, that the Church was to be morally universal, or to be propagated in all nations. The pro phecies relating to the kingdom of Christ all express this character: "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Gen. xxii. 18. xxvi. 4. xxviii. 14); "In the last days the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it" (Is. ii. 2); "Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit" (Is. xxvii. 6); "I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou maycst be my salvation unto the end of the earth" (xlix. 6); "Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession" (Ps. ii. 8); "All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall

worship before thee" (Ps. xxii. 27); "He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth" (Ps. lxxii. 8); "His name shall endure for ever his name shall be continued as long as the sun; and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him blessed" (verse 17).

Our blessed Saviour himself referred to these prophecies, in his discourse with his disciples after his resurrection, saying: "Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer.. and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem" (Luke xxiv. 47); he also declared that his disciples should be witnesses to him "unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts i. 8), and commanded them to "go teach all nations," promising his presence with them "always, even unto the end of the world" (Matt. xxviii. 19, 20). We find accordingly, that the apostles "went forth and preached every where" (Mark xvi. 20). As St. Paul says, "their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the end of the world" (Rom. x. 18); therefore, even in the lifetime of the apostles, the church was universal, and the prophecies of its diffusiveness were already fulfilled.

Now, since all these predictions were delivered without any exception or limitation as to time, we are bound to infer, that they are intended to describe the permanent condition of the Christian church. The character of Christianity as described by the prophets, is always universality. They never contemplate any failure or overthrow they never announce the virtual extinction of Christianity at any future time, or its reduction to narrow and insignificant limits.

That the church was not to fail is naturally inferred from the promise of Christ himself: "On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Matt. xvi. 18). It is also inferred from that parable, where the kingdom of God is compared to a grain of mustard-seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds

that be in the earth; but when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches; so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it" (Mark iv. 31, 32). Such is the greatness of the church of Christ, which is represented as its proper characteristic, and therefore cannot be lost.

2. The primitive church always understood the prophecies relating to the universality of Christianity, as descriptive of its permanent condition; for we find the fathers not merely asserting the fact, that the church of Christ was really diffused throughout the whole world; but arguing, that the church of which they were members must be the true church, because it was so diffused, and that the societies of heretics which claimed to be the only true church, could not be so, from their deficiency in this essential characteristic.

Thus, St. Athanasius and the bishops of the Alexandrian patriarchate, writing to the Emperor Jovian, argue for their own profession of the true faith and the true church, from the universality of their communion, and the insignificant numbers of the Arian party. Jerome, arguing against the Luciferians, says: "If Christ has not a church, or has one only in Sardinia, he has become greatly impoverished. And if Satan possesses Britain, Gaul, the East, India, the barbarous nations, the whole world, how were the trophies of the cross given to a mere corner of the world." Optatus argues thus: "Thou hast said, brother Parmenianus, that the church is only amongst you... Therefore that it may exist with you in a part of Africa, a corner of a small region, it must not be amongst us in the other part of Africa, nor in Spain, Italy, Gaul, where you are not, . . nor among the innumerable islands and other provinces which

a Theodoret. Hist. Eccl. lib. iv. c. 3.

"Si ecclesiam non habet Christus, aut si in Sardinia tantum habet, nimium pauper factus est. Et si Britannias, Gallias, Orientem, Indorum populos, barbaras nationes, et totem semel mundum possidet Satanas; quomodo ad angulum universæ terræ crusis trophæa collata sunt."-Hier. adv. Luciferianos, tom. iv. pars 2. p. 298. ed. Ben.

can scarcely be counted. Where then is the propriety of the name of catholic, since the church is called catholic because it is reasonable, and diffused everywhere?" Augustine says: "We hold the inheritance of Christ; they (the heretics) do not hold it they do not communicate with the whole world, they do not (i. e. refuse to) communicate with the whole community redeemed by the blood of the Lord."d Augustine cites almost all the passages ef Scripture adduced above, in his book "de Unitate Ecclesiæ," against the Donatists, to prove that the church is essentially universal. In fine, the ancient church considered universality as one essential characteristic of the church, for the creed approved by the General Council of Nice, as the confession of faith of the whole world, professes belief in a "catholic" (or universal)" apostolic church."f

3. In fact, the universality of the church is generally admitted. The Nicene and the Apostles' Creeds are received by the Eastern church, and by the Roman churches, as well as by all the Reformation, and they both contain a profession of belief in the "holy catholic " (or universal) "church." Hence all these societies continually profess their belief in the universality of the church. The hymn, "Te Deum," which is also generally used by them, recognizes the same-"The holy church throughout all the world doth acknowledge thee."

Its catholicity is also expressly admitted by the confession of

....

...

“Eam tu, frater Parmeniane, apud vos solos esse dixisti . . . . Ergo ut in particula Africæ, in angulo parvæ regionis, apud vos esse possit; apud nos in alia parte Africæ non erit. In Hispaniis, in Italia, in Gallia, ubi vos non estis, non erit, &c. . . . . Et per tot innumerabiles insulas et cæteras provincias, quæ numerari vix possunt, ubi vos non estis, non erit. Ubi ergo proprietas catholici nominis, cum inde dicta sit catholica, quod sit rationabilis et ubique diffusa?"—Optatus, liber ii. de schismate Donatist. p. 28. ed. Du Pin.

d "Tenemus hæreditatem Domini: illi eam non tenent: non communicant orbi terrarum, non communicant universitati redemtæ sanguine Domini."-Tract. iii. in Epist. Johan. p. 846. tom. iii. oper ed. Bened. * Tom. ix. p. 337, &c. ed. Bened.

Socrates, Hist. Eccl. lib. i. c. viii.

VOL. I.-20.