130 CHURCH UNITY 



coat of our Saviour, this schism in the mem- 

 bers of his mystical body, is by far the 

 greatest calamity which has befallen the 

 Christian interest, and one of the most fatal 

 effects of the great apostasy foretold by the 

 sacred penman, we have been so long famil- 

 iarized to it, as to be scarcely sensible of its 

 enormity j nor does it excite suspicion or 

 concern in any degree proportioned to what 

 would be felt by one who had contemplated 

 the Church in the first ages. Christian soci- 

 eties regarding each other with the jealousies 

 of rival empires, each trying to raise itself 

 on the ruin of all the others, making extra- 

 vagant boasts of superior purity, generally in 

 exact proportion to their departures from it, 

 and scarcely deigning to acknowledge the 

 possibility of obtaining salvation out of their 

 pale, is the odious and disgusting spectacle 

 which modern Christendom presents. The 

 evils which result from this state of divi- 

 sion are incalculable. It supplies infidels 

 with their most plausible topics of invective ; 

 it hardens the conscience of the irreligious ; 

 it weakens the hands of the good, impedes 

 the efficacy of prayer, and is probably the 

 principal obstruction to that ample effusion 

 of the Spirit which is essential to the renova- 

 tion of the world." 1 



1 Works I. 289. See Princeton Ess., 2d Series, p. 237. 



