Meaning and Application of the term "Church.”

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Nor can we sufficiently regret that in the very outset of his book Mr. Noel should have considered it necessary to indicate, in such strong terms, his leanings to the Congregational system of Church polity. In his introduction he has been at pains to define the meaning of the word "Church," in attempting which he gives too obvious evidence of being more indebted to the late treatises of Doctors Wardlaw and Davidson, than to an impartial course of reading on the subject. It is surely of small importance to the present question, in what sense the word "Church" or assembly is employed in the New Testament. It is a convenient phrase, which is not more sacred than many other scriptural phrases, and which it is no more unscriptural to apply to an assembly of Christians united under one form of discipline, than to an assembly of Christians united under one roof. Mr. Noel, however, rejects the use of the phrase, "Church of England," as if the word were thereby profaned, and his argument compromised. "I shall speak of the Roman Catholic Churches, and the Greek Churches, of the Scotch Establishment, of the English Establishment, or of the Churches within these Establishments; not of the Church of Rome, the Greek Church, the Church of Scotland, or the Church of England." This might pass as a trifling peculiarity, amounting, indeed, on the theory which Mr. Noel seems to have embraced, to something like a reductio ad nihilum, for his new friends, the Independents, would hardly acknowledge any of the congregations within the English Establishment to be Churches of Christ at all. And had we been critically inclined, we might have adverted to the inconsistency shewn in denying the use of the collective term Church to the religious establishment, while he has no difficulty in applying that of State to the civil establishment. If we can conceive, and may be permitted to speak of the visible complex body, including "the legislative and executive powers," the crown, the ministers, Houses of Parliament and constituency, as the "State," why may we not conceive and speak of the equally visible body, composed of professing Christians, as the "Church?" And surely it is of the Church as a visible, and not as an invisible society, that Mr. Noel speaks, when treating of "the Union of Church and State." It is impossible to speak of such a union intelligibly, without using the phrase as descriptive of the religious in contradistinction to the secular society; and accordingly, besides exhibiting it on his title, he has frequently, in the course of his book, been betrayed into the expression.* But our author has

* The following is one example among many of this unconscious forgetfulness of his Congregationalism :-" If the earth' means the European population gene

given still more decided evidence of his leanings to the congregational polity in other passages; and symptoms appear of a disposition to go more than half-way even with the Baptists. Unwilling to dwell on this theme, we refer the reader to pages 146, 212, 325, 436, 460, 486, 514.**

What we chiefly deplore, however, is the effect which this unhappy ultraism and indecision of tendency must have on the minds of his former brethren. If not deterred from following his example by the length of the leap he has taken, they must be all the more content to linger with the abuses he has denounced, when it is seen that, in Mr. Noel's opinion at least, there is no intermediate ground, no sure footing, between an outrageous Erastianism, crushing under its ironheel every fibre of life and freedom in the Church, on the one hand, and on the other, a nomadic unorganized Dissenterism; no alternative between the Establishment as it now stands, with all its corruptions, and an ecclesiastical revolution which would not only dissolve the Union of Church and State, but dissolve the Union of the Church herself, and explode her into ten thousand fragmentary churches, as unlike as unallied to each other, and the prospective constitution of which no man could foretell. The English mind seems hitherto unable to devise a middle path between the purest despotism and the rankest radicalism in ecclesiastical matters. We had hoped to find in Mr. Noel's book a more moderate scheme of reform projected, which might have reconciled the two extremes; but we are compelled to say that we despair of him as a leader in any great movement of reformation, when we see him thus merging himself in the confused ranks of existing dissent-descending into the arena, singlehanded, as the champion not of the Church but of a chapeland pleading, with all the ardour of a neophyte, for a system of disunion and disorganization, the utter impotence of which for any combined action, even its veteran supporters were beginning to deplore.

We shall not therefore follow our author into his lengthened discussion on the separation of Church and State. We are not aware that he has introduced a single new argument. When

rally, and the woman represents the Church of Christ, it shews that the Church may receive help from the people in any country, but the nature of the help is left undetermined. It may be the duty of nations to help the Church in one way, but unlawful to seek to help it in another. It may be right for them to protect it from violence, while it is wrong to fetter it (that is, the Church) by a Legislative Union," &c., p. 126. This must refer to the visible Church; for the Church invisible does not admit of being either helped or fettered.

"I do not find in the New Testament any other church court than the Church itself [i.e. the congregation] under the presidency of its elders."-P. 460. "Not a word is said in Scripture, clearly and explicitly, about the baptism of infants."-P. 436,

we state that his reading seems to have been limited on the side of Establishments to such writers as Hooker, M'Neile and Gladstone, our readers will not feel surprised that he should have adopted the views of " Wardlaw, Ballantyne, Conder, Gasparin, Vinet and Baird." And when it is kept in mind that his idea of an establishment is thoroughly Erastian, that he argues against what he calls the "State Episcopate," it need hardly be said that our advocates of establishments, whose reading and reflection are not "almost all on one side," will readily admit the force of the "General Considerations" which he has drawn from "the Constitution of the State," "the parental relation," from "history," from "Old Testament prophecies," and from "the New Testament," as quite applicable to such a union as that which he takes for granted.

The same remark applies to the latter, and by far the most important part of the volume, which refers to the "Effects of the Union." The fearful disclosures made in this portion of the work, of the inefficiency, the bondage, the corruption, and the baneful results of the system, when applied to that particular form of the Union which exists in England, are certainly fitted to create, and must leave, a deep impression on the mind of every Christian reader. This Part is divided into the "Influence of the Union upon Persons"-such as bishops, pastors, members, dissenters; and the "Influence of the Union upon Things" such as the number of ministers, maintenance, doctrine, discipline, evangelization, union, reformation, religion, government, and other national establishments. Under each of these heads the influence of the Union is brought out with great power and effect; though, throughout the whole, no distinction is ever suggested between "the Union" itself, and "the Union in England." The impression left on our mind indeed, is the utter hopelessness of seeing such corruptions removed But we regret

while such a connexion continues to exist. that the author should have exposed his well-intentioned arguments to be met, not by any attempts at reforming the Union as it is, but by a volley of counter-arguments in behalf of the Union as it should be; and that the odium which his exposé may, with too much justice, enhance against the Establishment will only be confronted by references to the growing attachment of multitudes to the Church established. There is a delusion here which, we fear, the friends of established abuses are destined sooner or later to discover; for if, after such an unfolding of the depth and extent of the disease, no remedial attempt is made, the body must sink into that state of collapse in which neither the skill of the physician nor the affection of friends can save it. Meanwhile, this concentration of attack upon the Union of

Church and State, as the sole cause of all the corruptions of the former, savours too much of the empiric and the visionary, to prove effective in the proper quarter. It may call forth To paans from a certain class of dissenters; but will the blow be fatal to Establishments? We doubt it greatly.

Had he come forth in

"The Union of the Churches with the State is doomed,” says Mr. Noel; and, for aught we know, the prediction may be a true one, though we do not think the prophet has taken the best way to ensure its fulfilment. the character of a Reformer of his native Church, denouncing the Union simply because he despaired of seeing her abuses removed while such a species of Union remained, and zealous to restore her to a purity and vigour outrivalling the days of the Sixth Edward, of Jewel and Latimer and Cranmer, he might have enlisted the best sympathies of Old England in the cause of spiritual independence. As it is, he has to fight his way against English patriotism as well as English pride; and the issue of such a conflict is more than doubtful.

The bomb has exploded within the citadel; but the effect on those within, who still constitute the_majority, can only be to stimulate their zeal in its defence. It must always be an impolitic, if not an unfair mode of warfare against the corruptions of a Church, to trace up all of these to a single source, however profound in error, or prolific of evil that source may be. It may be true that the corruptions may never be effectually reformed while that source remains untouched, just as the wounded warrior cannot be healed till he has been disencumbered of the armour which frets the sore and impedes the operation; but it does not follow that all the disorders which cry for remedy flow from one fountain, or will vanish on its removal. The grand origin of the evils affecting the English Church, it might be easy to shew, lies not in its being an Establishment simply, but in its having been, to a sad extent, from the very beginning, an establishment of abuses. Romish errors, never sufficiently purified by the Reformation, were consolidated and perpetuated by the despotism of Elizabeth, and have lain to this day congealed as in the iceberg of a long Arctic winter. Drifted as it has been lately within the influence of another spring, is there not some hope of seeing it thawed and broken up, and reduced to its original elements? And if so, is it not the office of all the friends of that Church, and of the truth as it is in Jesus, to see that due preparation is made to "separate the precious from the vile," and build up, from among the wreck of scattered abuses, a second Temple more glorious, because more spiritual and simple and godlike, than the first?

But we must conclude our rapid review. As a specimen of

The Pious Anglican Pastor.

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the author's style, we select the following passages in which he brings out, with withering effect, some of the most glaring faults of the Establishment which he has left :

INFLUENCE OF THE UNION UPON BISHOPS.

"From this enumeration of some of the functions of a prelate imposed by the State, it is too obvious that a pastor suddenly raised by the fiat of the premier to the prelatic dignity, must undergo temptations of no ordinary force. How can one, whose position was so humble, become at once so lofty without giddiness! That smile of a statesman has made him at once a peer, the master of a palace, the owner of a lordly revenue, the successor of apostles. Thenceforth he shines in Parliament, and moves among the most splendid circles of the wealthiest nation of the earth; or, retiring to his palace, he administers within its baronial precincts an extended patronage, wields an absolute sceptre over one-third of his clergy, and by an indefinite prerogative, awes and controls the rest; meets with no one to question his opinions or contradict his will; and may look along a lengthened vista of enjoyments to the more dazzling splendour and prerogatives of Lambeth. If a man, under these circumstances, is not deteriorated, he must have extraordinary wisdom and virtue. But when worldly men are chosen by the Government, and are rendered more worldly by the disadvantages of their position, their distribution of livings, their visitation charges, their circuits for confirmation, their private intercourse with the clergy, and their whole influence, must check evangelical religion, and add to the numbers of worldly and unsound incumbents throughout the land."-Pp. 273-275.

The following is a severe, but we suspect not an overdrawn picture of

THE PIOUS ANGLICAN PASTOR.

"He may exaggerate the importance of the Union, extol 'the Church' as the purest and best in the world, persuade himself that it is the chief bulwark of Protestantism; he may fill up his time and thoughts with the duties of his ministry, and may resolve not to read, speak, or think on those disputed topics. Thus he may strive to hide out the errors of the prayer-book, and avoid every conclusion respecting the legal fetters of his ministry, shielding himself under the thought that many excellent men do all that he is called to do, and that matters so trifling ought not to endanger an institution so venerable and so necessary.

"Symptoms of this state of mind are, I think, common.

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Amongst pious Anglican pastors it is common to hear strong and even violent denunciation of Popery, which requires no courage, because the thunderer launches his bolts against a despised minority, and is echoed by admiring multitudes. But the ten thousand practical abuses within the Establishment wake no such indignant thunders, -the nomination of worldly prelates, the exclusion of the Gospel from thousands of parishes in which by the Union ungodly ministers