THE VISIBLE CHURCH OF A NATION THE
CHURCH OF THE SCRIPTURES.

BY THE REV. ROBERT EDEN, M.A., CAMBERWELL.

PRICE 1d.

wherever we find the "reasonable soul and flesh" united, there, we pronounce, is a true man and, just similarly, where we find the truth taught in God's Scriptures (which is the IN deciding between the claims of disputing substance) professed by a body of men (this parties, that which would seem to give us the is the form), there we are entitled to say is most assistance in coming to a decision is a true Church. This holds good where a often the very thing which embarrasses our Church is either planted, or continued, or judgment. We are so well read in the argu- restored. If it be national, it is a company of ments of all the disputants, each of whom has people professing the truth of God in a whole some degree of truth on his side, and always land: such were the Churches of Judea, Samuch plausibility, that the mind becomes maria, and Galilee, with those of Asia. If it pre-occupied, and feels the greatest difficulty be parochial, it is a company of persons proin giving its final sentence. We have all fessing apostolic truth in a town, or in such felt this upon different occasions, and have a district as, for purposes of convenience, we secretly wished that it had been possible for form into a parish of this description seem us never to have heard of the reasons for or to have been the believing companies at Lystra, against any one opinion, but to have come Iconium, and Antioch, cities where the apostle fresh, as it were from some other planet, to is said (Acts, xiv. 23) to have ordained elders the consideration of the subject before us, in every Church. If it be domestic, it is a society and, without any force being employed from of persons professing the truth of God in a without, to have derived our own unbidden family: such was the Church in Philemon's impression. In no instance would it be more house, in the households of Narcissus and safe to trust to this first impression, than in Aristobulus (Rom. xvi. 10, 11), and in that reading the Bible, with a view to ascertain of Aquila and Priscilla (1 Cor. xvi. 19). In the scriptural idea of a Church. Any person each of these instances we have a collection who in this way should begin at the books of of persons, of whom nothing more appears Moses, and carry his reading down to the than that they professed the truth of Christ; end of the Revelation, would, in my opinion, they gave out to themselves, and before the leave off fully satisfied that the Church which world, that they believed all the articles of God designed to be upon the earth was one of the Christian faith; that they were subjects the most large and comprehensive nature. God of Christ's empire, and looking for salvation has deposited his truth with mankind; and through him. Whatever they may have been wherever men are united together in the pro- in their individual and component members fession of that truth according to the Scrip--whether they all consisted of genuine distures, there is a true, visible Church. It is with the religious body as with the natural body in this respect. Wherever we find the true substance and form of a man, that is to say,

VOL. II.-NO. XXXIII.

ciples, or whether some were unsound in creed or practice of this we know nothing; all we know is, that the professing adherents to Christ, in each nation, parish, and family,

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were called, and few chosen," but left in their own chosen ways to their ruin. When, again, the wise and foolish virgins came, as a matter of duty, to attend the bridegroom, though five only had lasting oil, and five had only lamps, there also we have the emblem of a true,

were collectively termed a Church. It is allowed that the truth may be held with greater purity in one Church than in another. The Church of Smyrna separated from the company, and protested against the teaching, of carnal and hypocritical men who had crept in among them. The Church of Philadel-visible Church. When the sower went out to phia had stedfastly kept the commands and institutions of Christ, though exposed to persecutions and dangers; and for this purity of profession both those Churches are praised. The Church of Ephesus, on the contrary, after having been fervent and active, had become formal and cold: that of Sardis had not advanced in proportion to its privileges; while that of Laodicea had fallen into lukewarm indifference; and for these faults each of those religious communities was visited with a sharp rebuke. It is true, also, that some Churches may be in their infancy, and therefore less perfect than others of longer standing; the Church of Crete was in this case, where Titus was left to redress the things that were amiss:-or a Church may have but lately left the errors of some other faith, and thus old prejudices not having quite worn away, it may be in a tender condition; such were those Churches of the Gentiles, of which the apostle James (Acts, xv. 19) advised, that they should not be troubled about circumcision, or the ritual law, lest the "rent should be made worse." And those of riper age may be in a very unsettled state, like the Church of Jerusalem (of which James was the bishop), insomuch that it was necessary for the apostles to hold a council before they could even, finally, determine the form of Church-government. Or a Church of great excellence, like that of Philippi, which had bishops and deacons resident among them, might even furnish occasion for admonition that they would continue "sincere and without offence." But in each of these cases,different and almost opposite as were the characters of some-since they join together to "confess the faith of Christ crucified," there is no one of them, not excepting the most degenerate, which is not a true, visible Church of Christ.

We find in the Scriptures many illustrations of these principles. When the King is represented as sending forth his servants into "the highways to gather together all, as many as they could find, both bad and good" (Matt. xxii.), to the marriage-supper of his Son, we see God calling a Church, in the midst of the mixed multitude that is in the world; and when these "bad and good" that were invited, listened to the invitation and came in to the banquet, there we see the avowed professing members of Christ's religion in this or any land. Here was a Church, though "many

sow the word of God, though some fell among thorns, some on a rock, some by the wayside, and but some upon good ground, yet each of the classes, the three unprofitable as well as the one fruitful class, were professing hearers, and so made up a true, ostensible people of God. The net cast into the sea, which gathered fish of every kind, both bad and good, describes the kingdom of heaven upon earth, where multitudes are brought to profess Christianity, and live and worship in the public congregation as long as they continue in this world; and in such a description we see the type of a true Church in the earth. When a man sowed good seed, and his enemy sowed tares, which sprung up as from the same root, both being destined to grow together unto the harvest, there was another striking emblem of a mingled and perplexing crowd of outward worshippers, but, nevertheless, of a true Church, upon the great field of the world. We may suppose the case of a newly discovered continent, which should be peopled by a multitude of hitherto untutored men: if the word of God should be imported into this colony, and received by the inhabitants, they would, all of them, after having submitted to baptism, which is the seal of profession, rise into and constitute a true Church: they would be a "candlestick" (Rev. i. 20) containing the word and Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, and holding forth that light to others, by the preaching of the word, and due administration of the sacraments on the part of the ministers; and by the profession of their obligation to "live soberly, righteously, and godly," on the part of the people.

Nor will extensive corruptness of practice at all affect the claim of a religious community to be esteemed a true Church. Every such society must, indeed, purify itself from "all false ways," when they are plainly convicted to be so by Scripture; but that it must be actually and at all times thus pure, or be unchurched, is utterly false. Israel was God's people when the sons of Eli, in communion with them, 66 were sons of Belial, and knew not the Lord." Moses calls them God's people even when they were not separated from idolatry, because he had no authority to cast them off, before God himself had given them a "bill of divorcement." God, by Isaiah, calls the Jews his children and people, when they were so far from being separated

from the rulers of Sodom, the rebellious princes, and "companions of thieves," that they had for their very teachers men who caused them to err; such rich men as were cruel oppressors; such inhabitants as that the "earth was defiled" under them; and such a face of the Church at large as that "the faithful city was become an harlot." St. Paul salutes the Corinthians as the Church of God, saints by calling, and sanctified in Christ Jesus (at least sanctified by baptismal consecration), at the moment when he was threatening to visit them with the "rod" of apostolical severity. The Church of Corinth, at that time, was worse, in some things, than ours can possibly be, having in it carnal men, who both went to law before infidels, and partook with idols, thereby scandalising the weak it had in it envyings and heresies, abuse of the Lord's supper by drunkenness and gluttony, neglect of the poor, and the foulest incest; and yet, when he writes to them, even before the incestuous person was cast out, he salutes them, collectively, in the above terms-terms than which none can be conceived stronger or more positive, if every individual member of that communion had been of the most unspotted character. The seven Churches of Asia had in them much abominable wickedness, and yet they are crowned with the name of "Churches" by Christ himself; and if any should imagine that these Churches ought to have separated, we grant that they ought to have been much better than they were; and because they were so bad, they afterwards felt the heavy hand of God: but that the good among them should have fallen out with God, and separated themselves from the "feast of fat things" of his ordinances, because of the wickedness of those who were in outward communion with themselves, this we no where read, and assuredly never shall read, in the statute-book of God's Church, the Bible.

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away." The whole Church of Corinth was thus the body of Christ, as well as any the healthiest member of it: it was "in Christ Jesus," though too many of its members professed that they knew God, but in works denied him:" for profession brings a Church into outward fellowship with Christ's body, as it brings a faithless wife into a real relation to her husband, or bad servants to a good master of a family, or soldiers to their captain, after they have declared themselves ready to fight under his colours, and have taken their oath, who become thereby, by that military sacrament, a true, visible army, though many run away in the day of battle. Such an army is the Church in a nation, "a company of two armies" (Cant. vi. 13), having in it countless descendants of Cain, Ham, Judas, Simon the sorcerer, and Demas, whose profession makes them members of the true Church upon earth equally with Abel, Noah, Peter, Philip, and Paul: they go back indeed afterwards, and walk no more with their faces towards Zion, or they are ejected by a spiritual sentence of excommunication; but their junction to profess the truth constituted them legitimate Churchmen, as the profession of the same trade, or craft, or science, makes men members of that society, how ignorant soever or unskilful they may prove.

The Church of Rome claims as her own all baptised persons throughout the world. And she would have a right to set up this claim, unless, having herself declined from the "faith" 66 as it was once delivered unto the saints," she had forfeited her title to be considered the Catholic Church: but the right which she has lost has been transferred to that Church which has "come out from her," refusing to be "partaker of her sins." God "will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth :" his Church must be constructed on a model not less extensive. Should some of his zealous, but inThe Church is Christ's body. This may discreet servants wish now to select the wheat be taken two ways; either for a body of all from the tares, He forbids them to attempt those who shall be saved-this is the "holy this delicate and difficult task, saying, “At Church throughout all the world," the the time of harvest, I will command the "Church of the first-born, whose names are reapers to make this separation." If any written in heaven," and is identical with the imagine that by the door thus widely opened communion of saints;- or it may be taken the demons of licentiousness and presumption for the body of those who are in the way of will rush into the Church, let him remember salvation, if they be not wanting to them- that the King, who has "compelled" all, both selves. Even if they are thus wanting to bad and good, to come to the marriage, sees themselves, if they "think scorn of that plea- even now, from an upper window, every unsant land" to which they are invited, and holy intruder, and shall, ere long, put to him shew unequivocal symptoms that they “de"de- a question, to answer which he shall be spise their birthright," they are yet true "speechless." "Blessed are they who are members of the body of Christ in this latter called" effectually by their obedience thereto, sense; for Christ himself says, in words most even as they are now outwardly and truly, remarkable and decisive of the point, "Every" to the marriage-supper of the Lamb.” branch IN ME that beareth not fruit, he taketh