SEVENTH DAY’S TRAVEL

SEVENTH DAY’S TRAVEL

“You will recollect,” said the Doctor, at the commence men of the conversation this morning, “that there was one point suggested by your remarks yesterday, concerning which I desired some further information; not so much because I had any doubt of the correctness of your statements, as because I desire to know upon what sort of evidence you made assertions so very different from those I have been accustomed to hear.”

“Certainly,” replied Mr. Courtney; “I remember it perfectly. You have all your life been taught, as all Pedobaptists are, by preachers, and books, and pamphlets, and papers, that the baptism of babes dates from the time of Christ. And I asserted that it was introduced at a much later period. I do not love to make assertions without giving the proof, and am very glad that you are disposed to hear the testimony. I will make it as concise as possible, and it will be as convincing as you can possibly desire. I will set your mind at rest on this point at once and for ever.

“And I say, in the first place, if the baptism of babes was not practiced by Christ and the apostles, it must have been introduced afterwards. This is self-evident. But now, we have carefully examined the record of the sayings and doings of Christ and the apostles, from Matthew to Revelation; and though we have found the baptism of many thousands of men and women expressly mentioned, we have not discovered any account of, or any allusion to, the baptism of one solitary babe. We must therefore, if the record be not incomplete on this most important point of Christian faith and practice, admit that no infant was baptized. At any rate, we must so decide, unless those who say that infant baptism was then practiced will show at least one plain, undoubted fact on which to base their assertion. But such a fact the most intelligent and candid Pedobaptists do not so much as pretend to have. They say, with their learned and zealous advocate, Professor Stuart, ‘Commands, or plain and certain examples, in the New Testament relative to it I do not find.’

“No one ever investigated this subject with more laborious scrutiny then Dr. Wall, the author of the ‘History of Infant Baptism;’ yet he is forced to acknowledge that, ‘Among all the persons that are recorded as having been baptized by the apostles, there is no express mention of any infant.’

“So Luther says, expressly, ‘It cannot be proved by the Sacred Scriptures that infant baptism was instituted by Christ, or begun by the first Christians after the apostles.’

“So the learned Erasmus, in his note on Romans v. 14: ‘Paul does not seem to treat about infants. It was not yet the custom for infants to be baptized.’

“So the Magdeburg Centuriators: ‘Concerning the baptism of infants, there are no examples of which we read in the first century.’

“Bishop Burnet expressly declares, ‘There is no express precept or rule given in the New Testament for the baptism of infants.’

“I might extend this catalogue indefinitely; but I need not do so. I will only add the testimony of the learned Limbroch, given in his System of Divinity: ‘There is no express command for it in Scripture. Nay, all those passages wherein baptism is commanded, do immediately relate to adult persons, since they are ordered to be instructed, and faith is prerequisite as a necessary qualification, which [things] are peculiar to the adult. There is no instance can be produced from whence it may indisputably be inferred that any child was baptized by the apostles. The necessity of Pedobaptism was never asserted by any council before that of Carthage, held in the year 418. We own that there is no precept nor undoubted instance in Scripture of infant baptism.’

“Now, since we have searched for it in the Record, and could not find it; and since these and others of the most learned, most industrious, and most zealous advocates of infant baptism admit that they have searched for it and cannot find it, it seems to me that we are fully justified in concluding that it is not there.”

“But, Mr. Courtney, you say these men were themselves baptizers of infants. They were pious, conscientious men How could they practice and commend that which had no Scripture authority?”

“That is a hard question, sir. If they were still alive, I would like to ask it of themselves. I suppose most of them, did they venture to speak out truly the real ground of their faith and practice, would give it somewhat in the language of Mr. Walker, in his modest plea for infant baptism: ‘Where authority from the Scriptures fail, there the custom of the Church is to be held as law. It doth not follow that our Saviour gave no precept for the baptizing of infants because no such precept is particularly expressed in the Scriptures; for our Saviour spake many things to his disciples concerning the kingdom of God, both before his passion and after his resurrection, which are not written in the Scriptures. And who can say but that among those many unwritten sayings of his, there might be an express precept for infant baptism?’”

“Certainly,” exclaimed Theodosia. “Who can say? And who can say that there was not among those unwritten sayings of his a complete description of purgatory? Who can say that there were not express directions concerning the consecration of monks and nuns? Who can say that all the mummery of Popery was not detailed in those unwritten conversations?”

“It seems very evident to me,” said Dr. Thinkwell, “that if He did give them such an express precept, they were very disobedient to his requirement; for of all the thousands whom they actually baptized, we do not read that they ever baptized a single infant; and never in a single instance so much as intimated to those whom they received and organized into Churches, that it was their duty and their privilege to bring their infants in with them. If he gave them such a precept, I can only say, they must have forgotten all about it, and the Holy Spirit failed to bring it to their remembrance, as Jesus promised he should do concerning the things which he had told them.”

“We have nothing at all to do,” said Mr. Courtney, “with traditions on this or any other point of faith or practice. The custom of the Churches, except so for as that custom is recorded in the Book, is nothing to us; and yet I will show that the custom of the Churches was not to baptize infants for several generations after the apostles. I say, first, infant baptism was not commanded by Christ, or practiced by the apostles. It did not exist up to the time when the canon of Scripture was completed. This I take for granted from the simple fact, that neither we, nor its most diligent and capable and zealous advocates have been able to discover any trace of it in the Book.

“I will now prove to you that it did not exist in the century next after the apostles. What sort of testimony do you require! Will you have the statements of ecclesiastical historians? Wallafridus Strabo, a Catholic ecclesiastical historian of the ninth century, says, ‘It should be observed, that in the primitive times, the grace of baptism was usually given to those only who were arrived at such maturity of body and mind that they could understand what were the benefits of baptism; what was to be confessed and believed; and, finally, what was to be observed by those who are regenerated in Christ.’

“In fact, there is a canon of a Roman Catholic council, held at Paris in the year eight hundred and twenty-nine, which says the same thing: ‘In the beginning of the Holy Church of God, no one was admitted to baptism unless he had before been instructed in the sacrament of faith and of baptism, which is proved by the words of St. Paul, Rom. vi. 3, 4.’

“Salmasius, an eminent French Roman Catholic, says, ‘In the first two centuries no one was baptized except, being instructed in the faith, and acquainted with the doctrine of Christ, he was able to profess himself a believer, because of those words, “He that believeth and is baptized.” Thence the order of catechumens in the Church. Then also it was the constant custom to give the Lord’s Supper to those catechumens immediately after their baptism.’

“Ludovicus Vives declares, ‘No one in former times was admitted to the sacred baptistery except he was of age, understood what the mystical water meant, desired to be washed in it, and expressed that desire more than once, of which practice we have yet a faint resemblance in our baptism of infants; for an infant of only a day or two old is yet asked [in the Lutheran Church] whether he will be baptized; and this question is asked three times: in whose name the sponsors answer, He does desire it.’

“Curcellæus says, ‘The baptism of infants in the first two centuries after Christ was altogether unknown; but in the third and fourth was allowed by some few. In the fifth and the following ages it was generally received. The custom of baptizing infants did not begin before the third age after Christ was born. In the former ages no trace of it appears. It was introduced without the command of Christ: and therefore,’ he says in another place, ‘this rite is observed by us as an ancient custom, but not as an apostolical tradition.’

“To the same effect speak many of the most learned Europeans who have, with every possible facility for such investigations, made the customs of the ancient Church their study.

“Thus the Magdeburg Centuriators concerning the first century say, ‘In this age they baptized only the adult or aged, whether Jews or Gentiles; and as to the manner of baptizing, it was by dipping or plunging in the water, into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.’ Of the second century they say, ‘It doth not appear from any approved authors that there was any mutation or change in respect to baptism from the first century.’ Of the third they say, ‘As to the rite of baptism in the Churches of Asia, we have no testimony of any alteration; but concerning the African Churches, there were great corruptions, in opinion at least, if not in practice;’ and instance the introduction of the baptism of infants, which was opposed by Tertullian.

“Dr. Mosheim says of the first century, ‘No persons were admitted to baptism but such as had been previously instructed into the principal points of Christianity, and had also given satisfactory proofs of pious dispositions and upright intentions.’ And of the second century, ‘The persons to be baptized, after they had repeated the creed confessed, and renounced their sins, particularly the Devil and his pompous allurements, were immersed under water, and received into Christ’s kingdom by a solemn invocation.’

“These authorities are none of them Baptists. They every one belong to Churches which consist of those baptized in infancy. They all have every motive to find infant baptism in the first Churches if they can. They none of them have any conceivable interest in advancing Baptist sentiments; and one would think the united testimony of such men, upon a question of ecclesiastical history, would be decisive. I would say, if I were talking on any other subject, that he who would, without a careful personal examination of the evidences, venture to assert, in opposition to all this, that infant baptism existed in the first two centuries, was either a liar or a fool. But I know the force of religious prejudice, and will not use such language. I will, on the contrary, suppose that even you and these good friends around me are not yet convinced I have given you the simple declarations of very learned and eminent men (themselves Pedobaptists) who before making those declarations had gone back into the musty records of antiquity, and made a careful and laborious search for the real facts. After such examination they expressly depose that the first and second centuries knew nothing of infant baptism. I can for my own part see no reason why any man should ask for further witnesses; but we have others, and I will bring them in, and they shall testify.

“There are witnesses which show that even to a much later day than this, infant baptism was the exception, and not, as now in Pedobaptist Churches, the general rule—I mean the baptistries. The Christians continued to baptize in streams, and pools, and baths until the middle of the third century. Justin Martyr says, the candidates ‘Were brought to a place where there was water.’ And Tertullian says, ‘It made no difference whether it were the sea, or a pool, or a lake, a river or a bath.’ But about the middle of the third century, shortly after infant baptism began to be rather proposed than practiced, the Churches began to build special places for baptism, especially in the towns and cities. These baptisteries were outside the churches, and consisted of a large pool enclosed in a building, and covered by a cupola, or dome. Now, the most ancient of these baptisteries were arranged at great cost for the immersion of adults. The pools were large enough and deep enough to swim in, and by the ancients were sometimes called swimming places. It was not until after the fifth century that the font was found in the place of the pool, and not until the fourteenth that the basin took the place of the font. Now these, though silent, are most convincing witnesses. The first baptisteries were contrived and fitted for the immersion of adults. The fonts, reduced in size, first to the standard of youths, and then to that of babes, show the gradual incoming of the immersion of infants; and the substitution of the basin shows the introduction of sprinkling.

“But, not to dwell on this, I wish to call your attention to another and a most conclusive fact. It is this: All the ancient formularies of the baptismal service are arranged for adults; or, at least, for those who could understand and answer the questions for themselves, In the earliest liturgies and rituals there is no provision made for infants. They are no more recognized as the proper subjects of baptism than are the worshippers of Jupiter.”

“I do not see how you can prove that,” said the Doctor, “unless you can give us the rituals to examine for ourselves, or show us the testimony of some competent and credible witness who has examined them.”

“It is in my power to do both at the same time. I have in my trunk a work, recently published in London, which brings to light much that was not known before, and clears away the rubbish which defaced and concealed much that was partly understood concerning the faith and practice of the first Churches. No one, who will follow the learned author through all the various paths by which he has come to his final conclusions, will be disposed to doubt that he has at length discovered and brought to view the real picture of the ancient Church. I will get it, and show you what was the practice of that Church concerning baptism. The author, who is the learned Chevalier Bunsen, is not a Baptist. He has no object in advancing Baptist sentiments. He is a Pedobaptist scholar, who, by vast labor and research, has endeavored to discover beneath the rubbish which false learning had heaped upon it, the beautiful form of the apostolical Church. Not, indeed, as it existed in the apostles’ days; not as it was before it had been at all corrupted by false doctrine or unauthorized practices; but as it was from the second to the fifth century. This book is called ‘Hippolytus And His Age.’ It is based upon the discovery of a long-lost manuscript of that ancient bishop, who lived and wrote in the third century. But besides this manuscript, Bunsen, the translator of it, has brought together, from many and various sources, the most reliable and authentic accounts of the age when Hippolytus lived.”

Mr. Courtney went to his state-room for the book, and presently returned with the third volume, containing what purports to be the “Church and House Book of the Ancient Christians.”

“We will not have time,” said he, “to read this book to-day. I will merely call your attention to the fact recorded on the fifth page, that those who would be baptized must first be brought to the minister to be instructed. On the eighth page, we learn that the course of instruction ordinarily continued three years, though this depended on their course of life. After this they were examined, the correctness of their lives duly certified by those who had brought them for instruction; and after fasting, bathing, exorcism, etc., they were divested of their clothing and immersed in water. (Pp. 18⁠–⁠22.) Then, after baptism, they go up out of the water, are anointed with oil, signed with the sign of the cross, clothed in white garments, and so return to the Church, where the Lord’s Supper is at once administered to them.

“We see, therefore, that all these fooleries of exorcism, unction, and chrism, together with the sign of the cross, which have no scriptural authority, had come into use long before infant baptism; and if the usage of the ancient Church can establish any thing not commanded in Scripture, these things stand on better ground than it does. But, although they had so far departed from the simplicity of the gospel as to introduce this senseless mummery, they had not yet learned to make one a Christian without his own consent. And Mr. Bunsen, on page 179, makes a very plain summing up of the whole matter. I will read it to you: ‘The Church adhered rigidly to the principle as constituting the true import of the baptism ordained by Christ, that no one can be a member of the communion of saints but by his own free act and deed, his own solemn vow, made in the presence of the Church. It was with this understanding that the candidate for baptism was immersed in water and admitted as a brother upon his confession of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. It understood baptism, therefore, in the exact sense the First Epistle of St. Peter, iii. 21, not as being a mere bodily purification, but as a vow made to God, with a good conscience, through faith in Jesus Christ. This vow was preceded by a confession of faith, made in the face of the Church, in which the catechumen expressed that faith in Christ, and in the sufficiency of the salvation offered by him. It was a vow to live for the time to come to God, and for his neighbor—not to the world and for self; a vow of faith in his becoming a child of God, through the communion with his only-begotten Son in the Holy Ghost; a vow of the most solemn kind, for life and for death. The keeping of this pledge was the condition of continuance in the Church. Its infringement entailed repentance or excommunication. All Church discipline was based upon this voluntary pledge, and the responsibility thereby self-imposed. How could such a vow be received without examination? How could such examination be passed without instruction and observation?

“‘As a general rule, the ancient Church fixed three years as the period for this preparation; supposing the candidate, whether a heathen or a Jew, to be competent to receive it. With Christian children the condition was the same, except that the term of probation was curtailed according to circumstances. Pedobaptism, in the more modern sense, meaning thereby baptism of new-born infants, with the vicarious promises of parents or other sponsors, WAS UTTERLY UNKNOWN TO THE EARLY CHURCH, not only down to the end of the second, but indeed to the middle of the third century. We shall show, in a subsequent page, how this practice originated in the baptism of children of a more advanced age.’”

Mr. Courtney then turned to page 186, and read,

“‘THE EXAMINATION.—In the third and last year of the preparation, the catechumens were called competentes, or candidates, as they had been called hearers in the second. Before they were set apart from the rest, in immediate preparation for their baptism, an examination was made as to their life and conduct during the period of probation.… It is unnecessary to say that this examination was a public one. The congregation [the ekklesia] was, and continued to be, the supreme judge.… If the candidates passed this ordeal, they were first bathed and pronounced personally clean. They fasted on Friday, and met together solemnly on Saturday. Thereupon they were commanded to pray. They knelt down and received the bishop’s blessing, who exorcised every unclean spirit.… The bishop breathed upon each of them, as the Lord did upon his disciples, and then sealed them (as the text-book expresses) on the forehead, ears, and lips—doubtless with the sign of the cross. At the dawn of Sunday, the baptismal font was filled, accompanied by a blessing, which corresponds exactly with the prayers [which they] used in consecrating the elements used for the Lord’s Supper. The deacons assisted the men, and the deaconesses the women, to take off their ornaments and put on the baptismal dress. They were then presented to one of the presbyters, who called solemnly on each of them to renounce Satan and all his services and all his works.… After this solemn renunciation he was anointed by the presbyter with the oil of exorcism.… The deacon and deaconess accompanied the neophytes into the water, and made each of them, in turn, repeat after them a confession of faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or respond to it with the words, I believe.… The confession was three times repeated, being uttered before each of the three immersions.… After that followed the true baptismal unction with the precious oil, the so-called chrisma.… The ceremony concluded with the Christian kiss.… After this, the baptized persons were clothed in white and conducted into the church.’ When, after repeating the Lord’s prayer in the name of the whole congregation, to show that each one was now a priest, ‘They partook of the Lord’s Supper, in which milk and honey were set before them, as well as bread and wine, doubtless as symbols of their being, as it were, newly born.’

“Now, what I say,” continued Mr. Courtney, “is this: however far all this may be from the practice of Christ and the apostles, it is utterly inconsistent with the idea that those who were the subjects of baptism could be little infants or any way incapable of witnessing a good profession. And if we read in this age or the next of the baptism of children, we may be sure that they are not little babes, but such as could be instructed, could believe and make profession of their faith.”

“But Bunsen promised to tell us, if I heard you rightly,” said Theodosia, “how it was that children at a later day came to be received. Can you find us that place?”

“It follows directly what we have been looking at. Here, on the 191st page, is the beginning of what he says on this point: ‘Baptism is indeed called a new birth—regeneration. But in what sense? Was it a sort of magical conversion of the curse into a blessing, effected now in the case of the infants by the act of sprinkling? Was it a forgiving of sins not intended to be brought back to the recollection of the parents or the sponsors who were present, but to be applied to the infant itself?

“‘The ancient Church knew no more than do the Gospels and the apostles of such superstition, which contains less spirituality than many of the lustrations of the old world, and not much more than the taurobolia and criobolia, mysteries of the last stages of heathenism, purporting to purify the neophyte by the blood of victims. On the contrary, she bears authentic testimony in all her ordinances against this corruption and misunderstanding, as in other cases the origin was innocent; and I think that we are at this moment better able than either the defenders or the opponents of infant baptism have hitherto been, to tell how it originated. A passage in our Alexandrian Church-book gives the true explanation of the assertion of Origen, himself an Alexandrian, that the baptism of children was an apostolic tradition. And it removes the origin of infant baptism from Tertullian and Hippolytus to the end of our present period; Cyprian being the first Father who, impelled by a fanatical enthusiasm, and assisted by a bad interpretation of the Old Testament, established it as a principle.… The difference between the ante-Nicene and the later Church was essentially this: the later Church, with the exception of converts, only baptized new-born infants, and she did so on principle. The ancient Church, as a general rule, baptized adults, and only after they had gone through the course of instruction; and as the exception, only Christian children who had not yet arrived at years of maturity, but never infants.… Cyprian, and some other African bishops, his contemporaries, at the close of the third century were the first who viewed baptism in the light of a washing away of the universal sinfulness of human nature, and connected this idea with that ordinance of the Old Testament, circumcision.’ And he goes on to show, that it was on this ground that it was applied to babes, to wash away their hereditary or original sin. Hence the doctrine of baptismal regeneration.

“Now, not only Bunsen, but all these writers whom I have quoted as authorities, are, if not opponents of the Baptists, all members of Pedobaptist Churches, and have every inducement to make the best showing that they can for the practice of their own communion. They are therefore most unexceptionable witnesses so far as they may be suspected of any secret bias to one side or the other of this controversy. They are certainly competent to testify, having made the customs of the ancient Church their special study; and they testify most unmistakably that what I said was true; namely, that baptism which Christ commanded to be given only to the believing penitent, that is, to him who gave evidence of a renewal of his nature by the obedience of faith, was first given to the youth upon the repetition of a form of words which they had learned as catechumens; and at length to those who could not say the words, but whose parents or others answered for them; and now, as we have often seen, it is given to little crying babes who do not know their right hand from their left. We have seen when infant baptism was introduced, why it was introduced, and how it was introduced;[7] and I trust you are ready now to go on with our investigation of the claims of the English or Episcopal Church.”

“I am quite ready,” said the Doctor. “I shall not be troubled any more with doubts about the time of the introduction of infant baptism. I used to think that Dr. Barlow, an eminent Episcopalian, and Professor in the University at Oxford, England, spoke very strangely for one who belonged to a Pedobaptist Church; but I see now, that as a diligent student of antiquity, and a candid man, he could not have spoken otherwise.”

“What did he say, sir?” asked Theodosia.

“It was in a letter of his, published in England, in which he says, ‘I do believe and know that there is neither precept nor example in Scripture for infant baptism, nor any just evidence for it for above two hundred years after Christ; that Tertullian condemns it as an unwarrantable custom, and Nazianzen, a good while after him, dislikes it too. Sure I am, that in the primitive times they were first CATECHUMENI, then Illuminati, or BAPTIZATI; and that not only Pagans, and the children of Pagans converted, but children of Christian parents. The truth is, I do believe Pedobaptism, how or by whom I know not, came into the world in the second century, and in the third and fourth began to be practiced, though not generally defended as lawful, from the text John iii. 5, grossly misunderstood; and upon the like gross mistake of John vi. 63, they did for many centuries, both in the Greek and Latin Churches, communicate infants, and give them the Lord’s Supper; and I do confess they might do both as well as either.’”

“The whole history is told,” said Mr. Courtney, “in a few words by the learned Johannes Bohemius, who wrote in the twelfth century. ‘In times past,’ he says, ‘the custom was, to administer baptism only to those who had been instructed in the faith, and seven times in the week before Easter and Pentecost catechized. But afterwards, when it was thought and adjudged needful to eternal life to be baptized, it was ordained that new-born children should be baptized, and godfathers were appointed, who should make confession and renounce the Devil on their behalf.’ But enough of this—perhaps too much, as it has turned our minds away, for the time being, from the main object of our conversation. Let us now proceed to look for our scriptural marks of a true Church of Christ in the English Episcopal Church. Let us have the tablet, Mrs. Percy. What is the first mark?”

“She must consist only of professed believers in Christ.”

“Is this true of the English Church? Does not her membership embrace the little children who cannot believe, and thousands who were made nominal Christians in their infancy, and who make no pretension to genuine piety? Does it not embrace the gamblers and horse-racers, the profane, the lewd and debauched? Does it not, so far us they can be brought into it, embrace the whole population, good, bad, and indifferent, of the great English nation? It is the custom, sanctioned by law, that every infant must be baptized. By baptism it is made a member of the Church. The confirmation which follows, when it has come to the age of childhood, and is able, though not very intelligently, to answer for itself, is not the act of admission: it only confirms what was already done. The liturgy regards the child as regenerated and made a member of Christ’s body by the act of baptism. This is the door of entrance into the Church; and, consequently, all who are baptized by her authority are members of her communion.”

“But, my dear sir,” asked the Doctor, “is not the confirmation necessary to complete and ratify the act of admission? I do not think any are recognized and treated as Church members, who do not at confirmation make a sort of profession of their faith. They must say the catechism and repeat the creed before they can be entitled to the privileges of full communion.”

“Let it be so; but is this an intelligent and personal profession of that saving faith in Christ which is required by the Scripture? Every one who has any familiarity with this confirmation ceremony, knows that the repetition of the catechism and creed is, in most cases, a mere formal saying over of the words. It means nothing more than that the child has been so far instructed that he has committed it to memory, and can say it over as he would a lesson in geography, or a rule in arithmetic. He is admitted to communion, not because he gives to the Church or to the bishop any evidence at all that he is a penitent believer in the Lord Jesus for the salvation of his soul, but because he gives evidence that he has intellect enough to learn the catechism, and memorize the creed. This is enough, and this is all. If it sometimes happens that the child has really been converted, and in his mind and heart attaches some spiritual meaning to the words repeated, this is the exception and not the rule. It is not required—it is not expected; and the membership exists, and is just as readily confirmed, without as with it. That there are some, nay, many, very good and pious people in the English Church, I will not deny. They have truly repented of their sins, and have heartily trusted in Christ as their Saviour. They have been born again, and made new creatures in Christ Jesus. But at the same time it is notorious that a majority of those she counts as members, make no pretensions to any other Christianity than that which they received by the forms of the Church; and to the efficacy of these forms they are trusting for salvation. If a profession made not by them, but for them, in infancy, and by them acknowledged and ratified in early childhood, not heartily, and with a full understanding of its import, but in words only, and as a regular matter of form—a mere ceremony which they read in a book, and which is required and expected to be observed at a certain age, and that whether there is any evidence of piety or not—if this is a genuine scriptural profession of faith in Christ, then they have made such profession; if not, then Mr. Percy must make the space opposite this mark in his tablet black, as he did for Rome.”

“It certainly cannot be left white,” said Mr. Percy; “and yet, when I see so many pious believers in Jesus among their members, I do not like to make it entirely black. Suppose we shade it, and leave it neither white nor black?

“Do not forget the true point of our inquiry,” replied Mr Courtney. “It is not whether she has believers among her members—Rome has had many thousands—but whether a genuine and scriptural profession of faith is, according to her acknowledged standards, a prerequisite for membership; or whether she admits them without such profession, and, in fact, before they are competent either to have or to profess a sincere and personal faith in the Redeemer.

“Now, if you have any sort of doubt that little infants are by baptism made members of this Church, you can easily dispel it by turning to the baptismal service in her liturgy: ‘The minister,’ you may read there, ‘shall take the child in his arms, and, after naming it, shall dip it discreetly in the water, or shall pour upon it, saying, “I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.” Then the minister shall say, “We receive this child into the congregation of Christ’s flock, and do sign him with the sign of the cross,”’ etc. Now, is this congregation of Christ’s flock the Episcopal Church? Certainly; for the minister is to go on and say, ‘Seeing now, dearly beloved, that this child is regenerate and grafted into the body of Christ’s Church, let us give thanks,’ etc. But if this leave any doubt, read on: ‘Then shall the minister say, “We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this infant with thy Holy Spirit; receive him for thy own child by adoption, and incorporate him into thy holy Church.”’ If the infant, therefore, is not a real Church member, the minister is instructed to say what is not true.

See also the form of a certificate of baptism, under the head of ‘Private Baptism of Children:’ ‘I certify you that in this case all is well done, and according to due order, concerning the baptizing of this child, who is now, BY BAPTISM, incorporated into the Christian Church.’

“And now, to assure yourself that it is not faith or penitence that qualifies for confirmation, and, consequently, for all the privileges of full communicants, turn to the note at the end of the little catechism, before the ‘Order of Confirmation,’ and you may read as follows:

“‘So soon as children are come to a competent age, and can say the creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the ten commandments, and can answer to the other questions of this short catechism, they shall be brought to the bishop for confirmation.’

“The English Church, and that of Rome, stand on the same ground. They both admit infants to Church-member ship by baptism; and both pretend that they are by this baptism regenerated and made members of Christ. It is by baptism in both that men are born again; and this is given, not on any evidence of faith in them, but solely on the promise of the sponsors, or godfathers.

“Give us the second mark, if you please, Mrs. Percy.”

“It is that the members must have been baptized upon profession of their faith.”

“The question for us, then, is whether the English Church has in herself, and confers upon her members, genuine Scripture baptism? We Baptists will say, of course, that she has not; for we do not recognize the baptism of infants as authorized by Scripture; nor do we admit that sprinkling, or pouring, which is now generally practiced in the Episcopal Church, is baptism at all. But as we have not time to go over the facts and arguments on which we have based our opinions, it will be enough for us to show, by the testimony of the Episcopalians themselves, that they have changed Christ’s ordinance, both in the act and the subjects of it; and, consequently, that what they now perform as baptism is, according to their own showing, NOT the baptism of the Scriptures, but a ceremony which was substituted for it by mere human authority.

“But, first, I would remark, that when we were examining the record upon this point, we ascertained that those who came into the apostolic Churches believed, and were then baptized. They were not first baptized, and left to find their faith in after life. Now, as in this Church the pretended baptism is given before there is or can be any faith, this fact alone vitiates the whole, and renders it no true scriptural baptism. And, therefore, if the Church of England had continued to practice immersion, as the Greek Church has done, it would not have been true baptism when applied to little babes. But they have changed the act as well as the subjects. This I will prove to you by their own plain and express declarations. Hear what the learned Dr. Wall says, in his famous History of Infant Baptism, page 462, speaking of the primitive Christians: ‘Their general and ordinary way was to baptize by immersion, or dipping the person, whether it were an infant or a grown man or woman, into the water. This is so plain and clear, by an infinite number of passages, that one cannot but pity the weak endeavors of such Pedobaptists as would maintain the negative of it.… It is a great want of prudence, as well as of honesty, to refuse to grant to an adversary what is certainly true and may be proved so. It creates a jealousy of all the rest that one says.… It is plain that the ordinary and general practice of St. John, the apostles, and primitive Church, was to baptize by putting the person into the water, or causing him to go into the water. Neither do I know of any Protestant who has denied it.’

“Hear what Bishop Nicholson says:

“‘The sacrament of baptism was anciently administered by plunging into the water, in the western as well as the eastern part of the Church.’

“So Archbishop Secker: ‘Burying, as it were the person baptized in the water, and raising him out again, without question was anciently the more usual method.’

“So Bishop Davenant: ‘In the ancient Church, they did not merely sprinkle, but immersed those whom they baptized.’

“And Bishop Patrick: ‘They [the primitive Christians] put off their old clothes and stripped themselves of their garments; then they were immersed all over and buried in the water.’

“In accordance with this, Mr. Stackhouse declares that ‘Several authors have shown that we nowhere read in Scripture of any one being baptized but by immersion; and from the acts of ancient councils and ancient rituals, have proved that this manner of baptizing continued (as much as possible) to be used for thirteen hundred years after Christ. But it is much to be questioned whether the prevalence of custom and the over-fondness of parents will, in these cold countries, ever suffer it to be restored.’

“So Bishop Taylor says, expressly, ‘The custom of the ancient Church was not sprinkling, but immersion, in pursuance of the meaning of the word in the commandment, and the example of our blessed Saviour.’

“And Archbishop Tillotson says, that ‘Anciently, those that were baptized put off their garments, which signified the putting off the body of sin, and were immersed and buried in the water, to represent their death to sin; and then did rise up again out of the water, to signify their entrance upon a new life.’

“Now, if the original practice was immersion, as these doctors, and bishops, and archbishops declare, and sprinkling has now come in its place, it is self-evident that, by some authority, the ordinance of Christ has been displaced, and another action substituted for that which he enjoined. But, lest any one may doubt the authority of these dignitaries of the Church—for some people will, now-a-days, doubt almost any thing which goes to show that sprinkling was not the baptism enjoined by Christ and practiced by the apostolic Churches—I will show you that the English Church herself practiced immersion, and immersion only, until comparatively a very recent day In a catechism, published in the name of King Edward VI., shortly after the separation of the English from the Church of Rome, are the following question and answer:

“‘MASTER. Tell me, my sonde, how these two sacraments be ministered: baptisme and that whyche Paule caleth the Supper of the Lord?

“‘SCHOLAR. Hym that beleueth in Christ, professeth the articles of the Christian religion, and mindeth to be baptized (I speake now of thè that be growè to ripe yeres of discretion: sith for the yòg babes, theyr parentes’ or the Church’s professiò sufficeth) the minister dyppeth in, or washeth with pure, clean water only, in the name of the Father, and of the Sonne, and of the Holy Ghost,’ etc.

“In a sermon by Archbishop Cranmer, a little before this time, the following passage occurs: ‘What greater shame can there be, than a man who professeth himself to be a Christian man because he is baptized; and yet he knoweth not what baptism is, nor what strength the same hath, nor what the dypping in the water doth betoken.… Baptism, and the dypping in the water, doth betoken that the old Adam, with all his synne and evel lusts, ought to be drowned and killed by daily contrition and repentance.’

“In like manner William Tyndale speaks of baptism: ‘The plungyǹge into the water sygnifieth that we dye and are buried with Christ, as concernynge the old life of sinne, which is Adam; and the pullynge out agayne signifieth that we ryse agayne with Christ in a new lyfe.’—(Robison, p. 430.)

“But why go to the early days of the English Church, when the very words of her Liturgy, even in modern times, expressly require dipping, except in case the subject be too feeble to endure it. Archbishop Usher says, ‘Some there are that stand strictly for the particular action of diving or dipping the baptized under water, as the only action which the institution of the sacrament will bear; and our Church allows no other except in case of the child’s weakness; and there is expressed in our Saviour’s baptism both the descending into the water and the raising up.’ So the famous George Whitefield says, ‘It is certain, in the words of our text, (Rom. vi. 3, 4,) there is an allusion to the manner of baptism, which was by immersion, which our own Church allows, and insists upon it that children should be immersed in water, unless those that bring the children to be baptized assure the minister that they cannot bear plunging.’ Thus Mr. Wesley says on one occasion that he baptized a certain individual by immersion, according to the custom of the first Church and the Church of England. And on another occasion says, he refused to baptize a child unless it could be done by immersion, according to the Book of Common Prayer, or unless the parents would certify it to be weakly.

“It is evident, therefore, that immersion was not merely the ordinance established by Christ, and practiced by the first Churches, but it was recognized and practiced by the Church of England as her ordinary baptism, even towards the close of the last century. And Dr. Whitby, of that Church, says expressly, that ‘Immersion was observed by all Christians for thirteen centuries, and approved by our Church, (the Episcopal;) and as the change of it into sprinkling was made without any allowance from the Author of the institution, or any license from any council of the Church, it were to be wished that this custom might be again of general use, etc.’—Now if these things be so, is it not as evident as any thing can be, they just to that extent to which they have left off immersion, they have ceased to baptize? and that, according to the confessions and declarations which they themselves have made? They lack, therefore, the second mark of a true Church, which we discovered in the Word.

“Let us now look for the third: Is it a local congregation or is it, like the Roman Church, a centralized hierarchy? We need spend no time to determine this. The structure and constitutions of the two establishments are very similar, if not identical, except that one recognizes the sovereign of England as its visible head, and the other the Pope of Rome. No local congregation of the English Church is of itself an independent church. It only makes a part of the great confederacy called THE CHURCH; and as our Scripture Churches were each one independent, and did not make a part of any such confederacy, but was complete within itself, so we may know from this circumstance alone that this is not the scriptural Church.

“Our next mark will demand a little more particular attention. Does the Church of England take Christ alone for her King and Lawgiver? or does she recognize the authority of the King or Queen and Parliament to legislate for her in matters pertaining to religion? I speak now of the Episcopal Church in England, for that in this country stands upon somewhat different ground. The English Church grew out of the Roman Catholic, as we shall see hereafter, in the time of Henry the Eighth; and one of those enactments by which it was established, declares that ‘Archbishops and bishops, archdeacons, and other ecclesiastical persons, have no manner of jurisdiction ecclesiastical, but by and under the King’s majesty, the only undoubted Head of the Church of England, to whom by the Holy Scripture power and authority is given to hear and determine all manner of causes whatsoever, and to correct all sin and vice whatsoever.’

“In the time of King Edward VI., it was further enacted, that ‘Whosoever should affirm by open preaching, express words or sayings, that the King is not, or that any other is the Supreme Head of the Church of England, should for the first offence forfeit goods and chattels, with imprisonment at the king’s will, for the second forfeit profit of lands; and for the third suffer as in cases of high treason.’ It was under such laws as these that the Church of England was organized.

“I cannot give you a better account of the results than has been given by Macaulay, himself a Churchman, in his History of England. ‘Henry the Eighth,’ he says, (p. 38, vol. i.) ‘attempted to constitute an Anglican Church differing from the Roman Catholic Church on the point of supremacy, and on that point alone. His success in this attempt was extraordinary. The force of his character, the singularly favorable situation in which he stood with respect to foreign powers, the immense wealth which the spoliation of the abbeys placed at his disposal, and the support of that class which still halted between two opinions, enabled him to bid defiance to both the extreme parties, to burn as heretics those who avowed the tenets of Luther, and to hang as traitors those who owned the authority of the Pope. But Henry’s system died with him.… The ministers who held the royal prerogative in trust for his infant son, could not venture to persist in so hazardous a policy, nor could Elizabeth venture to return to it. It was necessary to make a choice. The government must either submit to Rome, or obtain the aid of the Protestants. The government and the Protestants had only one thing in common—hatred of the Papal power.… But as the government needed the support of the Protestants, so the Protestants needed the protection of the government. Much was therefore given up on both sides. A union was effected, and the fruit of that union was the Church of England.… To this day the constitution, the doctrines, and the services of the Church retain the visible marks of the compromise from which she sprung.… Nothing, however, so strongly distinguished the Church of England from other Churches, as the relation in which she stood to the monarchy. The King was her Head.… What Henry and his favorite counsellors meant by the supremacy was certainly nothing less than the whole power of the keys. The king was to be the Pope of his kingdom, the vicar of God, the expositor of Catholic verity, the channel of sacramental graces.… The king (such was the opinion of Cranmer given in the plainest words) might, by authority derived from God, make a priest, and the priest so made needed no ordination whatever.… These high pretensions gave scandal to Protestants as well as Catholics; and the scandal was greatly increased when the supremacy which Mary had resigned back to the Pope, was again annexed to the Crown on the accession of Elizabeth. It seemed monstrous that a woman should be the chief bishop of a Church in which an apostle had forbidden her even to let her voice be heard.… When the Anglican Confession of Faith was revised in her reign, the supremacy was explained in a manner somewhat different from that which had been fashionable in the Court of Henry the Eighth.… The queen, however, still had over the Church a visitorial power of vast and undefined extent. She was intrusted by parliament with the office of restraining and punishing heresy, and every sort of ecclesiastical abuse;’ (so all the discipline of its membership was placed in the hands of the Crown;) ‘and was permitted to delegate her authority to commissioners. The bishops were little more than her ministers. Rather than grant to the civil magistrate the absolute power of nominating spiritual pastors, the Church of Rome, in the eleventh century, set all Europe on fire; rather than grant to the civil magistrate the absolute power of nominating spiritual pastors, the ministers of the Church of Scotland, in our own time, resigned their livings by hundreds. The Church of England had no such scruples. By the royal authority alone, her prelates were appointed. By the royal authority alone, her convocations were summoned, regulated, prorogued, and dissolved. Without the royal sanction her canons had no force. One of the articles of her faith was that, without the royal consent, no ecclesiastical council could lawfully assemble. From all her judicatures an appeal lay in the last resort to the sovereign, even when the question was whether an opinion was heretical, or whether the administration of a sacrament had been valid.’

“Such is the account which this learned son of the Church gives of her constitution. And if such a Church has Christ alone for her King and Lawgiver, there is no means of subjecting a Church to any secular or religious power. Loot at it a moment. No one can be a minister within her borders who has not been ordained by a prelate. Yet the prelate is the absolute creature of the crown. The crown, therefore, by making the prelate, makes the whole ministry of the Church. The whole discipline of the Church is in the crown. The queen says, by her commissioners, who are to be admitted as Church-members, and who excluded; who retained and who expelled; who shall be censured and who commended. And, in case even these, her own commissioners, do not decide to please her, there is, in the last resort, an appeal to herself. So that the queen has power to decide who shall and who shall not be members of the Church. The queen decides what is gospel truth, and what is heretical; what must be believed and what must be practiced. For, without the royal consent, the decisions of the Church can have no force.”

“That seems all very true,” replied the Doctor. “But you will recollect that this is the mere theory of the Church, under which she went into operation in the troublous times that gave her birth. It does not follow that the powers of the queen are now what they were then; that Queen Victoria has the same ecclesiastical prerogatives which belonged to Queen Elizabeth.”

“What if she has not?” replied Mr. Courtney. “The Church which once gave up her sovereignty, and consented to be subject in matters of religion to another lord than Christ, did, by that act, cease to be a Church of Christ, and lose the authority to act as his executive. But your surmise has no foundation in truth. This is not merely the ancient theory but the modern practice. The authority of the crown determines, to-day, the forms of prayer, the ritual of baptism, the times of worship, and all else pertaining to the English Church, as truly as it did in the days of Elizabeth. When Mr. Seabury went to England to procure ordination as a bishop, there was no Church or council of Churches, no bishop or house of bishops, that dared to confer ordination on him, or could, according to the law of the Church, have conferred it, until an act of parliament had been passed, and received the royal signature, permitting it to be done. Not only Seabury, but all the bishops of America, hold their commission by virtue of a special act of parliament; and not only they, but all who shall be by them ordained to the ministry, are by that act expressly prohibited from exercising their ministry in England.

“But we have been speaking of the Church of England as a whole; of the hierarchy, which comprises all the local societies in one great body. The Churches of Christ, however, we have before determined, are the local societies; and the true question before us is simply whether each one of the local organizations, commonly called Episcopal Churches, is subject, in matters belonging to religion, to any lord but Christ. If you look at it in this light, you will see that an Episcopal Church is subject to the priest; it is subject to the bishop; it is subject to councils; and in fact, it has no voice in its own government. It is ruled from without, and has nothing to do but inquire the decrees of its lords and humbly to obey them. If it refuse to carry into execution their enactments, it cannot continue an Episcopal Church.”

“But tell me,” asked Theodosia, “does the Episcopal Church in this country stand on the same ground?”

“It claims to be a part of the same Church. So far as practicable, it is constituted on the same plan. It is not, however, dependent on the will of the queen or the acts of parliament, but go the decrees of its general councils. If however, the mother, in England, was not a true Church when she gave it birth, it cannot be a true Church; for it has nothing which it did not receive from her. Moreover, each local society in America is just as much subject to its priest and bishop, and just as much bound by the ecclesiastical laws concocted for it and imposed upon it, as any local English Church.”

“Let us pass on,” said the Doctor. “I am anxious to see the end. What was our next mark?”

“It was,” said Mr. Percy, “that its members must have been made such by their own voluntary act; and we have seen already that the members of this Church were made such in infancy, without their own knowledge or consent.”

“Let us then go on to the next.”

“That,” said Mr. Percy, “has regard to her faith. Does she hold the fundamental doctrines of the gospel? It is well known that both in this country and in England she is divided into two great parties; one trusting as much as Rome herself to the efficacy of sacraments, and forms, and works; and the other recognizing salvation by Jesus only. I am disposed to mark her half black, therefore, to designate the High Church, or sacramental party; and half white, to designate the other, or Evangelical party.”

It may have been observed by the attentive reader that neither the Episcopal bishop nor the Methodist preacher have taken any part in this morning’s discussion. The truth is, they were not present; and the interest of the passengers had in a great degree subsided; so that our little company had the conversation all to themselves. They had been themselves so much engaged that they had scarcely observed the absence of their friendly adversaries, until they came to the seventh of those marks, which they had gathered out of the Book, and by which a true Church might be known.

But when the question was asked whether this Church began with Christ, and had continued ever since, they very naturally looked round for the Bishop, at whose instigation it had been added to the tablet; and, on finding that he was not present, they concluded to postpone their investigations until another day.

THE EIGHTH DAY’S TRAVEL.

WHEN our little company assembled the next morning, they learned that they were within an hour’s sail of Nashville They had therefore no time to talk, but each one began to make preparation to leave the boat. Mr. Courtney made inquiry for the Episcopal bishop and the Methodist minister, that he might bid them a kind adieu; but learned that they had taken another boat, or gone ashore at the mouth of the Cumberland. The Doctor insisted that Theodosia, Mr. Percy, and Mr. Courtney, should make his house their home for a few days, at least, until they should have finished this discussion. And in some three hours after they had landed, they were sitting round a table in Doctor Thinkwell’s dining room.

After dinner, when the Doctor had finished his cigar, he came into the parlor, where his guests were talking, and exclaimed, “Come, Mr. Courtney, we have no time to lose: I am anxious to have this question, what is the Church, or rather, which is the Church, settled as soon as possible. Let us resume our conversations here, and progress to a conclusion; I am impatient to see the end. Perhaps Mrs. Percy will come with us into the library, where we will be less liable to interruption, and have readier access to such books as we may wish to consult.”

The arrangements were made at once, and the investigation resumed where it was left off upon the boat.

“We were, I think,” said the Doctor, “engaged in applying our tests, or marks, to the English Episcopal Church and had progressed as far as the seventh sign. We had just inquired whether the English Church had been established by Christ, and had continued from his day until now?”

“It surely needs no time to answer that,” said Mr. Percy, “after what we have already seen to be the testimony of Macaulay, the historian; for he says expressly, that ‘it was the result of a compromise between the government on the one hand and the Protestants on the other.’ It cannot date farther back than King Henry VIII.”

“But I presume you are aware, Mr. Percy,” replied the Doctor, “that some of our clergy have contended that the true Anglican Church began in the time of the apostles, and has continued ever since, independent of Rome, except so for as it was for a time brought into unwilling subjection, previous to the Reformation. It is said that Christianity was brought into the island by Paul, and thousands of Churches existed both in England and Wales before the Saxon conquest; and when the Saxons re-introduced idolatry, Christianity retired to the fastnesses of the forests and mountains; and it was through these, and not through Rome, that our descent has come.”

“I suppose,” replied Mr. Percy, “that it is much easier to claim and contend for such a pedigree than to establish it. But let us see the proofs. We know what the English Episcopal Church is now. The question is, When did it become what it now is? And who made it such? Macaulay and other secular historians say with ope voice, it was Henry the Eighth and his successors on the throne of England. But theologians who see that this would be fatal to their claims to be a scriptural Church, declare that history is mistaken. Let us then examine for ourselves. It is a hierarchy which has for its head the person who wears the English crown. This is its peculiar feature. Take this away, and it is not the English Episcopal Church. It has been, in this respect, what it is now, ever since Henry the Eighth. What was it before that time? Was it not the same people, the same priests, the same bishops, and the same archbishops which then began to recognize King Henry as the head of the Church, who had previous to that time recognized the Pope as their sovereign lord in all matters of religion? Was it not that part of the Church of Rome which was in England which then, by the decree of the king and his parliament, was made the Church of England? They must be simpletons indeed who believe that the Church of King Henry, and his successors in the headship, was the ancient English Church which Austin, about the year six hundred, sought in vain to persuade to ‘give baptism to their children.’ Did King Henry call those people from their hiding-places in the mountains of Wales, and seek to them for the ordination and ordinances of Christ which Rome, as Antichrist, could not confer? No conscientious historian will dare to intimate any such thing. Those who make such statements make them to deceive. They know that he did nothing of the sort. They know that if the members and ministers of that old Church were yet in being, (and I do not question that they were,) King Henry had no use for them. No more did his successors. Both he and they continued to hang them, and drown them, and burn them, (as the Popes had done before,) even down to the time when Cromwell subverted his throne. That ancient Church, if I have read its history rightly, was a Baptist Church; or at least it was a Church that did not baptize except upon a profession of faith, and would not submit to be controlled in matters of religion by any lord but Christ.”

“It is a matter of no consequence at all to our present argument,” said Mr. Courtney, “whether the modern Church of England came out of Rome, or out of some ancient Church planted upon her native soil by Paul himself; for whatever her origin might have been, she could not at any time have been what she is now, and at the same time a true Church of Christ. Whenever she became a hierarchy, and owned the rule of any lord but Christ, whether that lord were the Pope of Rome, the King of England, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, is of no consequence at all; from that moment she ceased to be the true Church of Jesus Christ; for his Church was, and must continue to be, an independent local organization, not a confederacy; not a hierarchy; not any great ecclesiastical establishment. Christ established no such Church. The apostles established no such Church, either in England or anywhere else. If Paul built up a Church in England, (of which there is no proof but loose tradition,) it was like the other Churches which he founded, an independent local society; and if he established more than one, as he did in Greece, then each one was independent. And if any one usurped the power over others, or if any one yielded subjection to any other, whether that at Rome, or at Bangor, it ceased from that time forth to be a Church of Christ; for Christ was then no longer its only King and Lawgiver. Now, that the English Church has ceased some time or other to be the independent body which Christ enjoined, is certain; and it will not at all affect our argument whether she did so at, before, or since the time of Henry the Eighth.”

“But yet,” said Theodosia, “it would be very interesting to know the history of the Churches which were first established in England, and which must have been true Churches, if they dated near the times of the apostles. It may be they yet exist as independent bodies, and have always refused subjection alike to the Pope of Rome and the hierarchy of which the crown has now become the head.”

“Your conjecture is but the truth of their history, Mrs. Percy. They do yet exist. They have resisted, even unto death, all efforts to subject them to the Pope of Rome, or to the hierarchy of England. Their history was written in the blood of their martyrs, shed by those who, in former days, controlled the records and wielded the power of the country, and who were greatly desirous that it should be blotted out. We must therefore trace them mainly now in those brief allusions to their existence which the narration of other events made needful, and in the decrees which were designed for their destruction. Yet we will find no insuperable difficulty in tracing a true and pure Church of Christ in England, or at least in Wales, from the time that Christianity was first established on the island. This I trust we will be permitted to do before we close this investigation; but let us now not wander from the matter before us. This Church you may be sure was not the modern Church of England. That began with Henry the Eighth, according to the testimony of Macaulay and others of its own historians. But we can still trace the persecuted followers of Jesus by the blood of their martyrs, until the Reformation, and long after it. The first and the last whose blood was shed for their religion in England, were Baptists. They were never amalgamated with and never subjected to the hierarchy of the Pope, or of the King; and to this day maintain their ancient baptism, and their independent organization in the mountains of Wales, whence many have come, both ministers and members, to our own beloved land, and have aided us to build up Churches like their own, after the model at Jerusalem. But we will be obliged to go back to this subject. Let us now hasten on. What is your next mark, Mrs. Percy?”

“It is, that No true Church can be a persecuting Church.”

“Then surely the English Church cannot be true; for though she has not been, like Rome, at all times a perpetual and relentless persecutor, yet her hands are red with the blood of more than one of the followers of Jesus. Henry the Eighth laid the very foundation of the Church in blood. He, as head of the Church, persecuted and destroyed both Papists and Protestants: the Papists because they preferred the Pope to the King, and the Protestants because they could not receive his Church, which contained the whole of Popery except the Pope.

“Edward the Sixth, the youthful and amiable successor of Henry as the head of the Church, would gladly have been delivered from the necessity of killing his best subjects because they could not think about religion as his bishops did; but he was urged and goaded by the clergy into the condemnation and execution even of tender women, whose only crime was nonconformity to the Church of England. Cranmer, the archbishop, had great difficulty in overcoming his natural kindness of heart, and inducing him to sign the warrant for their death by burning; but he did succeed, and it was done.”

“Surely,” exclaimed Theodosia, “you do not mean to say that Archbishop Cranmer, the martyr, had been himself the means of bringing others in the flames! I have always thought he was one of the best and holiest of men. I remember there was in the catechism I used to study, a picture of him as he stood at the stake, holding out his right hand in the fire to punish it for signing his recantation.”

“Yes, Mrs. Percy, I mean to say that Cranmer was a murderer and a persecutor. So also was in heart that other saint of whom you had a picture in your catechism, representing John Rogers at the stake, surrounded by his wife and nine little children, one yet a nursing babe. John Rogers was so far a persecutor, that when he was solicited to ask for pardon, or at least some milder mode of death, for a woman condemned to the flames, he obstinately refused to say one word in her behalf.”

“I must believe you, Mr. Courtney; but still it seems to me almost incredible.”

“I grant, madam, that it is almost incredible; but I will show you such authorities that you shall be convinced that Rome herself, even in her worst estate, was never a bitterer or bloodier persecutor for conscience’ sake, than was this newmade Church of England. Look at Bishop Burnet’s History of the Reformation, vol. ii. p. 112. See also Strype’s Ecclesiastical Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 214; or Neal’s History of the Puritans; or Ivimey’s History of Baptism, pages 83⁠–⁠90. In the year 1549, a commission was given to Archbishop Cranmer and several others, by the King as the HEAD of this so called CHURCH of the gentle and loving Jesus, to ‘search after all Anabaptists, (the same people now called Baptists,) all heretics and contemners of their Book of Common Prayer, and, if they would not be reclaimed, to excommunicate, imprison, and deliver them over to death.’ There was a Baptist woman, Mrs. Joan Boucher, sometimes called Joan of Kent, of whom Strype says, ‘She was a great reader of the Scriptures,’ and who risked her life to circulate the Scriptures among the ladies at court. She could not conform to all that the bishops taught, and was therefore arrested and condemned. When the young king refused to sign her death-warrant, Cranmer urged him, with great earnestness, to authorize her execution. The king could not answer the arguments of the learned prelate, and knew not how to resist his importunity. He signed the warrant, but did it with tears in his eyes, and protesting that he did it only on the authority of the Archbishop, who had declared that God required it; and said, if it should be wrong, that ‘he (the prelate) should answer for the sin in the great day of judgment.’ The bishop took the warrant, and thus said, ‘Her blood be upon my soul.’ Now in Fox’s Latin edition of the Book of Martyrs are a few sentences which the English has omitted, and which are thus translated by Mr Pierce in his answer to Nichols, p. 83:—‘In King Edward’s reign some were put to death for heresy. One of these was Joan Boucher, or Joan of Kent. Now, says Mr. Fox, when the Protestant bishops had resolved to put her to death, a friend of Mr. John Rogers, the divinity-reader in Saint Paul’s Church, came to him, earnestly desiring him to use his influence with the archbishop that the poor woman’s life might be spared, and other means used to prevent the spreading of her opinion, which might be done in time; saying too, that though while she lived she infected few with her opinion, yet she might bring many to think well of it by suffering death for it. He pleaded, therefore, that it was better she should be kept in some prison, without an opportunity of propagating her notions among weak people; and she would do no harm to others, and might live to repent herself. Rogers, on the other hand, pleaded that she ought to be put to death. “Well then,” saith his friend, “if you are resolved to put an end to her life, together with her opinion, choose some other kind of death, more agreeable to the gentleness and mercy prescribed by the gospel; there being no need that such tormenting deaths should be taken up in imitation of the Papists.”

“‘Rogers answered, that burning alive was no cruel death, but easy enough. His friend hearing these words, which expressed so little regard to poor creatures’ suffering, answered him with great vehemence, and striking Rogers’s hand, which before he had held fast, said to him, “Well, perhaps it may so happen that you yourselves shall have your hands full of this mild burning.” And so it came to pass. Mr. Rogers was the first man who was burned in Queen Mary’s reign. I am apt to think,’ adds Mr. Pierce, ‘that Mr. Rogers’s friend was no other than Fox himself.’—(Crosby, vol. i., p. 61. Ivimey, p. 92.)

“In the few remaining years of Edward’s life, and while the religion of the realm was under the control of Cranmer, many other persons were burnt at the stake for their religious sentiments. After the king’s death, the Catholics had the supremacy for a little season, under the reign of her whom historians have been pleased to call the Bloody Mary, because she killed the Protestants for the same reasons that they had killed the Baptists, and other so-called heretics.

“When Elizabeth came to the throne, the Baptists expected toleration, and began openly to avow their sentiments. But they were fearfully mistaken. They were burnt with just as little pity as the Catholics themselves had ever shown. ‘Indeed,’ says Neal, ‘more sanguinary laws were made in her reign than in those of her predecessors. Her hands were stained with the blood of both Papists and Puritans: the former were executed for denying her supremacy; the latter for sedition and nonconformity.’ Nor did the persecution cease when Elizabeth had gone to her account, and James became the head of the Church. It was continued after James had died, and his unfortunate successor, Charles I., had come to the headship of the Church. Fines and imprisonments, whipping and mutilating, branding, torturing, and tormenting the saints of God, who held the authority of the Sacred Word to be above the dicta of the bishops, were not only inflicted by the laws, but earnestly urged upon the magistrates by the synods of the Church. (See the Constitutions and Canons of 1640.) But we have enough of this.

“He who would deny that the English Episcopal Church was a persecuting Church, would deny that Rome herself ever persecuted for conscience’ sake. Not only is the testimony rife in English history, across the water, but the men are living yet, among ourselves, whose ancestors in this country were, by the English CHURCH laws, condemned to fines and imprisonments, if not to death. The jails are standing yet in which they were confined. The iron bars are yet in place through which the Baptist ministers of Virginia preached to their people, while Virginia was subject to the head of the Episcopal Church. Now, let me say one word, and I have done with this disagreeable subject: When the Church of England became a persecutor for conscience’ sake, she CEASED TO BE A CHURCH OF CHRIST, even on the supposition that she had been one before that time. So, whether you derive her from Rome, her persecuting mother, or whether you try to trace her origin to the Apostle Paul, through the ancient English Churches, is of no consequence at all. She lost her authority to act as Christ’s executive (if she ever had it) when she began to shed the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. Trace your succession of Christian Churches downwards from Christ; or trace it upwards towards Christ; but, either way, it cannot cross that stream of blood which flows out from the hearts of the martyrs of Jesus. Every link of the chain of succession may he perfect, from Paul down to the first of the martyrs whose life was taken by the so-called Church, for his religion; but when the executioner lets fall his bloody axe, by Church authority or instigation, the chain is severed for ever. That is no Church of Christ that burns Christ’s people at the stake. Those gory hands, which are red with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, cannot confer the sacraments of his Church. Yet the advocates of Episcopacy will have us believe that this is, forsooth, THE Church, and out of her there are no ordinances and no Christian ministry!”

Mr. Courtney spoke with an energy of manner that was quite unusual for him; and when he ceased, there was perfect silence for a little time, till Theodosia, looking at her tablet, remarked that we had only one mark more, which is, that no apostate Church can be a Church of Christ.

“If you derive the English Episcopal Church from the ancient British Churches,” said Mr. Courtney, “she is apostate. She became so when she became a hierarchy, introduced infants as members, united with the state, (thus recognizing another lord than Christ,) and began to persecute for conscience’ sake. Any one of these innovations on Christ’s order would have marked her apostate; and when she became apostate, she ceased, of course, to be Christ’s Church. But if, according to the indisputable truth of history, you derive her from Rome in the age of King Henry VIII, she has not become apostate, for she never was a true Church of Christ. She had, at first, no baptism but that of Antichrist. She had no ministry but that ordained by Antichrist; and her organization was that of Antichrist. She began in lust, and worldliness, and blood. She was from her inception the mere creature of the secular power; and, from the very first, so foul that she could not apostatize.”

“My dear sir,” exclaimed the Doctor, “you must surely speak without thinking of the full import of your words. I grant that the Church of England was not at its inception a perfect Church. It still had some leaven of Romanism; but was certainly a very great improvement on the system which it supplanted, and far from being as vile as it could be.”

“By an apostate Church,” replied the schoolmaster, “we mean a Church which has once been a true Church of Jesus Christ; but, by a change of constitution, of membership, of doctrine, or of practice, in points essential to its identity with the New Testament model, has ceased to be a true Church. It follows, therefore, that if this Church of England never had the characteristics of a true Church, she could not lose them, and, consequently, could not apostatize. And this was all I meant to say. But if you imagine that she was at her beginning any better than her mother, of Rome, or in any way different from her as regards the want of the essential features of a Church of Christ, let me tell you that you have entirely misapprehended her character. The only important difference between them was that the pope was the head of the Roman, and the king was the head of the English. The king made laws for the one, as the pope for the other. The king required faith in his dogmas, on pain of death, as much as the pope. The king forbade the people to read the Word of God as peremptorily as the pope. The king, in short, became the pope of England. And this is what people call the Reformation.”

“I am certainly mistaken, if such were really the case; but I suppose you have the proof. I had been under the impression that King Henry authorized and encouraged the reading of the Scriptures; and even required, by his royal authority, that they should be publicly read in the Churches.”

“That is true, sir. The king, at first, did order a translation to be made; approved it when it was received from Tyndale; and it was ‘SET FORTH WITH THE KING’S MOST GRACIOUS LICENSE;’ and a decree enacted that it be ‘sold and read of every person, without danger of any act, proclamation, or ordinance, heretofore granted to the contrary.’ All the authority and influence of the government was earnestly and efficiently employed to secure to the people the opportunity to read the Scriptures and urge them to improve it.

“The king knew that the pope had forbidden the Scriptures to be read, and trusted that, by reading them, his people would learn to fear and hate the pope. But it did not occur to him that they would see that he had no more right to rule the Church than the pope had. He thought also that he had well secured his people from all danger of heresy, by the law enacted about the same time, ‘to establish Christian quietness and unity.’

“The doctrines enjoined by this statute were, 1. Transubstantiation. 2. Communion in both kinds not necessary to salvation. 3. Priests may not marry by the law of God. 4. Vows of celibacy binding. 5. Private masses to be retained. 6. Auricular confession useful and necessary. Its penalties were, for denial of the first article, death at the stake, without privilege of abjuration; for the five others, death as a felon, or imprisonment during his majesty’s pleasure.

“But so soon as the king found that if people read the Scriptures, they would not, or could not, believe his monstrous doctrines; when he found that hundreds of his most loyal subjects were ready to die at the stake rather than profess to believe them, he suddenly changed his policy. And it was then enacted, ‘That all manner of books, of the Old and New Testament, in English, of Tyndale’s crafty, false, and untrue translation, [the very same that had been before graciously ordered to be read,] should, by authority of this act, be clearly and utterly abolished and extinguished, and forbidden to be kept and used in this realm, or elsewhere, in any of the king’s dominions.’

“And further, ‘That no manner of persons, after the first of October, 1543, should take upon them to read openly to others, in any Church or open assembly, within any of the king’s dominions, the Bible, or any part of the Scriptures, in English, unless he was so appointed thereto by the king, or any ordinary, on pain of suffering one month’s imprisonment.’

“And, to show how little probable it was that the king would appoint any one to read, it was further enacted, ‘That no women, except noblewomen and gentlewomen, might read the Bible to themselves alone; and no artificers, apprentices, journeymen, serving-men of the decrees of yeomen or husbandmen, or laborers, were to read the Bible or New Testament to themselves, or any other, privately or openly, on pain of one month’s imprisonment.’

“And then again, three years after this, ‘That, from henceforth, NO MAN, WOMAN, OR PERSON, of what degree he or they shall be, shall, after the last day of August next ensuing, receive, have, take, or keep, in his or their possession, the text of the New Testament, of Tyndale’s or Coverdale’s, nor any other, that is permitted by the act of Parliament, holden at Westminster, in the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth year of his majesty’s most noble reign.’

“These and any other most interesting and significant facts connected with the introduction of the vernacular Bible in the English nation, you will find in that most admirable work of Mrs. Conant, The History of English Bible Translation, pp. 320⁠–⁠325.

“That these laws were designed to be executed, and that they were executed, even to the veriest extremity of their bloody requisition, the history of many a murdered lover of the Scriptures will testify. Under this law the Anabaptists were burnt, as testified by Bishop Latimer, in many parts of England; and under it the heroic Anne Askew was first tortured on the rack, and then burned at the stake.

“Now, what I say is this: a Church thus false in doctrine; thus like Antichrist in government; thus devilish in spirit; ordained and established by a wicked king, for worldly purposes, and sustained, from the very first, by outraging, not merely the laws of God, but the dictates of humanity, could not have been at any time, by any possibility, A TRUE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST. She could not, therefore, cease to be a true Church, since she had never been one. She could not apostatize. Nor can she ever become a true Church while she remains the Church of England. She may become less vile and abominable than at first. She has indeed grown vastly better than at first. But, since she was not a true Church then, she had no authority to administer the laws or ordinances of Christ. Her baptism was, consequently, no more Christian baptism than is a Mormon immersion; her ordination was no more Christian ordination than if it had been performed by the priests of Jupiter. Christ gave no sort of authority to any such establishment; and all her acts are therefore null and void. So far from having the only baptism, she has no Christian baptism at all. So far from having the only ministry, she has no Christian ministry at all. So far from having the exclusive authority to confer the sacraments of Christ’s Church, she has never received them, never has had, has not now, and never can have, the right to confer them at all.”

“Surely,” said the Doctor, “she may repent and reform, if she has not already done so. How then dare you assert that she can never become a true Church, and have all the rights of any other true Church?”

“My dear Doctor, let us simply use our common sense one minute. We have seen what a true Church is according to the Scriptures. It is a local, independent society, and not a part of a confederacy or a hierarchy. If this Church should ever fall back upon the Scripture rule in this respect, she will no longer be the Church of England.

“We have seen that a true Church can, as a Church, recognize no power to make laws for her but Christ. Now, if this Church deny the power of the king and parliament to determine for her the doctrines that her members shall believe, and her ministers shall teach; what parts of Scripture she shall read on certain days; what words of prayer she shall employ; or that the king, by his chancellors and the bishops, shall have control of her discipline; determine what each member must believe; who shall be received as members, and by what form it shall be done; who shall be excluded, who retained; and, in fact, almost every thing in regard to all that characterizes a Church—I say, if she deny all or any of this, she ceases to be the Church of England. We have seen that a true Church consists of those who have first professed their faith, and then have been baptized. Let this Church cease to receive any but believers, and restore what she herself admits to have been the baptism which Christ ordained, and which was changed without authority from him, and she will no longer be the Church of England. In short, if she should ever be so far changed as to be conformed in all essential points to the Scripture model, she must first cease to be. The king must resign the headship and give it up to Christ. The bishops and archbishops must leave their Episcopal thrones and become simple pastors of single Churches. The discipline of the Church must revert to the ‘ekklesia,’ the assembly of the brethren and sisters. And from this assembly those must be excluded who have not come to it voluntarily, professed their faith, and then received that baptism which Christ appointed.”

“And if all that is done,” said Theodosia, “she will no longer be the English Episcopal Church, for these are her characteristic features. But how is it with the American, or Protestant Episcopal Church?”

“In condemning the mother, we have sentenced the daughter,” replied Mr. Courtney. “The Episcopal Church of this country was a part of the English so long as it could be; and when, by the political separation of the two nations, it became impracticable to retain all that belonged to the mother Church, no more was given up than was imperiously demanded by the circumstances. The most important difference is, that as the king or queen could not be here recognized as the head, the bishops have retained the headship in themselves. It cannot here, since the revolution, secure the power of the state to enforce its decrees; and, therefore, it is no longer able to be a persecutor; and probably it has no will to be. But if the mother was (as we have seen) no true Church of Jesus, the daughter cannot be. She received her organization, her ministry, and her ordinances, from the English Church; and if that was not the authorized executive of Christ, it had no right to confer either, and its acts are null and void. The bishops of this country were made such, not by the law of Christ, but under a special act of Parliament, and their ministrations are limited by this act to the western continent. Their commission does not read, ‘Go ye into all the world,’ but, If you shall keep yourselves in the United States of America, you shall have the right to exercise the office of a Christian bishop. So the act of Parliament requires. The American Episcopal Church exists, so far as the greater part of its ministry are concerned, by a special act of the British government, passed after we had become a free and independent people; and that act confines their ministrations to this country, or, at least, forbids them to preach the gospel of salvation in the realms of her majesty the queen. Thus was Christ’s command, ‘Go into all the world,’ set aside, and the English king’s permission humbly sought, and reluctantly granted, to preach in these United States.”[8]

“I am convinced,” said the Doctor, “that this is not the Church of Christ. But let us hasten on, and find, if possible, what and where it is.”

“Wait one minute,” said Mr. Percy, “till I have finished my diagram of this claimant, and then I will be ready to look at another.

“Here is the picture, all black but half the space representing the articles of faith.”

DIAGRAM OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH.

Signs or Marks of a True | | Marks of the Episcopal Church. | | Church. --------------------------+--------------+---------------------------- 1st. It consists only of | ████████████ | It makes members of professed believers in | | children, who do not know Christ. | | their right hand from their | | left.

2d. Its members have been | ████████████ | They were sprinkled when baptized upon a | | they were incapable of profession of their | | believing. faith. | |

3d. It is a local | ████████████ | It is a vast hierarchy, and organization, and | | not a local organization. independent of all | | others. | |

4th. It has Christ alone | ████████████ | It is subject to the king for its King and | | and Parliament in England, Lawgiver, and recognizes | | and to the bishops in this no other authority above | | country. its own. | |

5th. Its members have | ████████████ | They were made such in become such by their own | | childhood, without their voluntary act. | | knowledge or consent.

6th. It holds as articles | ██████ | The high-Church party holds of faith the fundamental | | to salvation by the doctrines of the gospel. | | efficacy of the sacraments.

7th. It began with | ████████████ | It began with Henry VIII., Christ, and has continued | | or if before his time, it to the present time. | | had apostatized.

8th. It never persecutes | ████████████ | It was many years a bloody for conscience’ sake. | | persecutor.

9th. No apostate Church | ████████████ | If not apostate itself, it can be a Church of | | was the creature and Christ. | | offspring of Antichrist.

“I think,” said Mr. Courtney, “you might have left that white; for if we take their published standards, TO WIT, the thirty-nine articles in the Prayer-book, there is not much to object to them.”

“But how if they practically repudiate their own professions, and elsewhere teach, and in their hearts believe, that it is by the sacraments, and not by faith alone, that men are made the children of God and the heirs of glory? This I understand the high-Church party to have done, and so have marked them black.”

“Well, let it stand; we have not time to dispute about it now. Suppose we take up the other branch, or off-shoot, of the English Episcopal Church: TO WIT, the Methodists.”

“Very good; this is the natural place for them in our investigation; and after what has been already settled in regard to the Roman Catholic and Episcopal Churches, we need not spend much time upon their Methodist offspring. Now, if Mrs. Percy will read again the first of the marks of a true Church as they stand upon her tablet, we will apply it to this claimant.”

“Is the Methodist Episcopal Church composed exclusively of those who have professed a saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ?”

“I wish,” said Dr. Thinkwell, “that our Methodist minister were here to answer for his Church. I do not like to see her tried without the benefit of counsel.”

“Since he is not here,” said Theodosia, “let us set their Book of Discipline to answer for them. Mr. Percy has a copy in his trunk, and surely no Methodist, if he were present, would object to the reception of its testimony.”

Mr. Percy went for the little book, and on his return opened at the 20th page, and read as follows:

“‘The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men in which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments duly administered, according to Christ’s ordinance, in all things that of necessity are requisite to the same.’”

“It seems, then, from this, their own definition,” said Theodosia, “that the Methodist Church must be a simple local congregation of believers, or else it cannot be the visible Church of Christ; and yet it is notorious that the Methodist Church is not a mere congregation of believers, but that great confederation governed by the Conference. I fear their theory and practice will not correspond.”

“Here is something more,” said Mr. Percy, “on the 30th page: ‘Let none he received into the Church until they are recommended by a leader with whom they have met at least six months on trial, and have been baptized, and shall, on examination by the minister in charge before the Church, give satisfactory assurances both of the correctness of their faith, and their willingness to observe and keep the rules of the Church.’”

“Surely,” exclaimed Theodosia, “that excludes all but professed believers; and I am glad to find that this claimant has the first mark, at least, of a true Church. I have always admired the zeal and self-denying piety of Mr. Wesley, and am glad he had such correct views of what was necessary to membership in the Church of Christ; and yet I hardly understand how these views are compatible with the system of seekership and infant baptism. I have been under the impression that many of the members of the Methodist Churches had never even pretended to be converted people, but that they had joined the Church as seekers, passed their six months’ probation, and had simply been retained or confirmed as members on the recommendation of the class-leader.”

“The actual and the theoretical Methodist Church,” replied Mr. Courtney, “may be somewhat different. It is very certain that we read and hear every week of persons joining the Methodist Church as seekers: and it is equally certain that Methodists, as well as other Pedobaptists, contend that persons are by baptism made members of the Church. Mr. Wesley himself expressly says, that ‘by baptism we are admitted into the Church, and consequently made members of Christ its Head. The Jews were admitted into the Church by circumcision; so are Christians by baptism. For as many as are baptized into Christ, (in his name,) have thereby put on Christ, Gal. iii. 27; that is, are mystically united to Christ, and made one with him. For by one spirit we are all baptized into one body, (1 Cor. xii. 13,) namely, the Church, the body of Christ, from which spiritual, vital union with him proceeds the influence of his grace on those that are baptized, as from our union with the Church a share in all its privileges, and in all the promises Christ has made to it.’ (See Doctrinal Tracts, p. 248, Treatise on Baptism.) And again, on p. 250, ‘There can be no reasonable doubt but it [baptism] was intended to last as long as the Church into which it is the appointed means of entering.’”

“You need not have gone to Mr. Wesley,” said Mr. Percy, “for the Discipline itself teaches very plainly that baptism is the door of entrance to the Church, and consequently that all the baptized are, by that act, made members of the Church. See the Ritual for Baptism, chap. 5th, sec. 2d, where the minister, coming to the font, is instructed to say, ‘Dearly beloved, forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin, and that our Saviour saith, none can enter into the kingdom of God except he be regenerate and born anew of water and of the Holy Ghost, I beseech you to call upon God the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ, that of his bounteous mercy he will grant this child the thing which by nature he cannot have, that he may be baptized with water and the Holy Ghost, and received into Christ’s holy Church, and be made a lively member of the same.’ And thus exhorted, the people, through the minister, are taught to pray that the child now to be baptized may receive the fullness of God’s grace, and ever remain in the number of his faithful and elect children’—precisely the same language which is used farther on in reference to the baptized adults; and it would seem that if adults are made members by baptism, the infants are by the same process. Like the Presbyterians, however, they repudiate the act, and practically deny the membership. They give them no more Church privileges than if they had never had the holy water sprinkled on their foreheads, and are thus guilty of the inconsistency of refusing to commune with, or recognize as Church members, those whom they seem so anxious to bring into the Church by baptism.”

“But how is it with the seekers, Mr. Courtney? Are they not counted as Church members? I am sure they count themselves as such. Mrs Babbleton told me, just before we left home, that two of her daughters had joined the Church during a protracted meeting which had just closed, and that one of them had professed conversion. I know they both partook of the Lord’s Supper, and seemed to have all the privileges that any Church member has in their denomination; and I do not understand how they can be entitled to all the privileges of membership and yet be out of the Church.”

“The difference,” said Mr. Courtney, “between a member in full, and a member on probation, is simply this: the first cannot be excluded from Church privileges except by the preacher in charge, and that not until after trial and conviction. The other can be cast out at any time by the class-leader, without any trial or accusation. With this exception, they are equal partakers in all the rights and immunities of Church-membership; and whether converted or unconverted, all sit down together at the table of the Lord. ‘There is,’ in the language of the Discipline, ‘only one condition previously required of those who desire admission into these societies, and that is, a desire to flee from the wrath to come, and to be saved from their sins;’ and these societies are the Methodist Churches, if they have any Churches at all. They do consist in part of unconverted people. They may consist entirely of such. It often happens that there is in them a majority of such; and this majority can recommend candidates for license to preach; can witness the trial of accused members, and, so far as the laity have any part in Church discipline, it may be, and is, in the hands of men who have never made any pretensions to the possession of true faith in Christ, but only have expressed a desire for it.

“It is ‘the society,’ or a leader’s meeting, that recommends persons to be licensed to preach. See Discipline, chap. 2d, quest. 3, ans. 4. It is ‘the society,’ or a ‘select number them,’ before which the preacher is to try an accused member. Chap. 4, quest. 2, ans. 1. If the society were mostly converted people, I see nothing in the Discipline to hinder the preacher, if he chose to do it, from selecting those whom he knew to be the unconverted probationers to try the cause; nor can I see, after a careful examination of the Discipline, that the full member, as he is called, has any single privilege as a Church member which is not equally conceded to the so-called probationer, so long as it shall graciously please his class-leader to permit him to remain in ‘society.’

“If those who have made no profession of saving faith are permitted to enjoy all the privileges of Church members, and exercise all the prerogatives of Church members, it can be a matter of no consequence whether they are technically called Church members or not. It is things, not names, we must be governed by. If these societies form any part of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and they consist not of professed believers upon Jesus, but in part or in whole of those who are merely ‘seeking the power of godliness,’ who have only professed conviction and not conversion, we must of necessity conclude that the Methodist Episcopal Church does not consist exclusively of those who have professed their faith in Christ. Paul did not receive the jailer when he had merely asked what he must do to be saved. He waited until he had done what he was instructed to do. Nor did we, in all our examination, find any instance of members, whether believers or unbelievers, whether converted or only convicted, being received as probationary Church members.”

“Really,” said Theodosia, “I do not feel quite satisfied with this treatment of the Methodist societies. I fear we do not any of us fully understand them, and may unconsciously do them some slight injustice. I do wish some Methodist were here to plead their cause, and explain apparent difficulties. I know that they have done much to spread Christ’s gospel; I know that many of them are earnest and devoted Christians, patterns of piety which I long to be able to copy. I have read the lives of Wesley and Fletcher, and others among them, and am sure they could not designedly have gone counter to the teachings or God’s Word. They meant to serve the Master, and to lead men and women in the way to heaven; and surely their Church must have more marks of a true Church than the Episcopal or Roman Catholic.”

“Wesley and Fletcher, madam, lived and died as members of the English Episcopal Church. They had no idea of leaving it for any other. What they desired was, to infuse new life into its half-rotten carcass. They sought not to destroy, but to reform it; and if their personal piety makes the Church in which they had their membership a true Church of Christ, it makes the Church of England such. But let me again remind you, that it is not individuals, not persons, but organizations, which we are examining. The piety of Pascal, of Fénélon, of Madam Adorna or Madam Guyon, or even of Thomas à Kempis himself, could not make the Church of Rome, to which they belonged, a Church of Christ. No more could that even of the martyrs who bled for the Church of England make it a Church of Christ. Good people may, by birth or education, or errors of judgment, become connected with organizations which have no single feature of a Christian Church, yet such connection will not change the nature of the organization. It is true, that if Wesley had required, as a condition of membership in his societies, that piety which he himself exhibited after his conversion, they would not have been subject to the objective we are now considering. They would in that case have consisted exclusively of professed believers. But however pious he may have been, however devoted many of his followers have been, and may be now, yet he himself declares that the ‘only prerequisite for admission to his societies’ is a desire of salvation. They, according to his own words, consist of those who have the form and are seeking the power of godliness. Now all we have to do is, to determine whether this was the basis of membership in the New Testament Churches. Was this the condition of membership established by Christ and the apostles? If not, then his societies were not, and without a change in this particular could not be, Churches of Christ. This is as plain as common sense can make it.”

“Yes, Mr. Courtney, I see that, and admit its force; but still I would feel better satisfied if we could compel some intelligent Methodist to see it and admit it with us.”

“Your wish to have a Methodist to assist in our discussion can very easily be gratified,” said Doctor Thinkwell, “if you will but postpone the conversation until to-morrow. The presiding elder of this district is my nearest neighbor, and a special friend. He is, moreover, a man who takes delight in the defence of whatever is peculiar in the system which he advocates and of which he makes a part. The societies in this region regard him as an oracle, whose authority is, in matters of faith, second only to that of the bishop himself.”

“Do, then, let us wait,” exclaimed the lady. “We have talked too long to-day already. I am sure you must all be tired but me; and, besides, you know, Doctor, you have promised to take us in and show us the Capitol, and the bridge, and the other marvellous things in and about your famous City of Rocks.”

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