set up as its standard the authority of the church, as it existed in some earlier period subsequent to that of the apostles, or refers its faith and ordinances immediately to those communications which had been directly made by divine authority, either by our Saviour himself or by his inspired followers. You have, indeed, proposed very fairly to decide this question by an examination of our articles, in which course I propose to follow you. But it is necessary that some preliminary considerations of the authority of the church should be previously discussed.

The main question at issue is, indeed, what authority should be admitted as belonging to the church? Every member of our church readily acknowledges the high authority of the earlier church as a witness of the genuineness of the scriptures, and of the sense in which their more obscure passages were understood by those, who lived nearest to the times of the writers. But this acknowledgment is not sufficient to satisfy your pretensions. While the church is thus admitted as a mere witness, however respected, the value of its testimony must be estimated by referring it to the written word; nor is any distinct and independent authority conceded to it for the direction of individuals in matters either of faith or of practice. You have, on the other hand," stated

7 Pages 30, 53.

that the church is not only a witness, but also an expositor. Nor can this be understood to signify merely that the church may declare its own sense of the right interpretation of the sacred scripture, and claim for its exposition a respectful attention, for this also every member of our church would most willingly concede: but you claim that it may do this with an authority binding on the consciences of its individual members, even in contradiction to their private judgment.

This doctrine of the paramount authority of the church is founded on the declaration of our Saviour, in the concluding verse of the Gospel of Matthew, to the eleven apostles, "That he would be with them always, even to the end of the world:"-a most important declaration surely, but not by any means warranting a persuasion of infallible authority. In the verse next except one preceding this assurance, our Saviour informed them, as the ground of the commission given in the intervening verse, that "All power had been given to him in heaven and on earth." On this ground they were directed by him to go and instruct and baptise all nations; and they were, in conclusion, assured that he would himself be ever with them. We We may, therefore, rest persuaded that the church will ever experience his special protection; but we have not from these words any warrant for assuming over individuals the exercise of an infallible authority of direction. Our Saviour has not added, whatsoever you shall

decree in my name shall be implicitly received by my church; but, on the contrary, has limited them in teaching to all things whatsoever he had himself commanded them. With this limitation they were assured of his especial protection. They were not empowered to determine by any intrinsic authority what things should be observed in the church.

If these words of our Saviour should indeed be considered as conveying to the church an infallible authority of dictation, which should in every case overrule the convictions of individuals, it is not easy to see why this authority must not be considered as belonging to the church equally in every age, the promise being so expressly extended through all future time-Tάoas ràs nuégas. You, however, have πάσας been aware of this difficulty, and have devised an expedient for extricating yourself from it; whether it is sufficient for this purpose is now to be considered. “And hence it is," you say, "not from any abstract ideal of the first ages, that our divines appeal to the church anterior to the division of the east and west:" and you add," "this they do, because the church was then one; and it was to his one church, and as being one, that our Lord's promise was made. And now, on that ground, her functions are, in this respect, suspended; she cannot meet as one; and this coincidence of the errors

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of these later days, and the interruption of her harmony, seems remarkably to illustrate this fulfilment of our Lord's promise; particular churches have fallen into error because the church has separated, and the church is prevented from meeting that she may not, as a whole, fix any of these errors. What further fulfilments our Lord's promise may have hereafter we know not; or whether the church shall again be at one, and so be in a condition to claim it in any enlarged degree. It might be so; for although we have broken our traditions, yet might an appeal to those of the church, when it was yet one, set at rest what now agitates us. For the present, sufficient for us what has been bestowed in the period of her unity; the main articles of the faith have been fixed and guarded by her, and we possess them in her creeds, and believe that the church shall, by virtue of her Saviour's promise, preserve them to the end."

If I rightly understand this passage, the great sin of the church, in your opinion, was the religious separation of the east and west, which occurred, according to Mr. Palmer,1 in the year 1054, when the eastern and western churches were separated by mutual excommunications. By that unhappy division, you conceive the promised protection to have been forfeited. The articles of the faith, however, had been happily fixed while the

1 Treatise on the Church of Christ, vol. ii. p. 189. London, 1838.

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church was yet one, and will be preserved to her to the end by virtue of her Saviour's promise; and our sole expedient for setting at rest what now agitates us is, you think, to make an appeal to the traditions of the church when it was yet one, or during the earlier period of its existence.

Now, if there be any one thing in our Saviour's promise more clear than another, it is, that it cannot be fairly understood to convey an assurance liable to be suspended on any account whatsoever. The terms implying uninterrupted continuance are as express as any which language could supply,-all the days, even to the end of the world; and therefore I feel myself required to infer, that the subject of the assurance could not have been that, which admitted a suspension. Your expedient therefore, instead of removing the difficulty arising from the errors and abuses of the later church, presents to my mind an additional argument in proof, that the promise of our Saviour could not have been made with any reference to the authority of the church. I do not maintain that even the providential protection of the church has been promised without any limitation, for I see that it is limited to the consideration of what he had himself commanded; but I contend that the promise cannot be understood to be at any time wholly withdrawn. There is in it no intimation of any limit or qualification by which its active operation was to be suspended, and the followers of Christ were to be thenceforward aban