Your note of the 30th August, 1867, dated from "Wanganui Parsonage," is now before me, and l beg to say that after thirty years' experience in the Christian ministry and some acquaintance with ministers of various branches of the Church of Christ in England, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, and now and then a little kindly attrition with some one whose sectarian tumours stood out so as to disfigure the Christian character and damage the name by which we are called, yet your note is the most singular phenomenon, and the drollest oddity it has been my lot to come across at home or abroad. Tractariaus in obscure villages, new fledged from Oxford with the feathers of tract 90, or among others in the colonies, hastily jostled into the ministry from the school room, the queerest thing I have seen of the exclusive high church genus, is certainly this grave complaining note of yours.

You speak of members of your congregation as "members of the church," as though your people alone were Christians, and heathen all beside. And you speak of the "Faith once delivered to the saints," as the exclusive property of your church and if any churchman should be induced to attend another ministry in page 10 this town, yon regard that step as "changing the faith once delivered to the saints" for a new one. You then warn me not to interfere with your people being saved in "the way the Bible points out," as though that sacred book pointed directly to Christchurch, Wanganui, and ignored any revealed truth and grace beyond that holy inclosure.

All this is sufficiently remarkable, but the burden of your note is even more so, and I do not remember another complaint of the same kind either lodged against me or any other minister of the Christian church with whom I have been acquainted. Indeed in the present case I am not sure as to what parts of my conduct the complaint is intended to apply. I may have visited persons sick or dying under bereavement or stricken down by sorrow, but as the question seldom conies up in such interviews as to this or that church, I have rarely learnt anything as to their membership here or there. All that appeared was simply that they were my fellow men in trouble, requiring some one to guide them to the "God of all consolation," even to the "Saviour of all men especially of them that believe." As to my refraining in future from offering my ministrations to members of the church, that is in your use of the term Christ Church, Wanganui, I reply:

1. That in order to avoid the offence of which you complain, in all cases it will become needful to know who the members of the church are, and how to distinguish them from the world, for you have so thrown me back upon the authority of John Wesley, who used to say "the world is my parish," that in labouring in his spirit to seek and save them that are lost, some may be spoken to who had not asked our ministrations, and so we may, without intending to do wrong, become chargeable with this grave offence of offering our ministrations on more than one occasion to members of the church unasked. I must therefore beg you to adopt some measure to make known the exact number of your flock, and so to distinguish them on the one hand from other Christians, and on the other from "the world," that in the one case I may be sure they are not of my own people, nor of any church whose minister would not feel the objection which you do, and then I need to be also assured that they are not of Wesley's parish which you have divided into the "religious world," "and the purely secular world," for by neglecting the spiritual wants of some of these I may perchance provoke again that great warmth for which you apologise in your second letter, and which seems to have been kindled in your breast by the very irritating reflection that the Methodists were guilty of gross departures from "what glorious old John wished and intended."

But am I really to understand that you are provoked to think how that Methodism is now not so pure and good as it was, and that you are so zealous for its purity and interests that you page 11 could even wish glorious old John could walk upon this earth again and with a scourge correct the proceedings of modern Methodism?

It is however, necessary ever to bear in mind that there is a power far above the ecclesiastical boundaries built by men's hands, even that divine charity which seeks the speedy salvation of perishing souls from sin and death, and whenever men for whom our Saviour died are found lost in sin and exposed to destruction, may we still have grace to reprove or admonish them, or in affection and trouble may we comfort and relieve them, or shrinking from the terrors of the last enemy, may we be able to minister to them in the time of need, and that without waiting to be informed as to their baptism here or there, their confirmation, or their present relations to this or that denomination.

I cannot but think after all, that you will reciprocate the conviction, that ministers of the Lord Jesus must feel that their solemn duties are even more than they are equal to do, when they confine their warfare to that three-fold enemy "the world, the flesh and the devil," and I take leave to admonish you in all seriousness to do your best to keep the sheep of your flock from this great power of evil, and to husband for this, your proper work, the time and zeal which you now think it needful to devote to the keeping of them from any influence that other christian ministers may perchance bear over some of them.

You look out for the wolf and the roaring lion, and keep these from your fold, and the sheep are quite able of themselves to stand up and ward off any improper or dangerous influences which you appear so much to dread from me or any other clergyman of the great Protestant Church not of your own particular branch thereof.

It is now time that I should state my reasons for writing in reply to your note, not answering your complaint, but asking the questions comprised in my first. This with all brevity I will do.

During my few months' stay in Wanganui while you and I have never spoken the one to the other, a great deal of direct evidence has come to hand tending to show that you maintain views which, in my judgment, are very derogatory to the rights of the great Catholic Church of Protestantism, and to the spirit of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and believing that these views are highly injurious to the cause of truth, and in all ways tending to lower and weaken the Church of God, I wrote to elicit a fuller expression of the principles which were scarcely veiled under the brief forms in which you couched the feelings of a, churchman manifestly of a very exclusive school.

I was the more desirous that, having gone so far in your first note you should declare the church principles which under- page 12 lie the claims you assert, so calculated to mislead men of limited opportunity for research, and to convey a very narrow idea of the cause of God on the earth; for if, for instance, your members, say those who take the Lord's Supper at your church, make up the Church of God in Wanganui, as your language implies, then how very few are there in this town, who, in point of fact, have come out from the world and joined the Church of God, and what a very grievous reflection is thus cast upon the rest of us who do not feel it to be any part of our duty to attend your ministrations or to belong to your church. Controversy is not usually desirable, but there are cases when it becomes a duty, and the very name of Protestant calls upon us to protest against injurious errors such as you have so plainly unmasked in your three letters, and anyone would be unworthy the standing of a protestant clergyman, were he to shrink from exposing such errors in the light of Christian truth. Nor can you object to the publication of your views so carefully expressed on matters of such grave consequence, or you would have refrained from giving them to a perfect stranger, to whom you have yielded no opportunity of acquaintance with you beyond this correspondence.

Regarding therefore the matters you have opened up in your letters, as a declaration of the principles you endeavour to propagate in Wauganui, and, being perfectly sure that they are anti-scriptural, un-English, and essentially Romish doctrines, it becomes my duty as a protestant minister to expose their fallacy and danger, and to warn our people against placing either themselves or their children under its influence, deluded as they may be by the venerable name of the Church of England.

I will now consider the contents of your second and third letters at some length. As to the term "Reverend," I set no value upon it whatever, but could even wish it were universally obsolete; but as you, being a minister, addressed me as though I were not a minister, the high church principles came all up before me entire, just as the naturalist, finding a footbone, or a tooth, at once sees the animal complete to whom they belong, so I just searched a little further into your ground, and when fully jointed together you present me with a matured specimen of the Romish clergyman in a protestant pulpit. This is the ground upon which I took any notice whatever of your first note. It will be readily observed that you have not refused the recognition of me only, as a minister of God, but of all whom you choose to call by a name of your own making, "dissenting teachers;" a name not in vogue as an English designation of any class of men in the community. Then you tell us we are none of us Christian ministers, but have "fancifully" created to ourselves, without any "authority," our appointment in the church. This is certainly a very grave statement for a Christian clergyman to write. If we are not ministers, we must be great? page 13 sinners in taking that solemn office upon no authority beyond our own fancy. Our people too are no Christian churches; ministers and churches stand or fall together; and thus, by the powers so strangely vested in your high ecclesiastical pen, you blot out from the Holy Catholic Church more than half the Christianity of Wanganui; and, on the same principles, would blot out two-thirds of the Lord's ministers and people throughout Christendom, and had you the power, as you seem to have the will, would shut up in one day our mouths and our churches from offering salvation and peace to any portion of the redeemed family of our sinful world. So far is your mind from that of Moses, when it was told him "Eldad and Medad do prophecy in the camp," and he replied, "Enviest thou for my sake? Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them."

Allow me, sir, in all simplicity, to show you, or, if not you, some of those whom such teaching may have misled in things so vitally connected with the very foundations of our entire faith,—allow me to show at least that the Lord has more than one tribe in Israel, and that many beyond the borders of Juda have a lot from our God, and do not rudely lay hold of the Ark unbidden, any more than do ministers of the Anglican Church.

You tell me that you have good reasons for adopting the exclusive views you now hold, having taken to them as "the result of more than thirty years' serious reflection;" to which my only reply is, that more than thirty years ago these "reasons" appeared to me as they still do, to stand without a single pillar of God's word to support them, and without any chance of sympathy with the true British spirit, and to rest only in the marshes of Popery, propped up by Romish materials, as they have from time to time been shaken by the flying shots from the armoury of our free and holy Protestantism.

You say that "the title "clergyman" seems to you like the prefix "reverend," to involve the whole question at issue between the church and dissent.

But I cannot see what propriety there can be, in a country where there is no established church, in using the antithetical terms "the church and dissent" at all. To speak of the Church of England here as the church is to speak improperly, as much so as to speak of the Church of Scotland here, or the Wesleyan Church in that way, and any of us may with the same propriety call you dissenters as you may call us so; besides, the Wesleyans, and, I believe, the Presbyterians, never accepted the term dissenter, but regard themselves as nonconformists, a word which carries that mild and neighbourly tone of unhostile relationship which characterised both John Wesley and the people called Methodists, as "the friends of all—the enemies of none."?

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As to your exposition of the term clergy, and its application to the ministers of your church, whom you regard as the "lot," or appointment of God," "set apart by him like the tribe of Levi, to be his," while you "deny that dissenting teachers hold any appointment in the church except of their own fanciful creation, and upon their own unsupported authority." We must tarry a while over this remarkable piece of ecclesiastical lore.

Webster's large dictionary derives the word from its Greek root, and says that it was probably applied to ministers of religion because a lot of land was assigned to them for their support.

The venerable Hooker, than whom you would hardly seek a higher authority in your own church, defines the clergy as "The body of men set apart and consecrated by due ordination to the service of God in the Christian Church, the body of ecclesiastics, in distinction from the laity; in England usually the ministers of the established church."

A definition much larger than you could give, and implying that in Scotland, and other countries than England, where there may be no ministers of your church, there may yet be a clergy, and that in England the term was only usually, and not exclusively given to those of the established church.

The term cleros is of the same import in Latin and Greek as pur in the Persian. The word applied to the feast of lots' celebrated by the Jews in memory of the lots cast by Hainan their enemy. We see lots used in many places of Scripture. God commanded that lots should be cast on the two goats offered for the sins of Israel on the solemn day of expiation, to ascertain which of the two should be sacrificed, and which set at liberty. The land of promise was divided by lot, while the priests and Levites in like manner had cities given them by lot. In the time of David the twenty-four classes of priests and Levites were distributed by lot to their order of waiting in the temple, and it would seem from Luke that the portions of daily duty were appointed to the priests by lot: as Zechariah's lot was to bum incense. The soldiers cast lots for cur-Saviour's garment as the prophet had predicted, and in the apostleship, after the death of Judas, lots were cast to decide which of the two persons proposed by the disciples should succeed into his place. See Calmet in loco.

In your remarks you evidently refer to this last use of the lot in the filling up of the vacant Apostleship, as we have it recorded in the lst chapter of the Acts. Now taking the exposition of that passage, as given by one of the most eminent clergymen of the Church of England, Dr. Henry Alford, Dean of Canterbury, let us inquire and see whether there be any real parallel between that case, and the appointment or ordination of any of the ministers of your Church at the present day. At the instigation of Peter, page 15 the brethren (not the Apostles) to the number of about a hundred and twenty, nominated Joseph and Matthias for the vacancy; these it would appear were the only two, besides the eleven then present who had accompanied our Lord during the whole of his ministry and therefore the only two who could comply with the first conditions of apostleship, and it such were the case, the inference I think is unavoidable, that the apostles, qua apostles had no successors and could have none, and if you object to this, that Paul was an apostle in no sense behind the twelve, I would remind you that he vindicated his claim on grounds which none of his would-be successors, will readily take up. (Gal. i, 12; i Cor. xi, 23; xv, 3. And vide Alford Prologg, vol. I 1.3. 5). This however, by the way. After the two candidates had been chosen or nominated by the whole company of the disciples, the apostles, anxious to ascertain distinctly the will of God, "cast lots for them" not as in our English version, "gave forth their lots" The lots were in all probability tablets, with the names of the persons written on them, and shaken, by some one of the eleven likely, in a vessel or in the lap of a robe, Prov. xvi, 33, he whose lot first leaped out, being the person designated. Thus the lot fell upon Matthias, and he was "voted" not merely numbered with the eleven, the lot says our learned critic, being regarded as the divine choice, the suffrages of the assembly were unanimously given, not in form but by cheerful acquiescence to the candidate thus chosen. Such in substance is the light which Deem Alford throws on the term cleros but he does not certainly think it worth while to show us the connection that subsists between this term and the esoteric privileges of a High-church Clergyman. And how could he? for what connection is there? the voice of the church or christian people, and the casting of lots, are here set before us, as two methods of ascertaining the divine will. To the latter, the church so far as we know, never again had recourse. And we are therefore left with the former as the only expedient, we are now in ordinary circumstances at liberty to adopt. For nothing we believe can now settle the question of a divine call to the ministry but the voice of the brethren, the members, office bearers, and ministers, of the Christian Church, after testing the qualification of the candidate who believes himself divinely call to this sacred office and ministry. And with all respect, Sir, I beg to ask, can you produce any such credentials? On your own grounds, I suspect, you can establish no claim at all to the title of clergyman.—Matthias no doubt was the subject of divine appointment—but not the elect of Peter or of James or of John, or of any other person, but of God and of the church. And unless you can show that there was a casting of the cleros in your own case, or at least the choice and sanction of the church, prior to ordination, you will not be able, I fear, to identify the nature page 16 of your appointment with that of the one to which you have referred me. I do not regard it as any part of my duty to call in question, the validity of your ordination, or the possibility of your not being called of God to the ministry of the word—but I maintain, that those who have been set apart for this work without the expressed consent of the church, or only by the laying on of the hands of a single presbuteros or episcopos, can by no means lay claim to the same amount of New Testament authority, as those Ministers who can point back to the intelligent nomination of a Christian discipleship, by whom their character and qualifications had been tested, and also to "the laying on of the hands of the presbytery," and that those men ought to be the last to call our attention to the cleros.

Perhaps, taking your stand on the popish dogma of the "Apostolical succession," you may tell us that Matthias was an apostle,—that the apostles were authorised to transmit their appointment to their successors, who have therefore a divine warrant to ordain to the office of the ministry, all whom they regard as the chosen of God." On this subject we appeal "to the law and to the testimony," and for such a pretentious dogma, we must demand a "Thus saith the Lord." The apostles, as apostles we believe, had no successors. The Presbyters or Bishops who succeeded them in the oversight of the Church, were no doubt authorised to ordain other Presbyters, or bishops and also deacons, (a class of men who held a very different office from that of the diaconate of the Church of England, a fact frankly admitted by Dr. Vaughan of Doncaster, in his admirable lectures on the Church in The Early Days), but it was certainly the exception, not the rule that a single Presbyter or Bishop, should ordain other Presbyters or Bishops. We gather from Acts 1 and 6, that in all ordinary cases the express choice of the Christian people—as the best indication of the divine call—ought to precede the solemn act of ordination.

There is another point in your third letter we can hardly omit noticing, viz., your repetition of the hacknied challenge of Chilling worth, and your assertion that it has never been answered, which, allow me to say, betrays the fact that you are not well conversant with the great domain of Historical Theology. If you have never seen a refutation of this stale assertion, I refer you to the last which I have read, namely, the works of the late celebrated Dr. Cunningham, principal of the New College of Edinburgh. You mean to say, as I understand you, that we cannot point to a church community which existed anywhere during the first 1500 years of the Christian era, which was not governed by a bishop. Now in what sense do you use the term bishop? If you take it in the New Testament sense of the word, then we frankly admit that we cannot accept your challenge, and do Dot wish that we could. If on the other page 17 hand you understand the term bishop in the prelatic sense, it as signifying a bishop of bishops, or overseer, not of the church, but of the ministry of the church, then I can only express my surprise at your want of larger acquaintance with Biblical literature. The Presbyterate or Episcopate, spoken of in the Scriptures of the New Testament, are, not two offices, but one and the same; and I can .hardly believe you ignorant of this most patent fact. When the apostle Paul, called together the elders (Presbyters) of the church at Ephesus, he addressed them as bishops, (Acts xx., 17, 28.) And in sending an epistle to the Church at Phillipi, he addresed it (Ch. i., i.,) to "the bishops and deacons," not to the bishop and Presbyters and deacons, and on the former of these passages I observe, the learned Dean of Canterbury, after exposing the silly remarks of Trenæus, and with the frankness characteristic of a great man, makes the following note,—"The English version has hardly dealt fairly in this case, in rendering episcopous (Acts xx. 28.) overseers, whereas it ought there, as in all other places, to have been bishops, that the fact of elders (presbyters) and bishops, having been originally and apostolically synonymous, might be apparent to the ordinary English reader, which now it is not." The italics are Alford's. We can thus point to at least two Christian communities—that at Ephesus, and that at Phillipi in the first part of the fifteenth century, which were each under the government of a council of eiders. Of course you are aware of the spuriousness of those postscripts which have led the ignorant to suppose that Titus was bishop of Crete, and Timothy bishop of Ephesus. That they were bishops we know well, but we deny that they were prelatic or diocesan bishops. And it will not be difficult to show, if necessary, that the office they held and the work they performed, were very much the same as that which fell to the lot of Wesley in his day, or which has devolved on many a noble missionary of our own times. Timothy and Titus were bishops or presbyters, because they were ordained by the laying on of the hands of the presbyters, but the work assigned them was pre-eminently that of itinerating preachers. I might further remind you of the fact, that the only genuine remains of the men who associated with the apostles, are most fully in keeping with the testimony of Scripture. You would not, I suppose, refer me to the spurious epistles of Ignatius; and Clemens Roman us in his epistle to the Corinthians, and Polycarp in his epistle to the Philippians, speak of those churches respectively, as being under the government of a council of presbyters. I am disposed however, to ascribe but a limited authority to the fathers; and yet it is interesting to observe how little support your theory meets with from those who were the immediate followers of the apostles, so little indeed, that some of those writers of your own church who have recently undertaken the page 18 defence of Prelatic Episcopacy, have found it necessary to take their stand upon the patristic authority of the third, and especially the fourth and fifth centuries. And it was this difficulty we doubt not, that led the celebrated and notorious Dr. Newman to abandon the attempt, and, instead of trying to defend Prelatic Episcopacy on apostolic or scriptural grounds, to adopt the well known "Theory of Development," and like an honest and consistent man, to exchange the Church of England for the Church of Rome.

I must now proceed to notice a very frank avowal of your faith in the ultramontane dogma, that the office of a christian minister or clergyman derives it authority from "appointment" altogether irrespective of all considerations of personal worth, religious and moral qualifications, and the ability to perform efficiently the functions of the office. These are your words:—"Supposing myself a worse theologian, a worse scholar, a worse preacher, a worse man than yourself, I should still designate myself reverend, and should refuse that title to you, and why? I claim this title of honor, simply and exclusively in consideration of my office; I refuse it to you simply and exclusively, because I do not consider that you have been appointed to the same office."

Again in the same letter you say you deny that dissenting teachers hold any appointment in the church except of their own fanciful creation.

Now the doctrine of all this is clearly that a man destitute of a minister's qualification may yet be a minister; that a bad theologian, a bad scholar, a bad preacher, yea a bad man, being ordained in the Anglican establishment, is a true minister of the grace of God, while another man, a good theologian, a good scholar, a good preacher, and a good man believing in his own conscience after much prayer and godly council, that God has assuredly called him to the ministry, and having the appointment of a Christian Church, and ordination from its ministers is after all destitute of any appointment in the Church of God, except of his own fanciful creation and all this solely because he is not of your particular church. This is the doctrine of old Rome, not of the Bible: not of the Reformation, whose doctrine is quite the reverse. See what God said in old times of Levi, "My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid of my name. The law of my truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips: he walked with me in peace and equity and did turn many away from iniquity."

Now turn to Psalm 1., 16, and read "But unto the wicked God saith, what hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth."

Upon this very important subject of authority to exercise the office of a minister of God it is needful at this stage to page 19 make a remark or two. No man should lightly be told by another that he has not entered in by the door into the sheep-fold, and is consequently a thief and a robber. No man should lightly enter that fold without good evidence that he is called of God as was Aaron, not indeed to the same office, for Christ is our only Priest, not with the same circumstances, but with the same certainty called of God to minister as an ambasador in Christ's stead. Now, the Christian church is a spiritual church, and the call of sinners to repent is of the Spirit in their hearts, the testimony to their reconciliation to God is the Spirit itself bearing witness in their spirits that they are the sons of God, the new birth, the life of a Christian, and his graces are the fruit of the Spirit, and when a man is raised up of God to the ministry, the Holy Ghost saith, "separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work" where unto I have called them," and thus it is the Spirit who both qualifies and calls to the work of God. But it is for the Christian people who are well conversant with the manner of life, the preaching and the fruits of a person believing himself so called to the ministry, to test the truth of that call, and being satisfied that it is of God, then to give their sanction, and place him in the hands of ministers for ordination who on the principle that "the Spirit of the Prophets is subject to the Prophets," are to watch over and direct his labours in the church of God.

The intellectual and spiritual qualifications for a true minister of the Lord Jesus are so clearly the work of God, designing the character so formed for the work he is purposed to do, that we must either conclude there is no force in the general argument of design in creation, or that when a man is raised up and so fitted to act as a minister for God, that he wins souls to his allegiance and builds up the holy temple of God among men, he awakens the dead in sins out of their sleep, leads the brokenhearted penitent to Christ, with a Christian sympathy carries the lambs, comforts all that mourn, proves an angel of mercy to the dying, and is the bearer of consolation to the house of mourning. He breathes the spirit and leads the life of a disciple, does the work of an ambassador, heals the sick as a true physician, oversees the church as a true watchman and bishop of souls, nourishes the lambs and feeds the flock with all the efficiency of a true shepherd, and can humbly point to the fruit of his labours which God alone could cause to grow in human nature,—young men, strong men, fathers and mothers in Christ, as real and ornamental parts of God's temple as any others of the most apostolical churches upon earth. "The seal of mine apostleship are ye," said St. Paul, who, though he had inspiration and miracles, and had seen the Lord, brought forward this same argument as proof positive of his authority. "If I be not an apostle unto others, yet doubtless I am to you, for the seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord."—1 Cor, is. 2. page 20 Again, when addressing the Galatians, he lays the entire authority of a minister on this one link of doctrine so far as that false doctrine should be understood to disqualify the messenger, however he may possess other signs of apostleship. "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, 1st him be accursed." Gal. x 8,9. St. John also bears similar testimony in his epistle to the elect lady, saying to her, "If any come unto thee and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into thy house," &c.—2 Epis. v. 10.

With these authorities before us, in each case so strongly put, we, in our day of ordinary agencies and kindred results from adequate causes, must conclude that, in the Christian economy, sound doctrine and godly fruits, enter essentially into the evidence of a man's call to the Christian pastorate, and if any shall yet plead for exclusive authority as the apostles' successors,—if they tell us that the "worse theologian, the worse preacher, the worse scholar, the worse man," may be the true minister of holiness, the Lord himself will surely humble him by his own condescending example, for when John had heard in prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples, and said unto him, "Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?" Jesus answered and said unto them, "Go show John again"—again, as though once should have settled it,—"those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up and the poor hare the gospel preached to them, and blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me."

Again, it is worthy of attention that you are accustomed to teach that prayer and not preaching is the great function of the clergy. And on this, which we admit to be a solemn duty of the minister of God, the restored blind man in the Gospel, could teach us that "God heareth not sinners" (as intercessors,) but if any man be a worshipper of God and doeth his will him he heareth," and even the Jews in their sharp retort upon him, appeal to the acknowledged truth of our doctrine in its application to the teaching—"Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us?"

But the contrary doctrine of Rome would teach us that God heareth the intercession of sinners for congregations, churches, and the world, if only they be ordained; and that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man, being a minister, cannot avail in the absence of Episcopal ordination. We do not think that any advocate of the Romish view can point to an instance of a minister appointed by God, who had not all the qualifications required. It is indeed true that one of our Lord's apostles was the apostate Judas, but it is also true that when he fell into sin, he lost the apostleship, and the inspired page 21 narrative declares that he fell by transgression; but we will not dwell upon this case, as the most zealous advocate of the succession would hardly derive his authority to preach and baptise from Judas, although in cases where ordained ministers apostatise from the faith, it would seem needful to exclude them from linking themselves to any other apostle.

The high churchman may say, blessed are the people who sit under a minister in the succession, but our Lord hath said—"Blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it."

Your next thrust is a sharp and vigorous attack upon the "Wesleyan preachers," upon whom you feel called to rush with an irresistible argumentum ad hominum, having taken, as you think, a very sharp sword from the armoury of good John Wesley.

"I think that this objection applies with ten-fold force to the Wesleyan preachers, inasmuch as they have thrust themselves into the pastoral office, and made a schism in Christ's body," &c.

Arrogant words these; and "who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master be standeth or falleth. Yea he shall be holden up; for God is able to make him stand." And have not Methodist preachers by their works shown to the wide world for a century past, whose servants they are, and has not their Master put upon their labours, the broad seal of his approbation, in converting many tens of thousands of souls from sin to holiness, raising up to himself a people who now constitute indeed, one of the youngest, but well-nigh the largest protestant church in the world. In point of fact, it is a question whether any other church has so large a number of communicants, taking them in all the world. Not that mere numbers are sufficient to constitute our argument, but numbers taken together with a discipline to say the least of it, as likely to secure sincerity, soundness of faith, and Christian character in the members, as anything to be found in the discipline of the Anglican community.

But there is no schism in the body of Christ thus caused. The Methodists have been gathered from out of the world, not even what you are pleased to call the "religious world," but generally the outer circle beyond that. Millions who never in any Bible-sense belonged to your Church, have been converted by the instrumentality of these preachers, from sin to holiness, and from the power of Satan to serve the living and true God. And that is not causing a schism in the body of Christ. A schism is a division, a rent,—and if anything of the kind had happened in the creation of the Methodist body—the clergy of the Church who shut their pulpits against Wesley, and wrote and did all they could to stay his labours, were the cause and chargeable with the sin of the schism, not Wesley nor his preachers, nor their successors unto this day.

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You charge us with having acted in the matter of leaving the Church, in direct opposition to the precepts of our "Father and Founder." We are not aware of any precepts he ever gave us, and the words you quote from him, cannot in any proper use of language be called precepts. The Methodists do nob look at Wesley as they do at St. Paul, nor are they bound by all he ever wrote, any more than all Protestants are bound by all that Luther ever said. Luther at an early period thought it impossible he should ever commit what he verily thought to be the mortal sin of leaving the Church of Rome, and yet he lived long enough to cry with a voice which raised Europe to her feet, "Come out of her my people."

And Wesley, years after he wrote the words you so vauntingly quote from him, against leaving the Church of England, took the most decided steps in that direction, warranting the belief from the rate of his progress while he lived, that had he continued till this day, he might have departed even further than his sons and successors have done.

You would not argue that because for many years Thos. Chalmers adhered to the Established Church of Scotland, therefore he could not afterwards have aided in founding a separate church, the very useful and prosperous Free Church of Scotland, for we all know that he did both. And we know well enough that Wesley was thrust forward in a similar direction, and in the lapse of time there is good evidence to show that he could not have stopped short of distinct and separate Church organization. In point of fact what did he not do essential to the construction of a Church? He administered the Lord's supper in separate places, to the people called Methodists, he called out and appointed to the cure of souls many preachers who looked to him as their only bishop: He declared contrary to the doctrine of the school in which you have learnt, that Bishops and Presbyters are substantially the same,' and he ordained clergymen for the work of God in America and Scotland, yea he carried his practice to the extent of ordaining Dr. Coke a Superintendent or Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church in that land, and when his brother and some others objected to his conduct as opposed to the very words of a former period, which you would bind us to observe as "precepts." C. Wesley writing to his brother, said, "I can scarcely yet believe it, that my brother, my old and intimate friend and companion, should have assumed the episcopal character, ordained elders, consecrated a Bishop, and sent him over to America. "Again, Charles observes, quoting from Lord Mansfield, ordination is separation," and charges John with having now taken steps in direct opposition to his own words written some years previously.^* So fast and so far had Wesley receded from his page 23 former position, to which you would have the Methodist preachers and people of this day to go back, the fact is that John Wesley without recognising it, had for many years been the Bishop of a Church which he had founded, admitting and excluding members according to his own judgment. You have referred me to the 19th Article of the Church, and have stated that a Church is a society, &c. Now if you refer to Bishop Burnett on this Article, you will find that he expounds it so as to give the character of a church to a people and ministry which God might raise up, very much as he did raise up Methodism. The true construction of a Church of Christ comprises according to this article, gospel-preaching, the sacraments administered, and faithful men in christian communion. These things being absent, the building, the minister, the congregation, and the succession do not make up a true Church, these things being present beyond the Anglican pale there is a true church of God, and so we may conclude under cover of this Article, and with the sanction of the men who drew it up, and its standard expositors, that a particular Church may lose its character, the candlestick being removed out of its place, and God may raise up to himself a Church in his own way, according to his free and vast power to raise up of the stones, children unto Abraham. And so when we look around among the religious institutions of any country to find the Church of Christ, we must not enquire what is established by law, where is Apostolical succession, but where are faithful men, gospel preaching and the sacraments duly administered, there is the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

As to the dogma of A postolical succession, which is the very corner stone of your claims to the office of a Christian Ministry, there is no authority for such a claim in Scripture, and it cannot be traced through a single century, nor can you find me page 24 the requisite links to go over (he very first generation of the Christian Church. Such is the uncertainty of tradition and the baselessness of these popish assumptions, that it is not possible to determine the order of succession of the overseers of the Roman Church for the first century. Linus, Cletus, Anacletus, and Clement, precede or follow each other according to the varying judgment of various historians. Tertullian says that Clement was ordained by St. Peter. Jerome makes him the immediate successor of St. Peter. Others interpose Linus. Eusebius and Jerome, and Cletus, and Anacletus, to Linus, as succeeding the Apostle, and preceding Clement, while Irenæus altogether omits Cletus. Some suppose that Anacletus is a purely apocryphal personage, and that Linus and Cletus both exercised the pastorate at the same time,—the one having charge of the Gentile christians, and the other of the Jewish converts. So baseless is this vaunted doctrine of the Apostolical succession.

The time is surely now come when our Lord's disciples should seek to recognise with thankfulness the truth and grace of God in all places where goodness appears, and not labour to narrow up the operations of divine love to the merest corner of his redeemed world. As a heathen once remarked of the philosophy, "That is not philosophy which is peculiar to the differing sects, but that which is true in all sects," so that is surely not religion which is peculiar to this or that party of Christians, but that which is pure and godly in them all. The restrictions put upon Christianity in the exclusive teaching of the High Church, would dignify a portion of the Lord's heritage as though it were the church catholic, and would wipe off the rest of Christendom from the map of our Redeemer's kingdom, not shrinking from doing to him the dishonour of minifying his gracious reign to so small a province, and this in order that themselves may have the vain distinction of being his heritage alone. "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are we."

If this pamphlet may, by the blessing of God, be allowed to do any good, may it be that of showing that the Lord's last covenant with mankind is large and free, having no restrictions but those that are moral and spiritual; not for Judea, but the world; not in this or that mountain, but wherever the true worshippers are; not of ancient, Israel, but "in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted-of him."

Let us all as Christian ministers' and people feel the pre-ciousness of souls redeemed by the Saviour's blood,—let us lay to heart the vastness of Satan's work, and the rapidity of his destructive march, and the inuumerable Weapons of his warfare and then behold the love of the Redeemer, the grace of the Spirit, the freeness of salvation for every soul of man who can be induced to turn from sip and seek his grace; and, while any are turning sinners from the error of their ways, let us all join page 25 in a doxology to the God of all grace, still and ever praying that God may among all his people raise up and send forth labourers into bis fields, so ripe unto the harvest. And if any should so mistake his duty as to forbid in the name of Jesus the gospel work of others, we would remind him that a similar case was very early decided by the Lord, for "John answering said, master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and we forbad him because he followeth not us. But Jesus said forbid him not; for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name that can lightly speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is on our part."—Mark ix., 38, 39.

As for the Wesleyan Methodists, while they are glad to encourage all that truly follow the Lord Jesus,—that teach his doctrine, and preach holiness through faith in his blood,—they claim only what they grant,—to be a true church of Christ,—of equal authority with their sister churches, and to their own ministers they look as men called of God to preach his gospel, and be overseers, pastors, or bishops in his church, equally with any other ministers in the great Protestant family, founded in the providence of God at the Reformation. The doctrines taught by the Methodists are substantially the same as those that the reformers gave to the Church of England, and by undoubted proofs can be shown to be identical with the doctrines taught in the primitive and apostolical times, and we are prepared to go into those times, and compare with any other church, our credentials as servants of our common Master, and although infinitely unworthy, yet as true and authentic successors of the apostles in all things in which they were designed by God to have successors, as are any other men in this sinful but redeemed world.

We are prepared to show that the Wesleyan Methodist Societies throughout the wide world are an integral portion of the great Catholic Church of God which the Saviour purchased with his own blood, and which the Holy Ghost hath begotten by the Word, and part of that glorious temple of God upon earth which supercedes and now more than occupies the place in his estimation which the temple and ancient Israel held in the former dispensation. We "hold the faith once delivered to the saints," and that not with the effeminate fantastic touch which marks out so many of your clergy, unhapily at this day, as apostates from that faith and allies of the infidel, and Popish enemies of genuine Christianity.

By the faith once delivered to the saints, we understand—not any fanciful notions about an imaginary Christ, as many of your writers and clergy teach,—but we mean the definite and sublime system of revealed religion, preached in its perfected form by the apostles, centred around the personal Christ, whom the four evangelists describe, incorporated in the societies set forth in the Acts of the Apostles, expanded and enforced in page 26 the epistles, and in its onward march through time, prophetically pourtrayed in its leading features of success and obstruction, of opposition and triumph in the Revelation of St. John. This is the faith which we teach and our people believe. The same faith, the one religion, that the ancient prophets predicted for a thousand years, which underlies and vitalises the ten commandments, and which breathes eternal life in the Psalms of David, glows in the poetry of Isaiah, swells in the mysteries of Ezekiel, which alone makes Paul superior to Plato, and gives us in Christianity no uncertain sound of doubtful doctrine, but the voice of God, speaking in his own proper Son,—God of God, light of light, and man with men, shining in clear divine light into the darkness of a fallen world, speaking with a power which raised up out of heatheuism and Jewish corruption a band of faithful men who diffused the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, and fulfilled the vision of dry bones raised up into a living army by the power of grace.

This faith, full of mercy and good fruits, weeping over the miseries of a wicked world as Christ did over Jerusalem, "going about doing good" "round about the villages teaching," proclaiming pardon to the penitent, and a free, full, and present salvation to every one that believeth; this faith, once delivered to the saints, we hold, and have held it ever since God raised up John and Charles Wesley and George Whitfield to will the Church of England and the British nation back again to the saving truth of the Reformation, from which they had so widely departed.

And now vet again there is another apostacy from that divine "faith once delivered to the saints," and we have lived in this nineteenth century to witness the ignominious phenomenon of "heathenish priests and mitered infidels, and not a few, stand up in christian pulpits to preach the doctrine of anti-christ wearing the livery of heaven the better to serve the courts of hell. You talk of John Wesley's scourge, pray what kind of scourge would Paul and Peter take to these clergy equipped from the school of Porphyry, duly ordained—duly ordained indeed—yet apes of the infidels of a bye-gone age. Gowned, dignified, and paid that Christ and his gospel may be preached to the souls for whom he was crucified, but prostituting their sacred office and all its powers to degrade our Redeemer to the level allotted him by Volny, Hume and Porphyry. This portion of your clergy, reverend sir, would be beaten with many stripes from the apostolic whip, and I rather think that you yourself would hardly escape.

Allow me, however, to invite you to look at the great first principles of the oracles of God and to forego the traditions of men. Look at our Lord's great command, the charter of our ministry, of yours and mine, as we are the Lord's servants—"Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every page 27 creature; he that believeth and is baptised shall be saved and he that believeth not shall be damned." The souls attending your ministry are precious to me, as they are to every brother in Christ. Oh, sir, let them have the gospel of our common salvation. Hold up to them a perfect Saviour, a glorified High-priest, and a present salvation through his blood. Don't hide the Redeemer behind the drapery of your church or the dignity of your office. Come home, sir, to good old British Christianity for which the Reformers wrote and preached and died. Drink at their wells. Illuminate your mind with their lamps and put your extinguisher on the sickly flickering lights of Germany and of Home. Tell your people they are sinners and must be born again, guilty and must obtain pardon, under condemnation to the second death, but that life eternal is prepared for them that so believe as to flee for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before them in Christ Jesus.

Oh, let our souls be filled with gospel light, let us meditate upon it and let us feed by faith on the true bread of life, and then come out as strong men and giants ready to set our peoples' souls on fire with a Saviour's love, and lead them on to the purity of a christian life, the joys of the Saviour's love, and to a zeal for good works which shall shake popery to its base, change its brazen face into the paleness of death, send the false philosophers of Germany back sneaking into their own clouds, convince the Jews that Christ is really come, and impress the world that in this glorious church of the Lord there is a spirit and life which all her enemies can neither gainsay nor resist.

Let our churches live, and they will be respected. Let them put forth the Voice of a life-giving truth. Let them wake up the dead in sin and they shall be acknowledged of God and man. Let them reform the profligate, rescue the drunkard, elevate the worldling to higher thoughts than the everlasting monotony of bargain-making, only relieved by the horse-race, the ball, or the theatre.

Then will it be seen that we are ambassadors of Christ, and multitudes shall bow down at the feet of Jesus, saying "Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles (which thou by thy servants art doing,) except God be with him." And "Now may the God of Peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting Covenant, make us perfect in every good work to do His will working in us that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.