of the world. "There is no exception of persons with God;" "God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth;" and Christ died for all the children of Adam, without any exception whatsoever. Other commissions might expire with the object for which they were given; this could never expire, so long as the world lasted or there were men to be taught and to be saved; for this was precisely the object which it contemplated.

The third feature in the commission, is the circumstance, that the Savior imparted full and ample powers to the apostles for its complete accomplishment. He made them his ministers plenipotentiary to the world; their credentials were stamped with the broad seal of his own omnipotence. He sent them clothed with the powers with which he himself had been invested by his heavenly Father; and he tells them so plainly and explicitly: "All power is given to me in heaven and in earth; go ye, therefore, &c., ""As the Father hath sent me, so I also, send you." They were to preach, to teach, to baptize, to do all the acts necessary for the full and permanent establishment of Christianity every where; and he would be with them and in them, guiding and assisting them, enlightening their minds, confirming their purpose, and sanctioning their acts, "all days, even to the consummation of the world."

Closely connected with this, is the fourth feature of the commission. Christ intended and willed that all the substantial powers with which he then clothed his first body of ministers should descend to their regular and lawful successors in the ministerial office, to the very end of time. There is, there can be no doubt of this whatever. The commission was to last till "the consummation of the world;" and it could not do so, at least it would become utterly powerless and barren of all effect, unless it should continue to be invested with all the substantial powers which it possessed at the beginning. I say substantial powers; for it might, and probably would happen, that, amid the changes which circumstances might induce, the exercise of those original plenipotentiary powers would be variously modified, without their being, however, themselves substantially diminished or changed. Under the extraordinary

circumstances in which the first body of Christ's ministers were placed, some extraordinary powers and privileges,-such as personal infallibility and unlimited individual jurisdiction in point of persons and space, seemed to be required by the emergency. The men who, under Christ, were to lay the foundations of the Christian Religion, were very properly clothed with these personal privileges, in addition to the substantial powers of the ministry, which latter were to descend unim paired to their successors. It would be the province of these merely to continue to the end of time the glorious work begun by them;-to govern and preserve the church which they had founded, and to transmit unchanged the precious deposit of the faith received from their hands.

No reasonable Christian will, I think, be disposed to question the truth of this position. To say that the substantial powers of the ministerial office were to cease with the death of the last apostle, would be the same, in substance, as to assert, that Christ died only for those who lived in the apostolic age, and that he made no adequate provision for the less favored generations which were to come afterwards. It would be to falsify the plainest language of the commission itself, and to set limits where it sets none whatever. Nay more; it would effectually cut off, at the very source, all the powers of the minis try, claimed and exercised by Christians of all denominations at the present day. Once you admit this novel and strange theory, where is the proof that Christian ministers of any denomination have now the power to preach, to baptize, or to do any of the other acts of the original ministerial office instituted by Christ? You cannot appeal to the words of the commission, for you have virtually nullified the commission, by limiting it to the apostolic age. To what other authority will you then appeal for evidence? I know of no other; for all others presuppose and are based upon this. This theory, then, strikes a mortal blow at the Christian ministry, and, therefore, undermines the very basis of Christianity itself.

It is, then, clearly manifest from the very nature of the commission itself, and from the words in which it was given, that the will and intention of Christ was, to have his Religion

taught and established in the whole world and among all mankind, and to have it maintained, and progressively extended, to the very end of time, by means of a ministry authorized by himself, clad with ample powers derived from him; which ministry and which powers were to be substantially kept up and maintained in regular uninterrupted succession to the end of the world. This is the plain and obvious meaning of the commission; this is the interpretation which the whole Christian world unanimously put on it, for the first fifteen hundred years of the Christian era; there is no other worthy of its end and scope, or compatible with its plainest language. All other explanations of it are narrow, inconsistent, and contradictory; all others strike at the very essence of the Christian ministry, at Christianity itself.

Besides the features already indicated, and some others to which I may have more appropriate occasion to advert hereafter, the commission embraces two things, both of which are worthy our most serious reflexion; because they both lie at the very foundation of the Christian system, and furnish us likewise with a key for ascertaining which is the one true Church of Jesus Christ. These two things are: the object of the commission itself, which was the conversion of the world to Christianity; and the means by which, according to the intention of Christ, this object was to be accomplished.

The argument is this:

The Church which has fulfitled the commission according to its letter and its spirit,-which has actually converted the world, and by the precise means and in the precise manner ordained by Christ,-must be the one original Church which he founded, and over which he promised to watch.

But the Roman Catholic Church alone has done all this. Therefore the Roman Catholic Church alone is the original Church of Christ.

The first, or major proposition, is certain, and needs no proof. At least it is so far certain, that no Church which has not fulfilled the commission, and in the manner ordained by Christ, can lay claim to be the true Church of Christ; unless, indeed, you are prepared to say, that Christ gave the commission to his

Church, and yet did not mean that his Church should execute it! If there be a Church which has fulfilled the commission, in accordance with both its letter and its spirit, there is, then, very strong presumptive evidence, that this Church is identical with that established by Christ; and if it farther appear, that this Church alone, and no other, has fulfilled it, and in the manner indicated, the presumptive evidence grows into a conclusive argument; unless you say, that Christ either did not, or could not, keep his word, and have his commission executed according to its letter and its spirit.

All, then, that I am bound to prove, in order to make the argument complete and irresistible, is the second, or minor proposition, which contains three distinct assertions: first, that the Roman Catholic Church has fulfilled the commission by actually converting the world to Christianity; second, that she alone has done this; and third, that she has done it by the precise means and in the precise manner ordained by Christ. The proofs of these three propositions will open out before us a field as vast as it must be interesting to every lover of Christianity; the whole field, in fact, of theology and of Church history. The third proposition involves a question of principle and of theology; the first and second, questions of fact and of history.

The subject is so extensive, that I cannot hope to do any thing like justice to it in one Lecture; hence, with your kind indulgence, I will treat it in two successive discourses, the first of which will be devoted to the development of the third proposition, or the question of principle. As this lies at the basis of the other two, the nature of the argument requires that it should be treated first.

I solicit your calm and undivided attention; and I entreat you, in the name of Jesus Christ who died for our salvation, and who fervently wished with his last breath that we should "all be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth," that you enter with me on the inquiry with an humble prayer to heaven for light and grace, without which all our efforts to find out and to embrace the truth were vain and unproductive of any happy result.

What, then, were the means ordained by Christ for the fulfilment of the commission by the conversion of the world? Though the answer contains an important and fundamental principle, embodying no less than the RULE OF FAITH established by Christ, yet it rests, like every thing else in Christianity, upon a fact;-upon the will, intention, and positive act of Christ himself. Two antagonistic principles are advocated on this subject; the one by the Protestant sects, and the other by the Catholic Church. The former maintain, that the means ordained by Christ for the conversion of the world and the maintaining of Christianity to the end of time, is to be found in the bible alone, as understood and interpreted by each individual Christian for himself; the latter holds, that it originally consisted, and still consists, primarily and mainly, of authoritative preaching and oral teaching by an authorized and sent ministry, to whom belongs of right, by the will and intention of Christ himself, the keeping and interpretation of the written word itself. The Protestant has a ministry and a preached word, but he holds that this is a secondary institution, that the written word is the primary, and, in fact, the only infallible means ordained by Christ for coming to the knowledge of the truth, and that each individual Christian is bound to hear and obey the preached word, only so far as, according to his own private lights and judgment, it is conformable to the sense which he puts upon the bible: the Catholic receives and reveres the bible as the inspired word of God, in all its parts; but in its interpretation he distrusts his own private lights, whenever they conflict with the lights of the Church, the authorized teaching of which he feels bound, by what he believes to be the express command of Jesus Christ, to hear and obey, and to the decision of which in all matters of doubt and controversy he feels it to be a positive, divinely imposed obligation, to submit his individual judgment.

Now, both of these principles cannot be, at the same time, true and divinely established; for they are contradictory and mutually exclude each other. I am willing to abide by this simple test of the great question that lies back of it,-which is the true Church of Christ? If the Protestant Rule of Faith be