CLXXI.

TO ONE OF THE PUBLIC PAPERS.

SIR,-The more I observe and reflect upon the controversy with the Papists, revived at present by the "Reformation Society," the more am I convinced that the members of the so-called church of England, or of any other politico-religious establishment, are unfit to maintain it; and this, because they cannot effectually expose the corruptions of Popery, without giving themselves a hard slap in the face. For instance, I see they have been lately discussing at Birmingham the question of the "infallibility of the church," and a simple Christian, adhering to the Scriptures, would have no difficulty in refuting all the sophistry and trickeries of argument by which popish priests are trained to perplex the subject, if he only kept clearly in view, and insisted steadily on, the scriptural meaning of the term church. But how could this be expected from a clergyman of the establishment? He could not do so without admitting that what he calls his own church, is no church of Christ at all.

It will be admitted that the Greek word, rendered church, literally imports an assembly or congregation. Connected with this literal meaning of the word are the only two acceptations in which it is applied to Christians in the Scriptures of the New Testament. In the first place, it is applied to the whole aggregate of Christ's redeemed people, for whom he gave himself as a ransom, to whom he is the appointed "captain of their salvation" for bringing them unto glory, and who shall be all brought together or congregated before the throne of God in the heavenly mansions which he has gone before to prepare for them. This "general assembly, or church of the first born which are written in heaven," is evidently to be understood when Christ is said "to have loved the church, and given himself for it," as well as in all those passages of the Prophets, in which "the great congregation" is spoken of, in the midst of which he, the Redeemer, declares the name of the Lord to those whom he is not ashamed to call his brethren. (Ps. xxii. 22. Heb. ii. 10—12.) In this application, the phrase-" the church of Christ," imports an assemblage that never yet has been visible to the human eye, though all its component members are at once and for ever before the eye of him, to whom all things are alike present from everlasting to everlasting. In this sense of the term, to attribute visibility to the Catholic, or general church, is rank absurdity. It amounts to the monstrous assertion that man can discern and distinguish, not only all the real believers scattered over the earth at present, but all that have died in the faith in every antecedent age of the world, and all that are "ordained to eternal life" in the generations yet unborn. I shall by and by mark the only sense in which infallibility can be

truly attributed to this church of Christ. But at present I pass on to state the second acceptation, in which the word church is to be understood in Scripture,-namely, as applied to any particular assembly of Christians coming together into one place, on the first day of the week, to "shew forth the Lord's death" in the ordinance of his supper, to" exhort and admonish one another," to maintain the discipline, and observe the other institutions delivered by the apostles to the churches of the saints; and this is obviously the meaning of the term church, when we read of the church at Jerusalem, at Corinth, at Ephesus, &c,, or of the church in the house of such and such an individual. (Rom. xvi. 5.) Besides these two meanings, distinct indeed, but closely connected, the term church is not employed in any other meaning throughout the Scripture and however the art of ecclesiastics has misnamed and perverted the phrase, there are few expressions in Scripture of more simple and unambiguous import. And now, when a clergyman of the establishment boasts of his church of England, or a Presbyterian clergyman talks of his church of Scotland, is it not manifest that they employ the word church in a way in which it is never employed in Scripture? Do they even profess that there is any assembly, in which all the Christians of England or Scotland come together on the first day of the week? No. Or can they adduce any instance from Scripture of such language as the church of Judea, the church of Galatia, or the church of any other country? I defy them to do so. Here the language always runs-The churches of Judea, churches of Galatia, of Asia, &c.; and, light a thing as those men may regard it, to pervert the language of divine revelation in order to give a currency to scriptural phrases in a sense utterly unscriptural, none who truly reverence the word of God can make light of it. Indeed, it is one of the arts which the father of lies has most successfully employed for overspreading Christendom with every Antichristian corruption. If one of these reformed clergymen adhered in any degree to the scriptural import of the term "a church," he would apply the name -not to the politico-religious system established by acts of Parliament in these countries-but to the congregation with which he assembles on Sundays. There is an assembly indeed, an Exxλnabut certainly, in its constitution and its objects, utterly unlike the churches of the saints described in the New Testament; and there might be some danger of directing men's attention to this dissimilarity, if the person should talk of his congregation as his church. He professes, therefore, to talk of, as his church, the building of stone and mortar in which the parishioners meet to hear a sermon; a misapplication of scripture language, which is exceeded in its profaneness only by one other perversion of the term-namely, when the word church is employed to designate the clerical order in contradistinction to the so-called laity.

I would, in the next place, desire it to be remarked, that each of the Christian churches, spoken of in the New Testament, was perfectly independent of all the other churches, and subject to no authority in points of Christian faith or practice, but that of Christ himself as the one divine head of his universal church; and that the Apostles were

authorized organs of declaring his will. With them Christ declared be would be to the end of the world, sanctioning their word, so that whosoever heard them, hears him, and whoso despises them, despises him. No doubt, among the several churches, while they continued to adhere to the one common rule of the Apostolic word, and so far as they were known to each other, and had opportunities of communication, there would be a brotherly intercourse, and a mutual acknowledgment of each other as sister churches: but as to the idea of any one of those churches exercising the least authority over any others of them, it is utterly contrary to every scriptural principle, and originated in nothing else than the domineering ambition of corrupt ecclesiastics. The first Christian church was that at Jerusalem, and this existed before there was any such a thing as a church of Christ at Rome. But the church at Jerusalem exercised no jurisdiction, as a metropolitan church, over the other churches in Judea, no more than the church that was afterwards planted in Rome exercised any over the other churches in Italy, or in Achaia. Each church of Christ, I repeat it, was in itself competent to every act of discipline or Christian observance directed by the Apostolic word, and this without the interference or control of any other church, and subject to no authority whatsoever but that of Christ himself. The sanction of that authority they had with them for all their course according to that Apostolic word, as really when the Apostles were absent as when they were personally present. And so it is to this very day, wherever there is a church of Christ; and thus the simplicity of scriptural principles strikes at the root of all the Antichristian pretensions of Rome and her pontiffs. But can it be expected that any of the reformed clergy should honestly employ that simplicity of divine truth against the Papists, when it equally exposes the antichristian character of their own ecclesiastical courts and canons.

Again, let it be noted that each of the Christian churches spoken of in the New Testament, was a changeable, transient, and perishable body; and that, however distinguished by the purity of Christian faith and practice at one period, there was no error in faith or corruption in practice that might not be introduced into it. What has become of the church that was at Jerusalem, or that was at Smyrna, or at various other places, where we know that churches of the saints did exist in the Apostolic age? What has become of the church that was then at Rome? It is extinct, and succeeded by something assuming the name of a church of Christ, but really a synagogue of Satan-"a cage of unclean birds"-a mass of idolatrous worshippers of a flour-and-water God, and of a Goddess whom they blasphemously style "the mother of God," and "the queen of heaven"-a besotted multitude with their besotted priests, given up

Let not any theologian pervert this language to represent me as denying the Lord Jesus Christ to be indeed " God over all, blessed for ever." I abhor Socinianism, as much as I abhor Popery. But it was "according to the flesh" that Jesus of Nazareth was made of the seed of David, and conceived in the womb of the Virgin. She was honoured to give birth to his humanity, not to his Godhead.

"to strong delusions that they should believe a lie," because "they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved."

And now a very few words indeed would be sufficient on the-muchtalked of subject, the infallibility of the church. The very language that attributes infallibility to any man or men, or collection of men, or indeed to any creature however exalted, must be revolting to those who have the knowledge and fear of the Most High. To him alone that attribute belongs. All his works are perfect; and all his teaching is infallible. He has declared that all his children shall be taught of the Lord, and is infallibly faithful to his word of promise in accomplishing this, and all the other good things which he has spoken concerning it. So far as they are taught, they are taught infallibly, made wise unto salvation to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent. It would be utterly false to infer that they are therefore freed from all error, and much more that they are freed from the liability to err. But what has the infallible wisdom and unchangeable faithfulness of God the Saviour to do with the asserted infallibility of either the Pope of Rome, or a general council of ecclesiastics with the Pope at their head? About as much as light has to do with darkness. I believe few will have the hardihood to deny that some, at least, of the individuals who filled the Papal throne were notoriously monsters of iniquity, polluted with every defilement of the flesh, and even the most unnatural crimes. But, according to one of their theological fictions, such a pope, however bad as a man, was as good and valid a pope as any other-(in this, indeed, I agree with them) and gave as much validity and infallibility to acts and decrees of any general council, at the head of which he sat. Now, it cannot be denied that, if such a man had ever been in fellowship with a really Christian church walking by Apostolic rule, he would have been put away from the fellowship as one of the ungodly characters described in 1 Cor. v. Yet that man, who would not have been in even the outward pale of Christian communion, if the divine word had been obeyed, the popish doctors hold to have been the Universal Bishop of the Catholic church, Christ's Vicegerent upon earth, and at the head of a general council of Ecclesiastics like himself to have issued decrees infallible as the oracles of God! But how can any clergyman of the establishment consistently press such a plain remark as this against the Papists, when he himself derives the validity of his clerical character from ordination by a so-called bishop, and that bishop derives his pretended apostolic authority in the government of the church, from a pretended apostolic succession, traced through the very wickedest of the Popes of Rome?

I am, sir, &c.

CLXXII.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE.

SIR, Mr. Locke has long ago noticed how much the world is humbugged by words, when they acquire a currency of use without clear and distinct ideas annexed to them. I think we may see a striking instance of this in the language of which we have heard so much of late, that tithes are the property of the church: property which the legislature has no more right to disturb than the property of any private individual. The church! What a convenient expression that has been for concealing a world of nonsense and imposture in its womb! and here, I would observe, in general, that men, who professedly acknowledge the divine authority of the scriptures, have no right to give a currency to scriptural phrases in an unscriptural sense, as this tends at once to corrupt the very fountain of divine truth.

Church, or xx, is one of those phrases statedly employed in the New Testament, in one or other of two very simple meanings, either for the aggregate of all true Christians in all ages and nations (as when Christ is said to have “loved the church and given himself for it,”) er for the body of Christian disciples in any one place, and at any one time, who come together on the first day of the week to "shew forth the Lord's death till he come;"-as when we read of the church at Rome, at Ephesus, and in the house of such or such an individual. Accordingly, we never find in scripture such a phrase as “the church of Italy,"-but, "the churches of Italy."

But, adherence to the simplicity of scriptural phraseology would not answer the ecclesiastical purposes of the clergy, those great corrupters of the word of God. They have contrived, therefore, to attach to the word church three different senses, distinct from each other, and all of them alike remote from its scriptural meaning. 1st. It is employed to denote an edifice built in imitation of the heathen temples, and commonly dedicated to some of the saints, those modern demigods: as when we read of St. Paul's Church, St. Pancras Church, &c. 2ndly. It is employed to denote a politico-religious system of profession and observances differing in different parts of the British dominions, but receiving from the legislature peculiar favour and support; of which system, as criginating in political regulation, the king is the head-as when they talk of the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, &c. (I am no lawyer, but I conceive the king to be not more really the head of the Church of England than he is of the Church of Scotland, in the general synod of which he appears by his high commissioner. The Editor of the New Times, indeed, speaks of "spiritual obedience" as due to him, but due only by the members of the Church of England; all which I