of unity; and, as the Head of the Catholic Church, he might have carried out against them his threat of excommunication, had he not in this particular case been moving in advance of public opinion.  When Stephen, sixty years afterwards, disputed with Cyprian and others concerning the rebaptism of heretics, he was still endeavouring to work out the same unity; and the bishop of Carthage found himself involved in contradictions when he proceeded at once to assert his independence, and to concede to the see of Peter the honour which, as he admitted, it could legitimately challenge. [572:1]

The theory of Catholicism is based on principles thoroughly fallacious.  Assuming that visible unity is essential to the Church on earth, it sanctions the startling inference that whoever is not connected with a certain ecclesiastical society must be out of the pale of salvation.  The most grinding spiritual tyranny ever known has been erected on this foundation.  And yet how hollow is the whole system!  It is no more necessary that all the children of God in this world should belong to the same visible Church than that all the children of men should be connected with the same earthly monarchy.  All believers are “one in Christ;” they have all “one Lord, one faith, one baptism;” but “the kingdom of God cometh not with observation,” and the unity of the saints on earth can be discerned only by the eye of Omniscience.  They are all sustained by the same living bread which cometh down from heaven, but they may receive their spiritual provision as members of ten thousand separated Churches.  All who truly love the Saviour are united to Him by a link which can never be broken; and no ecclesiastical barrier can either exclude them from His presence here, or shut them out from His fellowship hereafter.  But a number of men might as well propose to appropriate all the light of the sun or all the winds of heaven, as attempt to form themselves into a privileged society with a monopoly of the means of salvation.

The Church of Rome is understood to be the spiritual Babylon of the Apocalypse, and yet one point of correspondence between the type and the antitype seems to have been hitherto overlooked.  The great city of Babylon commenced with the erection of Babel, and the builders said—­“Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” [573:1] Civil unity was avowedly the end designed by these architects.  Amongst other purposes contemplated by the famous tower, it appears to have been intended to serve as a centre of catholicity—­a great rallying point or landmark—­by which every citizen might be guided homewards when he lost his way in the plain of Shinar.  It is a curious fact that in the “Pastor of Hermas,” perhaps the first work written in Rome after the establishment of Prelacy, the Church is described under the similitude of a tower! [573:2] When Hyginus “established the