or else they take the view openly that the tares cannot be safely plucked from the wheat in the Church in this dispensation; whereas the Lord’s words are express in there same parable that He speaks not of the Church but of the world, & the result is that the world & the Church have become nigh identical; indeed offices in the Church are in repute in the world, & the two go hand-in-hand together, & the offense of the cross seems well nigh to have ceased, which cannot be except through our offense.

3) Or take again the question of ministry, theoretically the Church of England admits that the call to the ministry must be of God, practically she ignores it. Them that have received ordination at the hands of her bishops are appointed over churches & parishes, & in too many cases it is evident without knowing experimentally even so much as “whether there be any Holy Ghost”; but because their ordination was regular, their call must not be questioned. To the utter confusion of all true order ungodly men must be placed over the Lord’s people or else sent as “blind leaders of the blind” to speak of a church they know not & of a faith themselves are strangers to.

Your Lordship will never say that such a state of things is God’s working. Is the system of which it is the result God’s system at all? If it be so God does not own it as His, raising up one here & another there. He sends by whom He will send, utterly disregarding denominational order, nay, it cannot be disguised