I am not certain of that. Some time since a Romish priest came to one I knew; and, after talking with her largely, broke out, 'You are no heretic; you have the experience of a real Christian.' 'And would you,' she asked, 'burn me alive?' He said, 'God forbid unless it were for the good of the Church.' Now, what security could she have had for her life, if it had depended on that man? The good of the Church would have burst all ties of truth, justice, and mercy; specially when seconded by the absolution of a priest, or (if need were) a papal pardon.

"If any one please to answer this, and set his name, I shall probably reply. But the productions of anonymous writers I do not promise to take notice of.—I am, Sir, your humble servant,

"City Road, Jan. 21st, 1780."

"JOHN WESLEY.

Since the preceding pages were in print, I have seen in The Nonconformist and Independent journal a report of a Congress held in London in May last. From the speech of the President, as there reported, I extract the following:

"We are to go on unto perfection, not to go back to it. The creed of Independency does not include the belief that the most intelligent, instructed, spiritual, Christlike period of the Church is to be found anywhere in the past. The world is a fallen world: the Church is not a fallen Church. The best Church that the Lord ever had in the world is that which is in the world now, and it will be better to-morrow than it is to-day.

"Is not, then, the Eternal and Divine Spirit as fully with

men of modern times as He was with those we call the Fathers'? Has He not, for example, brought to light in these days the treasures of the Inspired Word by the devout scholarship of the late revered Bishop of Durham, as He did by the genius of Augustine? Does he not teach the splendid, though uncanonised, phalanx of Christian Apologists of the present and recent centuries, as manifestly as He did Athanasius or Cyril? Did He not inspire Robert Raikes as truly as ever He did St. Benedict or St. Bernard? Is He not as clearly-to mention only one contemporary name -working by General Booth as He did by St. Patrick or St. Dunstan, and immeasurably more clearly than He did by a vast number of the Popes? And does not the light of His presence shine forth far more brightly in the assembly of Christian Bishops at Lambeth, endeavouring to hold out the olive branch of peace and union to their fellow-Christians, than it did amid the confusions and the passions of Chalcedon, of Constance, and of Trent? Church Congresses-even Pan-Anglican Synods of the nineteenth century—are not Godforsaken mobs; still less are Wesleyan Conferences; and again, still less are Assemblies of the Congregational Union. The onus of proof lies with those who, in any fashion, affirm that the Holy Spirit displayed in former times a splendour that He could not maintain, and that, for our time, only a vanishing illumination remains. We cannot

remit His influence to the past. He is still in the Church, not, indeed, bestowing the gift of miraculous infallibility, or transferring to any man, or set of men, the rights of Divine Authority, but ever guiding into an increasing measure of the knowledge of the Truth of Christ. What better then, can we, and how more fitly can we build for the future than by continuing to proclaim this much needed truth, the antidote to infidelity, the strength and comfort of the Church.

"We look forward; and having the presence of the Lord, what more can we want for any possible to-morrow? His purposes are to unfold, no doubt. His kingdom is to stretch to the ends of the earth, but the King and the kingdom are here now. For the individual Christian the promise is

fulfilled 'the pure in heart shall see God.' In His presence now there is fulness of joy, and at His right hand-where the disciples of Christ dwell-there are pleasures for evermore. The foretaste of the heavenly Church is already in a very true sense ours if the Spirit of Christ is dwelling within us. And for the universal Christian Church the golden age is not in the past. To hold that it was there is a pagan conception. Nor is it in essence, but only in development in the future, and the development, we believe, can be only on the lines that are the truest in the present. If ye are Christ's and Christ is God's, all things are yours, and the full enjoyment of them is arrested, not because some fresh gift from God is needed, which only the blind and unbelieving heart can have the effrontery to ask for, but because of our own want of faith in the Divine and the Almighty powers that stand waiting around us. This great principle, which is the central principle of the Church of the present, we believe must stand in the same relation to the Church of the future. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is with us up to the full measure of our capacity to receive Him, and that He never can be more than that either in this world or in the world to come, earthly or heavenly. How else do we want Him, or rather how else can we have Him? What is wanted, therefore, is increase of capacity, on our part, and not any fresh revelation on His part. The brightest visions of the future become temptations when they draw away our eyes from beholding the living Lord who is standing by us. We look for a new heaven and a new earth wherein righteousness dwells; for the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. With deeper faith we should see that the new heavens and earth are nineteen centuries of age, though still but young; that the eternal city has long since had its foundation laid, its design mapped out, and its golden streets begun here amongst men. We sometimes long for a 'second coming,' both physically and spiritually impossible, while if we appreciated the first, we should so rejoice in its blessedness that we should feel it to be enough and infinite. We

are told that evil is gathering itself together with tremendous force; that the time is at hand when Babylon shall seem triumphant; that a period of persecution must set in, and the disciples in their sufferings shall be brought together, and the whole Church shall be firmly united in a compact body. Then the Lord shall suddenly come, and the long and weary waiting of His saints shall cease, and be rewarded. Brethren, on this occasion one of us must not presume for a moment to speak for another, but such a prospect as this seems to take all the heart out of one. It seems to banish Jesus Christ to regions beyond the stars. At any rate, we may safely say that Independency knows nothing of a Christ that is to be,' and that some happy bells are to ring in, at a point in the future, remote and even imperceptible in the distance, or possibly at a near fixed date, reached by arbitrary and cabalistic calculations founded on confused misrepresentations of Daniel and the Apocalypse."

If this be the voice of corporate Congregationalism, I fervently desire that myself, and all whom I love, may be delivered from it for ever. I believe it to teach genuine Antichristianism in an incipent, but in a deadly form. I believe it to lead to Babylon, Antichrist and Tophet, not to God. Only in name do we receive Scripture, if we listen to a voice like this.

APPENDIX.

(A.)

EXTRACTS FROM HIPPOLYTUS.

HIPPOLYTUS was a bishop and Christian martyr, who lived at the close of the second and beginning of the third century. He is said by Eusebius, to have lived in the reign of Geta, the son of Severus (Euseb. lib. vi. c. 20)-by others he is mentioned as living in the reign of Severus, who died about A.D. 204. Hippolytus wrote much on Scripture. His chief work that has descended to us is a Treatise on Antichrist.

Tillemont, in his "Comment on the Ecclesiastical History of the First Six Centuries," mentions him thus (vol. iii. p. 246):

Hippolytus composed a book concerning Antichrist, on the occasion of a conversation which he had with a certain Theophilus, to whom he dedicated it, whom he calls his most beloved brother, and whom he again and again admonishes not to make that which he had written known to unbelievers, who have no other thought than to challenge and revile the truth (ut veritatem lacessant blasphemiis),