communion, preserved in their integrity, “ as once delivered to the saints,” are our divine vouchers also, intelligible to all, that we are an integral part of that holy fellowship of the same spiritual family with the Jews in the days of Estherchildren of Abraham in common with them_heirs also of the promises—the people of God. So far then it appears we are personally interested in Mordecai's expostulation. To bring it completely home to us, our respective times and circumstances with reference to our own portion of the Catholic Church, must also correspond; and though, on first glancing upon the case, this obvious discrepancy presents itself, that no overt act of hatred so revolting to humanity has been perpetrated, as the promulging a decree of extermi. nation against our whole communion, yet the spiritual wickedness, constituting the very gall of bitterness in this sanguinary proscription, may still be abroad amongst us, and in active operation, compassing the same ends, with a refined malignity, by circumvention and intrigue. The times of Julian are precisely those characterized in this position; for that apostate from Christianity, in the course he adopted towards the church, studiously abstained from open and direct persecution. He affected, with reference to religion, that specious impartiality, which leaves to every man full power of judging for himself what faith and worship he shall-adhere to; but, under this mask of moderation, he withdrew from the Christians, and their spiritual rulers, the privileges that had been granted to them—he shut up the schools in which they exclusively taught philosophy and the liberal arts, turning the whole empire into a college of infidelity-he encouraged the sectaries who brought dishonour upon the Gospel by their divisions—and, whilst reviling the Mosaic history, and ridiculing the Jewish law, he distinguished the Jews by special marks of his indulgence & This was his insidious policy as ecclesiastical history sets it out. The statement is most remarkable with reference to our own Church, in the times in which we live: for terms could not be chosen more accurately descriptive, even in their minutest details, of the spoliations and restraints now under legislative deliberation, for its future discountenance, and intended, if it be possible, to be passed into laws. And if, upon comparing this sapping system with Haman's projected carnage, a question can be raised as to its essential identity with that tyrannous decree, either in the spirit a See Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, vol. i, p. 329. Van Mildert's Boyle's Lectures, p. 166. See also Appendix to ditto, p. 27, for the terms of sarcasm in which Julian issues his orders for the confiscation of the whole property of the Church of Edessa. which suggested it, or in the issue, the subtle contriver's own testimony, will set that question at rest; for Julian made it no secret, that the motive by which he was actuated was hatred to the Gospel; and that the policy he pursued was adopted upon a conviction both of the insufficiency of violence to effect its extirpation; and that the dexterous management of undermining expedients under the semblance of clemency, would accomplish that impious design. But the same EYE, whose watchfulness over Israel was its security against Haman's conspirings, was still expanded with unslumbering vigilance upon the Church : and as, in the former instance, the reckless persecutor was taken in his own snare, and perished suddenly by his own contrivings, so, in the latter, was the treacherous dealer, with almost equal unpreparedness for such an event, made a betrayer to himself; for he rashly embroiled himself in a war, which he as imprudently conducted, and the lance of a Persian soldier cut him short in his career, when he had lived just long enough to develop all the crafty wiliness that he imagined b. The time then in which it has pleased God to cast our lot, is precisely such a time as that which the text refers to. It is one of those seasons “ of trouble, rebuke, and blasphemy,” which, many a a See Van Mildert's Boyle's Lectures, p. 167. time, in ages past, the church has experienced, and to which, from a moral necessity, it is still conti. nually liable, in its passage through a world equally at enmity with it, and the God of its salvation. The very Israel of God, under the Gospel dispen. sation, it is now publicly proscribed, in the very terms I use, as “a vile incubusa ” upon Christianity; and the Hamans amongst us, who revile it in these atrocious terms, and who are conspiring together, and taking their counsel, to blot out its very remembrance from the earth, have been long too successfully preparing the way for this consummation of their hatred, by spurious admixtures and disfigurements of their own perverse conceits, and by confounding it with the corruptest counterfeits. The expostulation of Mordecai, therefore, appeals to us with all the force belonging to it in its original application; and its requirements are two-fold—to know the Church-and to know also, with reference to it, our respective responsibilities. The first and fundamental counsel, is to know the Church, the people of God, under all his dispensations. A single nation, issuing from the loins of Abrahamn, and propagated by natural generation under Moses-a conflux from all nations, em * See Report of Proceedings at Annual Meeting of Society of Ecclesiastical Knowledge. World, May 16, 1831. bracing the faith of Abraham, and propagated by baptismal regeneration under Christ. To know this Church—this holy fellowship-to distinguish it from all alien communities, as in the former case by its carnal, so in the latter by its spiritual genealogy, and to know, moreover, respecting it, what Mordecai avouched, with such full assurance of faith, and what our Lord affirmed, in terms incapable of clearer enunciation, that, whatever hostility may assail it, from some quarter or other, “ enlargement and deliverance” shall, in God's good time, arise ; so that “the gates of Hell shall not prevail against ita _” to know all this, and so to know it, as to act upon it, with a steadfastness commensurate with that evinced both by Mordecai and Esther, and under circumstances as apparently desperate as theirs, is the first principle of Christian discernment-it is that principle laid universally as the basis of the life of faith, from one end of the Scriptures to the other, and exemplified, in every instance, by those lights of the world, who are divinely commended to us as the patterns of our profession, from the great Pa. triarch, who became “ a stranger and a pilgrim upon earth," that he might “ seek a better country b," to the great Apostle, who “ suffered loss of all things, and counted all things but dung, so that he might win Christo" 2" might be found in |