e fulfilled nowhere,
because it is not fulfilled in them? By the Church we mean what
Scripture means, "the pillar and ground of the truth"; a power out of
whose mouth the Word and the Spirit are never to fail, and whom whoso
refuses to hear becomes thereupon to all his brethren a heathen man and
a publican. Let the parties in question accept the Scripture definition,
or else not resume the Scripture name; or, rather, let them seek
elsewhere what they are conscious is not among themselves. We hear much
of Bible Christians, Bible religion, Bible preaching; it would be well
if we heard a little of the Bible Church also; we venture to say that
Dissenting Churches would vanish thereupon at once, for, since it is
their fundamental principle that they are not a pillar or ground of
truth, but voluntary societies, without authority and without gifts, the
Bible Church they cannot be. If the serious persons who are in dissent
would really imitate the simple-minded Ethiopian, or the noble Bereans,
let them ask themselves: "Of whom speaketh" the Apostle, or the Prophet,
such great things?--Where is the "pillar and ground"?--Who is it that is
appointed to lead us to Christ?--Where are those teachers which were
never to be removed into a corner any more, but which were ever to be
before our eyes and in our ears? Whoever is right, or whoever is wrong,
they cannot be right who profess not to have found, not to look out
for, not to believe in, that Ordinance to which Apostles and Prophets
give their testimony. So much then for the Protestant side of the
thesis.

One half of it then is easily disposed of; but now we come to the other
side of it, the Roman, which certainly has its intricacies. It is not
difficult to know how we should act toward a religious body which does
not even profess to come to us in the name of the Lord, or to be a
pillar and ground of the truth; but what shall we say when more than one
society, or school, or party, lay claim to be the heaven-sent teacher,
and are rivals one to the other, as are the Churches of England and Rome
at this day? How shall we discriminate between them? Which are we to
follow? Are tests given us for that purpose? Now if tests are given us,
we must use them; but if not, and so far as not, we must conclude that
Providence foresaw that the difference between them would never be so
great as to require of us to leave the one for the other.

However, it is certain that much _is_ said in Scriptu