Dr.-The Bishops of the Church of England are they. There is not one of them who cannot trace his right to guide and govern CHRIST'S Church, and to ordain its Ministers, through a long line of predecessors, up to the favoured persons who were consecrated by the laying on of the holy hands of St. Peter and of St. Paul. This is a fact which dissenters from the Church of England do not, and ⚫ cannot, deny; nor do they profess that the authority of those, whom they call their ministers, to teach and to administer the Sacraments, rests at all on such grounds as these.

J.-I understand you, Sir; but I have one remark to make, if you will please to hear it. Bishops do not work miracles, as the Apostles did; nor can you mean that we are to look upon their teaching and writings now, as dictated by immediate inspiration, and consequently infallible, like the New Testament. How then are they successors of the Apostles?

Dr.-You are bringing me to a large subject, John; which we will discuss some other time, not on a Sunday evening, when you have your young ones at home, waiting to say their verses to you; and I had rather rest than argue after the Services of the day. We will have some further talk, when occasion offers; meanwhile, in answer to your inquiry, I will but bid you compare John xx. with Acts ii. The miraculous gifts were sent down upon the Apostles on the day of Pentecost; but the commission to preach, teach, and ordain, were given, quite independently of all such extraordinary endowments, before our SAVIOUR ascended into heaven. One word at parting. You have had a good education: your mind has been opened to enter into arguments, to see objections, and answer questions; your understanding has been sharpened. This is a talent which may be used rightly or abused; to the unwary all gifts are temptations. As riches betray men into selfishness and an evil security; so does a sharp wit tend to make them self-confident, arrogant, and irreverent. Look at the advantages which GOD has given you, not as a cause of boasting and self-gratification, but seriously and anxiously, as a treasure of which you are steward for GOD, and concerning which you must one day give account to Him.

No. 30.

(ad Populum.)

CHRISTIAN LIBERTY;

OR,

WHY SHOULD WE BELONG TO THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND?

BY A LAYMAN.

(Continued.)

He that receiveth you, receiveth Me; and he that receiveth Me, receiveth Him that sent Me.

He that receiveth a prophet, in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man, in the name of a righteous man, shall receive a righteous man's reward. Matt. x. 40, 41.

JOHN EVANS did not fail to look out in his Bible the texts to which Dr. Spencer had referred him; and he saw clearly that the miraculous powers with which it pleased God to endue the Apostles, were by no means necessarily connected with the commission which those Apostles had previously received from our LORD; the commission, we mean, to teach and baptize all nations.

John was seen again on the next Sunday, at his accustomed place in church. The Dr. preached from the text, Mark xvi. 17, 18; "And these signs shall follow them that believe: in My name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." He pointed out to his congregation the beautiful regularity which pervades the works of God; the settled laws, the established order, with which our Maker guides the course of things around us; the certainty with which the stars rise and set, the moon waxes and wanes, the flower follows the bud, and the seed the flower. He reminded his hearers how truly, from the times of the flood, GOD'S promise has been fulfilled; and seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, have not ceased. (Gen. viii. 8.) "And surely," said he, "we see in these things the proofs that God is a God of order; that He would not lightly or without important reasons change the system which He has established, the laws which He has framed. If then we were to hear that the AL

MIGHTY had on a certain occasion broken through these laws, and violated by miracles the established order of nature, we should have the strongest reasons to suppose, 1st, that He had only done so, in order to accomplish something which could not conceivably have been accomplished without such interpositions; and 2ndly, that He would discontinue these interpositions as soon as they became no longer necessary.

"Now both these conclusions," continued the Doctor, "we find to agree alike with the Bible and with the recorded history of mankind. It was necessary that the doctrines of Christianity should be known to be the infallible truth of God; that what the Apostles said or wrote on the subject should be received as the words of GOD Himself speaking to mankind. Now this authority, as far as we can see, can be given to mortal man only by GoD's visibly interfering in his support; and such interferences are what we call miracles. We see then, that for the establishment in the world of Christianity, and of the authority of those sacred books which form the New Testament, miracles were necessary; and we find from Scripture, that miracles were then vouchsafed. But when the interference had been fully proved, when evidence of it could be handed down by ordinary means to following generations; and when no more divine truth was to be revealed, miracles were needed no longer; and the history of the world informs us, that they have ceased for seventeen hundred years."

And while the Doctor, in conclusion, pointed out on the one hand the folly of expecting a recurrence of such marvels in our own days, an expectation which amounts to an acknowledgment that Christianity is as yet imperfect, and that we are to look for a more complete revelation; he dwelt with much earnestness on the danger of imagining that God's peculiar protection of Christianity GoD's peculiar inward gifts to believers ceased with the cessation of the outward signs and wonders which at first accompanied the revelation of His Word.

John listened with great attention; and, when the Service was over, he thought long and deeply upon what had been said. He looked out also the different texts which the Doctor had mentioned in his Sermon; and in so doing, he came to one which rather puzzled him. It was, John xiv. 16. "It is strange," said he to himself; "our LORD promised that the COMFORTER whom He would send, should abide with His followers for ever; I really do not see why this promise should be given, if the greatest and most striking gifts which that COMFORTER was to bestow, were to cease at the end of one, or at most of two generations."

That evening, as he was strolling in the fine summer twilight along the banks of the river, he met the Dr., who had walked that way to enjoy the fineness of the season, and to refresh himself after the holy labours of the day. He told him his difficulty, nearly in the words in

which we have expressed it; and the Dr., smiling good-naturedly, thus replied.

Dr. Are you quite sure, John, that you have stated your case aright? Is it perfectly certain that miraculous powers were the greatest gifts which the Eternal SPIRIT was commissioned to bestow upon mankind?

J.-It certainly appeared to me that they were; such marked, such striking instances of God's favour were surely greater boons than any thing else which we can conceive to be given to mortals in this present life. I think, Sir, that I have heard you yourself call these gifts of the SPIRIT, as opposed to others, His extraordinary gifts.

Dr.-You may very probably have heard me so call them; but "extraordinary" only means "unusual;" and it does not always follow that what is unusual is more important than what is of frequent occurrence. But tell me, John, in the case in which one thing is done in order to prepare for the doing of some other thing, which is the most important of the two? the first of these things or the last; the means or the end?

J.-The end, of course, is more important than the means; no man would venture to call the scaffolding which is raised that the house may be built, more important than the house itself.

Dr.-Now think a moment, John, before you answer me; why were the miraculous powers bestowed on the Apostles? J.-To make men believers in CHRIST.

Dr.-To prepare the way, that is, for their receiving those inward gifts of the SPIRIT in which true believers now participate as fully as those who lived in the days of the Apostles.

J.-I see, Sir; the extraordinary gifts might be compared to the scaffolding, the ordinary ones to the house.

Dr.--Exactly so, John; marvellous and striking as were the signs and wonders of the Apostolic age, we should ever recollect that they were not greater gifts, or even gifts so great as those inward ones which are our evangelical inheritance, as well as that of the Primitive Christians. When the doctrine of the HOLY GHOST, and of His inward influence, was new to the world, it pleased God to confirm it, and to show that the influence was real, by permitting, in some cases, those on whom it descended to perform works which they could not have done, had not God been with them. Thus the real importance, even then, of these miraculous gifts consisted in their bearing witness to the inward and unseen ones which God still showers upon His Church.

J.--And which wè dare not suppose to have ceased merely because the outward signs of them did, when God himself had promised that they should last for ever.

Dr.-Well; the promise of support to the Apostles, in the performance of their Ministerial duties, was equally perpetual; CHRIST

was to be with them, we have seen, as the teachers and baptizers of all nations, "alway, even unto the end of the world." The reality of their powers, and, among others, of their power of conferring the HOLY GHOST on others, was attested at first by miracles. (Acts viii. 17, 18.) But we have no more reason for supposing that the true powers of the Ministry ceased with the outward signs, in the case of the Apostles, than we have for supposing, in the case just mentioned of the gifts of common believers, that from the moment miracles were no longer vouchsafed, the HOLY SPIRIT withdrew Himself from the guidance of the Church for ever. That God has bestowed Apostolic gifts upon Apostles, and the regenerating influences of His HOLY GHOST upon other believers, we know from the recorded testimony of those who witnessed the miracles by which the reality of those gifts and influences was at first established. That those gifts and influences will be alike perpetual in the Church, we are bound to believe upon the solemn word of Him who gave them.

J.-Miracles, then, performed in one age, and handed down by history to others, form the standing proofs of the reality of those gifts which were given to the Church for ever; and one of those gifts was undoubtedly the Apostolic power; which we must believe, upon this evidence, to be still existing.

Dr.-Exactly so; and infallibility of doctrine, itself a miracle, ceased with miracles in general. We cannot see any reason for the continuance of such a gift to the successors of the Apostles, when the Apostles themselves have recorded all things necessary to salvation in those sacred Scriptures which have come down to our times, and to which we can all refer. Nor have we the slightest ground for doubting the permanence of those Apostolic privileges which were of perpetual necessity, merely because a miraculous gift, evidently no longer necessary, has been discontinued.

J.-This, Sir, I understand; but there is one difficulty which occurs to me. As the rulers of the true Church are no longer infallible, what is to prevent their all falling together into error, and thus leading astray the whole Church committed to their care?

Dr. We may infer from Christ's promise already mentioned, that this will never happen to the whole Church at once; that some true Apostles will be found on earth in every age, until that last period of the world's history, which shall witness His coming. But that with regard to particular branches of His Church this may happen, and has happened, is a melancholy truth. There is one simple test, however, by which we may at once assure ourselves that the Church of England has not so fallen away, or, as it is called, apostatized from the faith of her Lord and Master.

J.-And what is that, Sir?

Dr. As the eternal truth of God is contained in His revealed word, the Bible; no Church, whatever may be the errors of its individual members, can be said, as a Church, to have fallen away,