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doned, as a church, to the advantages already bestowed, without any prospect of further protection, except in their own efforts to return to religious unity by a common appeal to the ordinances of the earlier church. He did not warn his followers that they should be careful so far to maintain ecclesiastical unity, that they might be at least capable of being represented by a general council, as the indispensable condition, on the observance of which they might found a hope of experiencing his promised protection; but he assured them, without limitation or reserve, of his immediate presence and consequent support, during all the days, even to the end of that great period, which they were then directed to commence.

You argue, indeed, "that it was to his one church, and as being one, that our Lord's promise was made;" and I am disposed to admit your position, but not in a sense in which it would be available to your argument. Your argument requires that the promise should be conceived to have been made to the outward and visible church, as one; but the limitation which I conceive to be connected with the promise, can relate only to that invisible church, which is constituted by the union connecting each individual with Christ. "Teaching them," says our Saviour, "to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you;" he adds, "lo! I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." So long, and so long only, as you

adhere closely to my instructions, may you depend implicitly on my presence and protection. That there will be always a number of such Christians, however dispersed in place, and even separated by being connected with churches outwardly disunited, I can entertain no doubt; and therefore I rely firmly on the continuance of the promise, without any suspension on account of any interruption of external union.

How entirely your attention has been directed to the outward authorities of the church, even in disregard of the piety of its individual members, appears from a part of the passage just now cited from your letter. You tell us that the church is prevented from meeting, that she may not, as a whole, fix any of her errors; appearing to have conceived that, if the church could by any possibility be now assembled as a whole, she would by that outward unity be actually empowered to fix her errors as the authorised ordinances of our religion. In another passage you have proceeded yet further, for you have attributed to particular churches an authority, not indeed sufficient for establishing new articles of doctrine, but powerful enough to preclude all attempts at individual reformation, by passing from a corrupted to a purer profession of belief. Speaking of the church of England, you say, "We receive as articles of

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faith what she delivers to us as fixed by the universal church; what she has by her private judgment deduced from holy scripture we teach, because we also think it to be so deducible; if we did not so think, we should obey, must belong to her, but could not teach. Her sacraments we receive, because she has received the commission to impart them; her rites, because she has the power to ordain or to change them. To our own church we owe submission; to the decisions of the church universal, faith." In support of this fixed relation to our own particular church you had premised, "We belong to her because we were baptised in her, and she is the descendant of the primitive church in this land, and her bishops the successors of the apostles." The same plea for an unchanged adherence to his church would be not less applicable to the Romanist of Spain, Portugal, or Italy, and would thus forbid utterly any separation from a regularly constituted church, however corrupted.

Mr. Palmer, who is not less anxious to establish the controlling authority of the church, appears to have felt that your supposition of a suspension of the promise of our Saviour is liable to some objection, for he has devised a very different mode of guarding himself against the admission of the abuses of the papacy. Whether this is more satisfactory it may be useful now to consider. His principle for maintaining the authority of the

Church in coercing the judgment of individuals, is,3 that every decree possesses such authority, if it shall have received the acquiescence of the church dispersed. What he understands by the church dispersed, he has not thought it necessary to explain. I, for my part, cannot understand any other part of the general church than that comprehending all members of it not represented in the council issuing the decree. If this be the meaning, Mr. Palmer appears to me to have cut the ground from under his own feet, by referring the authority of a decree to the sanction of the judgment of individuals. In one passage of his treatise he has even admitted expressly the controlling authority of private judgment. Though," says he, "it be abstractedly possible that some prevalent opinion may be incorrect, yet we should not hesitate to believe generally what is received in the visible church, because the promises of Christ assure us that the church, on the whole, teaches the truth revealed by him; and the authority which teaches us christian doctrine is so probable in itself, that we can never be justified in doubting it on any point, unless there be clear evidence that scripture and catholic tradition do not support, but are rather repugnant to it, in that point." How is such evi

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3 Treatise on the Church of Christ, vol. ii. pp. 153, 154, 158, 164, 165, 356.

4 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 148.

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dence to be found except in the exercise of individual judgment?

Of the general reasoning, by which Mr. Palmer supports his doctrine of the imperative control of the church over the judgment of individuals, it may be sufficient to adduce a single specimen. "Whatever texts or arguments," he says," "establish the right of individuals to judge, establish directly that of the church. I conclude, therefore, that the right of individuals to judge, directly establishes that of the church." I confess that this, which is his leading argument, appears to me to fall within the description of that inconclusive reasoning, which in logic is denominated sophisma compositionis, or a fallacious inference from the parts to the whole. It is not by any one maintained, that an individual has a right to coerce the private judgment of another; and there is therefore no ground for inferring, that any number of the individuals composing a church has a right to coerce the private judgment of a minority. The individual right claimed, and the collective right inferred from it, are dissimilar, and even contradictory; and no inference can be fairly made from the one to the other. The logical example of this kind of reasoning is this: three and five are odd numbers; therefore eight, their sum, is an odd number. This, it must be admitted, is rather

5 Treatise on the Church of Christ, vol. ii. p. 97.