had no positive truth to offer in its room. But the thousands of good
men whom it has beguiled, because it professed to meet the earnest
craving of their minds for a restoration of Christ's church with power,
need not fear to open their eyes to its hollowness; like the false
miracles of fraud or sorcery, it is but the counterfeit of a real truth.
The restoration of the church, is, indeed, the best consummation of all
our prayers, and all our labours; it is not a dream, not a prospect to
be seen only in the remotest distance; it is possible, it lies very near
us; with God's blessing it is in the power of this very generation to
begin and make some progress in the work. If the many good, and wise,
and influential laymen of our Church would but awake to their true
position and duties, and would labour heartily to procure for the church
a living organization and an effective government, in both, of which the
laity should be essential members, then, indeed, the church would become
a reality[11]. This is not Erastianism, or rather, it is not what is
commonly cried down under that name; it is not the subjection of the
church to the state, which, indeed, would be a most miserable and most
unchristian condition; but it would be the deliverance of the church,
and its exaltation to its own proper sovereignty. The members of one
particular profession are most fit to administer a system in part, most
unfit to legislate for it or to govern it: we could ill spare the
ability and learning of our lawyers, but we surely should not wish to
have none but lawyers concerned even, in the administration of justice,
much less to have none but lawyers in the government or in parliament.
What is true of lawyers with regard to the state, is no less true of the
clergy with regard to the church; indispensable as ministers and
advisers, they cannot, without great mischief, act as sole judges, sole
legislators, sole governors. And this is a truth so palpable, that the
clergy, by pressing such a claim, merely deprive the church of its
judicial, legislative, and executive functions; whilst the common sense
of the church will not allow them to exercise these powers, and, whilst
they assert that no one else may exercise them, the result is, that they
are not exercised at all, and the essence of the church is destroyed.

[Footnote 11: The famous saying, "extra ecclesiam nulla salus," is, in
its idea, a most divine truth; historically and in fact it may be,