priest, Christ's successor, creates the Lord whom he succeeds. "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church," and so the faith is subordinated to the mutable and fallible successors of Peter, instead of the successors of Peter to the immutable and infallible faith which Peter professed. Here, again, is Rome the agitator and the radical, and the Truth the conservative.

So with regard to inspiration. Inspiration was a special and temporary gift communicated to the apostles, just as would be the case were a telescope of extraordinary powers placed in the hands of a body of astronomers, and then destroyed. In the latter case, it would be folly to predicate of succeeding observers an accuracy and authoritativeness they were no longer able to secure. The data which were obtained when the powerful instrument was in use must be taken as the basis of all subsequent calculation; it would be a destructive radicalism to submit these to the revision of the unarmed eye. And so it is with regard to the canonical scriptures. They were written when inspiration existed. When they were closed, inspiration ceased. In supplementing them by the utterances of uninspired men, Rome is the agitator and the radical, while Truth, in maintaining their sacred integrity, is the conservative.

So, again, it was a temporary condition of the church, at its founding, that its members should be grouped together in one close, visible organization, which, through the supernatural insight of the apostles, was made coincident with the communion of all sincere believers in Christ. The principles of faith and salvation are permanent and immutable; those of polity, which sprang from the supernatural insight and miraculous gifts of the apostle's, were special and mutable, and were to be subordinated to the maintenance intact of the former. Hooker states this, when he declares: "So perfectly are these things [of faith and salvation] taught, that nothing can ever cease to be necessary; these [matters connected with the discipline of the visible church], on the contrary side, as being of a far other nature and quality,

are not so strictly and everlastingly commanded in scripture but that unto the complete form of a church polity much may be requisite which the scripture teacheth not, and much that it hath taught become unnecessary, because we need not use it sometimes because we cannot."1 And again: "The rule of faith [quoting Tertullian] is but one, and that alone immovable and impossible to be framed or cast anew. The law of outward order and polity is not so."2 Rome makes the rule of faith mutable by subordinating it to what is now the peccable and mutable church. The Truth, on the other hand, makes the mystical church pure and perpetual, by subordinating it to the immutable and perfect faith. Here, again, Rome is the agitator and radical, and Truth the conservative.

So, again, as to usages and rites. "Nothing," says Lord Bacon," is so uproarious as a froward custom." By which he means, we suppose, that there is nothing that produces so much disturbance and riot as the persistent enforcement of a custom that the body politic has outgrown. A boy whose parents should force him to wear through his boyhood his old child's skirt may appear fractious enough at the absurd sight he presents and the awkward bandages in which he is swathed; but the real insubordinate element would be traceable to parents whose conservatism was so unique. The sheath which shelters the bud in its formation only crushes the flower when it begins to blow. The safetyvalve, which must be kept down when the steam begins to form, must be opened when a high pressure comes, or the boiler will explode. Hood's conservative old knight, who when the houses of parliament were burning, rushed to his seat, saying that he never would desert it, come what might, was not a conservative at all; he was an absurd radical, who pursued the fleeting form, deserting the essential substance; and yet Hood's knight was but a type of toryism, such as that of Lord Eldon, which, in preserving the obsolete phraseology of the coronation service,. would sacrifice 2 Ibid. chap. x. 7.

1 Eccl. Pol., Book iii. chap. xi. 16.

those great principles of reciprocal loyalty which that servicewas meant to express. For, while these great principles of loyalty remain steadfast, the crude symbols which form their expression in a nation's babyhood, must yield to well-weighed and exact sentences when the period of manhood comes. The college cannot retain the clappings and marchings and singings of the little pupils of the Kindergarten, nor parliament the monotone of the professor's chair. Hence it is. that that which was necessary to convey instruction in the dark ages to barbarous and uneducated hearers now no longer quickens, but distracts spiritual thought. So, also, usages which were needed in apostolic times to protect the church when she was an outcast, are no longer appropriate when her worship has the support both of law and of public opinion. "It is not, I am right sure," said Hooker, in arguing with the puritans, who then took the position that all apostolic usage was jure divino immutable, while Hooker insisted that usage, even divinely directed, is mutable, and is to be changed so as to make it from age to age the fit exponent of immutable truth—"it is not, I am right sure, their meaning that we should now assemble our people to serve God in close and secret meetings; or that common brooks or rivers should be used for places of baptism; or that the custom of church-feasting should be renewed. In these things they easily perceive how unfit that were for the present which was for the past age convenient enough. The faith, zeal, and godliness of former times is worthily held in honor; but doth this prove that the orders of the church of Christ must be still the self-same with theirs that nothing which then was may lawfully since have ceased?" It is he who enforces a custom no longer intelligent and sensible who is "uproarious." The true conservative is he who seeks "the faith, zeal, and godliness" of apostolic times, and would adopt the forms and agencies by which this faith, zeal, and godliness may be best expressed.

Many. like illustrations might be given; but between

1 Eccl. Pol. Book iv. chap. ii. § 3.

Rome and the Truth the distinction may be generally stated as follows: Rome clings to the letter, and changes the essence as the letter shifts its meaning with time. The Truth clings to the essence, and adopts a new letter to express it when the old becomes obsolete or false. Or, to state the same proposition in another form: With Rome, doctrine is mutable, and organization immutable; with the Truth, organization is mutable, and doctrine immutable. Rome adds to or varies the volume of revelation, but declares its ecclesiastical mechanism to be infallible, unchangeable, and perpetual. With the Truth, the volume of gospel inspiration is complete, and by man its sense can neither be added to nor changed; but the hierarchy is fallible and imperfect, and is to be so moulded as to adapt it to the conditions of each particular country or age. In other words, while Rome presents stability of form, and hence instability of life, the truth presents stability of life, and hence flexibility of form. And, tenderly as we may view those who in seeking for rest ally themselves with Rome, we cannot but feel that that from which they are reacting is not Protestantism merely, but a necessary condition of all life and truth.1

1 Then, again, visible unity may be but that of a fagot, while mystical unity is that of the branches of the true Vine. The branches may be invisible, as the Vine is invisible, and the Husbandman who tends it is invisible. And yet the tie that unites the branches to the Vine, and makes them a living whole, is none the less essential because it is invisible. "In St. Paul's representation of the church, the unity of the one body springs from the unity of the indwelling Spirit; from the one Lord, who is the sole Head of his church; from the one faith, whereby it is united to him; from the one baptism, which is the initiation of that union; and from the one universal God and Father, who rules over all its members, and pervades them, and abides in them. In like manner, when St. Paul is speaking of manifold diversities of gifts and offices, and pointing out the necessity of these diversities, he at the same time declares that at the root of all these diversities there is a ground of unity, in that they are all the gifts and ordinances of one and the same Spirit. Here everything is spiritual; and when acting under this her heavenly Guide, the church will preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." "When St. Paul is reproving the divisions at Corinth, he does not set himself up as a centre of unity; nor does he tell them that they must seek a centre of unity in St. Peter. He tells them that Paul is nothing, that Apollos is nothing, that Peter is nothing. But is his inference that they are therefore left to hopeless divisions? He does not say

6. Disgust with Orthodoxy.

It is at this point, as has already been incidentally mentioned, that we depart from Herr Nippold; and, in fact, apart from the considerations already mentioned, a scrutiny of the cases detailed by him in this portion of his work, shows that so far as the accessions from orthodoxy are concerned, reac

that there is no foundation for them to rest on, nor that Peter is the foundation on which the church is to be built. He says merely that none can lay other foundation than that which has been laid already, and that this only foundation is Christ. In truth, this Romish inability to recognize the unity of the church without the help of a visible human centre, is only another instance of that miserable incapacity for faith in spiritual realities which, we have repeatedly observed, is the pervading character of Romanism."— Arch. Hare, ut supra.

And, once more, all the analogies of society are against the idea that religious peace is to be secured by submission to an infallible judge. Rome says: "In every phase of society we must take our duties from others- the child from the parent, the servant from the master, the suitor from the judge." But, as Archdeacon Hare well observes, the analogy points the other way: "Children need guides, and have fallible ones. Pupils need guides, and have fallible ones. Nations need guides, and have fallible ones." And as in social matters, so in ecclesiastical. Nothing can be less peaceful than the clothing of authority with infallibility. The Highland chief who insisted on having his whole clan vaccinated by force, had right on his side, so far as vaccination itself is concerned; but to bring in by force troops of grown and even aged men, struggling, kicking, and screaming, in order to have the virus communicated to them, without explanation, was far more objectionable, and certainly far more riotous, than would have been the slower process of explaining to them what vaccination meant, and obtaining their free consent. The imposition of infallibility may produce peace in the same way that destroying the vital powers destroys pain. Or it may drive men off from religious controversy, just in the same way that imperialism drives men off from political controversy; but the result in the one case is spiritual, in the other political, degeneration. But, if it means the inculcation of doctrine by force, then the result is uproar not unlike that of the Highland clan to which we have referred. If doctrine be viewed as anything else than a matter of mere indifferentism, then there is nothing the soul resents so convulsively as the attempt to impose such doctrine on it by force. And so absolute submission by itself destroys true faith. But this "is not God's mode of dealing with his human creatures. In the whole scheme of our redemption the help which is granted to us is to elicit a corresponding energy in us. The eye drinks in the light, and puts forth its faculty of seeing. So every truth communicated to the mind is the awakener and stimulater of an intellectual energy. Thus, and thus alone, truth becomes power. We are not supplied with leading-strings to draw us blindfold to the truth. But we have every help, each according to his need; and if we make a right use of