sibly draw you in further than you were aware into the ways and spirit of the world. Perhaps by and by you might be led even into their diversions, which you know can never be done to the glory of God. Perhaps you may, by little and little, become partaker of their sins, at least by your silence at their idle words, or oaths. There's no standing neuter in the midst of worldly men.

"We must, or imitate, or disapprove,

Must list as their accomplices, or foes."

That you may use the world as not abusing it, and live above it while in it, is the earnest prayer of yours most affectionately, C. WESLEY.

To Mr. Blackwell.

Bristol, January 24th, 1753.

DEAR SIR,—I have just now received your very obliging letter, and, with my wife, sincerely thank you for it.

We are truly sensible of your kind intentions towards us. You are a friend to my brother, a friend to me, and a friend to our common Master.

Your desire is alone sufficient to bring us to town: but my wife will do nothing without consulting her relations; and I have neither power nor inclination to force her. (As for me, I am quite out of the question.) We join in cordial respects to Mrs. Blackwell and Mrs. Dewal. I am, dear Sir, more than ever, your obliged and affectionate servant, C. WESLEY.

Bristol, February 2d, 1753. DEAR SIR,-Your Christian intention is quite obvious. You can have no other end in troubling yourself about our affairs but the establishment of true brotherly love and harmony. The only means to this end you apprehend to be mine and my wife's immediate presence in town. To this we answer, We will come when we shall have convenient time; but immediately we cannot, for reasons which it would be impertinent to trouble you with. I thought Mr. Perronet had had a copy of the settlement. "Tis fit my brother should have an extract of what concerns himself. My thanks are poor recompence; but if my prayers are heard, the blessing of the peacemakers will rest upon you for your kindness to, dear Sir, your most obliged and affectionate servant, C. WESLEY.

Mrs. Jones's, at Fonmon-Castle, Glamorganshire,

South Wales, August 26th, 1746.

DEAR MADAM,-I have often thought of writing to you, because I always have you in my heart, and desire above all things that you may be conformed to the image of the Son of God. God has showed you his goodness plenteously, and strove to win your heart from the world by a series of miraculous mercies. How often has he lifted you up from the gates of death! How often has he weighed down your spirit unto seriousness by his fatherly corrections! He has chosen you in the furnace of affliction, and walked with you in it, and brought you out of it, and tried you every way, and every moment. What has he spoken to you in all these gracious visitations, but, "My child, give me thy heart?"

But has my dear friend obeyed the repeated call? Are you crucified to the world, and the world to you? wholly taken up with the one thing needful? Do you look steadily unto the things unseen; eternal? Is the residue of your days entirely devoted to God in serious, thankful love? Answer these questions, my friend, not to me, but to God and your own

conscience. And if you are still conformed to the world, more or less, and if you do not yet love much, O stir yourself up to lay hold of the Lord, and labour more abundantly, having obtained mercy. Work: work out your salvation, before the night cometh, &c. Be a widow indeed! this is "Desolate," (cut off from the world,) trusting in God, and continuing in prayer and supplication night and day. You have no time to lose. Every moment is precious; and, if well employed, will add a jewel to your crown. Let me, then, conjure you, my dear friend and sister, to break off entirely that friendship with the world which is enmity with God. God and your own heart will tell you whose conversation forwards and whose stops you in the way to heaven. Remember, by your words you shall be justified, or by your words you shall be condemned. The Lord forgive you and me all our idle words, and give us grace and resolution from this moment to have all our conversation in heaven!

I have found time for this long letter by a particular providence, having sprained my foot a fortnight ago, which still confines me to my room; and I am not yet able to set it to the ground. I promise myself the pleasure of your answer to this. Your letter will find me here, and assure me, I trust, that my plain dealing is not disagreeable to you. My excuse (if it needs one) is that I love and honour you, and hope to live with you for ever, where is no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, nor pain!

"Partner of this heavenly hope,

Travel on and meet me there!"

A few more weary steps, and the days of our mourning are ended. Till then remember your brother and companion in tribulation, and pray always for me, that I may save my own soul, and those that hear me.

Your ever affectionate,

C. WESLEY.

To Mrs. Sparrow, at Lewisham, in Kent.

To Mr. William Perronet, No. 1, Mead's-Court, Dean-Street, Soho. Bristol, February 12th, 1756. DEAR WILL.,-Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation. If sinners entice thee, consent thou not. Principiis obsta.

Keep evil communication at a distance. The grace of the Lord Jesus is sufficient for you, were you weaker, and your enemies stronger, than they are. You did not go to London to keep company, but to mind your business, and get established in it. Improve all your leisure hours, that is, all the time you are not at the hospital, in reading, thinking, and praying. We are, you may believe, somewhat concerned for your well-doing. Watch and pray always, that you may be counted worthy to escape the judgments coming on the world, and to stand before the Son of Man. The Lord bless and preserve you unto that day! Farewell.

C. WESLEY.

Manchester, October 23d, 1756. DEAR WILL.,-Watch and pray. Watching implies early rising. Pray; that is, enter into thy closet. The first hour should always be sacred. Carry this point, and the world, the flesh, and the devil shall fall before C. WESLEY. you.

VOL. IV. FOURTH SERIES.

2 x

CHRISTIAN UNION.

Ir is important to consider well what Christianity is, in order to see why there should be a Christian union, and how to proceed for its attainment. It follows from the nature of Christianity, that Christians are not simply individuals placed by the side of one another, but that they are a real and living unity.

Christianity is neither an abstract doctrine, nor an external organization: it is a life communicated to mankind, or rather to the church. "The life was manifested," says the beloved Apostle, "we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us," and by which we are passed from death unto life. (1st Epistle of John.)

This new life given to redeemed man is contained essentially in the person of Jesus Christ. It was given him of the Father "to have life in himself;" but this life is given to all those who are united to Christ: a union which is assured by believing in certain divine facts accomplished by him,—in his humble incarnation, in his expiatory death, in his glorious resurrection. The eternal life which is communicated by Christianity being "in the Son," (1 John v.,) faith, by establishing between the Son of God and the believer an intimate, real, mysterious union, becomes by this very act the source of religious life, or of eternal life, in man.

But from this intimate union of the Christian with Christ, there results necessarily an intimate union of the Christian with all who receive the life of Christ. The eternal life which is in Jesus, and which flows for me, is the same which flows for my Presbyterian, Baptist, or Episcopal brother in London, Geneva, New-York, Tahiti, Calcutta ; so that the life which is in me is identically the life which is in them. Christians are not then a mere plurality; they are also, they are especially, a living and organic unity. To deny plurality in regard to the existence of Christians, would be folly; but to deny unity would be hardly less absurd.

Now this unity, this organization, this body, all the members of which have but one head, one blood, one life, is the evangelical union, the Christian society, the church.

Just as all the members of my body have an intimate and undefinable relation with one another, because the same life animates them, the same head makes them move, so every Christian finds himself really and indissolubly united to all other Christians by an identical relation with the same Saviour. This is what is called "the communion of saints." This communion is not only a system, a doctrine,—it is a reality, a fact which exists in the world, as certainly as the union of the members of the same body.

There can be really no Christian union in the church, unless it proceed from the spiritual and internal fact which I have mentioned. Our part is not to make a Christian union, but rather to recognise it, to exhibit it, to take away the obstacles which hinder it from having free course. Christian union must proceed first of all from unity of spirit. The whole theory of Christian unity is found in these words of the beloved disciple: "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God; and every one that loveth him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of him."-D'Aubigne's Preface to the American Tract Society's Edition of the History of the Reformation.

643

ON THE PAPAL SUPREMACY OF ROME.

FROM POPERY DELINEATED," BY THE REV. THOMAS HARTWELL HORNe.

(Concluded from page 533.)

"VI. THE Bishop of Rome is called 'the Pope,' (which word signifies 'Father,') because he is the spiritual father of all the faithful, according to these words addressed by Jesus Christ to St. Peter, Feed my lambs; feed my sheep; (John xxi. 15 ;) and again, I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.' (Matt. xvi. 19.) "

The passages of Scripture here cited have no relation whatever to the purpose for which they are produced by Papists.

1. The words, "Feed my lambs; feed my sheep," (John xxi. 15-17,) addressed to Peter, are considered as the formal investiture of that Apostle with the superintendence of the whole church. "But, to say nothing of the fact, that there is no reference here to the Pope's supremacy, or to a successor to Peter, how, on the one hand, is the phenomenon to be accounted for, of the total absence from the New Testament of any palpable evidence that Peter was at that time really clothed with such authority; and why, on the other, should not these words be regarded as a sufficient expla nation of the triple commission, that the Apostle had been guilty of a triple denial of his Lord? Peter might have deemed himself, even after his bitter repentance and restoration, utterly unworthy of a place among the Apostles of Christ, had it not been for such a striking address."* In fact, let the reader only read the context of John xxi. 15-17; and he must perceive that the commands to Peter, "Feed my lambs; feed my sheep," were evidently intended, not to confer a new dignity upon him, but to restore him to his former dignity as an Apostle, by a threefold re-investment corresponding with his having thrice fallen by his base denials of his Master. "Bellarmine's distinction between lambs and sheep, as signifying the laity and Clergy, is very trifling; nor can any example of the like distinction be produced. It is much more natural to suppose in general that 'lambs' here (as in Isai. xl. 11, and many other places) may signify the meanest of the flock, which it is by no means to be taken for granted that the laity always are. So that, on the whole, this argument for the Pope's supremacy seems almost as contemptible as that which some writers of the Romish communion have drawn from these words, to prove that heretics, though Princes, are to be put to death by authority derived from Peter, because feeding the flock' implies a power of killing wolves." +

2. Matt. xvi. 19 affords as little support as the passage cited from John xxi. 15-17, to the assertion of Papists, that Peter, and through him his successors, were here solemnly invested with the power of admitting men into the kingdom of heaven, and of granting to believers, or withholding from them, at their pleasure, indulgences, or the remission of the temporal punishment due to sins. These words, however, conferred no peculiar power or prerogative on Peter; for they were addressed to all the Apostles in Matt. xviii. 18: "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." These words, "binding" and "loosing," are used by Jewish writers in the

*Cochrane's Protestant Manual, vol. i., p. 375.

+ Bayle, Commentaire Philosophique, tom. i., p. 82. sec. 201. Note on John xxi. 15.

Doddridge's Expositor,

sense of affirming or denying any precept of the law which might be in dispute. Their meaning, therefore, is, that Jesus Christ committed to the Apostles the dispensing of his Gospel to the world, by which he authorized them to dissolve the obligations of the Mosaic law, and to give other rules to the Christian church, in which they should be so visibly aided by the divine presence, that it should be evident that their decrees were ratified in heaven.

So again, in John xx. 23: "Whosesoever sins ye shall remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." Hence Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, rightly concluded, "that what is said to Peter is said to the Apostles:"* and Theophylact explicitly states, that "although it is said to Peter only, 'I will give thee the keys,' yet the keys were granted to all the Apostles."+ Peter was addressed, in Matt. xvi. 18, not as the representative of the Popes of Rome, but as the representative of the other Apostles.

3. What sort of "spiritual fathers of all the faithful" the Popes have been, "the kind and well-minded Protestant" will be enabled to judge for himself by considering the following historical facts, selected out of many which might be adduced.

Bellarmine asserts that heresy breaks the Papal succession. We have seen that several infallible Popes were heretics. We might, indeed, fill a volume with details of the crimes of the "spiritual fathers of all the faithful," would our limits permit. But we must confine ourselves to observing that, in the ninth and tenth centuries, not fewer than fifty Popes succeeded one another on the pontifical throne, of which they made themselves masters by fraud, by money, and by the influence of their strumpets. Of what shameful excesses they were guilty, let the following declarations of two Popish historians bear witness :

"What, then," says Baronius, "was the face of the holy Roman Church? How exceedingly foul was it! when the most powerful and most sordid strumpets ruled at Rome, by whose will sees were changed, Bishops were presented, and—what is more horrid to hear, and unutterable—false Pontiffs, their lovers," [this being the case, what becomes of the Papal succession from Peter?]" were intruded into the chair of Peter, who are only written in the catalogue of Roman Pontiffs in order to mark the times. For, who can say (or affirm) that those who were illegally intruded by harlots of this description, were lawful Roman Pontiffs! There was no mention whatever made of the Clergy electing or afterwards approving; all the canons were closed in silence; the decrees of the Pontiffs were quashed; the ancient traditions [were] proscribed, and the ancient customs in electing a Pope, and the sacred ceremonies and pristine usages [or usages of former days] were wholly extinct. Thus mad lust, relying upon the secular power, and stimulated with rage for dominion, claimed everything for itself. Then, as it seems, Christ was evidently in a deep sleep; when, these winds blowing so strongly, the ship itself was carried with the waves." §

* Ambrose on Psalm xxxviii. Operum tom. i., p. 858. Paris, 1690. Theophylact, Comment. in Matt. xvi. 19, p. 94. Lut. Par. 1631. De Rom. Pontif., lib. ii., c. 30. Est ergo quinta opinio vera, etc.

Quæ tunc facies sanctæ Ecclesiæ Romanæ ? Quam fœdissima! cum Romæ dominarentur potentissimæ æquè ac sordidissima meretrices, quarum arbitrio mutarentur sedes, darentur Episcopi, et, quod auditu horrendum ac infandum est, intraderentur in sedem Petri earum amantes pseudo-Pontifices, qui non sint, nisi ad consignanda tempora, in catalogo Romanorum Pontificum scripti. Quis enim, a scortis hujus