UPON TRADITION AND EPISCOPACY; PREACHED AT THE TEMPLE CHURCH, AND PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. BY CHRISTOPHER BENSON, A.M., MASTER OF THE TEMPLE. THE SECOND EDITION. LONDON: JOHN W. PARKER, WEST STRAND. M.DCCC.XXXIX. PREFACE. THE tractarians, that is, the authors, editors, and approvers of the Tracts for the Times, are Divines of acknowledged piety, and sincerity, and learning. It must always be painful to be in opposition to such men. But believing, as I do, that many of their statements are confused and vague, their arguments inconclusive, and their opinions, upon several points, indeterminate or exaggerated, and even sometimes erroneous, I thought it incon sistent neither with my respect for their character, nor my duty to the Church, to endeavour to lay before my congregation at the Temple the views which appeared to my own mind to be both definite and correct upon some of the most important points in debate. The discourses which, in pursuance of that plan, I preached, are now pub lished, at the request of those Benchers of the Inner Temple who heard them; and to those gentlemen, for the kind manner in which they made the request, I return my thanks. In addition to the subjects already treated of, it would have been desirable to have considered also some others which are brought forward in the tracts. I allude to their doctrines upon the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, upon prayers for departed saints, and, more particularly, upon the powers attributed to the episcopal clergy, the power of the keys, the power of binding and loosing, and the power of remitting and retaining sins. Without the discussion of this latter subject, all that has been said upon the commission of Christ's ministers and on episcopacy may seem to be incomplete. But as I was requested only to print what had been delivered in public, I did not feel authorized to add anything to the present publication beyond a few illustrative notes. Should any favourable opportunity occur hereafter for discussing the points alluded to, I would then venture to attempt their elucidation,-difficult and delicate as such an undertaking must necessarily be. In the mean time, I hope, that I have not |