XVII. NOTE Covenant); these inferior communications, I say, are not of themselves sufficient to entitle to or enable us to attain that eternal Life, which is the gift of God, and noways due to our nature, or to our best performances; they being only some remainders and footsteps of that, Divine Image, which was itself necessary even to our first parents themselves in the state of innocency to exalt them to that supernatural immortality for which God designed them, and consequently is much more so with regard to their fallen posterity: for it is only the inhabitation of the Spirit as an internal principle united to our nature, living and abiding in us for ever, and making us partakers of the Divine nature, and not any inferior communications of it as a principle external to our nature, that constituteth this Divine Image, by which alone we become the sons of God, and as being sons, heirs, and co-heirs with Jesus Christ, our elder Brother, of the heavenly inheritance. Now this Divine Image, and the sonship consequent on it, which the Apostle so much admires as a most surprising instance of the love of God towards us Christians, (1 John iii. 1.) being one of the exceeding great and precious promises' of the New Covenant which Christ hath purchased for His Church, can never be obtained by any other means but those which He hath prescribed in the Gospel for the conveying of it; and they are none other than the Christian Sacraments, by which this new Covenant itself is transacted and maintained, and by which we are made and continued members of the Church. Hence our blessed Saviour Himself assures us, that except we be born again of Water, and of the Spirit, we cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; and that Baptism, as well as faith, is necessary to Salvation; and likewise, that unless we eat the Flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His Blood, in the Eucharist, we can have no life in us; and that it is by our eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood that He dwelleth in us by the inhabitation of His Spirit, and we in Him, as members of His Body, the Church; and that thereby we have eternal life, and He will raise us up at the last Day, by this quickening Spirit, which thus dwelleth in us, and shall quicken our mortal bodies. From whence it appears, that as the Baptism of water, and that of the Spirit, which is given in Confirmation, are necessary in order to that Regeneration whereby this new life is first infused into us, and the Divine Image, which we lost in Adam, re-implanted in us; so a constant participation in the Sacrifice of the Eucharist is as necessary for our continuance and growth in this divine life of the Spirit, as our bodily food is for the support of our natural life. "Now the design of God in thus conferring the benefits of the Christian Covenant, and particularly the conveyance of this divine Spirit by these external Symbols, is not only to heighten our devotion by these sensible representations; or to teach us that they are, as hath been proved, supernatural favours, which He bestows on us purely of His own free grace and bounty; but principally to confederate us into a visible Society, under XVII. visible Governors authorized and commissioned by Him, (which is what NOTE the Scriptures and the primitive Fathers always mean by the Church, which is inserted into our Creed as a necessary Article of Faith ;) such a visible Society being necessary to preserve and continue down to the end of the world that Faith which was once delivered to the Saints, which must otherwise have been extinguished and swallowed up long ere now, by those many heresies from within, and persecutions from without, with which Christianity hath been infested from the beginning; on which account the Church is by St. Paul called 'the Pillar and Ground of the Truth;' and also to keep us stedfast in the performance of those exalted duties which the Gospel requires from us; and to prevent the growth of licentiousness and immorality by the just severity of its discipline. "That this was indeed the thing chiefly intended by God in this confinement, will appear from its being so necessary a consequence thereof. For if we cannot have the Spirit, or any other of the benefits of the Christian Covenant (which are necessary in order to our attainment of that supernatural reward of everlasting salvation) without an external participation in those Sacraments by which this Covenant is transacted and maintained, and which God has appointed as the only ordinary means of conveying them to us; and if these Sacraments derive their whole efficacy, not from their own nature, but from their Consecration; and if this power of consecrating them must be derived from God, Who only has the disposal of the benefits conferred by them, so that none can validly consecrate them without an authority derived from Him for that effect; and if none can lay any just claim to this authority, but they who have received it from those who had power to give it them, in a continued succession from the Apostles, who at first received it from Christ; this will necessarily oblige us, as we value our eternal salvation, to a strict dependance upon, and submission to them, who thus have alone this power of consecrating the Sacraments. . . . . And this obligation will extend to all cases wherein we cannot expect, nay and be sure of, God's supplying the want of these ordinary means, which Himself hath appointed, by extraordinary and uncovenanted favours. But this is what we can have no reasonable ground to hope for, but upon a perfect impossiblity, either physical or legal, of obtaining them; which can never be pretended, while they may be had by any moral diligence, or by any not unlawful compliance. "Now this obligation to submit to all unsinful conditions, how hard or imprudent soever we may think them, which may be required from us, in order to the obtaining of these Sacraments, by those who alone have the power of consecrating them, will necessarily give them a power of government over us; and consequently make the Christian Church a visible society under visible governors: which therefore (since God cannot be supposed to have given them this power unawares, but designedly) must have been the thing chiefly intended in this whole contrivance. XVII. NOTE "And indeed, the Christian Church being instituted for purely spiritual purposes, and not designed to interfere with the civil societies of this world, but to subsist distinctly from, and independently on them, nay, even in a state of persecution from them; as its being a visible society was necessary for this end, so the rewards and punishments of it could not have been of a civil, but spiritual nature; and the most proper, or rather indeed the only way, so far as we can conceive, whereby the governors of this society could have had the power of such spiritual rewards and punishments, even in this life, (which yet is necessary for them to have in order to a government in this life,) could only be by confining the spiritual privileges of it to external symbols, and putting the whole power of dispensing these symbols, with any legal validity, into their hands, after the manner above laid down: which plainly shews us both the wisdom of this contrivance, and the end for which it was designed. "It was on a full persuasion of this truth, then deeply rooted in the minds of all Christians, that an exclusion from the Sacraments and from the Communion of the Church was in consequence an exclusion from the covenant and promises of God which are confined to them, and so from the means of salvation, that the Discipline of the primitive Church was wholly founded. This was the thing which made them then dread the Ecclesiastical Censures more than all the punishments which the civil magistrate could inflict, or than any evil whatsoever that could reach no further than this life; and so made them willing to atone for their scandalous offences by many years austerities, inflicted on them by the governors of the Church. And it was the exactness and severity of this discipline that made those happy times so glorious and exemplary. "This Discipline therefore, which was then exercised with so great severity, and yet everywhere submitted to, is a plain and unanswerable proof that this doctrine of the necessity of an external participation of the Sacraments, in the visible Communion of the Catholic Church, in order to salvation, was then universally believed. Which it is impossible it could have been in the very age next to the Apostles, if it had not been delivered by the Apostles themselves as a fundamental doctrine of Christianity to the Churches planted by them.”—Preface to Instructions &c. P. xxiii. NOTE XVIII. Q. Is there likewise unity between the Church on earth and the Church in heaven? A. Doubtless there is.-Orthodox Catechism, p. 50. I. The Scottish Bishop Rattray, of Dunkeld, has left us a whole Dissertation in proof of the following proposition ; "That the habits contracted in this life, and with which we depart out of it, are not extinguished altogether by death, but that we carry them NOTÉ along with us into the state of separation."-Bp. Keith's work, p. 539. That of Aberdeen: "Q. Does the Communion of Saints extend to the other world? A. Yes; the Church upon earth and the Church in Paradise communicate together by mutually praying for each other."-P. 19. And that by Bishop Jolly: "Q. But is this life the boundary of our connexion with Christ, or with one another? A. No; death cannot dissolve those bonds which divine grace has formed, or separate us from the love of Christ. Q. What do you infer from this? A. Since the union between Christ and His Church cannot be dissolved even by death, it is reasonable to think that a communion still subsists between the Church on earth and the Saints in Paradise, as being still united to the same Head, their common Lord and Saviour. Q. And how is this communion maintained or kept up? A. By mutual prayer and thanskgiving."-P. 35. And the Catechism of Brechin: "A. I believe that this communion with Christ, and through Him with one another, is not dissolved by death; but that the Saints departed and the Saints on earth make One Family, which is named of our Lord Jesus Christ." (Eph. iii. 15.)—P. 24. III. From the Liturgy of the Scottish and Anglican Churches :"Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with all the Company of heaven, we laud and magnify Thy glorious Name, evermore praising Thee, and saying, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts, &c." IV. From Bishop Nicholson's Exposition of the Catechism : "It is our duty, 4. to pray with and for one another; 5. to praise God with and for one another; 6. to imitate the Saints in heaven, that praise God and pray in general for the Militant Church on earth: for it cannot be conceived, that they being united to the Saints on earth in charity, (which must needs be heightened by their glorification, and by the beatifical vision,) will omit this special duty of charity."-P. 63. V. Bishop Montague, in his book on the Invocation of Saints :"It is in confesso, that all the Saints departed, each and several Saint departed and with God, do and doth incessantly invoke the high Majesty of heaven 'pro nobis miseris peccatoribus.””—P. 190. VI. From the Proposals of the British Bishops to the Easterns:"The souls of the Faithful remain until the resurrection in certain mansions appropriated to them, waiting in hope for the revelation of that Day, and joining in the prayers and praises of the Militant Church upon earth offered up in faith." And again: “We believe that both Saints and Angels have joy in the conversion of one sinner, and in the progress of a Christian; and we desire to join with them in spirit.”—Prop. xii. XVIII. NOTE NOTE XIX. Q. On what is grounded the rule of the Church upon earth to invoke in prayer the Saints of the Church in heaven? A. On a holy tradition, the principle of which is to be seen also in holy Scripture. For instance, when David cries out "O Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, our Fathers;" he makes mention of Saints in aid of his prayer, exactly as now the Orthodox Church calls upon "Christ our true God, by the prayers of His most pure Mother and all His Saints."-Orthodox Catechism, p. 50. The above passage of the Russian Catechism identifies all lawful Invocations of Saints in principle with the oblique form, about which there can be no doubt, that it is admitted by the British Churches: I. From Bishop Andrewes' Private Devotions: Making mention of the all-holy, immaculate, and most blessed Mother of God and ever-Virgin Mary, let us commend ourselves, and one another, and our whole life, unto Christ our God.”—Oxford ed. 1843, p. 92. II. Dean Field in his treatise on the Church: 66 Prayer wherein the Church desireth God to be gracious to her, and to grant the things she desireth the rather for that the Saints in heaven also are suppliants for her, will not be found to contain any point of doctrine disliked by us."-Append. to B. iii. p. 223. III. From Archbishop Bramhall's Answer to M. De la Militiere :"We do sometimes meet in ancient authors with the intercession of Saints in general, which we also acknowledge; or an oblique invocation of them, (as you term it,) that is, a prayer directed to God, that He will hear the intercession of the Saints for us, which also we do not condemn." -Vol. I. p. 58. Oxford ed. 1842. IV. From a Collect in the original Service for the Day of King Charles the First's Martyrdom, put forth by authority in the year 1661: "We beseech Thee to give us all grace to remember and provide for our latter end by a careful imitation of this Thy blessed Saint and Martyr, and all other Thy Saints and Martyrs that have gone before us; that we may be made worthy to receive benefit by their prayers, which they in communion with Thy Church Catholic offer up unto Thee for that part of it here militant, and in fight with, and in danger from the flesh.” V. From Thorndike's book entitled "The Epilogue": "I will distinguish three sorts of prayers to Saints. The first is of those |