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any in modern times; and on the interpretation of type and prophecy. The latter seem to require a light for access to them, before we can display in the face of men that which they themselves emit.* And as

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* I cite the following development of the practical bearing of certain texts in the prophecies of the Old Testament on the modern question of connection between the Church and the State, from an article in the British Critic and Quarterly Theological Review,' for the month of September, 1839, pp. 373-375: -" Some perhaps will think it strange to be referred thus to the Old Testament, and to a single text there, for an evangelical law of such great practical import. But they may consider that, since it was not intended that the Church should, at her first beginning, enter into relations with any State-since that whole order of things was to be but a later development of something in her original constitution-any rules expressly concerning it could only be prophetic, and the natural place to look for them would be in those portions of the prophetic Scriptures which the Church, from the beginning, knew to have reference to her own later times. Nor would it be hard to find other usages and rules on which the same remark might be made, viz., that they are developments of something in the original system, for which at first there was no occasion, and accordingly that for the scriptural sanctions of them we have to look in the prophetical and typical Scriptures rather than in the New Testament itself. Such, for example, is the penitential discipline of the Church: her earlier and purer times had comparatively little occasion for it; and when it became settled, it was in great measure the development of precedents and hints from the Jewish history, and the lessons of mortification and penitence in the Psalms and Prophets. Such again is the splendour of churches and church ornaments: the days of our first poverty of course knew it not, but when it came it found its warrant in the records of Moses, David, and Solomon. No prejudice, therefore, need he against a similar mode of deducing the obligation of the State to establish the Church.

"If any one ask, of what particular article or fundamental rule of God's kingdom this theory of Church and State is a development, we should answer, of the Holy Catholic Church: i. e., of the continued presence and manifestation of Jesus Christ in the world, through the medium of that society which is called His mystical body. The Church is the spouse of Christ, and the mother of His family; and these passages of Isaiah declare what is the especial office of kings and queens in that family; how they in particular stand related to the Church. They are to be her nursing fathers and mothers: i. e., as Leslie has

respects the former, namely, the Jewish precedent, it is only by considering what nationality is and imports, that we can be in a position to judge accurately how far that case is peculiar; or how far a real analogy

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explained at large (and to him we must refer for a thorough and most satisfactory elucidation of the passages), they are among her servants and attendants, trusted by Almighty God with the nourishment of her children, with the training of them, and bearing them safe in their arms. The phrase has acquired a trite and almost a proverbial use, in a very different sense, as though the Church were a helpless infant in the arms of some Defender of the Faith; but the context puts the true force of the image out of question. Thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people; and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers; they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord, for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.'-Isaiah, xlix. 22, 23. Again, in ch. lx. 4, Thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side.' If in another verse we find, Thou shalt suck the milk of the Gentiles, and thou shalt suck the breast of kings;' this cannot be so pressed as to denote childish dependence and obedience, since in the very same prophecy, as well as in the former one, apparently parallel to it, the expressions of humiliation, nay subjection to the Church, on the part of the potentates of the earth, are so very full and unequivocal. The sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee.' Thy gates shall be open continually, they shall not be shut day nor night, that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish: yea those nations shall be utterly wasted.' These words throw light on one of the distinctive titles given to Jesus Christ in the Apocalypse: 'Prince of the Kings of the Earth.' They point out in what sense the kingdoms of this world were to become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ; and how the kings of this world' were to bring their honour and glory into the Holy Jerusalem.' And that all this was not so much a prediction as a promulgation of God's will on the subject, is proved unquestionably by the fearful sanction annexed: perishing and utter wasting to the nation and kingdom that will not serve Zion.

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Thus are kings and governors representatives of Jesus Christ, in

prevails, and, consequently, to what extent the authority of Scripture will apply. But after such consideration, we may find ourselves the more able both to set aside what was temporary and specific in the theocratic dispensation, and to retain and press the claim from the Israelitish history for the principle of national religion; as well as to establish that sense of the prophecies which it is so easy for an opponent, as long as no literal precept can be cited, nor any collateral light introduced, to dispute.

And that argument which I have termed ethical must of course, to be valid, be itself agreeable to the principles of Scripture, though it includes their application to a distinct subject-matter. There is however a further object in resorting, firstly, to an argument distinct from that of Divine Revelation: it is to show that by the light of nature God had already, when

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His protecting particular Providence, whereby He educates those who shall be heirs of salvation: that Providence of which Moses, who' was king in Jeshurun,' was a type, when he had to bear God's people as a nursing father beareth a sucking child,' which he describes in its application to the whole people, where he says, 'The Eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.' And in its application to Benjamin individually (i. e., to the energetic self-renouncing champions of the Church, such as St. Paul, of whom Benjamin was the appointed image), in the last clause of that highly descriptive verse, The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by (literally, upon) Him, and the Lord shall cover, wrap him up in His garment, and he shall dwell between His shoulders.' There cannot be an exacter-if it were uninspired we should add a sweeter and more engaging-description of a foster-father bearing a young child; and this, we have reason to believe, is the appropriate scriptural image-the sacramental sign, as antiquity would have esteemed it-of the care due from kings and governors to the children of the Church. (Deut. xxxiii. 5; Num. xi. 12; Deut. xxxiii. 27, 12.)”

revelation was unknown, imparted sufficiently the grounds and proofs of the principle of public religion, together with those of other elementary truths and duties; which if we reject under this double confirmation, we do it with enhanced guilt.

9. Secondly. As respects the argument from consequences, it has received I think its full proportion of attention it is no less liable to indefinite prolongations through the spirit of controversy than any other course of reasoning; and the discussion upon it, if exclusively pursued, has a tendency to lower that moral tone with which the mind should engage itself in the pursuit of truth.

10. On the other hand, the conclusion from history is allowed to be in our favour; but an appeal is entered to a different tribunal. It is imagined that for the present age has been reserved the discovery of a grand and determining moral principle, the duty of separating the Church from the State; and that, having exploded the axioms of former times, we must no longer argue from their practice. I desire then to test this great discovery, and to afford some aid towards conjecturing its final results, by looking for those manifestations of the will of God, which are afforded by the structure of His creatures; and by showing that, until we can radically change. and invert the very nature of political society, we cannot, except with fearful guilt and hazard, consent to its divorce from the consecrating principle of national religion.

11. If government be in its substance a divine ordi

nance; if the testimony of primeval records, repeated in the individual history of every one among us, bear witness to the fact that our social relations do not derive their origin from the private, or even from the general will; then I submit that the most authentic, the most conclusive, the most philosophical, and, in the absence of literal and undisputed precept from Scripture, also the most direct method of handling this important investigation, is that which examines the moral character and capacities of nations and of rulers, and thus founds the whole idea of their duty upon that will which gave them their existence.

And indeed this province is one almost untrodden. We have not given free scope to the resources of the ethical argument. Undoubtedly it lies in a region of abstraction to which the temper of the age, and the prevailing pursuits of this country, are averse. Yet, though the sphere be narrow, contemplative investigations are not wholly disused among us, nor are they likely so far to fail as that there shall not be left space and ample reward for every man that brings his gift, though mean, to the altar of truth; the seed he sows in weakness may find entrance into minds whence it may again and again become prolific.

12. In attempting then to investigate, by such a course of argument, the truths indicated by the popular symbol already cited, I shall commence by considering what place association in general occupies with reference to our moral being, what is its proper work in the Divine organisation of the universe, what addi

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