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 E> RARY 
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 ILLINOIS
 
 10 
 
 THE 
 
 SIN AND DANGER 
 
 OF 
 
 LUKEWARMNESS,
 
 THE SIN AND DANGER OF LUKEWARMNESS : 
 
 A SERMON. 
 
 " Thou art lukewarm." — Rev. iii. 16. 
 
 Such was the character given to the Church of the 
 Laodiceans by Him who, being God Himself, assumed 
 for the occasion a title which denotes decision of purpose 
 and stedfastness of character, and described Himself as 
 the Amen, the Faithful, and True Witness, marking 
 more emphatically thereby the disagreement between 
 those, who professed to be His followers, and Himself 
 the divine example as well as Saviour of His Church. 
 
 " I know thy works," said our Lord to the Church of 
 the Laodiceans, " that thou art neither cold nor hot ; I 
 would thou wert cold or hot." It was not to praise 
 either the one extreme or the other that these words 
 were uttered; they were merely intended to describe the 
 divine abhorrence of that lukewarm state, — in which, 
 mistaken for the via media, men deceive themselves by 
 supposing that, because they are not openly opposed to 
 the Gospel, they must therefore be under its sacred in- 
 fluences; and the mere professor of godliness accounts 
 himself to be an Evangelical Christian. The man who 
 is cold, without any religion, cannot be saved while he 
 continues thus ; neither can that man who is hot, whose 
 fanaticism leads him to crime, as in former days to bum 
 men at the stake, in these days to have recourse to evil 
 speaking, lying and slandering against those who by 
 adhering to the principles of the Church, may differ from 
 himself; — but there is more hope for these than for the 
 political Churchman who, while professing a respect for 
 religion, and boasting a charity which would palliate vice 
 by countenancing error, careth for none of these things ; 
 there is more hope that the cold or that the hot will re- 
 pent, than that the lukewarm who thinks that he is quite 
 religious enough, will be converted. Of the lukewarm 
 59
 
 THE SIN AND DANGER 
 
 State, therefore, our Blessed Lord expresses His disgust 
 in the very strongest terms ; for, even as in the taste of 
 that which is lukewarm, there is tliat peculiar nauseous- 
 ness which will cause us at once to eject it from the 
 mouth, so does the Lord Jesus nauseate the lukewarm 
 character in the members of His Church. 
 
 I say the members of the Church, instead of the 
 Church itself, for when such a charge is brought against 
 any particular branch of the Church Catholic, it has re- 
 ference not to what may be called the external circum- 
 stances of the Church, but to its existing members, 
 forming the majority of which it is composed. A Church 
 may be in externals corrupt, and yet not be guilty of the 
 sin of lukewarmness : we could hardly say, for example, 
 that lukewarmness is a charge which can justly, at the 
 present time, be brought against the con-upt Church of 
 Rome : whereas the sin of lukewarmness may be a pre- 
 valent sin in a Church, which, like our own, has been by 
 the piety and wisdom of our ancestors so wisely reformed, 
 that she is regarded by her faithful children as the purest 
 branch, without exception, which now exists of the 
 Church Catholic. Even in this Church there may be 
 lukewarmness ; and if we say that there is lukewarmness, 
 or that there has been lukewarmness, while we take 
 blame to ourselves, or cast it upon our fathers, we say it 
 not in disparagement of our Holy Mother the Church, 
 but of those her unworthy children, who^ in spite of the 
 Church, her injunctions and her discipline, have been 
 guilty of the offence ; and when the charge is substan- 
 tiated, it proves, not that the Church itself, externally 
 considered, but, that the members of the Church, at 
 some particular period, require reformation. It was not 
 in her liturgy and offices, it was not in her fastings and 
 prayers, it was not in her forms and ceremonies, it was 
 not in her sacraments and ordinances, that the Church of 
 the Laodiceans required to be reformed, for at that period 
 these were, in essentials, precisely the same in every 
 
 GO ^<* \ 
 
 U.UC
 
 OF LUKEWARMNESS. 
 
 branch of the Church ; the reform was necessary in those 
 members of the Church who^ notwithstanding the injunc- 
 tions of the Church, were too sensual or too unscriptural 
 to fast, and too worldly to continue instant in prayer^ 
 who profaned her liturgy and offices by attending them 
 in-everently, carelessly, coldly, and thought that their 
 neglect of her ceremonies argued, on their part, a supe- 
 riority of wisdom, instead of proving, as it did, an 
 absence from their hearts of humble faith and reverential 
 love ; and who desecrated the sacraments and ordinances 
 by coming to them with minds unprepared by a living 
 faith for the reception of divine grace ; although none 
 could have in words denied that, through the sacraments, 
 grace was conferred upon hearts prepared to receive it, 
 for this heresy, the anti-sacramental heresy, did not 
 exist until, at a period much later in the history of the 
 Church, the truth of the Gospel was made to succumb 
 to the inventions of man. 
 
 In every age, then, it becomes a question of solemn 
 importance to ascertain whether the Church in which 
 God, by his predestination, election and grace, has ap- 
 pointed us to serve Him, be, or be not, at the existing 
 lime, in a lukewarm state. 
 
 That the charge of lukewarmness is justly brought 
 against the members of the Church of England generally, 
 during the last century, can hardly be denied. We hear 
 it continually urged by those who observe that if the 
 Church of England, that is, the members of the Church, 
 clerical and lay, for the laity are as much a part of the 
 Church as the clergy, had done their duty in times past, 
 things would be very different from what they now are. 
 And we may in a great degree trace this to the erroneous 
 view which was, during that period, for the most part, 
 taken of the connexion which exists between the Church 
 and the State. 
 
 Until the Revolution of 1688, the prevalent opinion 
 was, that by a Christian country was meant a coun- 
 61 g2
 
 THE SIN AND DANGER 
 
 try which united itself with the Christian Church, 
 not only by recognizing its doctrine, but by enforcing 
 its disciplinary laws; so that the laws of the State 
 should always be framed in agreement with the can- 
 ons of the Church, and any new canons enacted by 
 the Church, should always accord with the laws of the 
 State. Hence, while the two powers, the spiritual and 
 the temporal, in their legislative capacity often acted 
 separately, the one body was bound to support the 
 enactments of the other, and so the two bodies became, 
 in the eyes of the people, in many respects, identified. 
 And thus it came to pass, that heresy was regarded as an 
 offence to be punished with the same severity as a felony, 
 and an illegal conventicle of religionists was to be put 
 down by the same armed force which was employed to 
 quell a riot, or disperse an assembly of political revolu- 
 tionists. In like manner, as in these days, if a person is 
 conscientiously opposed to a monarchical system of 
 government, he has no remedy but to leave the country 
 and reside in a republic, our ancestors thought that if 
 persons could not conscientiously conform to the Church, 
 there was no alternative left for them but to leave their 
 native land, and go where they might find a system of 
 religion more in accordance with their private judgment. 
 So long as they remained in England, to the laws of 
 England, whether of the Church or of the State, they 
 were compelled to yield obedience. Of toleration they 
 had no more idea than a Greek or a Roman politician 
 had of the existence of a state of society without slavery. 
 This notion accounts for many acts of severity, 
 amounting often to persecution, on the part of our early 
 reformers, from which, in these days, we should justly 
 revolt. What we should now deem persecution, they 
 regarded as a punishment necessarily inflicted upon the 
 transsjessors of the law, — and thev had no more com- 
 punction in restraining a schismatic, than our present 
 rulers have in punishing the demagogue who breaks the 
 62
 
 OF LUKEWARMNESS. 
 
 peace ; as the conscientiousness with which the latter 
 holds his disloyal opinions is not now regarded as an 
 excuse, no such excuse was in former times admitted to 
 exonerate the schismatic from the penalty of the law. 
 The struggle down to the period of the Revolution was 
 not for toleration, hut either for the estahlishment in this 
 country of the presbyterian sect, instead of the Church, 
 or for the re-introduction into the Church of those errors 
 of popery which were so wisely repudiated at the reform- 
 ation, and against which we still protest. 
 
 At the Revolution, the principle of toleration was 
 positively asserted, although it was not carried out to its 
 full extent. We may regret that men could not be per- 
 suaded to act together in one body as regards religion, 
 notwithstanding those differences of opinion which must 
 exist, to a greater or less degree ; since in civil affairs 
 this they are able to do : but the experiment was fairly 
 made for some time after the reformation, and it did not 
 succeed. We must rejoice, therefore, that the next best 
 course was adopted for the peace of society, and that 
 toleration was established. A full, a free toleration is, 
 under these circumstances, a blessing for which we 
 cannot be too thankful : — it is a blessing to the Church 
 not less than to parties tolerated, since it enables the 
 Church, when her rulers are religious men walking by 
 faith, to fix her attention solely on the question What 
 is the truth ? and she may then maintain the truth 
 without respect of persons. But then, the fact of a 
 toleration completely changed the nature of that alliance 
 between the Church and State which had theretofore 
 existed, although this circumstance was not at once, or 
 for some time, perceived. At that period, the Church 
 might have disconnected itself from the State, reserving 
 only its endowments, since for her endowments the 
 Church is indebted to the munificence of individuals, 
 and not to the liberality of the State, — for the State, 
 though it has often taken from the Church, has given to 
 63
 
 THE SIN AND DANGER 
 
 it next to nothing. But this course was not pursued. 
 As the rights of toleration became more extended, the 
 canons of" the Church intended for a whole Christian 
 nation became more relaxed, for, without a violation of 
 those rights, they could not in many instances be en- 
 forced. The rulers of the Church therefore, to keep up 
 the little discipline they were enabled to enforce, applied to 
 the State, and governed the Church, not by ecclesiastical 
 canons as in times past, but by acts of parliament. The 
 consequence was, that the notion began to prevail that 
 the Church was a mere creature of the State: the idea of 
 the Church, an institution founded by Christ Himself, 
 was permitted to sink into that of an establishment, a 
 sect created by man : made by a breath, and, conse- 
 quently, liable to be by a breath destroyed. The worldly 
 name of an establishment was, indeed, during the last 
 century, made to supersede the divine name of the 
 Church, and since there is a mighty and unseen power 
 in a name, a word, the minds of men were gradually led 
 from relying upon the outstretched arm of the Divine 
 Head of the Church, to trust on the arm of flesh, and 
 regard the protection of the State as the one thing need- 
 ful. Hence the Church being regarded as an appendage 
 to the State, it was supposed tliat, although the State 
 might act in sacred things through the ecclesiastical as 
 one of its departments, still by the State every thing was 
 to be done ; and the State doing nothing, nothing was 
 accomplished : it was supposed to be the business of the 
 State to build churches, and therefore a population grew 
 up without any sufficient provision for their spiritual 
 wants ; it was thought to be the duty of the State to 
 educate the people, and therefore the people were un- 
 educated ; it was thought to be the duty of the State to 
 maintain Churches in the colonies and to establish mis- 
 sions, and consecjuently those very colonics which now 
 form the United States of America, and in which a 
 branch of the Church is flourishing under the divine 
 64
 
 OF LUKEWARMNESS. 
 
 blessing, — those colonies remained in a state of spiritual 
 destitution until they were divided from us : nay, what 
 was worse, since people had learned to connect the 
 operations of the Church with those of the State, the 
 State, through its various governments, sometimes pre- 
 vented the Church from acting, lest what was done by 
 the Church should alienate the minds of certain classes 
 of the people from the State : when the bishops, for ex- 
 ample, wished to establish that Hierarchy in America, 
 which, since the separation from the mother country, the 
 United States have possessed, the government of the day 
 interfered to prevent a measure which was deemed to be 
 impolitic. 
 
 We ought not to be surprised at finding that the 
 bishops and clergy, became mere functionaries of the 
 State, when they had been led, by circumstances, to 
 resign to the neglect of the civil magistrate the generality 
 of those duties which ought to have devolved upon them- 
 selves as servants of the Lord Jesus, should think of 
 making themselves comfortable at home, puffed up by 
 their temporal dignity, and looking down upon their 
 spiritual office : many, in consequence, becoming self- 
 indulgent themselves, were easy and lax in referring to 
 the discipline which they were no longer able to enforce : 
 fasting, though strictly enjoined by the Church, fell into 
 disuse, and clergy were sometimes found to be so de- 
 graded as to palliate this neglect by representing fasting 
 to be any thing but what it is, — to consist in the easy 
 temperance of those who fare sumptuously every day, 
 and whose private judgment was to decide in what the 
 temperance, which required no self-denial, was to consist : 
 daily prayers, together with the observance of Fasts and 
 Festivals, which, at the beginning of the last century, 
 were general, fell into disuetude, because to a self- 
 indulgent people, clergy and laity, they were irksome : 
 all mortification was regarded as popery : all enthusiastic 
 zeal and fervour of feeling as method ism : in things 
 65
 
 THE SIN AND DANGER 
 
 spiritual as in things temporal, each man seemed to be 
 saying, soul take thine ease. 
 
 There were, indeed, many and splendid exceptions ; 
 the more splendid, because the great and holy men who 
 formed the exceptions, were great and holy in spite of 
 adverse circumstances : but still I fear that in the 
 description thus given, the picture has not been over- 
 charcred : and one charitable conclusion we must draw 
 
 o 
 
 from the contemplation of these circumstances ; — we 
 may lament, but we cannot wonder at the fact, that many 
 persons of ardent and enthusiastic minds, confounded the 
 mal-administration of the Church, with the Church 
 system itself, and in seeking for sympathy in those 
 enthusiastic feelings of devotion which the Church, 
 rightly administered, would encourage, quitted a com- 
 munion which, if not absolutely cold, had, at least, 
 become lukewarm : when we assert the principles of the 
 Church, when we would recall to the fold the wandering 
 child of error, we should deal very tenderly with those 
 who have thus been educated in separation from the 
 Church, by parents who, under such circumstances, 
 seceded from it : it is a false charity not to tell them of 
 their errors, and that we deem those errors to be of a 
 serious nature, for it is by so doing that we awaken them 
 to inquiry : but we are not to judge others, and even 
 when they are most hostile to us we should say, — Father, 
 forgive them, for they know not what they do.^- 
 
 Of this past lukewarmness we are uow reaping the sad 
 fruits : we are surrounded by whole classes of enthusiastic 
 men, who ought to be with us, but whose minds are 
 alienated from the Church : we are also surrounded by a 
 population fast sinking into heathenism : immorality is 
 
 * There seems to have been as strong a desire among the luke- 
 warm during the last century to compel devout and enthusiastic- 
 men to leave the Church and go over to mcthodism, as there 
 seems to be in the present day a determination to drive them into 
 the Church of Rome. 
 
 66
 
 OF LUKEWARMNESS. 
 
 prevailing in the manufacturing districts to an extent 
 which cannot be contemplated without weeping by the 
 Christian philanthropist. 
 
 And what are we churchmen doing ? We are certainly 
 animated by an increasing activity, devotion, and zeal. 
 But still we are too much inclined to look to the State 
 for support; although, if we regard the case fairly, we 
 must perceive that the State, formed as it now is, and 
 having granted a full toleration, cannot give to us its 
 exclusive support ; all that we can expect is, that, as an 
 act of common justice, it will permit us to retain what 
 we have inherited from our predecessors : nor would it 
 be desirable that by accepting a grant of money from the 
 State, (and it could never be equal to our needs,) we 
 should afford another plea for the interference of the 
 State in ecclesiastical affairs : all that the Church should 
 ask of the State is, protection, — protection to her pro- 
 perty, and liberty, by the taxation of that property, 
 for the purposes of religion, to meet the demands 
 which are made upon us, for the education of the peo- 
 ple and the extension of the Church. By some such 
 measure, much may be done : and blessed be God, by 
 the voluntary contributions of our higher ecclesiastics, 
 much in this respect is beginning to be done : but much 
 more, and that more systematically, remains to be done : 
 large sacrifices must be made by the bishops and clergy ; 
 and although we should not expect so much in proportion 
 from the laity, since the clergy are to set the example, 
 and since they receive their endowments that they may 
 be the better able to do so, — still, large sacrifices, very 
 large sacrifices must be made by the Christian laity. If 
 you wish to hand down to your children the blessings 
 which belong lo that pure and reformed branch of the 
 Catholic Church, which, when rightly administered, is 
 indeed the purest portion of the Christian vineyard, 
 equally removed from superstition and from irreverence, 
 — if you wish to extend its blessings through the length 
 67
 
 THE SIN AND DANGER 
 
 and breadth of the land, you must sacrifice much. And 
 this is no time, my brethren, for slumber : if we love the 
 Lord Jesus we must be up and doing : they may be 
 angered who are aroused from their easy slumbers, when 
 we call upon them to awake and arise : the clergy may 
 be angered when we tell them that more is required of 
 them than to live respectably, to preach eloquently with 
 the enticing words of man's wisdom, to declaim on plat- 
 forms, and to rush into conti'oversy with one another : 
 the laity may be angered, when we tell them that some- 
 thing more is required of a Christian than to sit in 
 judgment upon a preacher, to criticise sermons, and with 
 a domineering spirit to maintain a certain class of opini- 
 ons : when we exhort them to acts of self-denial, and bid 
 them, instead of paying others to do what they ought to 
 to do themselves, to take up the cross that they may 
 devote themselves to the cause of a Crucified Master. 
 But by all who are in earnest, the warning cry must be 
 raised, and we must tell each man to dread, as he would 
 dread the loss of his Saviour's love, the accusation. 
 Thou art lukewarm ! 
 
 I have said that the charge of lukewarmness, when 
 brought against a Church, has reference, not to its insti- 
 tutions, but to its members. At the time of the refonna- 
 tion it was in her institutions that our Church required 
 to be reformed : in a season of lukewarmness, the reforma- 
 tion is needed in her members, in her clergy, and in her 
 laity — in ourselves, my brethren. Let us each one of us 
 have regard to one individual, even to ourself; let us 
 vindicate ourselves from the charge of lukewannness, by 
 a zeal and enthusiasm in the cause of our Glorious and 
 most Blessed Master, controlled only by those rules of 
 moderation which the Church has laid down ; and when 
 all the members of the Church, or the great majority 
 both of clergy and laity, have ceased to be lukewarm, of 
 lukewarmness the Church itself can no longer be accused. 
 Remember, ray brethren, that if a whole Church may be 
 68
 
 OF LUKEWARMNESS. 
 
 rejected because it is lukewarm, if it may fall and its 
 candlestick be removed out of its place, — much more 
 shall this be the case with respect to individuals : with 
 respect to those who, without entirely renouncing, never 
 seriously believe the doctrines of the Church ; who, with- 
 out completely disregarding attempt not universally to 
 obey the precepts of the Gospel ; who, without totally 
 relinquishing, do not cordially adopt or uniformly act 
 upon the principles of religion ; who, without absolutely 
 denying, do uot practically observe the sanctions of Scrip- 
 lure; who, without scornfully despising, do not confidently 
 depend upon the promises of Christ ; who, though they 
 do not always forsake the House of their God, or attend 
 there with the wanton levity which we have sometimes 
 with sorrow to observe, yet are not regular in their attend- 
 ance on the ordinances of religion, nor take part in them 
 with habitual seriousness ; who, although they admit the 
 general importance of Christianity, do not experimentally 
 feel it ; who, without abandoning the principles of the 
 Church, or those high truths for which Confessors bled 
 and Martyrs died, yet, from motives of worldly interest, 
 or Huder the impulse of worldly fears, to avoid persecu- 
 tion, or to escape ridicule, neglect steadily, consistently, 
 and fearlessly to support the glorious cause. These are 
 the lukewann, these, who think of self instead of Christ 
 and His Church, — these who say Lord, Lord, but do not 
 attempt to do the will of their Father which is in Heaven ; 
 these, who though not against Christ are not decidedly 
 with Him ; these, who have Jacob's voice but Esau's 
 hands ; — these are the lukewarm : these are they who 
 beat the air and waste their time for naught ; who have 
 enjoyed so much of Divine illumination as to see the path 
 of life and to admit the necessity of walking in it, who 
 have felt some of the various motives which would invite 
 almost impel them into the narrow path ; who have been 
 under that preventing grace of God, by which the Holy 
 Ghost would press those motives on the conscience ; who 
 69 H
 
 THE SIN AND DANGER 
 
 have gone, as it were, to the top of Calvary and seen the 
 dying Lamb in his agonies, the stupendous sacrifice of 
 God Incarnate, whose minds have felt overawed at the 
 sight, their hearts almost melted into penitence, almost 
 kindled into love, and have still hesitated, — have luke- 
 warmly neglected the salvation they would not coldly 
 reject, and when nothing less than the agony and bloody 
 sweat, the Cross and Passion of their Incarnate God 
 would sufiice to obtain for them the possibility of Hea- 
 ven; when the Holy Ghost has been ever present to 
 convert their hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, — have 
 remained only one degree better than civilized heathens, 
 doing only what mere men of good morals would do 
 under any circumstances, even though they had never 
 heard the name of Christ : these are the lukewarm : and 
 the lukewarm will in the last day be rejected by Him 
 who is the only Saviour, and whose words, " Depart from 
 me, for I know you not" imply everlasting misery. 
 
 It is delightful to turn from such thoughts as these to 
 the bright example of devoted zeal which is now before 
 us ; it has been in no niggard, no lukewarm spirit, that 
 the vicar of this parish has come forward and, aided by 
 subscriptions, but chiefly from his private resources, has 
 erected this goodly fabric, in which we are now assembled, 
 a sanctuary worthy of this important town. He has felt 
 that what was decent and orderly when Leamington 
 was little more than a country village, ceased to be 
 decent and orderly when Leamington became a city of 
 palaces : he has felt, in the spirit of David, that when 
 lordly palaces are arising around him for the convenience 
 of the wealthy and great, the House of his God ought not 
 to be the only edifice left unadorned by those arts and 
 that science, in which the Good God has made us pro- 
 ficients. In your own house you desire to have every 
 thing done decently and in order, and you consider that 
 that to be decent and orderly, which is in accordance 
 with your station in society. It is right that it should 
 72
 
 OF LUKEWARMNESS. 
 
 be so ; — it is right that your children should be accus- 
 tomed to the sight of what is decent and orderly, it is 
 right that you should receive, with something of cere- 
 mony, those with whom you are accustomed to associate, 
 for civilization is the handmaid of virtue. This is the 
 case with all except the few who, having no dependants, 
 no family demanding their attention, have asked. What 
 shall I do Lord ? and having received for answer — " If 
 iliou ivouldst he perfect, go and sell that thou hast and 
 give to the poor, and thou shall have treasure in heaven, 
 <ind come and follow me"'*' have retired from society to 
 devote themselves to works of mercy and an ascetic life. 
 Except these, you are accustomed to act as I have stated. 
 But the principle upon which you act in your homes, you 
 ought surely to act upon, also, in regard to your Heavenly 
 Father's House. The poor man remains contented in a 
 humble cottage ; the first thing that a successful adven- 
 turer does is to build a large house and to adorn it with 
 works of art. The humble Church, decent but unadorned, 
 the uninstructed choir, and a few ceremonies, such as 
 may serve to remind men where they are, will amply 
 suffice for the requirements of the humble villager. But 
 when the village has increased to a town, religious per- 
 sons still wish the sanctuary to surpass in height the 
 houses by which it is surroimded ; they desire to see it 
 standing in grandeur and with all proper decorations ; 
 3'es, they are unwilling to permit their larger churches to 
 remain unadorned, and the services there to be unaccom- 
 panied by ceremony, when they think of the grandeur in 
 which our earthly sovereign is lodged, and the ceremony 
 by which she is served. What the great God, the 
 searcher of all hearts, requires in the first place, and with- 
 out which all external worship is worse than useless, — a 
 mere mockery, — is the inward homage of the soul justi- 
 fied by faith ; but though without this, external wor- 
 ship is vain, yet surely by this attention to external 
 
 Matt. six. 21. 
 73
 
 THE SIN AND DANGER 
 
 worship is not excluded. What our Sovereign Lady the 
 Queen most desires in her subjects is loyalty of heart : 
 and she would spurn with indignation the homage ren- 
 dered, even on the bended knee, by those whom she 
 might know to be plotting treason ; but does it follow 
 that she will reject, rather does she not require, those 
 marks of respect in all who approach her, which, although 
 they may be counterfeited by the traitor, are, neverthe- 
 less, the conventional and recognized expressions of 
 loyalty ? Nothing, then, can be more unphilosophical 
 than the argument of those, whether infidels or men of 
 mistaken piety, who contend that because God is to be 
 worshipped in spirit and in truth, therefore no attention 
 is to be paid to the form, the manner, and the ceremonies 
 by. which that inward homage is to be expressed and our 
 general wants stated. The external worship without the 
 inward, so far as the individual pretending to worship is 
 concerned, is, as I have said, worse than useless ; but 
 there is no legitimate therefore in the case, to bring us 
 to the conclusion that the external worship is to be dis- 
 regarded. A man may bend his knee and yet not pray, 
 but there is no therefore in the case to prove that in 
 praying we ought not to kneel. 
 
 We find that, under the Old Testament, from which 
 we are to gather, not the details, but the principle of 
 public worship, God did Himself give directions in regard 
 to the services of the sanctuary. He was pleased to de- 
 scend from Mount Sinai in a cloud, and in the midst of 
 external circumstances calculated to excite the awe of all 
 beholders : He admitted Moses into His presence, and 
 gave him the two tables of stone, and, as it is supposed, 
 conferred upon him the spirit of prophecy, adding direc- 
 tions for the formation of a magnificent tabernacle, and 
 for the perfonnance of the divine worship therein. And 
 it was under the same divine instruction, that Solomon 
 acted, when the tabernacle, decent and orderly for the 
 wilderness, was superseded by the temple, a house more 
 72
 
 OF LUKEWARMNESS. 
 
 in accordance with the altered circumstances and increas- 
 ing wealth of the sons of Israel. And let not the proud 
 heart suppose that circumstances deemed trivial, which 
 the Almighty God Himself stooped down from heaven to 
 direct, are beneath the attention of man who is a worm. 
 The Lord God who knows all hearts, knew that external 
 circumstances were necessary to maintain the spiritual 
 worship of the Jews ; and, as human nature is still the 
 same, the same necessity still exists. We require exter- 
 nal worship as well as inward sanctification ; and the 
 external worship should, as far as it rests with us, be 
 worthy of Him to whom it is offered, — we should give 
 of our best, — and although the soul is the first concern, 
 and the sanctified soul would be heard though praying 
 from the dung-hill of Job, the regulation of the body 
 and of things outward, types of the inward, are not to be 
 disregarded. 
 
 Now here we have an answer to the question which 
 the cold and the lukewarm will combine to ask when they 
 behold this magnificent pile, — " to what purpose is this 
 waste ? — the money might have been more profitably 
 expended by building churches in those various manu- 
 facturing districts in which church accommodation is so 
 sadly needed." Thus did the unconverted and therefore 
 lukewarm Apostles argue, when the poor woman anointed 
 our Dear Master's Head in the house of Simon the 
 leper. 
 
 Now it is very true that the money expended upon 
 this church might have been employed in erecting more 
 churches than one, — but who is he, the lukewarm man, 
 who complains of the waste ? Let us ask him whether 
 he is in earnest in his zeal for the erection of new 
 churches ? Let him ask his own heart whether he is not 
 a hypocrite, though hitherto he knew it not, in objecting 
 to our present proceeding ? Let this zealot of utility, 
 this strict utilitarian, who grudges the few expensive 
 ornaments by which this church is adorned, when next 
 75 H 2
 
 THE SIN AND DANGER 
 
 he sits down at his own board to fare sumptuously, while 
 surrounded by menials ceremoniously waiting upon 
 him, — let him cast his eyes upon his sideboard heaped 
 with plate, and let him calculate how many churches the 
 sale of that plate would enable him to erect ; and then, 
 when he has erected them, let him come to his pastor, 
 and we will see even then, whether there be not still 
 something to say in behalf of the expenditure here, which 
 excites the wrath of the lukewarm. Alas ! you pile 
 ingots o{ gold on the altar of self, and are content with 
 casting a niggard farthing on the altar of God. In say- 
 ing tbis, we may be deemed extravagant and mad; and 
 where is the true Christian who is 7io( deemed extra- 
 vagant and mad by the lukewarm utilitarians of this 
 world ? But is every thing to be accounted extrava- 
 gance and madness, except what is based upon selfish- 
 ness ? When the wealthy man of the world expends on 
 the erection of his family mansion what would suffice to 
 build a hundred churches, or when the avaricious eccle- 
 siastic, whether presbyter or prelate, instead of endowing 
 as many more, saves up the patrimony of the Church to 
 endow his children and establish a name in the world, 
 are they accounted extravagant and mad ? Then surely 
 ihe religious man may say, " I am not mad, most noble 
 Felix," when, instead of keeping that splendid establish- 
 ment, or erecting that lordly edifice, which his means 
 would otherwise afford, he expends his money in erecting 
 a palace for the King of Kings ; when, instead of adorn- 
 ing his own walls with costly pictures, he seeks rather 
 the adornment of his heavenly Father's House ; when, 
 instead of having his own sideboard covered with plate, 
 he would rather decorate the Table of his jNlaster ; when 
 the sum that he might expend merely upon himself, he 
 expends for the use of his neighbours also, and for the 
 glory of his God. Will you say that of s])lendid and 
 adorned churches we read not in the New Testament ? 
 We answer that in the New Testament we read that 
 74
 
 OF LUKE WARM NESS. 
 
 ** all that believed were together and had all things in 
 common, and sold their possessions and goods, and 
 parted them to all men as every man had need ;"* we 
 read that " the multitude of them that believed were of 
 one heart and of one soul : neither said any of them 
 that ought of the things ivhich he possessed ivas his 
 own, but they had all things in common :'\ nay, we 
 read, " as many as were possessors of lands or houses, 
 sold them and brought them to the Apostles' feet, and 
 distribution was made to every man according as he 
 had need"X We read that the women were expressly 
 exhorted not to adorn themselves " with broidered hair, 
 or gold, or pearls, or costly array ; § in short, all 
 seemed to he alarmed by that fearful saying of our 
 Blessed Saviour : " it is easier for a camel to go 
 through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to 
 enter into the kingdom of heaven." \\ 
 
 Now, then, to be consistent, if you would have us to 
 be guided by the Bible, and the Bible only, as to the 
 character and decoration of our churches, you must 
 become very different persons from what you now are, 
 you must reduce yourselves to poverty. But you will 
 say — " No, though these texts against riches and worldly 
 grandeur are perplexing, circumstances are changed, and 
 we will explain them so as to apply them to those altered 
 circumstances, still admitting the principle." We concede 
 the point to you ! — We wish to assent to your explana- 
 tion ; but then, if, in these altered circumstances, you 
 find your justification, these altered circumstances justify 
 us in desiring to build churches not less splendid than 
 those ceiled houses in which you dwell : when the time 
 shall come, as come it probably may, when Christians 
 will revert to primitive simplicity, then, but not till then, 
 we may think of having for our sanctuary the upper room 
 of a hired house. 
 
 * Acts ii. 44. f Acts iv. 32. + Acts iv. 34. 
 
 . § 1 Tim. ii. 9. i| Matt. xix. 24.
 
 THE SIN AND DANGER 
 
 But if the rich cannot, with consistency, complain of 
 the expenditure which, with no lukewarm spirit, has been 
 lavished on this house, the poor, I am sure, will not. 
 For what to him has been the consequence ? By the 
 erection of this church, hundreds of poor persons have 
 been for many months employed. They might have 
 been employed in erecting private houses, but mark the 
 difference ! The working man, when employed in erect- 
 ing the worldly palaces around us, knows that he is con- 
 tributing to comfort and elegance in which he will have 
 no share : the artist decorates the rich man's mansion ; 
 the cunning artificer in brass and iron, the inventor of 
 the musical instruments, all complete their work; and 
 then the door is closed upon them, — other eyes, not 
 theirs, gaze with admiration on the result of their labours; 
 the strains of melody, perhaps of sacred music, are heard, 
 but the poor man is not suffered to remain even beneath 
 the windows to listen to the sweet sounds produced by 
 the very instruments which his own hands wrought : how 
 different is it with respect to this House ! This is God's 
 House, the House therefore of the children of God, the 
 House of the poor : the poor man has tastes, and feelings, 
 and gentle sentiments, oftentimes more genuine than the 
 rich ; here, in this House to which he has, if possible, 
 more right than the rich, he can look upon the work of 
 his hands, he can see that in working for God he has 
 been working for himself; here the decorations are 
 intended for him ; here the sweet sounds of music are 
 intended to aid his devotions, to soothe and to calm his 
 weary soul, and to render his duty a delight ; unless his 
 heart be sanctified, he knows full well that God will not 
 accept him, but if his heart be right with God, while he 
 is worshipping in spirit and in truth, he will rejoice to be 
 reminded by eye and ear, that he is in his Father's 
 House, and that the homage due to the Kuig of Kings 
 and Lord of Lords is rendered by dedicating to His 
 service every art and science in which we have profited. 
 78
 
 OF LUKEWARMNESS. 
 
 To what purpose was this waste ? Will the lukewarm 
 repeat the question ? Let the poor man give the answer, 
 — for the glory of our Good God and the comfort of 
 God's poor. 
 
 I have been called upon by the circumstances of the 
 day to allude to the worthless, ay, I will say, the wicked 
 arguments by which the lukewarm rich, pretending to a 
 sober and rational, but a very heartless religion, would 
 depreciate, and if they could, annihilate such good works 
 as these, which we are assembled to commemorate, thus 
 seeking to deter the more pious and self-denying of the 
 rich from setting an example which it would be inconve- 
 nient to follow. But arguments equally worthless are 
 adduced by the lukewarm against every good work in 
 every department of the Christian field ; against every 
 attempt to raise, to spiritualize the Church and warm her 
 children into zeal. Be lukewarm, be lukewarm, says the 
 world, to be otherwise than lukewarm is indiscreet ! 
 Because thou art lukewarm, saith He who once came as 
 our Saviour and will return as our Judge, "Because thou 
 art lukewarm I will spue thee out of my mouth."* 
 Surely, my brethren, as I have said before, it will add to 
 the agonies of him who shall be lost, to find that he was 
 only excluded from heaven because he was lukewarm : so 
 lukewarm, as not to have rejected, but still to have slighted 
 the oft-repeated proflfcrs of salvation ; so lukewarm, as to 
 have neglected the many opportunities of doing the good 
 works which God had prepared for him to walk in ; so 
 lukewarm, as to have been an " almost" and not an 
 '' altogether" Christian ; it will add a keener feeling of 
 anguish to his heart to find that he has gone down to the 
 world of darkness by that path which is nearest to the 
 regions of light ; to feel that he did but just miss the 
 road to glory, just fail of being one of that happy com- 
 pany which surrounds the Throne of Glory, just fail 
 because when all the mercies of redeeming love, in an 
 * Rev, iii. 16. 
 77
 
 THE SIN AND DANGER, &c. 
 
 Incarnate God, were brought before him, he remained 
 lukewarm. 
 
 It is time, my brethren, to have done, and to have 
 done for ever, with supposing religion to be merely 
 important ; with wishing carelessly and lukewarmly that 
 its blessings may be ours, without any vigorous effort on 
 our part to realize them ; with acknowledging its duties 
 and its claims, while we neglect to perform and to meet 
 them. It is no time to hesitate when all is at stake ; no 
 time to delay our choice between life and death, between 
 heaven and hell,. when that day may come unawares, 
 which will take the question out of our hands and decide 
 it for us ; ay, and if we continue amenable to the charge, 
 " Thou art lukewarm" decide that we are undone for 
 ever. The fact is, my brethren, that Christianity must 
 be to us everything, or it is nothing : it must attend us 
 at all times and in all places ; whether we eat or whether 
 we drink, or whatsoever we do, at our going out and our 
 coming in, at our studies, our business, our relaxations, 
 above all, in the sanctuary, we must be very zealous in 
 our Master's work. We must remove from ourselves 
 and so from our Church, all suspicion of lukewarmness ; 
 schools, missions, charities. Churches, and Church ser- 
 vices, all are to be zealously supported by all who love 
 the Lord Jesus, by all who have the Good God for their 
 Father, and our own dear Church, once polluted, now 
 reformed, once lukewarm, now rising into life and energy, 
 for their Mother. Of wealth, and time, and thought, we 
 must all contribute much, and let us each dread before 
 all things the charge once brought against the Church of 
 the Laodiceans, Thou art lukewarm. So may we do 
 away the evil effects of past lukewarmness, and the Lord 
 our God may even yet give us His blessing : so may our 
 candlestick, instead of being removed, be burnished bright, 
 and its light still shine before men to the glory of God 
 the Father. 
 
 80
 
 // 
 
 ON THE CHURCH 
 
 , AND 
 
 THE ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 The Church was like a garden, in which things rank and gross in nature 
 were running to seed: but they did not possess it wholly; it still produced 
 beaulifulflowers, and wholesome herbs and fruit. At the Kefoi-mation, wise 
 men would have weeded the garden, but rash ones were for going to work with 
 the plough and the han-ow. Southey. 
 
 The Church of Ihe living God, the pillar and gi-ound of the 
 Truth.—! Tim. iii. 15. 
 
 By the Church is here meant that community of 
 Christians, existing in its various branches, which was 
 instituted by our Saviour Jesus Christ Himself, and by 
 Him placed under the superintendence of the Apostles 
 and their successors. 
 
 Of the commission of all the Apostles, except St. Paul, 
 we read in the Gospels. There we see that, as the Father 
 sent the Lord Jesus in His character of the Messiah, so 
 did the Lord Jesus in that character send His Apostles.* 
 To them He appointed a kingdom, even as the Father 
 had appointed a kingdom to Him.f And having pre- 
 viously commissioned them to consecrate the Sacrament 
 of His Body and Blood, and to celebrate that ordinance 
 in remembrance of Him, He left them, as His last in- 
 junction — ^just before he went up on high to receive good 
 gifts for men —this command : — " Go ye, thereforey and 
 disciple all nations, baptizing them in the name of the 
 Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teach- 
 
 * John, xs. 21, -f- Luke, xxii. 29. 
 
 1 A
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 ing them to observe all things whatsoever I have com- 
 manded you."* 
 
 Our Saviour at the same time added : — "And to! I 
 am with you a! way, even unto the end of the world. 
 Amen ! — that is to say, He would be with them in these 
 tlieir ministrations, co-operating with them by His Spirit. 
 But this He could not be, if His promise were intended 
 only to include the eleven persons to whom He immedi- 
 ately spake. For these persons, instead of abiding till 
 the end of the world, in due course, went the way of all 
 flesh. Our Lord must, therefore, have meant, what the 
 Church has always understood Him to mean, that He 
 would be present with that body of men whom He thus 
 incorj)orated and commissioned to act as His ministers 
 and as the rulers of the Church. Individuals were to 
 pass away, but, by a constant succession of members, the 
 commissioned body was to continue, and, so continuing, 
 to be blessed with His spiritual presence. 
 
 That the eleven who were first commissioned by our 
 Lord thus understood their commission is clear, since 
 the very first thing they did was to exercise the privilege, 
 which their commission implied, of adding to their 
 number. They determined to make up their number to 
 twelve, (the a])OState Judas having forfeited his bishopric); 
 and for this purpose they selected Joseph, called Barsabas, 
 and Matthias. And God sanctioned their proceeding by 
 interfering by Miracle, on their supplication, to point out 
 which of the two should be consecrated. 
 
 The fact to which I have alluded, and which is record- 
 ed in the first chapter of the Acts, is important on two 
 considerations ; first, it shows that the Apostles under- 
 stood our Lord's commission not to be confined to those 
 to whom it was immediately addressed, but to embrace 
 also their successors ; and, secondly, since they performed 
 this act before the miraculous eflTusion of the Holy Ghost 
 on the day of Pentecost, it is obvious that they made a 
 
 * Matthew, xxviii. 19, 20. ^^""^ 
 
 2 2*^'^ I!
 
 AND THE ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 distinction between that commission, which they received 
 only in common with the other Bishops of the Churcli, 
 and that miraculous power which was conferred upon 
 them to enable them to execute their commission under 
 circumstances of peculiar difficulty. 
 
 To the number of commissioned ministers of Christ, 
 our Lord Himself added the great Apostle of the Gen- 
 tiles, St. Paul. The divine Head of the Church, the 
 blessed Jesus, has a right to send on an extraordinary 
 mission whom He will ; and we should never reject any 
 one who should come among us so commissioned. Only 
 as when St. Paul was commissioned, out of due course, 
 the commission was notified by miracle — so should we 
 say to any one who pretended that he had received a 
 command from on high to minister in sacred things, and 
 that he was thus exempted from the usual form of ordi- 
 nation conferred by the successors of the Apostles : — " It 
 may be as you say, but, before we admit your pretensions, 
 let a miracle be performed, to convince us that God 
 Himself has sanctioned so great an exception to the 
 general rule which He has Himself laid down." 
 
 Of the early growth and progress of the Church, (that 
 community of Christians placed by our Lord under the 
 superintendence of the Apostles and their successors) we 
 read in the Acts of the Apostles, and in the apostolic 
 Epistles. 
 
 The Apostles went into all nations, as the}' were com- 
 manded, and preached Christ crucified ; but not only 
 this : wheresoever they went they at the same time estal)- 
 lished the kingdom of Christ by organizing the Church. 
 The conduct of the Son of God was, in no respect, more 
 distinguished from that of the celebrated heathen ])hilosu- 
 ])hers than in this — that they, when they had broached 
 their tenets, took no stej)s for the promulgation of them : 
 whereas. He, by instituting His Sacraments, and ordain- 
 ing a body of men whose business to the end of time will 
 be to administer them, has secured for ever, even by 
 3
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 human means, the promulgation of the two great truths 
 of His religion, a belief in the atonement and in the 
 necessity of grace. Thus the Apostles, in every place to 
 which they went, not only preached the Gospel, but 
 ordained an order of men, with powers inferior to their 
 own, and without permission to add to their numbers, 
 whose office it was and still is to preach the Gospel, to 
 offer the prayers of the people, to bless in God's name, 
 and to administer both the Sacraments. These men were 
 called Presbyters (contracted into Priests), and some- 
 times Bishops — not meaning by that title what we now 
 mean, but simply a superintendent of a single congrega- 
 tion. To assist these, with more limited powers, they 
 also appointed Deacons. Hence we find the early 
 Churches thus constituted : there was a baptized people, 
 to minister among whom Presbyters and Deacons were 
 appointed, while over the whole body the Apostle who 
 first founded the Church presided as what we should now 
 call the Bishop. He visited this Church (as our Bishops 
 in these days visit the Churches under them) as circum- 
 stances required ; and if detained from them long, he was 
 accustomed to send to them his directions by letter. 
 Thus the Epistles of St. Paul are, most of them, letters 
 addressed by the inspired "writer, in his character of 
 Apostle or Bishop, to the Churches under his superin- 
 tendence. 
 
 Some persons seem to think that the government of 
 the Church was essentially different in the days of the 
 Apostles from what it is now, because they do not find 
 the names and titles of the ecclesiastical officers precisely 
 the same. For instance, as I have just said, he whom 
 we now call a Presbyter or Priest was frequently styled 
 in the New Testament a Bishop. But it is not for names 
 that we contend. We ask what was the fact, and the 
 fiict was this : that the officer whom we now call a 
 Bishop was at first called an Apostle, although afterwards 
 it was thought better to confine the title of Apostle to 
 4
 
 AND THE ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 those who had seen the Lord Jesus, while their succes- 
 sors, exercising the same rights and authority, though 
 unendowed with miraculous powers, contented themselves 
 with the designation of Bishops. After this, the title was 
 never given to the second order of the ministry. In the 
 New Testament we find each Church (as I have just 
 said, and now, on account of the importance of the sult- 
 ject, repeat) thus constituted : — there was an Apostle \v 
 superintend it — Presbyters and Deacons under him, and 
 the company of Believers ; the only difference is that, 
 instead of calling him that presides over any particular 
 branch of the Church an Apostle, we now call him a 
 Bishop. And such rulers, descending from the Apostles, 
 the true Church has ever possessed from the ascension of 
 our blessed Saviour to the present hour ; for the earliest 
 uninspired writer we have — a disciple of St. John him- 
 self — states it as an acknowledged rule in his day, that 
 nothiuij: was to be done without the sanction of the 
 Bishop. 
 
 In this manner was the Church originally formed. It 
 extended itself into several branches, and each branch, 
 continuing not only in the Apostle's docfrine, but in 
 iheir fello7vship, was called a distinct Church. We read 
 of the Church at Jerusalem, the Church of the Thessa- 
 lonians, the Church of Ephesus, and Sm^-rna, and 
 Pergamos, and Thyatira, and Sardis, and Philadelphia, 
 and Laodicea. In one sense, they were separate Churches, 
 as each was complete in itself under its Bishop (called 
 by St. John its Angel); in another sense, the Church 
 was one, inasmuch as in all its branches the same doc- 
 trines were professed, the same episcopal discipline ob- 
 served : — There was one body and one spirit, even as 
 ihey were called in one hope of their calling, one Lord, 
 one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who 
 is above all, and through all, and in them all. 
 
 The Church, so constituted by our Lord, and governed 
 by the Apostles and those Bishops, their successors, to 
 5 A 2
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 whom our Lord's commission applied equally with the 
 Aposiles themselves — the Church so constituted was open 
 universally to all persons of all nations, and was not 
 confined, as was the Jewish Church, to a single people. 
 It was, therefore, called Catholic, or universal. But 
 against the doctrine or discipline of this Apostolic Church, 
 numerous sects professing to believe in Christ soon arose. 
 These sects were generally distinguished by the names of 
 their founders, whereas the true Church rejected any 
 designation that seemed to confine it exclusively to one 
 party or place. But, as some designation was necessary, 
 it was usually known by the name of the Catholic Church 
 of such or such a place. And consequently the word 
 Catholic, in process of time, came to signify, not luiicer- 
 sal, but true. The ancient ecclesiastical writers almost 
 invariably use it in this sense — namely, to denote the 
 Church, which, in any place, by the succession of its 
 Bishops, has come down in regular descent from the first 
 Apostles, as contradistinguished from all other sects. 
 Those persons are consequently in error who would use 
 the term Catholic to denote an amalgamation of all sects, 
 for the term was in the first ages always used to distin- 
 guish the true Church from sectarian congregations ; and 
 those are still more in error who speak of the Papists as 
 Catholics. If you call the Romish sect in this country 
 the Catholic Church, you as much as say that it is the 
 true Church. The Catholic Church means the true 
 Church of Christ, holding the Apostolic doctrine, and 
 governed bv Bisho}^s descending regularly from the 
 Apostles — and a Catholic Church means a branch of 
 that true Church. 
 
 These Churches, descending from the Apostles, have 
 continued to the present day. They are to be found in 
 the east and in the west, and against them forming the 
 one Church of Christ, we know that the gates of hell will 
 not prevail. But among the Churches great errors have 
 prevailed, and in some of them they still exist. These 
 G
 
 AND THE ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 great errors, which call out for reformation, do not pre- 
 vent such Churches from being true Churches, for he is 
 still a true man whose face is besmeared with dirt, and 
 the diamond is still a diamond though covered with dust. 
 Against the Churches, to which St. John, in the Apoca- 
 lypse, was directed to address himself, the Divine had 
 many things to write ; but, while he threatened punish- 
 ment, he did not pronounce them to be no true Churches. 
 
 In this country — and it is with our own country that 
 we are concerned — a true branch of the Catholic Church 
 has existed from the remotest antiquity. Bishops from 
 Britain sat in some of the earliest councils : and the Pre- 
 lates, who at this present time rule the Churches of these 
 realms, were validly ordained by others, who, by means 
 of an unbroken spiritual descent of ordination, derived 
 their mission from the Apostles and from our Lord. 
 This continual descent is evident to every one who 
 chooses to investigate it. Let him read the catalogues 
 of our Bishops ascending up to the most remote period. 
 Our ordinations descend in a direct unbroken line from 
 Peter and Paul, the Apostles of the Circumcision and 
 the Gentiles. These great Apostles successively ordained 
 Linus, Cletus, and Clement, Bishops of Rome ; and the 
 Apostolic succession was regularly continued from them 
 to Celestine, Gregory, and Vitalianus, who ordained 
 Patrick Bishop for the Irish, and Augustine and Theo- 
 dore for the English. And from those times, an unin- 
 terrupted series of valid ordinations has carried down the 
 Apostolical succession in our Churches to the present 
 day. There is not a Bishop, Priest, or Deacon, among 
 us, who cannot, if he please, trace his own spiritual des- 
 cent from St. Peter or St. Paul.* 
 
 That in the Church of England purity of doctrine was 
 not always retained is readily admitted. In the dark 
 ages, when all around was dark, the Church itself suffered 
 
 • Palmer's Origines Liturgiccr, vol. ii. p. 249. 
 7
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 from the universal gloom : this neither our love of truth 
 nor our wishes will permit us to deny. About the seventh 
 century the Pope of Rome began to establish an influence 
 and interest in our Church. The interference of the 
 Prelate of that great See, before he laid claim to any 
 dominion of right, was at first quite justifiable, and did 
 not exceed the just bounds, while it contributed much to 
 the propagation of the Gospel. That the Bishop of 
 Rome was justified in endeavouring to aid the cause of 
 Christianity here in England, when England was in 
 Heathen darkness, will not be disputed by those who re- 
 cognize the same right in the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 with respect to India at the present time. But, in after 
 ages, what was at first a justifiable interference was so 
 increased as to become an intolerable usurpation. This 
 authority was an usurpation, because it was expressly 
 contrary to the decisions of a general council of the 
 Church, and such as the Scripture condemns, in that the 
 Scripture places all Bishops on an equality, and so they 
 ought to continue to be, except where, for the sake of 
 order, they voluntarily consent to the appointment of a 
 President or Archbishop, who is nothing more than a 
 primus infer pares. This usuqjation for a time con- 
 tinued, and with it were introduced various corruptions, 
 in doctrine as well as in discipline. 
 
 At length, in the reign of Henry VIII. the Bishops 
 and Clergy accorded with the laity and government of 
 England, and threw off the yoke of the usurping Pope of 
 Rome. They, at the same time, corrected and reformed 
 all the errors of doctrine, and most of the errors of dis- 
 cipline which had crept into our Church during the reign 
 of intellectual darkness. They condemned the monstrous 
 doctrine of transubstantiation, the worship of saints and 
 images, communion in one kind, and the constrained 
 celibacy of the Clergy, having first ascertained that these 
 and similar errors were obtruded into the Church in the 
 middle ages. They did not attempt to make new, their 
 8
 
 AND THE ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 object was to reform, the Church. They stripped their 
 venerable mother of the meretricious gear in which 
 Superstition had arrayed her, and left her in that plain 
 and decorous attire with which, in the simple dignity of 
 a matron, she had been adorned by Apostolic hands. 
 
 Thus, then, you see ours is the old Church of Eng- 
 land, tracing its origin, not to Cranmer, and Latimer, 
 and Ridley, who only reformed it — but the only Church 
 of England, which traces its origin up through the Apos- 
 tles, to our Saviour Himself. To adopt the words of the 
 most learned and pious writer to whom I have before re- 
 ferred : " The orthodox and undoubted Bishops of Great 
 Britain and Ireland are the only persons who in any 
 manner, whether by ordination or possession, can prove 
 their descent from the ancient Saints and Bishops of 
 these Isles. It is a positive fact, that they, and they 
 alone, can trace their ordinations from Peter and Paul, 
 through Patrick, Augustine, Theodore, Colman, Columba, 
 David, Cuthbert, Chad, Anselm, Osmund, and all the 
 other worthies of our Church."* " It is true that there 
 are some schismatical Romish Bishops in these realms, 
 but they are of a recent origin, and cannot show the pre- 
 scription and possession that we can. Some of these 
 teachers do not profess to be Bishops of our Churches, 
 but are titular Bishops of places we know not. Others 
 usurp the titles of various Churches in these Islands, but 
 are neither in possession themselves nor can prove that 
 their predecessors ever occupied them. The Sect (the 
 sect of Enghsh Papists or Roman Catholics) arose in the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth, when certain persons, un- 
 happily and blindly devoted to the See of Rome, refused 
 to obey and communicate with their lawful pastors, who, 
 in accordance with the law of God and the canons, 
 asserted the ancient independence of the British and 
 Irish Church : and the Roman Patriarch then ordained 
 
 * Origines Liturgiccc, vol. ii. p. 252.
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 a few Bishops to Sees in Ireland, wliicli were already 
 occupied by legitimate pastors. In England, this minis- 
 try is of later origin ; for the first Bishop of that com- 
 munion was a titular Bishop of Chalcedon in the seven- 
 teenth century."* 
 
 You see, then — and in these days it is particularly 
 necessary to bear the fact in mind — that ours is the old 
 Catholic Church of England ; a Church which traces 
 its origin to the Apostles and our Lord ; a Church which 
 in the dark ages laboured under abuses and corruptions, 
 which were removed under the Episcopates of Archbishop 
 Cranmer and Archbishop Parker. Nothing can be more 
 mistaken than to speak of these great men as the 
 founders of our Church. One only is our founder, and 
 that is Christ. And as well might we say of a man 
 when he has washed his face that he is not the same 
 man as he was before his ablution, as to say of the 
 Church of Endand that she is a different Church since 
 the Reformation from what she was before. 
 
 You will observe how important all this is which I 
 have now laid before you. Unless Christ be spiritually 
 present with the ministers of religion in their services, 
 those services will be vain. But the only ministrations 
 to which He has promised His presence is to those of 
 the Bishops who are successors of the first commissioned 
 Apostles, and the other clergy acting under their sanction 
 and by their authority. 
 
 I know the outcry which is raised against this — the 
 doctrine of the Christian Church for 1800 years — I know 
 the outcry that is raised against it by those sects which 
 can trace their origin no higher than to some celebrated 
 
 * Origines Lifurgicie, vol. ii. 251. The reader is referred to 
 this most interesting and saiisfactory work, if he wish to see the 
 statements here made established and proved. See also Rose's 
 admirable Disroioses on the Commission and Consequent Duties of 
 the Clergy ; and Discourse 7, vol. i. of the Practical Theology of 
 the truly apostolical Bishop Jebb — vi/v ev ayioic. 
 10
 
 AND THE ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 preacher at the Reformation. But I disregard it, because 
 I shall, by God's help, continue to do, what I have done 
 ever since I came among you* — namely, declare the 
 whole council of God, without regard to consequences or 
 respect of persons, and, at the same time, as far as in me 
 lies, live peaceably with all men. 
 
 But, after all, the outcry is most unjust. We seek 
 not to condemn others, though we maintain that ours is 
 the only right path. There is no precept of the Gospel 
 more important than this — Judge not that ye may not be 
 judged. If a man err through ignorance, ignorance such 
 as he has had no means to remedy, we may surely sup- 
 pose that his ignorance will be pardoned, and that God, 
 though He have not promised to be so, may yet be 
 with him. Or, again, the same may be sup])osed when 
 necessity is laid on us, when a man, for instance, lives 
 where no true Church exists, or where the true Church is so 
 (.orrupted as to render communion with it impossible. f 
 
 * This Sermon was preached in Coventry, in the year 1S34. 
 
 + Although with foreign reformers we, of the Church of Eng- 
 land, have no immediate concern, it is important to know that, 
 where episcopacy was not retained, the reformers pleaded not 
 principle but necessity. " How Calvin stood affected in the said 
 point of episcopacy, and how gladly lie and other heads of the 
 reformed Churches would have received it, is evident enough from 
 his writings and epistles. In his Book of the N'ecessity of Reform- 
 ing the Church, he hath these words : Talem iwhis hierarchiam 
 exhiheant, &c. ' Let them give us such an hierarchy, in which 
 Bishops may be so above the rest as they refuse not to be under 
 Christ, and depend upon Him as their only head, that they main- 
 tain a brotherly society, <Scc. If there be any that do not behave 
 themselves with reverence and obedience towards them, there is 
 no anathema, but I confess them worthy of it.' But especially 
 his opinion of episcopacy is manifest from a letter he, and Bul- 
 linger, and others, learned men of that sort, wrote, anno 1549, to 
 King Edward VI. offering to make him their Defender, and to 
 have Bishops in their Churches for the better unity and concord 
 among them j as may be seen in Archbishop Cranmer's memorials 
 and likewise by a writing of Archbishop Abbott, found among 
 the MSS. of Archbishop Usher, which, for the remarkableness of 
 11
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 In this respect, as in every other, we may look for our 
 guidance to the conduct of our blessed Lord Himself. 
 When conversing with the woman of Samaria, He did not 
 compromise the truth, at a time when the Jewish mode 
 of worship was divinely appointed and established, by 
 letting her suppose that it was a thing indifferent whether 
 men worshipped at Mount Gerizim or on Mount Moriah. 
 But, when implying that men, at that period, ought to 
 have worshipped at Jerusalem, He, nevertheless, did not 
 treat as a heathen one who acknowledged Jehovah for 
 her God, or censure as a schismatic one who continued 
 to worship, through want of better information, where her 
 fathers had worshipped before her. And thus it is pos- 
 sible for us to maintain that the Church is the only 
 Christian community in these realms which can prove 
 that it possesses the promise of Christ's presence in her 
 
 it, and the mention of Archbishop Parker's papers, I shall here 
 set down. ' Perusing some papers of our predecessor, Matthew 
 Parker, we find that John Calvin, and others of the Protestan^ 
 Churches of Germany and elsewhere, would have had episcopacy^ 
 if permitted J but could not on several accounts, partly fearing the 
 Princes of the Roman Catholic faith would have joined with the 
 Emperor and the rest of the popish Bishops to have depressed the 
 same ; partly being newly reformed and not settled, they had not 
 suflficient wealth to support episcopacy, by reason of their daily 
 persecutions. Another and a main cause was they would not have 
 any popish hands laid over their Clergy. And whereas John 
 Calvin had sent a letter, in King Edward the Sixth's time, to have 
 conferred with the Clergy of England about some things to this 
 effect, two Bishops, viz: Gardiner and Bonner, intercepted the 
 same : whereby Mr. Calvin's overture perished. And he received 
 an answer, as if it had been from the reformed divines of those 
 times, wherein they checked him, and slighted his proposals; from 
 which time John Calvin and the Church of England were at vari- 
 ance on several points, which otherwise, through God's mercy, 
 had been qualified, if those papers of his proposals had been dis- 
 covered unto the Queen's majesty during John Calvin's life. But, 
 being not discovered until or about the sixth year of her majesty's 
 reign, her majesty much lamented they were not found sooner.' " 
 
 Strype^s Life of Archbishop Parker. 
 
 12
 
 AND THE ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 services and Sacraments, and yet we may hope and 
 believe that the blessings of His presence, though unpro- 
 mised, may still be vouchsafed to all those who devoutly 
 worship Him in sincerity, though they hold not, as we 
 conceive, the whole truth, as it is in Jesus. It is in 
 Sion only that God appears in perfect beauty, though 
 we admit He may manifest Himself elsewhere. Ours is 
 the only path that can be proved to be the right one ; 
 but there may be many by-paths, through which, though 
 with greater difficulty, the traveller may arrive at the 
 same destination, where, blessed be the name of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, tve shall all speak the same thing, 
 and, there being no divisions among us, tve shall be 
 perfectly joined together, in the same mind and the 
 same judgment.* 
 
 There is indeed such a sin as schism. Yet, as the 
 Church has never attached the notion of heresy to error, 
 not factiously and pertinaciously maintained, so we may 
 believe that the conscientious dissenter is not guilty of 
 schism when he does not act with a schismatic intent. 
 
 But although it seemed well to me to offer these expla- 
 nations, I wish to remind you that with the judging of 
 others we have nothing to do. God is their judge, not 
 we. Our business is, as regards ourselves, to prove all 
 things, and to cleave to that which is good. At a period 
 when the principles of toleration were little understood, 
 and when the Puritan condemned the Papist, in language 
 not less strong than that which the Papist employed 
 when dealing out his anathemas against the Protestant, 
 it was asked of a distinguished individual '' whether a 
 Papist could be saved." And very wise was his answer : — 
 " You may be saved without knowing that — look to your- 
 self ;"f What is that to thee P says our Saviour : folloiv 
 thou me.X 
 
 * I Corinthians, i. 10. 
 
 f Sir Henry Wotton. Wordsworth's Biog. p. 43. 
 
 + John, xxi. 22. 
 
 13 B
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 And if to ourselves, my brethren, we do look, let us 
 consider seriously and solemnly the increased responsi- 
 bility which results from our greater advantages in being 
 members of a true reformed Catholic Church. Whatever 
 may be the case with others, if we neglect so great 
 salvation, (on the principle that from him to whom much 
 is given much will be demanded), as we shall be without 
 excuse, so will our condemnation be the more severe. 
 But let us dwell not on the terrors but on the consolations 
 of our Sion. To us pertaineth the adoption, and the 
 <jlory, and the Covenants, and the service of God, and 
 the promises and the Sacraments, and among us, beyond 
 reasonable doubt, Christ dwells, tvho is God blessed for 
 ever. Delightful thought, with which to enter the sanc- 
 tuary and to approach the pulpit, the altar, or the font ! — 
 Delightful thought, with which to worship in the beauty 
 of holiness, and to pour forth the soul in those self-same 
 prayers through which, for at least fifteen centuries, the 
 hearts of saints have winged their way to heaven ! — 
 Delightful thought, while with psalms, and hymns, and 
 spiritual songs, we unite with the Church triumphant in 
 ascribing to God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost, blessing, and honour, and glory, and power ! 
 
 H
 
 AND THE ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 \^Tioever attentively considers the subject will find that troubles in Church 
 and State usually come to a crisis at the same time. Either originating in the 
 same cause, or the immediate consequence the one of the other, sometimes the 
 calamities of the Church lead the way to commotions in the State, while at other 
 times it is just the reverse. So that I cannot imagine that this interchangeable 
 course of things is the effect of mere accident; but I apprehend rather that these 
 troubles are to be traced to our iniquities, of which they may be considered as 
 the punishment. Socrates Scholasticus, a. d., 439. 
 
 And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy 
 nursing mothers. — Isaiah, xlix. 23. 
 
 On a former occasion we traced the history of the 
 Church through the succession of its Bishops, up to its 
 origin in the commission given by our Lord to the Apos- 
 tles and their successors. Now, that branch of the Church 
 which exists in this country has always been connected 
 with, and closely allied to, the State. Although we know 
 little of its history before the conversion of the Saxons, 
 there are good grounds for supposing such to have been 
 the case, even with respect to the British Church ; while 
 nothing can be more certain than that the conversion of 
 our Anglo-Saxon ancestors was a national one. 
 
 When the Anglo-Saxons conquered the Britons, they 
 were heathens, and, persecuting the Church, either drove 
 the professors of Christianity to the mountains of Wales 
 or reduced them to a state of slavery. By that moral 
 alchemy, through which Divine Providence converts evil 
 into good, the latter circumstance prepared the way for 
 the conversion of the conquerors, who, seeing the pious 
 and regular deportment of their slaves, soon learned to 
 respect their religion. We may gather this fact from a 
 letter written by Gregory, the Bishop of Rome, in the 
 sixth century, to two of the kings of France, in which he 
 15
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 states that the Enghsh nation was desirous of becoming 
 Christian, and in wliich he, at the same time, complains 
 to those monarchs of the remissness of their Clergy in 
 not seeking the conversion of their neighbours. And 
 hence it was that Gregory, with that piety and zeal for 
 which he was pre-eminently distinguished, sent over 
 Augustine and about forty missionaries to England, to 
 labour in this good work. The success of these mission- 
 aries, the way having thus been paved before them, was 
 most satisfactory. They converted Ethelbert, who was 
 not only king of Kent, but Brsetwalda, or chief of the 
 Saxon monarchs. His example was soon followed by 
 the kings of Essex and East Anglica, and gradually by 
 the other sovereij^ns of England. 
 
 The successful Augustine then went over to Aries, in 
 France, where he was consecrated by the prelate of that 
 See ; and returning, became the first Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, the patriarch and metropolitan of the Church 
 of England. His See was immediately endowed with 
 large revenues by King Ethelbert, who likewise estab- 
 lished, at the instance of the Archbishop, the diocese of 
 Rochester and London. The other kings of the heptarchy 
 erected bishoprics equal to the size of their kingdoms. 
 And the example was followed by their nobles, who con- 
 verted their estates into parishes, erecting fit places of 
 worship, and endowing them with tithes.* This fact 
 accounts for the unequal size of our dioceses and parishes : 
 the first were (though subsequently subdivided) of the 
 
 * The property of the Church remains with those wlio have 
 (lescended in an uuhroken line from the Clergy to whom it was 
 originally gi-anted. If our title be disputed, it devolves upon the 
 adversary to establish a prior claim. This the protestant dissen- 
 ter does not attempt to do ; and, with respect to Roman Catholic 
 dissenters, we know that, instead of being descended from the 
 <jriginal grantees, their line of succession began at Rome scarcely 
 more than two centuries ago. Nor can they claim on the ground 
 of greater similarity of doctrine. For transubstantiation, the 
 worship of saints and images, half communion, constrained celi- 
 16
 
 AND THE ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 same extent as the dominions of their respective kings ; 
 the second corresponded with the estate of the patron. 
 Nor was the regard of those by whom the Church was 
 established and endowed confined to the spiritual edifica- 
 tion of the poor; no, they knew that righteousness ex- 
 alteth a nation, and, estimating properly the advantages 
 of infusing a Christian spirit into the legislature, they 
 summoned the higher order of the Clergy to take part in 
 the national councils. 
 
 Thus was the Church established and the State con- 
 secrated. For many years, there appears to have con- 
 tinued a good understanding between the civil and eccle- 
 siastical authorities, the powers of which were, in most 
 respects, as in these days, blended. But, after the moral 
 world had been subdued, and papal tyranny had been 
 established, by the marvellous energies of Hildebrand, 
 his crafty successors, the Popes of Rome, soon perceived 
 that, in order to secure their dominion, it was important, 
 as far as possible, to sever the alliance which had hitherto 
 subsisted between the Church and the State. Repre- 
 senting the Church as independent, they regarded the 
 King as the head of the State, and the Pope as supreme 
 of the Church. No sectarian of the present day can be 
 more hostile to an alliance between Church and State 
 than were those divines who, in the middle ages, were 
 devoted to the Popedom. Although the Pope, however, 
 had, here in England as elsewhere, many creatures and 
 advocates, yet many and manful were the repulses he met 
 with from our Clergy, our Kings, and the People. His 
 authority, indeed, was in this realm a mere assumption, for 
 he was never elected by any synod of our Church as its 
 head. Still, assuming rights to which he could lay no 
 
 bacy, &c., the doctrines and practices Avhich distinguish the 
 modem Romish sect were unknown to the Anglo-Saxon Church. 
 Admitting, then, that we may differ in some particulars of prac- 
 tice from our ancestors, yet certainly we do nvt differ from them 
 so much as the modem Romanist. 
 
 17 b2
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 lawful claim, his usurpations were continued until, in the 
 reign of Henry VIII. the Clergy, the Monarch, and the 
 People, could bear the tyranny no longer, but, throsving 
 off the yoke, declared that the Pope was not the head of 
 the Church of England, but that, in these realms, the 
 King is, as in times past he was, over all persons, and 
 in all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, in these his 
 dominions, supreme. 
 
 This was the first step towards a reformation. Various 
 other abuses were then corrected, as we pointed out on 
 Wednesday last ; and our doctrines, as well as our ser- 
 vices, were brought back to that primitive simplicity and 
 solemnity in which we now find them. The Church 
 (not made new, but canonically reformed) still con- 
 tinued to be allied with the State, and has remained from 
 that day to this — except for a short period during the 
 Rebellion — established. 
 
 Such is the fact, and the history of the fact. The 
 Church in this country has come down to us established 
 and endowed. And the first question to be asked is, 
 whether in this alliance between Church and State there 
 be anything unscriptural and unholy. If there be, let 
 the text of Scripture be cited which prohibits this con- 
 nection. Where is it ? Observe, we do not say that the 
 Church must be established, so that unless it were estab- 
 lished it would cease to be a Church. God forbid ! We 
 only sav that it maij be established — that there is nothing 
 in Scripture to forbid its establishment, where its estab- 
 lishment can be accomplished. In the United Slates of 
 America a branch of the reformed Catholic Church is 
 existing, and I am happy to say flourishing, under the 
 government of many orthodox Bishops. Now, this 
 Church is not recognized by the Stale. It is not estab- 
 lished. But we do not object to it on that account. We 
 acknowledge it to be a true and most pure branch of the 
 Church of Christ, and we \^atch with fraternal affection 
 its pre-eminence and its progress. We do not, therefore, 
 18
 
 AND THE ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 sav that the Church must be established— the only ques- 
 tion, I repeat, is, whether, where we find it allied, as in 
 this country it is, with the State, there is any thing un- 
 lawful in such alliance. And again I say that the onus 
 probandl lies with the adversar3^ Where, I ask, is 
 there any thing that condemns the establishment of the 
 Church of Christ as the national religion ? I am, of 
 course, aware that reference is sometimes made to the 
 eighteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel, where our Lord 
 declares. My kingdom is not of this ivorld ; but that, 
 I conceive, is always done for the sake more of popular 
 declamation than of solid argument. For it is clear, 
 from the context, that this passage cannot be made to 
 say any thing, either one way or the other, with respect 
 to a national establishment. It had been represented to 
 Pontius Pilate that the Lord Jesus, by claiming to be a 
 king, w'as an enemy to Caesar. In order to ascertain the 
 truth of this accusation, the Roman governor demanded 
 of our Lord, Art thou the King of the Jews ? In answer- 
 ing in the affirmative, the blessed Jesus, to guard against 
 misconception, adds : — My kingdom is not of this ivorld ; 
 if my kingdom ivere of this world, then would my ser- 
 vants fight, that I should not he delivered to the Jeivs ; 
 hut 7101V my kingdom is not from hence."^ It is difficult to 
 force any other meaning from this passage, considered as 
 an answer to Pilate's question, than this : *' I am a king, 
 but not such a king as Caesar need to fear ; in proof that 
 I do not wish to dethrone him, or to interfere with the 
 powers that be, I refer to the fact that I have not com- 
 manded my servants to fight for me." 
 
 If to establish — ay, or to ww-establish — the Church 
 we were to have recourse to weapons of carnal warfare 
 and to seek a revolution, as the Presbyterians did in the 
 reign of Charles the First, I can then understand how we 
 might violate the principle implied in this text ; but it is 
 impossible to conceive how, by any process of sophistry, 
 
 * John, xviii. 36. 
 19
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 it can be interpreted as condemning the civil magistrate 
 when he offers, or the ecclesiastical magistrate when he 
 accepts, an alliance between Church and State for the 
 purpose of benefiting those who are the subjects of both. 
 At all events, it is not from one text of very doubtful 
 meaning that a wise man will start such an objection 
 as this; he will rather feel surprise, if the establish- 
 ing of the Church as a national religion be so heinous 
 an offence as some persons would represent, that our 
 Lord did not condemn it in the very strongest terms. 
 For we know that, among the Jews, the State and the 
 Church were closely united ; that the Jewish Church 
 was as much established in Palestine as the Christian 
 Church is in England ; and that, moreover, this union 
 between Church and State was instituted by God himself. 
 The Apostles, therefore, could not have considered an 
 established religion as a thing, in itself, unlawful. That 
 they themselves made no attempt to establish Christianity 
 is most true ; but then it is to be remembered that no 
 nations were, at that period, converted. What would 
 have been their conduct had an opportunity offered of 
 grafting Christianity upon the civil institutions of the 
 heathen world neither we nor our opponents can decide. 
 Their example, therefore, can be urged by neither party, 
 since they had no opportunity of acting. 
 
 And now, having seen that there is nothing to be urged 
 from Scripture by the religionist against a union with 
 the civil power, it only remains to consider what are the 
 advantages of the union. Whatever may be the theories 
 of the political economist of the present day, the ancient 
 lawgivers considered religion to be of such importance, as 
 bearing even on the temporal welfare of society, that 
 they actually preferred a false religion to none. It was 
 the remark of a celebrated historian, that Rome was 
 indebted for her glory to the prevalence, in her best days, 
 of Superstition — meaning by superstition a feeling of 
 
 20
 
 AND THE ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 religion, though directed to a wrong ohject.* But 
 superstition is like a statue too massive for the pedestal 
 on which it is placed ; and, as civilization advances, it 
 soon falls into ruin. Its absurdities are detected, and 
 the conclusion is hastily drawn that because one system 
 of religion is proved to be false, no system of religion 
 can be proved to be true. Among the heathens, therefore, 
 a religious feelingnever existed, for any great length of time, 
 as an influential principle. And the consequence was that 
 in the heathen world, that greatest of all earthly blessings, 
 civil liberty was utterly unknown. For real freedom we are 
 indebted to Christianity, which alone could make reli- 
 gion to be not an idle theory, but an abiding conviction. 
 
 •Polybius, 1. 6. p. 497. The whole passage is curious : — " The 
 greatest advantage,'' says he, " which the Roman government 
 seems to have over other states, is in the opinion publicly enter- 
 tained by them about the gods; and that very thing which is 
 decried by other mortals sustained the Republic of Rome — I 
 mean, Superstition: — for this was carried by them to such a 
 height, and introduced so effectually both into the private lives of 
 the citizens and the public affairs of the city, that one cannot help 
 being surprised at it." " It Avas not withovit great prudence and 
 foresight that the ancients took cai*e to instil into them these 
 notions of the gods and infernal punishments, which the moderns, 
 on the other hand, are now rashly and absurdly endeavouring to 
 extirpate." How would this historian have felt had he known of 
 a religion adapted equally to the wants of the most learaed 
 philosopher and the most unlettered peasant, in which a Newton 
 and a cottager may find subjects for study, in which, to use the 
 expression of one of the Fathers, while there are shallows which 
 a lamb may ford, there are depths where an elephant must swim ! 
 Chi-istianity, so fai* as religion is concerned, has utterly abolished 
 the doctrine of expediency, and in its stead established tndh as 
 the sole object which the religionist is to have in view. This is a 
 blessed and a glorious fact. But it seems irrational to fall into 
 the opposite exti-eme ; and because the heathen philosophers 
 supported a false religion tlu-ough expediency, not to observe the 
 tendency of the true religion, while affording gi-ace for the renova- 
 tion of the hearts of individuals, to confer at the same time, indi- 
 rectly, the most important temporal benefits on society. 
 21
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 By an armed oligarchy, the greater part of the opera- 
 tives in the heathen world were kept in a state of slavery, 
 the abolition of which was a subject on which the most 
 benevolent of philosophers could scarcely dare to dream. 
 How impossible it is for a society of men, with equal 
 rights, to exist without the restraints of religion, may 
 be seen in what took place in France during the first 
 revolution. Religion being regarded as a thing of naught, 
 the wild passions of men burst forth in all their ferocity ; 
 the land was full of blood, and the city ivas full of 
 perverseness : and, the experiment having been made, 
 even Infidels bore testimony to the blessings — I mean 
 the temporal blessings — of Christianity, by re-establish- 
 ing its institutions, though, judicially blind themselves, 
 they embraced not its doctrines. And the reason of this 
 is obvious : the statesman can only legislate for society in 
 the mass ; it is the minister of religion who applies to 
 individual cases those principles upon which all sound 
 legislation is founded ; while the former looks to the 
 bare fact, the latter is probing the motive ; while the 
 human lawgiver can only say. Thou shall not steal, it is 
 the Divine Lawgiver who adds. Thou shall not covet ; 
 the law of the land can only guard against the effects 
 of passion ; to subdue the passions themselves belongs to 
 divine grace ; the civil magistrate can do little more 
 than become a tenor to the evil doer ; the rewards of 
 the humble and the righteous are administered by that 
 faith which realizes the joys of eternity, and secures, at 
 the time present, the peace which passeth all under- 
 standing ; laws of perfect obligation fall under the pro- 
 vince of the legislature ; those higher laws of imperfect 
 obligation are enforced by the Church : the civil authori- 
 ties may govern man, as a selfish, money-getting, 
 ambitious creature : it is Christianity alone which can 
 foster and bring to maturity the generous principles of 
 courtesy, benevolence, and charily, which can elevate us 
 
 22
 
 AND THE ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 to all that is high and honourable in sentiment, all that 
 is disinterested in conduct, and amiable in feeling. 
 
 It is true that, to a certain extent, much of this might 
 be accomplished even though the Church were not 
 established. Religion would still have its influence. I 
 will go even further, and add that, so far as regards those 
 who are Churchmen hi deed and in truth, the Church 
 itself would be benefitted by a separation from the State : 
 for she would regain those undoubted rights from which, 
 for the sake of harmony, she now recedes — the right, for 
 instance, of legislating for herself on all occasions, and 
 of electing Bishops without the interference of the civil 
 power. The question with the legislator is not whether 
 the Church would do much good, though unconnected 
 with the State, but whether, by an alliance therewith, she 
 cannot do more good : and the question with the Church- 
 man is, whether, for placing in abeyance some of its 
 spiritual rights, the Church does not receive compensa- 
 tion by the indirect influence it is enabled to exert. The 
 Church may be less free, but is it not more efl5cient ? — 
 The Church may be unduly controlled in the exercise of 
 its authority over its own members, but does it not 
 possess gi'eater means of purifying society ? — and to 
 purify society, to act as the salt of the earth, is one of 
 the purposes for which the Church was instituted. It is 
 not, indeed, as churchmen but as patriots that we depre- 
 cate the desecration of the State ; that is to say, we 
 deprecate it for the sake, not of those that are within the 
 pale, but of those that are without ; we deprecate it, not 
 because the Church would be a less eflficient minister of 
 grace to the faithful, if, driven from her glorious cathe- 
 drals, she summoned her children around her in the 
 upper room of a hired house, or the caves of the desert ; 
 but because she would be a less efiectual preacher of 
 morality to the unenlightened and the unbeliever. Her 
 voice would still be the voice of the charmer when heard, 
 but it would not reach so far. When men are once 
 23
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 awakened to a vital sense of religion, when its blessings, 
 its holy consolations, and heavenly joys, have been 
 kindled in the heart, they need not an establishment, for 
 they will never be without the ordinances and sacraments 
 of the Church from whence those blessings flow ; but, 
 were there no establishment, how would it fare with those 
 who, not knowing its consolations, are naturally averse 
 from its restraints ? The strong would have their meat; 
 but how would the babes be supplied with milk ? To 
 those who truly believe, beautiful ivill be the feet of 
 them that preach the Gospel of peace, and bring glad 
 tidings of good things ; but concerning others we may 
 ask how shall they call on Him in ivhom they have not 
 believed P — And how shall they believe in Him of whom 
 they have not heard? — And how shall they hear with- 
 out a preacher ? — And how shall they preach except 
 they be sent? Will individual zeal suffice? — Alas! 
 the zeal of individuals soon waxes cold when all cause of 
 opposition is removed. It is, at all events, hard to con- 
 ceive why the case should be difl^erent with us from what 
 it is in the United States of America. There, in the 
 towns and cities, where religion is regarded as a luxury. 
 Churches and Chapels abound. But, in the rural dis- 
 tricts, the population is either utterly destitute of pastoral 
 supervision, or depends, for the sacraments and for spiri- 
 tual edification, on the visits, few and far between, of 
 some chance missionary. And so it was in the primitive 
 a"es before the Church obtained the countenance and 
 support of the civil government ; religion flourished in 
 the towns, but in the villages the inhabitants continued 
 to be Heathens, and hence an Infidel and a Pagan 
 became convertible terms. In short, where there is no 
 national establishment, they who require instruction least 
 receive it most, and they who require it most have it not 
 at all. And therefore, whether we look at the fact with 
 the eye of the legislator or of the Christian, the circum- 
 stance of stationing a man of education, respectability, 
 24
 
 AND THE ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 and religion, in each parish, where the inhabitants are 
 loo poor to support, or too ignorant to desire, an instruc- 
 tor, is an advantage to the country, which will only then 
 be properly appreciated when it is lost. 
 
 On the other hand, the position of our higher ecclesi- 
 astics as the compeers of the royal and great, if it afi'ect 
 not all the good we could desire, certainly gives to 
 English society that moral tone which is the glory of our 
 country. By intercourse with the good, the irreligious 
 learn to respect virtue, and become less immoral than 
 they would otherwise be ; for it is impossible to be in the 
 midst of odours without bearing away some portion of 
 their fragrance. Meantime, their children are brought 
 up not only without feelings of hostility to religion, but 
 even with a due regard for its decencies if not for its 
 duties. Thus the way is prepared before the preacher by 
 our national institutions, which bring religion under the 
 notice of many who would not otherwise have bestowed 
 a single thought on the subject. Religion is thrust, as it 
 were, into every one's face; and he must be pertinaciously 
 negligent and wilfully blind who does not examine into 
 its claims. 
 
 It is to the circumstance that we have in this coimtry 
 an established Church, which, without requiring implicit 
 faith in its dogmas, demands investigation from all its 
 subjects — an establishment which forces men to inquiry, 
 while inquiry leads to conviction — it is to this circum- 
 stance that we may attribute the gratifying fact that many 
 and most of those illustrious men, who for intellectual 
 acquirements, are the ornaments of their native land, are 
 ever the foremost to bow the knee at the name of Jesus, 
 and to vindicate the ways of God to man. But, whatever 
 may be thought of these considerations — important ones 
 in the estimation of a Christian — the question, at the 
 present time and in this country, is not as to the estab- 
 lishing of the Church, but as to the wM-establishing of it. 
 And they who have before their eyes either the fear of 
 25 c
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 Go<^ or the love man, will tremble at the responsibility 
 they incur in helping to break up the old paths, lest of 
 those they turn adrift into the highway there should be 
 some — and doubtless there would be many — who, from 
 the tendency of human nature to rush into opposite 
 extremes, would plunge headlong into the abyss of Infi- 
 delity and Atheism, and thus involve the nation in all the 
 curses denounced upon an apostate people. To dissolve 
 the religious establishment of this country would be, as 
 it were, to tear the sun from the centre of our social 
 system . 
 
 It is, I know, the custom of the adversary to attribute 
 to the existence of an establishment the evils of secta- 
 rianism. But to argue thus is to argue from hypothesis 
 and not from fact. For the fact is, that, in America, where 
 no establishment is recognized by the State, sectarianism 
 rages with a far more bitter spirit than it does in Eng- 
 land.* Sectarianism ever has existed, and, till a mighty 
 
 * There are some very sensible remarks on this subject — remarks 
 the more valuable from being made by a man of the world — at the 
 conclusion of Mr. Hamilton's interesting volumes on " Men and 
 Manners in America." Having stated that in towns there is no 
 apparent deficiency of religion, the author obsen'es : — " In the 
 country, however, this is not the case. These differences of reli- 
 gion rend the country into shreds and patches, varying in every 
 thing of colour, form, and texture. In a village, the population 
 of which is barely sufficient to fill one Church and support one 
 Clergyman, the inhabitants are either forced to want religious 
 ministration altogether, or the followers of different sects must 
 agree upon some compromise, by which each yields up some por- 
 tion of his creed to satisfy the objections of his neighbour. This 
 breeds argument, dispute, and bitterness of feeling. The Socinian 
 will not object to an Arian Clergyman, but declines to have any 
 thing to do with a supporter of the Trinity. The Calvinist will 
 consent to tolerate the doctrine of free agency, if combined with 
 that of absolute and co-respective decrees. The Baptist may give 
 up the assertion of some favourite dogmas, but clings to adult 
 baptism as a sine qua non. And thus with other sects. But who 
 is to inculcate sucli a jumble of discrepant and irreconcileable 
 doctrine ? No man can shape his doctrine according to the 
 
 26
 
 AND THE ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 change come over the spirit of the world, it ever will 
 exist. And, therefore, the wise man will not engage in 
 any chimerical project for conciliating all sects ; his 
 endeavour will be to moderate the rancour of the sectarian 
 spirit. By an establishment one grand cause of dispute 
 is removed. In every parish the first place is pre-occu- 
 pied : and this renders one party desirous of peace. It is 
 very seldom that the Clergyman of the parish feels it to 
 be worth his while to enter into controversy with the 
 dissenting teacher. He knows bis superiority, and that 
 he has nothing to gain by the contest. Consequently, 
 while local controversies in America are many, and fierce, 
 and prolonged, in England they are few, and soon subside. 
 In an establishment there is less of that kind of zeal 
 which the ignorant admire, but which is, in truth, only 
 party spirit ; but there is more of 
 
 " Pure religion breathing housebold laws." 
 
 The very fact of the ministry being provided for, and 
 having no pecuniary interest in making proselytes, tends 
 to peace. One influential party is withdrawn from the 
 scene of combat : and even the dissenting sects enjoy the 
 sunshine which the establishment diffuses, though, like 
 the blind, they distinguish not the light from which it 
 flows. For, having a common interest in preventing the 
 establishment from exceeding the powers to which it is 
 legally entitled, their hostility to one another, which, in 
 the United States, is often disgi'aceful to the very name 
 of Christianity, is modified. Another advantage of an 
 establishment is that, although it may be impossible to 
 
 anomalous and piebald creed prescribed by such a congi-egation, 
 and the practical result is that some one sect becomes victorious 
 for a time ; jealousies deepen into antipathies ; and what is called 
 an opposition church probably springs up in the village. The rival 
 Clergymen attack each other from the pulpit: newspapers are 
 enlisted on either side, and religious warfare is waged with the 
 bitterness, if not the learning, which has distinguished the contro- 
 versies of abler polemics." 
 27
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 make all men think alike, yet it indirectly leads if not to 
 uniformity yet to similarity of doctrine. The doctrines 
 and practices of the establishment are fixed ; and thus it 
 stands a warning against the excesses of rival sects, while 
 it affords a model according to which those sects, when 
 correcting their abuses, will to a certain extent shape 
 themselves. Every one must have observed that, in 
 manner, in dress, even in the title he assumes, the dis- 
 senting teacher wishes to appear like the Clergyman; and 
 this he would not do unless he were accustomed in 
 weightier matters to look up to the Church with a degree 
 of respect, which he will not, perhaps acknowledge even 
 to himself. The consequence of this is, that, although 
 we have sects of every sort and grade in this country, yet 
 the extremes of " Unitarianism," and Fanaticism in its 
 wildest state, are far less prevalent here than in the 
 United States. Our sects come much nearer to the 
 golden mean ; for the establishment, to which all eyes 
 are turned, is always indirectly infusing some slight por- 
 tion of caloric into the cold system of the " Unitarian," 
 while she tempers the fiery zeal of the Fanatic. The 
 operation, also, of dissenting sects upon the establishment 
 is not without benefit, since it prevents the religious 
 atmosphere from stagnating. Sectarianism is not, there- 
 fore, an unmixed evil ; or, if it be, I repeat, it is not an 
 evil to be cured by human means. To expect to model 
 an establishment, so as to please all parties, is to indulge 
 in an amiable but chimerical theory. The object of the 
 practical man will be, not to attempt the extirpation of 
 sectarianism, but simply to remedy its evils. He will 
 not seek to add to our numbers by concession of prin- 
 ciples ; he will not seek to conciliate a few wavering 
 nonconformists by disgusting the conformist ; but his 
 object will be to preserve concord within the sanctuary, 
 and bv exhibiting her services in all the fair beauty of 
 holiness, to make men enamoured of the Church. 
 
 To what I have said of the tendency of an establish- 
 28
 
 AND THE ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 ment to preserve peace among religionists, the acrimonious 
 spirit evinced against the Church at the present time 
 is no contradiction. The violence of the sectarian is to 
 be attributed to very peculiar political circumstances, on 
 which it does not become me to dilate in this place. And 
 what, let me ask, what would be the state of the country, 
 at the present moment, if the combined attack of dis- 
 senters and infidels — unhallowed combination ! — were 
 met with the spirit in which it is made ? — What would 
 be the state of the country, if the Clergy of England, 
 instead of acting with the temper of Christians and the 
 deportment of gentlemen, had been habituated to those 
 arts of personal altercation and controversy, which are 
 too often found to prevail where no establishment exists ? 
 
 It is, indeed, Tfith complacency that I regard the 
 conduct of the vast majority of that sacred order to which 
 I have the happiness to belong, under a system of mis- 
 representation, calumny, and moral persecution, more 
 hard to bear than tortures or death. And while we look 
 for a recompense elsewhere, through the merits of a 
 crucified Saviour, it is surely a pardonable weakness to 
 feel some satisfaction in the thought that, when, in a 
 future age, the historian is recounting the acts of the 
 present generation, he will tell of a Clergy who, if they 
 were, like the Apostles from whom they claim to descend, 
 misrepresented as the filth of the earth and the offscour- 
 ing of all things, yet so far trod in their INIaster's footsteps 
 that, being reviled, they learned to bless, being persecuted, 
 they learned to suffer ; behig defamed, they learned to 
 entreat. 
 
 Before I conclude, I must just advert to the system 
 adopted in some of the States of America, where every 
 person is obliged to contribute towards the support of 
 religion, while it is left to his choice to decide upon the 
 sect on which his bounty shall be conferred. And what 
 is the consequence ? The prevalence in those States of 
 what is called " Uniturianism." He who must support 
 20
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 some sect, aiid yet is indifferent alike to all religion, 
 chuses that form, of com'se, which is nearest to no reli- 
 gion, and remains for ever ice-bomid under that petrifying 
 system of theology — that apology for Christianity — which 
 can teach — what he knew before — that honesty is the best 
 policy, but can never warm the imagination or amend 
 the heart. For advancement, for growth in grace, no 
 opportunity is afforded. If I wish to prove the excellency 
 of the contrary system — if I wish to prove the advantage, 
 not only of a national religious establishment, but of 
 establishing the true Church — it is not to argument that 
 I would resort — I should appeal to the experience of 
 those whom I address. Some there are — the happiest of 
 their kind — who, under any circumstances, would have 
 belonged to the Church of their God. But, of the hun- 
 dreds — I may say the thousands — who worship in this 
 sanctuary, let me ask what first brought the generality 
 within consecrated walls ? They came because, through 
 the influence of an establishment a religious atmosphere 
 being created around, it is respectable to attend a place 
 of worship ; and because such being the case, and not 
 being controversialists, they preferred to any other the 
 place provided for them by the institutions of their coun- 
 try. Unworthy motives ! And yet, my brethren, what 
 has been the consequence ? If there had been no estab- 
 lishments, half of those whom I see before me would 
 have remained indifferent to the high privileges and 
 blessings of Christianity ; but now — though brought 
 here first, perhaps, from insufficient motives — you have 
 become regular worshippers ; gi*adually, from being mere 
 formalists, you have brought the principles of religion to 
 bear on your general conduct ; gradually, from consider- 
 ing praver to be a disagreeable though a necessary duty, 
 you have learned to feel that communion with the Father 
 of your spirits is a great, a glorious, a holy, a delightful 
 privilege ; gradually, you have been led from your kneel- 
 ings in the pew to the rails of the altar, and there, in the 
 30
 
 /3 
 
 ,jCm ^ ■^'^^'^S^ 
 
 THE 
 
 CATHOLICISM 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ANGLICAN CHURCH 
 
 AND ITS BRANCHES.
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The following Sermon was preached at the consecration of 
 Bishop Luscombe, who was consecrated in Scotland, 1825, as a 
 Missionary Bishop to exercise episcopal functions among the 
 British subjects in France and Belgium. 
 
 From the concluding words of the Letters of Collation, de- 
 livered to Bishop Luscombe by the Prelates who consecrated him, 
 the object of his mission will be best understood : " He is sent by 
 us, representing the Scotch Episcopal Chuixh, to the continent of 
 of Europe, not as a Diocesan Bishop, in the modem or limited 
 sense of the word, but for a purpose similar to that for which 
 Titus was left by St. Paul in Crete — that he may set in order the 
 things that are wanting among such of the natives of Great 
 Britain and Ireland as he shall find there, professing to be mem- 
 bers of the United Church of England and Ireland and the 
 Episcopal Church in Scotland. But, as our Blessed Lord, when 
 he first sent out his Apostles, commanded them, saying, * Go not 
 into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans 
 enter ye not, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of 
 Israel ;' so we, following so divine an example, which was cer- 
 tainly left on record to the Church to guide her conduct in making 
 future converts to her faith, do solemnly enjoin our right reverend 
 Brother, Bishop Luscombe, not to disturb the peace of any Chris- 
 tian society established as the national Church, in whatever 
 nation he may chance to sojourn, but to confine his ministrations 
 to British subjects, and to such other Christians as may profess to 
 be of a Protestant Episcopal* Church. 
 
 " And we earnestly pray God to protect and support him in his 
 arduous undertaking, and to grant such success to his ministry 
 that among those who ' have turned many to righteousness, he may 
 at ast shine as the stars for ever and ever.' "
 
 THE CATHOLICISM OF THE ANGLICAN 
 CHURCH AND ITS BRANCHES. 
 
 SERMON. 
 
 Whether one member suffer all the members suffer with it, or 
 one member be honoured all the members rejoice with it. Now 
 ye are the body of Christ and members in particular. 
 
 1 Cor. xii. 26, 27. 
 
 Deeply impressed with the importance of the solemn 
 office for the celebration of which we are this day 
 assembled, and equally aware of my own unworthiness, 
 as a simple Presbyter, to discuss the great questions 
 which naturally arise out of it in the presence of so 
 many right reverend Fathers of the Church, it is with 
 sincere humility and diffidence that I take upon me a 
 duty, to the performance of which I am capable of 
 bringing little more than that fervent zeal which such an 
 event is calculated to call forth in the breast of every 
 true servant of our holy Catholic Church. Heartily, 
 however, as humbly I pray unto Him " who worketh 
 great marvels," to send down upon this whole congrega- 
 tion such a portion of the "healthful spirit of His grace," 
 as may supply all deficiencies on the part of the creature, 
 and bring our designs and labours to a happy conclu- 
 sion, to the honour and glory of the Creator. 
 
 In contemplating a measure which forcibly brings 
 back to our recollection the primitive periods of the 
 Church of Christ, and awakens the memory of those 
 events which have marked its career from the first mis- 
 sion of the Apostles, down to the present hour, we are 
 necessarily reminded of the distinguishing features by 
 which, and by which alone, the true apostolic and Ca- 
 tholic character of it may be traced. 
 35
 
 THE CATHOLICISM OF THE 
 
 In the regular procession of events, first principles too 
 frequently become obscured, or are only referred to, as 
 they partially appear to justify a latitude of interpreta- 
 tion. In an age of professing liberality especially, men 
 are apt to be fascinated by words, and to merge the dis- 
 tinctive chai'acter, — to lose sight feature by feature, of 
 TRUTH itself — in the prevailing mode of generalizing 
 principles, as well as systems. Thus by an error, venial 
 perhaps as far as concerns the ignorant multitude, but 
 criminal in those who either through prejudice, or for 
 the purpose of deluding others, foster and extend it, — 
 every sect, every shade and denomination of dissent or 
 departure from the institutions of the Apostles and the 
 primitive Church, are comprehended equally with the 
 most rigid and conscientious adherence to them, under 
 the general head and title of the Catholic Church. 
 
 In such an assembly as this, I need not insist upon 
 the impropriety, — to use no harsher term — of such a 
 general classification ; but it may not be considered 
 irrelevant, if in discussing the merits of our present 
 undertaking, in order to anticipate misunderstanding, and 
 to guard against misrepresentation, we explain distinctly 
 and clearly what "WE mean by the Catholic Church ; 
 and hence endeavour to shew how perfectly in accord- 
 ance with its principles and objects, is the purpose now 
 contemplated by the pious and venerable governors of 
 this pure and legitimate branch of it. 
 
 That the Church of Rome has unjustly arrogated to 
 herself an exclusive claim to the title of Catholic — that 
 name so dear to all who are imbued with the love of 
 primitive Christianity — has been too satisfactorily proved 
 by a succession of the ablest divines, and, indeed, is too 
 self-evident, to need any discussion upon the j^resent 
 occasion. We shall rather direct our observations against 
 the error, not only of those who dissent from our apos- 
 tolic Church, but even of too many careless professors 
 within its pale — who, ignorant or regardless of the primi- 
 36
 
 ANGLICAN CHURCH AND ITS BRANCHES. 
 
 tive institutions of Christianity — the restoration to which 
 was the object of our Refonnation, — content themselves 
 with a literal interpretation of this designation of the one 
 true Church, and thus predicate it indiscriminately of all 
 believers. 
 
 That their principle of interpretation is erroneous, a 
 little consideration will serve to shew. Ascertaining 
 KccOoXiKog to mean universal, they demand where is to be 
 found a universal Church. They perceive the disagree- 
 ment which exists with respect both to doctrines and 
 ceremonies among the various religious establishments 
 throughout the world, and finding, strictly speaking, no 
 satisfactory answer to the question, they, at once, assume 
 the fact, that under the general title of the Catholic 
 Church, must necessarily be included every sect and 
 denomination of professing Christians, however difierent 
 in doctrine, in discipline or even in faith, from the primi- 
 tive Church. But is this a just or legitimate mode of 
 interpretation ? Is it the mode of interpretation, with 
 which any one who comes to the consideration of the 
 subject will be satisfied ? If in the study of the litera- 
 ture, the philosophy, or the political economy of the 
 ancients, we were to meet with a technical expression or 
 a term of art, should we rest contented with the imper- 
 fect notions conveyed by either, in their first and literal 
 sense ? Should we not rather refer to the writins^s of 
 the poet, the philosopher and the politician, and adopt 
 the term, ivhether agreeable or not to its strict etymolo- 
 gical signification, in the precise sense to which it had 
 been restricted by them ? This surely is consonant with 
 every principle applicable to the investigation of truth, 
 and must, injustice, be adopted in analyzing any ques- 
 tion connected with the first and greatest of all truths — 
 "the reason of the faith which is in us." 
 
 When, therefore, we adopt and daily repeat the creed 
 of the early Christians, we are surely bound to ascertain 
 not only the meaning of their words, but the precise 
 37 d2
 
 THE CATHOLICISM OF THE 
 
 sense in which they were used, and in which those holy 
 Fathers intended that we should receive them. 
 
 By this test, then, we are prepared to ahide ; and we 
 may, without presumption, challenge the opponents of 
 our interpretation to point out one instance in which the 
 term Catholic is applied by the ancients in the indefinite 
 and indiscriminate manner for which they contend. 
 They will invariably find it used, for a purpose directly 
 opposed to that which they profess. They will find it 
 used, to speak logically, as a word of the second inten- 
 tion, to distinguish the one true and apostolic Church — 
 the Church which was established at Jerusalem by the 
 preaching of St. Peter, and existing through all ages the 
 same, by the succession of its Bishops — from the various 
 sects, heresies, and schisms which even then brought 
 scandal upon the name of Christians. " Christianus 
 mihi 7iomen, Catholicus cognomen" the former to dis- 
 tinguish him from the heathen, the latter from the 
 heretics, was the motto not of Pacian alone, but of every 
 orthodox member of the Church. 
 
 If earlier than the age of Irenseus the distinction is 
 not so clearly marked, it is only because the errors of 
 the first and the former part of the second century, were 
 so gross in their nature that they could scarcely lay 
 claim to the common term of Christian, and that, conse- 
 quently, the line of demarkation between Churchman 
 and Heretic was too clearly ascertained to require that 
 nice distinction which afterwards became necessary when 
 Schism as well as Heresy divided the believers in the 
 name of Christ. But to the writings of Ireneeus, Ter- 
 tullian, and St. Cyprian, — the polar star of the Ecclesi- 
 astical Antiquary, — we might, with safety, appeal, for 
 the fullest proof of our assertion; were it not amply 
 suflicient for the object we have in view to ascertain the 
 meaning which was attached to the term by those who 
 first adopted it in the Creed. 
 
 Although the article concerning the Catholic Church 
 38 jfs^S^ 
 
 X 
 
 UIUC .
 
 ANGLICAN CHURCH AND ITS BRANCHES. 
 
 had been inserted in many of the Oriental Creeds at the 
 beginning of the fourth century, and although the term 
 itself had been applied to the Church, as we shall pre- 
 sently see, from the apostolic age ; it did not form part 
 of any of those Creeds which are retained by us, until 
 the Council of Constantinople added it-to the Nicene. 
 Now it would be perfectly fair to infer that the very 
 circumstance of its insertion in the Creed is sufficient, if 
 not to support our argument, at least, to invalidate that 
 to which we are opposed. The design of a Creed is not 
 the expression of all that we believe, hut the profession 
 of certain truths which, although denied by some, are 
 maintained by ^ls. There is, consequently an antithesis 
 to every article. We profess to believe in God the 
 Father, because the Pagan rejects Him ; in God the 
 Son, because the Arian blasphemes him ; in God the 
 Holy Ghost, because His personality is denied by the 
 Macedonian. Now, if in the profession of belief in the 
 existence of the Catholic Church, the primitive Chris- 
 tians had intended nothing further than the acknowledg- 
 ment of the existence of large masses of believers in the 
 name of Christ, scattered over the face of the earth, no 
 one in his senses would have objected to that which was 
 self-evident. To have denied it, would have involved an 
 absurdity too gi'oss for the most weak and illiterate of 
 mankind to have been guilty of ; and to have inserted 
 the article in the creed, would, in consequence, have 
 been, at least a work of supererogation. But if, on the 
 other hand, they intended, as we maintain, to distinguish 
 by that title the true and Apostolic Church from the 
 different sects of Schismatics and Heretics ; then they 
 asserted a fact, against which those sects would vigorously 
 contend, and then, also, we can readily account for its 
 adoption in the various Symbols or Creeds of the 
 Church. 
 
 But we are not driven to the necessity of drawing our 
 conclusion by inference, or from merely general views of 
 39
 
 THE CATHOLICISM OF THE 
 
 the subject. The article now under consideration we 
 repeat was first added to the Creed of Nice, by the 
 Council of Constantinople.* The question, then, is — 
 what was the idea which the Constantinopolitan Fathers 
 intended to convey by the term. This may be answered 
 at once if the authenticity of the seventh Canon of that 
 Council be admitted, and I trust I do not presume too 
 far in affirming that the arguments in its favour are of 
 equal strength, at least with those of its opponents. 
 Now, these Fathers in their seventh Canon make a 
 manifest distinction, between the various Schismatics and 
 Heretics, and " the Catholic and Apostolic Church of 
 God," by the appointment of particular ceremonies to be 
 observed by the former upon their admission into this 
 Church, — of which, had they previously been members, 
 there would have been no necessity. And let it be 
 particularly observed that among the Schismatics speci- 
 fied in the seventh canon, and alluded to as being ivithout 
 the pale of the Catholic Church, are the Novatians, — 
 the Novatians who differed less from the Church then, 
 than any one sect, whether Calvinistic or Lutheran, 
 differs from it now, — who were, in faith Homo-ousians, 
 and in doctrine Episcopalians. Their only distinguish- 
 ing characteristic was the uncompromising rigour of 
 their discipline ; so that if the Novatians were not con- 
 sidered as members of the Catholic Church, to that high 
 privilege no other sect surely could prefer a claim. 
 
 * The reader is requested to bear in mind, that the clauses which 
 in our Prayer Books succeed the mention of the Holy Ghost, were 
 not originally in the Nicene Creed, but added to it, as stated in the 
 text, at the Council of Constantinople, in the year 381. It is some- 
 times maintained that this alteration was made not at the general 
 Council, but at one holden immediately afterwards at the same 
 place. Without entering into controversy upon this subject, it is 
 sufficient to observe, that — even supposing this to be the case, — 
 since it is agreed on all hands that the same Fathers, (or at all 
 events, the triumphant majority of the previous Council,) acted in 
 both, our argument will not be effected by it. 
 40
 
 ANGLICAN CHURCH AND ITS BRANCHES. 
 
 But even admitting the arguments against the authen- 
 ticity of this Canon to be valid, we are still at no loss to 
 discover the intention of the Constantinopolitan Fathers, 
 since they admitted the Creed and Decrees of the 
 Council of Nice. For although the Nicene Fathers did 
 not insert it as an article of faith, they nevertheless not 
 only applied the term Catholic to the one true Church, 
 in contradistinction to the assemblies of the Heretics, 
 but actually made use of it, in this sense, at the conclu- 
 sion of their Creed. The original Nicene Creed, as is 
 well known, concludes with an anathema against the 
 Arians, in the name of " the holy Catholic and Apostolic 
 Church ;" of which Church, by a reference to their 
 eighth Canon, it will plainly appear they did not con- 
 sider either Heretics or Schismatics to be members; 
 since that Canon was expressly framed to legislate for 
 those of the Puritan or Novatian Clergy who might 
 *' come over to the Catholic Church" Trtft twv ovoijlx^ovtuv 
 p?y lavrov; xaOapot/j ttote, '7rpoc7£p%Oju.Ev&;v ^s t*i xaGoXixri xa» 
 AroaToXiKYi sx.KXv(Tkx, manifestly implying that they did 
 not previously belong to it. This is the more remarkable, 
 since the validity of the orders of these Novatian Clergy 
 — who had preserved the episcopal succession, and had 
 among them Bishops regularly consecrated, — is, by 
 implication, in this very canon acknowledged. 
 
 Enough I trust has been said to establish the sense 
 in which the term Catholic, was by the compilers of the 
 Creed applied to the Apostolic Church of our blessed 
 Lord and Saviour. It was evidently used, I repeat, as a 
 word of the second intention to distinguish the true 
 Church from the heretical and schismatical sects. Adopt- 
 ing, therefore, the term in its legitimate and restricted 
 sense, we might now, if the time permitted, enter upon a 
 curious and interesting inquiry concerning its origin. It 
 may be said, indeed, that upon this point nothing can be 
 asserted with any degree of certainty. The testimony of 
 the Fathers is, no doubt, various and conflicting. The later 
 41
 
 THE CATHOLICISM OF THE 
 
 Fathers, and particularly St. Augustin, while applying 
 the term in the same restricted sense with ourselves, ap- 
 pear to have believed that it was originally given because 
 " the Catholic Church was not like the Churches of the 
 heretics confined to certain places and provinces, but 
 enlarged by the splendor of one faith, from the rising up 
 of the sun, to the going down of the same."* But whe- 
 ther such was its original signification may admit of a 
 doubt. The earliest writer by whom the word has been 
 used is Ignatius the Apostolic Bishop of Antioch. It 
 occurs, also, twice in the Epistle of the Church of 
 Smyrna upon the martyrdom of Polycarp, their vener- 
 able Prelate. That neither the Church nor Christianity 
 was at that period the universal religion must be ap- 
 parent to every one. The name, therefore, must either 
 have been given prophetically, purporting that the one 
 true Church would eventually be the universal one, — or 
 might, more probably, have been adopted to distinguish 
 the Christian Church from the Jewish ; the one having 
 been confined to a single chosen nation, while the other 
 was destined to spread throughout all the nations of the 
 world. When we consider the disputes which were early 
 prevalent between the Gentile converts and the Judaizing 
 Christians, we can easily conceive the readiness with 
 which the former would adopt a title which proclaimed 
 their liberty, as the sons of God. 
 
 But whatever may have been the origin of the word, 
 the manner in which it was applied by the Fathers of the 
 Church, and the purpose for which it was used, are 
 palpable and clear — upon the whole, then, I conclude, 
 according to my first position, that, in adopting the 
 Creed of the ancients, we are bound to interpret the 
 articles in the sense in which they were understood by 
 them, and thus to receive the article in question, as 
 applicable wholly and exclusively to that one Church, 
 
 * August. Tom. 10 Serm. de Temp. 
 42
 
 ANGLICAN CHURCH AND ITS BRANCHES. 
 
 which — founded on the day of Pentecost by the preach- 
 ing of St. Peter at Jerusalem, — is to exist through all 
 ages the same, by the succession of its ministers in an 
 unbroken line from the Apostolic period. 
 
 As a branch of this Church, the Church of Eng- 
 land, (from which the Churches of Scotland and of 
 North America have derived their succession,) was 
 established : in the middle ages it became not a new 
 Church, but corrupted : and in the sixteenth century it 
 was not made a new Church, but it was reformed. Our 
 Reformers gradually and carefully removed the corrup- 
 tions by which it was defaced, and brought it to the state 
 in which we find it now. 
 
 Resolute against error, yet cautious of innovation, the 
 divines of England consulted Scripture by the light of 
 antiquity. The traditionary comments of the Fathers 
 and the authoritative decrees of the four first general 
 councils were a check upon the presumption and too 
 prevailing error of self-interpretation. Truth, not the 
 spirit of party animated their councils, /x>i^' ^Trspc-f/Sovrj? 
 ^Jt^v^^' v-Tvoo-i^ovT^, was their motto. The doctrines which 
 were rejected by them had never been the doctrines of 
 the primitive Church, and while they scrupulously 
 abscinded all that was Popish, they tenaciously adhered 
 to every thing which was Catholic.'^ Thus through 
 
 * As the Bishops both of Scotland and America, have derived 
 their succession through the Bishops of England — the fonner in 
 the reign af James I. and Charles II. the latter in that of his late 
 Majesty — thev have an equal interest in the English Reformation 
 with ourselves. It is impossible to trace the history of the English 
 Reformation, without perceiving the strong desire and constant 
 care of the Reformers, tliroughout, to reject " every thing Popish 
 and to retain all that was Catholic.'' To give a few, out of the 
 many instances which might be adduced: in the ai-ticles drawn up 
 by Convocation, in the reign of Henry VIII. and signed by the 
 members in 1536, (which was the first real step towards the 
 Refonnation) " all opinions contrary to the Articles of the Creed 
 are condemned, which were of long time past condemned in the 
 Council of Nice, Ephesie, and Chalcedonense, and all others since 
 43
 
 THE CATHOLICISM OF THE 
 
 their agency, under the guidance of providence, was 
 reformed that Catholic Church for the high privilege of 
 
 that time in any part consonant to the same.^^ In the institution 
 of a Christian man, published in 1537, it is declared, in the notes 
 upon the Creed, " that heterodoxes condemned in the four first 
 general councils, must be renounced, and the Creed interpreted 
 agreeably to the sense of Scripture and antiquity." In the act 
 for the conformity of prayer and the administration of the Sacra- 
 ments, in the reign of Edward VI. it is expressly stated, that the 
 Bishops and Divines who had been appointed to draw up the 
 reformed Liturgy, "had been directed to have a regard to the 
 direction of Scripture, and the usages of the primitive Church.'' 
 Cranmer, who drew up the answer to the rebels of Cornwall and 
 Devon, in the same reign, states, " that the practice and belief of 
 the Church of England is agreeable to the decisions nf the rjeneral 
 councils." In the act for recalling the liturgic books, the first 
 book of Edward is declared " to be agreeable to the order of the 
 primitive Church." In the letter sent by the council to the Lady 
 Mary, A. D. 1550, (that part wMch relates to religion ha\ing pro- 
 bably been written by -Archbishop Cranmer, assisted by a greater 
 than Cranmer, Bishop Ridley,) it is said, " that all the Articles of 
 the Creed were professed both by the Romanists and the Church 
 of England men — that the difference lies in the ceremonies, and 
 the use of the Sacraments — that in these particulars the English 
 Reformation has recovered the worship to the directions of Scrip- 
 ture, and the use of the primitive Church.'' The refoi-med preach- 
 ers, who from prison addressed Philip and Mary, offered to prove 
 their doctrines " by catholic principles and authority, by Scripture 
 and antiquity." Cranmer, at his last trial, and previously to his 
 recantation, declared, " that he was not only willing to be deter- 
 mined by the sense, but to subscribe the very phrases and terms 
 of the ancients relating to the Eucharist." Home, in the confer- 
 ence between the Papists and Reformed at Westminiter, at the 
 beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, asserts : " that his 
 party were guided by the practice of the Church for the five first 
 centuries.^' Elizabeth herself, in her reply to the foreign powers 
 who applied to her to receive the ejected Bishops, gave, as one of 
 her arguments for refusing their request, " that no new faith was 
 propagated in England, no religion set up, but that which was 
 commanded by our Saviour, and practised by the primitive Churchy 
 and unanimously approved by the Fathers of antiquity. 1 shall 
 only further add, that by 1st Eliz. I. what was adjudged to be 
 44
 
 ANGLICAN CHURCH AND ITS BRANCHES. 
 
 belonging to which., on bended knees and with uplifted 
 hearts, we should pour forth our praises and thanksgivings 
 to the Almighty " giver of all good things." We con- 
 heresy by the four firsl general councils, is allowed to be so by 
 the English statute law. Having thus shewn, from the commence- 
 ment of the Reformation in the reign of Henry VIII. to its con- 
 summation in that of Queen Elizabeth, that it was merely the 
 design and object of the English Reformers, by abscinding the 
 novelties which popei-y had introduced, to place the Church in the 
 same situation in which it stood during the primitive ages ; we 
 have only to appeal to history for a most U'iumphant proof of 
 their success. 
 
 It has been the boast of the Roman Catholics, and of late years 
 the}^ have upon this ground, appealed with too much success to 
 the feelings of the ignorant, that their's is the old Church, and 
 cur's the nciv one. That their's is the old Church, when it is 
 compared with the other Protestant sects, — with the Presbyterians 
 and Independents, we are free to confess, — but that it is not so, 
 when compared with the Church of England, has been, and must 
 always be, maintained by every sound Churchman. What is a 
 new Church I That which adopts or supports novelty of doctrine ; 
 not that which, retaining the Episcopal succession, rejects all those 
 doctrines which want the stamp ofantiquHy, If this definition be 
 correct, we are bold to assert, that our's is the old Church — and 
 the Roman Catholic a new one. Every one of those peculiar 
 tenets which distinguish them from us is a novelty; the charge 
 of novelty we retort i;pon them. Nothing but impudence itself," 
 says Bishop Bull, (Vindication, p. 119,) " nothing but impudence 
 itself, dares affirm that the Scriptures teach or the primitive Church 
 practise image worship, invocation of saints, the half communion, 
 prayers in a tongue not understood by those who ai-e required to 
 join in them ;" and to these we may add transubstantiation, the 
 supremacy of the pope, and the adoration of the host. It was 
 after enumerating these innovations of the Church of Rome, that 
 Bishop Jewell declared, that " if any one of his adversaries were 
 able to make good a single proposition amongst them all, either by 
 sufficient declarations of Scripture, or by the testimony of the an- 
 cient fathers or councils, he would give up the contest, and declare 
 himself a proselyte." His ever memorable challenge, in which he 
 defied the Papists to " bring one sufficient sentence out of any old 
 catholic doctor or father, or out of any old general council, or any 
 one example of the primitive Church, in favour of these doctrines 
 45 w
 
 THE CATHOLICISM OF THE 
 
 scientiously believe that this Church thus restored to 
 primitive purity, — restored in countries, wherein it is by 
 law established, to the state in which it existed in the 
 
 for ihe^rst GOO years,'' has hitherto been unanswered — because it 
 is unanswerable. We might, at the same time, defy the Romanists 
 to shew that we have received any doctrine or tenet which was not 
 received by the Catholic Bishops of the primitive Church. We 
 are justified, therefore, in proclaiming in the words of Bishop 
 Hall :* '' Be it known to all the world, that our Church is only 
 reformed or repaired, XOT made new — there is not one stone of a 
 new foundation laid by us ; yea, the old walls stand still, only the 
 overcasting of those ancient stones with untempered mortar of Jiew 
 inventions, displeaseth usj plainly set aside the corruptions, and 
 the Church is the same." 
 
 I will only add, that if it be true, as some persons would have 
 us believe, that the objectionable doctrines of their Church are no 
 longer holden by the Roman Catholics, all controversy is at an 
 end — all bone of contention taken away — let them set aside their 
 corruptions — let them cast off their bonds of human superstitions, 
 aud the Churches are the same. That there would be no back- 
 wardness on the part of the Church of England, to lend her assist- 
 ance to any part of the Romish Chui-ch, which might be willing to 
 renounce all, or even most of its errors, is sufficiently proved by 
 the friendly correspondence which was entered into, on that sub- 
 ject, between Archbishop Wake and the historian Du Pin.f But 
 the fact is, that their objectionable doctrines are not renounced by 
 lh3 great body of the Roman Catholics; aud it is as absurd, as it 
 is useless, to seek to ascertain the doctrines of a Church or Sect, 
 from any singular opinions which may be entertained by a few 
 individuals, however exalted in station or distinguished in charac- 
 ter. By the law aud the testimony — by their canons and ritual 
 are they known — until those be altered, their Church must remain 
 what it was made at the Council of Trent. 
 
 Much as this note has been extended beyond my original pur- 
 pose, it is impossible to conclude without observing, that if the 
 design of our Reformers in renouncing Popery was to return to 
 true Catholicism, and if we are commanded, as we undoubtedly 
 are, by the canons, to preach nothing but what is agreeable to the 
 Catholic Fathers, aud the Ancient Bishops, — they will be the 
 
 • Quoted by Bishop Bull, " Vindication," p. 164. 
 + See the Appendix to Mosheim. 
 46
 
 ANGLICAN CHURCH AND ITS BRANCHES. 
 
 days of Constantine, — restored in countries like this* 
 and America where it is simply tolerated, to the state in 
 which it existed in those still purer ages, which boast of 
 a Cyprian, an Irenaeus, an Ignatius, even of the Apostles 
 themselves — is that true Catholic Church, " against 
 which," (He, whose words shall remain firm, though 
 heaven and earth pass away, has declared it) " the gates 
 of hell shall not prevail." 
 
 Under this view of the subject, we shall easily perceive 
 our relative position with respect to the leading sects of 
 the Reformation on the one hand, and the Romanists on 
 the other. To both can we hold out the hand of Chris- 
 tian charity, with neither can we enter into entire com- 
 munion. We consider the former in error for having 
 seceded from that Church which required reformation, 
 but which we were forbidden, as the institution of our 
 Saviour and His Apostles, to overthrow ; the latter we 
 regard as a branch of that Catholic Church, to which 
 we ourselves belong — but a branch so scathed by time, 
 and cankered in the sap, that we dare not rest upon it 
 our hopes of salvation, f The one, in short, we censure 
 for having revolutionized instead of reformed, the other 
 for pertinaciously defending instead of correcting errors 
 — unknown to antiquity — the creatures of barbarism, 
 ignorance, and superstition. But as long as they con- 
 truest and most orthodox Churchmen, who devote their time to 
 the study, (not of the continental Refoi-mers, of Luther, Melanc- 
 thon, or Calvin,) but of primitive Christianitj' — " nequaquam 
 hujus temporis consuetudinem, sed veterum Scriptorum auctori- 
 tatem sequentes." — It would have been better perhaps, inasmuch 
 as it would have explained the true character of our pretensions, 
 had our Church in Scotland and America assumed the title of the 
 Reformed Catholic Church, instead of that by which it is now de- 
 signated — the Episcopal Church. 
 
 ' It is to be remembered that this Sermou was preached in 
 Scotland. 
 
 \ The same may be said of the Greek Church. 
 47
 
 THE CATHOLICISM OF THE 
 
 tinue to hold the doctrine of the holy undivided Trinity, 
 we regard neither the one nor the other with feelings of 
 severity- Oiir fellow Protestants, although on many 
 points erroneous, worship the same Father, Son, and 
 Blessed Spirit with ourselves, they confide on the merits 
 of the same crucified Redeemer ; they look for, and will, 
 we trust, through His mercy, receive the graces of 
 the Holy Spirit; if not in all their fulness, yet so as to 
 secure the salvation of their souls. The same charitable 
 feelinfjs we would extend to the Church of Rome. That 
 the Church of Rome, amidst all its errors, still retains 
 faith sufficient for salvation — that amidst all its corrup- 
 tions it still cherishes something which is pure — that 
 amidst all its superstitions it still points out to the sinner 
 the road of virtue and the path to heaven — that it still 
 can boast among its members, many who, however mis- 
 taken in their doctrines, are to be esteemed for their 
 virtues, and honoured for their piety, God forbid that 
 the most devoted Protestant should deny. But at the 
 same time with these charitable. Christian and liberal 
 sentiments, with respect to other communions, our 
 Church has ever united the most uncompromising firm- 
 ness in maintaining the doctrines of its own. We have 
 a duty to perform to ourselves, and above all to our God, 
 paramount to that even which we owe to our neighbour. 
 Believing, therefore, according to our previous statement, 
 that the Almighty, having in His wisdom instituted one 
 Church, (which, for the sake of distinction, has received 
 the title of Catholic) intends, through the agency of His 
 creatures, that it should last for ever— and conscien- 
 tiously believing, through a clear and impartial inter- 
 pretation of the Gospel commission, that the high trust 
 of preserving the purest branch of it, has been confided 
 to lis, — we feel it a solemn duty incumbent upon us, not 
 onlv to preserve its faith intact and pure, but equally to 
 vindicate it from the glosses of ignorance and prejudice, 
 and zealously to cultivate those peculiar doctrines, which 
 48
 
 ANGLICAN CHURCH AND ITS BRANCHES. 
 
 have ahvays marked and do still continue to mark the 
 distinction between the Church of Christ, and 
 
 THE SECTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 By these principles, which instruct us how to perform 
 our duty to God, without violating our obligations to 
 man, we are actuated in whatever nation we may reside. 
 We seek not to interfere with, much less to overthrow 
 any Christian form of worship which may be established 
 by its civil constitution, so long as it tends to promote 
 the great ends of virtue and morality. For ourselves, we, 
 at the same time, lay claim to the privilege of worship- 
 ping the Almighty in the manner we conceive to be pre- 
 scribed by Him, and of keeping clear from what we 
 consider to be error on one side or on the other, 
 whether resultincj from the innovations of the Protest- 
 ant or of the Romanist. In this country, grateful 
 for the toleraton which is afforded to the reformed 
 Catholic Church, its pious ministers, while they vindi- 
 cate its doctrines and maintain its discipline, seek not 
 to interfere with the Presbyterian establishment; but, 
 although they cannot enter into its communion, or 
 attend its services, they duly appreciate its merits in 
 contributing to rear and foster a thinking, a sober, a 
 moral people. The same sentiments influence us, 
 when resident in a country where the Church of Rome 
 is established. Far be from our views that misdirected 
 and fanatic zeal, which would seek, at all hazards, the 
 downfall of even an erroneous mode of Christian worship, 
 reckless of the consequences which in removing one 
 stumbling-block may open the door to a thousand others, 
 and give loose to passions which war against the spirit of 
 Christianity itself. That the day indeed will come when 
 those branches of the Christian Church which still lie 
 obscured under the corruptions of Rome, in the same state 
 now, or nearly so, in which we were three centuries ago, 
 will gradually be reformed according to our example, and 
 by its own members be restored to that primitive purity 
 49 2f
 
 THE CATHOLICISM OF THE 
 
 to which we have returned, Christian charity commands 
 us to hope — that the day may not be far removed Chris- 
 tian charity induces us to pray; still Christian humility 
 instructs us to wait, in patience, for God's own time for 
 the accomplishment of this glorious event. But if our 
 charitable sentiments are thus largely exercised, when 
 forming our opinions of other communions, how natur- 
 ally, I repeat, are they exalted to brotherly love, when 
 regarding the members of our own. There is, accord- 
 ingly, among all true members of the reformed Ca- 
 tholic Church, a bond of union which no time, no 
 distance, no disagreement even, on certain points in 
 themselves indifferent, can ever dissolve. In its welfare, 
 wherever it may exist, in England, in Ireland, in presby- 
 terian Scotland or republican America, in the regions of 
 the East, or the islands of the West, a true Catholic 
 will take an interest, not less fervent, not less sincere, not 
 less devoted than that which he experiences for the par- 
 ticular branch of it to which he may himself belong, 
 *' whether one member suffer, all the member's suffer 
 with it, or one member be honoured, all the members 
 rejoice with it." 
 
 Thus bound by every tie of duty and affection to have 
 in honour all those of our brethren, who " continue to 
 hold fast the form of sound words which they have 
 heard ;" we deem it equally incumbent upon us to pre- 
 vent the rise, or to animadvert upon the progress of error, 
 whenever it appears to be insinuating itself within the 
 pale of our vineyard. It is not, therefore, with an indif- 
 ferent eye, that we observe its stealthy growth among 
 the scattered members of our communion, in the differ- 
 ent parts of the continent of Europe. It is a well 
 known fact that many thousands of British subjects are 
 at the present moment resident 'abroad. The difference 
 which exists between that branch of the Church to which 
 we belong, and the various Protestant Establishments, as 
 well as the Church of Rome, are too striking not to be at 
 once discerned. These absentees from the land of their 
 50
 
 ANGLICAN CHURCH AND ITS BRANCHES. 
 
 fathers, therefore, feel a natural dislike to attend, for a 
 continuance, the public worship, as established in those 
 countries in which they may have taken up their abode ; 
 while awful, indeed, must be the reflection to the pious, 
 that there is either none qualified or none willing to 
 administer the Sacrament of Baptism to the infant, or 
 the Eucharist to the sick. An English clergyman is, 
 consequently, the first object of their search ; and with 
 his aid, if attainable, they are accustomed to establish a 
 chapel, under the sanction or the connivance of the 
 government, in which the English service is performed. 
 In doing this, they are at present, by necessity, com- 
 pelled to act upon the principle of the Independents, 
 with their ministers unlicensed, their chapels unconse- 
 crated, and their children unconfirmed ! There is 
 scarcely a mark of our Church to be discovered, ex- 
 cepting its liturgy ; nay, even the propriety of the con- 
 duct of that clergyman who takes upon himself to 
 officiate among them, for a permanency, may be ques- 
 tioned. The truth of this assertion, which is made 
 without any feeling of disrespect towards the many pious 
 and excellent clergymen, who are at present compelled 
 by necessity to perform their functions unlicensed, — will 
 easily be perceived by a slight reference to the ordination 
 office. The Bishop immediately after the laying on of 
 hands, is directed to deliver the Bible to the new-made 
 priest, and to say : " Take thou authority to preach the 
 AVord of God, and to minister the holy Sacrament," — 
 {not, observe, in any place where he may find it conve- 
 nient, but) " in the congregation ivhere thou shalt be 
 lawfully appointed ;" and those only we ought to deem 
 lawfully appointed, according to our Twenty-third article, 
 *' who have been chosen by men who have authority 
 in the congregation or Church, to call and send minis- 
 ter's into the Lord's vineyard" — that is to say, upon our 
 episcopalian principles, by a Bishop. Thus, then, the 
 clergy who oflficiate in the episcopal chapels in different 
 parts of the Continent, are, through necessity, assuming 
 51
 
 THE CATHOLICISM OF THE 
 
 an authority which was not bestowed upon them at their 
 ordination, and which can only be conferred by a Bishop. 
 It may be said this license might be obtained from an 
 English Bishop ; — and although an English Bishop, 
 unable to visit the spot, might not, in every instance, be 
 qualified to judge of the expediency of granting or of 
 withholding such license, we are ready to admit, that if 
 this were the only reason, it would scarcely justify the 
 recourse now had to a measure of an extraordinary na- 
 ture ; but when coupled with others of equal or of 
 greater importance, it is not to be overlooked. There is 
 no person, I believe, properly instructed in the principles 
 of the Churchj who will not readily acknowledge the very 
 great importance of the solemn rite of confirmation. The 
 fear, indeed, of falling into the error of the Romanists, 
 and of classing it with the two great Sacraments of the 
 Gospel, has, perhaps, induced some persons to rank this sa- 
 cred ordinance too low, and to regard it merely in the light 
 of an edifying ceremony. Upon its real importance as the 
 (r?)payic ^Tcrpsaj Trvsu/ixaro? ayiov, in a congregation SO versed 
 in primitive lore as the present, it were presumptuous 
 in me to insist. Of this holy, apostolical, and important 
 rite the children of many thousands of our brethren, not 
 merely travelling over, but actually resident upon the 
 Continent, — who being engaged in trade or business, 
 are likely there to remain — are now deprived. If this, 
 then, were the sole object to be gained, who would not 
 rejoice at the pious work to which these venerable Pre- 
 lates are this day about to lay their hands. But we go 
 further, we not only lament the want of that order and 
 regularity which result from the spiritual government of 
 a Bishop, — we not only complain of the anomaly of 
 Episcopalians dependent upon no Episcopus, — but we 
 look, with some degree of alann, to the precedent which 
 is set, of presbyters establishing, when out of the juris- 
 diction of their national Bishops, independent congrega- 
 tions. Such a procedure, unwarranted by the doctrine.
 
 ANGLICAN CHURCH AND ITS BRANCHES. 
 
 the canons, or the example of the primitive Church, can 
 only he palliated hy extreme necessity, — a necessity 
 which it is the present object to remove. The occasional 
 visitation, also, of a superior, — the influence of one com- 
 ing like a father among his people, especially upon the 
 younger and less inexperienced clergy, who are frequently 
 employed in the continental chapels, and who are thus 
 placed in situations where the want of advice and experi- 
 ence is deeply felt ; — the check, too, which this will have 
 upon those who may be gradually, and almost unawares, 
 yielding to the allurements of dissipation unchecked by 
 any moral or religious restraints — these are benefits which 
 cannot — ought not to be overlooked. 
 
 To promote then, these holy objects to which we have 
 alluded, and to avert those evils which we so justly 
 apprehend, — to counteract, also, that too prevalent opinion, 
 that our Apostolic Church exists wherever its liturgy 
 is read, or its doctrine preached ; — to convince foreigners 
 in general, and the Roman Catholics in particular, that 
 our's is the primitive faith, and that with St. Ignatius we 
 hold it not only necessary " to have one common prayer, 
 one supplication, one mind, one hope," but that it is also 
 necessary " that nothing be done without the Bishop;"* — 
 that in the words of the same Ignatius, confirmed by the 
 32nd of the apostolical canons, " it is lawful neither to 
 baptize nor to celebrate the holy communion without the 
 Bishop, "f without that is to say the episcopal sanction — 
 to evince in short our faith, that " sine Episcopo nulla 
 Ecclesia" without a Bishop there can be no Church — 
 is the present pious design of our right reverend fathers. 
 Aware of their two-fold character, as Bishops bound par- 
 ticularly to the discharge of their episcoj^al functions 
 
 * Ep. ad Magn. cap. tu. 
 
 •\ Ep. ad Smym. cap. viii. Tertullian also speaking of Baptism, 
 " Dandi quidem habet jus sumtnus sacerdos, qui est episcopua 
 deMac Presbyteri et Diaconi — non tamen sine episcopi auctoritate." 
 De Baptismo, cap. xvii. 
 53
 
 THE CATHOLICISM OF THE 
 
 within the districts to which they have been appointed by 
 Providence, and generally as Bishops of the Church at 
 large, to promote the true faith in every place to which 
 their influence may extend — aware also that to avoid 
 great evils it is necessary to prevent small ones,— and 
 that a schism may at the beginning be easily closed, 
 which if left to widen unnoticed, may eventually be 
 beyond our power to heal, — they have determined to 
 invest with the episcopal character a pious and zealous 
 presbyter of that branch of the Church which is estab- 
 lished in England, who has for years voluntarily devoted 
 himself to the spiritual interests of our absent brethren ; 
 — one, who qualified by his learning and piety as well as 
 by his local experience, will cheerfully be guided by their 
 advice, and in humility follow their example. And where 
 — where can he find an example more worthy of imita- 
 tion that that which has been afTorded him by the 
 Bishops of Scotland ? Should persecution await him, — 
 which God of His infinite mercy avert ! where could he 
 find an example more worthy of imitation than that 
 which has been afforded by those venerable Prelates who, 
 not a century ago, achieved the work, without the fame of 
 confessors, — who exposed themselves to the storm of 
 persecution, to shelter their ark from the annihilating 
 blast which swept around it, — who undauntedly defended 
 the priesthood from the aggressions of Korah and his 
 company, but were like Moses, "the meekest of men," — 
 who " dared to be honest in the worst of times," that 
 they might transmit their Church, — and they have 
 transmitted it, uninjured to you, — who having renounced 
 every worldly comfort, every temj)oral hope for the sake 
 of their conscience and their God^ are now, we doubt 
 not, enjoying a celestial crown with the martyrs of old. 
 
 Should he meet, on the contrary, as we hope and pray 
 
 that he may, with that toleration abroad which we extend 
 
 to the Romanists here, where can he look, I would ask 
 
 again, for an example more worthy of imitation than 
 
 54
 
 ANGLICAN CHURCH AND ITS BRANCHES. 
 
 that which is afforded him by the Bishops" of Scotland, 
 who have inherited the virtues, but blessed be God, not 
 the sufferings of their ancestors, — whose learning, talents, 
 and unassuming piety shine forth the more conspicuous 
 from their very poverty — who with the most uncompro- 
 mising adherence to principle, unite a truly Christian 
 liberality of sentiment — who in their zeal as Churchmen 
 forget not their duty as subjects, but while vigorously 
 contending for the faith that is in them, through the 
 fear of God, yield, without a murmur, the precedence 
 which the laws have conceded to others, in their duty to 
 the King. 
 
 Commissioned by these holy fathers, he goes, according 
 to the principles before laid down, not to interfere with, 
 (let this be constantly borne in mind,) not by word or 
 deed to give offence to any established Church or sect, but 
 simply and exclusively to superintend the worship of the 
 British residents in France and Belgium ; to afford them 
 the means of worshipping God in ther own way ; to 
 authorize their Sacraments, to confirm their children, to 
 license their clergy, and where many have fixed their 
 abode in one place, without a clergyman to officiate among 
 them, — to ordain some person qualified on the spot. 
 
 This, my brethren, is the truly evangelical object which 
 has brought together, upon the present occasion, the 
 venerable fathers of your Church. But, "except the Lord 
 keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." We 
 call upon you, therefore, we earnestly exhort you, to put up 
 your prayers to the throne of grace, that the Great Dis- 
 poser of all human events may prosper their pious design, 
 that He may grant a full proportion of ** his heavenly 
 " benediction and grace" unto him who will be this day 
 consecrated a successor of the Apostles ; that, following 
 their bright example, " he may turn the hearts of the 
 disobedient to the wisdom of the just;" that, "by his life 
 and doctrine, he may set forth the glory of his gracious 
 
 Redeemer, and set forward the salvation of all men." 
 55
 
 THE CATHOLICISM OF THE 
 
 Finally, brelbren, we call upon you, and earnestly exhort 
 you to pray, that, by the important business of this 
 eventful day, the knowledge of our apostolical doctrines 
 may be more universally diffused, and, in consequence, 
 more generally appreciated. JNIay generation upon gene- 
 ration arise to preserve uncontaminated and pure that 
 
 ONE HOLY, CATHOLIC, and APOSTOLICAL ChURCH 
 
 which was planted by the Apostles, and watered by the 
 blood of martyrs — which was corrupted by our grandsires, 
 and reformed by our sires. Thus may our children's 
 children — may generations yet unborn, who shall bear 
 our names when all other memorial of us will be lost — 
 join with us and all good Christians, in the Church tri- 
 umphant in heaven, in ascribing blessing, honour, glory, 
 and power unto the Great Shepherd and Bishop of our 
 souls,, which was, and is, and is to come. 
 
 56
 
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