Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/215

Rh embolden themselves to call any portion of institution for our salvation, "husk," or "shell," or the like: let it seem to us never so external, it can in no stage of the Christian course be dispensed with, which these similitudes would imply. Rather, if we use any image, might we better speak of the whole Gospel as an elixir of immortality, whereof some ingredients may be more powerful than the rest, but the efficacy of the whole depends upon the attemperament of the several portions; and we, who formed neither our own souls, nor this cure for them, dare not speak slightingly of the necessity of any portion. Doubtless there are truths, which in one sense (comparatively speaking) may be called the great truths of Christianity, as embodying in them a larger portion of the counsel of, and exhibiting more fully His attributes of holiness and love. Better perhaps, and more Scripturally might we speak of the truth,—the Gospel itself; yet there is no evil in that other expression, if intended solely as the language of thankfulness for the great instances of His mercy therein conveyed. If used, on the other hand,—I will not say disparagingly, but—as in any way conveying an impression that other doctrines are not in their place essential, or that we can assign to each truth its class or place in the Divine economy, or weigh its value, or measure its importance, then are we again forgetting our own relation to, and from the corner of His world in which we are placed, would fain judge of the order and correspondencies and harmonies of things, which can only be seen or judged of, from the centre, which is Himself. We cannot, without great danger, speak of lesser, or less essential, truths, and doctrines, and ordinances, both because the passage from "less essential," to "unessential," is unhappily but too easy, and because although these truths may appear to relate to subjects further removed from what we think the centre of Christianity, the mode in which we hold them, or our neglect of them, may very vitally affect those which we consider more primary truths. We can readily see this in cases in which we are not immediately involved. Thus we can see how a person's whole views of Sanctification by the Holy Ghost will be affected by Hoadley's low notions of the Supper;