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work has been, by the divine providence, supported for preserving due order in the visible church, the special object of the divine protection through every age should be that aggregate of pious Christians who, in various circumstances and in distant places, are yet united together in one christian community by their common engraftment into the vine of the gospel.

It is natural that no special attention should have been given to this distinction, until the accumulated abuses of the visible church had rendered it indispensable to the purity of religion to effect a separation from them, though not from the framework of the church, in which they had been engendered. The minds of Christians were then, necessarily, directed to another consideration of the character of the church, distinct from that which had previously prevailed, and had been abused to the assumption of an undue dominion over the minds of men; and they sought in the obscure and secret piety of individuals the constituent parts of an unmixed and pure church, to which the promised presence and protection of our Saviour might safely be understood to have been assured. The two characters of the church appear to have two distinct functions: the visible church, that of maintaining and transmitting the ordinances and divine commission of the gospel; and the invisible, that of forming and preserving within the other a number of Christians, spiritually united with their

Lord, however little connected outwardly among themselves. The former is represented by the net, the latter by the leaven, of our Lord's own illustrations. Nor is the former of these without its appropriate promise; for, as we are assured of the immediate presence and protection of our Saviour in supporting the other, so are we assured by a distinct promise, that the power of hell should not prevail against the visible church, but that it should ever continue to bear witness, by maintaining a sound profession of the faith, to the doctrine of christian salvation.

As this distinction is the essential principle of the reformation, so is it very plainly discoverable in the articles of our church. In the nineteenth article, a definition is given of the visible church. Why should this have been proposed, if an invisible church were not at the same time acknowledged to exist? The two terms are correlative, and either without the other would be unmeaning and absurd. Neither is this all; for in the twenty-first article it is stated, that general councils "may err, and sometimes have erred." What is the meaning of these words but that the visible church, though collectively represented in a general council, is dif ferent from that aggregate of the faithful followers of Christ which is favoured with the presence and protection of their Lord? To abandon the distinction is in effect to renounce the reformation, and return to that misconception of the character

of the church, in which all the corruptions of the church of Rome have had their origin.

It should not, therefore, be matter of surprise that you are found palliating practices, which are foreign from the spirit of the reformation, as they are not warranted by any sound authority of scripture. You disclaim, and doubtless with sincerity, any intention, or wish, to return to the communion of the church of Rome; but you do actually return to that assertion of church-authority, which by degrees was matured into the monstrous usurpation of the papacy. Nor can I quit this part of my subject without noticing a passage,* in which you intimate your resumption of the title soróxos, and represent the objections with which you have been on that account assailed, as illustrating "the danger of an over-anxiety to recede from Rome, or of sacrificing truths which that corrupt church has abused." And is it then indeed a truth, that Mary was the mother of Jesus as God? We are taught in the Scripture that she was his mother according to the flesh, or in regard to his human nature; and we find him rather availing himself of occasions for admonishing both herself and his disciples, that this relation did not invest her with any title to interfere with him, even in the conduct of his ministry on earth. You remark, indeed, that these objections "imply that some have sadly

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forgotten what was the origin of the Nestorian heresy." I would remark, on the other hand, that to resist these objections might rather seem to imply a forgetfulness of the origin of those grosser abuses, by which, in the church of Rome, she is adored as the queen of heaven, and in the Greek church worshipped as all-holy.

You intimate, indeed, in a note, your approbation of a reference of this title, Osoróxos, to the authority of the council of Ephesus, which falls within your period of the authoritative unity of the church; and you support the reference by observing that "the state, by the advice of our church, acknowledged that what the council of Ephesus ordered, judged, or determined to be heresy,'" is such. 1 Eliz. i. 36. The statute did indeed so acknowledge; but, as that council was convened expressly for the condemnation of the doctrine of Nestor, which was understood to separate the divine from the human character in our Saviour, and thereby to constitute in his nature two distinct personalities, the condemnation of this doctrine must be considered as the object of the statute, and not the epithet given in the decree of the council to his earthly parent, which is but incidentally introduced to justify that condemnation by the authority of those by whom it had been bestowed. "In tali sensu," says the decree,5

5 Summa Conc. per F. B. Carranzan, p. 185. Salm. 1551.

"sanctos patres fuisse comperimus. Ideoque illi non dubitaverunt sanctam virginem dicere θεοτόκον, i. e. Deum parientem; non quia verbi natura deitasque in sanctâ virgine sumpsit exordium, sed quia ex eâ natum sit sacrum illud corpus, animatum animâ rationali, cui substantialiter adunatum Dei verbum, carnaliter natum esse dicitur." Well, indeed, might the council conclude that such was the opinion of those fathers who had used the epithet, for it appears to have given occasion to the heresy of Nestor, by provoking opposition; and it might seem that the objections, with which you have been assailed on account of this epithet, had been urged by those who well remembered, not by those who had "sadly forgotten, what was the occasion of the Nestorian heresy."

On the other hand, I do not see how you can, consistently with your principle of church-authority, disown the decree of the second council of Nice, which established the worship of saints, reliques, and images. This council was convened towards the close of the eighth century, and therefore two centuries and a half before that time, which Mr. Palmer has fixed for the disruption of the unity of the church, on account of which you conceive that the promised protection of our Saviour has been suspended.

Having disposed of these preliminary consider

6 Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. vol. ii. p. 66.

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