separation; and after that the judged enter upon an un. changing state of punishment or blessedness: Rome, that there is a purgatory, which is neither heaven nor hell, that souls in it are purified by sufferings more or less protracted, and make satisfaction more or less complete, and that the prayers of the faithful here and the power of the church are efficacious towards the relief of souls from this place of torment. Thus showing a difference as thorough in regard to the state, the necessities and the destiny of man, as in regard to the nature and influences of true religion, and the character and claims of God *

Thus, too, in regard to that great department of religion which concerns its outward manifestation, and treats of the visible church, the communion of saints, the nature of ecclesiastical power, and the whole extent of discipline and government; the difference is not less absolute. Rome teaches that God has established on this earth, in the person of the Pope, a vicar, who is invested with all the direct powers in and over his Church, which Jesus Christ himself would exercise if personally reigning upon earth, and with all such indirect authority over the nations, as is necessary to protect and extend the Church; that this Church, of which he is the visible head, is endowed with miraculous gifts, infallible knowledge, and the perpetual and extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost; and that subjection to it is not only necessary to salvation, but that conformity with it is to be enforced by the power both of the temporal and spiritual sword. On the contrary, the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is the only King and Lord of Zion; that his word of inspiration is the only statute book of his earthly kingdom; that the miraculous and extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost, have long ago ceased; that

* In addition to the Decrees and Canons of the Trent Council already referred to, see those on Purgatory, Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance, Orders, Extreme Unction.

† See Bellarmin, De Summo Pontifice, and De Ecclesia Militante. Also the Corpus Juris Can. Tom. iii. Part ii. Titulus vi. De Judiciis.

the bond of union between his people is a spiritual bond; that the visible Church has no commission but to preserve and to extend the revealed truth of God, and that by means exclusively spiritual; and that the soul of man, is, and from its own nature, as well as that of true religion, must be exempt from every species of physical violence. So that not the honour of God only, nor the concerns of the soul only, nor the issues of eternity only, but all these, and all the present and outward interests of man, whether socially or individually considered, are directly involved in this controversy between Christ and Anti-Christ.

It is not, then, to be wondered at, that those who differ so thoroughly in regard to the matter of their religious belief, should differ equally as to the sources of it, and the proper methods of arriving at a comfortable assurance concerning it. They whose faith is so opposite could hardly be expected to agree as to the rule of faith itself; and I shall best fulfil my present duty by clearly explaining that of the Church of Christ, and in contrast, that of the Church of Rome.

II. And what is the precise meaning of the terms in which our subject is expressed? A Rule in things physical, is a measure of the proportions of material and sensi. ble objects; in things intellectual, it is a measure or law by which we determine a thing to be true or false; and in things moral, whether they be good or evil. It is, in general terms, a measure, by agreement or disagreement with which, we judge of all things of that kind to which it belongs. Faith, though often and properly enough used in a general sense, yet as a term in theology technically means the belief of truth upon divine authority. The rule of faith must, therefore, needs be that measure by which we regulate our belief in divine things. And the precise question between us and the papists is, What is the rule, or measure, or law, by which we are to judge what things we ought to receive as revealed to us by God?* "The first creature of God," says the profoundest of

* See Tillotson on the Rule of Faith.

all thinkers, "in the works of the days, was the light of the sense the last was the light of reason: and his Sabbath work ever since, is the illumination of his Spirit. First, he breathed light upon the face of the matter or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his chosen." Thus, "truth," he saith, "which only doth judge itself, teacheth, that the inquiry of truth which is the love-making or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoy. ment of it, is the sovereign good of human nature."*

Truth, then, is the sole object proposed by God to our belief, which is indeed its sweet enjoyment; and the light of reason in all human things, to which in all moral ones that of conscience is superadded, and in all heavenly ones the illumination of God's gracious Spirit, is that by which our inquiry for her must be guided, and our assurance of her presence certified. Truth, which, "though this ill hap wait on her nativity that she never comes into the world," as Milton saith, "but like a bastard, to the ig nominy of him that brought her forth; till time, the midwife rather than the mother of truth, have washed and salted the infant, declared her legitimate, and churched the father of his young Minerva from the needless causes of his purgation;" yet is she "as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch, as the sunbeam;" for "truth is but justice in our knowledge, as justice is but truth in our practice;" "the daughter, not of time, but of heaven, only bred up here below in Christian hearts, between two grave and holy nurses, the doctrine and discipline of the gospel ;" and to universal knowledge, " strong next to the Almighty," needing "no policies, nor stratagems nor licensings, to make her victorious."+

In seeking after truth, God has furnished us with

Lord Bacon's First Essay.

+ Milton.-Tract on Prelatical Episcopacy.-Dedication of the Doct. and Dis. of Div.-Eikonoklastes, Sec. xxviii. And Areopagitica.

means and instruments to use, some of which are common to every search we undertake, some more peculiar to special occasions and kinds of knowledge. He has endowed us with great faculties, with deep emotions, with vast desires; and set before us every motive, here and for ever, to seek, to know, and to love the truth. He has endowed our minds with power to perceive intuitively, the unmixed and fundamental truths of nearly every part of knowledge; and in minds of the highest mould this precious gift is carried so high, that observation and reflection nearly supply the place of all instruction, and reason to them is more an instinct than a faculty. He has blessed us with capacities to prove and try all sorts of things of which those are the methods to arrive at certain knowledge; and our minds are so, by him, created, that we may not only assure ourselves by proof, but that we cannot without proof, believe such things, of which proof is the appropriate evidence. He has established such relations between certain kinds of truths, that they are capable of being subjected to that compact process which we call demonstration; and our minds are not only made capable of receiving this evidence, but when rightly trained, incapable of rejecting it. And to all these he has added that mighty power of truth to verify itself, known to its inmost votaries; that all-pervading sympathy of truth with truth, all fortifying all throughout creation; that lofty freedom of the human soul, as from the highest mount of truth it overlooks "the errors, wanderings, mists and tempests in the vale below,"-capacious to dis cern amid the general chaos, every piece into which wicked deceivers have hewed the lovely form of truth; in search of whose mangled limbs her sad friends go up and down, gathering them as they may be found, and looking for the Master's second coming, who then "shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection."*

* Milton, Areopagitica; Bacon, Essay on Truth.

The highest kind of truth, is doubtless, that which concerns God and our relations to him. That this should be excepted from the influence of those principles which regulate our inquiry, our acquisition, and our belief of all other truth, is in itself absurd; for in all things else the higher we mount upwards the more rigid is the force of general laws. Nothing, then, can be more clear than that if truth in general is the only thing proper to be believed, divine truth is the specific thing on which religious faith must rest. But as divine truth is concentrate, at last, in the mere word of God, the rule of divine belief can be no other, than that word which is itself the truth. And the grand difference between this and other cases, lies chiefly here, that God has given to his word of truth, a power, an efficacy, and an unction beyond all other truth, and that he has added therewith the enlightening, convincing, life-giving Spirit.

Thus, then, stands our case. God has given to us a nature, one of whose strongest impulses is a religious instinct insatiable but in the fruition of himself. He has endowed us with faculties capable of directing the outgoings of this profound emotion. He has set himself before us, as the sole object of our supreme and everlasting love. That lost image of himself in which we were created, he has restored to us, through a Redeemer, by a new, spiritual and divine creation. And now he proposes to us, as the sweet, infallible and perfect rule of faith, of duty and of love-his own unerring statement of his own glorious being, high decrees, infinite grace, majestic works, eternal providence. And to crown all, he sheds abroad within our hearts the eternal Spirit, the inspirer and Spirit of truth itself, to keep us clear lighted on our heavenly way, and fast bound in the free, unbroken covenant of his love. Oh! blessed faith that binds to such a God! Oh! blessed rule by which to keep that faith!*

* On the general subject of the perfection of Scripture as a rule of faith, cosult Turretin, Institutio Theologiæ, Pars Prima, Loc. Sec. quæstio 16, 17; and his two tracts De Scrip