hy messenger. [649:1] "Some indeed," says Paul, "preach Christ
even of envy and strife, and some also of good-will.... What then?
Notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is
preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." [649:2] But
Catholicism taught its partizans to cherish very different feelings, for
they were instructed to believe that the gospel itself was without
efficacy when promulgated by a minister who did not belong to their own
party. They could not challenge a single flaw in the creed of Novatian,
[649:3] and yet they strongly maintained that his preaching was useless,
and that the baptism he dispensed was worthless as the ablution of a
heathen. "You should know," says Cyprian, "that _we ought not even to be
curious as to what Novatian teaches, since he teaches out of the
Church._ Whosoever he be, and whatsoever he be, he is not a Christian
who is not in the Church of Christ." [649:4] "When the Novatians
say--'Dost thou believe remission of sins and eternal life by the Holy
Church?' they lie in their interrogatory, since they _have no Church._"
[649:5]

Strange infatuation! Who could have anticipated that one hundred and
fifty years after the death of the Apostle John, such miserable and
revolting bigotry would have been current? The Scriptures teach us that,
in the salvation of sinners, ministers are as nothing, and the gospel
everything. "Whosoever," says Paul, "shall call upon the name of the
Lord _shall be saved_.... Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by _the
Word of God._" [650:1] Cyprian did not understand such doctrine. He
imagined that the Word of God had no power except when issuing from the
lips of the ministers of his own communion. The Catholic Church must put
its seal upon the gospel to give it currency. Without this stamp it was
all in vain to announce it to a world lying in wickedness. The Catholic
pastor might be a man without ability; he might be comparatively
ignorant; and he might be of more than suspicious integrity; and yet the
King of the Church was supposed to look down with complacency on all the
official acts of this wretched hireling, whilst no dew of heavenly
influence rested on the labours of a pious and accomplished Novatian
minister! When men like Cyprian were prepared to acknowledge such folly,
it was not strange that a darkness which might be felt soon settled down
upon Christendom.

* * * * *