and hence they are indifferent, even on a Sunday, to the prayers of the Church, unless there is a sermon.

JONES OF NAYLAND, PRESBYTER.-Lectures on Hebrews iii. The Church, in its nature, always was what it is now, a society comprehending the souls as well as the bodies of men; and, therefore, consisting of two parts, the one spiritual, answering to the soul, and the other outward, answering to the body. Hence, some have written much upon a visible Church and an invisible, as if they were two things; but they are more properly one, as the soul and body make a single person.

In the twelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apostle gives such a description of that society, into which Christians are admitted, as will show us the nature of it. "Ye are come," says he, "unto Mount Zion," &c. .... The terms here used give us a true prospect of the Church. . . . . . This is that Zion of the Holy One of Israel, to which the forces of the Gentiles were to flow from all parts of the world. . . . the city of the living God, distinguished from the cities of the world, as Jerusalem was from the cities of the heathens, who dedicated their cities not to the living Gon, but to the names of their dead idols. .. This, being the city of the living GOD, must be an immortal society, for the living God does not preside over dead citizens; He is not the GOD of the dead, but the God of the living, and all the members of this society live unto Him...... It is, therefore, called the Heavenly Jerusalem, because it is of a heavenly nature; and it is called the Jerusalem which is above, which is free, and is the mother of us all... Its spiritual nature is further declared, in that it is said to comprehend an innumerable company of angels. . . . . In the communion of the Church the spirits of just men made perfect are also included. It is a society which admits only the spirits of the living, and as such cannot exclude the spirits of the dead; and this confirms what we said above, that the Church is a spiritual community, comprehending the dead as well as the living...

But it is now to be shown, secondly, that as the Church of GoD hath always been the same in its nature, it hath likewise preserved the same form in its external economy; the wisdom of GoD having so ordained, that the Christian Church under the Gospel should not depart from the model of the Church under the Law. For as the congregation of Israel was divided into twelve tribes, under the twelve Patriarchs, so is the Church of CHRIST founded on the twelve Apostles, who raised to themselves a spiritual seed amongst all the nations of the world. . . . .There were then three orders of priests in the Jewish Church: there was the high priest

and the sons of Aaron and the Levites. In the Church of CHRIST, there was the order of the Apostles, besides whom there were the seventy Disciples sent out after them; and, last of all, the Deacons were ordained to serve under both in the lower offices of the Church. The same form is still preserved in every regular Church of the world, which derives its succession and authority from the Church of the Apostles: after whom the Bishops succeeded by their appointment, such as Timothy and Titus, in their respective churches. This authority has been opposed to the Christian as it was in the Jewish Church: Corah and his company rose up against Moses and Aaron for usurping a lordly authority over the people; so, in the later ages of the Christian Church, a levelling principle hath prevailed, which has appeared in many different shapes...

....

The Church has also been remarkably conformable to itself in its sufferings. There never was a time, so far as we can learn, when the true Church of God, with its doctrines and institutions, was not hated and opposed by the world; either persecuted and oppressed by powerful tyrants, or traduced and insulted by lying historians.

HORSLEY, BISHOP.-Sermon on Matt. xvi. 18, 19.

The keys of the kingdom of Heaven here promised to St. Peter must be something quite distinct from that with which it hath generally been confounded, the power of remission and retention of sins, conferred by our LORD, after His resurrection, upon the apostles in general, and transmitted through them to the perpetual succession of the priesthood. This is the discretionary power lodged in the priesthood, of dispensing the sacraments, and of granting to the penitent and refusing to the obdurate the benefit and comfort of absolution. The object of this power is the individual upon whom it is exercised, according to the particular circumstances of each man's case. It was exercised by the apostles in many striking instances. It is exercised now by every priest, when he administers or witholds the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, or, upon just grounds, pronounces or refuses to pronounce upon an individual the sentence of absolution.

HEBER, BISHOP.-Sermons in England, No. xii.

We must return then, after all, (in ordinary cases, and where an immediate and supernatural commission from the Holy Ghost is neither proved nor pretended,) to the appointment and ordina

tion of those among our fellow-creatures who exercise a legitimate authority in the Church of CHRIST, and who, as being appointed by GoD, are placed in GoD's stead, and commissioned by Him to dispense those graces which are necessary for the feeding of His flock, and to designate those labourers who are henceforth to work in His harvest.

And having arrived at this point of the discussion, even if that discussion were to proceed no further, and if the Scriptures had given us no information as to the persons by whom this authority was to be exercised, the validity of our ordinations would still be sufficiently plain, and the danger of separation from, or rebellion against, our Church, would be sufficiently great and alarming; inasmuch as, where no distinct religious officer was instituted by GoD, the appointment of such officers must necessarily have devolved on the collective Christian Church, and on those supreme magistrates who, in every Christian country, are the recognized organs of the public will and wisdom. . . . It happens, however, to be in our power to show (if not an explicit direction of CHRIST for the form of our Church government, and the manner of appointing our spiritual guides,) yet a precedent so clear and a pattern so definite, as to leave little doubt of the intentions of our Divine Master, or of the manner in which those intentions were fulfilled by His immediate and inspired Disciples. Nor will the force of such precedent and example on the practice of succeeding Christians be regarded as trifling by those who consider that it is on such grounds as these that the obligation rests of many observances which are allowed by all parties to be essential; among which may be classed the baptism of infants, the observance of the Lord's Day, and our participation in the Lord's Supper.

But, without entering into the question of the absolute necessity of this rule, and without judging those other national Churches which have departed from it, it is evident that those Churches are most wise and most fortunate, who have continued in the path which CHRIST and His Apostles have trodden before; and that religious insubordination is then most unreasonable and most dangerous, when exerted against a form of polity which the majority of our fellow-Christians, the wisdom of our civil governors, and the full stream of precedent, from the time of the Apostles themselves, combine to recommend to our reverence.

We find, accordingly, that our LORD, on His own departure from the world, committed, in most solemn terms, the government of His Church to His Apostles. We find these Apostles, in the exercise of the authority thus received, appointing Elders in every city, as dispensers of the word and the sacraments of religion; and we find them also appointing other Ecclesiastical Officers, who were to have the oversight of these Elders themselves;

and who, in addition to the powers which they enjoyed in common with them, had the privilege, which the others had not, of admitting, by the imposition of hands, those whom they thought fit to the ministerial office. . . .

And it is not too much to say, that we may challenge those who differ from us, to point out any single period at which the Church has been destitute of such a body of officers, laying claim to an authority derived by the imposition of hands from the Apostles themselves; or any single instance of a Church without this form of government, till the Church of Geneva, at first from necessity, and afterwards from a mistaken exposition of Scripture, supplied the place of a single Bishop by the rule of an oligarchial presbytery,

JEBB, BISHOP.-Pastoral Instructions, Discourse i.

"And lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world;"-a promise not occasional or temporary, like that of miraculous powers, but conveying an assurance, that CHRIST Himself will, in spirit and in power, be continually present with His Catholic and Apostolic Church; with the Bishops of that Church, who derive from the Apostles by uninterrupted succession, and with those inferior, but essential orders of the Church, which are constituted by the same authority, and dedicated to the same service,

VAN MILDERT, BISHOP.-Bampton Lectures. Sermon viii.

The system, of which the Apostles had laid the foundation, was to be carried on through succeeding generations; but with a gradual diminution of that extraordinary aid, which the circumstances of the case rendered no longer necessary. . . . Yet since the object to be attained was not temporary, but to continue from age to age, the mode, the form, and the instrument to be employed, were still to be conformable to the primitive institution. Accordingly, the Apostles ordained successors to themselves, and took measures for perpetuating in the Church a standing ministry of diverse orders and gradations. In so doing, they showed in what sense we are to interpret our LORD's assurance, that He would "be with them always, even unto the end of the world."

The evidences, from the best historical records, to the simple fact that a visible Church of this description has actually subsisted from the time of our LORD and His Apostles to this moment, are too well known to require a detail. Nor is there

any defect of similar evidence, to show that, whatever errors or corruptions may have occasionally found admittance into it, the Church itself has proved a successful instrument in the hands of Providence, both of transmitting the unadulterated Word of GOD from generation to generation, and also of promulgating and maintaining all its great fundamental truths; nay, perhaps, of preserving even the very name as well as substance of Christianity, which, humanly speaking, would probably have been long since extinct, had it not been nurtured and cherished by this its appointed guardian and protector.....

Let us take, for instance, those articles of faith which have already been shown to be essential to the Christian Covenant :— the doctrines of the Trinity, of our Lord's Divinity and Incarnation, of His Atonement and Intercession, of our sanctification by the Holy Spirit, of the terms of acceptance, and the ordinances of the Christian Sacraments and Priesthood. At what period of the Church have these doctrines, or either of them, been by any public act disowned or called in question! We are speaking now, it will be recollected, of what in the language of Ecclesiastical history, is emphatically called THE CHURCH; that, which has from age to age borne rule, upon the ground of its pretensions to Apostolical succession. And to this our inquiry is necessarily restricted....

Surely, here is something to arrest attention; something to awaken reflection; something which they who sincerely profess Christianity, and are tenacious of the inviolability of its doctrines, must contemplate with sentiments of awe and veneration. For, though a sceptic may contend that this species of evidence does not amount to a direct and demonstrative proof of the truth of the doctrines; yet if they be not true, how shall we account for their having been so uninterruptedly transmitted to these latter times? How they have withstood the assaults of continued opponents? opponents, wanting neither talents nor inclination to effect their overthrow? If these considerations be deemed insufficient, let the adversary point out by what surer tokens we shall discover any Christian community duly answering the Apostle's description, that it is "built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, JESUS CHRIST Himself being the chief Corner-Stone ?"

MANT, BISHOP.-Parochial Sermons, xxvii.

Nor had He in this appointment a view to those times only, in which the appointment was made; but He designed that it should be extended to all future ages; for so we must understand the words which He pronounced immediately after giving His apostles their authority to baptize: "Lo, I am with you always, even