fluenced by a minor and derivative authority. But for other things, whether ceremonies or conceits, whether matters of discipline or of opinion, their diversity does not at all break the unity of the outward and visible Church, as long as they do not subvert the fundamental laws of Christ's kingdom nor contradict the terms of admission into his Church, nor contravene the essential characters by which it subsists and is distinguished as the Christian Catholic Church."

To these sentiments, borrowed from one of the most philosophical of our learned elder divines, I have only to add an observation as suggested by them;-that as many and fearful mischiefs have ensued from the confusion of the Christian with the National Church, so have many and grievous practical errors, and much un-Christian intolerance, arisen from confounding the outward and visible Church of Christ with the spiritual and invisible Church, known only to the Father of all Spirits. The perfection of the former is to afford every opportunity, and to present no obstacle, to a gradual advancement of the latter. The different degrees of progress, the imperfections, errors and accidents of false perspective, which lessen indeed with our advance our spiritual advance-but to a greater or lesser amount are inseparable from all progression; these, the interpolated half-truths of the twilight, through which every soul must pass from darkness to the spiritual sunrise, belong to the visible Church as objects of hope, patience, and charity alone.

ON THE

THIRD POSSIBLE CHURCH,

OR THE

CHURCH OF ANTICHRIST.

Eccle sia Cattolica non, ma il Papismo denunciamo, perchè suggerito dal interesse, perchè fortificato dalla menzogna, perchè radicato dal più abbominevole despotismo, perchè contrario al diritto e ai titoli incommunicabili di Cristo, ed alla tranquillità d'ogni Chiesa e d'ogni Stato.-SPANZOTTI.

Thus, on the depluming of the Pope, every bird had his own feather in the partage whereof, what he had gotten by sacrilege, was restored to Christ; what by usurpation, was given to the King, the (National) Church and the State; what by oppression, was remitted to each particular Christian.-Fuller's Church History of Britain, Book v.

143

ON THE CHURCH,

NEITHER NATIONAL NOR UNIVERSAL.

IF our forefathers were annoyed with the cant of over-boiling zeal, arising out of the belief, that the Pope is Antichrist, and likewise (sexu mutato) the Harlot of Babylon: we are more endangered by the twaddle of humid charity, which (some years ago at least) used to drizzle, a something between mist and small rain, from the higher region of our Church atmosphere. It was sanctioned, I mean, both in the pulpit and the senate by sundry dignitaries, whose horror of Jacobinism during the then panic of property led them to adopt the principles and language of Laud and his faction. And once more the Church of Rome, in contrast with Protestant dissenters, became "a right dear, though erring sister." And the heaviest charge against the Romish Pontificate was, that the Italian politics and nepotism of a series of Popes had converted so great a good into an intolerable grievance. We were reminded that Grotius and Leibnitz had regarded a visible head of the Catholic Church as most desirable; that they, and with them more than one Primate of our own Church, yearned for a conciliating settlement of the differ