sessed, has ever been put forth and presented to others in forms as diverse as the powers, dispositions, prejudices, and habits of individuals vary from each other, and mingled with the impurity of each through whom it is conveyed no individual is capable of containing the whole, and the fragment of intelligence of God's ways which each possesses is magnified into an exaggerated importance beyond all fragments held by others, through his vanity, self-love, and proud contempt for the opinions and feelings of all except himself. Thus for want of love, that which might be made subservient to giving the additional beauty of multiform and many-sided variety to the unity of the Church, has been made the cause of strife and schism, till a state of things has been developed which is without possibility of remedy through the means of any instrumentality now in operation in the world.

Whilst freely admitting that any thing which is contrary to catholic faith is wrong, and therefore to be renounced, and that the inculcating of such contrariety is to be repented of as a sin against the Church, which is a sin against God, who is only to be met with in this

thority would have been followed, when indispensable, by the separation of such dissenter from the communion of the Church; Christ's presence by the Holy Ghost in His body would have been a manifested fact, instead of, as it is now, a mere theological theory; and it would have been made evident to all, that to be debarred from eating the flesh, and drinking the blood of the Son of God at His altar, was separation from the alone source of spiritual life, and Satan would have taken possession of such apostate, tormenting his body and soul, until he either repented, or finally perished.

But since the Church did not continue under the guidance of apostles; since those who succeeded them taught things which neither Christ nor the apostles had ever taught; since the Church, through want of the chief ordinance, never could assume its true form as one Catholic Church; since there was no ordinance to preside over or to interpret prophecy; since no proper councils were held, no spiritual power accompanied the decisions of the rulers; their orders were set at nought with impunity, truth was no longer declared by lawful authority, and although

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destroys unity, without ensuring preservation from corruption. Thus all Christendom is now divided between those who, as in the Church of Rome, maintain unity and authority by the annihilation of personal responsibility; and those who, as amongst Evangelicals, maintain personal responsibility to the destruction of all authority and unity.

An appeal to "the Church," is an appeal to an abstraction, which is, for all practical purposes, a nonentity. "The Church" is only a tangible thing, with which man can deal, when she speaks through her heads who are her guides, and leaders, and in so far her rulers. If the Church had continued under the guidance of the rulers whom God appointed at the beginning; if these had taught nothing but that which Christ had taught them; if, as the number of disciples increased and the perfect form of the whole body became manifest, they had continued to receive counsel from the whole body, as they did in the Council at Jerusalem; and if prophecy had remained, then doubtless the permanent disagreement in spirit or mind of any Christian from any thing that was determined by au

thority would have been followed, when indispensable, by the separation of such dissenter from the communion of the Church; Christ's presence by the Holy Ghost in His body would have been a manifested fact, instead of, as it is now, a mere theological theory; and it would have been made evident to all, that to be debarred from eating the flesh, and drinking the blood of the Son of God at His altar, was separation from the alone source of spiritual life, and Satan would have taken possession of such apostate, tormenting his body and soul, until he either repented, or finally perished.

But since the Church did not continue under the guidance of apostles; since those who succeeded them taught things which neither Christ nor the apostles had ever taught; since the Church, through want of the chief ordinance, never could assume its true form as one Catholic Church; since there was no ordinance to preside over or to interpret prophecy; since no proper councils were held, no spiritual power accompanied the decisions of the rulers; their orders were set at nought with impunity, truth was no longer declared by lawful authority, and although

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pervading the mass of the baptized, it was not concentrated nor applied so as to become a blessing, and therefore it became a bone of contention amongst brethren in every place.

The duty therefore of each individual who felt convinced of truth and of error, was to maintain the one and protest against the other in every place within his sphere, whether as bishop in his diocese, priest in his parish, deacon with the poor, father with his children, master with his dependants: and as such individuals would be few in comparison to the mass, which is ever contented to remain in error, they would be more or less objects of dislike to those around them, and be persecuted in some form or other. Nothing however should have induced them to separate themselves from the communion of the Church: if they were excluded by force they should not have resisted, even if put to death and in this way the Church would have continued to contain within herself a witness, without presenting the sinful spectacle of divisions. Persecution and cruelty indeed have not been lacking on the part of the rulers: the bishops and priests of the Church of Rome have