gaining your attention to any sound argument of sober discussion on this subject. I know that here your education—your habits-your mode of thinkingyour conversation, as well as your personal interest, present a manifold and close covering against the admission of one beam of the light of truth. You feel as if your all was concerned in holding up "the Cause:" if that should fall, you must fall with it— must retire back into those more honourable stations in life, whence ye have risen. Yet as many of your Ministering Brethren have lately abandoned their Dissenting notions, and conformed to the Church, I do not despair of seeing many more follow their honourable and laudable example. And if any thing which I may advance be the means, in ever so trifling a degree, of producing such a happy effect, or of enabling some of your people who are earnestly bent upon their eternal welfare, to see the erroneous nature of their sentiments, and the great evil of schism, my labour shall not have been in vain, and I shall be perfectly satisfied. I am, With all becoming respect, Your most obedient and humble Servant, L. S. E. ON LETTER II. CONGREGATIONAL INDEPENDENT CHURCHES. SIR, HAVING Occupied my last with Introductory Observations, I now come more immediately to the subject in hand; fully confident that I shall be able to place before you such statements as will be sufficient to convince every candid enquirer after truth, that I am not without substantial reasons for rejecting Dissent, and embracing the religion of the Established Church;-reasons strong, manifold, and incontrovertible, drawn from an attentive and careful comparison, of Congregational Independency and the Established Church with each other, and both with the Word of God. And as you are ever ostentatiously asserting that the Word of God, and that alone, is your only rule of faith and practice, I undertake to show that such assertions are utterly false, by proving that your whole system is entirely destitute of any foundation whatever in the Sacred Scriptures. In order to do this, the signification of the word “ Church," so frequently occurring in the New Testament, must first be determined. Mr. James, of Birmingham, says, and after him in similar language, your friend, Mr. Scales, of Leeds, that " it has an enlarged, and also a more confined signification, in the Word of God. In some places, it is employed to comprehend the aggre 6 gate of believers of every age and nation; hence we read of the general Assembly and Church of the firstborn;' and of the Church which Christ loved and purchased with his own blood.' In its more confined acceptation it means a Congregation of Professing Christians, meeting for worship in one place; hence we read of the Church at Rome, Colosse, Philippi, &c."* In assigning to the word "Church" the first meaning, I fully agree with Mr. James, as I do also in the second; but I dispute that it is used in such a sense in the quotations he has produced. I admit at once that the Church at Rome, the Church at Colosse, and the Church at Philippi, were Independent, and so is the Church of England; but that any one of them was Congregational, that is, consisted of no more than one Congregation, I defy Mr. James, and all the Dissenting Ministers in the world, to prove. Yet this they must do, to support their own system of Congregational Independency. There are, indeed, only four places in all the New Testament where it can be clearly proved that the word Church' means no more than a single congregation-and not one of them has Mr. James produced. They are these-" Greet the Church, which is in their house”—“ the Church which is in their house"-" the Church in thy house"-" the Church which is in his house." But although these four Churches were Congregational, I can easily prove that they were not Independent. And although Mr. James himself has said that the word Church " means a congregation meeting for worship in one place," he has not said that the same Congregation was Independent; and therefore his Dissenting system of Congregational Independency is not at all supported by the word " Church," used in the very sense which he has himself assigned to it. 6 Mr. James positively says, after giving his ideas of the word—" these are the only two senses in which the James, p. 6.-Scales's Principles of Dissent, p. 86, 87. word is ever employed by the Sacred Writers." Now,' not to mention that the word used in either of the senses which he has attributed to it proves just nothing at all to his purpose, you know well, that had the word been "employed by the Sacred Writers" in fifty different senses, he dares not for the world admit of its having more than two, simply because such an admission would be entirely fatal to his own darling scheme of Dissent, and this he well knows. But by examining the Holy Scriptures without Mr. James's Dissenting spectacles, I think I could find at least five or six different senses in which the word is there used; but as some of them would be foreign to my present purpose, I shall notice only the three following: It signifies, First. The Catholic or Universal Church, including all the people of God, of every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, that have lived from the beginning, and that shall live to the end of the world. "Christ is the head of the body, the Church."* It signifies-Secondly. The Christians of one family or household, who with probably a few neighbouring Christians, assembled for Divine Worship in their own house, but who were still a part of the collective Church of the respective town or district in which the house was situated. "The Church in thy house." And thirdly. It signifies the faithful Christians of some one town, district, or province, consisting of several Congregations, but constituting at the same time only one Church, as-" The Church of Ephesus." "The Church of Jerusalem." "I persecuted the Church."+ As I know you will agree to my first definition of the word, I have only to establish the other two. I, therefore, proceed to the second, in reference to which I observe as before, that there are only four places in the Sacred Writings where the word "Church" can possibly be proved to mean but a single Congregation; and if I can prove that not one * Col. i. 18. +Rev. ii, 1.-Acts viii, 1. Gal. i. 13. of these four little Congregational or House Churches, was Independent, I desire no more; your system will be shown to be destitute of Scriptural foundation, and my task fulfilled. One of the passages in which the word occurs in this sense is this:-" Salute the brethren which are in Laodicea and Nymphas, and the Church which is in his house. And when this Epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the Church of the Laodiceans."* The word " Church" here occurs twice in two different senses. In the fifteenth verse it means a single Congregation which assembled in the house. of Nymphas; and in the sixteenth, the whole body of Christians at Laodicea. Now as Nymphas dwelt at Laodicea, there must have been at least two Congregational Churches in that City; for had all the Laodicean Christians met in the house of Nymphas, where would have been the Apostle's propriety in describing them, so particularly, as "the Church which is in the house of Nymphas;" why did he not term them as in the next verse- "the Church of the Laodiceans;" which they actually must have been, had there been no other Congregational Church in that city? But there were certainly two, and very probably several, and yet they are called as in the above quotation; so also above thirty years after, not the Churches, but "the CHURCH" of the Laodiceans. The truth evidently is, that as the Apostle's salutation in this instance did not concern the whole body of Christians in Laodicea, he commanded it to be given to those for whom he particularly intended it. Nymphas, and the Church in his house." But as the Epistle did concern the whole, he directed it to be read generally to "the Church of the Laodiceans," of which the small Congregational Church in the house of Nymphas formed a part, and, therefore, could not be Independent. Indeed, if it had been Independent, it would have formed no part of "the * Col. iv, 15, 16. |