The church universal: a series of discourses on the true comprehension of the church, as exhibited mainly in the Holy Scriptures and subordinately in the standards of the Protestant Episcopal church. With thoughts on church government and worship: and a view of the church in heaven

Front matter

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A SERIES OF DISCOURSES

Preface

The form, in which this little work appears, is not such as it would have assumed had it been originally prepared with a view to its appearance from the press. Each Discourse has, indeed, been more or less enlarged ; yet, the recasting of the whole into the form of a regular treatise, retaining none of the peculiarities of Pulpit address, would have been a labor incompatible with the concurrent discharge of parish duties. So far, however, as a passing change of phraseology could go, those peculiarities have been laid aside; and the work may therefore be considered as blending, with some of the proprieties of the Pulpit, others more befitting the Press: — whether to the advantage, or to the disadvantage of the book, its readers must judge.

To those, who have opportunity for the comparison, it will be seen, that, in several points, both in the views advanced and in the authorities cited, there is a coincidence of thought and of reference with the Sermon of Bishop Mcllvaine on " the Holy Catholic Church." Indeed, it would be wrong to suffer these pages to go forth without carrying a distinct acknowledgment as well of the author's great indebtedness to the contents, as of his cordial assent to the views, of that very able and eloquent Discourse and its truly valuable Appendix. In the Church Theory advanced, there is no difference between that Sermon and the present work. The main difference between the two lies in the less extensive citation of other writers, in the wider and more formal range of Scriptural authorities and of Liturgical illustrations, and in the introduction of a greater number of topics, which have been attempted in the ensuing pages.

In his more special appeal to Scripture, the author has been influb PREFACE.

enced by an increasingly painful conviction, that, unless something, in the Providence of God, arrest the Theologic tendency of the age, the Protestant Church will ultimately reach a state, in which the argument, in the style of the first Christian writers and apologists, from the sole, all-sufficient authority of the Word of God, will fall — a virtually dead weight — on the minds of a majority both of Clergy and of Laity. What little he can do to lift into that peerless honor, which is its heaven-born right, The Holy Bible, as the only infallible standard and rule of faith, he is most anxious to contribute. To the inspired Word, nothing can give either a meaning or a certainty, which lies not in its own sense: and from it nothing but Inspiration can develope a meaning or a certainty, which the human mind, as addressed in that Word, and as guided by the ordinary teachings of the Holy Spirit and by other accessible lights, is unable to discover. The latter part of this remark applies to doctrines, not to facts. Testimony to facts, and determination of doctrines are very different things. So far as testimony may be considered necessary to such facts, as the application of Baptism to Infants, the change of the Day of Rest, the origin of Episcopacy with the Apostles, and even the prevalence of the doctrine of the Trinity, or of any other doctrine, as a matter of History, we may receive that testimony if good and sufficient in kind and amount, — just as we receive any other good and sufficient human testimony ; regarding it as adequate to the reasonable proof of any fact, possible under the government of God.

But, we cannot receive any exterior documents, or authority, as necessary and sufficient to determine, with infallible certainty, what are the otherwise undiscoverable doctrines of Christianity, without thereby elevating those documents and that authority to a certainty and a value above those of the Sacred Records themselves. If, in matters of doctrinal truth, the Bible — under the ordinary teachings of the Holy Spirit, and amid the lights, with which a Divine Providence has surrounded it, — cannot disclose its own sense to that mind of man which it addresses, then nothing, lower than a new Revelation, can be made, with, certainty, to disclose that sense. Such new and clearer Revelation, were it given, could not be safely received unless accredited by miracles : and such a Revelation, so accredited, would rise at once to a certainty of authority and an eminence of value, above those of the ancient Bible itself. Hence the peril of receiving Tradition, in any form, as a necessary and infallible interpreter of the doctrinal sense of the Bible. To be of any higher authority than that of ordinary human testimony, or of any other value to interpretation than that of ordinary human helps, under the teaching of the Spirit, Tradition must necessarily take rank with Revelation ; and when used to fix on the doctrinal sense of the Bible an infallible interpretation not otherwise discoverable, must necessarily take rank above the Bible. And yet, the Tradition, of which so much is made, has none of the accrediting miracles of a Revelation. The gravest suspicion may well be considered as resting on all pretensions to miracles subsequent to the Apostolic age.

The fact, that Mr. Newman's "Essay on the development of Christian Doctrine " was written after he became, though before he avowed himself, a Romanist, destroys not its force as a true exponent of the tendency of the Tractarian doctrine on the subject of Tradition. The starling point of that doctrine cannot be distinctly and intelligently assumed, and the line of that doctrine honestly and logically followed, without reaching an elevation of authority and of value not only with but above the Word of God. Whether or not the advocates of that doctrine ever go, with Mr. Newman, to the length of receiving the peculiar doctrines of the Church of Rome, while admitting that those doctrines find no support, or none but the most dreamy, in the Bible ; and that many of the peculiarities of that Church have been developed in a way, of which the Ancient Heresies were but the premature, and therefore abortive, anticipations ; — whether or not they ever reach this extreme of bold but desperate honesty, — they, at least, cannot logically stop, till, like the Pharisees of old, they have, however unintentionally, yet virtually, " made the Word of God of none effect by their Tradition."

For, or against the Tractarian doctrine of Tradition ? — this is the very heart of the contest, on the decision of which hangs, for us, the question, Papal, or Protestant? — whether this question respect the movement of the individual, or that of the Church. If either the individual or the Church declare for that doctrine, — adhesion to Rome is the only result, which lies in a right line before the mover. The individual may die before that result is openly reached : or various strong influences may hold him back, or turn him aside, from the advances of rectilinear sympathy and logic : but nothing else can keep him frcm reaching and entering the gates, which open into the enclosure both of Romish Theology and of Romish Rites. If Protestants cannot be convinced of this by arguments, there is, at least, seme prospect, that they may be convinced of it by facts.

As to the Theory of the Church, advanced in the ensuing pages, — the fact that this Theory is identical with that, embraced and defended by the leading writers of the English Church in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, is admitted, — indeed, it cannot be denied, — by the advocates of the Tractarian scheme. The testimony of those writers is too explicit and too harmonious to be disputed, or set aside. The only way? in which it can be met, is that, recently adopted in one of our Church periodicals, which consists in ascribing that testimony to undue sympathy with the Continental Reformed bodies, and to ignorance of the value of certain Patristic testimony, the credit of which, it is said, has been since established. The plea, in substance, is, that the English and Continental Reformers were fellow-sufferers in the persecutions, which Rome waged against her reforming opponents. It is not, therefore, a matter for wonder if, in their strong fellowship of feeling for each other, and of dislike for the common persecutor, the English writers were led too far in admitting the claims of the non-Episcopal Reformed bodies of the Continent to the character of Churches, or parts of the one true Church of Christ. Besides, at the time of the Reformation, and in the Seventeenth Century, the Epistles of Ignatius were not free from a suspicion of their authenticity. This suspicion has since been removed, and those Epistles are now available to the Episcopal argument in all the explicitness and strength of their testimony. Had the Ignatian Epistles been in credit then as they are now, the English Reformers and their successors would not have admitted, as they did, the Church character of the Continental Reformed Christians.

As to the former part of this plea, — if sympathy under common persecutions can make Protestants recognize each other as fellow members of Christ, and Protestant Communions acknowledge each other's claims to at least the substance of Church character, — there would be one blessing, if no more, in making such persecutions perpetual. That the English sympathised tenderly with the Continental Reformed Christians in their trials, there can be no doubt: but that their sympathy blinded their judgments, or made them indifferent to the sad loss of the Episcopacy among their companions in suffering ; this is a very slender pretence, opposed by abundant testimony to the contrary. The language of Bishop Hall did not express his own sentiments alone, when he thus wrote, concerning Churches, which he called England's " dearest sisters abroad."

" Oh ! how oft, and with what deep sighs, hath this most flourishing and happy Church of England wished that she might, with some of her own blood, have purchased unto her dearest sisters abroad, the retention of this most ancient and every way best of governments;" i. e. the retention of government by the Episcopacy.

" It is not the variety of by-opinions that can exclude them from having their part in the One Catholic Church, and their just claim to the Communion of Saints. While they hold the solid and precious foundation, it is not the hay or stubble, which they lay upon it, that can set them off from God and His Church. But in the mean time, it must be granted, that they have much to answer for to the God of Peace and Unity, who are so much addicted to their own conceits, and so indulgent to iheir own interest, as to raise and maintain new doctrines, and to set up new sects in the Church of Christ" (not out of that Church) « varying from the common and received truths ; laboring to draw disciples after them, to the great distraction of souls and scandal of Christianity."

No: the English Reformers and their successors were neither blind nor indifferent, they were keenly awake and alive, to the value and the obligation of Episcopacy : and all their sympathy with their suffering brethren of the Continent could not have extorted from them an acknowledgment of Church character without Episcopacy, had they not, as sound students of the Bible, been convinced that Episcopacy, however valuable and obligatory, is not in such sense essential to the being of the Church that, without it, the Church cannot exist.

As to the latter part of the plea ; — it is true that the Ignatian Epistles are now admitted to be authentic ; but it is not universally conceded that they are free from interpolations. One of the profound Orientalists of England, Mr. Cureton, has recently published, and, by permission, dedicated to the Primate of the English Church, an interpretation of the Syriac version of three of those Epistles, which, as there is said to be little reason for considering them abridgments, would shew that the expurgated Greek copies, in ordinary use, — much as their former contents have been reduced, — still contain many interpolations. It is remarkable that, in this shorter Syriac version, almost all the strong passages on the side of Episcopacy are icanting Allowing, however, that the Greek copies in common use are genuine as well as authentic; or that Ignatius actually wrote all the strong passages ascribed to him, on the subject of Episcopacy ; — this makes him not a teacher of the Tractarian Theory of the Church. You search those Epistles in vain for the Tractarian Idea of Apostolical Succession ; i.e. ; of ordination as a virtual sacrament, transmitting not merely office, but a certain mysterious and, as it were, miraculous sacerdotal power, on the possession of which, from the Apostles' hands through the line of Bishops alone, depend the validity and efficacy of the other sacraments and of all ministerial acts. Not one of the strong passages, referred to, represents ordination as the exclusive prerogative of Bishops : not one speaks of it as conveying the mvstcrious sacerdotal power, for which the Tractarian contends. Ignatius, on the supposition that he wrote those passages, was evidently pressing Episcopacy as the regularly derived government of the Church ; a government then universally received, but having no necessary affinity, with the idea of a sacerdotal power conveyed in ordination, without which there can be no valid or efficacious ministerial act.

A single passage will illustrate the remark, that Ignatius looked on Episcopacy, as a Government, for the Church rather than as a channel of Ordination for the transmission of such sacerdotal power. Addressing the Magnesians, he says : " I exhort you that ye study to do all things in a divine concord ; Your Bishop presiding in the place of God, your Presbyters in the place of the Council of the Apostles ; and your Deacons most dear to me, being entrusted with a ministry of Jesus Christ." This Idea, — putting, for purposes of Goverment, or Presidency, the Bishop in the place of God, the Presbyters in that of the Apostles, and the Deacons as the servants, or ministers, of Jesus Christ, — occurs repeatedly in his Epistles; and shows how little Ignatius had to do with the Theory of Ordination, as transmitting sacerdotal power from the Apostles through Bishops alone. According to Ignatius, Presbyters, not Bishops, are successors to the Apostles.

It is needless to say that the English Reformers and writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not unlearned in Patristics. Usher, at Oxford in 1644, as well as Vossius, at Amsterdam in 1646, was engaged most learnedly in the great work of expurgating these very Ignatian Epistles. The sacred scholars of England, in both centuries, studied the Fathers deeply; though they never exalted them to an equality with the Bible. The Bible, too, they studied profoundly : and, being thoroughly versed in both, and withal, skilled as few or none others have since been, in meeting all the turns, and foiling all the movements, of the Romish argument on the subject of the Church, they were led to the adoption of the only Church theory, which can stand this side of an admission of the entire claims of Rome. As Protestants, we must go back to the ground of the English Reformers, or we shall be either drawn or driven back to the ground of the Romish decrees.

This English Reformation-Theory of the Church, — giving Episcopacy its due place of value and of obligation, yet leaving to all Christians an open ground of common membership in the one Church of Christ ; a ground, on which they may all come together in the glorious work of ultimately melting all hearts into one feeling of love, and of uniting all mouths in one profession of faith ; has, — the writer believes, — the Bible for its base, and the Bosom of God for its home. It is, he is persuaded, the only window in the Roof of our Ark, through which light from heaven can come in upon the darkness of Christian divisions and confusions, and make manifest the secret of peace, love and concord among all who name themselves of Christ. Cheerfully, therefore, and trustingly does he bid the ensuing little work forth, that it may be the instrument of doing whatever God may allot as his part in the blessed work of filling the world with the spiritual reign of its One Prince of Peace.

Brooklyn, October 1, 1846.

J

Part I. The Spiritual Church Catholic

DISCOURSE I.

General Remarks on Eph. ii; 19 — 22, Subject proposed. Special interest of the subject at the present day. Romanist's definition of the Church Catholic. The Tractarian's definition. A third definition sought. God's design in the Bible, to save sinners. .Requisites to salvation. Union with Christ, individual and immediate. The aggregate of those thus united, il a peculiar people." Some of this peculiar people found among all Christian denominations. Case of such among non-Episcopalians, Reasons why they belong to the Church Catholic. Third definition of the Church Catholic deduced. Difference be tween this and former definitions. Close. Page 18 to 33

DISCOURSE II.

Third definition of the Church Catholic resumed. Scripture Testimony to this definition. I. Metaphors. 1. A Fold. John x; 16, examined. 2. A Family. Eph. iii; 15, explained in connexion with vs. 20, 21. 3. A Bride. Rev. xxi ; 9, examined in connexion with vs. 10, 11, 24, 27. 4. A Body. Rom. xii ; 4. 5. Eph. ii ; 16: and iv ; 12—16, examined. 5. A Temple. Eph. ii j 21, examined in connexion with the rest of the Chapter, and with i ; 23. Reason why the Church, in this sense, is addressed as imperfect. Use of argument from these Metaphors. Close. Page 35 to 4S

DISCOURSE III.

Scripture Testimony resumed, II. Literal Passages. 1. Meaning of Greek word, Ecclesia. 2. Matt, xvi ; 18, explained. 3. Acts ii ; 47, explained. 4. Eph. i; 22, 23, explained. 5. Eph. iii; 10, 20, 21, explained. 6. Col. i; 18, 24. explained. 7. Eph. v ; 25—27, explained. 8. I Tim. iii; 16, explained. 9. Heb. ii; 10— 12, explained. 10. Heb. xii ; 22— 24, explained. Mutual cupport oi the metaphors and the literal passages, which have been examined.

Page 49 to 67

14 CONTENTS.

DISCOURSE IV.

I. Objection to the theory. Rational and Scriptural reasons for distinguishing the Spiritual from the Visible Church Catholic. Comments on John x ; 26 : Rom. ii ; 28, 29 : Rom. ix ; 6—8 : Gal. iii ; 7. Sense, in which the old writers call the true Church Invisible. II. Importance to Christian theology of the view, which has been taken; 1. To a right understanding of Church Unity ; 2. To a right application of Christ's promises ; 3. To a right view of the Indefectability of the Church. III. Testimony of our Standards to this view. Reason for citing Devotional rather than Dogmatical Standards. 1. Collect for All Saints' Day. 2. Closing Prayer in Communion Service.

3. Language in the Creed, the Litany, and the Te Deum. 4. Force of all these testimonies. Page 69 to 83

DISCOURSE V.

Testimony of our Standard Writers. Ages to which they belong. 1. Cranmer 2. Ridley. 3. Hooker. 4. Perkins. 5. Hall. 6. Taylor. 7. Usher. 8. Jackson. 9. Barrow. 10. Sanderson. Force of these testimonies. Non-juring doctrines of the Seventeenth Century. True use of the witnesses cited. Close. Page 85 to 96