When the clergy, then, are reminded of the virtues of the Apostles, is it not their duty to press upon such friends the virtues of those who were the Apostles’ hearers? Such munificence as that of selling states and possessions, and placing the price of them in the hands of the Christian minister, might render superfluous any other support. We are told that heresies (that is, divisions and sects) must need come, and _why_? That “they which are approved may be made manifest.” {11a} They are permitted as the trial of our faith and proof of our orthodoxy. Schism is a carnal sin, {11b} and must not be countenanced, but avoided. It must be treated and resisted just as the determined Christian would treat and resist any other carnal sin. It is unnecessary to enlarge, with proofs and testimonies, upon the guilt of schism. It is our business to discover what is the true nature of the offence, and what its guilt. This is demonstrated from the Sacred Scriptures and from the Church Universal. We come with the Sacred Scriptures in our hands, supported by the holy fathers and a host of primitive writers. We define the sin from the mouth of the Lord and from the pen of the Apostles, and we have the universal agreement of the whole Christian Church for fifteen hundred years together. It will be useful to trace the history of schism from early times. The very first generation of mankind furnishes an example, and describes the case with several of those circumstances which ever since have generally attended it. When Cain fled from his father after the murder of Abel, he went out from “the presence of the Lord.” He went out from some place where God was present in an especial manner, that is, the place of divine worship, which was doubtless with Adam, and thus forsook the stated public communion of those persons with whom the covenant of mercy was made, in the promise of the Blessed Messiah. From this time he and his descendants became a separate people from the true Church, which continued in the line of Seth, for in Seth’s time they were called the people or Church of God—in contradistinction to the schismatical party of Cain. To this account of Cain’s first schism we may add the testimony of St. Jude, who, in speaking of teachers of false doctrine and men who despise government, joins together those who perished in the gainsaying of Corah, and says of them in ver. 19, “These be they who separate themselves.” The cause of this separation of Cain may be traced from the circumstances of the worship of the two brothers: for schisms are not made for their own sake: there is generally something corrupt in their origin.