ested, forbearing, scornful of untruth and
baseness, and esteeming nothing so much as the fruits of the Spirit:
accordingly, John did not hesitate to say: "_We know_ that we have
passed from death unto life, _because_ we love the brethren." Our
doctrine certainly had been, that the Church was the assembly of the
saved, gathered by the vital attractions of God's Spirit; that in it
no one was Lord or Teacher, but one was our Teacher, even Christ: that
as long as we had no earthly bribes to tempt men to join us, there was
not much cause to fear false brethren; for if we were heavenly minded,
and these were earthly, they would soon dislike and shun us. Why
should we need to sit in judgment and excommunicate them, except in
the case of publicly scandalous conduct?

It is true, that I fully believed certain intellectual convictions
to be essential to genuine spirituality: for instance, if I had
heard that a person unknown to me did not believe in the Atonement of
Christ, I should have inferred that he had no spiritual life. But if
the person had come under my direct knowledge, my _theory_ was, on
no account to reject him on a question of Creed, but in any case to
receive all those whom Christ had received, all on whom the Spirit of
God had come down, just as the Church at Jerusalem did in regard
to admitting the Gentiles, Acts xi. 18. Nevertheless, was not this
perhaps a theory pleasant to talk of, but too good for practice? I
could not tell; for it had never been so severely tried. I remembered,
however, that when I had thought it right to be baptized as an adult,
(regarding my baptism as an infant to have been a mischievous fraud,)
the sole confession of faith which I made, or would endure, at a time
when my "orthodoxy" was unimpeached, was: "I believe that Jesus Christ
is the Son of God:"[2] to deny which, and claim to be acknowledged as
within the pale of the Christian Church, seemed to be an absurdity. On
the whole, therefore, it did not appear to me that this Church-theory
had been hollow-hearted with _me_ nor unscriptural, nor in any way
unpractical; but that _others_ were still infected with the leaven of
creeds and formal tests, with which they reproached the old Church.

Were there, then, no other hearts than mine, aching under miserable
bigotry, and refreshed only when they tasted in others the true
fruits of the Spirit,--"love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,
goodness, fidelity, meekness, self-control?"--