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THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH: or, the Communion of
Saints in the mystical Body of Christ: a Sermon preached in
the Church of the Epiphany, in the city of Philadelphia, on
Sunday, October 6, 1844. By CHARLES PETTIT M'ILVAINE,
D.D. Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the
Diocese of Ohio. With
With an Appendix. London: Seeleys.

1844.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY OF OHIO, on the preaching of Christ Crucified. By CHARLES P. M'ILVAINE, DD. Bishop, &c. London: Jackson.

MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY: A Sermon preached on the Consecration of Bishop Lee. By CHARLES P. M ́ILVAINE, D.D. Bishop, &c. London: Jackson.

We know not how far these little manuals have obtained the circulation they deserve: but they appear to us of such peculiar value, that we feel it a duty to give them a distinct and special recommendation. The first on the list had not fallen in our way till within the last few days, and bringing to our recollection the great pleasure and profit we had formerly derived from the Charge and Sermon last named, we felt a strong wish that all our clerical brethren could be induced seriously to read and ponder them. At a trifling cost, any person possessing the means might render an essential service by putting them into the hands of the clergy -and to our minds it is a delightful thought, that, by importations such as these from our transatlantic brethren, we are furnished at once with so pleasing an evidence of Christian unity, and with means so well calculated to promote it. Would that we had all but one ambition-thus to contend for the faith,' and strive together for the furtherance of the Gospel.

There is a full and valuable Appendix attached to the Sermon on 'The Holy Catholic Church,' showing how entirely the doctrine it contains is identical, in every particular, with that which our Hookers, and Taylors, and Ushers, &c., most earnestly taught. We heartily concur with Bishop M'Ilvaine in recommending them to the reader's careful attention. It may be well, perhaps, to subjoin his notice of these authorities.

"We have taken Cranmer and Ridley for the times of the ReformationHooker for the days immediately succeeding-Bishops Taylor and Hall, Archbishop Usher, Drs. Jackson and Perkins for the trying times of the early part of the seventeenth century-and Dr. Barrow for those immediately succeeding.

"In this selection we have, as holding what are now called Calvinistic views of the doctrines of grace, Hooker, and Hall, and Usher, &c., on the opposite side, we have the golden-mouthed Taylor; a little less Arminian, Dr. Barrow-still less, Dr. Jackson. Thus we have representatives of all classes of English divines, of the ages above-mentioned, in regard to what is supposed so much to modify one's views of questions, like these treated in this discourse. Nevertheless, it will be seen, from the extracts here subjoined, that among these great writers, there was not the least difference of opinion in the points now in view. That the true Catholic Church is composed only of the true children and people of God, who are united by a living faith to Christ; that none others have any real membership in God's Church, however they may be externally associated with it in visible ordinances; that this Church is the Holy Catholic Church, and Communion of Saints; having all its being in the union of its several members, by faith, immediately to Christ; that this is the mystical body of Christ, as nothing else can be, and invisible, because while its members on earth are personally visible, their distinction as such members is invisible; that this and no other is the Church to which all the promises are given, as the real believers among the children of Abraham were the only Church to which the promises then made, belonged finally that this Church, mystical and invisible, is the 'pillar and ground of the truth,' against which the gates of hell shall not prevail,' to which belongs essentially the unity of the Spirit, however the bond of peace, in the common use of creeds and sacraments, may be broken, the reader will find to be the concurrent testimony of those unquestionable witnesses of the doctrine of the Protestant Episcopal Church in their respective times."(pp. 76, 77.)

In the extract here given, the reader has a clear statement of the scope and substance of this valuable Sermon. The importance of its argument may, again, be thus put in the bishop's own words

"Take away from beneath his (the Pope's) feet these two props-first, the pretence that every baptized person is spiritually and internally renewed, ex opere operato; secondly, that to be a true Christian and have true faith, and so to be a true member of God's Church, does not require that a man should have faith that worketh by love,' or to be else than most wicked or flagitious;' in other words, establish the scriptural doctrine that the Church of the promises, the pillar and ground of the truth,' the Communion of Saints, the Holy Catholic Church, the living mystical body of Christ, is composed only of those who are in Christ Jesus, by a living, fruitful faith, and the foundations of that whole city of abominations will become as quicksand.

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"Hence the pains taken by our Anglican divines, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to make plain the distinction between the Church visible and invisible, for lack of diligent observing of which (says Hooker) the oversights are neither few nor light that have been committed.""-(pp. 73, 74.)

Alas, we have but too much cause ourselves to sympathise with the good Bishop in the following statement a statement which lets us into a sad and affecting secret as regards the present condition of the Churches-

"The present writer has observed in many ministers of our Protestant Church of the United States, a great lack of the diligent observing of that difference; and he thinks, that the oversights which have ensued, and do 1846.

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still increase, are neither few nor light, but so many and weighty as to affect in a very important degree the great interests of Gospel truth. The whole matter concerning Regeneration and Justification, as connected with the Sacraments, and all the language of the Scriptures, the Early Fathers, and the Early Anglican divines, would be much more correctly and easily understood, were that difference well seen and forcibly fixed on the mind.

66 'Peculiar circumstances have tended so much to draw the minds of the Protestant Episcopal ministry in this country, to the study and defence of those visible institutions of the Church, which we believe to be Apostolic in origin, and important enough to be sustained by any earthly sacrifice, that it is apprehended, there are not a few minds, otherwise strongly imbued with Evangelical truth, that have become so unused to the old Anglico-Protestant views of the Church as it is invisible or mystical, that the undisguised exhibition of them in this discourse will seem almost new and dangerous."(pp. 74, 75.)

"Such minds" the bishop hopes, "on a little reflection, will come to their true bearings. The slightest effort to controvert these views from Scripture, or in consistency with other great truths of the Gospel, will convince them that nothing else can be true, and that the whole doctrine is as well Anglican as Scriptural." We earnestly wish it may prove so. The tendency, no doubt, as Bishop M. intimates, is strong in the present day among many, in the precise direction by which the Romish Church arrived at its present doctrine: and hence the importance of giving the true Scripture view the prominence which it occupies in this discourse. We regard the point as a vital one. It appears to us, almost more than any other, to contain within itself the very marrow of modern controversy and hence, we repeat, our desire earnestly to recommend this cheap but most valuable little manual on the doctrine of "The Holy Catholic Church."

Bishop M.'s Charge and Sermon on 'Ministerial Responsibility,' are, we believe, more generally known. They well deserve an extensive circulation.

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NOTE ON MR. FABER'S LETTER.

THE letter of our venerable and much-esteemed correspondent, in our last number, seems to require a few words of reply. In our Review of Mr. McNeile's valuable work on the Church and the Churches, we had briefly observed, in passing, that the refutation of Mr. F.'s Treatise on the Primitive Doctrine of Election, was, in our judgment, complete. Our excellent friend naturally dissents from this verdict, and though he has not read the work we reviewed, endeavours to prove that our estimate of it, on this one point, is entirely erroneous.

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We cannot here enter at length on this subject.

But we think easy to shew that there is a fundamental fallacy, of great importance, in Mr. F.'s line of argument, and indeed Mr. McNeile has briefly hinted its nature in the passage to which we referred. The letter of Mr. Faber may help to put this in a clear light. “I have carefully studied Scripture," he says, "as well as Mr. McNeile; but I own, I do not perceive how either my interpretation of Scripture, or Mr. McNeile's, can afford any legitimate proof that either my view, or his view, is correct. In arguing thus, we should severally produce a mere paralogism. We, both of us, hold Scripture to be the sole binding rule of faith, but if either of us maintains that his own interpretation of Scripture must inevitably exhibit the true sense of Scripture, we do not argue; we merely dogmatize. The question respects, not the authority, but the meaning of Scripture; and how Mr. McNeile's argument, from his own gratuitous interpretation of Scripture, can be so clear and forcible and conclusive as to bring out a complete refutation of my strictly evidential Treatise, I do not understand. The whole of my Treatise is purely evidential. I know not whether Mr. M. attempts to produce any evidence to substantiate his own private view of Scrip ture; which private view, and not Scripture itself, as I gather from your statement, forms the groundwork of his argument."

Now here two maxims are plainly assumed; first, that Scripture furnishes no internal evidence by which a Christian may ascertain its true sense on reasonable and solid grounds; and secondly, that the writings of the Fathers do furnish sufficient evidence by which to determine their doctrinal judgment, and hence to infer, evidendentially, what must be the sense of Scripture also.

With all our deep and sincere respect for Mr. Faber, and our high esteem for the writings of antiquity, in their own place, we are fully persuaded that this is an illogical and dangerous error,

that it derogates from the practical worth of the Scriptures, and is the first step in that downward course of superstition, to which Mr. F. is as heartily opposed as we ourselves. We hold that Scripture contains its own evidence, to fix its true meaning; that this evidence amounts to demonstration in all great and leading truths, and to a presumption of varying strength, in secondary doctrines. We believe that the evidence of antiquity is subsidiary, not essential; that whatever ambiguity there is in the word of God, must be shared, and often in a higher degree, by the writings of the Fathers; and that even were we certain of their unanimous judgment, it could be no strict proof, but only a fallible presumption, that their interpretation was true. It should make us very slow to reject their opinion, but could not supersede a direct appeal to the internal evidence of the word of God. This is the common voice of Chrysostom, Augustine, and of all the Reformers, and Mr. Faber, we conceive, is in a great error when he sets it aside.

The question, in fact, lies within a narrow compass. Every judgment, which a private Christian forms, whatever its ground, must be, in one sense, a private judgment. It may be a private judgment on the sense of Scripture, or on the writings of the Fathers, but in every case it is a private judgment still. It may be an implicit faith, again, in the Pope; but still it is a private judgment that the Pope is infallible. This element of uncertainty cannot be got rid of by any art or device, though people may disguise it in various forms. The real difference is in the means used for gaining a correct private judgment, and the grounds on which it must rest. We say that the great means is the direct evidence of the word of God, compared with itself; that, in most questions of doctrine, this alone, when honestly and carefully used, is sufficient and decisive; that where it is insufficient, the truth is not revealed, and no human authorities whatever can supply the defect. But still, where Scripture does furnish evidence, and we ourselves, at present, apprehend it only with a dim and uncertain vision, human authority, like that of the earliest Fathers, may be of use either to discourage hasty and rash interpretations, or to confirm a weak and unassured faith. There are, however, two drawbacks from which it cannot be free. It requires, like the Scriptures themselves, the use of our private judgment, before we can decide even on the teaching of the Fathers; and their teaching is itself mixed with error, and therefore cannot supply any full and certain proof that their view of Scripture is its true meaning.

Now here is just the fallacy which Mr. Faber, in several of his works, has repeated in various forms. His reasoning implies that the Scriptures are quite ambiguous, and the Fathers entirely free

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