It is very easy to mystify a plain subject, and to represent that the word CHURCH is of doubtful meaning; but let any reader of the Bible answer this question:—When St. Paul wrote a letter to “the CHURCH of Philippi,” was there any difficulty in deciding whom he meant to address? It is plain that there existed in that city a number of families BAPTIZED in the name of CHRIST; and that number was ruled over by certain spiritual officers; and, as a whole, was called THE CHURCH. Wherever, then, we find a similar body of men, we say, there is a Church. Now, we believe that such bodies of men, so organized, and constituting, in the aggregate, the Church Universal, or Catholic, must exist to the end of the world; because, at the very time when CHRIST promised to set up such an institution, He promised to it a perpetuity. “I will build My CHURCH;” and the “gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” All this we believe simply as it stands, putting no invisible meanings upon it. Wherever, indeed, we meet with a spiritual truth, we receive it; but we desire not to make or imagine one where it exists not, just to carry out an hypothesis of our own. We know that the spiritual rulers of the CHURCH were made so at first by CHRIST personally, and that all the members of the CHURCH were made so in one way, namely, by Baptism. (Gal. iii. 27.) We think that to the CHURCH alone the peculiar promises of the Gospel were made. (2 Peter i. 4.) We believe that there was an awful power lodged in the CHURCH, and exercised from the beginning, through her Rulers, a power which, for example, could exclude unworthy members from Communion, and that those so excluded were cut off from the CHURCH’S peculiar blessing. (Matt, xviii. 18.) We think that how much soever Excommunication might now be called a “form,” it was no mere form in the Apostles’ days. (1 Cor. v. 5; Gal. v. 12; 1 Tim. i. 20, and v. 20.) We look with reverence therefore on the powers of the CHURCH, in her Ministers. We dare not hastily pronounce any thing to be “a mere matter of discipline” or “only a form,” because we feel that we are ignorant of the mysterious ways of GOD: and none can determine the limit which separates Divine Doctrine and Discipline. In fine, we look upon the CHURCH herself as One Eternal SACRAMENT: the One great outward and visible Institute, set up by CHRIST, conveying to its members His invisible grace, through many consecrated channels.