NATURE AND OFFICE OF THE CHURCH.

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for April, 1844.]

WE have received the following letter without name or iate, but post-marked "Philadelphia, January 10." It probably was not intended for publication, but we insert it, because it affords us an opportunity to offer a few additional remarks, not uncalled for, on certain points touched upon in the article on The Church Question, and because it is only in this way that we can acknowledge its reception. Should the writer address us again, we hope he will give us his name, for he wants not the capacity to render it honorable, be it what it may.

"SIR-I have been reading the first number of your Review with deep attention and admiring interest. You have the power of doing good or evil beyond most men of our age and country, and with it a fearful responsibility. God has blessed you with a fearless heart, and a tongue, as you rightly say, trumpet-toned,' and, what is better, true to your heart's convictions. With those convictions mine harmonize, in

many of the great points to which you call attention. But in some, to me, of all-absorbing interest, I believe you wrong, and think I see why you are wrong.

'Most truly do you set forth the rights and powers of the living Body of the Son of God. Of its nature and office you have yet to learn.

"How can you, who so powerfully appeal to the 'fact of eighteen hundred years?' set aside the historical view, by which, alone, you get at that fact? History teaches you and the world, that the church of God is, and has been, through eighteen centuries. To history I appeal, to show what it is, (in its external development-its shell, in which the meat must be, and without which there can be no meat) and where it has been. By the same evidence by which I know that God has ordained a man, in and by whom to redeem and judge the world, by that same evidence I know how this life has been perpetuated, and is to be, until his coming again. The inner life of the church no history can touch-it is a thing of experience, and experience only. But the organized life of the one Body has been seen, heard, looked upon, and handled, from the day of the apostles until now. Your own beautiful adaptation of the fable of the quest of Isis seems excellently to point out the яpôτov yεdov of your present view of the church you are so nobly disposed to serve. Why did not Isis succeed in revivifying the re-collected fragments of the torn body of the good Osiris ?' Because the reproductive organs had

been lost. Typhon had whelmed them in the sea-that symbol of the storm-tossed, noisy multitude, who have no ear for history, no eye for the seal of God's own signet. Were you right—which you most certainly are not-in supposing the sects to be the fragments, yet instinct with life, of Christ's living body, some one of them must have, and develope, the reproductive power, before that Body can be revivified by reuniting. You long for the μία πίστις and the ἔν βάπτισμα. How is it you have not seen that the latter must precede the former, and that it is the result of the μia kλ615 (ỷ kλñб15 of Paul) which is a thing of history. Whom has God commissioned to baptize men into the Body of his Son ? and how is that commission known? is the concerning question of our day. Settle that, and church authority can show itself, ay, and develope itself, too. "But your theory of development is wrong. Most truly you assert a continuous inspiration. But of what kind? of invention? of addition? No; but of living breath, of vocal utterance, of articulate expression of the ONE, unchangeable, changeless, Eternal Word. God changes not. Man changes not. The world changes not. Its phases are phases only; the one message which was from the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. With it the church came into the world, and goes on her way through it, Her progress is a progress toward eternity, not in time.

"Go on, Sir, in your outspoken zeal; but beware of speaking with out searching further. You are yet but a 'forscher'; you have grappled a fragment of the truth, and a precious one, but not the whole. You have vibrated from your ultra Protestant position at the beginning of your course, to the other extreme of the arc of oscillation. You have yet to find the centre. Believe all you do of the church's life, and work; but neglect not her organization. You have but one half of the 'mystery' which Paul saw symbolized in human marriage. You know the church as the Body of Christ. You have yet to know her as his Bride, on whom he is ever begetting children, who are to her instead of fathers (Ps. 45.) the means of perpetuating herself in time and for eternity. You know the being and the power of the living Temple of the Almighty; do not, I entreat you, blind yourself and others to its mission.”

Our anonymous friend and correspondent mistakes, entirely, the questions we were discussing, and the general bearing of our remarks. If he had paid more attention to the questions we ourselves raised, and less to those with which he himself is preoccupied, he would have spared us his objections. In what we said on the church question, we were not required to enter largely into the question of the nature and office of the church.

We raised the question indeed, stated it to be the great and paramount question of the day; but we did not undertake to answer it, for we had, at that time, another object in view. Our real purpose was to show, 1. That, throughout

Christendom, there is a strong tendency to return to the unity and catholicity of the church; 2. That, to effect this return, it is necessary to take up the great question of the church itself; 3. That this question may be taken up and discussed in the freest and fullest manner, in any or all of our professedly Christian communions; 4. That the answer, the germs of which each sect may find in its present faith, so far as it believes in the church at all, once obtained, all particular communions will be destroyed, by being absorbed in the catholic communion.

Now, with what thought could we have written this? On what does our argument rest for its validity? And on what conditions could the means we suggested be adequate to the end we proposed? Supposing we understood ourselves, and were not merely sporting with our readers, we must have implied, what indeed we stated; 1. That men have broken away from the church because they have lost the sense of its profound significance; and, 2. That the recovery of this sense, that is, a full understanding of the true nature and office of the church, will bring them back to the one catholic communion, because, the moment they come to perceive the true nature and office of the church, they must perceive that a church not one and catholic, can be no church at all? Does this imply ignorance of the nature and office of the church on our part?

We assure our friend that, if he supposed we were sug gesting a plan for making up, creating, or reconstructing a catholic church, he did us great injustice. Our inquiry was not, How may the church recover its unity and catholicity? but, How may professedly Christian communions find their way back to the one catholic church? The church has never lost its unity and catholicity, for it cannot lose them without ceasing to be the church of God. The church never stands in need of reform. The censures we bestowed, in our remarks, were not bestowed on the church as an organization, but on the church, in the modern Protestant sense, as an assemblage of individuals; that is, upon churchmen. The church was as pure in the days of Luther and Calvin, as it was in the days of the apostles, though, doubtless, many of its members, and some of its dignitaries, even, were corrupt, and abused their powers and privileges. The reform we demand is never of the institution, but of the individuals. We believe in no church that can ever need reforming.

We do not overlook the church as an organization, for the church, in any other sense, is to us no church at all. The church is an organic body, existing in time and space, under one visible as well as invisible Head, with one common centre of life, out from which, through communion, flows the life to all its members. We may, indeed, recognize a holy brotherhood, the spiritual priesthood, the invisible church, as some call it, composed of all holy persons, whether in this world or the other, the grand communion of the saints; but this is not what we mean by the catholic church. The catholic church is the divinely instituted body to prepare us for admission into this glorious company of the saints. Like that Gospel net, it gathers all, both good and bad; for we come into it, not because we are sanctified, but that, through its ministries, we may be sanctified. Through its ministries Christ, who is its head, its life, and its efficacy, works for our redemption from sin, and reconciliation with the Father, and our practical holiness.

We do not set aside, nor count of little consequence, the historical view of the church. If our correspondent had read what we said, with a little more attention, he would not have suspected us of doing so. The Christian world is broken up into particular communions. Whence the cause? In the fact that churchmen have lost the profound significance of the church. What is the remedy? To take up the question of the church itself, and ascertain what it is, what its nature, rights, duties, mean. Now, this question, we said, and we say still, cannot be answered by the historical method of the Oxford divines; for the very simple reason that it is not a question which relates to the history of the church, but to its philosophy. The historical method is the proper method, when the question is, which is the church? but not when the question is, what is the church? And it was only in relation to this last question, that we asserted its insufficiency.

We do not agree with our correspondent as to the order in which the several problems, relating to the church, should be taken up. He wishes us to go, in the first place, into history, and ascertain which is the catholic church; and afterwards come to the question, what is the church. But, if we know not what the church is, before we go into history, how shall we know what to look for? Or how shall we know when we have or have not, found the catholic church? The great evil under which we suffer is not so

much wrong-churchism, as it is no-churchism. The great mass of the people have no real, serious, earnest belief, in the church at all. They see no necessity for it, nor why they cannot just as well commune with Christ without, as with, union with his body. Nay; they look upon the church as something interposed between them and Christ, and as separating them from him who is the life of the soul, instead of uniting them to him. It is, in fact, to the great mass, either a stumbling-block, or foolishness. They have lost the sense of the profound mystery of the Incarnation, and will own no church but what they term holy principle, by virtue of which, every man is, or may be, his own priest, and his own church. A reaction has, doubtless, commenced against this no-churchism; but the great mass are still unbelievers in the necessity of the church as the instrument, in the hands of God, of bringing us to Christ. Here is the fact our correspondent overlooks. He supposes the age already ripe for the question, Which is the church? But the age demands first, to be shown that any church at all is necessary. Before you appeal to history to determine what body God hath commissioned to baptize, you must prove that baptism itself is necessary, and that an outward divine commission to baptize is essential. Before all, then, we repeat it, the great question is, the question of the church itself. What is the church here for? What is its nature? What is its mission? What are its rights? What is its authority? What the ground of its authority? What the principle of its operation, and efficiency? These are the questions which are to be answered, and these are not to be answered by appeals to history, but by profound meditation on the philosophy of the church, and on the nature and constitution of things in general. These are great questions, and not to be answered by a few quotations from the fathers.

Nor is this all. Broach the question of which is the church, before men are well grounded in what the church. is, and you only provoke the wrath of rival communions, aggravate the evils of sectarianism, already so intolerable, and put still further off the day of union and catholicity. There are some questions, which the wise man, however firmly persuaded in his own mind, will adjourn till they can be profitably discussed.

We accept what the writer of the letter says of the reproductive powers of the church, and should regard our