their portion is not with God's people; that Christ is not
their Saviour, nor the Holy Spirit their Comforter and Guide: but what
blasphemy is it to call themselves friends of the church! as if Christ's
church could have any friends except God and his holy angels: the church
has its living and redeemed members; it may have those who are craving
to be admitted within its shelter, being convinced that God is in it of
a truth; but beyond these he who is not with it is against it; he who is
not Christ's servant, serves his enemy.

Farther, it is this same deadly error which is the root and substance of
popery. There is no one abuse of the Romish system which may not be
traced to the original and very early error of drawing a wide
distinction between the clergy and the laity; of investing the former in
such a peculiar degree with the attributes of the church that at last
they retained them almost exclusively. In other words, the great evil of
popery is, that it has destroyed the Christian church, and has
substituted a priesthood in its room. This is the fault of the Greek
church, almost as much as of the Roman; and the peculiar tenet of the
Romish church, that the supreme government is vested in one single
member of this priesthood, the Bishop of Rome, is in some respects
rather an improvement of the system, than an aggravation of it. For
even an absolute monarchy is a less evil than an absolute aristocracy;
and an infallible Pope is no greater corruption of Christ's truth, than
an infallible general council. The real evils of the system are of a far
older date than the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, and exist in places
where that supremacy is resolutely denied. And if we attend to them
carefully, we shall see that these evils have especially affected the
Christian church as distinguished from the Christian religion. It is
worth our while to attend to this distinction; for the Christian
religion and the Christian church together, and neither without the
other, form the perfect idea of Christianity. NOW, by the Christian
religion, I mean the revelation of what God has done or will do for us
in Christ; the great doctrines of the Trinity, the incarnation, the
atonement, the resurrection, the presence of the Holy Spirit amongst us,
and our own resurrection hereafter, to an existence of eternal happiness
or misery. And these truths, if revealed to any single person living in
an uninhabited island, might be abundantly sufficient