those great principles of reciprocal loyalty which that service was meant to express. For, while these great principles of loyalty remain steadfast, the crude symbols which form their expression in a nation's babyhood, must yield to well-weighed and exact sentences when the period of manhood comes. The college cannot retain the clappings and marchings and singings of the little pupils of the Kindergarten, nor parliament the monotone of the professor's chair. Hence it is that that which was necessary to convey instruction in the dark ages to barbarous and uneducated hearers now no longer quickens, but distracts spiritual thought. So, also, usages which were needed in apostolic times to protect the church when she was an outcast, are no longer appropriate when her worship has the support both of law and of public opinion. "It is not, I am right sure," said Hooker, in arguing with the puritans, who then took the position that all apostolic usage was jure divino immutable, while Hooker insisted that usage, even divinely directed, is mutable, and is to be changed so as to make it from age to age the fit exponent of immutable truth" it is not, I am right sure, their meaning that we should now assemble our people to serve God in close and secret meetings; or that common brooks or rivers should be used for places of baptism; or that the custom of church-feasting should be renewed. In these things they easily perceive how unfit that were for the present which was for the past age convenient enough. The faith, zeal, and godliness of former times is worthily held in honor; but doth this prove that the orders of the church of Christ must be still the self-same with theirs that nothing which then was may lawfully since have ceased?" It is he who enforces a custom no longer intelligent and sensible who is "uproarious." The true conservative is he who seeks "the faith, zeal, and godliness" of apostolic times, and would adopt the forms and agencies by which this faith, zeal, and godliness may be best expressed.

Many like illustrations might be given; but between

1 Eccl. Pol. Book iv. chap. ii. § 3.

Rome and the Truth the distinction may be generally stated as follows: Rome clings to the letter, and changes the essence as the letter shifts its meaning with time. The Truth clings to the essence, and adopts a new letter to express it when the old becomes obsolete or false. Or, to state the same proposition in another form: With Rome, doctrine is mutable, and organization immutable; with the Truth, organization is mutable, and doctrine immutable. Rome adds to or varies the volume of revelation, but declares its ecclesiastical mechanism to be infallible, unchangeable, and perpetual. With the Truth, the volume of gospel inspiration is complete, and by man its sense can neither be added to nor changed; but the hierarchy is fallible and imperfect, and is to be so moulded as to adapt it to the conditions of each particular country or age. In other words, while Rome presents stability of form, and hence instability of life, the truth presents stability of life, and hence flexibility of form. And, tenderly as we may view those who in seeking for rest ally themselves with Rome, we cannot but feel that that from which they are reacting is not Protestantism merely, but a necessary condition of all life and truth.1

1 Then, again, visible unity may be but that of a fagot, while mystical unity is that of the branches of the true Vine. The branches may be invisible, as the Vine is invisible, and the Husbandman who tends it is invisible. And yet the tie that unites the branches to the Vine, and makes them a living whole, is none the less essential because it is invisible. "In St. Paul's representation of the church, the unity of the one body springs from the unity of the indwelling Spirit; from the one Lord, who is the sole Head of his church; from the one faith, whereby it is united to him; from the one baptism, which is the initiation of that union; and from the one universal God and Father, who rules over all its members, and pervades them, and abides in them. In like manner, when St. Paul is speaking of manifold diversities of gifts and offices, and pointing out the necessity of these diversities, he at the same time declares that at the root of all these diversities there is a ground of unity, in that they are all the gifts and ordinances of one and the same Spirit. Here everything is spiritual; and when acting under this her heavenly Guide, the church will preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." "When St. Paul is reproving the divisions at Corinth, he does not set himself up as a centre of unity; nor does he tell them that they must seek a centre of unity in St. Peter. He tells them that Paul is nothing, that Apollos is nothing, that Peter is nothing. But is his inference that they are therefore left to hopeless divisions? He does not say

6. Disgust with Orthodoxy.

It is at this point, as has already been incidentally mentioned, that we depart from Herr Nippold; and, in fact, apart from the considerations already mentioned, a scrutiny of the cases detailed by him in this portion of his work, shows that so far as the accessions from orthodoxy are concerned, reac

that there is no foundation for them to rest on, nor that Peter is the foundation on which the church is to be built. He says merely that none can lay other foundation than that which has been laid already, and that this only foundation is Christ. In truth, this Romish inability to recognize the unity of the church without the help of a visible human centre, is only another instance of that miserable incapacity for faith in spiritual realities which, we have repeatedly observed, is the pervading character of Romanism.". Arch. Hare, ut supra.

And, once more, all the analogies of society are against the idea that religious peace is to be secured by submission to an infallible judge. Rome says: "In every phase of society we must take our duties from others- the child from the parent, the servant from the master, the suitor from the judge." But, as Archdeacon Hare well observes, the analogy points the other way: "Children need guides, and have fallible ones. Pupils need guides, and have fallible ones. Nations need guides, and have fallible ones." And as in social matters, so in ecclesiastical. Nothing can be less peaceful than the clothing of authority with infallibility. The Highland chief who insisted on having his whole clan vaccinated by force, had right on his side, so far as vaccination itself is concerned; but to bring in by force troops of grown and even aged men, struggling, kicking, and screaming, in order to have the virus communicated to them, without explanation, was far more objectionable, and certainly far more riotous, than would have been the slower process of explaining to them what vaccination meant, and obtaining their free consent. The imposition of infallibility may produce peace in the same way that destroying the vital powers destroys pain. Or it may drive men off from religious controversy, just in the same way that imperialism drives men off from political controversy; but the result in the one case is spiritual, in the other political, degeneration. But, if it means the inculcation of doctrine by force, then the result is uproar not unlike that of the Highland clan to which we have referred. If doctrine be viewed as anything else than a matter of mere indifferentism, then there is nothing the soul resents so convulsively as the attempt to impose such doctrine on it by force. And so absolute submission by itself destroys true faith. But this "is not God's mode of dealing with his human creatures. In the whole scheme of our redemption the help which is granted to us is to elicit a corresponding energy in us. The eye drinks in the light, and puts forth its faculty of seeing. So every truth communicated to the mind is the awakener and stimulater of an intellectual energy. Thus, and thus alone, truth becomes power. We are not supplied with leading-strings to draw us blindfold to the truth. But we have every help, each according to his need; and if we make a right use of

tion from orthodox severity was in no sense a motive power propelling to Rome. Let us examine this position a little in detail.

Take, for instance, the history of Scotland and of England. Undoubtedly the reign of puritan and of covenanter was followed by a reaction; but it was not a reaction Romewards. If in the days of the puritan and the covenanter, the letter was unduly elevated over the spirit; if there was a tendency to bind down the gospel by a series of minute ascetic observances, by which a temper of legal fear was substituted for that of faithful love, men did not seek relief by a recourse to Rome. The excess which they reacted from was that of undue restraint: that which they rebounded to was undue liberty. Because they found the bonds of the letter grievous, they revolted also against the bonds of the spirit. Because that which was merely mutable-as Hooker so well taughtin the apostolic practice was unduly pressed on them, they discarded that which was truly immutable, that which was the eternal essence of the gospel of Christ. A reign of laxity and of rationalism followed; and it was not until men saw how perilous this laxity was, and how hollow this rationalism, that the reaction began towards Rome. Of course we do not class under this head such inconsistent bigots as James II. or such miserable time-servers as his courtiers; though, as far as there was any religious sincerity in them, they were impelled by disgust, not at that which was orthodox in the what we have, and seek for more, under the guidance of God's Spirit, meekly, patiently, diligently, we shall assuredly have more and more of this truth made manifest to us" (Archdeacon Hare's Charge of 1840, p. 35). Infallibility shuts, close to the eye, the lid of the telescope of faith. But the truth lifts this lid, and bids us strain our sight through it, and, though our vision is fallible, and the telescope is fallible, yet in this way alone is Christ revealed. Then, again, by one of the conditions of our nature, just as an infallible principle reaches us only through a fallible form, so an infallible form involves a fallible principle. Rome offers an infallible form in the papacy, tendering a peremptory decision on every disputed point; but when we go back from the form to the principle, we find contradiction, intrigue, and corruption. The truth, on the other hand, confesses to fallible forms. Language changes, doctors vary, councils err; but above us, as a centre of unity, is Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.

puritan creed, but at that which was lawless in those by whom the puritans were followed. But we do speak of the cases of men of true piety who then, and subsequently, have passed from orthodox churches to the church of Rome; and what we have to say is that what took them over, was not disgust at the orthodoxy these churches cherished, but dread of the rationalism by which this orthodoxy was assailed. Those of this class who are cited by Nippold bear this testimony: "The atonement, the incarnation, were doubted, were imperilled; we sought refuge in a communion where they would be unquestioned." It will be seen, therefore, that we have ascended to a still higher range than that which we reached in viewing the former "disgusts." Those who now pass before us are serious, devout men, who feel that they must live by faith, and not by sight, and that in the poverty of this life of show and sense, it is the supernatural alone that can feed the soul. Christ as a reality is what they crave; and it is a sad thing that they should leave the region where he can be viewed directly by the spiritual eye, for that in which between him and the believer are interposed distorting ordinances or erring men. And yet so it is; and this class of refugees, seeing that out of Rome Christ is denied, fly to Rome as a secure retreat, just as would men, who, perplexed with the quiver and refraction of the noon-tide air, should hide in a dark cave in order to see straight. The doctrines of the Trinity and of the atonement, as we have seen, they find are attacked by the rationalist; therefore they go to Rome, in order to hold these doctrines in peace. And yet where could there be a greater mistake! For the doctrine of the Trinity is assailed in truth at Rome, not by denying the Godhead of Son or Spirit, but by adding the Godhead of virgin and saint. The assailants of the Trinity are enthroned at Rome; not indeed, in the persons of Socinus, arguing only for the schoolman, or of Hegel, rhapsodising only for the philosophers, but in those of the virgin, appealing to a whole humanity, and of saints, appropriating each suppliant. And of the atonement, the religious and moral bearings are re