and miraculously gifted for producing conviction in those whom they addressed, directed their attention towards the same great principles which their Master had taught and exemplified. But this was not all. These great principles were now enriched and completed by the doctrine of the cross, which, as it was not "finished" till the death of Christ, could not be fully developed till after that event. The Epistles, therefore, are a necessary supplement to the Gospels; and in order to seize upon the unity of the faith, and to avoid resting in partial and fragmentary views of it, an equal regard must be had to both. We will not attempt here, however, to give a summary of what is to be found there. Such summaries are already very numerous. Far better go to the originals. Suffice it here to say, that (1.) the necessity of repentance in order to the remission of sins; (2.) the sufficiency of believing the gospel in order to salvation; (3.) the necessity of the love of God in order to true religion, and (4.) the love of each other in order to true discipleship to Jesus, -these were the great articles of primitive Christianity, these were the elements of primitive catholicism.

But besides the full and direct statement of such great principles, very much of a more particular nature is found both in the Gospels and Epistles. And here we must not fail to remark, that of all collateral subjects, that on which the apostles bestow most pains, is the endeavour to persuade the Christian converts, while they embraced the salvation of Christ, to embrace also the liberty with which Christ had set them free, to leave off from the complicated ceremonials and positive institutions of the preceding order of things, which had now fulfilled its term, and to walk, like the patriarchs of old, by reason and conscience, ennobled by the faith of Christ, and enlightened by His voice and spirit. The faith itself explained, this was the next great object of their preaching.

In every discourse and epistle they appeal to the reason and conscience of those whom they address. They rest very little upon mere authority. They rather avoid appealing to it. Hence the form of the apostolic epistles ; which may, of course, be taken as types of the apostles' preaching. Each consists of two parts; first, an argument addressed to the reason, in order to establish the faith of the converts on reasonable grounds, and put them in a position in which they would both be secure from being tossed about by every wind of doctrine (which is very much the case when the faith lies in the sensibilities merely, and not in the reason), and also be able to give to every one that asked them a reason for the hope that was in them; and, second, a practical part addressed to conscience, and consequently recognising and appealing to its supremacy.

Much of the argumentative parts of the epistles, especially those of St Paul, may be described as the development of the theory of the Mosaic economy; whence it followed, that, far from arguing any thing like mutability in God, its abrogation then, or rather its transformation into Christianity, was the very plan and principle of it from the beginning. The apostles inform us, that a complicated ritual, a law of outward and positive precepts, such as that under which the people of God had been laid till then, however divine in its origin, and however binding, from the days of Moses till those of Christ. was not in itself an object of the divine complacency; they shew that it was the form of religion suitable to the childhood of the church only; they shew that this childhood was then past,-that Christ was come to establish a new order of things,—come to do what was to give God pleasure, from the very nature of the thing done, namely, to make expiation for sin once for all, and setting the pious for ever free from sacrifices and ceremonials, to

call upon them to obey the law written on their hearts,a law in obeying which there is not only that which is pleasing to God, but that which has in itself a great reward. Hence the earnest endeavours of the apostles, to persuade those whom they addressed to believe in a oncecrucified, but now highly-exalted Redeemer, to trust in him for justification before God, not in the law of Moses, and to regulate their lives by those faultless moral precepts which Jesus taught in His discourses, and exemplified in His life.

As to externals, the chief endeavour of the apostles was to induce the Christian converts, on the one hand, to abandon the ritual in which they had been educated, which was now superseded by the advent, and replaced by Christian liberty; and to induce the heathen converts, on the other, to refrain from adopting the ritual of the Jews, when they abandoned the rites of paganism. To the ceremonies which they abrogated, the apostles do, indeed, assign the valuable place of tutors and governors, until the time appointed by the Father. But they shew also, in very explicit terms, that these ceremonies were not designed by Jehovah to be perpetual, but only to regulate and educate the childhood of the church when it came out of the dark womb of Egypt.

In teaching Christian liberty, however, the apostles only partially succeeded. Educational prepossessions and prejudices are not to be overcome, except in a very few. And though the ritual against which the apostles directed their preaching, stood only in meats and drinks, and diverse washings and cardinal ordinances, imposed on the church, till the time of reformation; still, to their great grief, the apostles had occasion to utter such exclamations as these: "How turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage! Ye observe days and months, and times and

years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed on you labour in vain." *

Nor were these fears groundless or applicable to those times only. Judaizing has been the great error in the Christian church from age to age, down to the present day. The tendency to place religion in the sensibilities and the imagination, rather than in the reason and conscience, and consequently in forms addressed to the senses, rather than in spiritual truths addressed to the understanding and the heart, is inveterately strong in the nature of fallen man. And it is so much more easy to obey any authority addressed to the outward ear, than the still small voice of conscience, so much more easy to recognise the supremacy of another power than to master self, that, just as in the childhood of the church, when nothing else would do, so is there still a great demand on the part of the many, for positive institutions and precepts. Nay, worse than this, it is so hard to give up all hope from self, and to trust entirely in the merits of another for salvation, that man will rather put himself under a self-invented bondage, and serve all his life under the fear of death, in the hope of saving himself by his own endeavours, than embrace the liberty with which Christ hath made His people free, and worship and obey through love, Him who is already his Saviour, and as such calls every believer to virtue and to holiness.

THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH.

Such were the objects to which the apostles directed their labours almost exclusively, the glory of God in the mission of Christ, and the salvation of men through him. But in revealing these objects, they did not go * Gal. iv. 9.

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by stated rule, but by immediate inspiration. Far from giving any examples of those rubrics and rituals, afterwards framed (the Rituale Romanum, for instance, my copy of which is a goodly quarto, the first fifty-two pages filled with rules how to perform the sacraments of baptism, and the next ten with rules how to perform the sacrament of penitence, and so on), the apostles seem only to have considered what forms, congenial with the spirituality of the gospel, would be most likely to succeed in persuading men to believe in a once-crucified, but now risen Saviour. Thus, his rule of proceeding, the apostle Paul lays down in these words :-" Though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law, as without law (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ), that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel's sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you."

With regard to the form and constitution of the churches, which resulted from their ministry, the apostles, when compared with most who have come after them, were but little solicitous. They acted on the great and undeniable principle, that, wherever there are Christians, a church will form itself spontaneously, and needs only to be organized and regulated as circumstances require; in order to which, a Christian spirit in the members will of itself be sufficient. Hence they directed their chief endeavours to the preaching of the gospel, and to the making of converts. And as to the