HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST.

CENTURY I.

A SUMMARY VIEW OF THE CHURCH

SO FAR AS IT MAY BE COLLECTED FROM THE SCRIPTURE.

CHAPTER I.

JERUSALEM.

THAT " repentance and remission of sins should be preached in the name of Jesus Christ, beginning at Jerusalem," is a passage of Scripture, which at once points out what the Christian Religion is, and where we may look for its beginning and for its character. We are to describe the rise of a dispensation the most glorious to God, and the most beneficent to man. Christianity found mankind in an universal state of sin and misery. In Judea alone something of the worship of the true God existed. The forms of the Mosaic economy subsisted, but were greatly obscured and corrupted with Pharisaic traditions and Sadducean profaneness. The ancient people of God had defiled themselves with heathen profligacy: and, though there wanted not a multitude of teachers among them, yet, when HE, who knew what was in man, saw the spiritual condition of this people, "he was moved with compassion toward them, because they fainted, and were as sheep having no shepherd."† Certainly they were in possession of a degree at least of moral information, though it was extremely defective, and, in many points of view, fundamentally erroneous. But, of that knowledge which relates to repentance and remission of

* Luke xxiv. 47. VOL.I.

B

+ Matt. ix. 36.

sins, they were totally destitute. Notwithstanding the light of the Old Testament, the provision of sacrifices, the declaration of so many prophecies concerning the Messiah, and the examples of so many holy men, who, in that dark and preparatory dispensation, had learned to fear God, and to believe in his promises of grace, it does not appear that the body of the Jewish nation were, in their religious state, materially better than the rest of the world. That men needed such a change of disposition as in Scripture is expressed by the term uerava, that they must become new creatures, and receive the forgiveness of sins by faith in the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, were ideas unknown in Judea :-if indeed we except the dim light which visited the souls of Zacharias, of Simeon, of Anna, and of a few other devout persons, who looked for redemption in Jerusalem.

Such was the dismal night, in which the Sun of Righteousness made his appearance in the world. Scarcely in any age had ignorance and wickedness a more general prevalence. The history of Josephus evinces this. This author dwells chiefly indeed on public and political affairs; yet he throws a sufficient light on the manners of the times, and shews, that the extreme impiety and profligacy of the Herodian princes, were but too faithfully transcribed into the lives of their subjects. There had been periods of Jewish story more favourable to godliness for instance, the age of Joshua, of David, of Ezra, and of Nehemiah. For some persons there ever were who, at least, implicitly rested on the God of Israel, and trusted in the Redeemer that was to come. But the darkest season was chosen for the exhibition of the Light of Life by him, "who hath put the times and seasons in his own power.

To know our own depravity and helplessness; and, by faith in Christ, to know "experimentally" the suitable and the efficacious cure, is doubtless the genuine secret of true piety. But wherever wickedness and profaneness have spread very generally, the knowledge of these doctrines is usually lost. Amidst a thousand disputes even on religious subjects, these are erased out of men's creed,

* Acts i. 7.

-the very doctrines-which alone can be the means of freeing them from vice and folly. It was their ignorance of these things, which moved the Son of God to lament the uninformed condition of the Jews at that time. To dwell on the history of Christ himself is foreign to my design. Indeed a few souls were converted during His abode on earth: but the five hundred brethren, who saw him all at one time after his resurrection, seem to have made the sum total of his disciples. And it may further be observed, that all these, and the eleven sincere Apostles themselves, were possessed with notions of a temporal kingdom, the rock on which their countrymen fatally split in their expositions of the Scriptures relating to the expected Messiah; and that they had not yet learned, with any clearness and steadiness of apprehension, to set their affections on things above.

And now was the critical moment, when it pleased God to erect the first Christian Church at Jerusalem. This was the first of those EFFUSIONS of the First effuSpirit of God, which from age to age have sion of the visited the earth, since the coming of Christ, Spirit. and prevented it from being quite overrun with ignorance and sin. It is an unspeakable advantage, that we have the sacred narrative to unfold this to our understandings. The want of such an advantage will appear too fully in the history of the succeeding EFFUSIONS* of the Divine Spirit. Our duty, however, is not to complain, but to be thankful. If we carefully attend to this first instance, it will serve as a specimen, by which to try other religious phænomena: and whether they lead to genuine piety or not, may generally be judged from their agreement or disagreement with this.

Let us then observe the circumstances in which this effusion of the Holy Spirit was vouchsafed. As repentance and remission of sins were leading doctrines of

* In the term effusion there is not here included the idea of the miraculous or extraordinary operations of the Spirit of God, but only of such operations as he vouchsafes in every age to his church. The plan of this History has little connection with the former. It is, however, to be remembered, that a remarkable display of the Divine Grace, at some par ticular season, is always intended by the expressions, EFFUSION of the Spirit of God, or EFFUSION of the Divine or Holy Spirit.

Christ's religion, the most ample room had been made for them by the completion of his redemption. He had offered himself a sacrifice for the sins of men, 66 was risen" from the dead "for our justification," and in the sight of his disciples was just ascended up to heaven. That the Gospel, the good news for penitent sinners, the good news of reconciliation with God, should begin at Jerusalem, the scene of so much wickedness perpetrated, and of so much grace abused, was itself no mean argument of the riches of Divine goodness, and was an illustrious exemplification of the grand purpose of the Gospel,-to justify the ungodly, and to quicken the dead. By the order of their Divine Master, the Apostles remained at Jerusalem, waiting for the promised Holy Spirit "which they had heard of him,"* and abode in mutual charity, and in the fervent exercise of prayer and supplication. What the Holy Spirit was to do for them, they seemed little to understand; if one may conjecture from their last question to their Master, "Wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" it is natural to apprehend, that they were feasting their imaginations with the delightful prospect of a splendid kingdom, attended with all the circumstances of external pomp and grandeur. Principalities and lordships were, in their fancy, soon to be assumed in the room of fishermen's nets and boats, and they pleased themselves with the notion of their Master's external dominion in the world. Not that they were without a genuine taste for something infinitely better. At any rate, they afford us a useful lesson;they continued in prayer and supplication." In every age, they who do so, shall doubtless understand, in God's due time, what the kingdom of heaven means, and find by happy experience that kingdom established in their own souls, even "righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."§

Matthias substituted

During this interesting crisis, we do not find them employed in any other business than this of prayer, except in filling up the apostolical college of twelve, by the substitution of Matthias in the room of the unhappy Judas, who, for the love of

in the place of Judas Iscariot.

* Acts i. 4.

+ Ver. vi.

Ver. 14.

§ Rom. xiv. 17.

a little gain of this world, had unfitted himself for the riches of the next, and rendered himself unworthy to partake of the marvellous scene now about to be exhibited. Behold then the twelve Apostles, Peter, James, John, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James the son of Alpheus, Simon Zelotes, Judas the brother of James, and Matthias, expecting and longing for the unspeakable blessings of true Christianity!

The Pentecost, one of the Jewish festivals, was the era of the Divine Visitation. The Apostles were all in harmony assembled together; when lo! suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. Their Master in his conference with Nicodemus,* had compared the operations of the Holy Spirit to the wind, and the sound from heaven on this occasion was a just emblem of the power of the Divine Influence now commencing. And there appeared "unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them:"+ Another emblem no less just, which the Church of England uses in her hymn to the Holy Ghost in the ordination-office,

In truth they now found they were "baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire." And the effects in purifying their hearts, in enlightening their understandings, and in furnishing them with gifts, and zeal, and boldness, hitherto unknown, were very soon exhibited. They were all filled with the "Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance."§ Of the many miraculous gifts now imparted, this of tongues, at once so useful for the propagation of the Gospel, and so striking an attestation of its truth, first displayed itself to the amazement of a number of Jews, out of every nation under heaven, who heard these Galileans speak each in his own language. There is reason to believe, that, as many of them were devout men, they had been prepared by Divine Grace for the effectual reception of the Gospel, and that a considerable part of the first converts were of their body.

* John iii. 8.

+ Acts ii. 3. + Matt. iii. 11.

§ Acts ii. 4.