on earth, as revealed in the New Testament: the doctrine of which, upon this point, cannot be better conveyed than in the inimitable language of the Church of England:"The visible church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men in which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly administered according to Christ's ordination,"100 and, therefore, the only purpose for which they are so congregated is, that those ministrations may, through the Spirit, be attended with the greatest possible success, in the edification of the saints, and in the conversion of sinners. To this purpose, and to this alone, the power and authority entrusted with the ministers of the church were to be entirely subservient. It is not possible that the doctrine of the New Testament regarding the church can be more clearly stated, and we can hardly conceive of any thing more entirely at variance with it than the tradition of the apostolical and early fathers. With them, the church was an association politically incorporated by the Almighty, and having offices of dignity of many degrees in rank. In these offices is vested a very large measure of the divine power, in virtue of the apostolic succession. The purpose for which this power was imparted they do not inform us. From hence the error proceeds in a two-fold direction. They regarded the church as consisting not of the people (with the New Testament and the Church of England) but of the ministers; 101 that it, and therefore, they were the only media of communication between God and man. In the other direction of the error, they altogether mistook the Scripture regarding the unity of the Spirit, which they taught to be, so entire a subjection of all the mental faculties of the laity to those of the clergy, that when the latter shall address God in the name of 100 Article 19. 101 Ign. ad Trall. 3. Supra, p. 194.

the congregation, they shall speak as with one mind and one will.

Here the two branches of the error again converge; for the duties of the laity, as taught in the second century, are legitimate conclusions from both. They, as we have already seen, were not allowed to act either in their religious or civil duties, without the consent of the clergy; they were not even to think without them; they were to render them the homage of the heart and spirit, as well as of the body; and to have them in reverence, exactly similar both in kind and degree, to that which they paid to God himself. The sanctions which enforced these precepts were tremendous. The slightest mental dissent from any thing advanced by the clergy implicated the dissentient in the sin of schism, cut him off from the unity of the church, and, therefore, shut out all hope for him of acceptably approaching God; all other Christian virtues, yea, the sacrifice of Christ himself, notwithstanding.

The mode in which these opinions would seem to have co-operated with other causes, in giving success to the rank heresies of the times, we have considered at length: and by showing that the homage demanded by the clergy was clearly idolatrous, we have obviated the necessity of any scriptural disproof of it.

Nor are we at all at a loss for the origin of the error. It is merely a Christianized version of the maxims of social government of every kind, which were then universally current. The ideas of responsible authority, and of government for the benefit of the governed, received no countenance whatever from the practice of those times. On the other hand, dignitaries of every rank, both civil and religious, assumed exactly the lofty, God-deputed bearing with which Ignatius carries it, on behalf of the Christian

ministry. We must also call to mind here our former observation, that it was not the divine purpose, in revealing Christianity, to teach mankind politics; but to impart a rule of life that should adapt itself to the political circumstances of society, whatever they might be. And nothing is more certain than that when such harsh and arbitrary notions prevailed universally, a larger measure of authority would be required to give full effect to the ministrations of the clergy, than in times when milder and more rational theories of government were entertained. We have great satisfaction in being able thus to mitigate the error of Ignatius; whose name, as one of the early martyrs to the faith, must always be fragrant, and whose writings abound, nevertheless, in passages of pure piety and exquisite beauty.

The nature and general bearing of the error upon the Christian system, is the only point that remains to be considered. These we shall find to be in melancholy uniformity with the aberrations from the doctrine of Scripture which have already engaged our attention. It interposed another cloud between the heart of the believer, and that sun of righteousness, whose full splendour it was the purpose of this perfect revelation to unveil. Like the other errors of the period, it debased and sensualized Christianity, rendering it more a concern of time and less of eternity-it cast another defilement on the pure spirituality of its motives, by infusing into it a gross and earthy element; it destroyed the simplicity of its moral code, by enjoining, as imperative duties, acts which the Bible denounces as grievous sins: and thus, by introducing into Christ's religion absurd and irrational motives, and anomalous and incongruous precepts, it marred the harmony of the entire system: and reduced that, whose exact

arrangements and nice adaptations, otherwise, loudly and sweetly utter forth the praises of the infinite wisdom which framed so fair a plan, to a chaotic mass of hopeless confusion.

It was not possible, but that great and grievous practical evils should ensue upon a derangement like this. Besides those immediate effects which we have endeavoured to trace, it were easy to show the rapid advances of the clergy in arrogance, intolerance, and secularity, through this and succeeding centuries; until "the man of sin, the son of perdition," was unveiled in the fulness of his gigantic dimensions. But we rather turn to that which, being the necessary consequence of the error, must always appear under whatever circumstances it is entertained, and however carefully it may have been purified from the idolatrous grossness of Ignatius.

Christianity knows nothing of degrees of requisition ; she asks the dedication of the whole heart and affections, of all the faculties and powers, without the slightest reservation, to her service; it is impossible to overstate, either the comprehensiveness or the universality, of her demands. She can ask no more from the clergy; she demands not one whit less of the laity. The one and the other are equally exhorted "to present their bodies" (and therefore all their outward actions) "a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God," and this, and this alone, "is their reasonable service." Evidently, nothing can be more abhorrent to the spirit of a religion like this, than the notion of a vicarious performance of its duties: of the supererogatory labours of one class in the church, supplying the lack of service of another. Yet, that this is elementary to the error in question, is equally apparent. To make this clear, let us contemplate, for a moment, the

situation in which a lay Christian of the second century was placed by it. We have already shown that, according to the then prevalent theology, the only mode by which man's acts of devotion could pass through the invisible world to the ear of Him to whom they were addressed, was by the free agency of a universe of angels. We now find that, even in this world, the layman had access to his heavenly Father, only through the medium of the bishop and clergy. Thus separated by a double remove from the object of his worship, it would infallibly be concluded that religion was an affair in which the layman had, comparatively, but little concern; and that his safest course regarding it, was to keep on as good terms as possible with the clergy below, and with the angels above, and to leave the rest to be managed between them.

This is, of course, an extreme case, arising out of the gross character of the unhappy times we are considering. But is not the same consequence inevitable upon every shade of the same error, however attenuated? Is the entire figment of a church on earth, the only authorised expositor of the word of God, in virtue of the apostolical succession of her clergy, (a notion as utterly destitute of Scripture warrant as the supremacy of the Pope) any thing more than a dilution of the doctrine of Clement and Ignatius, from which the deduction of the Romish church, that therefore the Scripture is to be denied to the laity, has been somewhat illogically severed? And is it possible to escape the inference, that therefore the laity will do well to leave a very exact and curious attention to religion, to those whose holy orders confer upon them the advantages for such pursuits, whatever they may be, which accrue from the apostolic succession; and not to busy themselves with enquiries which they must necessarily pursue under