for the work of ordaining." "The fact is, the Word of God nowhere hints at the continuance of an ordaining power." Again: "None but an Apostle, or an apostolic delegate, was warranted to nominate the elders to their office, and not a word about perpetuating that power of appointment after the Apostles left the earth." Is not this to argue in a circle? Because we are not told in so many words that the mode of proceeding is to continue and be perpetuated through all time, we are to infer that the ministry in the Church, after this form, died with the Apostles! For what purpose, then, we ask again, as respects us, were the Epistles to Timothy and Titus written? Is not this taking extraordinary liberties with God's written word? Because Mr. Kelly, with all the positiveness of a pope, declares "the present practice has not the smallest foundation in Scripture," we are to believe it without a question, or to be ridiculed after the following fashion :-"Are they to neglect what was written to the assembly at Corinth, or to the saints at Ephesus, and to ape what was not written to the Church, but to Timothy and Titus!" Well would it be, if Mr. Kelly were to take heed to his own words only two pages beyond this: "Beloved friends, it is a grave thing to trifle thus with the Spirit of God."

One" chief man among the Brethren," whom we need not name, has published "Six Lectures on" what he terms "Fundamental Truths connected with the Church of God." To our view, his "Fundamental Truths" are so many fundamental errors. It would be easy to demonstrate, had we space for it, that he is wrong, most egregiously wrong, upon every one of his points. He may well be afraid of mathematics. By his method we would undertake to prove anything whatever out of the Bible. For wherever he wants Scripture to be explicit, he finds it so; and wherever it would be inconvenient if it were explicit, to him it is not so; and both ways it is "this precious truth," or "this precious provision for God's children.' Thus on one page he writes: "It is easy to settle matters after a sort where this is allowed to pass; but, beloved friends, wo want the word of God. Let me ask for a plain answer to the question, Do you believe that the Word is perfect?" &c.when his object is to urge subjection to some principle of his own; and then, on another page, where the reverse is his object, he can write,-"It is not at all in the manner of Scripture, or of the Lord, to furnish a mere formal list; for the truth is not written in the word of God so as to satisfy human curiosity, or form a system of divinity." And that this teacher knows how to put things in the true sectarian style, so as to convince the weak-minded of both sexes, without their tender hearts, will appear from the following quotation:-"I appeal to

you as Christians. Do you value the word of God? Do you cherish that word only for the salvation of your souls? Or do you confide in that same word and Spirit for guidance as to ministry and Church office?"

Dealing with Holy Scripture as they do, it is not to be wondered at that "the Brethren," as we always hear them call themselves, should slide into error with regard to God's Church. We have shewn what the principle is that they lay down, namely, that God had no Church on the earth till the Holy Ghost descended on the Day of Pentecost to form it by the bestowment of special gifts. They assume that there could not possibly be such a thing as "the Church," till our Lord Christ, as its Head, had actually taken human nature, died, risen again, ascended, and taken His place again in heaven. A continued, but enlarged Church, to consist of Jews and Gentiles, formed into "one body," is what they cannot comprehend. It is something wholly different from what God had before sanctioned; they must have to constitute the Church, or (and here we suppose is the hitch) they will have nothing to justify their separation from all existing communions of Christians. Now it does seem a most strange thing, looking very much like a wilful blindness, that these same men, who make so much of what is said about the Church in one part of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, should altogether have overlooked what the Apostle has written in the tenth chapter of that same Epistle, of which he tells the Corinthians (and through them he tells us) he would not have them "ignorant." We must quote his words, that the point may be seen" Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ." Surely here is the continuity, and the essential identity, of the true Church of God shewn. Here, at all events, is Christ recognised as the Spiritual Head of the Church, long before he took upon Him the form of man. And this sort of recognition is of frequent occurrence in the New Testament. We have it again in the 9th verse, in the words, "Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them" (the Israelites in the wilderness) "also tempted." The same mode of speaking occurs in the 11th chapter to the Hebrews, where it is said of Moses, that he esteemed "the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt:" while that same chapter concludes with the remarkable words,-" God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect;" a statement this which plainly shews, that we

are to be added on to them, not constituted a distinct and separate body. Christ, as "the angel of the Covenant," was "in the Church in the wilderness," as Stephen says (Acts vii. 38), before He actually became its human Head, because His incarnation was an anticipated fact in the Divine purposes. He existed in posse before he existed in esse, as logicians say. How utterly obfuscated by their sectarian theory the senses of the Plymouth Brethren must be, that they cannot see and understand this distinction. Have they never read, that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever"? Have they never observed what our Lord told the Jews, in regard to the transfer of Church privileges from them to others, in the words," The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof"? But it is not always convenient to see. The leaders of the Plymouth sect want to constitute a peculiar Church of their own, in which they may exercise their fancied "gifts;" and it would prove to be only the "baseless fabric of a vision," if the full light of Heaven were let in upon it; so they take the one only part of Scripture that seems to suit their purpose, and ignore or pervert all the rest.

The first Epistle to the Corinthians is the stronghold of "the Brethren." Because they find at the beginning of this the expression, "the Church of God which is at Corinth," they conclude that that, as set in order by the Apostle, must have been intended to be a pattern Church. But was the Church of God to be found only at Corinth, because this expression is used here? It is a gratuitous assumption, that what is there written respecting the Church was intended to exhibit that, so corrected, as the model for all Churches. The Apostle speaks of several things in that Church as exceptional, or only of temporary purpose. And if that Church were designed to be made the model for all Churches, in all countries, and in all ages, the Epistle to it ought obviously to have been the very first Epistle St. Paul wrote. But the first Epistle to the Church of the Thessalonians" at least is of earlier date; so is that to the Galatians; and that to the Romans is coeval, even if not somewhat earlier. The Apostle of the Gentiles seems to have had no idea of conforming the Churches, as established in different countries, among people with different habits, to exactly the same type. That would have been Judaism indeed. There is a certain pliancy in Christianity in this respect. The Churches planted by the Apostles were, so far as we can discover, differently endowed as to gifts, and so they had prescribed for them different rules of action. The Plymouthites admit that the age of miracles has passed away, so far as the supply of "Apostles and Prophets" is concerned. By what kind of

logic, then, can they contend for its permanence in the supply of "Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers"? If the Plymouth Brethren can exhibit the miraculous gifts possessed by the Corinthian Christians, we, for our part, will not object to their acting by the same rules; but to enforce the rules for their exercise, where the gifts do not exist, would be obviously Pharisaic and foolish. The laws of the first creation of the world were exceptional: the laws of its continued existence are fixed and uniform. Is not the same true of the Church?

There is a note of Calvin's, on the first Epistle to the Corinthians, to which the Plymouth Brethren would do well to give heed. Their avowed object is to establish a perfectly pure Church on earth, and one in which, if they could accomplish it, there certainly would be unity; for it is to consist only of all the good taken out of all other Churches. This is what Calvin, who, on the whole, is a most judicious divine, says with regard to the Church :

"Mirum forsan videri queat, cur cam hominum multitudinem vocet Ecclesiam Dei, in qua tot morbi invaluerant, ut Satan illic potius regnum occuparet quam Deus. Certum est autem, eum noluisse blandiri Corinthiis: loquitur enim ex Dei Spiritu, qui adulari non solet. Atqui inter tot inquinamenta qualis amplius eminet Ecclesiæ facies? Respondeo . . . . utcunque multa vitia obrepsissent, et variæ corruptela tam doctrinæ quam morum, extitisse tamen adhuc quædam veræ Ecclesiæ signa. Locus diligenter observandus, ne requiramus in hoc mundo Ecclesiam omni ruga et macula carentem: aut protinus abdicemus hoc titulo quemvis cætum in quo non omnia votis nostris respondeant. Est enim hæc periculosa tentatio, nullam Ecclesiam putare ubi non appareat perfecta puritas. Nam quicunque hac occupatus fuerit, necesse tandem erit, ut discessione ab omnibus aliis facta, solus sibi sanctus videatur in mundo, aut peculiarem sectam cum paucis hypocritis instituat. Quid ergo causæ habuit Paulus, cur Ecclesiam Corinthi agnosceret? Nempe quia Evangelii doctrinam, Baptismum, Cænam Domini, quibus symbolis censeri debet Ecclesia, apud eos cernebat."

These remarks read as if they were written, by anticipation, purposely for the Plymouth Brethren. They are attempting what the Donatists attempted in the first century, and attempted in vain. It is as clear as anything can be, that there never was "the one body" in the sense the Plymouth Brethren would put upon the words, that is, a Church consisting exclusively of true saints, in perfect unity one with another, since the day that the three thousand, along with the previous hundred and twenty true disciples, assembled with one accord at Jerusalem, and had all things in common. The Corinthian Church certainly exhibited the reverse of this: and, indeed, in all the Apostolic Churches, as described in the Epistles, we

find precisely the same evils, more or less, and still greater moral evils, prevailing, than can be found now in any communion of Christians. Are there no similar evils, even among "the Brethren" themselves, with all their pretensions to oneness, and to exclusive purity?

Of all the intolerant sects that ever arose, the Plymouthites are about the most intolerant. These spiritual Ishmaelites turn their hand against all their brethren, and make war upon all other communions of Christians alike. With an assumption of spiritual judgment, that goes even beyond that of the Pope, they unchurch all the Churches in Christendom. This they will not themselves deny. But as most of them were previously members of the Established Church, they hate this Church above all other Christian bodies, and pour out upon it the bitterest of their abuse. Is this grace? or is it not rather nature? Having taken up a false position, it must be maintained at all hazards, and so they give us a new version of the Scriptures under the title of "A Synopsis of the Books of the Bible," which is their "Douay Version." With the most daring dogmatism, (we must use strong words to describe their acts truly,) they undertake to tell us precisely why each Book of Scripture was written, and upon what exact point it bears. Thus Mr. Kelly tells us that the Epistle to the Romans was written for the "Children," but that to the Corinthians was written for "the Church." We are not to be left to judge for ourselves any more than the poor Papists. The worst of it is, that they all write in such a foggy style, that it is almost impossible to attach to their sentences any definite meaning; they can be crisp and clear enough, indeed, where they want to be so, but elsewhere they are misty and vague. One thing, however, stands out everywhere in painful prominence: under phrases of the most luscious piety there peep up the horns of an intolerant spiritual tyranny.

Our witnesses to this shall not be what they say of us,-but the way in which they treat members of their own schism who dare to differ a hair's breadth from them. It is not long since Plymouth Brother No. 1, Mr. Müller, the founder of the Orphanage at Bristol, published an account of his institution, in which he recorded several extraordinary answers to prayer, when he was in want of funds to carry it on: whereupon Plymouth Brother No. 2, published an answer to Plymouth Brother No. 1, telling him that it was probably the devil who answered his prayers, in order to punish him, as it would appear, for disobedience to those Plymouth Brethren who, like No. 2, "stood on another platform." Our second case is the following statement made by one of their own body: