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the keeper of the Sacraments, it is an essential means of the realizing it at present in our fallen race. Nor is it much to the purpose, as regards our duty towards it, what are the feelings and spiritual state of the individuals who are its officers. True it is, were the Church to teach heretical doctrine, it might become incumbent on us (a miserable obligation!) to separate from it. But, while it teaches substantially the Truth, we ought to look upon it as one whole, one ordinance of God, not as composed of individuals, but as a House of God's building;—as an instrument in His hand, to be used and reverenced for the sake of its Maker.
Now the Papists have retained it; and so they have the advantage of possessing an instrument, which is, in the first place, suited to the needs of human nature; and next, is a special gift of Christ, and so has a blessing with it. Accordingly we see that in its measure success follows their zealous use of it. They act with great force upon the imaginations of men. The vaunted antiquity, the universality, the unanimity of their Church puts them above the varying fashions of the world, and the religious novelties of the day. And truly when one surveys the grandeur of their proceedings, a sigh arises in the thoughtful mind, to think that we should be separate from them; Cum talis esses, utinam noster esses!—But, alas, an union is impossible. Their communion is infected with heresy; we are bound to flee it, as a pestilence. They have established a lie in the place of God's truth; and, by their claim of immutability in doctrine, cannot undo the sin they have committed. They cannot repent. Popery must be destroyed; it cannot be reformed.
Now then what is the Christian to do? Is he forced back upon that cheerless atheism (for so it practically must be considered) which prevailed in the world before Christ's coming, poorly alleviated, as it was, by the received polytheims of the heathen? Can we conceive a greater calamity to have occurred at the time of our Reformation, one which the Enemy of man would have been more set on effecting, than to have entangled the whole of the Church Catholic in the guilt of heresy, and so have forced every one who worshipped in spirit and in truth, to flee out of doors into the bleak world, in order to save his soul? I do not think that Satan could have desired any event more eagerly, than such an alternative; viz. to have forced Christians, either to remain in communion with heresy, or to join themselves in some such spontaneous union among themselves, as is dissolved as easily as it is formed. Blessed be God! his malice has been thwarted. I do believe it to be one most conspicuous mark of God's adorable Providence over us, as great as if we saw a miracle, that Christians in England escaped in
