n acting _together_,
except that of forming themselves into a visible body or society,
regulated by certain laws and officers? and how can they act on a large
scale, and consistently, unless it be a permanent body?

3. But, again, I might rest the necessity of Christian unity upon one
single institution of our Lord's, the Sacrament of Baptism. Baptism is
a visible rite confessedly, and St. Paul tells us that, by it,
individuals are incorporated into an already existing body. He is
speaking of the visible body of Christians, when he says, "By one
Spirit are we all baptized _into one body_[6]." But if every one who
wishes to become a Christian must come to an existing visible body for
the gift, as these words imply, it is plain that no number of men can
ever, consistently with Christ's intention, set up a Church for
themselves. All must receive their Baptism from Christians already
baptized, and they in their turn must have received the Sacrament from
former Christians, themselves already incorporated in a body then
previously existing. And thus we trace back a visible body or society
even to the very time of the Apostles themselves; and it becomes plain
that there can be no Christian in the whole world who has not received
his title to the Christian privileges from the original apostolical
society. So that the very Sacrament of Baptism, as prescribed by our
Lord and His Apostles, implies the existence of one visible association
of Christians, and only one; and that permanent, carried on by the
succession of Christians from the time of the Apostles to the very end
of the world.

This is the _design_, of Christ, I say, implied in the institution of
the baptismal rite. Whether He will be merciful, over and above His
promise, to those who through ignorance do not comply with this design,
or are in other respects irregular in their obedience, is a further
question, foreign to our purpose. Still it remains the revealed design
of Christ to connect all His followers in one by a visible ordinance of
incorporation. The Gospel faith has not been left to the world at
large, recorded indeed in the Bible, but there left, like other
important truths, to be taken up by men or rejected, as it may happen.
Truths, indeed, in science and the arts _have_ been thus left to the
chance adoption or neglect of mankind; they are no one's property; cast
at random upon the waves of human opinion. In any country soever, men
may appropriat