as the effect which
certainly it produced on myself.

[9] Vide Note C. _Sermon on Wisdom and Innocence._

The point of these Sermons is, that, in spite of the rigid character of
the Jewish law, the formal and literal force of its precepts, and the
manifest schism, and worse than schism, of the Ten Tribes, yet in fact
they were still recognized as a people by the Divine Mercy; that the
great prophets Elias and Eliseus were sent to them; and not only so, but
were sent to preach to them and reclaim them, without any intimation
that they must be reconciled to the line of David and the Aaronic
priesthood, or go up to Jerusalem to worship. They were not in the
Church, yet they had the means of grace and the hope of acceptance with
their Maker. The application of all this to the Anglican Church was
immediate;--whether, under the circumstances, a man could assume or
exercise ministerial functions, or not, might not clearly appear (though
it must be remembered that England had the Apostolic Priesthood, whereas
Israel had no priesthood at all), but so far was clear, that there was
no call at all for an Anglican to leave his Church for Rome, though he
did not believe his own to be part of the One Church:--and for this
reason, because it was a fact that the kingdom of Israel was cut off
from the Temple; and yet its subjects, neither in a mass, nor as
individuals, neither the multitudes on Mount Carmel, nor the Shunammite
and her household, had any command given them, though miracles were
displayed before them, to break off from their own people, and to submit
themselves to Judah[10].

[10] As I am not writing controversially, I will only here remark upon
this argument, that there is a great difference between a command, which
presupposes physical, material, and political conditions, and one which
is moral. To go to Jerusalem was a matter of the body, not of the soul.

It is plain, that a theory such as this,--whether the marks of a divine
presence and life in the Anglican Church were sufficient to prove that
she was actually within the covenant, or only sufficient to prove that
she was at least enjoying extraordinary and uncovenanted mercies,--not
only lowered her level in a religious point of view, but weakened her
controversial basis. Its very novelty made it suspicious; and there was
no guarantee that the process of subsidence might not continue, and that
it might not end in a submersion. Indeed, to many minds, to say that
E