and this, not merely with respect to their own flocks, but to the Church at large.

Thus in the Christian ministry, priesthood, pastorate, -the Church administrative and representative, three several ideas are realized. It is a dispensation, first of prophecy and divine instruction, secondly, of sacrifice and spiritual grace, lastly of rule and government, restricted indeed to the Church as a sacred polity, distinct from the State, but sharing in those expansive energies which characterize the kingdom of God, spreading as it spreads, the symbol and sanctifying principle of all lawful power and sovereignty. We see further that these ideas were successively developed in the Saviour's own person, and consequently in the history of the Church. That offices, corresponding to these dispensations, were formally deputed by our Lord himself to the apostles, with the intention that they should be continued in perpetual succession, till His coming again (which is the last of the three principles which I proposed to examine), must now be proved, as a question of fact, from sacred history, independently of ecclesiastical tradition. This will form the subject of my next sermon, the last on this important branch of my general inquiry-the scriptural character, namely, of the three ministerial orders as they appear in the English Church.

I conclude with a caution, suggested by the aspect of the present time, in particular by the ominous tendency to popish doctrines lately manifested, and the actual spread of papal power in this Protestant land, the demesne of a happily reformed, and truly catholic Church.

Things most precious in their use, in their abuse become most mischievous. This general maxim applies with peculiar force to religious teaching. Here especially

there are no falsehoods so dangerous as perverted truths. In the Douay Catechism', we read as follows:

Q. "Is any great honour due to priests and ghostly fathers?"

A. "Yes; for they are God's anointed, represent the person of Christ, and are the fathers and feeders of our souls."

The pernicious tendency of the doctrine, here delivered, lies not more in the turn of the phrase, (though "to represent the person of Christ" is at best an ambiguous and inconvenient expression,) than in the interpretation to which it is liable, and which we know that it is intended to receive. It is the practical corruptions of the Romish system, which supply the venom of Romanist theology. If while the representative nature of the Christian priesthood be recognized in terms, an independent self-centred power be in fact attributed to the priest; if instead of symbolizing that immanence of the incarnate Word, the Light of the world, and the Life of men, which is the blessed portion of the Church at large, he is practically regarded as His vicar and substitute; then, instead of the one Christ, variously communicating himself through the Spirit, to every member of his mystical body, we have indeed, "Lords many, and Mediators many"-a blind idolatry, and an impious priestcraft. The quality of the doctrine is, as it were, reversed, and instead of reconciling the powers and functions of a ministering priesthood, with the exclusive attributes of the Saviour on the one hand, and the diffusive privileges of the faithful on the other, it places them in obvious contrast with both: instead of annihilating all personal pretensions on the part of the clergy, and subduing those of an official nature

Pp. 70 and 41-Keating and Brown, 1824.

to a just harmony with the general scheme, it enforces the first and unduly exalts the other.

Let it not then be objected to the doctrine of this sermon, that something like it is taught by the Roman church in subserviency to a belief and practice which no awakened mind can contemplate without horror. It has so fared with many vital truths. Long divided from the source of life, they have been preserved in the Romish creed as in a reliquary, not merely deprived of virtue, but with the accession of a pernicious quality, as the droppings of the yew-tree are said to become poisonous, not on their native branch, but after they have left it :—dry fragments, torn from the tree of life, and exhibiting in their unaltered sameness, not the identity of a living form, but the rigidity of a dead image. Still their existence in the formularies of that ancient Church, though the occasion of idolatrous error, and the specious pretext of many corruptions, testifies to the reality of certain corresponding truths, with which they have been formerly identical; truths which they have ceased to be, but which they still resemble. Thus, to employ an illustration still more in point, a so-called petrifaction, although in substance wholly foreign to that which it appears, and which it does but mimic, though in itself a feculent subsidence, that has gradually eaten out and displaced the original matter, still records the existence, and partly discloses the structure of that living thing, of which it has usurped the name, and assumed the semblance.

If then we are assailed by lying vanities in the disguise of vital truths, let us not hope to repel the former, by attempting to discountenance the latter. Rather by giving these an increased prominence, and subjecting them to a closer study, let us learn to recognize their distinctive

features, and to confess their peculiar power. So shall we pre-occupy the ground which in no other way can permanently be defended.

Alas! it is a childish prudence to reject the reality, because we have been mocked with a counterfeit.

206

SERMON XII.

THE SAINTS, OR THE CHURCH OF CHRIST, AS DELINEATED IN THE APOSTOLIC SCRIPTURES.

PART IV. THE COMMISSION OF THE APOSTLES ASCERTAINED
FROM SCRIPture.

HITHERTO I have been engaged in the examination of scripture principles, as exemplified in the economy of the existing Church, thus seeking to confirm the presumption created in favour of the latter, by its actual position, and traditional character. The results to which I have arrived have already been subjected to the ordeal of scripture incidentally, in a variety of ways: and it only remains, in conclusion, to apply this searching test to one particular branch of the enquiry. Did the apostles receive a formal commission from their divine Master? If so, what was its nature? Had it, as from various considerations we have been led to conclude, a three-fold character, formally impressed upon it by the great Head of the Church? A very brief collation of the several scriptures bearing upon this point, will, I trust, suffice to answer these questions in the affirmative.

If, indeed, the view which I have taken of the three sacred orders, as they appear in the historical Church, be correct, if ideally considered, they are found to set forth, in their very nature and constitution, the several offices