Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: of Christ. It is to attribute to the world the attributes of the Church; to the kingdom of darkness the prerogatives of the kingdom of light. It is to ascribe to wickedness the character and blessedness of goodness. Every such historical Church has been the world baptized; all the men of a generation, or of a nation, are included in the pale of such a communion. If they are the Church, who are the world ? If they are the kingdom of light, who constitute the kingdom of darkness ? To teach that the promises and prerogatives of the Church belong to these visible societies, is to teach that they belong to the world, organized under a particular form and called by a new name. CHAPTER II. THEORIES OF THE CHURCH. ] This is one of the ablest productions of the Oxford school. The theory of the Church which that school has embraced, is here presented historically, in the first instance, and then sustained by arguments drawn from the design of the Church, as a divine institute, and the common conclusion is arrived at and urged, that the one Church, as described by the author, is the only revealed way of salvation. Archdeacon Manning's work has excited no little attention in England; and its republication in this country, has been warmly welcomed by the Oxford party in America. We do not propose to make the book before us, the subject of particular examination; but simply to exhibit the theory of the Church which it advocates, in connection and contrast with that which necessarily arises out of the evangelical system of doctrine. The Church as an outward organization is the result and expression of an inward spiritual life; and consequently must take its form from the nature of the life whence it springs. This is only saying, in other words, that our theory of the Church, depends...