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knowledge. And whatsoever the designing or the deceived among them may say of the English Church, she knows too well the Catholic traditions to lend much heed to their unreasonable criminations. She is clear from any position or practice which can bring her under even the surmise of heresy and schism; and in all her dealing with those that anathematize her, she would follow His temper who bids us render" not railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing." Such being her state and posture of heart, she freely enjoys spiritual communion with Christ the Head of all, and with His mystical body, the " garden enclosed, the fountain sealed, the spring of living water," and with all the saints of God in the court of heaven.

GENERAL CONCLUSION.

HAVING now gone, as far as I have been able, through the course of the subject, I may shortly state the sum of the Catholic doctrine of unity, and with a few obvious remarks bring this work to an end.

We have seen, then, that there is a doctrine of unity, which, as a part of the Gospel of Christ, is the matter of a Christian man's belief: we have found that doctrine to be a part of the first elements of Christian faith, professed by every candidate for baptism we have found also that the testimony of inspired and uninspired men delivers to us one definite and consistent scheme of unity, which accords both with the moral design of God revealed in Holy Scripture, and with the moral government of God unfolded in the history of mankind. The one Church, then, is the one only body to which, by the act of God, the salvation of Christ is by revealed pledges assured; and this one only body is proposed to us as an object both of faith and of sense. It is an object of faith in so far as it is invisible; and an

object of sense in so far as it is visible in the world. It is invisible in so far as it comprehends retrospectively all saints, from righteous Abel to this day, now gathered in the world unseen; and prospectively all who by the election of God shall hereafter be made members of it unto the end of time. It is visible in so far as, throughout the whole world, there is a body of men professing the Catholic faith under their lawful pastors; although to each man only that particular portion in which his own regeneration has been ordained is truly visible. But it is this member of the Church Catholic which is to each man the witness of the whole. It is to him the symbol of the whole object of faith, and the representative of the whole subject of sense. The Diocesan Church is to him the pledge of the Church Universal, ecclesia in Episcopo. His own pastor, and the altar where he communicates in the Eucharistical sacrifice, is the test and the centre of all duties and obligations of love and loyalty; and to it he does the homage which he owes to the one holy Church throughout all the world. Such is the actual and the representative character of every Catholic altar. It is both an integral portion and a proxy of the whole Church, and a discipline and probation of the whole man.

Now, upon the sum of this doctrine I would make one or two remarks. And, first of all, it must be observed that the doctrine of unity here affirmed is grounded upon the positive ordinances

and revelations of God. It is a doctrine antecedent to the realization of unity in the Church; an objective idea declared by revelation antecedent to its objective manifestation in the world. The importance of this remark will be felt when it is remembered how easily and almost certainly the mind of man is biassed by the phenomena, whether truly or falsely apprehended, which appear before his eyes. The understanding is perpetually usurping upon the reason, first thrusting upon it false deductions, and then limiting its clearer and broader perceptions by the narrow reach of observation. As so many instances of this may be taken the many theories of Catholic unity; each one being a consequence of some imaginary principle assumed either à priori, from anticipations of what it should be, or, à posteriori, from observation of the existing anomalies of Christendom. There can be no doubt that most theories of Church unity are nothing more than either pious and charitable endeavours to adjust a scheme which shall embrace all professing Christians, or a refined hypothesis which shall serve some proximate design. There can be no doubt that the reason why many minds abandon the doctrine of unity, as it was believed by Christendom for fifteen hundred years, is that they are at a loss how to square with it the anomalies of the last three centuries. But for the unhappy rending of the Western Church, no man would have any more dreamed of gainsaying the mystery of the visible Church than of the visible

Sacraments. Men's minds have been bribed by their wishes, or perplexed by their difficulties, into lower and looser conceptions of unity. The doctrine here affirmed is affected by no such prejudice. It is a definite and substantive part of the original revelation; a mystery, a positive institution, having its basis in the wisdom and will of God. Its partial realization in the world, its many seeming defeats, and apparent anomalies, make no more against the truth and certainty of it than the contravention of immutable morality, the difficulties in the probation of individual men, and the partial extent of Christianity against the Gospel itself.

And this brings me to a second remark, namely, that this doctrine of unity can be shown to be false only by evidence the same in kind with that by which it has been here shown to be true, namely, by the Holy Scripture, and by the consent and practice of the Church, down to the time when the first anomalies arose on the face of Christendom. It must be perfectly obvious to every reasoning mind, that the condition of a part of Western Europe during the last three centuries cannot avail to unsettle the fixed rule of the Catholic Church for

fifteen hundred years. We may, indeed, be unable to find any common term under which to bring both the Apostolical Churches and the self-originated communities of Christendom. It is impossible to find any scheme which shall not either exclude those communities from the unity of the Church,

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