discriminated. Now, as all Christian churches agree in acknowledging the Bible to be true and of divine authority, their differences must originate in different expositions of the rule and matter of their common belief. And such we find to be, in fact, the ground upon which each church takes its stand. Without defining what a church is, or ought to be, we may take as the basis of a secondary division of the Christian world, the authorised symbols and confessions of faith of the various ecclesiastical communions. As, then, we have said, that there are only so many religions as there are revelations, real or pretended, so we may lay it down, that there are only so many forms of the one true religion, as there are churches holding separate authorized public confessions, ostensibly comprising the doctrines contained in the Bible.

According to this principle of classification, the grand subdivisions of the Christian world may be thus enumerated :

I. The Latin or Roman-catholic Church; the accredited faith of which is embodied in the symbol of Pope Pius IV. and the Catechism of the Council of Trent.

II. The Eastern or Orthodox Greek Church; the creed of which is defined in the symbol entitled, "The Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Greek Church" (1642).

III. The Anti-Byzantine Eastern Churches of Armenia, Syria, Egypt, and Chaldea.

IV. The Protestant Lutheran Churches, holding the Confession of Augsburg (1530).

V. The Protestant Churches holding the Gallic, Helvetic, and Belgic Confessions.

VI. The Protestant Episcopal Churches holding the Thirtynine Articles of the Anglican Church.

VII. The Protestant Churches adhering to the Westminster and Savoy Confessions.

The above comprise all the principal churches or communions; the sub-sects of Protestantism classing under one or other of the four last divisions, with two remarkable, but, in point of numbers, inconsiderable exceptions; viz. the followers of Barclay and Penn, and the followers of Socinus,

and their descendants, the modern Unitarians. These, as coming properly under the denomination of sects, may be, for the present, set aside from consideration.

Taking the word sect in its primary sense, i. e. a body of persons following some particular master, heathen philosophy as well as christian theology exhibits its sectarian varieties, which are not considered as involving any difference of religion. Thus, the followers or sectators of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Zeno, were severally distinguished as the Academic, the Peripatetic, the Epicurean, and the Stoic sects. In like manner within the Romish church, before the rise of Protestantism, the Scotists and the Thomists of the scholastic philosophy, and the monks of various orders, formed distinct sects, without any schism of that unity which was held to be essential to the church itself. The term sect is now generally used in a contemptuous sense, and applied to smaller and what are deemed schismatical communities; but it is evident, that whole nations and national churches may be comprised under this designation. Thus the Lutherans, as the followers of Luther, must be regarded as a Protestant sect; although the Lutheran faith is the established religion of several of the German states. The established church of Scotland may be said to consist of the sect of Knox, its venerated founder. The church of England was long divided between the Calvinistic and Arminian sects; and although these denominations are now regarded as opprobrious, the diversities of sentiment which they originally denoted, remain. A sect, then, is properly a school, whether of divinity or of philosophy; not a separate religious communion, since the same communion may comprise several sects. It is not till a sect becomes a separate ecclesiastical body, having its own peculiar symbols and organization, like the Wesleyans and the Quakers, that it claims to be recognised as a church or society. The great body of English nonconformists, though subdivided into different denominations, (as differing on the subject of baptism, and in the form of their religious discipline,) are not, strictly speaking, distinct theological sects, since they are the followers of no particular founder or leader, and, for the most part, substan

tially adhere to the doctrines of the Westminster Confession. On the other hand, the Arians, the Socinians, the Arminians, the Antinomians, &c. are sects or schools, common to several communions, established and non-established. Our present inquiry relates to the characteristics and pretensions of rival churches or communions, acknowledging the Bible as their common rule of faith, but holding different expositions of the Christian doctrine. The various theological sects or schools of divinity will require to be treated of in a subsequent stage of the inquiry.

Confining, then, our attention, for the present, to these seven principal modifications of the Christian faith,—the Latin or Romish, the Byzantine, the Anti-Byzantine, the Lutheran, the Reformed or Calvinist, the Anglican, and the Scottish or Nonconformist churches, we propose, in the ensuing Chapters, to exhibit, first, the points of general agreement between their respective creeds and formularies, and then their specific points of difference.

Although there can be but one true religion, it does not follow that there can be but one true church, unless the several churches are all at mutual variance upon points confessedly essential. That is a true church, which truly holds the religion of the Bible; for the truth of a church consists in its fidelity to the inspired doctrine. If every church were unfaithful,-were there no true church, the religion of the Bible would be not the less true, and its intrinsic authority would remain unshaken: God would be true, according to the apostolic reasoning, "though every man were false."* The appeal lies from every church to the Divine Oracles.

There is, indeed, a sense in which there can be but one true church, because the church of Christ is but one, its unity being a mark of its truth. "One Lord, one faith, one baptism."+ But, of that one true church catholic, these several churches claim only to be a part,-with the exception of the Latin church, which arrogates to itself the exclusive title of Catholic, as comprehending in its pale all true believers.

The unity obtained by exclusion is, however, in its very nature, an anti-catholic unity, the mark of a pseudo-catholicism. That which does not include all the parts, cannot be either universal or entire.

The church of Christ, considered as a spiritual body, is incapable of being circumscribed by the pale of any political institution. Nor does it even consist of the aggregate of such institutions. The church of Christ is not composed of true churches, but of true believers; that is, of such individuals as not only hold the true faith, but truly and religiously hold it. The church is spoken of in the New Testament as "one body," in reference to the spiritual relation which connects every true believer with its Divine Head.

The ambiguity of the word church, arising from its various acceptations,* has been the source of so many fallacies, that we cannot be too much on our guard against the sophistry which would attribute to the church, taken in one sense, what is true of it only in another. A church may be taken to signify, "a congregation of faithful men or believers;" or, an organized society of such persons; or, an ecclesiastical corporation or estate, an order of clergy; or, a communion of churches; or, in the abstract, the doctrine and ritual of a church, comprised in its articles and formularies. But we have the authority of Hooker for regarding as the proper, at least as the highest sense of the term, that which is conveyed by a far more comprehensive definition. "Church is a word which art hath devised," remarks the learned Author of the Ecclesiastical Polity, "thereby to sever and distinguish that society of men which professeth the true religion, from the rest which profess it not : so he that will teach what the church is, shall never rightly perform the work whereabout he goeth, till, in matter of religion, he touch that difference which severeth the church's religion from theirs who are not the church. Religion being, therefore, a matter partly of

The word, EKKλnoía, of which church is the representative, primarily denotes an assembly of any kind, civil or sacred; but it is used with considerable variation of import in the New Testament. In like manner, the English word, house, is used to denote a family or household, an assembly, a legislative body, and a dynasty.

contemplation, partly of action; we must define the church, which is a religious society, by such differences as do properly explain the essence of such things; that is to say, by the object or matter whereabout the contemplations or actions of the church are properly conversant. For so all knowledges and all virtues are defined. Whereupon, because the only object which separateth ours from other religions is JESUS CHRIST, in whom none but the church doth believe, and whom none but the church doth worship, we find that, accordingly, the apostles do everywhere distinguish hereby the church from infidels and from Jews; accounting them which 'call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ' to be his church. If we go lower, we shall but add unto this certain casual and variable accidents, which are not properly of the being, but make only for the happier and better being of the church of God, either in deed, or in men's opinions and conceits. This is the error of all Popish definitions that hitherto have been brought. They define not the church by that which the church essentially is, but by that wherein they imagine their own more perfect than the rest are."* This, the error of all Popish definitions, an error unhappily countenanced by some Protestant controvertists, is not, however, universally maintained even by Romish divines, since a learned writer among them has held this language: "For there is to be considered, as to the church, the head and the body. From the head, there is no departure but by doctrine disagreeable to Christ, the head. From the body, there is no departure by diversity of rites and opinions, but only by the defect of charity."†

It is not of the church mystical or spiritual, however, that we have now to treat, but of churches considered as bodies or societies of men, distinguished by their respective tenets and forms of polity. That which broadly distinguishes them as

Hooker's "Eccl. Pol." book v. § 68. Elsewhere the learned Author thus describes the church catholic: "The church, being a supernatural society, doth differ from natural societies in this; that the persons unto whom we associate ourselves in the one, are men, simply considered as men; but they to whom we be joined in the other, are God, angels, and holy men."

+ Cassander" de Officio pii ac publicæ Tranquillitatis vere amantis Viri." Cited by Howe in his sermon "Concerning Union among Protestants."