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with her, acknowledge her as a whole; and thus, by implication at least, put the seal of our approbation to whatever belongs to her as a church."

The difficulty is precisely where it was. I must also take an individual as a whole. His communicating is an act of the whole man. If I cannot, for the purposes of communion, separate the divine ordinances in a church from her corruptions, how can I thus separate the graces of a Christian from his sins? If by communion with her in God's ordinances, I must participate in her corruptions also, how can I commune with a believer in his faith and love, and not participate in the "sin that dwelleth in him?" Let your objection set out from any point, on any course, it cuts up, in its progress, all communion of saints by the very roots.

2. If communicating, as a guest, with another church, involves an approbation of her sins, by the same rule communicating with my own church involves an approbation of hers, and renders me by so much the more inexcusable, by how much a transient act of intercourse with a church in her corruptions whether great or small, is less culpable than that regular and habitual intimacy with her which is unavoidable by her members. And so we come again to the old result; viz. that there can be no lawful church-com

munion upon earth: with this addition, that the most exceptionable and criminal form in which it can possibly exist, is communion with one's own church while a corruption or abuse can be found in her skirts.

In order to evade this conclusion, good and sensible men have resorted to a distinction of which the soundness is more than doubtful.

They say, that "what may be wrong in our own "church is always supposed to be under our own "government. As members of our own church, "we must always have some degree of influence "over our own government: and as it is our duty "to exercise this influence, whatever it may be, at "all times and to its utmost extent; we may at all "times indulge the hope of having that wrong or "those wrongs rectified. But with respect to the "errours, or defects, or corruptions, of other "churches, till we become actual members, we "can indulge no such hopes."

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This reply, instead of destroying the conclusion against which it is levelled, does, in fact, surrender the objection it was brought forward to defend. That objection was and is, that by the act of communion with an erroneous or corrupted church we patronise her errours or corruptions, i. e. we contract pollution from contact with a polluted society. But the contact cannot be the

less close, nor the pollution less contagious from the circumstance of the society being our own. Thence it follows that communion here, on account of its intimacy and extent, is worse than any where else, while there is any wrong to be rectified among ourselves. No, says the reply; "We have influence, we have control over our own defects"-therefore-what? Why truly, "we are not involved in the sin of our own church by our communion with her." No other inference can repel the conclusion to which the objection was driven. But the whole ground is changed: and it is now asserted that our contamination does not proceed from communion with a corrupted church; but from our inability to purify her! Here then, I repeat, is an absolute surrender of the objection which was to have been defended. And the reply contains this curious doctrine, that vices which we cannot cure spread their leprosy over us by contact; but vices we can cure, do not. And that the shortest way of escaping the charge of being partakers in other men's sins, is to go over to their church: and then, as members, we shall have influence in reforming her!

But can we seriously persuade ourselves by such a reason, that we may safely communicate at home though not abroad? Shall a man keep at a prudent distance from the fire on his neigh

bour's hearth because he has no rightful control over it; and thrust his naked foot fearlessly into the fire on his own, because he has a well at his door and may extinguish it when he pleases? Shall he avoid the dirt of his neighbour's premises and wade through the mire of his own, because he can cleanse the one and not the other? Will his fire or his filth be so charmed by his metaphysicks or his rights, as that the one shall not burn nor the other defile him? And shall the mere capacity of influencing the reformation of a church, so neutralize the poison of her sins as that it shall be harmless to her members, while it continues deleterious and may be mortal to her guests? Let us not deceive our souls with vain words. There is ground to fear that notions such as have now been combatted, quiet the consciences of many who might else be roused; and compose them securely to sleep under abuses which would startle them in others. They are pleased with dreaming of a power which they never exercise. They can rectify the faults of their own church but do not. And thus year slips away after year; and life after life: reformation is loudly called for, and the delay of it severely chided, every where but at home! A church which needs no reform is yet a desideratum: and a church fairly and honestly setting about the

work of her own reformation, is a glory not of this hemisphere. In truth, human passions are so unmanageable in nothing, as in what relates to human sins. Let any man make the experiment, and he shall find that to touch abuses which have become incorporated with the habits of society, is to kindle a flame of the most fierce and inextinguishable resentments. It is, therefore, perfectly wild to place the lawfulness of communion with our own church, and the unlawfulness of it with another, upon the footing of our having some influence over the former and none over the latter.

It must be some strange mistake, some potent illusion, which can have persuaded worthy and sensible men to adopt such an objection to Catholick communion; and a more than common distress in maintaining it, which could reduce them to so feeble a defence, as have now been exposed. What is it? Shortly and simply this

Taking it for granted, that communion with a CHURCH or with her MEMBERS, implies our approbation of her in all things belonging to her ACTUAL CONDITION as an organized body.

We have seen above, that, on such a principle, society cannot exist. But, happily, the whole world being judge, the principle assumed is false. For it might be shewn to contradict the practical