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as are acknowledged to be genuine christians. In ancient times, the limits of communion were supposed to be coextensive with those of visible christianity, and none were excluded from the catholic church but those whom that church deemed heretics or schismatics. Our opponents proceed on an opposite principle; they exclude myriads whom they would not dare to stigmatize with either appellation. In ancient times, the necessity of baptism, as a qualification for communion, was avowedly and uniformly founded on its supposed essential connexion with salvation; opponents have totally relinquished that ground, yet still assert, with equal vehemence, the same necessity, and absurdly urge the shadow, or rather the skeleton, of ancient precedent, after they had disembowelled it, and divested it of its very soul and spirit. In ancient times, the whole mass of human population was distributed into two classes, the church and the world; all who were deemed incapable of admission to the first, were considered as belonging to the last of these.

The advocates of strict communion have invented a new classification, a division of mankind into the world, the church, by which they mean themselves, and an immense body of pious padobaptists, who are comprised in neither of the preceding classes, their charity forbidding them to place them with the former, and their peculiar principles with the latter. Were they to assign

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them to the world, they would at once declare them out of the pale of salvation; were they to acknowledge them a part of the church, they: would convict themselves of the crime of schism, in repelling them from communion. In attempting to designate this class of christians, compared to which their numbers dwindle into impalpable insignificance, they are reduced to the utmost perplexity. On the one hand, they contend, that they are not entitled to be considered as disciples; on the other, they loudly proclaim the confidence they entertain of their ready admission into heaven. They are acknowledged to possess faith in an eminent degree, yet it is denied that they have afforded any legitimate evidence of it; and though out of the church, it is confessed, it would be the height of bigotry to pretend to invalidate their religious pretensions, yet to recognise their validity in it, would be an equal impropriety. It is unnecessary to say how far these maxims deviate from christian antiquity; nor is it easy to conceive the astonishment their avowal would have excited in the breast of the Cyprians and the Austins; I might add, of the apostles and evangelists of a former age. Guided by the simple dictates of inspiration, accustomed to contemplate the world under two divisions only, that of believers and of unbelievers, they would, doubtless, have felt themselves at an utter loss to comprehend the possibility of the existence of an equivocal race, who are to be

treated as heathens in the church, and as christians out of it; and, while they possess whatever is necessary for an instant translation to glory, are disqualified for the possession of the most ordinary privileges of the christian church.

As it is the province of poetry to give to "airy nothings a local habitation and a name," if we cannot eulogize the reasoning of our opponents, we willingly allow them all the praise of a creative fancy, due to the invention of so bold a fiction.

The unity of the church is not merely a tenet of antiquity, but a doctrine of scripture, to which great importance is attached by the inspired writers. Wherever the word occurs, without being applied to a particular society, the idea of unity is strictly preserved by the invariable use of the singular number; the great community denoted by it is styled the body of Christ, of which every believer is declared to be a particular member; and the perfect oneness of the whole is solemnly and repeatedly attested. "The bread which we break," says St. Paul, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? for we, being many, are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread."+ "Now ye," says he, in the same epistle, are the body of Christ, and members in particular."

This grand and elevating conception of the unity which characterises the christian church, Ephes. v. 23. Col. i. 24. +1 Cor. x. 16, 17.

was ever present to the minds of the fathers; and never do they rise to a higher strain of manly and impressive eloquence, than when they are expatiating on this theme. Thus we find Irenæus celebrating that "church which was disseminated throughout the whole world, to the very ends of the earth, which carefully preserved the preaching and the faith she had once received, as though she resided in one house; and proclaimed, and taught, and delivered the same doctrine, as though she possessed but one soul, one heart, and one mouth."* 66 Every kind," says Tertullian," must be referred to its origin. So many and so great churches as now subsist, are that one church, founded by the apostles, from which they all derive. Thus all are first, and apostolical, while they retain the relation of peace, the appellation of fraternity, and the symbol of hospitality; which rights are regulated by no other principle than the tradition of the same creed."+ Cyprian, comparing the church to the sun, affirms, that while she extends her rays through the whole world, it is yet one light, which is every where diffused; nor is the unity of the body separated; her exuberant fertility stretches her branches to the whole earth; she expands her streams most widely, yet the head and origin is one, and it is one mother

*Irenæus, lib. i. c. 2, 3.

Tertullian De Præscriptione Hereticorum, p. 209.-Lutetiæ Parisiorum, 1675.

that is so prolific. Who," says he, "is so wicked and perfidious, who so maddened by the fury of discord, as to suppose it possible to divide, or attempt to divide, the unity of God, the vestment of Christ, the church of God!" He elsewhere expresses his conviction that he who does not hold the unity of the church, does not hold the faith.

During the first centuries, the unity of the church was not a splendid visionary theory; it was practically exemplified in the habits of reciprocal communion, cultivated and maintained among orthodox societies through every part of the globe.t

So repugnant, however, is the narrow exclusive system which we are opposing, to that considered as characteristic of the church, that its advocates profess themselves at a loss to comprehend its meaning, except in the arrogant and offensive sense in which it is sometimes employed to vindicate the pretensions of Roman catholics and high churchmen. "Is the unity of the church," Mr. Kinghorn asks, "destroyed by nothing but

* De Unit. Ecc. pp. 110, 111.

See upon this branch of the subject, the admirable work of Dr. Mason, who, by a copious induction of ancient authorities, has indisputably established the fact, that every portion of the orthodox church formed one communion; and most ably illustrated the mode of proceeding by which their union was maintained. The depth and accuracy with which he has discussed the subject, must be my apology for not entering into it more fully,

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