Then, that the will must follow the practical intellect whether right or wrong,—­that is no precept, but the nature of the soul in its acting, because that the will is ’potentia caeca, non nata ad intelligendum, sed ad volendum vel nolendum intellectum’.

This is the main fault in Baxter’s metaphysics, that he so often substantiates distinctions into dividuous self-subsistents.  As here;—­for a will not intelligent is no will.

Appendix.  III. p. 55.

And for many ages no other ordinarily baptised but infants.  If Christ had no Church then, where was his wisdom, his love, and his power?  What was become of the glory of his redemption, and his Catholic Church, that was to continue to the end?

But the Antipoedo-Baptists would deny any such consequences as applicable to them, who are to act according to the circumstances, in which God, who ordains his successive manifestations in due correspondence with other lights and states of things, has placed them.  He does not exclude from the Church of Christ (say they) those whom we do not accept into the communion of our particular Society, any more than the House of Lords excludes Commoners from being Members of Parliament.  And we do this because—­we think that such promiscuous admission would prolong an error which would be deadly to us, though not to you who interpret the Scriptures otherwise.

‘In fine.’

There are two senses in which the words, ‘Church of England,’ may be used;—­first, with reference to the idea of the Church as an estate of this Christian Realm, protesting against the Papal usurpation, comprising, first, the interests of a permanent learned class, that is, the Clergy;—­secondly, those of the proper, that is, the infirm poor, from age or sickness;—­and thirdly, the adequate proportional instruction of all in all classes by public prayer, recitation of the Scriptures, by expounding, preaching, catechizing, and schooling, and last, not least, by the example and influence of a pastor and a schoolmaster placed as a germ of civilization and cultivation in every parish throughout the land.  To this idea, the Reformed Church of England with its marriable and married Clergy would have approximated, if the revenues of the Church, as they existed at the death of Henry VII., had been rightly transferred by his successor;—­transferred, I mean, from reservoirs, which had by degeneracy on the one hand, and progressive improvement on the other, fallen into ruin, and in which those revenues had stagnated into contagion or uselessness,—­transferred from what had become public evils to their original and inherent purpose of public benefits, instead of being sacrilegiously alienated by a transfer to private proprietors.  That this was impracticable, is historically true; but no less true is it philosophically, that this impracticability, arising wholly from moral causes, (namely, the loose manners and corrupt principles