If these considerations be duly weighed, we will not be greatly surprised that so little progress has been made in the work of composing differences among Christians. Since the period of the Reformation, attempts of this kind have been frequently made in reference to various parties; some proposing to unite the denominations commonly called evangelical, or which differ only as to forms of government and worship; others extending their views to Arminians and Calvinists; while others have engaged in the preposterous undertaking of effecting a reconciliation between Papists and Protestants. But though these designs have been prosecuted with great zeal, and sometimes by men of acknowledged talents and piety, whose exertions have been backed by those who had great influence with the contending parties, they have generally failed altogether, or led to no permanently good results; and sometimes they have tended to inflame the quarrel, to place the parties at a greater distance from one another, and to create new confusions and divisions. Sensible of these difficulties, and despairing of being able to remove them by the ordinary mode of conference, explanations, and discussion, many have come to adopt the opinion that there is but one way of putting an end to the divisions of the church; that is, by abstracting totally the points of difference, consigning all the controversies which have arisen to oblivion, and bringing together the separate parties on the undebatable ground which is common to all. A remedy which would prove worse than the disease-an expedient which would lay the basis of union on the grave of all those valuable truths and institutions which have been involved in the disputes of different parties, and which constitute the firm and sacred bonds of ecclesiastical confederation and communion. Is this desirable event, then, altogether hopeless? Is it vain to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, or to make any attempts for its restoration? Is there no balm by whose virtue, no physician by whose skill, the bleeding wounds of the Church may be closed? Every person who loves the truth and peace" will reply, God forbid that this should be the case! DISCOURSE II. EZEKIEL XXXvii. 19.-" They shall be ONE in "mine hand." HAVING taken a view of the scriptural unity of the church, and of the nature and causes of those divisions by which it is broken, let us now turn our eye to a more agreeable and cheering prospect. III. Of the Removal of the divisions of the church, and the Restoration of her violated unity. 1. A happy reunion of the divided church is promised in the word of God. It is implied in those promises which secure to the church the enjoyment of a high degree of prosperity in the latter days in which God engages to arise and have mercy on Zion, to be favourable to his people, pardon their iniquity and hear their prayers, cause their reproach to cease, and make them a praise, a glory, and a rejoicing, in all the earth; in one word, in which he promises to pour out his holy Spirit and revive his work. God cannot be duly glorified, religion cannot triumph in the world, the church cannot be prosperous and happy, until her internal dissensions are abated, and her children come to act in greater unison and concert. But when her God vouchsafes to make the light of his countenance to shine upon her, and sheds down the enlightening, reviving, restorative and sanctifying influences of his Spirit, the long delayed, long wished-for day, will not be far distant. It will have already dawned. But there are, in the Bible, promises that bear directly on this part of the Church's felicity, and pledge the divine faithfulness for the restoration of her lost peace and violated unity. Some of these I shall lay before you as grounds of your faith, and encouragements to your hopes and endeavours. I begin with the declaration of the evangelical prophet, which has been often reechoed in the prayers of the friends of Zion, and which deserves your particular attention from its occupying a place in the midst of promises referring immediately to the times of the New Testament: "Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing ; they shall see eye to eye when the Lord shall bring again Zion." The divisions and distractions of the church have, in every age, been greatly owing to the conduct of her overseers and guardians. If they "follow their own spirit, and *Isa. lii. 8. peace, see a lying divination," how can it he expected that they shall " go up into the gaps, to make up the hedge, or stand in the battle in the day of the Lord * ?" If in giving forth instructions respecting sin and duty, danger and safety, their voices be dissonant and contradictory, must they not cause great distress and perplexity to their people, and prove, instead of messenof gers "the snare of a fowler in all their ways, and hatred in the house of their God+?" How cheering, then, the assurance that they "shall see eye to eye" in the matters of God, and lift up their united voice in "publishing salvation, and saying to Zion, Thy God reigneth!”— To this may be added another passage from the same prophecy which bears an equally undoubted reference to the latter days, although clothed in Old Testament language: " He shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the enmity of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim." Then, instead of waging an unnatural 'war, and forming ungodly alliances to enable them the more effectually to harrass one another, they shall, with united strength, assail the avowed enemies of religion : "They shall fly upon. the shoulders of the Philistines; they shall lay * Ezek. xiii. 2-6. Mic. vii 4. Hos. ix. 8. C |