it; to the examination of the fulfilment of that purpose, as we find it exhibited in the page of history.

Mr. Palmer, in his Treatise on the Church, is very earnest in reminding us that "the Holy Ghost was always to abide with the Church." (Matt. xxviii. 20. John xiv. 16, 17.) And the conclusion he would draw from this promise, is, that the great mass of the visible Church, having Rome for its centre and main body, must always have been divinely preserved from falling; and must be, in fact, still, as ever, "the Church of Christ."

But Mr. Palmer too willingly forgets that this promise was originally made to a mere handful of persons,-"the number of the names being about an hundred and twenty," who were regarded as heretics and schismatics by the established church of their nation; and that it was expressly coupled with a charge, to "continue in the doctrine." "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: AND, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."

Now it is a matter of fact, as certain, and as undeniable as the existence of Julius Cæsar or of Pope Gregory, that after the lapse of three or four centuries, the great body of those who called themselves Christians, and who deemed themselves to constitute "the Church of Christ," left off" teaching" and "observing the things which Christ had commanded; and taught and observed a religion as little like that of the Apostles as Pope Stephen was like Stephen the martyr.

"

The state of the nominally Christian Church, when the sun of temporal prosperity began to shine upon it, in the fourth century, was already one of rapid decay; and that prosperity, very naturally and very rapidly, hastened its corruption, and speedily rendered it a mass of spiritual pride, covering, as it always does, spiritual alienation from God.

Salvian, of Marseilles, is an unimpeachable witness to this fact. His language is, "The very Church of God, which in all things ought to be the pacificatrix of God,-what is she but the provoker of God? And, a very few excepted, who flee from evil, what else is almost every assembly of Christians, than a sink of vices? For you will find in the Church scarcely one who is not either a drunkard, or a glutton, or an adulterer, or a fornicator, or a frequenter of brothels, or a robber, or a manslayer;" "truly you will more easily find the man who is guilty of all these crimes, than one who is guilty of none." "The churches," continues he, "are outraged by indecencies, and by the irreverence of those who rush

thence, after the formal confession of their past sins, to perpetrate more. You may well imagine what men have been thinking about in Church, when you see them hurry off, some to plunder, some to get drunk, some to practise lewdness, some to rob on the highway."

1

Abundant corroboration might be added, if needful, from Cyprian, Chrysostom, Basil, Ambrose ;-but we need not multiply proofs. That any one writer of good character could have written and published such a description as we have just quoted, without calling forth any protest, shews abundantly that all discipline and all purity had departed from the Church.

And where this was the case, we might be assured that the sanctifying doctrines of the gospel had already been lost also. Doubtless such was the fact. Saint-worship had arisen, and the idolatry of the virgin and the martyrs was fast obliterating all traces of the gospel system. What are the chief topics handled by the greatest divines of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries? The praise of asceticism; the glory of virginity; the wonders wrought by the bones of the martyrs; the merit of fasting, and its virtue in the expiation of sin; the sinless perfection of the mother of Jesus. This was the religion taught by Ambrose, Basil, and Gregory;-not one word of which is to be found in the lessons of our Lord and his apostles; while the things which He and they did really commend, were entirely forgotten.

Hence came "lying wonders" to constitute the main reliance of the Church. The mother of an emperor becomes a devotee; instead of leading her to Christ her Lord, she is sent on a delusive search after the wooden cross on which, three hundred years before, the Saviour had died! A pious fraud is concocted,-the cross is found! and a miracle is got up to prove its identity! Pitiable folly, on the part of Helena,—but a wicked and scandalous fraud on the part of the "holy" monks and priests who contrived the imposture.

A little later we come to another empress; but this one, unhappily, is tainted with heresy. The great Ambrose cannot be contented to combat Arianism with the sword of the Spirit, but "pious frauds" must be brought to bear upon the controversy. A couple of heretofore unheard-of martyrs are conjured up,-two great skeletons are found; the names of "Gervasius and Protasius" invented for them; though they have laid dead, (so runs the story,) from the days of Nero to those of Valentinian,-that is, for three hundred years, there is "plenty of blood" discovered with their bones:-a blind butcher is miraculously cured, and various

Ancient Christianity, vol. ii. pp. 40, 41.

demoniacs, suddenly released, declaim against the Arians. And these are the achievements of the greatest churchman of the Theodosian age!

Need we go through the evidence adduced by Bishop Newton, to prove the demonolatry of the fourth and fifth centuries; the orations of Basil on the martyr Mamas, and on the forty martyrs, whom he calls "stars of the world; flowers of the churches; common guardians of the human family." Or the oration of Ephrem Syrus on the death of Basil; or that of Gregory on Athanasius ;-but we stop,—the simple truth is, that the preaching and the worship of Christ had almost wholly ceased out of the churches, and the worship of dead martyrs and monks, and the slavish following of living ascetics, had brought in a new religion.

Not to dwell needlessly on this point, let us come at once to Gregory I, often called "the last bishop of Rome and first pope." This prelate was one of the best of his class; in quoting him, therefore, we shall see, at once, an instance and example of the piety of his age, as beheld in the most favourable point of view.

The empress Constantina, who was raising a church in honour of St. Paul, writes to Gregory for some portion of the Apostle's remains, to impart a sanctity to the new edifice. The reply of this prelate, one of the brightest lights, be it remembered, of his day, is thus given:

"The pope begins his answer by a very polite expression of his sorrow, that he neither could nor dared to grant that favour; for the bodies of the holy apostles, Peter and Paul, are so resplendent with miracles and terrific prodigies in their own churches, that no one can approach them without great awe, even for the purpose of adoring them. When my predecessor, of happy memory, wished to change some silver ornament which was placed over the most holy body of St. Peter, though at the distance of almost fifteen feet, a warning of no small terror appeared to him. Even I myself wished to make some alteration near the most holy body of St. Paul, and it was necessary to dig rather deeply near his tomb: the superior of the place found some bones which were not at all connected with that tomb, and having presumed to disturb and remove them to some other place, he was visited by certain fearful apparitions, and died suddenly. My predecessor, of holy memory, also undertook to make some repairs near the tomb of St. Lawrence: as they were digging, without knowing precisely where the venerable body was placed, they happened to open his sepulchre: the monks and guardians who were at the work, only because they had seen the body of that martyr, though they did not presume so much as to touch it, all died within ten days; to the end that no man might remain in life who had beheld the body of that just man. Be it then known to you, that it is the custom of the Romans, when they give any relics, not to venture to touch any portion of the body, only they put into a box a piece of linen (called brandeum), which is placed near the holy bodies, then it is withdrawn, and shut up with due veneration in the church which is to be dedicated, and as many prodigies are wrought by it as if the bodies themselves had been carried thither; whence it happened, that in the time of St. Leo, (as we learn from our ancestors,) when some Greeks doubted the virtue of such relics, that pope called for a pair of

scissors, and cut the linen, and blood flowed from the incision. And not at Rome only, but throughout the whole of the west, it is held sacrilegious to touch the bodies of the saints, nor does such temerity ever remain unpunished. For which reason we are much astonished at the custom of the Greeks to take away the bones of the saints, and we scarcely give credit to it. But what shall I say respecting the bodies of the holy apostles, when it is a known fact, that at the time of their martyrdom, a number of the faithful came from the east to claim them? But when they had carried them out of the city, to the second milestone, to a place called the Catacombs, the whole multitude was unable to move them farther, such a tempest of thunder and lightning terrified and dispersed them. The napkin too, which you wished to be sent at the same time, is with the body, and cannot be touched more than the body can be approached. But that your religious desire may not be wholly frustrated, I will hasten to send you some part of those chains which St. Paul wore on his neck and hands, if indeed I shall succeed in getting off any filings from them. For since many continually solicit, as a blessing, that they may carry off from those chains some small portion of their filings, a priest stands by with a file, and sometimes it happens that some portions fall off from the chains instantly, and without delay; while, at other times, the file is long drawn over the chains, and yet nothing is at last scraped off from them."'

Now on reading this, the question naturally arises, Did Gregory believe, or not believe, all these marvellous stories which he thus gravely retailed to the empress? If he did, into what a pitiable state of superstition must the Church have fallen! If he did not, we have then the "lying wonders" predicted by the Apostle, openly displayed. Either way, however, and let the narrative be regarded how it may,-it is quite plain that a new worship,-a new faith, had gained possession of the Church; and the "doctrine" in which Paul exhorted his pupil Timothy to "continue," had been entirely abandoned by later generations.

What becomes, then, of the promise, "that the Holy Spirit should always abide with the Church?" Do we mean to question the purport of this promise, or to allege that it has failed of its accomplishment? We intend neither; but it is highly important that so gracious and important a promise should not be distorted or misapplied.

Our Lord gave no assurance of any indefectibility to any particular local church. He never promised the constant continuance of His Spirit with the church at Rome, or the church at Antioch, or the church at Jerusalem. On the contrary, even to churches planted by the "beloved disciple," and honoured by an especial message, in the very last inspired writing given to the whole Church, a distinct warning is held out, of a speedy overthrow, and utter dissolution, except purity of doctrine were preserved. ("I will come unto thee quickly, and remove thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent.' And that threat, or warning, we all

know, was most lamentably fulfilled.

Nor was there any promise given to any mere majority, or 1 Waddington's History of the Church, pp. 152, 153.

larger part, or division, in the Church. It is not, therefore, sufficient to shew, that this or that opinion has the larger body of adherents; for not one word is there in Scripture, to lead us to conclude, that the bulk, or principal community of Christians, must needs be the abiding-place of the Holy Ghost.

Believing, then, as we do, that the Holy Ghost was to abide with some community, or body of persons, on the earth, even through the darkest and most corrupt ages, and that the mere fact of the chief sway in the visible Church being enjoyed by Rome, is no proof whatever that Rome is the place where the Divine Presence should be sought, we may fairly be asked, where we intend to seek for this Divine Presence, and by what signs or tokens we expect to be able to discern it?

We reply, without the slightest hesitation, that we know of no other rule to guide us in this search, than the tokens and distinguishing characteristics given us by our Lord himself, and his apostles. These are of three kinds. 1. Purity of doctrine: "If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love." "Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other doctrine than that we have preached, let him be accursed." 2. Purity of life: "Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit." "Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth." "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." 3. Persecution: "If ye were of the world, the world would love its own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." "If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you." "The time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.”

Such are the three very legible marks, described by our Lord, and repeated by his apostles in a multitude of passages; by which, throughout all the many centuries of "the times of the Gentiles," his own Church might be discerned. It is sufficient to name them, to prove at once how entirely at variance was the state of the Romish Church, or the general mass of "whole Christendom," from Gregory I to Leo X, from this portraiture. In the popes and cardinals of the middle ages, we neither find purity of doctrine, nor purity of life, nor any signs of enmity on the part of the world. Hence we are compelled to look elsewhere for that Church with which it was promised "that the Holy Ghost should always abide."

Now of these three chief lineaments, by which the Church was to be known, we are inclined to fix upon the last as the most usually visible, and the most indisputable. Disputes may arise as