of Christianity; for the impenitent and unbelieving cannot be Christians. And there are revealed truths so absolutely fundamental, that their removal from the plan of salvation completely destroys it as the way of life eternal. I have stated, in every variety of form, what I suppose to be the immediate and universal foundations of that Gospel of Christ, which is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth ;' and God himself has declared, that if an Apostle, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel than that of Christ, he is accursed. It is absolutely impossible, therefore, to esteem any faith pure, or any Church true, unless the Lord Jesus Christ is accepted in sincerity as the divine Saviour crucified for lost sinners-unless the word of God is accepted purely as the infallible rule of faith and duty-unless the Holy Ghost is accepted as divinely and effectually working in the soul-and unless the new life, imparted to us by these means, with its perpetual fruits, is accepted as the result of all. With less than this, neither truth nor charity can admit, that the revealed remedy for sin has been received by man; or that men know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent which is eternal life.' In effect, therefore, the true and satisfactory judgment which every child of God forms concerning purity of faith, and concerning the true Church; is the necessary result of his own inward experience of divine things, grounded upon his own saving knowledge of Christ. Nor is any truth more clear in itself, or more clearly revealed, than that if any man will do the will of God, he shall know the doctrine whether it be of God.' 2. The lawfulness and the value of the symbolical books of the Christian Churches-those creeds and confessions against which all heretics have protested-seem to be beyond reasonable doubt. Indeed, it is not possible in the nature of the case to avoid the formation and use of systematic statements, which are essentially creeds. Every one who accepts the Gospel as the ground of his hope, the rule of his faith, or the standard of his life; necessarily accepts it according to some sense of its various parts-and of the whole composed of those parts; and necessarily utters this accepted sense of the parts, and of the whole, as often as he has occasion to explain his religious life. But this 1 Rom., i. 16. * 1 John, v. passim 2 Gal., i. 8. 4 John, vii. 17. is simply the formation and utterance of his creed. If the Gospel of God is so intractable, that its various parts cannot be put together in some systematic order, then it is simply incapable of being known by man, otherwise than as a series of incoherent statements if it is capable of being systematically stated-then the primitive laws of our being unavoidably oblige us to state it so, as soon as we take interest enough in it to desire to understand it. And every organized Church must necessarily do something tantamount to this, every time it acts organically; and it is its indispensable duty to do so, both in order to preserve its own purity and peace, and to bear its testimony for the truth of God. Nor is it without great value to the Church herself, that the most distinct expressions of her faith should be as permanent as they are articulate. For by them the highest and surest proof is created and preserved, through all ages, not only of her existence but of her condition, age after age, beside the mighty stream of time, as it rolls across all the centuries. It is thus she erects, from generation to generation, great landmarks, by which posterity may know assuredly, how far the inundation of error had spread, and how deeply the waters of eternal life had fertilized the earth. Of course, human creeds can possess no more than human authority; and it is the highest profanation to put them on a level with the word of God. But they may justly claim great authority; chiefly because they may-and so far as they do-accord with the divine word. In addition, they are covenants, mutually binding, as such, upon the conscience of all who voluntarily enter into them. And the clearness, fulness, rational power, and spiritual unction, with which the great truths of salvation and the great duties of men, may be systematically stated by such as God raises up, from time to time, for this very end; become means of great comfort to his poople, and of great confusion to his enemies. The Spirit, which has always been the life of the Church, sometimes more powerfully, sometimes less so, produces by his powerful presence, nothing more certainly, than a renewed hatred of error, and a fervent love of truth, leading to those great conflicts, out of which all the great testimonies of the Church have been accustomed to spring; testimonies which there is reason to accept, as in a peculiar manner expressive of the life of God's Church, in its most powerful manifestations. 3. It is impossible for the heart of man to conceive too deeply, of the sin of corrupt Churches, and of God's hatred of them. Throughout the Scriptures, the image of the true Church is a chaste, loving, and faithful wife; and besides innumerable separate passages, the entire Book of the Song of Solomon-and that not one of the shortest-is devoted to the complete illustration of this similitude. On the other hand, a faithless, corrupt, and shameless wife, is everywhere the image of an apostate Church; and besides multitudes of separate passages, a large part of the last Book of the inspired oracles, is employed in exposing and denouncing the greatest, bloodiest, and most polluted of all apostacies, under the frightful appellation of a harlot. Nor is there any command delivered to such of God's children, as may chance to be found in such Synagogues of Satan, more distinct than that they should come out of them; nor any threat more precise, than that they will, otherwise, be partakers of their sins, and receive of their plagues.' It is not, therefore, only against error, delusion, and sin, abstractly considered, that God calls his children to testify; but, also, against the corruptors and oppressors of the earth -and that all the more earnestly when their sins are perpetrated in his holy name. Heaven itself is called on to rejoice, with holy apostles and prophets, when God avenges his slaughtered saints upon great Babylon, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth and the voice of much people in heaven is heard glorifying the Lord God, and saying, Alleluia—when the smoke of her torment rises up, forever and ever!' 1 Rev., xviii. 4; Isaiah, xlviii. 20; lii. 11; 2 Cor., vi. 17, 18. CHAPTER XXV. THE WORSHIP OF GOD IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH: THE SECOND INFALLIBLE MARK OF THE TRUE CHURCH. I. 1. Divine Statement of the Three Infallible Marks of the True Christian, and the True Church; The Second One now to be explained.-2. The Unity and Spirituality of God the sole Object of all Religious Worship: The Truth and Spirituality of all Worship, acceptable to Him.-3. True Conception of this Worshipand of its Nature and Grounds.-4. Relation of the Word of God, and of the Life of God in our Souls, to each other, and to God's Worship.-5. God—Religion -Worship-Salvation-Human Nature.-II. 1. The Kingdom of Royal Priests: Their Life, a Life of Worship.-2. The Obligation, the Rule, the Blessedness, and the Perpetuity of this Ordination.-3. The Plan of Salvation-the Work of Christ -the Divine Idea and Organism of the Church, relative to Worship.-4. That Or ganism in its Fundamental Nature as hitherto disclosed-and as yet to be traced in Connection with the Gifts of God to his Church.-5. Relation of the Sacrifice and Priesthood of Christ, and of his Ascension Gifts, to the Idea of True Spiritual Worship by the Church.-6. The Relation of Worship to Religion, and to God— through every conception thereof-from the widest to the narrowest.-7. Worship, as divinely disclosed in each Christian Congregation.-8. Abstract Demonstration, of the unavoidable Conclusion. I.-1. WE are the circumcision, says the Apostle Paul, which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.' These are the marks in the elect individually, of reigning grace; the marks also, in their collective body when organized into Christ's visible Church, by which that body is to be infallibly distinguished as his body. According to the point of view from which the subject is contemplated, the particulars of this divine and all pervading definition, fall into one or another order; but in whatever order of these particulars, unitedly they absolutely distinguish the child of God-and the Church of God. In the order of absolute reality, they stand as the Apostle has placed them; for all is from God, all is through Christ, and all is unto our complete deliverance from all subjection to the flesh, and from all trust in it. In the order of actual 1 Phil., iii. 3. development to our weak understandings, and to a certain extent, also, in the mode of their inworking with our souls; their manifestation to us is, perhaps, more clear from the lowest to the highest, to wit, man, Christ, God. And considered as accomplished in us, and viewed as marks of our estate before God, the first thing is our relation to Christ, and then our relation to God through him, and then our real condition produced in that manner. I have, therefore, treated first and with reference to Christ and our glorying in him, purity of Faith as the first infallible mark of the true Church. And I am now to treat of the true spiritual worship of God, which is indissolubly connected with. our union and communion with Christ, as the second mark. And in the next chapter I will endeavour to disclose, as the third mark, that holiness of life-that total abnegation of the flesh-which is the product, through Christ, of all divine operation in the human. soul. 3 2. There can be but one God. I have proved that with any true notion of the living God, we are incapable of conceiving of a second God and the Scriptures, as we might expect, assert continually, and imply throughout, that God is one.' The reality and the unity of his existence-are the primitive truths upon which the possibility of all spiritual religion rests. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one God: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might this is the revealed foundation of whatever acceptable worship-in whatever sense of that term-man has ever rendered to God. He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him for without faith it is impossible to please him. Ye worship ye know not what; said Jesus to the woman of Samaria-we know what we worship; for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him. For God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in Spirit and in truth. And then he told her plainly, that he was Messias-the Christ :-I that speak unto thee am he.' In like manner, the other part of true religion—all duty as well as 1 Gal., iii. 20; Rom., iii. 30; 1 Tim., ii. 5; 1 Cor., viii. 4. 4 Heb. x. 6. 3 Deut., vi. 13; x. 20; 1 Cor., viii. 6. 5 John, iv. 21-26. |