pray, for God will regard and fulfil our prayer,— In the afflictions of life, in the agonies of death, in the awful realities of judgment, be gracious unto us, have mercy upon us,-good Lord, deliver us!

69

PART III.

INTERCESSION.

LECTURE X.

We sinners do beseech thee to hear us, O Lord God; and that it may please thee to rule and govern thy holy Church universal in the right way;

We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.

HAVING, in the first part of the Litany, made a solemn profession of our faith in the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, and prayed the three Persons of the Godhead, severally and jointly, to have mercy upon us as miserable sinners; and having, in the second part, prayed our Lord to deliver us from all the various trials both of body and spirit, the enumeration of which may be considered a striking and instructive paraphrase of his own prayer-" lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil;" having, in each of these parts, prayed mercy, and protection, and blessing to ourselves, the Litany now expands, in the true spirit of Christianity, into a fervent and compre

hensive intercession for the whole family of mankind, beginning with those who are dearest unto himself, his "holy Church (upon earth) universal."

By the holy universal, or (as it is designated in the Apostles' Creed) the holy Catholic Church, we mean no particular and exclusive body of Christians, but all who, however differing in forms, or in other matters of doctrine, are bound together by the ties of one common faith in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The Church of Rome arrogates to itself only the title of the Catholic Church, excluding all other bodies of Christian men. unwarily recognise this claim, in giving to Papists exclusively the name of Catholics; properly speaking, Protestants are Catholics also, as alike members of the Catholic or universal Church.

We

The first objection to the arrogant title of the Roman Catholic Church is, that it involves a contradiction; if a Roman Church, it cannot be a Catholic or universal Church; if an universal Church, it cannot be merely Roman. If such a title could be claimed at all, it would belong rather to the Protestant Church, because all her doctrines are founded exclusively upon the broad basis of the universal Word of God, and not (as is in a great measure the case with the Church of Rome) upon the narrow local traditions of men, and the authority of general councils. And yet it were manifestly contradictory, not to say how presumptuous, to talk of the English Catholic or universal Church.

We can only speak of our own Church as a part of the Catholic Church; and we are willing to assign the same station, but no more, to the Church of Rome, which denies even that to ourselves. No more, for, in the second place, we have the authority of Holy Scripture for believing that Christ's Church upon earth cannot be restricted by territorial boundaries, like the language and habits of mankind, nor by any peculiarities of belief or worship, but comprehends all who, whatever their country, whatever their church, believe in and worship the Lord Jesus Christ. [St. Paul constantly declares this throughout his epistles; thus to the Romans: 66 As we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office; so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another*." Again, to the Corinthians: "As the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For by one spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or freet." Lastly, to the Ephesians: "There is one body, and one spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." References might be multiplied to any extent, but enough has + 1 Cor. xii. 12, 13. Ephes. iv. 4, 5, 6.

* Rom. xii. 4, 5.

been said to show that the Catholic Church, in the scriptural sense of it, comprehends all bodies of Christian men, whatever their peculiarities, denomination, or country, if they do but bow the knee at the name of the Lord Jesus. So that, even were the Roman Church right, and our own and all other churches wrong, still she would have no sort of claim to the arrogant title of the Catholic or universal Church, thus excluding from the Church of Christ all other Christian churches, which are out of the pale of her own.

But, we do not believe her to be right; we believe her to be corrupting the simplicity of the truth as it is in Jesus, and fulfilling at this hour all the various marks and characters which are clearly prophesied of her in Holy Writ; we believe her to be idolatrous in her worship, corrupt in her faith, secular in her ambition, unchristian in her intole

rance.

Nor is this all; for, though we must in Christian charity believe many to "walk no more with us," from the purest motives of conviction and duty, we believe others even of our own Protestant Church, with whom we "took sweet counsel, and walked in the house of God as friends," to have made wilful and culpable shipwreck of their faith in suffering themselves by every wind of doctrine to be drawn aside from that unity of Christian brotherhood which Holy Scripture lays down as a Christian

* Psalm Lv. 15.