security and public provision-clandestine and precarious opportunities of hearing the word and communicating in the rites of Christianity, by stationary pastors and appropriated seasons, as well as places, of religious worship and resort: I say, the situation of the Christian community was so different in the infant and adult state of Christianity, that the highest inconvenience would have followed from establishing a precise constitution which was to be obligatory upon both: the same disposition of affairs which was most commodious and conducive to edification in the one, becoming probably impracticable under the circumstances, or altogether inadequate to the wants, of the other.

What farther recommends the forbearance observable in this part of the Christian institution, is the consideration, that as Christianity solicited admission into every country in the world, it cautiously refrained from interfering with the municipal regulations or civil condition of any. Negligent of every view, but what related to the deliverance of mankind from spiritual perdition, the Saviour of the world advanced no pretensions which, by disturbing the arrangements of human polity, might present an obstacle to the reception of his faith. We may ascribe it to this design, that he left the laws of his church so open and indeterminate, that whilst the ends of religious communion were sufficiently declared, the form of the society might be assimilated to the civil constitution of each country, to which it should always communicate strength and support in return for the protection it received. If there be any truth in these observations, they lead to this temperate and charitable conclusion, "that Christianity may be professed under any form of church government."

But though all things are lawful, all things are not expedient. If we concede to other churches the Christian legality of their constitution, so long as Christian worship and instruction are competently provided for, we may be allowed to maintain the advantage of our own, upon principles which all parties acknowledge-considerations of public utility. We may be allowed to contend, that whilst we imitate, so far as a great disparity of circumstances permits, the example, and what we apprehend to be the order, of the apostolic age, our church and ministry are inferior to none in the great object of their institution, their suitableness to promote and uphold the profession, knowledge, and influence, of pure Christianity. The separation of a particular order of men for the work of the ministrythe reserving to these, exclusively, the conduct of public worship and the preaching of the word—the distribution of the country into districts, and the assigning of each district to the care and charge of its proper pastor-lastly, the appointment to the clergy of a maintenance independent of the caprice of their congregation, are measures of ecclesiastical policy which have been adopted by every national establishment of Christianity in the world. Concerning these points, there exists no controversy. The chief article of regulation upon which the judgment of some Protestant churches dissents from ours is, that whilst they have established a perfect parity among their clergy, we prefer a distinction of orders in the church, not only as recommended by the usages of the purest times, but as better calculated to promote, what all churches must desire, the credit and efficacy of the sacerdotal office.

The force and truth of this last consideration I will endeavour to evince. First, the body of the clergy, in common with every regular society, must necessarily contain some internal provision for the government and correction of its members. Where a distinction of orders is not acknowledged, this government can only be administered by synods and assemblies, because the supposition of equality forbids the delegation of authority to single persons. Now, although it may be requisite to consult and collect the opinions of a community, in the momentous deliberations which ought to precede the establishment of those public laws by which it is to be bound; yet in every society the execution of these laws, the current and ordinary affairs of its government, are better managed by fewer hands. To commit personal questions to public debate, to refer every case and character which requires animadversion, to the suffrages and examination of a numerous assembly, what is it, but to feed and to perpetuate contention, to supply materials for endless altercation, and opportunities for the indulgence of concealed enmity and private prejudices? The complaint of ages testifies, with how much inflammation, and how little equity, ecclesiastical conventions have conducted their proceedings: how apt intrigue has ever been to pervert inquiry, and clamour to confound discussion. Whatever may be the other benefits of equality, peace

is best secured by subordination. And if this be a consideration of moment in every society, it is of peculiar importance to the clergy. Preachers of peace, ministers of charity and of reconciliation to the world, that constitution surely ill befits their office and character which has a tendency to engage them in contests and disputes with one another.

Secondly, the appointment of various orders in the church may be considered as the stationing of ministers of religion in the various ranks of civil life. The distinctions of the clergy ought, in some measure, to correspond with the distinctions of lay society, in order to supply each class of the people with a clergy of their own level and description, with whom they may live and associate upon terms of equality. This reason is not imaginary nor insignificant. The usefulness of a virtuous and well-informed clergy consists neither wholly nor principally in their public preaching, or the stated functions of their order. It is from the example and in the society of such persons, that the requisites which prepare the mind for the reception of virtue and knowledge, a taste for serious reflection and discourse, habits of thought and reasoning, a veneration for the laws and awful truths of Christianity, a disposition to inquire and a solicitude to learn, are best gained: at least, the decency of deportment, the sobriety of manners and conversation, the learning, the gravity, which usually accompany the clerical character, insensibly diffuse their influence over every company into which they are admitted. Is it of no importance to provide friends and companions of this character for the superior as well as for the middle orders of the community? Is it flattery, to say, that the manners and society of higher life would suffer some depravation, from the loss of so many men of liberal habits and education, as at present, by occupying elevated stations in the church, are entitled to be received into its number? This intercourse would cease, if the clergy were reduced to a level with one another, and, of consequence, with the inferior part of the community. These distinctions, whilst they prevail, must be complied with. How much soever the moralist may despise, or the divine overlook, the discriminations of rank, which the rules or prejudices of modern life have introduced into society; when we have the world to instruct and to deal with, we must take and treat it as it is, not as the wishes or the speculations of philosophy would represent it to our view. When we describe the public as peculiarly interested in everything which affects, though but remotely, the character of the great and powerful, it is not that the soul of the rich man is more precious than the salvation of the poor, but because his virtues and his vices have a more considerable and extensive effect.

Thirdly, they who behold the privileges and emoluments of the superior clergy with the most unfriendly inclination, profess nevertheless to wish, that the order itself should be respected; but how is this respect to be procured? It is equally impossible, to invest every clergyman with the decorations of affluence and rank, and to maintain the credit and reputation of an order which is altogether destitute of these distinctions. Individuals, by the singularity of their virtue or their talents, may surmount all disadvantages; but the order will be contemned. At present, every member of our ecclesiastical establishment communicates with the dignity which is conferred upon a few-every clergyman shares in the respect which is paid to his superiors-the ministry is honoured in the persons of prelates. Nor is this economy peculiar to our order. The professions of arms and of the law derive their lustre and esteem not merely from their utility (which is a reason only to the few), but from the exalted place in the scale of civil life, which hath been wisely assigned to those who fill stations of power and eminence in these great departments. And if this disposition of honours be approved in other kinds of public employment, why should not the credit and liberality of ours be upheld by the same expedient?

Fourthly, rich and splendid situations in the church have been justly regarded as prizes held out to invite persons of good hopes and ingenuous attainments to enter into its service. The value of the prospect may be the same, but the allurement is much greater, where opulent shares are reserved to reward the success of a few, than where, by a more equal partition of the fund, all indeed are competently provided for, but no one can raise even his hopes beyond a penurious mediocrity of subsistence and situation. It is certainly of consequence that young men of promising abilities be encouraged to engage in the ministry of the church; otherwise, our profession will be composed of the refuse of every other. None will be found content to

stake the fortune of their lives in this calling, but they whom slow parts, personal defects, or a depressed condition of birth and education, preclude from advancement in any other. The vocation in time comes to be thought mean and uncreditable-study languishes-sacred erudition declines-not only the order is disgraced, but religion itself disparaged in such hands. Some of the most judicious and moderate of the Presbyterian clergy have been known to lament this defect in their constitution. They see and deplore the backwardness in youth of active and well-cultivated faculties, to enter into the church, and their frequent resolutions to quit it. Again, if a gradation of orders be necessary to invite candidates into the profession, it is still more so to excite diligence and emulation, to promote an attention to character and public opinion when they are in it; especially to guard against that sloth and negligence, into which men are apt to fall, who are arrived too soon at the limits of their expectations. We will not say, that the race is always to the swift, or the prize to the deserving; but we have never known that age of the church in which the advantage was not on the side of learning and decency.

These reasons appear to me to be well founded, and they have this in their favour, that they do not suppose too much; they suppose not any impracticable precision in the reward of merit, or any greater degree of disinterestedness, circumspection, and propriety in the bestowing of ecclesiastical preferment, than what actually takes place. They are, however, much strengthened, and our ecclesiastical constitution defended with yet greater success, when men of conspicuous and acknowledged merit are called to its superior stations: "when it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth." When pious labours and exemplary virtue, when distinguished learning or eminent utility, when long or arduous services are repaid with affluence and dignity, when a life of severe and well-directed application to the studies of religion, when wasted spirits and declining health are suffered to repose in honourable leisure, the good and wise applaud a constitution which has provided such things for such men.

66

Finally, let us reflect that these, after all, are but secondary objects. Christ came not to found an empire upon earth, or to invest his church with temporal immunities. He came "to seek and save that which was lost;" to purify to himself, from amidst the pollutions of a corrupt world, a peculiar people, zealous of good works." As far as our establishment conduces to forward and facilitate these ends, so far we are sure it falls in with his design, and is sanctified by his authority. And whilst they who are intrusted with its government employ their cares, and the influence of their stations, in judicious and unremitting endeavours to enlarge the dominion of virtue and of Christianity over the hearts and affections of mankind, whilst "by pureness, by knowledge," by the aids of learning, by the piety of their example, they labour to inform the consciences and improve the morals of the people committed to their charge, they secure to themselves, and to the church in which they preside, peace and permanency, reverence and support--what is infinitely more, they "save their own souls;" they prepare for the approach of that tremendous day, when Jesus Christ shall return again to the world and to his church, at once the gracious rewarder of the toils, and patience, and fidelity of his servants, and the strict avenger of abused power and neglected duty.

SERMON IV.

A CHARGE DELIVERED TO THE CLERGY OF THE DIOCESS OF CARLISLE, IN THE YEAR 1790.

THE USE AND PROPRIETY OF LOCAL AND OCCASIONAL PREACHING.

REVEREND BRETHREN,

THE late archbishop Secker, whose memory is entitled to public respect, as on many accounts, so especially for the judgment with which he described, and the affecting seriousness with which he recommended, the duties of his profession, in one of his charges to the

clergy of his diocess*, exhorts them "to make their sermons local." I have always considered this advice as founded in a knowledge of human life, but as requiring, in its application, a more than ordinary exercise of Christian prudence. Whilst I repeat therefore the rule itself, with great veneration for the authority by which it was delivered, I think it no unfit employment of the present opportunity, to enlarge so far upon its use and meaning, as to point out some of the instances in which it may be adopted, with the probability of making salutary impressions upon the minds of our hearers.

But, before I proceed, I would warn you, and that with all the solemnity that can belong to any admonition of mine, against rendering your discourses so local, as to be pointed and levelled at particular persons in your congregation. This species of address may produce in the party for whom it is intended, confusion perhaps, and shame, but not with their proper fruits of penitence and humility. Instead of which, these sensations will be accompanied with bitter resentment against the preacher, and a kind of obstinate and determined opposition to his reproof. He will impute your officiousness to personal enmity, to party spirit, to the pleasure of triumphing over an adversary without interruption or reply, to insult assuming the form of advice, or to any motive rather than a conscientious solicitude for the amendment and salvation of your flock. And as the person himself seldom profits by admonitions conveyed in this way, so are they equally useless, or perhaps noxious, to the rest of the assembly; for the moment the congregation discover to whom the chastisement is directed, from that moment they cease to apply any part of it to themselves. They are not edified, they are not affected; on the contrary, they are diverted, by descriptions of which they see the design, and by invectives of which they think they comprehend the aim. Some who would feel strongly the impropriety of gross and evident personalities, may yet hope to hit their mark by covert and oblique allusions. Now of this scheme, even when conducted with the greatest skill, it may be observed, that the allusions must either be perceived, or not. If they be not perceived, they fail of the effect intended by them; if they be, they are open to the objections which lie against more explicit and undissembled attacks. Whenever we are conscious, in the composition of our discourses, of a view to particular characters in our congregation or parish, we ought to take for granted that our view will be understood. Those applications, therefore, which, if they were direct, would produce more bad emotions than good ones, it is better to discard entirely from our sermons; that is to say, it is better to lay aside the design altogether, than to attempt to disguise it by a management which is generally detected, and which, if not seen through, defeats its purpose by its obscurity. The crimes then of individuals let us reserve for opportunities of private and seasonable expostulation. Happy is the clergyman who has the faculty of communicating advice and remonstrance with persuasion and effect, and the virtue to seize and improve every proper occasion of doing it; but in the pulpit, let private characters be no otherwise adverted to, than as they fall in with the delineations of sins and duties which our discourses must necessarily contain, and which, whilst they avoid personalities, can never be too close or circumstantial. For the same reason that I think personal allusions reprehensible, I should condemn any, even the remotest, reference to party or political transactions and disputes. These are at all times unfit subjects not only of discussion in the pulpit, but of hints and surmises. The Christian preacher has no other province than that of religion and morality. He is seldom led out of his way by honourable motives, and, I think, never with a beneficial effect.

Having premised this necessary caution, I return to the rule itself. By "local" sermons I would understand, what the reverend prelate who used the expression seems principally to have meant by it, sermons adapted to the particular state of thought and opinion which we perceive to prevail in our congregation. A careful attention to this circumstance is of the utmost importance, because, as it varies, the same sermon may do a great deal of good, none at all, or much harm. So that it is not the truth of what we are about to offer which alone we ought to consider, but whether the argument itself be likely to correct or to promote the turn and bias of opinion to which we already perceive too strong a tendency and inclination. Without this circumspection, we may be found to have imitated the folly of the architect who

* Archbishop of Canterbury's Third Charge to his Clergy. Abp. Secker's Works, vol. iv.

placed his buttress on the wrong side. The more the column pressed, the more firm was its construction; and the deeper its foundation, the more certainly it hastened the ruin of the fabric. I do not mean that we should, upon any emergency, advance what is not true; but that, out of many truths, we should select those, the consideration of which seems best suited to rectify the dispositions of thought, that were previously declining into error or extravagancy. For this model of preaching we may allege the highest of all possible authorities, the example of our blessed Saviour himself. He always had in view the posture of mind of the persons whom he addressed. He did not entertain the Pharisees with invectives against the open impiety of their Sadducean rivals; nor, on the other hand, did he soothe the Sadducee's ear with descriptions of Pharisaical pomp and folly. In the presence of the Pharisee he preached against hypocrisy to the Sadducees he proved the resurrection of the dead. In like manner, of that known enmity which subsisted between the Jews and Samaritans this faithful Teacher took no undue advantage, to make friends or proselytes of either. Upon the Jews he inculcated a more comprehensive benevolence; with the Samaritan he defended the orthodoxy of the Jewish creed.

1

:

But I apprehend that I shall render my advice more intelligible, by exemplifying it in two or three instances drawn from what appears to be the predominant disposition and religious character of this country, and of the present times.

In many former ages of religion, the strong propensity of men's minds was to over-value positive duties; which temper, when carried to excess, not only multiplied unauthorised rites and observances, not only laid an unwarrantable stress upon those which were prescribed; but what was worst of all, led men to expect that, by a punctual attention to the ordinances of religion, they could compound for a relaxation of its weighty and difficult duties of personal purity and relative justice. This was the depraved state of religion amongst the Jews when our Saviour appeared; and it was the degeneracy, against which some of the most forcible of his admonitions and the severest of his reproofs were directed. Yet notwithstanding that Christ's own preaching, as well as the plan and spirit of his religion, were as adverse as possible to the exalting or over-valuing of positive institutions, the error which had corrupted the old dispensation, revived under the new; and revived with double force, insomuch as to transform Christianity into a service more prolix and burdensome than the Jewish, and to ascribe an efficacy to certain religious performances, which, in a great measure, superseded the obligations of substantial virtue. That age, however, with us, is long since past. I fear there is room to apprehend that we are falling into mistakes of a contrary kind. Sadducees are more common amongst us than Pharisees. We seem disposed, not only to cast off the decent offices, which the temperate piety of our church hath enjoined, as aids of devotion, calls to repentance, or instruments of improvement; but to contemn and neglect, under the name of forms and ceremonies, even those rites, which, forasmuch as they were ordained by the divine Founder of our religion, or by his inspired messengers, and ordained with a view of their continuing in force through future generations, are entitled to be accounted parts of Christianity itself. In this situation of religion, and of men's thoughts with respect to it, he makes a bad choice of his subject, who discourses upon the futility of rites and ordinances, upon their insignificancy when taken by themselves, or even who insists too frequently, and in terms too strong, upon their inferiority to moral precepts. We are rather called upon to sustain the authority of those institutions which proceed from Christ or his apostles, and the reasonableness and credit of those which claim no higher original than public appointment. We are called upon to contend with respect to the first, that they cannot be omitted with safety any more than other duties; that the will of God, once ascertained, is the immediate foundation of every duty; that, when this will is known, it makes little difference to us what is the subject of it, still less by what denomination the precept is called, under what class or division the duty is arranged. If it be commanded, and we have sufficient reason to believe that it is so, it matters nothing whether the obligation be moral or natural, or positive or instituted. He who places before him the will of God as the rule of his life, will not refine, or even dwell much, upon these distinctions. The ordinances of Christianity, it is true, are all of them significant. Their meaning, and even their use, is not obscure. But were it otherwise was the design of