work tolerably easy, by a prudent provision of many proper general forms of absolution: to which in her wisdom She may add proper forms of excommunication and judicial absolution. But when this is done, there still remains a great deal more belonging to the full discharge of this office, for which the Church cau make no particular provision; and, therefore, that must be left to the industry and diligence of Ministers, in their particular studies and labours. And this requires both a diffused knowledge, and great application; to be able to understand the nature of all GOD's laws, and the bounds and distinctions betwixt every virtue and vice; to be able to resolve all ordinary cases of conscience, and answer such doubts and scruples as are apt to arise in men's minds; to know the qualifications of particular men, and the nature and degrees and sincerity of their repentance, in order to give them a satisfactory answer to their demands, and grant or refuse them the several sorts of absolution, as they shall think proper, upon an impartial view of their state and condition. He that thinks all this may be done without any great labour and study, and a diligent search of the Holy Scriptures, the rule and record of God's will, seems neither to understand the nature of his office, nor the needs of men; nor what it is to stand in the place of CHRIST, and judge for Him between God and man. The Priest's lips should preserve knowledge and a man that considers the large extent of that knowledge, together with the great variety of cases and persons to which he may have occasion to apply it, would rather be tempted to cry out with the Apostle, "Who is sufficient for these things?" And if this be not an argument to engage a man to industry in the office of a spiritual physician, it is hard to say what is so.

SKELTON, PRESBYTER.-Discourse 71.

The next thing the Puritans took offence at, was the Hierarchy of the Church. They looked on the Bishops as the instruments of papal tyranny, and the corrupters of true religion.... They... were, it seems, so ignorant, as not to know that the Bishops, of all men, had most reason to oppose the usurpation of the Bishop of Rome, who had made himself the only Bishop, and reduced all the rest to cyphers. Nor did they consider, whether it was in the power of man to abolish, at his discretion, an order of the Church, instituted by GoD Himself, merely because the men who filled this order had degenerated, together with all the rest of the Church, into superstition and luxury. Here again the scheme of our opposers was not to reform, but to destroy; and what was equally bold, to begin a new ministry, with hardly any other mission. than such as a number of men, and sometimes one man only,

8

wholly unauthorized, for aught that others could perceive, should assume. From men thus sending themselves, or sent by we know not whom, we are to receive the sacraments.... We must not forget, however, that these new orders lay claim to scriptural institution and primitive example. What, all of them? And without succession? Do we hear of any man in Scripture who ordained himself, or who presumed to take the ministry of God's word and sacraments upon him, without being sent either immediately or successively by CHRIST? Or, can an instance of this kind be assigned during the first fourteen centuries of the Church?

.. So sacred a thing is the succession of ordination, that the HOLY GHOST, who had already enabled Barnabas and Saul to preach the word, ordered them to be "separated for the work whereunto He had called them, by fasting, prayer, and imposition of hands," that is, to be ordained: the SPIRIT of GOD hereby plainly showing, that He himself would not break the successive order of mission established in the Church.

SAMUEL JOHNSON.—ἐν φιλοσόφου σχήματι πρεσβεύων τὸν θεῖον λόγον. Sermon 7.

With regard to the order and government of the Primitive Church, we may doubtless follow their [the ancients] authority with perfect security; they could not possibly be ignorant of laws executed, and customs practised, by themselves; nor would they, even supposing them corrupt, serve any interest of their own, by handing down false accounts to posterity. We are, therefore, to inquire from them the different Orders established in the Ministry from the Apostolic ages; the different employments of each, and their several ranks, subordinations, and degrees of authority. From their writings, we are to vindicate the establishment of our Church, and by the same writings are those who differ from us in these particulars to defend their conduct.

Nor is this the only, though perhaps the chief use of these writers; for, in matters of faith and points of doctrine, those at least who lived in the ages nearest to the times of the Apostles undoubtedly deserve to be consulted. The oral doctrines and occasional explications of the Apostles would not be immediately forgotten, in the Churches to which they had preached, and which had attended to them with the diligence and reverence which their mission and character demanded. Their solution of difficulties, and determinations of doubtful questions, must have been treasured up in the memory of their audiences, and transmitted for some time from father to son. Every thing, at least, that was declared by the inspired teachers to be necessary to salvation, must have been carefully recorded; and, therefore, what

we find no traces of in Scripture, or the early Fathers, as most of the peculiar tenets of the Romish Church, must certainly be concluded to be not necessary. Thus, by consulting first the Holy Scriptures, and next the writers of the Primitive Church, we shall make ourselves acquainted with the will of God; thus shall we discover the good way, and find that rest for our souls, which will amply recompense our studies and inquiries.

HORNE, BISHOP AND DOCTOR.-Charge at Primary Visitation of his Diocese.

The Constitution and use of the Church of CHRIST is another subject, on which our principles, for some years past, have been very unsettled, and our knowledge precarious and superficial. Ignorance is dangerous here, because there are so many whose interest it is to flatter us in it, and take advantage of it. The definition of the Church, contained in our Articles, was purposely less definitive than it might have been, to avoid giving further offence to those whom we rather wished to reconcile; but it does not appear, that the Church hath gained any thing by its moderation: it hath rather lost; because in virtue of that moderation, it hath been pleaded against us, that Ecclesiastical Unity may be dispensed with, and that all our differences in this matter are only problematical and immaterial.

But salvation is a gift of grace; that is, it is a free gift, to which we have no natural claim. It is not to be conceived within ourselves, but to be received, in consequence of our Christian calling, from God Himself, through the means of His Ordinances. These can no man administer to effect, but by GoD's own appointment; at first, by His immediate appointment, and afterwards, by succession and derivation from thence to the end of the world. Without this rule we are open to imposture and can be sure of nothing; we cannot be sure that our ministry is effective, and that our Sacraments are realities. We are very sensible the spirit of division will never admit this doctrine; yet the spirit of charity must never part with it. Writers and teachers who make it a point to give no offence, treat these things very tenderly; but he who, in certain cases, gives men no offence, will for that reason give them no instruction. Light itself is painful to weak eyes; but delightful to them when grown stronger, and reconciled to it with use; and he who was instrumental in bringing them to a more perfect state of vision, though less acceptable at first, may yet, for his real kindness, be more cordially thanked afterwards, than if he had made the ease and safely of his own person the measure of his duty. It is by no means evident, that the Church hath ever recommended itself the more by re

ceding from any of its just pretensions: generosity obliges and secures a friend; but an enemy construes it into weakness, and then it never does any good. Yet the adversaries of the Church of England have always been persuading her to make the experiment, and have promised great things from it; with what views, it cannot be difficult to discover. It was an unhappy circumstance, and had very ill effects, when some pions men,* of more zeal than discretion, who set out on the work of reforming this nation, opened an asylum for penitents, which took in people of all persuasions, without exception of any. It came to be inferred from hence, that souls might be saved as well without as with a Church; perhaps better; and when men have once begun to neglect rules, they go on to despise them, and know not where to stop, till all things are brought into confusion. . . . .

The ancient Church is the standard by which all modern ones are to be examined; and unless a man knows what the Church was in centuries before the Reformation, he will see bat darkly into the troubled waters of later times, in which faction and party have confounded things; and it hath become as much the interest of some, that the Church of CHRIST should be found every where, as it is the desire of others that it should be found no where. . . . If we would guard against popular mistakes in the subject at large, it will be necessary to examine first, what the Church was under the Old Testament; for there we find its original establishment, its form, its authority, its ministry, its unity and uniformity, its maintenance, its independence; which things being so particularly laid down, no new establishment is to be found in the Epistles or the Gospels of the New Testament, but the ancient constitution is referred to, to show as, in certain cases, what ought to be from what had been....... From the Scripture we should proceed next to observe, what the Church was in the first ages of the Gospel, before worldly policy, miscalled moderation, had any influence upon the opinions of Christians. There is an epistle of St. Clement, on Church unity and Church authority, with which all students in divinity should be acquainted. It will teach them what the Christian society then was, and what it ought to be. Ignatius and Cyprian, both of them martyrs, will give further instruction. The latter is so particular and copious, that a code of discipline might nearly be formed upon his authority. With these preparations, we shall be the better able to judge of what happened at the Reformation, when many things were right and many wrong; when the Church of England, by the singular blessing of God, preserved its constitution and its doctrines, while many of the reformed fell off by degrees, some into disorder, some into dissolution. What remains with us we must defend and preserve; trusting that the same GOD who hath raised

Mr. Wesley, &c.

this Church, when trodden down to the dust, will never forsake us till we forsake Him. . . ..

.....

But I must now hasten, in the last place, to a subject of more quietness or less suspicion [than the subject of civil government], in which wise men of all persuasions are more nearly of a mind; ; I mean, the conduct of the Christian life. Modern times and new modes of education have given too great a latitude in the articles of dress, and dissipation, and self-indulgence. Every thing is to be avoided which tends to diminish that gravity and seriousness which God expects to find in all those who are flying from the wrath to come. It was observed of old, that when inconsiderate people are avoiding one extreme, they commonly fall into another, while reason and discretion keep the middle way. When Protestants laid aside the austerities of superstition, they began to see less harm in the liberties taken by the world. The kind of life to which the first Christians conformed, hath been considered as a sort of heroic piety, which had more of suffering and mortification than are now required of us; as if the way to heaven could be easier, while the number of our temptations is probably increasing from the refinement of modern times, which, instead of giving us more liberty, call upon us for a greater degree of caution and reserve.

To us JESUS CHRIST is the pattern of holiness, the great exemplar of perfection, of whom we are first to learn, what no heathen ever professed, to be "meek and lowly in heart ;" and accordingly, one of the best books extant on the Spiritual life, is entitled, "The Imitation of JESUS CHRIST." Its language is barbarous, but its matter is divine and heavenly, and hath administered instruction and consolation to thousands of devout Christians. The way of true devotion must still be understood to be the same humble, secret, unaffected, unaspiring practice of piety, as it used to be of old. The Cross, which JESUS CHRIST carried for our salvation, is still the true emblem of our profession, from our baptism to our departure out of this life, and is to be borne by us in our minds, as a daily admonition to patient suffering and self-denial.

To assist us in the great duties of prayer and meditation, books of devotion have their use; but to us of the clergy, the liturgy of our Church is the best companion and the daily use of it in our churches and families is required by the canons. It cannot be denied, that from various reasons prevailing amongst us, we are much fallen off, of late years, from the practice of weekly prayers in our churches. Wherever this has been neglected, we should exhort the people to the revival of it, if circumstances will possibly permit; and alarm them against a mistake, to which they are all exposed, from a fanatical prejudice of baneful influence, namely, that they come to Church only to hear preaching;