New, this society unhesitatingly appropriated to itself; and (which is the main point) that there was no rival society making a similar claim. When, therefore, the Reformers thus raved and blasphemed against the only society in existence which either claimed for itself, or had conceded to it by others, the name and attributes of the Church as described in the sacred writings, it is not easy to see how they proposed to make good their case by an appeal to that only standard which they allowed, viz. those very writings themselves. And indeed their attempts to reconcile their teaching upon this point with the teaching of Holy Writ were clumsy and awkward enough. "When I tell him"

says Sir Thomas More, speaking of one of these new teachers-"when I tell him of Christ's promise that He would leave behind Him a spouse, His Church, without spot or wrinkle, and yet that according to his teaching it would appear otherwise, he equivocates, he scuds in and out like a hare with a dozen brace of greyhounds after her; and finally he slinks slily away by saying that the Church ever had spots and wrinkles of sin, and yet for all that the Church of Christ is very pure and clean, because abiding in the knowledge of her spots and wrinkles, and asking mercy for them, God layeth none of them to her charge. I know not what to make of a Church pure and clean, and yet with spots and wrinkles both. He might as well have told us, that if there were a woman with a crooked nose, yet as long as no man tell her of it, so long her nose stood straight."

You may think this perhaps an exaggerated specimen of the shifts and quibbles whereby these men attempted to explain away the declarations of the Bible respecting the Church; but the truth is, that those declarations are so precise and positive, that it requires no little ingenuity to escape from them; and if the arguments which Protestants use upon the same subject at the present day do not exhibit the same manifest absurdities, it is because they have invented a theory, more plausible indeed, but certainly not a whit more true or more scriptural.

This theory may be briefly stated thus: that the Church of which such glorious things were spoken by the prophets,

victim to the priest, and laid his hand upon its head, to shew that the innocent animal was going to bear his sins, and to die in his place. Then it was slain by the priest, and the blood poured round about the altar. Or if he de sired to obtain any particular blessing or mercy, he did in like manner; and again, if the blessing were granted, or any particular mercy had been bestowed upon him.

I beg you to consider all this, and to think how in the old Church before Christ came, as well before the Deluge as after, the religion which God gave to man was a religion of sacrifices. It was one continual offering of sacrifices; daily, every day, on every occasion, public and private. The fire upon the altar was never suffered to go out; the smoke of the sacrifices went up continually; and the blood of the victims never ceased to flow round about the altar. It is quite true that all these sacrifices were to cease when Christ came; because they were all merely typical of His one great sacrifice of Himself; but still, I say, consider what a very different kind of religion this was to the Protestant religion, or to any form of religion which a Protestant would think to be a divine religion. And yet it was a divine religion; it was, as I have said, the religion which God gave to His people: more than this, it was the religion which was to prepare them for Christianity; nay, more even than this, it was the shadow and the figure of Christianity. The Christian religion was the fulfilment and the completion of the Jewish. The Jewish religion was Christianity in the germ or in the bud; it not only preceded it, but implicitly contained it; so that it is true to say that the Jewish religion was Christianity undeveloped, and that Christianity was the Jewish religion developed and fulfilled. The Gospel was the fulfilment of the law (Matt. v. 17): "the law was our pedagogue in Christ" (Gal. iii. 24), "our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ" (Prot. version). The Jewish religion was to train and educate men for the Christian religion. They were taught to worship in such a way and with such rites and ceremonies, as should make it easy and natural for them to become Christians, and to worship God as Christians, in spirit and in truth. But if Christianity was to have no

henceforth as the heathen; that is, he was no longer to be looked upon as a Christian or a member of the kingdom of heaven. And our Lord immediately goes on to add that most solemn consideration, namely, that this sentence of the Church upon earth should be ratified in heaven: "Amen, I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven" (ver. 18).

This, then, as I have said, is a passage in which our Lord has revealed to us something about the nature of His Church, calling it by its own name of Church; and you see how contrary it is to the Protestant notion of the Church as already explained. And if we turn to other passages in which our Lord speaks of the Church under other names or titles, the result will be the same. Thus-only to mention a single instance-nobody doubts but that the long and solemn prayer recorded in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John was in fact a prayer for the Church. Whether we look upon the Church as the whole visible society of professing Christians, or as the elect only, at least we shall not refuse to identify them with those for whom our Lord prayed: "Not for these only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in Me" (ver. 20). And what is it that He prays for them? " "That they all may be one, as Thou Father in Me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast also loved Me." The unity of the Church, then, was to be a token to the world of the divine mission of our Saviour; but how could the world be made to recognise this property of a body which it could not see? How could the unity of an invisible body be itself visible, and a token, a very important token, to others?

And if we turn from the Gospels to the Epistles, from the words of our Lord to the words of His Apostles, or, again, from the New Testament to the Old, from the Apostles to the Prophets, it is always the same idea of the Church continually set before us. It is the body of Christ, into which

all Christians are incorporated by the Sacrament of Baptism (Eph. i. 23; 1 Cor. xii. 13); it is the house of God, in which are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some indeed unto honour, but some unto dishonour (1 Tim. iii. 15; 2 Tim. ii. 20); it is the house of the God of Jacob, prepared on the top of mountains, and exalted high above the hills, unto which all nations should flow (Isa. ii. 2), reminding us of our Lord's own words, "A city seated on a mountain that cannot be hid" (St. Matt. v. 14); it is a rich habitation which our eyes shall see; a tabernacle that cannot be removed; a straight way, so that fools shall not err therein (Isa. xxx. 20; xxxiii. 20; xxxv. 8); in a word, it is scarcely possible to quote a single passage of Holy Writ which speaks of the Church at all, which does not describe it more or less distinctly as a visible body, invested with invisible privileges; a treasury and channel of spiritual blessings to mankind, yet itself made up of good members and of bad; and above all, as a body that might be easily known and recognised, just like any other external object, so that a plain and simple person could not fail to discover it.

Without entering, however, on a particular examination of each of these texts in detail, every one of which is contradicted or made to have no sense at all by the theories of Protestantism, it will be enough for our purpose to look at the matter from another point of view, and to make a brief statement of facts, that must needs be admitted on all sides.

Every one who receives the Bible as the word of God must believe that our Lord appointed certain persons to teach His doctrine to the rest of mankind: "Go and teach all nations, . . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." He must acknowledge, also, that to these teachers was committed the authority of ordaining others to assist and to succeed to themselves; for the election of Matthias to supply the place of Judas, and the ordination of Saul and Barnabas, are clear instances of the exercise of this authority. He must still further admit that the persons thus appointed to assist and to succeed to the Apostles received a commission themselves also to ap

as

as contrasted with Christianity, it was imperfect and elementary; fitted rather, as he says, for children, than for full-grown men, and preparatory to a better (comp. Heb. vii. 18, 19). Its ordinances were devoid of life and power; they had no virtue in them, as have the Christian sacraments; they did not convey grace; they were incapable of justifying those who came to them, incapable of cleansing from sin, or "making the comers thereunto perfect" to the conscience" (ix. 9; x. 1, 4, 11). Holy Scripture contrasts Jewish ordinances with Christian ordinances; and declares that the former were in themselves merely external and unprofitable; but it never says that the Jewish religion was a religion only of forms and ceremonies,—a merely external religion, with nothing inward and spiritual about it; a religion which failed to inculcate the true principles of Divine worship. Yet such is the view which Protestants in general seem to take of it. They would make it appear that the Mosaic dispensation was opposed to inward vital religion, and that the Jew knew nothing of true holiness. And so they say, not only that legal sacrifices have been abolished, which is quite true, and that God requires to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, and not with carnal ordinances, which is quite true also; but that the only sacrifice which is pleasing to God, the only sacrifice indeed which the Christian can offer, is the inward sacrifice of the heart. In this, according to them, consists the difference between the Christian and the Jew. The Jewish sacrifice, say they, was only outward; the Christian sacrifice is only inward. Here, then, it is that we Catholics join issue with them; and maintain, on the contrary, that the Jewish sacrifice was not only outward in the sense they mean, nor the Christian only inward. I will take each point separately.

First, although the Jewish sacrifices were carnal sacrifices, inasmuch as the victims offered were literally of flesh and blood, bulls, and goats, and other animals, and in themselves merely external, having no virtue or efficacy in them, yet they were not an acceptable offering to God unless they were accompanied with the inward sacrifice of the heart; humility, obedience, repentance, and the like;