Christian's course can be made with that ministry, and how impossible without it!

"In a word, their steps are dark, their ministrations mysterious; suited rather to the office of a priest of some heathen mythology than of ambassadors from Christ, ministers of the everlasting gospel, whose feet are beautiful upon the mountains, as those that bring glad tidings, that publish peace.

"The aspect which it wears towards those of other communions is fearful in the extreme. No purity of faith, no labor of love, no personal piety, no manifestation of the fruits of the Spirit, will avail any thing. Though steadfast in faith, joyful through hope, and rooted in charity, they pass not through the eye of this needle, and shall not see the kingdom of God."

The great evil of such a system is, that it is a religion. of forms, of mysterious rites and awful prerogatives. Heaven in mercy save us from such a religion which sub. stitutes these things for the gospel of the grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. To Episcopacy in any form, the one great objection which includes almost all others is, that unavoidably, if not intentionally, it encourages that besetting sin of man,-the innate propensity to substitute the outward form for the inward spirit of religion.

We close, therefore, this protracted view of the Governernment and Worship of the Primitive Church, with a deep impression of the wisdom from on high, that guided the apostles in adopting an organization at once so simple and so efficient in promoting the great ends for which the church of Christ was instituted, and in establishing those forms of worship, simple and impressive, which most happily promote that spirituality and sincerity in the worship of God, which alone are well pleasing in his sight. Nor can we resist the conviction, that the substitution of the Episcopal government and worship for the apostolical, was an

efficient cause, if not the principal occasion, of that degeneracy and formality, which soon succeeded to the primitive spirituality and purity of the church. The elegant and forcible language of Robert Hall is the happiest expression which we can give of the conclusion to which we are brought, on the review of the whole subject. "The descent of the human mind, from the spirit to the letter, from what is vital and intellectual to what is ritual and external in religion, is the true source of idolatry and superstition in all the multifarious forms which they have assumed; and as it began early to corrupt the religion of nature, or more properly of patriarchal tradition, so it soon obscured the lustre and destroyed the simplicity of the Christian institute. In proportion as genuine devotion declined, the love of pomp and ceremony increased. The few and simple rites of Christianity were extolled beyond all reasonable bounds; new ones were invented, to which mysterious meanings were attached! till the religion of the New Testament became in process of time as insupportable as the Mosaic law."

Bengel, Erklarung. Offenbarung.,161.

Antioch, Conc., 63, 74, 276, 278, Bernaldus, Constantiensis, 224.

Burton's History of the Christian | Eutychius of Alexandria, 186, 187.
Church, 51, 100, 202.

Echell. Abr., Eutychius Vindicatus, Hefele, C. J. ed. of Clem. ad Cor.,