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its ornaments shall be defiled with foul spots, and then its walls shall be rent with many cracks and crannies in every part, and then it shall crumble and fall; and a few generations shall see the whole in ruins and overspread with howling desolation!" And what would they reply unto him? "Go to," they would say, "for a fool, or one who taketh us for such: are these the proofs thou givest us of thy fitness to build a house for our abode ?"

And if so, my brethren, must we not call it almost impious and blasphemous, to suppose that our Saviour can have given, as evidence of His divine commission to establish a religion and a church, that His work should not stand, but, after a few years, become disfigured with error and crime, and in a few centuries perish, or, what is worse, relapse into idolatry and corruption?* For, let those who say that the whole Church fell away into idolatry, remember that it was to overcome this foul usurpation of the devil, that Jesus Christ taught and preached, and suffered and died; and shall we dare to say that He conquered not? Shall we presume to assert that, after having wrestled with the monster, even unto the shedding of His priceless blood, and having crushed its head, and left it apparently lifeless, yet it did too soon revive, to assail and lay waste His inheritance, and tear up the vineyard which His hands had planted? Why, the weak and material prototype of His truth and law had more power of old! For, when the Ark of his Covenant was placed, even by the hands of his enemies, in the temple of Dagon, it not only overthrew the idol, but it broke off its feet, so that it might no more be replaced upon its pedestal. Even the false prophet of the east shall have

* So that clergy and laity, learned and unlearned, all ages, sects, and degrees of men, women, and children, of whole Christendom, (an horrible and dreadful thing to think,) have been at once drowned in abominable idolatry, of all other vices most detested of God, and most damnable to man, and that by the space of 800 years and more,—to the destruction and subversion of all good religion universally."-Book of Homilies, (Hom. 8, p. 261, ed. of Soc. for propagating Christian Knowledge,) pronounced in the 35th of the 39 articles, "to contain godly and wholesome doctrine, and necessary for these times."

proved more successful! For, so powerful is the dogma of God's Unity, that wherever the doctrines of Islamism have been proclaimed, idolatry has been banished, so as never more to have returned. And shall Christianity have proved feeble than they? shall it alone have been compelled to yield to th power of Satan? shall Jesus Christ alone have been baffled b His enemy, and unable to establish what he came to teach? Away from us such impious and ungodly thoughts!

But if these prophecies exist,—every one of which I unhesi tatingly and solemnly deny,-have we not a right to expect some intimation of the glorious event which was to remedy the said defection? When God foretold, through his prophets, the captivity of His people, He always presented the balm with the wound, and cheered them with the prospect and certainty of redemption. And is it possible, that such an event should be omitted in the annals of prophecy, as that return of the church from universal idolatry, by its favoured portion in the islands of the west,* which, at last, should give efficacy to what Christ and His Apostles had in vain attempted to achieve? Then, with His spouse, the Church, how different is His conduct from His dealings with His stiff-necked people! She is left in total and cheerless darkness; she is only to be assured that she shall be degraded and defiled, without a word of hope, that mercy will be ever again shown unto her! But no, my brethren; let us not be so inconsistent as to imagine such things, after the clear, incontrovertible proofs which we have seen both in the prophecy of the old law, and in the promise of the new; for, never will she be abandoned by God, any more than the earth shall be again desolated by a deluge;— and so far from the gates of hell thus prevailing against her, Jesus Christ, and His Holy Spirit of Truth, will teach in her, and abide with her, till the end of time.

And now in conclusion, allow me to remark that, if any one will dispassionately look at the constitution of the Church,

* Anastasius, speaking of Pope Celestine's liberation of our Island from Pelagianism, thus expresses himself:-" Quosdam inimicos gratiæ, solum suæ originis occupantes, etiam ab illo secreto exclusit oceani."

such as I endeavoured to describe it, at our last meeting, and have partially, although I trust so far satisfactorily, proved it to-night, it must seem to be precisely what, in the nature of things, we should expect to find it. For, we cannot fail to observe, that the system pursued by the Almighty in every other case, where it is His intention to mould or form men for any certain condition of mutual relation-where He intends to prepare their minds for any state requiring uniformity of purpose and of action, is to bring them unto it through the principle of authority. On what principle has he grounded the domestic society but on that of subjection and obedience? Is it not an instinctive feeling inherent in our nature, that the child who has to learn, could not do so unless a scheme of rule and of submission existed in the little republic of each family? And if he be not so placed under the instruction and direction of his parents, or other masters, and by them formed and trained to those domestic virtues which it is the intention primarily of domestic order to instil and perfect, does not experience prove that the mind will be untutored and wild, devoid of the best affections, and open to the occupation of every passion, and the dominion of every vice? And as the domestic virtues are the stock, whereon are ingrafted our social qualities, never could we expect, that by any other system, the youth of any country could be brought to the adoption of the same. moral, and social feelings, and pursuits, than by the natural course of youthful discipline and restraint, whereby the mind gains that self-command and love of principle which can alone well direct it.

And is it not so, likewise, in the course followed by Almighty Providence, for the preservation of social order? Who ever heard of a society held together but by the principle and tie of authority and lawful jurisdiction? Can we conceive men enjoying the benefits of the social state, acting towards one another on certain fixed rules and principles, united for the great purposes of public co-operation—be it for peace or for war, or for their mutual support in private life, or the great and more general wants of human nature-otherwise than

when united upon a system of proper authority and control? And not only so, but must they not have among them a living authority fully competent to prevent every infraction of the law, and to secure the state against the corruption which results from the private opinions of men?

And, although it may appear perhaps somewhat foreign to the subject, yet I cannot help making a remark connected with this observation; that such is peculiarly the nature of our own constitution. It is singular, that we have a letter addressed by one of the oldest Popes to a Sovereign of this Kingdom, which, even if it be not allowed all the antiquity attributed to it, must yet be considered anterior to the Conquest; in which he expressly says, that the constitution and government of all the other nations of Europe are necessarily less perfect than that of England, because they are based on the Theodosian, or an originally heathen code, while the constitution of England has drawn its forms and provisions from Christianity, and received its principles from the Church. It is remarkable that, perhaps, no other country has such a steady administration of the laws, in consequence of the admission into it of that very principle, which corresponds to the unwritten or traditional code of the Church. For, besides the Statute Law of the Kingdom, we have also the Common Law, that law of traditional usage now recorded in the decisions of Courts, and in other proper and legitimate documents, precisely in the same manner, as the Church of Christ possesses a series of traditional laws, handed down from age to age, written, indeed, now in the works of those who have illustrated her constitution and precepts, and demonstrated every part of her system, but still differing from the Scripture much in the same way, as the unwritten, differs from the written law. This may sufficient to show, how far from unreasonable our system is, and how far remote from any tyranny or oppression, or unjust restraint of men's minds, wherewith it is so often charged.

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I trust, my brethren, that I have now shown you how consistent with sound reason, and how strongly confirmed in

Holy Writ is the rule of faith whien the Catholic holds, in the authority of the Church. I trust, too, that you will have seen how beautifully it harmonises through all its parts, from one extreme to the other, so as to be worthy of being considered the work of God's hand. When you behold a majestic tree standing in the field, which has darted its roots far and deep into the earth, and spreads its branches wide around it, and produces, year after year, its store of leaves, and flowers, and fruit; you might as well imagine it to be the fashioning of man's hands, an ingenious device and artifice of his, which he feeds and nourishes, as suppose the same of the system I have described; which, as you have seen, entwines its roots through all the shadowy institutions of the elder dispensation, and standing tall and erect in the midst of the new, defies the whirlwind and the lightning, the drought and scorching sun, burgeoning widely, and, like the prophet's vine, spreading its branches to the uttermost parts of the earth, and gathering all mankind underneath its shade, and feeding them with the sweetest fruits of holiness. For, I have yet to show you much of its fairest graces and mightiest influences. Yes, and of it we may well exclaim with Peter, in this day's gospel, "Lord, it is good for us to be here." Under its branches we have done well to make unto ourselves a tabernacle, where, with Moses and Elias, as the bearers of evidence from the old law, and with Jesus and his chosen apostles, as our vouchers in the new, we repose in peace and unity, in joy and gladness, in the security of faith, in the assurance of hope, and in the firm bond of charity.

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