I will freely make a further admission. The leaving many saints behind tied by ten thousand bonds which Satan and circumstances have formed around them, and the feebleness of faith, which long bondage in Egypt has occasioned, weaken the ranks of those who are out, make gaps in their spiritual advantages which they fully feel, and leaves them more liable to the inroads of Satan—their labor more abundant than it would otherwise be. The question is, Are they to go back to those who are thus behind, or to march on looking for them to follow? It may be, their want of courage for war has caused them a more toilsome journey through the wilderness; but they are learning faith in God who supplies every need there, which their long worldly supply in Egypt (since they left their strangeness in a promised land) had taught them almost to forget entirely. Leeks and onions were there, but there was not the supply and the care of their own God, and they were in bondage under hard and cruel masters, whose enmity was against their first-born. They trust that if journeying through the wilderness to the Canaan left of old, it is now not to be as strangers without so much as to set their foot on, but to the rest and to the inheritance which God has prepared for them. They prefer indeed the path of faith, feeble though they be; they are sorry for their brethren behind.
There are other things in which these, which constitute the great principle, are shown in practical detail. The whole arrangement of ministry is from the world, and not from God. All the chief pastors of the church, and a great body of the inferior (but it is sufficient here to note the chief as the fountain), are appointed by the world in its worst form—a perfectly monstrous notion, under which the godly men are themselves groaning, but which is much more important, as sheaving the practical dependence on it, and the identity of the whole system with the world. The letters patent of the king (that is, the fiat of a worldly minister, perhaps an infidel) are the credentials and appointment of all the bishops in Ireland—all the parochial cures or non-cures are secular livings incident to a profession, and a large portion of them not even in the gift of men who have the moral control of the church, however they got it, but come directly from the world. It is perfectly ridiculous to talk of godly-appointed ministers, or of this being ministry.
Mr. Simeon of Cambridge, and others, used to buy up livings in order to get godly men into them: has this the smallest resemblance to spiritual pastorship in the church of Christ? The result is, that in the very best of times a large majority of the pastors, so called, are not Christians at all, but serve only to make everything but themselves schismatical; and the best comfort one can get is, that there are often no Christians under them; and where a godly man has been, in the majority of instances, the effect of the system is, that the person who follows shall have his only business in sedulously rooting up the principles taught, and scattering the flock. We have a promise in this number, of instruction what Christians are to do when a Christian ministry is not within reach, although there are plenty of pastors brought there by the system of the English Establishment.
If it is not the fault of the English Establishment, whose fault is it? I shall be told the bishops; the bishops are to take care. And who appoints the bishops? Are they appointed according to God's order? No, but according to the system of the English Establishment, which as to church matters, however to be obeyed in civil, we must say is the world. All this then is the system of the English Establishment, and is destructive of the nature and possibility of a Christian ministry. People may talk of books and regulations in the prayer book. They do not let out the great secret of the whole: The source of the ministry is in the world, with the government of the country, and not with God, by the system of the English Establishment. There can be no regular Christian ministry in it. It is impossible that any order or discipline should be in it. The Spirit of God may be too strong for the system. So it is; and therefore there are both godly individuals and separatists; and such is the case partly by virtue of their being separatists. But the system is irreclaimably destructive of the being of a church. In the same way there is, and can be, no legislation, no provision for the emergencies of the church, by any meeting assembled as a Christian one for the purpose. They have signed that they have no right to meet unless by the king's calling them together—not the Lord's. They had to do with the world, which jealous of their doing anything without the prerogative authority of the world; they belong to it, and therefore are regulated by it. In lieu thereof, they are legislated for by Infidels, Dissenters, Socinians, Roman Catholics, and everybody else that may be. And to such extent is this, that at one time half the chief pastors of the country were cut off, when the leader of the Commons had considered the circumstances of the church, and the arrangement of their pastoral care settled by him! And there is not a pastor in the country but derives his authority from them, and there is now a commission in the country to examine the inferior ones. How ridiculous to talk of the divinely ordained ministry of the church! And are the sheep of Christ to be subjected to this—to own such a system at all This then is another objection to the English Establishment, that its ministry is entirely the appointment and arrangement of the world, because it is of the world.
I have here spoken, not of the monstrous and horrible abuses which are the consequences, but of the principles of the whole system. It was an ominous circumstance when the image of Christ, which was always in the rood-loft of the church, was taken down at the Reformation and the king's arms were set up there instead. This is the symbol of the English Establishment—the sign of what it is. It is not formed then to act as a church, but to obey and be arranged by the king and the parliament. They could not legislate for the spiritual welfare of the church of Christ; they are the only legislature for the English Establishment. Why? Because it is of the world, not of God. These are not abuses—not corruptions; they are its principles—its system. The Home-mission is a disorder, a corruption like the separatists; the system is orderly subservience to the king and parliament, generally not Christians, and never acting as such. This is an object moreover, which acts upon the circumstances of almost every private Christian, and it is felt in the grieving of the Spirit to the utmost corner to which it reaches, or where it precludes another from going who might be a blessing.
And hence another deadly evil in the English Establishment: the ministry itself becomes a worldly ordinance—a clergyman is a clergyman, without reference to grace or gift in him. There is an entire separation between gift and nominal office in the church. Nominal office is not founded on the exercise of gift, as it was in the primitive church, and hence becomes, and is, an authority entirely independent of gift, and necessarily hence apart from, and independent of, God, whose part in the office is conferring the gift. It becomes simply derivative from man, and thus the nominal authority of God's offices attached to every error, unbelief, and evil-doing that can be in the church; and this is the church's apostasy in office, and this is the meaning of the English Establishment, as to its offices. They are derivative without grace; not the recognition of gift in any case, but the conferring of authority with or without it. A man has them because of his humanly derived authority, and what is merely human becomes an exclusion of God's Spirit, and a divine warrant attached to evil. The authority is derived from the appointment, and is as good in the English Establishment without grace as with it. And yet there is the awful assumption of actually conferring the Holy Ghost; and this is so entirely and avowedly the case in its worst form, that a clergyman of the church of Rome, ipso facto on his coming over, is a clergyman of the English Establishment, without any reference to gift or office at all, for then gift and office cannot be, and proves the whole force to be in the humanly derived authority. Their orders are identical in their source. Whence then is the mission and authority of the church of Rome? Thence are the boasted orders of the English Establishment. They are the human substitute for divine grace, and thus the constant security of mischief and evil in the church—the seal of apostasy.
Hence a man with less grace, less of God's Spirit, less knowledge, less holiness, would be received and trusted to, because he was a clergyman—because the world owned his fleshly order, while he who had all of them would be slighted. It is the denial of the exercise of all gifts, and the substitution of a clergyman, be he even no Christian at all, in their place. He and no other may speak, though he may be totally incompetent to edify the church, and God may have specially qualified some one else to do it; and there is no remedy in the system for this, no provision for the exercise of any gifts; for were he even ordained, he must go elsewhere. The clergyman is the person to give his half-hour's instruction, bad or good, and no one else can be allowed to speak. Let one be an apostle, it would make no difference: let God send him expressly, it is no matter. It is irregular for the Spirit of God to act in the English Establishment. It would not suit the world, and therefore it does not suit the English Establishment: unless therefore the Spirit of God be quenched, there must be divisions. While the system of the English Establishment remains, it is the grand bar to the operations of the Spirit of God; and so I have ever found it in this poor benighted land. Oh! the loads of guilt it will have upon its head in this country.
The next thing, showing its connection with the world, and rejection of the Spirit of God, is indiscriminate communion: thus it becomes the positive witness of the compatibility of unholiness and all Christian privileges. Sacramental communion is the seal and symbol of the participation of all Christian privileges. We are identified with every person who partakes there, not as to his being a child of God as known to God, but as to his being one as known to us with all due spiritual investigation. “Looking diligently,” says the apostle, “lest there be among you, &c.” “Inasmuch then as ye are partakers of that one loaf, ye are all one body.” (1 Cor. 10:17.) It becomes then the solemn sanction of unholiness, making Christ the minister of sin. This is the universal practice of the English Establishment. It makes her, the national church, no church at all—discipline in it is simply ridiculous. The moment it is exercised, it ceases to embrace the nation: the king and the bishops must be the first persons excommunicated; and then where is the English Establishment? So in the colleges, the education for the church, all the fellows and students (Christians or no Christians, is no matter) are canonically, and by the regulations, bound to receive, at least, three times a year. Thus it becomes, by embracing the world, the grand sanction for ungodliness in the church of God, the nursery of apostasy. It makes no difference in godliness as to the privileges of Christianity. It is essentially and practically antinomian; assurance without discipline must be antinomian.
The next thing that may be mentioned is entire unsoundness of doctrine; the want of liberty which flows from this association with the world; and next the ascribing to ordinances an efficacy which makes the world without faith on the same ground as the believer, thus putting the ordinance in lieu of believing on the Lord Jesus Christ.
As to doctrine, we read in the second Article “That Christ died to reconcile His Father to us” —a statement quite inconsistent with the gospel on its fundamental principle, which flows from the Father sending the Son out of His own voluntary and uncaused love. This mission of the Father from His own mind is of the very essence of the gospel. The error is an abuse of one part of the gospel, in which Christ made satisfaction for sin, to destroy another, the fountain from which it flowed in which God gave Him so to make the satisfaction. It strikes at the root of all the liberty and settledness of peace of the people of God. It is false doctrine, and all the liturgy is founded on this bondage.
The litany especially, much as people admire it, is what no simple holy Christian could use. Can a body of Christian worshippers continually be saying, “Spare thy people; and be not angry with us forever?” If these are joint supplications, is the church always to be under the sense of God's anger? There is a continual confusion in these supplications between God's people and the people of England or Ireland as being a Christian nation, and they treat the world even in a Christian state, and are no prayers of the Spirit of Christ and for the church at all. The fact is, it is a relic (as any one may see in the treatises on the common prayer) of superstitious processions, begun about the seventh century to arrest evils, but is not a Christian supplication at all, though there may be Christian things in it.
I do not think any part of the common prayerbook recognizes the church in the place in which God has set it, of redeemed liberty in Christ; and because it is identified with the world, and therefore always labors and tends to keep down the church to the level of its association with the world. In the assertion of provision for everything, there is the assertion of fitness for nothing. If I make the common supplication of the congregation to say, “be not angry with us forever,” it is foolish to say before hand, “let us rejoice in the strength of our salvation.”
The fact is, the church is laboring under kingly prohibition to the Reformers to act upon the light which had opened upon their consciences. We have this statement in the Homily for Whit Sunday, “The true church is a universal congregation or fellowship of God's faithful and elect people, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone. And it hath always three notes or marks whereby it is known: pure and sound doctrine; the sacraments ministered according to Christ's holy institution; and the right use of ecclesiastical discipline.” Will any man, will the editor, say that there is the right use of ecclesiastical discipline in the English Establishment? If not, it is not the church of God at all; and for the plain reason that holiness ceases to be a characteristic of it. Truth, fellowship, and holiness constitute the church: take away either, and the church is gone. The two latter the English Establishment has not at all; the former, defectively.
I have noticed one point: I shall mention another in which they are mixed up.
In the Homily on “Common Prayer and Sacraments,” we read, “And as for the number of them, if they should be considered according to the exact signification of a sacrament, namely, for visible signs, expressly commanded in the New Testament, whereunto is annexed the promise of free forgiveness of our sins, and of our holiness, and joining in Christ, there be but two; namely, baptism and the supper of the Lord. For although absolution hath the promise of forgiveness of sin, yet by the express word of the New Testament it hath not this promise annexed and tied to the visible sign (I mean laying on of hands); is not expressly commanded in the New Testament to be used in absolution, as the visible signs in baptism and the Lord's supper are: and therefore absolution is no such sacrament as baptism and the communion are. And though the ordering of ministers hath this visible sign and promise; yet it lacks the promise of remission of sin, as all other sacraments besides the two above named do. Therefore, neither it, nor any other sacrament else, be such sacraments as baptism and the communion are.”
Now here we have the annexing and tying of promised forgiveness to the visible sign, and this is habitual in the minds of most, as to the eucharist, where a man ought not to come except in full forgiveness. It is taught in the most objectionable way as to baptism. Thus, “it is certain that children baptized, dying before they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved.”
Now I am not here questioning the point of infants' salvation, but adduce it to show that salvation is annexed to baptism by its own efficacy under all circumstances. Children who are baptized are undoubtedly saved. No wonder if they are regenerate and have their sins forgiven them. As to both then we have the prayer, and the assertion, “Dearly beloved, ye have brought this child here to be baptized, ye have prayed that our Lord Jesus Christ would vouchsafe to receive him, to release him of his sins, to sanctify him with the Holy Ghost, to give him the kingdom of heaven, and everlasting life. Ye have heard also that our Lord Jesus Christ hath promised in His gospel to grant all these things that ye have prayed for which promise, He for His part, will most surely keep and perform:” and then: “Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is regenerate, &c.” and afterward, “we yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this infant with thy Holy Spirit; to receive him for thine own child by adoption, and to incorporate him into thy holy church.” And he is asserted thereby to be made partaker of the death of God's Son, though not of His resurrection.
And in the catechism the statement is made broadly that the child was made a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven; which last indeed is made a matter of hope in the baptismal service. So in confirmation, “Almighty and ever-living God, who hast vouchsafed to regenerate these thy servants by water, and the Holy Ghost, and hast given unto them forgiveness of all their sins.” And so much is this the case that in the 16th article we read, “not every deadly sin willingly committed after baptism is sin against the Holy Ghost, and unpardonable.” Why after baptism, but that baptism was regeneration and the forgiveness of sins? The whole statement is utter confusion, but it shows the place baptism had in the system. The prayer in the eucharist service is equally strange “Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.”
Now these things really involve most important points of doctrine; they show a continuous system, by which though Christ has died “to reconcile His Father to us,” the church is still praying God may not be angry with it forever, and seeking by the use of ordinances to make daily available to itself the security of averted wrath. I do not believe this is a correct view of the gospel, but puts the gospel and the church in a false, an unchristian, position. It arises from the necessary sense of unknown and unascertained love and craving of mercy, which its identification with the unbelief of the world imposes on it. Let it have as much love towards the world as it pleases, but let it have the joy of forgiveness for itself. I repeat it, it is but the systematic perpetuation of unbelief; I do not say intentionally but in fact. By asserting everyone to be regenerate and in a state of salvation, it has lost for itself what it is to be regenerate and saved.
The next point is the want of spirituality of worship. This must be the case in its utter mixture with the world, because of the grieving of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is not looked for in worship; but instead of it prayers which must suppose the thoughts of the Spirit of God in the church, and the wants of the saints to be invariable every Sunday in the year and all years, and capable of being appointed beforehand; and the incongruity of which to the real expression of spiritual wants is proved by their never being by any chance used by men of the English Establishment at any other time than that in which they are prescribed by law. As a matter of fact, the worship of the English Establishment is not the worship of the church of God, not therefore spiritual worship, and consequently unacceptable to God. They do not reckon on the presence of the Spirit of God to enable them to worship, but have substituted the liturgy in its stead; in which there are many holy things doubtless, but which are not the Spirit of God, nor are they necessarily the wants of those who may be there, nor are they gathered together in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. They meet as the parishioners of a parish, not as Christians. The service goes on just the same whether there be a single person who knows the Lord or not, whether they are Christians or not; and if there be such there, they have not been gathered together in His name. Whatever the form of piety, no stranger, nor any spiritual Christian going in. could feel that there was dependence there on the Spirit of God, nor consequently His presence there, because two or three were gathered together in Christ's name, unless for judgment on the form of it; and the general answer is, they go for communion between themselves and God. They confess that the communion of the saints is lost, but for the other home is a better place. But think of the whole congregation (taking them in their best light) getting publicly absolved every Lord's day! and I say it now, not in reproach but as showing the character of the service, and again, as a whole congregation of Christians, saying, “Be not angry with us forever!” Where is the peace and liberty of saints in this?
But the great point is, they do not meet as Christians leaning on the Spirit of God, but as men trusting to a form. It is vain to attempt to bring it to one's self, as the spiritual worship of believing people, the joint spiritual worship in whatever feebleness of believing people. Is there such a thing called for in the church of God? Is it not its special character? The Establishment destroys any such thing. Hence the whole inquiry is, Is the gospel preached there? I want spiritual worship with the saints. I believe it the supply of God's goodness for our weakness, and the especial privilege and comfort of the church. The other is a form of godliness for the world, but indeed denying the power of it. Extempore prayers need not be spiritual, but the leading of the Spirit is the power of prayer and spiritual worship, expressing thereby its necessities; and daily reiterated forms cannot be assumed to be the expression of the Spirit's mind, though they may serve for the world who do not want it. They serve perfectly to prevent the ascertainment whether men are spiritual or not—the great object where the church is joined to the world.
I would ask godly men of the English Establishment, why on every other occasion they make use of what is called extempore prayer? Is the meeting of the saints, the church, the only place where such guidance and assistance of the Spirit could not be? Or is it that indeed there is such mixture of the church with the world that it cannot be; that is, that it is no meeting of the saints at all, and that dependence on the Spirit of God is given up, as in a place unsuited for His presence and help? The truth is, it is framed for meeting the world, and hence it is public worship (i.e. of the world and of the saints in the world) not the gathering into one, in any sort, the children of God which were scattered abroad.
And here while I acknowledge that there are many saints in the English Establishment, as we find Jonathan the beloved of David mixed up with Saul, I would notice what appears to me a very fatal consequence as to them of this state of things, and of the whole position of the clergy—an habitual disregard to convictions of mind. The system being inevitably and infallibly tied to all these things, they meet every conviction with the feeling, “If I give way to this, I must leave the whole system.” The consequence is, they endeavor somehow or other to repress or else to quiet the conviction by some subtle reasoning or general comforting persuasion. “I shall do more good by being here:". but the Spirit of the Lord is grieved, and the honesty of their conscience and judgment impaired in its principles. If we suppress our conscientious convictions in one thing, it is not in that alone we suppress it, but we suppress the conscience itself, and we weaken the godly spring of judgment in it. There is not the same nearness to God of our conscience, the surface of it is hardened by the resisted conviction, and nothing tells upon it as it did. It does not tell so speedily, as by the presence of the grieved Spirit of God, the presence of good or evil. It is not in the healthful discernment of the Spirit of God, God's index to the soul. The man ceases comparatively to be of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord. I have known a clergyman tell me “he had no conscience;” another, “things were true, but he had no faith;” another, “that he thought he did more good by preaching against the principles of seine of the services, than harm by using them;” and multitudes, “that though they did not agree with everything,” though they signed that they did, “they thought they did more good by staying where they were than by leaving it:” some that the sixth article neutralized their signature to all the rest. I never found any one (any believer that is) but a clergyman say such things. I have known persons stay where a measure of actual evil was, which they had not signed, which they opposed in the hope of getting rid of it; but I have not known any but clergymen sign what they did not agree to, or twist their consciences and judgment together in some way, so as to let their consciences slip through the difficulty for the sake of gaining an end. It seems to a simple Christian “doing evil that good may come” (for I am putting the best case for the clergy, and that no temporal motive actuates them in the least). I do not believe that one godly clergyman in the country, until lately (for this wrenching of conscience has now, I believe, obscured many a spiritual thought) believed in baptismal regeneration—at least they preached against it. I do not believe, if left to themselves, ten Christian Clergymen in the country, until it became a matter of partisanship, would have used the public baptismal service as it stands; but they signed the approval of it, and used it, thereby not only grieving God's Spirit in their conscience, but wronging the people by an untruth. They taught continually and repeatedly in their black gown, contrary to what they used and declared continually in their white; and this has had a most fatal effect upon the conscientiousness of the whole body, and a most visible one to those who are free. And they may be assured that the perception of this is not confined to separating brethren. Acting upon conscience they are pleased to call a morbid conscience. The tendency this will have in bringing in popery, I believe they are very little aware of. Dulling the conscience is the great secret of that system, and in connection with the necessary value and power of formal ordinances. Dark as they may be, the high church clergy are more honest in this. How deep a sin it is against the people, they must answer in that day.
But the editor of the “Christian Journal” has established us in the conviction of the rightness of our principle. If he tells us that we are weak and feeble, we acknowledge it altogether as thrown upon the Lord, but not without His guidance. He tells us we are “separatists,” “Israelites indeed in whom is no guile, more than ordinarily engaged in doing good.” I read that Christ the Lord “gave himself for us, that be might purify to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works.” We accept the designation, and crave the power of His presence and Spirit, that we may abound more and more, that we may be more nothing and His presence everything among us. We are not satisfied, nor shall we be, till the resurrection, if we are saints; but apart from evil we seek to be every day more, preparing to meet the Lord; and we would remind the editor that to continue in gross corruptions may be human wisdom, but we read “The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; to depart from evil, that is understanding.”
We believe that the editor of the “Christian Journal” has signed many things which he does not believe, and is what he is by virtue of doing so; we cannot think that is right. I have refrained from entering into actual abuses; but when we look around, we see the effect of the English Establishment system to be the destruction of pastorship as to the great body of Christians, and the large majority of those called so, not Christians at all; the abuse of ordinance to a frightful degree; the destruction of spiritual worship; the sanction of abounding iniquity, and the casting the reproach of schism and disorder upon the saints of God who labor in His name, or seek to keep a good conscience. And we do not think it requires a morbid conscience to have done with this.
As to ourselves we are feeble and weak, but we are not careful to answer them in the matter: our God is able to deliver us through the fire we may be brought into, and He will deliver us; but if not, we will not serve their gods, nor worship the golden image which they have set up. They have taken the graving tools, and got the gold (while our Mediator has gone on high, receiving the commandments of His grace for us), and put it into the fire, and fashioned it with the tools; and when we would ask, with the broken word in our hand, What did the people, or what the king, that thou didst do this? We are answered, Providence, providence. “There came out this calf.” The principles of the church are gone in it. The spirit of obedience is gone in it. They know not what is become of Him who guided them, and they have left the principle of obedience, the only guide meanwhile, and they have formed a guide for themselves and called it a feast to Jehovah. They may be saved (indeed we would intercede for them), but their idol must go to the ground—it must be made dust of, not by man's hand (save the wicked “the men of God's hand”), but by God's. “They have not continued in God's goodness” —the church has not; and the word runs, “otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.”
And now I have only to add, what perhaps may seem an odd conclusion, that I look for no effect merely from these reasonings. If there be not spirituality enough to give up the Establishment on the highest principles, it is of little avail that reasonings convince; though as a positive hindrance to truth, and for the opening out of real spirituality in the soul, I do sincerely desire every Christian to be out of it. I have only to add, that the reforms in the “Christian Journal” lead, as we have seen, to no real result. I do not believe the editor would now insert articles he did some months ago, while they plunge at present persons who act on his provisional plans into the worst principles of dissent. Thus in this “Journal” — “on hearing sermons” —we have this recommendation as “excellent advice:” “As the gifts and talents of ministers are different, I advise you to choose for your stated pastor and teacher one whom you find most suitable upon the whole to your own taste, and from whom you are likely to learn with the most pleasure and advantage.”
Now this is merely passing from the confessed ruin which the church system presents of efficient worship and ministry, into the very worst principle of dissent, and that upon which more of dissenting and real evil is founded in the church of God than perhaps any other, choosing teachers suited to our taste. It is in fact, much as the English Establishment dislikes dissent, the only real principle of conduct it has left, but such a one as from one end of scripture to the other shall be hard to be found—unless in “I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas.” Unity I believe to be the most desirable of all things, but unity founded on godliness, the unity of the faith, the unity of the Spirit in a good conscience, and as the apostle describes, “the wisdom from above, first pure, then peaceable.” But Jehu's reformations will not save Israel from the judgment that is to come—no getting rid of mere abuses, though it may protract awhile in the patience of God. But the temple of God is lost: it is not Judah, nor ruling with God, nor faithful with the saints. May the Lord grant us to know our own feebleness, and purge us from all evil!
Before the above could be printed (for the November number was seen late in the month), the December number with an additional article appeared on the subject. It will not require many words. The early part of it, it strikes us, is low, but so timid of the prophecies of the last proving true, that it convinces us rather of the uneasiness of the writer's mind on the subject than anything else. In the close of it he recommends us (by a simile, if possible, more kind than even the early Quakers or Swedenborg) to be prayed for as “apes.” All this I would pass by: only hinting in all friendliness, that as to the English Establishment, wherever it has been brought—it is his nurse-child, not our's—we hope he may get safe down without killing himself or his nursling. We simply disclaim all care of it. I am not aware of any dying Tostatus among his separating brethren. But he has now ventured in scripture, and I cannot help feeling that as, in the former part, he must have been ignorant of the facts he spoke of, so here there is very great ignorance of the mind of scripture; but when it is quoted, it must always be met. The first part is so little to the purpose, from the character of the worship of the time, that it is difficult to deal with it; but the evidence it does afford is conclusive against the editor. It is perfectly clear that separation from the public worship of Israel was a bounden duty, and there is express commendation of it in scripture. Does the editor mean to say that it was right for Israelites to continue in the worship of the golden calves, the sin of Israel? or to make the English Establishment the answering analogy to the sin of Jeroboam, who made Israel to sin?
The commendation of the seven thousand is that they had refused to join in the national worship, because it was corrupted with worldly practices. There were no such things as religious communities then; it could not be; it was not the form of divine worship to have churches. But they separated from the public worship of the country when it was corrupted, and were commended for doing so. And when even much less corruption than Baalim was practiced; when the golden calves were set up in Bethel and Dan, pretended to be the worship of Jehovah, but mixing for worldly reasons Egyptian practices with it, it is mentioned with honor that out of all the tribes of Israel such as set their hearts to seek the Lord God of Israel separated from them and left the country. And if the editor had ever read the Prophets, he would have known that their testimony was incessant against having any such worship. As to Jerusalem, no person could have gone from the temple, or he would have had no sacrifice at all. When it was corrupted, they were bound not to join. As to Ezekiel, he prophesied in Babylon, and the people of whom he speaks were shut up in the city of Jerusalem besieged, but they were to be marked, because they sighed over the abominations. But the editor seems not to be aware that they were commanded by the prophet Jeremiah to separate themselves and leave it, because the judgment of the Lord was coming on Jerusalem, and that so their lives would be spared, and that all the princes and the king, &c., were very angry because thereby they said Jeremiah was weakening the hands of all those who were striving to save Jerusalem and resist the Chaldeans. There is indeed nothing new under the sun; so that, so far from there not being in a single instance anything like separation, it was commended or commanded in both the instances to which the editor alludes, when religion had become corrupt, and that even at the risk, nay the certainty (for they could be performed nowhere else, which is not at all our case), of losing the ordained and regularly necessary sacrifices of God. Thus we see, in the case when we might least expect it from the nature of the worship, it is exactly the opposite to the editor's statement.
Does he seriously mean to tell us that the Israelites ought to have worshipped the calves in Bethel and Dan? It is quite clear they ought not, and sinned if they did. Ought they not to have owned therefore any god? ought they not to have owned, thanked, and worshipped Jehovah? It is clear it was their very point of faithfulness to do so; and they were separatists from corrupt national worship for the Lord's sake, and worshipped as well as they could by themselves—evil having got possession of public worship. They were hated just as much as, or more than modern separating brethren—hid perhaps by fifty in a cave, where of course it would have been a sin to worship Jehovah, or they would have been separating brethren. I protest I cannot see what the editor means, but that Baal and the calves were like the English Establishment, and that people ought to have worshipped them. The former part may be true for aught I know; but certainly the scripture totally condemns the latter, and makes it the very point of faithfulness that it had been refused, in spite of acts of uniformity by kings and queens; and this makes a wide breach in his argument. He says, “in their several places in the church, protest” —what church? Were they to worship the calves and protest against them? They did not worship with the nation at all, and could not. This was their protest, and the whole point in question, as it is now; and the Lord specially owned them, because they would not, but did form a separate communion, and there were worshippers of Baal, and worshippers of Jehovah; so that Jehu could separate them for the slaughter of the former. So it is now. It is not I who have drawn the comparison; but the conclusion is manifest—the protest of refusing to worship with them, and worshipping Jehovah by themselves at all cost, constituted the point of Israelitish faithfulness.
Now as to the New Testament; and, first, the Jewish church in our Lord's time. It is a mere subtlety to call it a church. It was no church, but an outward prescribed form of legal sacrifices and ceremonies ordained by God Himself, from which no one could willfully deviate without sinning, as our Lord says, “not a jot or tittle should pass from the law till all were fulfilled;” and our Lord being made under the law, having graciously humbled Himself to this, was bound to be, and would not have conformed to all righteousness, had He not conformed himself to it. Was a Jewish Messiah (as such—though much more—He then came) to have been the first to break the law God had given to the people He was of and came to?
Who ordained the pattern of the English Establishment? On what mount was it shown unto a mediatorial Moses? We are getting into popery in earnest now. The church of Judaism, if He will call it so—for church it was not—was not corrupt; but the people were who ministered in it. The state of things in the ordinances was exactly what God had ordained, even to the tything of mint, rue, and cummin: and therefore the Lord says, “these ye ought to have done.” Conformity therefore was a plain duty; therefore the Lord says, “the scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat.” They were prescribing Moses' enactment by Moses' authority, and therefore what they commanded was to be observed; but their works were not to be followed. There is no such seat, unless we come to popery or legal prescriptive ordinances, in the Christian dispensation.
The confessed inventions of man we do not feel it necessary to follow; the works of those who assume the place we would for the most part avoid; but the simple answer to this is, that the temple was a divinely ordained system, and that the structure of the English Establishment is not. Our Lord Himself therefore, could not separate Himself from it. “He came to be the minister of the circumcision for the truth of God,” to confirm the promises made to the fathers,” and of course came in connection with them—would not go to a Gentile, and commanded His disciples not. But, consistently with this, He was as separate as He could be, living in despised Galilee, and choosing His disciples thence, from whom Jews were a distinct designation, as is manifest to any one well acquainted with the Gospels: but the moment our Lord died and rose again, the whole thing changed. The church became partakers of “the heavenly calling,” and the character of His priesthood, and consequently of worshippers under it, was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens. He was to be known in the church “not after the flesh,” in which He was connected with Judaism according to the faithfulness of God, but “the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead.” It was then, not Messiah walking blameless under the law, but “what communion hath light with darkness, Christ with Belial, or a believer with an unbeliever?” The world was a condemned world, having rejected Christ; wherefore, “come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”
The English Establishment and the editor of the “Christian Journal” will not obey this primary command, constituting the spiritual character of the church as one with Christ. They will not “come out, and be separate,” but say, under the sanction of the Irvingites whom they despise, “that Christ can have communion with Belial. Be it ever so corrupt, people ought to stay there.” They have destroyed and corrupted the foundation principle of the church of God stated in that passage, that a believer cannot have communion with an unbeliever, that it is Christ and Belial. They would rather justify the worship of the golden calves, or Baalim, or Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, than have the trial of losing the support and comfort of the world. For my own part, I have no hesitation in saying that, were it to come to this, I would rather worship with two or three in a house separate from evil, though it were in every street of—, than be deliberately mixed with evil, which the Lord must judge and set aside when He shall appear.
Such a state of things may be an evil and sorrowful state, but it is not the deliberate and haughty sanction of wickedness. They might have been destitute of the order and beauty of worship, and bidden in their caves on bread and water, but not sanctioning a system in which, whomsoever would, people that were not priests at all, the king consecrates to minister to the calves which are called Jehovah, in departure from the covenant of God. But I trust that the readers of the “Christian Journal” will remember that the principle on which the editor calls on them to continue in the English Establishment is avowedly that which is built upon the sanction and continuance in the worship of the golden calves of Bethel and Dan. I desire no other evidence of what the principle really is.
(To be continued.)