magnificence of their extreme exclusive human pretensions, for which they have such poor apologies, reorganise in conformity with the plain letter of the divine law, expunge from their pulpits the language of man, and substitute for it the pure and uncontaminated word of God. Whenever they do this, then, having dressed themselves in the plain habiliments so becoming the lowly followers of the lamb of God, they will then be like the bride of the lamb, adorned for his embrace.

The Methodist church has conformed to the transmitted authority she finds written in the word of truth; has organised her church structure in obedience to this law, teaches the doctrines of Christ free from the corrupt adulterations of mere men, and in doing this, manifests a much greater deference for the transmitted authority of Jesus Christ, than do those churches which cry out more for a transmitted authority, and practice less. But who, besides these churches, entertains the idea that a transmitted authority can exist in the persons of men? Can the persons of men be a written divine law? This is what they say. Show the law in the written bible, and the Methodist church will immediately submit to it. Will you show that bishops should alone ordain? This church conforms to it. Show her any other law, and if she can read it as you read it, she will, if she does not already, at once conform to it. But will you follow her example? Will you yield obedience to the written law? Then banish your liturgies, and your written sermons, and your baptismal regeneration, and your doctrine that the church is the kingdom of God, and your formal mode of church service, and your unique dress for the men of your pulpits, and act an humble part as fallible men, and come meekly before a throne of grace as broken hearted penitents and the poor pensioners of the cross, denuded of all self-righteousness, and all intolerance, and serve God by the exhibition of an enlarged love of all, who, in your estimation, may have wandered farthest from the fold, following the example of your master with respect to the

lost sheep, and then you will be counted worthy of double honor.

It is important in this connection, to take into consideration. the design of a Christian church. We are to remember that the employment of the agency of a church, and indeed of human agencies, of whatever character, occurred posterior, in point of time, to the completion of the gospel as a plan of salvation. There is an intervening period of time, dividing the gospel of salvation, as a divine grant to the human family, and the institution of a church and a corps of ministerial laborers. We must be particularly watchful not to confound this divine gospel grant with anything that subsequently occurred. For this grant, we are indebted to the blood of Calvary, where the gift was finally and forever made, consummated, and finished. It was after the death of our Saviour, upon the cross, after the completion of the gospel, and after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that a Christian church and ministerial agencies were employed. Now, their object was evidently to advance the primary interest at stake; the interest of the human family and its salvation, according to the gospel. This makes the church a trustee. It is an agency,

with limited and defined powers, and with a definite end. This very distinctly appears from the very guarded and warning language of our Saviour upon the occasion of the delivery of the ministerial commission. He expressly told his ministerial agents to observe "all things whatsoever I have commanded you." Now, here is the origin, as well as the precise limit of ministerial authority. Beyond all question, this guarded language of limitation is pregnant with the instruction, that mankind have the right of practical protest whenever ministers transgress the limit and undertake to teach them to observe what Christ never directed them to teach. Either this is so, or the language is void of meaning. If mankind had no right of protest, there would have been no utility in placing a guard over ministerial conduct. Did our Saviour suppose that ministers were to be the final and ultimate judges of what they were to teach, and that whatever they taught was

law, no

to be regarded as true and binding upon mankind, in virtue of a personal authority distinct from his law; then the language is without sense or meaning, as a binding or operative law. Now, if ministers are not amenable to the law of Christ, as disconnected from any authority personal to themselves, as successors of the apostles, then no right of protest can belong to those who are to be benefited or injured by their teachings. But if, on the contrary, they are amenable to the law, whose benefit accrues to the human family, a right of protest belongs to those for whose benefit the gospel was instituted, and for whose benefit a ministry was instituted. Hence, it follows that whenever ministers conform to the right of protest lies, because they are in that case the agents of the law. But when they depart from the law, does the right of protest lie against their action? That is the question in which Protestant churches are alone interested. Whoever answers this question affirmatively, is a Protestant; aud whoever in the negative, is a Catholic. There is no middle ground between the infallibility of the church and the right of private judgment. Whoever sanctions the right of private judgment, thereby maintains the propriety of Protestant churches, and whoever does not, to be consistent, must insist upon the infallibility of the church. It is to be confessed, to their eternal shame, that the Church of England and the Protestant Episcopal church are seeking to occupy the seat of a neutral, where neutrality is a philosophical inconsistency, and run neither with the hounds nor the hare, and thereby cut themselves off from the respect of all lovers of a consistent logic. No wonder that so many of their ministry, enter into the Romish communion.

Considerable celebrity has been gained by bishops of the Protestant Episcopal church in the United States, by a no less celebrated than original argument drawn from the analogy of the conduct of the order of free masons. Not to say anything with respect to the manifest irreverence of endeavoring to arrive at the purposes of God from an analogy drawn from human conduct, it is proper to say that the argument by no

means serves the purpose for which it was sought to be used. Human conduct can never serve to give strength to any interpretation of God's truth. Nor is the analogy proper upon other grounds. It is contended that a revolution, or a departure from the regularity of the established organic laws, cannot be justified unless brought about by the regular officers, whose duty it is to perform the ceremonies of initiation. This duty, it appears, appertains to master masons. This celebrated argument insists that the subordinate officers of apprentices and private masons, like presbyters and members in the church, not having, according to the law, the right to induct men into the order, could not institute a separate order without the concurrence of the master masons. That they could not do it in agreement with the law is admitted, but suppose the master masons, like the regular bishops, were to convert the order into a money machine, depart from its original purpose of benevolence, impressed upon it by its founder; were to become corrupt and licentious upon the gain in money, obtained by outraging every law of the institution, would not a right of restitution appertain to the great body of good and virtuous masons? Will Episcopal writers, who are so fond of this illustration, support the idea that either the institution must go down under the weight of its corruptions, or that all the apprentices and private masons must submit to the yoke of an usurpation that might be rendered more bitter than death, and more remorseless than the grave, rather than protest by a practical lateral reorganization, by disregarding a ceremony for the purpose of hurling the corrupt master masons from power, and reinstating, in their stead, persons more honest and more obedient to the law of the institution? They cannot admit this right, for then the argument would justify Luther and Wesley.

We expect, of course, that we shall be called upon to prove that necessity is a ground for the disregard of a plain command of Jesus Christ. We have admitted in this argument, that it is a plain command of Jesus Christ that the rite of ordination. is to be performed in the Christian church by persons who fill

the office in the church of apostles. We regard the office of bishop in the church as substantially identical with the office of apostle in the early church, and that ordination appertains regularly to this office. Now, we have contended that when the regular officers of the church departed from the law of its founder, and converted it into a money machine, for their own advantage, thereby utterly defeating the object of its institution, that anybody, that everybody, that Luther, that Wesley, had the right to reorganise it, restore the original law, restore the observance and obedience of the original organic law, and by departing from a form, preserve the substance of a salvation scheme upon which, in its purity, depended the eternal happiness or misery of the whole human family. This is what Luther and Wesley did, and they are gratefully held in remembrance by countless hosts of the happy beneficiaries of their heroic conduct. The forms of the church are never to stand in the way of the end of the gospel. Whenever they do, they are to be disregarded; not that they are not of divine authority, but that they are of subordinate divine authority. Our Saviour set us the example in two memorable instances of his life. With regard, first, to the observance of the sabbath, and with regard, secondly, to the salvation of the thief without any reference to the solemn service of baptism. For this doctrine, we have the authority of names of the highest distinction in the Church of England, among which stands conspicuous that of the distinguished Hooker. It is a choice of evils. Whether it is better to see Christianity sink into an endless and remediless eclipse, under the iron heel of the despotic, cruel and corrupt regular officers of the church; to see it diverted from the beneficent object of its founder, and prostituted to the vilest purposes, or to disregard, for but the one time, a form of initiation into the priestly office, and thereby restore the richest heritage of the human family, to its end and purpose, is the question at issue. The question hardly admits of a doubt. Nor would it ever have been objected to, had it not disturbed the silken nests of a voluptuous priesthood; had it not awakened from the lethargic slumbers of sin and death, the