acceptation in Scripture, is applied to any number of persons lawfully collected in the Lord's name-['lawfully' in Mr. Baylee's theory means canonically, and according to the permission of those persons whom he calls the lawful governors of the Church,']-the word church is also applied to the great body of real or professed Christians in all ages, whether those who have gone before us, or those who are to succeed us, or those who are at present living upon earth. This view of the Church is presented in Canticles. A converted soul is represented as earnestly seeking for Christ, 'Tell me, O Thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest;' the answer of Christ to her is not a little remarkable,' If thou know, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids by the shepherd's tents.' Think not that the Church and the truth are to be discovered in modern times, or to be remodelled from time to time. Observe the footsteps of my flock which has gone before thee, and bring thy children up under the lawfully ordained pastors, 'feed thy kids besides the shepherds' tents.' The gravity with which Mr. Baylee makes this absurd application of Scripture forbids one to suppose that he is trifling, but surely it does not often fall to the lot of theologians to elaborate such samples of commentary.

In the following passage it will be seen how earnestly the preacher inculcates that the Church ought to consist of a mixture of saints and sinners.

"The visible Church is the whole

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body upon earth who profess to be Christians. They are described in the 19th article of our Church. The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments are duly administered, according to Christ's ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.' It is not here said, that the visible Church contains none but faithful men; on the contrary, we find the 26th article saying, Although in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good, and sometimes the evil have chief authority in the ministration of the word and sacraments, yet forasmuch as they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ's, and do minister by his commission and authority, we may use their ministry, both in hearing

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the word of God, and in receiving of the sacraments.' Thus, then, she does not intend to teach us that the visible Church contains nothing but faithful men; but in defining the Church, she only considers the faithful men amongst her, just as when John saw the emblems of the visible Church in the 1st chapter of Revelation, they were golden candlesticks. If we examine the seven churches thus represented, we find in them much dross, but Christ recognised them as golden candlesticks, and as his Churches, although there were amongst them false teachers, false doctrines. and dead members, thus he says, Notwithstanding, I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, who calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed to idols.' Here we have false doctrines taught by teachers in the Church, and yet she did not cease to be a Church, nor her bishop a star in the right hand of Christ. In the same way Jerusalem was called the holy city,' though there was much wickedness in it; the devil taketh Him up into the holy city,' it was so called, not because there was no sin in it, but because our Lord was there, and because, notwithstanding all its errors, the Lord's truth was there.-To membership in the Holy Catholic Church all are invited in the Scriptures, and nothing is required of them but profession previous to admission [and not so much as that scarcely in any instance, as baptismal regeneration is the almost universal ground of admission in what Mr. Baylee calls, the Holy Catholic Church]. There is in Scripture no long process of examination prescribed in order to be admitted, they are at once received when they present themselves, without any other examination than a mere confession of faith. In the case of infants, the profession of others is accepted instead of their own."..." In Ephesians iii. 10, the Apostle declares that all things were created by Jesus Christ, to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God,' for this purpose then to exhibit the goodness, the grace, and the power of God in delivering sinners from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, was the Church formed in the world, to be unto them as a school and a hospital. These are the two lead

ing features of the Church upon earth, in its preparation for membership with the Church in heaven; it is a large school, in which we are to be instructed, and a large hospital in which we are to be cured of moral disease. In the 28th of Matthew we find our Lord presenting this idea of the Church. When about to leave his apostles, he said to them, "Go ye, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.' To go and make disciples-that is, in other words, to make scholars or pupils, to bring them into a large institution or school, in order to teach them. What is the great necessity for being sent to school? Is it not our ignorance? It is then for the ignorant the Church is set up. In the 5th chapter of Ephesians we have the Church presented to us as a hospital for the cure of our diseases. In the 25th verse the Apostle says, 'Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.' Here, then, Christ opens His Church not only to the ignorant but to the diseased, that is, the morally diseased the polluted, the fallen, the vile, the guilty, are welcome to the Saviour's Church, that they may receive the waters of life; there will He employ upon them the agency of his heavenly cleansing, and deliver them from all their moral pollutions. They are received in a polluted state into his Church upon earth-in order to be prepared for the inheritance of the saints in light by the sanctifying energy of his Holy Spirit, through the agency of the appointed means, 'the word,' preached or read. Ignorance, then, should not exclude us from membership with the Church of Christ. Sin should not be a preventive to our admission, but both the one and the other are the very reasons why, through God's mercy, we have a Church to instruct and cleanse us. I trust it will ever be the glory of the Church of England, that, like her Master, the ignorant and diseased are welcome to her."

These are startling assertions, and scarcely need refuting. The gracious Redeemer does indeed receive the ignorant and the guilty, but it is when they come to find in him the cure of their ignorance and the free remission of their guilt. The cleansing takes place when

This

the sinner believes, when he is justified by faith and has peace with God. faith is the operation of the Holy Spirit; and with faith ignorance is removed, for all the true members of the church of God know much, are deeply instructed, are profoundly taught, for they have "received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that they might know the things which are freely given to them of God,"- "but the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned: but he that is spiritual judgeth all things."

All this is prevented by this mistaken preacher, who, in order to varnish the scandals of his communion, imagines the daring figment that ignorant and wicked people may readily be admitted into the communion of the church [of England] in order that they may be taught and cleansed and washed by the word "preached or read." The sins and the ignorance of the natural man, remitted through the blood of Jesus, and through nothing else, he would have cured by a system of scholarship and indoctrination in the Church of England, which he most erroneously designates the Church of Christ, telling us with much composure that Christ receives polluted people into this His Church, or 66 opens His Church" for their reception.

Christ

does not " open His Church," he opens himself; and all this language about the church is absolutely popish, substituting an ecclesiastical corporation for the Lord our righteousness; and turning all things in the faith once delivered to the saints, upside down. Doubtless it is "the glory of the Church of England" to have the world in its church, and its church joined to the world-but other things than these we learn in the New Testament of "the Church of the living God, the ground and the pillar of the truth."

The next point which Mr. Baylee is anxious to establish is, that the kingdom of Christ is of this world, which he undertakes to prove with sophistical arguments and provisions of Scripture closely resembling the specimens already given -he concludes his argument with these words, "The plain testimony of the word of God then is, that the kings of the earth, reigning and ruling under the Lord Jesus, are to govern according to His will, and to instruct His people in

His laws; in other words, to establish a close connection between Christ's church and Christ's state."

The "officers of the church" next occupy Mr. Baylee's attention; and having secured ignorant and sinful people in his church, he labours hard to secure ignorant and sinful priests for the pastoral office. "In the Apocalyptic churches," he says, "we find unconverted and ignorant bishops, who were yet stars in the right hand of Christ, from whom he expected ministerial labour, and whom he exhorted to repentance and diligence. The Bishop of Sardis was a mere nominal Christian. Thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead.' Yet this unconverted bishop is admonished to attend to his episcopal duties. Christ's faithful ones submitted to Him as their Bishop, and in so doing were sinless.

Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which has not defiled their garments.' The Bishop of Laodicea was ignorant, proud, and lukewarm. Yet he too was in the right hand of Christ, His angel, that is, His messenger to the church."

Of the Lord's Supper Mr. Baylee says, "Rightly to observe the Lord's Supper, we must have an ordained minister to consecrate the bread and wine, and thus to make them the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ."

"On

One more extract may suffice. the burial service I shall only briefly touch. The church having received the infant into her fellowship by baptism, having instructed his opening years, fed him with knowledge and understanding, and received him at her Lord's table, having smoothed his dying pillow with the consolations of the gospel, through the attendance of her appointed minister, pays him the last homage of respect by committing his mortal remains to the keeping of the grave until the morning of the blessed resurrection. No rightminded person would object to a solemn service suited to such an occasion; to a solemn farewell expressive of the assurance that those that sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. Indeed the only objection made is to the abuse of the service in reading it over wicked persons, and the supposed decision made about their state. But neither are well founded. The service is not to be read over excommunicate' persons, and who could object to recognize in death as a Christian brother those who had been received in life as such? Our answer

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then, to all objections is, use the service only for those for whom it was formedcommunicants." To which we reply 1. that the clergy are not allowed to confine the burial service to communicants only. 2. That Mr. Baylee's communicants may be " sinful, ignorant, and unconverted persons." 3. That notorious sinners really do "receive the last homage of respect" in solemn assurances "of a blessed resurrection." 4. But a man may be a great sinner though he is not "excommunicated" by the ecclesiastical courts. 5. That a person 'so 66 excommunicated' may be a holy Christian, and really inherit that "blessed resurrection" which though denied to him, is "respectfully" allowed to the most profligate of mankind. Excommunication is no proof of sin.

Such is the infatuation of the clergy in these days, and such the monstrous doctrines they are continually publishing. Mr. Baylee's case is remarkable, as he takes care to inform us that his doctrinal views are not those entertained by the Oxford divines; so that we have in this gentleman a type of the High Church Evangelical clergymen, who, though they profess to dissent from the Oxford Tracts, nevertheless hold opinions on ecclesiastical matters of so extreme a nature as scarcely to differ from avowed Romanism. All things do, indeed, seem preparing for popery in the establishment. The days of Archbishop Laud were less dangerous for the Church of England than those in which we live; for at that time there was a Puritan Parliament and nation, drawn up in battle array against the Romanizing clergy, but now the nation" care for none of these things;" and the feeble band of Evangelicals is daily wasting away before the allurements of the world and the innovations of Puseyism.

"AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS PLATTER, a Schoolmaster of the Sixteenth Century." Translated from the German. B. Wertheim, Paternoster-Row. THIS little biography is interesting, as it displays in its simple narrative, many characteristics of the deep and dark delusion which Popery spread over the people of Germany, just previous to the Reformation-and exhibits the state of the Schools of Theology, &c. at that period.

THE PAIN OF A WOUNDED

CONSCIENCE.

(Prov. xviii. 14.)

GATHER all the down which floats on the wind,

And all the leaves from the tree, Can ye make a couch for a troubled mind? Can ye find a rest for me? Gather all the honey-dew from the leaf, And the labour sweet of the bee; Can ye 'suage the bitter tongue of grief? Give a drop of sweet to me?

Let the cold wind blow through the midnight rain,

And the breeze flutter over the sea; Can it breathe one chill on a burning brain? Can it cool my brain for me?

Let the gale which springs in the morning cloud,

Give life to all that be;

Can it quicken again my murder'd mind?
Give back my mind to me?

Let the spring-time shine, with its sunny
hours,

And the merry birds, all in glee; Can ye gather, amidst ten thousand flowers, One bud that blooms for me?

A HOME, AND A HEARTY WELCOME.

THERE is a green grass blade,
And a lovely daisy blowing,

And a king-cup there,

And a primrose fair,

And all by the green grass growing:
And there I shall meet,

For my weary feet,

A home and a hearty welcome.

And there is a noble bed,

Where many a prince has been lying,

And a rest for the head,
And a white sheet spread,
And a door to none denying:

And strait though it be,
There is room for me,

For a home, and a hearty welcome.

And I have been called to go,
When all the rest denied me;

Though dark, I know,

Is that chamber low,

And cold will the friends be beside me;
But though cold they be,

They are ready for me,

And a home, and a hearty welcome.

But there'll be a window bright,

When the cock-crow gives his warning,

And the long dark night
Will break at the light,

A CONSCIENCE HEALED BY THE

ATONEMENT.

Oн there is a bed, that was hewn in stone, Where He lay who was nail'd to the tree ! 'Twas there my Lord lay, all alone,

And there's the rest for me.

And there was a dew, all silvery bright,
It fell on plain and lee;

They gathered it fresh, at the morning light,
And sweet's its taste to me.

And there was a rushing mighty wind,
It blew o'er a bloody sea,

It breathes a calm for my troubled mind,
A Comforter for me.

And there was a gale, when the day-star
rose;

His shining clear I see;

My mind, in his beams, revives and glows, And all is life with me.

And there was a flower, which sprung from the tomb,

When the days had number'd three ; Upon my heart that flower shall bloom, Eternal joy for me.

And joy will come in the morning: And I shall arise,

Through the flaming skies, To a home, and a hearty welcome.

But hark, 'tis the clarion sound,
Which calls us from our slumber,
And the hearts around,
From the dull cold ground,
Spring up in countless number:
And he bids us all,

To his golden hall,

To a home, and a hearty welcome.

For us He shed his blood,
To rescue us when strangers;
And His word made good,
When by us He stood,
Through all our toils and dangers:
And now we rest,

At His royal feast,

At our home, with a hearty welcome,

No more away we'll go;

No more from Him we'll sever;
From our wand'ring wce,
In the vale below,

We rest with Him for ever.

In His world of light,

And His kingdom bright,

We've a home, and a hearty welcome.