The rapid increase which Popery is making in this land is now a matter of notoriety, and has begun to alarm the minds of very many of the saints of God. As yet, however, it has called forth no real energy to meet it. Many of those who see it most clearly, and most righteously abominate it, do not find themselves free to grapple with it, having themselves to contend for their own corporate existence, so far as it of the world. And it is in this way that Satan most effectually paralyzes Christian energy, by causing its strength to be spent in the defense of that which is questionable, and of the world. Error can only be met by the exhibition of the truth; and, while this is true generally, it is more especially true with respect to that system, wherein every truth of God has been so misplaced as to become the support of the natural selfishness of the human heart, and to build it up in distrust of God. In Popery every truth of God may be found, but found out of place; and misplaced truth is the most powerful engine which Satan uses. From the day of his saying "Ye shall be as gods" {Gen. 3:55For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. (Genesis 3:5)}, to the present time, when he has given the privileges of God's children to the world at large, he has effectually worked by perverted truth. It is, therefore, not by the statement of an isolated truth, but by "the acknowledging of the truth according to godliness" that this mighty fabric of human ingenuity, under the guidance of that wisdom which is earthly, sensual, and devilish, can be met.
Popery has been looked on by the wise and prudent merely as a system, many of the tenets of which are abhorrent to the reason of man. And hence this class of men have confidently predicted that if the people were educated and enlightened, that Popery would become antiquated. It is quite true that the effect of such light may be to turn a man from superstition to infidelity, but to the infidel the very thing he scorns in his heart, may be an engine of moral power, and as he will own it publicly, and use it for his ends. The fact is, Man, constituted as he is, craves a something, which he calls religion; it is to him not a thing imposed of God, but a natural necessity; and if he can but find that which in any wise will satisfy the cravings of conscience or give him honor before men, and at the same time leave his soul in insubjection to God, he will have the desire of his heart. Such exactly is Popery. -The principle is the very one of Satan, when he showed the blessed Lord all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and saith unto Him, "All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me." It was, in fact, to have had the world without owning God in it. But the prince of this world had nothing in Jesus. But he renewed the attempt successfully in the Church -he sought to be owned there; and giving her the world and its glory, his authority was substantially owned. Jesus would not take the world but as His own by purchase; and the redemption of the purchased possession by the strong hand of power is yet future. The Church would have the world and escape the suffering, and therefore owns it and Satan in it, while the Lord is disowning it.
But Popery was not the work of a moment, nor a scheme struck out at once by the wisdom of man, but it required many centuries to perfect it. Its beginning is to be traced in the Apostles' days, but in its growth the spiritual eye will observe something beyond mere corruption; its steady progress can only be accounted for by its being under the guidance of a Master Spirit; and the skepticism of real Christians as to the energy of Satan in this scheme, has made them give into the notion that it might be met by weapons merely carnal. It is not reasoning, nor irony, nor ridicule, that will subvert its strong hold; these are carnal weapons, and in the use of these Satan will have the advantage. Where he works it is reasoning against reasoning. We know full well his power in this, even against man in his innocence, what must it then be now? When Satan is met he is met with his own weapons, and can turn them against those who use them. It is the blindness of man himself, under the power of the god of this world, to the active agency of Satan in this mighty fabric of his power, which has made them believe that it could be met by the merely enlightened understanding. Their folly has been made manifest, their predictions falsified, and instead of the light they have sought to impart being effectual to the end they proposed, it has signally failed. Popery, in this enlightened era, has alarmingly increased. Now there are two things to be noticed as giving it so strong a hold as to become impregnable to mere human reasoning:
I. It is not a scheme excogitated by man's wit and imposed on man, but it has in it every element of the natural heart most wonderfully molded into a religious scheme, so that it has in its principles a strong claim on man. The very element of man is distance from God, and here is a scheme professing to come from God, settling Him in that distance, without opening the possibility of present nearness to God. A favored class or caste, as being more especially consecrated to God, is another natural element of the heart of man, and in this system strongly corroborated. That honor should be given to this class, and that all the concerns of man relative to God should be entrusted to them, is what the natural heart of man universally confesses; and here comes the authoritative claim of such a class of men in the name of the Son of God. There is nothing more remarkable than the strong hold which the notion of priesthood has on our minds; and it has been Satan's marvelous wisdom in this system to satisfy this craving, to the utter exclusion of the one great High Priest -the Lord Jesus Christ. And this has been his wisdom so to act through man as to pervert God's truth, and by means of it to bind man down to the groveling desires of his own heart, and at the same time to hide effectually the Priesthood and Lordship of Jesus.
II. Its strong hold is, that it professedly adapts itself to the world -"They are of the world, therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them." Man needs religion, and this system has been marvelously interwoven, not only with all the charities of domestic and social life, but likewise embodied in civil life. It was consummate skill in the god of this world to make the truth of the gospel even subservient to his keeping the world under his authority. He added a patch of the new to the old garment; and this blinded men as to the present existence of any other kingdom than his own. The Church took the world under its patronage -gave its sanction to the world's laws, opposed as they were to the very spirit of the gospel; and although idolatry had fallen before the preaching of Christ, yet the world was still owned, owned as an improved world, as a Christian world, as a world not lying under the wicked one. We are all sensible how remarkably a semblance of Christianity has become introduced into things most secular. "The woman took the leaven and hid it in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened {Matt. 13}." Christianity has lost its distinctiveness, but the world is still unreconciled to God. It has changed its name, and its form and fashion, but it is still the same world that crucified the Lord of glory; and it is a masterpiece of the wisdom of the serpent to get Christ owned in name, but His claim of Lordship effectually denied. It is this which must give this system a great [false} moral power; it has sought to adapt Christianity to existing circumstances; and while it claims for itself the most unreserved subjection, if it be but owned publicly and nominally, it allows the most perfect liberty to man's self-will. We know little of man, if we have not learned that element of his constitution which would gladly assent to a claim of authority, which shall relieve him from the irksomeness even of caring for his soul, and divest him of the thought of individual responsibility unto God. It is thus that the wise and prudent have in their day found this a most convenient system for them, they have professed themselves Children of Mother Church, it may be to have defended her interests, but have thus been able to pursue the paths they desired to tread with a conscience that gave them no uneasiness, because lulled into security. It would almost appear, from the reasonings of some men on the subject, as if they thought that none but the illiterate or stupid owned Popery; surely it has had its wise and great men, men of science and of freedom of thought; but as men they had in common with others the natural want {need} of religion. That which was at hand suited them -they received it by tradition from their fathers: it was not their province to question it, they found it established, and although it might appear bondage in many things and must be, too, yet it interfered not with the right of man to live as he wished, and the bondage was bearable. "Ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise, for ye suffer if a man bring you into bondage, if a man devour you, if a man exalt himself, if a man smite you in the face {1 Cor. XXX}." A man will suffer anything for the sake of self-will. It is so blinding, that while both morally in bondage to sin, and civilly in subjection to a foreigner and a conqueror, men would say, "We were never in bondage to any man" {XXX}." There is no liberty but that which the Son gives; and it is this which Satan would by all means hinder -that liberty destroys his power. But what man naturally craves is actually rivetting his chains; look at it as we may, it is the desire of irresponsible power, uncontrolled will; and this is what he gained by the desire of being as God -a will of his own -out of control of God's will. And hence we discover, also, what cannot fail of striking many minds, how it is that Popery in the present day, the supposed natural ally of despotism, can adapt itself to democracy. Despotism and democracy are in themselves but a varied exhibition of one and the same principle -uncontrolled self-will; and hence democracy is the worst kind of despotism. Only let Popery be acknowledged, and it interferes no farther. Men are delivered to do all abominations, and to resist every other authority if they only submit outwardly to this.
It is, in fact, receiving the mark of the beast (whatever may be the true interpretation), which is the principle of Popery, or of any Church system which would claim the world for itself: And, when that is received, there is a free grant to buy, or sell, or do anything; and the sense of individual responsibility becomes deadened or entirely lost. It is thus, then, that Popery can present itself as the religion of the people; and those who hold men in bondage to themselves, can speak "great swelling words of vanity, promising liberty. "
But there is another most important point to he considered, as incidentally affording facility to the growth of Popery -hiding it may be what in it may shock the moral sense, but most assuredly assuming a sway not only over the minds of the careless and irreligious, but over many of the thinking and conscientious, yea, even of the children of God themselves. To any acquainted with the present state of the Church, the question most constantly agitated among Christians, is that of Church constitution. Authority is craved both on the part of those who desire to exercise it, and on the part of those who desire to lean on it. But authority in man's judgment is something palpable, something intrinsical, something conferred. It was this feeling that raised the question even in the presence of the exercise of powers that could not be questioned. ""By what authority doest thou these things, and who gave thee this authority?" (Matt. 21:2323And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority? (Matthew 21:23))." It was the supposed lack of authority which was made the handle by false teachers against the Apostle Paul. Had he been an "Apostle of man or by man," the question as to his authority would not have been raised in the Church; it would have been drawn from a visible source. And in his answer we find the Apostle appealing not to that which man would have expected, but to their own selves,—"Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, which to you-ward is not weak, but is mighty in you; examine yourselves whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves; know ye not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates (without proof) {1 Cor. XXX}.)"
Now to those who are looking for outward authority, its most legitimate source is Popery. If it come instrumentally through men, there it is to be found; and those who are seeking it are forced to allow that this is the channel of its conveyance. If the fountain of this delegated authority be in the Church, here stands forth that with its Church claim of unity and universality. That this is the real ground of the supposed authority of the Priesthood has been made abundantly manifest by the tone assumed by its defenders. The point which has of late been so much agitated is, not whether the National Church be corrupt, that is admitted at all hands, but the very principle of its being a Church at all; and the defense is invariably derived authority. There can be no doubt that the Christian Ministry, at a very early period, assumed the form of a distinct order, and became assimilated in men's minds to the Jewish Priesthood, which was God's own order. The unconscious desire, even in the minds of good men, to have a supremacy over the minds of others, and the natural leaning of man on a visible order, will readily account for this most important change silently taking place, -a change which has been more destructive to the genius of Christianity than anything else. Ministry and Priesthood stand most broadly distinguished in the New Testament,—"We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Christ's sake" {XXX}." Now a Priesthood with the claim of the trust of all spiritual power, demanding the entire surrender of man to its control in. things pertaining to God, is not only that which man craves, but which God has provided to meet man's necessities, -and such a Priesthood is that of Jesus. Another order therefore effectually hinders the perfection of that one order of God, and instead of bringing near, keeps man contented with the shadow, at a distance from God. Now that it is no vague charge that there is the attempt made to assert the existence of a visible order of Priests, the following quotations are produced. The quarter from whence the publications in which they are found have issued, is one of very great respectability, the reputed Authors being men of undoubted learning and of great moral worth. A "Series of Tracts for the times" have been published at Oxford, -some addressed, "Ad Clerum"; others, "Ad Scholas"; others, "Ad Populum. " Some very fearful statements in Tracts from the same quarter have already been alluded to in the "Christian Witness"; such, for instance, as that the Clergy are "intrusted with the awful and mysterious gift of making the bread and wine Christ's body and blood"; but in this series the statements are less startling, but equally tending to the same point -the exaltation of the Christian Ministry into a visible Priesthood.
AD POPULUM -The People's interest in their Ministers' commission.
"But something beyond the ministration of the word is committed to the care of the Pastors, when our Lord speaks of the keys of heaven -viz. the ministration of the sacraments. St. Paul also tells us, that the ministration of these sacraments is entrusted to the Pastors of the Church by this commission, when he says, ' Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.'" "By virtue of this commission, (viz. Matt. 18:2020For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:20)) each Bishop stands in the place of an Apostle of the Church, and discharges the important trust reposed in him, either in his own person, or by the Clergy, whom he ordains, and gifts with a share of his authority. ... A person not commissioned from the Bishop, may use the words of baptism and sprinkle and bathe with water on earth, but there is no promise from Christ that such a man shall admit souls into the kingdom of heaven. A person not commissioned, may break bread, and pour out wine, and pretend to give the Lord's supper, but it can afford no comfort to any to receive it at his hands, because there is no warrant from Christ to lead communicants to suppose, that while he does so here on earth, they will be partakers in the Savior's heavenly body and blood."
No. 15 -On the Apostolical succession in the English Church.
"But it may be said, on the other hand, that if we do not admit ourselves to be heretic, we necessarily must accuse the Romanists too of being such; and that therefore on our own ground we have no valid orders, as having received them from an heretical Church. True, Rome is heretical now; but she was not an heretical Church in the primitive ages. She has apostatized, but it was at the time of the Council of Trent. Then it was that the whole Roman communion bound itself by a perpetual bond and covenant to the cause of Antichrist. But before that time, grievous as were the corruptions in the Church, no individual Bishop, Priest, or Deacon, was bound by oath to the maintenance of them" (p. 10).
AD SCHOLAS -Primitive Episcopacy.
"The first step towards evangelizing a heathen country in the early times, seems to have been to seize upon some principal city in it, as a center of operation; to place a Pastor -i.e., a Bishop there; to surround him with a sufficient number of associates and assistants, and then to wait till, under the blessing of God, this missionary college was enabled to gather round it the scattered children of grace from the evil world, and invest itself with the shape and influence of an organized Church."
The faith and obedience of Churchmen the strength of the Church.
"The days may come when your Churches may be shut up, or only filled by men who will not teach the whole truth as it is in Jesus, when you will be deprived of ministers of religion, or have only such as are destitute of God's commission. Do not, I beseech you, by your neglect now, add to your misery then, the bitterness of self-reproach, when you will have to say, I had once the opportunity of worshiping God aright, but I neglected it, and He now has withheld it from me. I had once the means of receiving the body and blood of my Savior at the hands of His own minister, but I refused it, and now He has placed it out of my power."
The nature and constitution of the Church of Christ.
"Since the Apostolic age, seventeen centuries have rolled away; exactly eighteen hundred years have elapsed since the delivery of Christ's recorded promise, and, blessed be God, the Church is with us still. Amid all political storms and vicissitudes, amid all the religious errors and corruptions which have checkered, during that long period, the world's eventful history, a regular unbroken succession has preserved among us, ministers of God, whose authority to confer the gifts of His Spirit is derived originally from the laying on of the hands of the Apostles themselves."
"Wonderful indeed is the providence of God, which has so long preserved the unbroken line, and thus ordained that our Bishops should even at this time, stand before their flocks as the authorized successors of the Apostles; as armed with their power to confer spiritual gifts in the Church" &c.
The only thing which effectually meets the scheme of Satan's wisdom, is the truth; and as it is one of bondage, it must be the liberty of truth. There are many who may be thankful for their freedom from the trammels of Popery, who have again become entangled with the yoke of bondage,-many who have indignantly spurned this thraldom of mind, who have used their liberty as a cloak of maliciousness. True liberty has reference to God. -"If the Son shall make you free then are ye free indeed." "Ye are bought with a price, be not ye the servants of men." Now, there is a threefold liberty into which the children of God are brought, which Satan ever attempts to separate. -The first is that of standing before God, or complete justification, effected solely by Christ. Nothing short of the fullness of the gospel at all meets the case. At the Reformation we find the great truth of a sinner's justification before God to have been the one of contention. Everything depended on its assertion, and it was most blessedly asserted. That no qualified statement of the believer's standing before God, as perfect in Christ, would meet the case, may be seen in an extract or two from the council of Trent. "C. vii. Canon ix. -'Si quis dixerit sola fide impium justificari, ita ut intelligat nihil aliud requiri, quo ad justificationis gratiam consequendam cooperetur, et nulls ex parte necesse esse eum sum? voluntatis motu preparari, atque disponi, anathema sit.'" "Canon xi. -'Si quis dixerit homines justificari vel sola imputation justitim Christi, vel sola peccatorum remissions exclusa gratis vel charitate, qua; in cordibus eorum per Spiritum Sanctum diffundatur atque illis inhareat, aut etiam gratiam qua justificamur esse tantum favorem Dei, anathema sit.'" Now there is nothing in these statements which is so very abhorrent to much of what is called the gospel in our days. The grace of God is so surpassing our thoughts and our ways that we are ever disposed to qualify God's own statements, in order, as we think, to make them safer, But the moment we come to inherent grace as the ground-word of our standing before God, we are on Popish ground. It is the distinct assertion of the complete putting away of all sin to him that believeth in Jesus. -"By Him all that believe are justified from all things {XXX}." Being washed in that blood, he is thereby made meet for partaking of the inheritance of the saints in light. It is assurance of present forgiveness, of present acceptance, of present sonship, of present introduction into the kingdom of God's dear Son, which alone meets Popery. Before this alone, the mighty machinery of error gives way. The possibility of God ever standing before him otherwise than as an Exactor cannot enter into the heart of a well instructed Papist; the moment, therefore, he sees God's love towards him in having Himself provided the sacrifice, his own holiness needed, and that the sacrifice has been offered and continues its efficacy unto this very moment, and that there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, because that by the will of God those who believe are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all {Heb. 10}, he is set free. He can come near to God in full assurance of faith; he finds a Priest and a sacrifice in heaven, and naturally turns away from that on earth (which kept him at allthe distance from God his own heart would naturally keep him in), to that which gives him nearness of access to God, through the efficacious sacrifice and prevailing mediation of a High Priest in heaven. Add to this, that the Priest is the Son over the Father's house {XXX},and brings him immediately into that house as a son free of it, not as a servant, there to enjoy the presence of the Father. This is the point at issue, and it is mere polemical skirmishing to be drawn aside to the question of the worshiping of saints, and their intercession; their judgments may be convinced, but there is no peace to the soul, no purgation of the conscience, till the testimony unto the efficacy and completeness of the work of Christ on the cross be received. We may talk of ignorance, and superstition, and darkness, and boast in our own superior light, but the heart of the Papist is systematically as well as naturally shut against the reception of the love of God; and how can it get entrance there but by setting it forth as meeting us as enemies, dead in trespasses and sins, and bringing us at once, through the mighty efficacy of the cross, into His own bosom -into the Father's heart. The liberty wherewith Christ makes free, effectually delivers from the thraldom of an earthly priesthood; and therefore it is that while Satan knows complete justification in and through Christ to be the only world-delivering truth, Man also, who would put himself in the place of priest, finds it to be the truth which destroys his caste; and the deliverance is the same in principle, whether it be from the Hindoo or Popish Clergy. It completely subverts the notion of a privileged order, and therefore is thought to be a dangerous truth.
But secondly, and intimately connected with this is the liberty of worship. The complete standing of the believer in Christ immediately places him in the presence of God, whom he worships in Spirit and in truth, even as the Father is seeking that he should. He is not obliged to approach God by first coming to an ordered priesthood on the earth, because there is the Priest and Sacrifice in heaven. Neither is he to be bound down to a Ritual, which whatever may be its excellence cannot suit the child who comes in liberty of Spirit to his Father. It was stated some few years ago, when there was a great stir among the Papists in Ireland, and large numbers were ready to leave that system, that they were effectually thrown back by its being proposed to them to submit to the Test Acts, or something equivalent, before being received into the communion of the Establishment. It was to them, therefore, a mere exchange of one system of bondage for another, and opened not at all to the awakened mind that which would effectually deliver it from that in which it was held. It tended to keep them still back, instead of pointing out their privilege of being brought nigh by the blood of Christ, to appear themselves as priests in the presence of God, to offer to Him the sacrifice of praise and thanks-giving. The notion of an ordered priesthood effectually destroys the character of Christian Ministry -they are as distinct things as can possibly be. -The Priest is to reconcile, the Ministry is that of reconciliation through the priesthood of Jesus. If, therefore, a Papist, whose whole principle has been the entrusting his soul's concern to an earthly priest, has, by the grace of God, found that he has held a right principle in a wrong place, and that his allegiance being turned from a priest on earth to one in heaven, peace is the result; if after this he is still to look to an order somewhat different from his own, but still an order between him and Christ, where is the real difference of his standing? I say, not that his judgment may not be convinced, and his heart comforted by the truth he may hear, but he is again entangled. He is yet in the state of the bewitched Galatians, observing days, and months, and years. And the whole tenor of that Epistle shows the remarkable connection between liberty in Christ, liberty in worship, and liberty of spirit, opposed to the liberty of the flesh. What was all the zeal of the Apostle against Judaism, but because he saw in it an infringement of real liberty. Surely there could be no moral harm in observing the ritual of God's own institution: they might have observed days, and months, and years unto the Lord; but the moment it became a question of obligation, and it was attempted to be prescribed as the proper mode of worship, then the Apostle only saw in the Ritual according to God's own pattern, weak and beggarly elements, to which they desired again to be in bondage, and therefore in principle a going back to heathenism. Now if this unquestionably divine order of worship would have interfered with the liberty of sons, how much more must that which is but man's servile copy of it tend to bondage. The notion of a priest, of an altar, of a sacrifice, and of service (Aci,TXXXpyi, a), which are visible and earthly, must necessarily, tend to keep the soul to the earth, instead of leading it from the earth to worship in God's house in heaven, where the High Priest and Sacrifice are. The consequence is, that a Ritual so ordered, must almost of necessity amalgamate the world and the Church; and let there be ever such spiritual breathings in it, their power is lost by their general application and worldly accompaniments. Now the only worship which suits one set at liberty, by belief of the truth of complete justification in and by Christ, is, that of Spirit and of truth -is that which is in the name of Jesus, even that of sons. Such the Father is seeking, and such fulfills the joy of the one set free;—"Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name; ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full."
But in the third place, the liberty of service -the necessity of service is one most distinctly acknowledged by the Papist; but its liberty is unknown; like everything else it is wrongly placed -it is the very spirit of bondage. Now there is a service of liberty, "that we should serve in newness of Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter {XXX}." We are made free in order to serve, called unto liberty, not to use it as a cloak of maliciousness, but by love to serve. Man can easily imagine service to God in order to procure His favor, but service can only he regarded as privilege by those who know the liberty wherewith Christ has made them free. The claim which the Lord Jesus prefers on His disciples for their obedience is the claim of His own love. -"If ye love me keep my commandments." Man would ever pervert this blessed order and say, keep the commandments in order to procure the love. But the claim of obedience brings before us all our security -"Ye are not your own, ye are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your bodies and your spirits which are His {XXX}." And here again we see the intimate connection between the completeness of justification through Christ and obedience or service. When a qualified justification is asserted, we immediately get on the Papist's own ground, and both liberty of Spirit and liberty of service, are lost together. The service of a believer proceeds from his altered position towards God. "Christ has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust to bring us near to God {XXX}." It is no longer therefore effort to get near to God, but being made nigh by the blood of Christ, we go forth in the strength of God to obey Him. And this alone meets the entanglement into which that system draws the soul. The truth which is according to godliness, puts in their right places the truths which Satan has perverted, giving peace and liberty to the soul, and leading into righteousness and true holiness.
Now it is the exhibition of this truth, the practical exhibition of it which is needed to expose the errors of Popery. It is the recognized value of the priesthood of Jesus, and Church office and Church authority only used in service to the saints, which ought plainly to be set before their minds. It is present deliverance out of the world, even while being the ministers of grace towards it, which alone can show forth that the Church can never be in its real standing before God when it is great in the earth. It is MINISTRY in all its varied branches, which needs to be exercised, to show practically the false pretensions of an earthly priesthood. Priesthood may awe, but ministry will win; the one requires to be served, the other is the service of love; and the pretension to priesthood is especially dangerous in this respect, that it so completely obscures and nullifies the ministry of reconciliation.
Now it may be asked, is there in existing systems any effectual testimony to the truth, so as to bring into strong relief the perverted truth of Romanism. Granting to the National Establishment (i.e., the Church of England} all the doctrinal purity claimed for its articles, yet its worldliness in theory, making the nation the Church, and its tolerance and support of every worldly practice, would of itself effectually hinder the power of its testimony to doctrinal truth. But when its whole order is just as much independent of the Spirit of God as that of Romanism itself, it becomes a mere question of uniformity on a greater or lesser scale. And for these reasons, as well as the necessary allowance of the authority of the Church of Rome as the channel of succession, the Establishment fails in so exhibting the truth as to manifest the false pretensions of Popery. There is no provision for real liberty of worship, and the machinery of the one as well as the other can go on equally orderly without, as with the Spirit of God.
If, on the other hand, we look to Dissent, we see worldliness in another form, but equally hindering the testimony as to the deliverance and heavenly portion of the Church. And the entire rejection of all the truth which Romanism holds in error with respect to Church order, and Church unity, and Church authority, (as if all this had been left to man's arrangement, when the Scripture has spoken largely on the subject), effectually thwarts the power of any doctrinal statement as a testimony.
There is therefore no reason, so far as we can see, to prevent an increase of Popery, and if we might judge from the tone of thought and feeling daily increasing among the Clergy of the Establishment, there is nothing to prevent an attempt at a comprehension. Towards this there has often been a tendency at different periods since the Reformation; and it may now be the policy of Romanism to assume liberalism not only in politics but also in religion, and to keep back much that is offensive against reason or feeling, for the purpose of extending its authority. Surely the children of God, who do know their blessed liberty, are loudly called on to show forth real unity of the Spirit, in opposition to that which is outward and formal; real subjection to the Spirit in any of His gifts, whether of teaching, oversight, or rule, in-stead of bondage to an order of men claiming for themselves the authority of God, and the blessedness of worship in Spirit and truth, instead of bodily exercise and constrained service.
The Christian Witness 4:1-16 (1837).