alike reduce them to the character of something outward and accidental only to the true Christian life. The Quakers, more consistently true than all sects besides to the spiritualistic theory out of which the sect life springs, agree with infidelity itself, in rejecting the sacraments altogether.* Not from the Christ without, the objective historical Christ, as revealing himself in the Church and exhibited in the sacramental symbols, but only from the Christ within, the interior spiritual life of the believer himself, is any true salvation to be expected. "Whenever the soul is turned towards the light of the Lord within, and is thus made to participate of the celestial life that nourishes the interior man, (the privilege of the believer at any time,) it may be said to enjoy the Lord's Supper, and to partake of his flesh and blood." To insist upon the outward sacraments is to fall back to Judaism, and to magnify rites and forms at the cost of that spiritual worship, which alone is worthy of our own nature, or suitable to the character of God.

The anti-sacramental tendency of the sect spirit is strikingly revealed under its true rationalistic nature, in the disposition so commonly shown by it to reject infant baptism. If the sacra

ments are regarded as in themselves outward rites only, that can have no value or force except as the grace they represent is made to be present by the subjective exercises of the worshipper, it is hard to see on what ground infants, who are still without knowledge or faith, should be admitted to any privilege of the sort. If there be no objective reality in the life of the Church, as something more deep and comprehensive than the life of the individual believer separately taken, infant baptism becomes necessarily an unmeaning contradiction. Hence invariably, (as already remarked in the first part of the present chapter,) where the true church consciousness is brought to yield to the spirit of sect, the tendency to depreciate the ordinance in this form is found to prevail to the same extent; and so on the other hand, there is no more sure criterion and measure of the presence of the sect spirit, as distinguished from the true spirit of the Church, than the tendency now mentioned, wherever it may be exhibited. The baptistic principle, whether carried out fully in practice or not, constitutes the certain mark of sectarianism all the world over. It may be controlled in many cases by outward influ

* ❝ Nihil aliud hæreditatis nostræ signaturam et arrhabonem nominat scriptura præter spiritum Dei." Barcl. Apol. The Lord's Supper, originally observed," imbecillium causa," was only a shadow, he tells us, that is no longer needed for those who have the substance.

"Why are the Congregationalists, or Baptists, any more a sect than the German Reformed or the Episcopalians ?" Thus asks the Biblical Repertory, in its review of Schaf on Protestantism, (Oct. 1845,) charging the author with being vague in what he says on the subject of sectarism. The question is

ences, or by some remnant possibly of church feeling still preserved, so as not to come openly into view; but it will be found then as a worm at least at the root of the institution here in view, consuming all its vigor, and turning it in fact into the powerless form for which it is unbelievingly and rationalistically taken. Where it comes, however, to a full triumph of the sect character, the baptistic principle, for the most part, asserts its authority in a more open way. Infant baptism is discarded as a relic of Roman superstition. Here again the Anabaptists and Mennonites appear in close connection with Socinians and Arminians; whose judgment at least with regard to the point in hand, though not their practice, has ever been substantially the same. According to the Racovian Catechism, the baptism of infants is without authority and without reason, and to be tolerated only as a harmless inveterate prejudice.* The Remonstrants of Holland, (Arminians,) much in the same way, declare the rite worthy of being continued to avoid scandal, but hold it to be of no binding authority in its own nature. In our own country, as was remarked before, we have, at the present time, an exemplification of the sect feeling at this point, on a large scale. The Baptists, as they are called, including all the sects that reject the baptism of infants, form, it is said, the most numerous religious profession in the United States: and the baptistic principle, it is plain, prevails still more widely, where the practice, through the force of denominational tradition, remains of an opposite character.

It appears then that the spirit of heresy, and the spirit of schism, in the case before us, are substantially one and the same. Both are unchurchly and anti-sacramental, to the same extent. It is not an accidental resemblance simply, that connects them together in this view; but the inward power of a common life. It belongs to the very genius of sect to be rationalistic.‡

certainly very striking, in view of the quarter from which it comes. Only think of Baxter, or any sound Presbyterian of the seventeenth century, asking such a question in relation even to Congregationalism! But here the very Baptists themselves, whom the New England Congregationalists of that period could not tolerate in their midst, are exalted to the same church level with the churches of the Reformation generally. This, of itself, betrays a most low conception of the Church, and a strange confusion in relation to the idea of sect. Neither Calvin nor Luther could have endured the thought, of being associated in this way with a spirit so utterly unhistorical, unchurchly, and unsacramental, as that which is presented to us in the Anabaptist schism from beginning to end.

* Errorem adeo inveteratum et pervulgatum christiana charitas tolerare suadet. Rac. Cat.

Remonstrantes ritum baptizandi, infantes ut perantiquum haud illubenter etiam in cœtibus suis admittunt, adeoque vix sine offensione et scandalo magno intermitti posse statuunt; tantum abest ut eum seu illicitum aut nefastum improbent ac damnent. Apolog. Remonst.

Ronge, the famous head of the "German Catholic" movement, now

And now it cannot be denied, that the modern Puritan theory of the Lord's Supper, as it has been presented to us in contrast with the old Calvinistic doctrine, is strikingly in harmony with the whole style of thinking here offered to our view. This must be apparent at once to any one, who will only take the trouble to refer again to the illustrations of the Puritan theory that have been already quoted, and to compare them with the modes of thought and language employed by the rationalistic school on the same subject. The ground on which much of our American theology is here standing at the present time, is palpably the same with that occupied by the old rationalistic supernaturalism of Germany; which was found so insufficient, as we have just seen, to maintain itself scientifically against the neology with which it was called to contend. It is the orthodoxy at best of such men as Ernesti and Morus, Reinhard and Knapp; only with a very small part of their learning. Its safety is found in the fact, that it has for the most part no power to perceive the contradiction it carries in its own bosom. But with all this, the false element works itself out in many practical consequences, alike mischievous for theology and for the religious life in general.

engaging so much attention, shows here also his true theological stand-point. Christ laid down his life, according to this man, to open the way for the more rapid spread of his salutary doctrine in the world; and the Supper was instituted to keep up his memory, and to be the standing "brother-meal of humanity," in all times. See a notice of the Easter Service held last year in Berlin, by Ronge and Czersky, in the correspondence of Krummacher's Palmblatter, for June, 1845. How invariably the rationalistic and sectaristic spirit betrays itself just at this point, and always in the same way! This Ronge, it will be remembered, was hailed by our religious papers generally, at first, as a second Huss or Luther. But it is in the highest degree dishonourable to the Reformation, to think of it as parallel, in any measure, with such a move. ment. Ronge is no Reformer, but a Radical only, of the worst stamp. Like Luther, he has indeed cast off the authority of Rome. But the resemblance of the two cases is merely in outward form. Luther was full of positive life; Ronge is negative wholly, and destitute of all faith in Christianity as a real life-revelation in the world. Luther stood in the element of the objective, and felt himself to be the passive organ only of the true and proper historical life of the Church itself; Ronge is supremely subjective, unhistorical, and full of blind self-will. Luther was himself the first, central, and in some sense fontal, product of the vast spiritual revolution in which he led the way; it came to the birth with deep, convulsive throes, in his separate personal consciousness, before it revealed itself in the rest of the Church, already ripe for the change. Ronge stands in no such relation to the inmost religious life of the age, in which he affects to play the spiritual hero. No world-convulsion has gone forward, in the first place, in his own soul. His vocation is evidently superficial and outward, in the fullest sense; and the movement over which he presides is as plainly distinguished throughout by the same character. God may make it indirectly subservient at last, in some way, to the advancement of his kingdom; but, in its own nature, it belongs not at all to this kingdom, but to the world only.-See an excellent article on the whole subject, by Professor Ullmann, characterized by his usual caution, moderation, and profound historical wisdom, in the Studien und Kritiken, for the last year.

It is not necessary that we should be able to trace any outward connection between the two forms of theology thus compared, to establish their actual affinity. It is enough that they are inwardly connected, and that they belong to the same general development of a false tendency comprehended in Protestantism itself. This tendency has shown its power from the beginning, as a spirit of heresy in one direction, and a spirit of schism in another; but it may be said to have come to the fullest revelation of its bad life, during the last century and the first part of the present. That the modern Puritan theology should be deeply affected by its influence, might seem to be in the circumstances precisely what was to be expected. Puritanism, as all know, involves in its original constitution a large measure of the tendency which has just been mentioned. It formed from the start, a marked advance, in this direction, upon the character of the Reformed Church, as it stood in the beginning; showing itself more decidedly independent of all objective authority, and more favourable by far to a mere abstract spiritual-ism in religion. The danger to which the Reformed Church might be said to have been most liable, in its very nature, from the first, came here to be something more than danger; it appeared as actual ultra-protestantism itself, hostile to the proper idea of the Church, and irreverent towards all history at the same time. Nor has the history of this system of thinking since furnished any reason to suppose in its case a change of character, in the respect here noticed. On the contrary, it is clear that the wrong element which was embodied in it at the beginning, has been only confirmed and consolidated since, under the same character; for to this very influence must be referred, to a great extent, more or less directly, the curse of sectarism, as it has now become so widely established both in Great Britain and in this country. That some leaven of rationalism then should enter into its theology, in these circumstances, must appear, after what has already been said, a matter of course. This may be, notwithstanding the presence of a large amount of religious life in connection with the same system.

Be all this as it may, however, it must at all events be regarded as a presumption against the modern Puritan view of the Lord's Supper, that, in departing from the doctrine of the Reformation, it is found to fall in so strikingly with what may be styled the apostacy of Rationalism in the same direction. It might seem sufficiently startling to be sundered, in such a case, from the general faith of Christendom as it has stood from the beginning. But still more startling, certainly, is the thought of such separation in such company. This much is clear. The Reformation included in its original and proper constitution,

two different elements or tendencies; and it was felt that it could be true to itself, only by acknowledging the authority of both, as mutually necessary each for the perfection and proper support of the other. In the nature of the case, however, there was a powerful liability in the movement to become ultraistic and extreme, on that side which seemed to carry the most direct protest against the errors of the Church, as it stood before. In the course of time, undeniably, this became, as we have already seen, its general character. The simply Protestant tendency was gradually sundered, in a great measure, from its true Catholic complement and counterpoise; and in this abstract character it has run out into theoretical and practical rationalism, to a fearful extent, in all parts of the Church. The low view of the sacraments, which we have now under consideration, came in with this unfortunate obliquity. It belongs historically and constitutionally to the bastard form, under which the original life of Protestantism has become so widely caricatured in the way of heresy and schism. Its inward affinity with the spirit of Rationalism, in one direction, and the spirit of Sect in another, (two different phases only of the same modern Antichrist,) is too clear to be for one moment called in question. In this character, it forms most certainly, like the whole system with which it is associated, a departure from the faith, not only of the Lutheran, but of the Reformed Church also, as it stood in the sixteenth century. It involves in this respect, what would have been counted, at that time, not only a perversion, but a very serious perversion of the true Protestant doctrine. Now, with this neological and sectarian view, we find the modern Puritan theory of the Lord's Supper to be in full agreement. Both sink its objective virtue wholly out of sight. Both do this, on the principle of making the service spiritual and rational, instead of simply ritual. Both, in this way, wrong the claims of Christianity as a supernatural life, in favour of its claims as a divine doctrine. Both proceed on the same false abstraction, by which soul and body, outward and inward, are made to be absolutely different, and in some sense really antagonistic, spheres of existence. Both show the same utter disregard to the authority of all previous history, and affect to construct the whole theory of the Church, doctrine, sacraments, and all, in the way of independent private judgment, from the Bible and common sense. Both, in all this, involve a like defection, and substantially to the same extent, from the creed of the Reformation; and would have been regarded accordingly, not only by Luther, but by Calvin also, and Beza, and Ursinus, and the fathers of the Reformed Church generally, as alike treasonable to the interest, which has become identified with their great names.