disputably her view of those institutions. And Christ himself undoubtedly gave his Church a government, a ministry, and at least two holy ordinances of a peculiar character; constituting her an holy kingdom, in the midst of the world, yet separated from it, by distinctive truths, laws, worship, and institutions; establishing her as his body on earth, in whom was still to be exhibited the substance of previous shadows; still to be accomplished the Levitical types. In other words, the Church under the Old Testament, was a close type of the Church under the New, and not of her Divine Head only."-pp. 7-8.

With this guiding truth, Mr. Sibthorp proceeds to consider, and connect some of the principal points in which the correspondence must exist between the typifying and the typified Church. The former he found to be

"A compact, united body, really and visibly united in all its parts; combining a number of provincial and locally separate portions in one religious nation or people; combining them in a most strict, perfect, and evident unity of faith, of worship, of laws, of discipline, of religious ordinances, and even of minute ceremonies: no variety permitted,―no departure from the oneness demanded being sanctioned in any individual. Such was the ancient Israel; and if typical of the Church, such should be the Israel of God under the New Testament. At the head of this body, nation, or Church, was one supreme dignitary, of priestly order, invested by God with singular prerogatives, ruling in perpetual succession over Israel, until the Lord should come: in his person, offices and residence, a centre of unity to the whole nation, far and near,—a representative on earth of the Divine High Priest in heaven. There was a regularly organized and consecrated tribe, of two degrees-priests and Levites-separated by peculiar ordinances, and privileges, and duties, from the rest of Israel; having every office, every ceremony, every vestment, full of sacred significancy; continually engaged in sacrifice, and instruction of the people. The principal sacred rite of the nation was sacrifice; in its frequency, perpetuity, character, and circumstances, directing the worshippers to have in view a Lamb of God, which should take away the sins of the world. There was a real, and not merely spiritual, figurative, or imaginary presence of God himself in his earthly temple; which was also illumined with a seven-fold light, perpetually fed by holy oil. Sculptured cherubim and pourtrayed angels seemed to share in the sacred rites, and mingle in the worship, at once participating with, and ministering to, the holy nation, in their prayers and adorations. There was an impressive and magnificent ritual, every ceremony of which was symbolic and instructive,―adapted alike to the present infirmity of man, needing such sensible aid, and to the glory of the majesty of God, who vouchsafed to receive from his creatures such homage, as expressive of their sense of his glory and greatness. Certain seasons were distinguished by peculiar and impressive rites, commemorative of divine mercies, or events in the formation of the nation. From the Dan to the Beersheba of that land which

was this ancient Church's appointed heritage, there was not an Israelite that lived not in fealty and submission to the supremacy of the one high priest; or that might lawfully, or without the heaviest anger of God, recognize or use any other sacred ministry than that of the tribe of Levi, and the house of Aaron; or that might contemn the appointed sacrifices, or live in wilful neglect of the most trivial sacred ordinances. Wherever an Israelite journeyed in that land, he found one creed, one faith, one religious rite, one harmonious agreement, even in the minutest points of ceremonial worship. He was at home everywhere as to his religion, for the Church of the Old Testament was purely Catholic, as to the given extent of its possession. Such were some of the great typical features of the ancient Israel, of which I had to seek for a correspondence in the Christian Church. The Mosaic dispensation led me then to look for a Church characterized by visible oneness,-by the strictest required holiness,-by Catholicity, as to the land of its inheritance (this being, under the Gospel, the whole earth),- by a supreme spiritual Rule, in a succession of individuals,-by unbroken pastoral descent from its first divinely selected office-bearers, the Apostles,-by continual daily sacrifice, directing the minds of the worshippers at once back to the great propitiatory offering of the Lamb of God, and upward to the perpetual presentation of that propitiation before the Eternal Throne, by a real, mysterious presence of Deity with her,—by a sevenfold channel of sacramental grace, illumined, and illuminating all within her sacred enclosure,-by angelic ministrations, and an intercourse intimate, though unseen, with those who see God,-by an impressive, magnificent, significant ritual,-by such an uniformity of doctrine, discipline, worship, and ceremonial, that from the north to the south, from the east to the west, there should not be a Christian that differed from another, or should not find, wherever he journeyed over the wide earth, the same religion he left at home. And what these typical considerations warranted me to expect, the prayer of the Blessed Saviour doubly warranted: 'that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.' St. Paul declared at once the same character of the Church, and the fact of its existence: 'One body and one spirit, as you are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all.'

'Could I find this typified Church on earth? The truth of God assured me of its existence. But certainly no Protestant sect presented the slightest correspondency with it. My own, the Anglican, which promised fairest, totally failed to prove her claim, if, indeed, she made it, to be in the world what the Jewish Church was in the Holy Land. Facts were against her, declaring her very limited extent and her insulated position unrecognized by the rest of Christendom. Her present constitution forbad her Catholicity. She had totally thrown off her recognition of that pastoral supremacy which, from the sixth to the sixteenth century she had admitted. Was the accomplishment

of the glorious Levitical shadows to be found in a patchwork combination of a multitude of sects, as opposed in their interests as in their belief and worship? Could the typified holy-separated as to others, and as to themselves visibly united-nation, the one body of Christ, consist of a mixture of Prussian Lutherans, French Calvinists, and Swiss Socinians; of Independents, Baptists, Quakers, Shakers, of Irvingites, and Plymouth Brethren; of Methodists of the Old and of the New Connexion; of New Jerusalemites, and Primitive Revivalists? Could such disorder be the designed fulfilment of a type of such holy order ?—such disunion be the rightful substance of a shadow marked by an entire harmony of its parts, and perfect oneness of outline? Ingenuity could not trace a resemblance. But when I looked back to the primitive apostolic Church of the first six centuries, I found an exact correspondency with the type :—when I also looked back to the ancient Church of England, as first formed by St. Augustine, I found the most entire agreement, aud an actual, visible, professed oneness, with that apostolic Church, as it had existed for six centuries: it was a provincial limb of that vast Catholic body which was then co-extensive with the knowledge of Christianity. When I viewed it at any subsequent period down to the commencement of the sixteenth century, I met with the same unaltered character; and though the Catholic body had been lopped of some of its limbs by the severing strokes of heresy or schism, it still flourished a vigorous, stately, wide-expanded tree, the same in every essential, almost in every minute particular, which it had been, when the English branch first grew from out its sustaining, fostering trunk. The Catholic Church in communion with the see of Rome, stood forth, in my view, the close and perfect antitype of the Church under the Old Testament. She had still a branch, unsheltered, yet growing-feeble, yet full of hidden life-despised, yet fruitful-in my native land; and in joining myself to it, I felt that I should join myself to the Church of the whole earth, the Church of twelve centuries in England, and of eighteen centuries in the world, the Church of the shadowy dispensation that had comprehended the tribes of Israel, as they marched out of the land of Egypt under Moses and Aaron-that I should join myself, in short, to the true Israel of God. All that the ancient types led me to look for in the Christian Church, I found in her alone. She stood forth, on scriptural grounds, the sole authorized claimant of God's favour and heritage. Separation from her, at any period, of any portion of mankind, did not invalidate her claims, nor affect her true Catholicity and unity, no more than the falling of a decayed limb destroys the claim of the trunk, with its remaining branches, to be the tree."-pp. 8-14.

The analogy here put is exceedingly beautiful; and the parallel between the type and its antitype-between the typical institutions of the Mosaic dispensations and their realities, as accomplished in the Christian Church-is carried throughout by the highly-gifted and accomplished writer, in a way that must carry conviction along with it. Mr.

Sibthorp observes, that he might have gone very much farther into the particulars of the close agreement of the Catholic Church with its Old Testament type; and that he has dwelt longer upon this topic of the Levitical types, because he has seldom found it more than hinted at in modern theological works; and because it became, from the cause already mentioned, that which first influenced his mind, presenting to it what seemed cogent reasons for regarding the Catholic Church in communion with the See of Rome as claiming his "avowed allegiance."

"The fact which these last words declare, the communion of the whole Catholic Church, in recognition of one supreme see and its possessor,—as it was one of the chief points of her correspondency with the Jewish type, so it became a principal one of my present consideration. The necessity of a centre of unity, for the well-being of the Church, as it had often at previous times been on my mind, now forcibly recurred. The sanctions of God to the office and authority of the high-priesthood of the Jews, I knew to be very solemn. His own institution, I knew that he upheld with jealousy the office, while he punished with severity the sins of some who filled it. The nation, I remembered, had flourished or decayed, both in spiritual and temporal matters, much as it respected this divine appointment, or otherwise.

Every well established kingdom has its central government, acting both as its effective executive, and as that which combines together, regulates, and invigorates all the subordinate authorities, and otherwise scattered parts. It cannot subsist without it, no more than the body without a head. There is an analogy here between the natural works of the Creator and the rational institutions of men, which has its counterpart in the gracious dispensations of the Saviour. It would be incredible that he should leave his kingdom in the world, without any fixed government, or that government without an essential to all governments--a supreme executive and centre of unity. He instituted this for the Jewish Church, and left it not to accident to set it up or throw it down. The United States of America, full of wild notions of independence and equality, and of the self-governing rights of its different parts, admit the existence and power of one continuing, supreme, central government, essential to the conservation of the body politic. What would be a body without a head? and how often is the Church described as a body of which all the parts are harmoniously fitted in, for the efficient movement of the whole to its intended end! Previous then to the revelation of the Gospel, my belief in the wisdom of the Divine Author of Christianity would lead me to expect the institution and development of a centre of unity and government in the Church. The Mosaic type confirms the expectation. Be it observed that the fundamental principle of Protestantism, under every form, rejects it; setting at defiance the testimony of nature, reason, fact, antiquity, and Scripture,-I fear, because that combined testimony forbids the anarchy and self-will on which its results are based, and not solely, as is sometimes adduced, because the power of rule had been abused.”—pp. 14-16.

The foregoing remarks are preliminary to the following judicious observations upon the primacy of St. Peter and his successors.

"There is in the New Testament a remarkable promise given to one of the twelve apostles (St. Matt. xvi. 16-19), which we must view in connexion with an extraordinary exhortation afterwards addressed to him (St. John xxi. 15-17), and a very peculiar position held by him (Acts ii. iii. iv. x. xii.): all which also, from the striking accordance with the Jewish type which they gave the Christian Church, warrant the inference that the Lord in his kingdom, his body, his family, his household, acts on the same principle and plan on which he has acted in nature, and guided man to act in ordinary arrangements of this life. It is not correct that what is allowed to have been once appropriated to St. Peter was afterwards made common to all the apostles. No other apostle shared his office in the formation of the Church. To no other apostle was such a solemn exhortation given, to feed the flock of God, as to him. And though the Lord did afterwards give the power of the keys to all the apostles, that no more affected the previous distinction of the separate gift to him (see St. Matthew xvi. 16), than the Lord's calling all his apostles beloved, affects the claim of St. John to be pre-eminently "the beloved disciple." Briefly, but sufficiently, is the establishment of a centre of unity for his Church declared by Christ, while it was left to the providence of God (not to accident), to develope in time its design, growth, and prerogatives. The essential value of the rock to the building fitted into it, was to be shown as the building rose, and the added weight, and the rising height, and the lofty towers; and the power of the fierce winds and the beating waves without, and the slow attacks of wasting time developed, and so to speak, called into trial and proof its solidity and use.

"I think that, upon reflection, you will see that the case could not well have been otherwise, than as I have now hinted it. For the Saviour gave no intimation of the time of his absence, but left his Church in constant expectation of his return. What he left her he expected to find her, so constituted and so united, whether he delayed his coming for twenty or two thousand years. Had this event occurred during St. Peter's life-time, no farther development of a primacy and centre of unity in the Church had taken place; no successor of the apostle been needed. But as it was otherwise, when he died to whom the special promise and charge had been given, another took his position, to occupy it, and continue the Church in her divinely arranged and existing constitution, if haply the Lord should come in his days. And thus another and another have successively filled the chair of St. Peter for eighteen hundred years, on the same warrant, with the same design, and the same darkness as to the Lord's time to return: that warrant, Christ's words to St. Peter; that design, the good rule and unity of his Church and kingdom;— that darkness, the purpose of God (Acts i. 7); herein accomplishing the type of the continuous high-priesthood of the Jews; and no more, than that type did, discrediting or displacing the heavenly high-priesthood and rule of Christ;