^ei^el

J

THE ^ *-
PLEA OF CONSCIENCE

SECEDING FROM THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
TO
THE ROMISH SCHISM
IN ENGLAND,
A SERMON
PREACHED BEFORE
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
NOVEMBER 5, 1846.
BY
W. SEWELL, B.D.
FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE,
ANn LATE PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
TO WHICH IS PREFIXED,
AN ESSAY
ON THE PROCESS OF CONSCIENCE.

OXFORD,
JOHN HENEY PARKER.
1845.

BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD.

AN ESSAY

PROCESS OF CONSCIENCE.

It seems so harsh and ungenerous a thing to charge
earnest and religious minds with acting without the
sanction of conscience — the language is so unlike that
of the world, which in an easy but mistaken charity,
pronounces all conduct conscientious, that proceeds on a
firm persuasion, and looks to no mercenary object — and yet
the plea of conscience is so commonly made, coupled with a
direct confession that the most obvious conditions for the
right direction of the conscience have been neglected — •
that I cannot refrain from prefixing to the following
Sermon a few remarks, too abstract to form ]iart of it,
and yet necessary to understand it fully.
I am the more anxious to ask attention to this point at
the present moment, because amidst the recent melancholy
acts of apostasy from the Church, all the cases which have
come under my own observation have taken refuge ulti
mately in this defence. It has been confessed, that the facts
of the question have never been studied, and are not
understood. And yet upon the plea that conscience
pronounces either some individual friend to be an unerring
a 2

guide, or the Chutch of Rome to be the only true Church,
the act of schism has been committed — and this after a
long continued neglect, and even defiance of advice given
by authorized instructors, and received during a state of
pupilage. The frequent occurrence of the term conscience in
modern Ethics, and its comparatively rare use in the
Scriptures, and in ancient Philosophy and Theology, is in
itself remarkable. The cause seems to be this. There is
a standard of right and wrong within our own bosoms;
and there is a standard without them, in the authoritative
declarations and testimonies of our fellow-men. AVhile
Society was bound together by the spirit of obedience and
faith, this outward standard was chiefly, nay, almost ex
clusively, regarded. Now that Society has been almost
pulverized, as it were, and the hold of man upon man
relaxed, if not wholly broken off, the standard within the
breast of each individual becomes naturally his chief
appeal. Nor is the use of the word conscience to indicate
a particular faculty to be lightly passed over. W^e have
learnt to regard it as an especial organ and instrument in
the mind, which, the moment a moral action is presented
to it, can pronounce on its character with the same rapidity
and precision, as the eye pronounces on colours, or the
ear on sounds. AVhereas, as Bishop Taylor carefully
asserts", it is the whole mind — the whole mind when
turned in upon itself, and contemplating its own moral
actions. And it differs from what is called our moral
sense, only as it pronounces on our own acts, instead of
the acts of others ; and from this cause is attended with
more intense pain, abhorrence, shame, and fear.
A clear analysis of the process pursued in pronouncing
" Diiotor Dnbit. ch. i. sec. 11.

its decisions seems necessary to understand the full force
of the warning so repeatedly given in the Scriptures,
" Lean not unto thine own understanding V — a warning
which bids us distrust our intellect, or what is now com
monly called the principle of Rationalism — and also the
force of another warning against dependiisg on the guidance
of our moral affections; " The heart of man is deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know
it°?" For the AVord of God makes no distinction of com
parative security and innocence between the voice from
our head, or the voice from our heart. It does not tell us
that to trust the former is Rationalism and folly ; to trust the
latter is faith and wisdom. Rather it seems to make the
heart the seat of the greater sinfulness and danger. " For out
of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adultery, forni
cations, thefts, false witness, blasphemies : these are the
things which defile a man ''."
And a more accurate explanation, than could well be
given in a Sermon, of the same process of the conscience,
seems also required to explain the reasonableness of the
tests suggested, for distinguishing a conscience rightly
directed, and safe to be trusted.
Let it be remembered, that the present observations are
confined to that single operation of the mind, in which it
is called on to pronounce on the right or wrong of a future
act which we contemplate, but have not committed ; and
that act the separation from the English Church in this
land to the Communion of Rome. The term conscience is
indeed applied equally to the mind when it witnesses to
our having done, or left undone, a particular action,
simply as attesting a fact, without deciding on its moral
character. And it is also api)lied to the mind, when it
pronounces on the morol nature of an act already done.
^ Prov. iii. 5. "= Jerem. xvii. 9. <> Matt. xv. 19,

Vl
In both these cases, from circumstances, which need not
here be dwelt on, its voice possesses a very high degree
of certainty and authority. At least, the chances of error
are far less than in the present case, where it is supposed
to decide on an action not yet committed. And probably
much of the mistaken confidence with which it is relied
on as an adviser for the future, proceeds from its almost
unerring correctness as a judge of the past. But the
t«'o functions are very dissimilar, and the circumstances
different. And they must not be confounded.
AVhen then we go lo our conscience to consult it as a
prophet on the moral right or wrong of an act which we
are contemplating, four conditions seem requisite for the
proper discharge of the prophet's office, to ensure the
delivery of a true oracle. AVithout these conditions his
answer cau only mislead. Whether it be the conscience
within, or a teacher without, in either case we look to be
guided by his eye. ' That eye is the light of the body'.'
But our Lord Himself has told us that that eye within
may be evil, as well as that the Prophet may be a Balaam.
" If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of
light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be
full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be
darkness, how gTeat is that darkness !"
And how are we to guard against its being evil?
In consulting an external adviser, the conditions seem to
be four.
1. The referee must place before him the party con
sulting him, as one by whom he is neither influenced,
nor bribed, nor suborned, nor affected towards him parti
ally, nor in any way dependent upon him, or interested in
his case. Unless the two parties and their interests are thus
' Matt. vi. 22.

kept distinct, the value of the consultation and decision is
proportionately deteriorated. We may be only asking a
prophet ' to prophesy unto us smooth things, to prophesy
deceit.' 2. He must possess a clear and full knowledge of the
circumstances of the case, — of the relation in which the
moral agent stands to the parties who may be afiected by
his act, — as to his father, brothers, country. Church, — to
his Maker, — ^his Saviour, — to the whole of mankind.
Upon these relations depend our duties. They are the
skeleton upon which are to be framed and moulded our
moral affections and moral acts. Without an accurate
knowledge of them to pronounce safely on the morality of
an act, is wholly impossible. And the process by which
we attain this knowledge, constitutes the intellectual
province of the moral sense and of the conscience alike.
3. He must place before him laws, — fixed, external,
immutable laws — the laws of God Himself — by which to
try the case and shape his answers. If he answer accord
ing to his own caprice, or mere opinion, his sentence
is as valueless as that of a judge, who sitting on the
bench should decide without reference to statutes, or of a
politician who recommended measures without any standard
of expediency or justice but his own fancy. And if these
laws are not recognised by him as really and truly external
to him, as rules over which he has no power, to alter
or add to them, or take away, — if he considers himself at
liberty to vary or supersede them at his own will, — then,
as in tyrannies, the legislature and judicial functions will
become blended, and all distinctions of right and wrong
will finally be confused and lost.
4. As these laws are general laws — as they must at
times seem at least to come into collision with each other —
as moral actions and affections admit of degrees — and as
the relations of man to man are very complicated — hence

arises the necessity of recurring to an adviser, who is skilled
in disentangling these questions, or, in other words, is
familiar with the science of casuistry, the most difficult
branch of all moral science.
And when we make our appeal to the mind itself within
us, or, as we term it, to our own conscience, we must require
tbe same conditions. And yethow difficult, if not impossible,
it is to realize them !
] . The mere division as it were of ourselves by a process
of reflexion into two persons, so as to be at once the
adviser and the advised — the judge and the judged — the
person professing ignorance, and the person possessing
knowledge — the person cherishing desires, and the person
prepared if necessary to repress those desires — the subject
and the ruler — the teacher and the taught — the accuser
and defender — the punisher and the criminal — this very
separation, the power of affecting and acting upon which
constitutes one essential perfection of our moral nature, is
one of the greatest mysteries which we can imagine, and
one of the hardest tasks which we can perform. How
strangely St. Paul seems to speak, when he alludes, as he
does again and again, to this (if we may use the word)
biune construction of the mind : ' That which I do, I
allow not; for what I would, that do I not; but what I
hate, that do I '.' How impossible it would seem to a
spectator, that the nund of man should project itself out of
itself, place itself before itself, detach itself from any con
nection with itself, and thus examine itself, unbiassed by
its own inclinations then actually pressing upon it; unin
terested by its own avowed interests; unprejudiced by the
very reasonings which it is at the time carrying on ; un
touched by the hopes and fears at that very moment working
within itself; undeceived by the deceptions which it con
fesses to be deceiving itself; that it should be able to
*" Kom. viii. ]5.

IX
plead lor itself, and against itself, before itself, and expect
fromitself a judicial, impartial decision — that being ignorant
what is truth, it should come to itself to ascertain truth,
and that itself should be able to declare the truth — that it
should be at once itself and another, one and two —
surely this process, demanding such an extraordinary
power of abstraction, and self-command, and reflection,
cannot be carried on with any chance of correctness except
in minds to the highest degree purified, and disciplined,
and elevated. Surely it cannot be realized in such young
imperfect natures, as now plead conscience for an act of
schism. That this separation does at times take place
clearly and effectually even in young minds, cannot be
doubted. But it is after the act has been done — when the
frame of mind after the act is totally changed from what
it was before — the passions cooled down, the visions de
parted, the appetites glutted, the punishment fallen. Then
it is that Nabal's 'heart dies within him, and he becomes as
a stone ^:' — then that the Prophet comes to David, and
David answers, ' 1 have sinned against the Lord'' :' — then
that Judas casts down the pieces of silver in the temple,
and departs, and goes and hangs himself'.' But before
the sin is perpetrated, again and again the most solemn
warning may be given, and yet fail to throw the mind into
this attitude of reflection. We may receive the sop, and
even hear the words, bidding us ' do what we do quicklv' —
as from the voice of Heaven itself declaring that its eye
is upon our acts, and yet never turn our own eye in upon
ourselves. O that young minds, which tamper with the name of
conscience, would think of this ! O that they would re
member that this power of self-reflection, like all other
powers of our moral nature, does not come with us into the
'¦ 1 Samuel xxvi. h 2 Samuel xii. 1.3. ' Matt, xxvii. 5.

worid in full maturity, but must be strengthened, and
developed, and purified by repeated exercise — that in the
very best, and purest, and most thoughtful of the young, it
can only exist in a very imperfect state — like their power
of realizing and setting before the eyes of their soul, the
visions of the invisible world. Let them ask themselves
what practice they have had in this exercise. Let them
not trust to any sudden need or emergency to call it forth,
if it has been permitted to be dormant before.
They cannot learn such a fallacious hope from either
their Bibles, or any Philosophy which possesses a know
ledge of the human heart. They know themselves, that
when minds unaccustomed to this reflexion are suddenly
roused to undertake it, however slight the accident which
awakens them, it is looked on as a miracle. ' 1 was about
to commit a sin,' (they are the words of a well-known
story,) ' and my conscience was sleeping : and I heard
a clock strike. I remembered that at that hour my parents
aud all who loved me in my home were kneeling at their
worship, and praying for me. And I was horror struck,
and abandoned the sin.' But to such Providential chances
who can trust? And even when the conscience is thus
awakened suddenly, it is for the most part at the sight
of some flagrant self-evident crime, not of a subtle sin like
heresy and schism ; and it has no power to examine questions
soberly and calmly even then. It sees men like trees
walking. It is still giddy, and alarmed, and perplexed.
The scales have dropped from its eyes, but it ne^ds persons
to lead it by the hand. And let the young also test the
degree of perfection to which they have carried this faculty
of self-reflection by the ideas they have formed of their
own character, by their confidence in themselves. The
holiest of men u hen, at the close of life, after years of mor
tification aud perseverance, they have at times seen as it

were their souls standing unclothed before them, have
described it as a sight of horror. If our souls are no sight
of horror to us — if we are willing iu the very beginning of
our Christian course, to throw ourselves blindly under
their guidance, where has been our power of examination ? —
AVhat can be the fitness of our conscience for undertaking
the first duty required of it, before it gives us rules for our
conduct — the duty of detaching itself from itself, and con
templating itself, as it would contemplate the soul of an
entire stranger. One confession of our own would suffice to
condemn us. We say that we may leave the Church of
England, because she fails thus to exercise and perfect the
conscience. How then can we, who have never been sub
jected to such a discipline, trust to our conscience at all?
II. Nor are the other conditions requisite for a just and
impartial judgment upon our proposed conduct more
likely to be found when we make our own minds the
judge. To trace out and examine all the relations in
which we stand to persons affected by our conduct, is no
easy task, even to others. To ourselves it is more difficult,
in proportion as we are naturally inclined to dweU on some
relations to the exclusion of others ; on that, for instance,
10 our Church to the exclusion of that to our Parent ; on
our friends and party, without thinking of our rulers ; or
on the Catholic Church, without thinking on our own
Church ; or on God, without thinking of man ; or on man,
without thinking of God. A stranger may be so free from
bias as to comprehend them all, and each in its proper
place and due proportion. Not so with au interested and
prejudiced judge — even ourselves. Even a moderate
acquaintance with all the circumstances of the case, with
the laws, principles, history of the Ecclesiastical Polity,
without which it is impossible for us to decide on the
question now occupying us — even this requires time.

labour, learning, research, scholarship, criticism, philo
sophy. And yet a young man can dare to decide it in a
few months, or decide it with a confession that he knows
nothing, trusting to a miracle from God that his judg
ment will be rightly directed, without using the first means
which He has appointed for its direction. And he will
dare to call this judgment the voice of conscience.
Ill, Consider also the third condition required to secure a
trustworthy advice from our conscience. Has our mind been
accustomed to a rigid scrupulous observance of external law ?
Have we been in the habit of walking not merely innocently,
not merely without infringing law, where no temptation per
haps invited us to infringe it, but with fear, and reverence,
and thoughtlulness, as beings allowed indeed within a
certain limit to move with freedom, and to indulge our
inclinations, but surrounded also on every side by bounds
which we may not pass, to which we are constantly ap
proaching, which it is possible for us to violate by secret
sins, even without presumptuously intending it, and to
which we must conform in all our movements, acknow
ledging them as limits which we dare not transgress, as
the molten metal must in every feature shape itself after the
mould, if the jjerfect statue is to come out from it ? Have
we uniformly obeyed these laws, — laws of Scripture, laws
of our own nature, laws of revelation, laws of states, laws of
the Church, laws of everj- power set over us from without?
Have we obeyed them not from fear of puni.shment, but as
the law,s of God ? Can we understand the 119th Psalm,
the whole of which is au expansion of this precept of
obeying huv as law ? II ,such has not been our lil'e hitherto,
and yet suddenly our mind litos up in scrupulous anxiety
to obey some new law, of which it has only just heard,
and of which tlie authority is estimated solely by the mind
itself, we may at least suspect it. Wc can no more trust

xui
to such a decision, than we trust to the decision of a judge,
who, being notorious for his general neglect of law,
suddenly professes a scrupulous adherence to it, in a case
where his own inclinarion is interested. He has been
accustomed to create laws for himself before, instead of
obeying those placed over him by others ; why should not
this be the case now ? And where shall we find the young
man whose steps have been uniformly 'ordered in the word
of the Lord'';' ' whose heart has been inclined to perform
His statutes alway, even unto the end' ?' Surely not in
those whose plea for abandoning their Church is, that their
own wayward hearts require a sterner rule, and a stronger
shelter from the temptations which mislead them. And
here also let us remember, that conscience does not rise up
suddenly, and in a night. If it slept yesterday, it will
sleep lo-day, and sleep a deeper sleep in proportion as its
sleep has been longer. None but a most holy man
habitually reverent of law can be expected to decide a
question of conscience in conformity to law, least of all
amidst interests of his own. Are we holy ? And can we
trust ourselves ?
IV. No mind can decide such questions without some
knowledge of casuistry. The very existence of such a
science, its intricacy, the necessity of placing it in the
hands of few and carefully chosen instructors, the need of
compiling technical and elaborate systems even for their
guidance — -(however this necessity and these difficulties
may be exaggerated — however true it may be that a simple
humble mind, habitually reverent of law and exercised in
duty, can see its course through the perplexities of a
doubtful conscience, where the most learned philosophers
may be embarrassed) — still these things must prove that
skill in casuistry is not a faculty possessed by the many.
k Ps. cxix. 133. I Ps. cxix. 112.

They must prove that deep study, at least, and research
are required to master its problems, to enable us to
speak peremptorily and rapidly on any questions, much
less questions which involve such nicely balanced duties
and probabilities as, in the case at present assumed, present
themselves, by the very assumption, to a doubtful and
prejudiced mind, when weighing the titles to his obedience
of the Church of England and of the Church of Rome. One
thing at least is certain. If (forgetting that England allows
her children to profit by all the real treasures in this science
accumulated by Rome, and that she has great treasures of
her own besides) if forgetting this, we plead the want of a
casuistical Theology in the Church of England as a reason
for joining the Church of Rome, we are at once silenced
from appealing to our conscience. If the aid of casuistry
is so necessary, that a conscience cannot be rightly guided
without it, and we have been walking in darkness without
such aid, our conscience cannot be in a condition rightly
to guide ourselves. Either the Church of England is not
so deficient in this branch of science, and we have profited
by its possessions, whether derived fi-om Aquinas and the
Jesuits, or firom Bishop Taylor, Bishop Sanderson, and her
own children; or we cannot plead conscience for deserting it.
It is most certain then, that to far the greater portion of
mankind, most of all to the young, and among the young
most of all to those who have beeu erring and straying
from God's way, and who confess their blindness and the
weakness of their minds — conscience, detached from any
other help, must be a most treacherous and dangerous
guide. There is no chance that the mind will or can put
Itself in the only position in which it can advise us rightly.
And practically this is found to be the fact. How few of
all the houriy sins committed by us all are committed with
any sense of their real enormity, any remonstrance, any

XV
but a silent acquiescence, or assenting voice from the
interested, sleeping, ignorant, capricious, partial, judge
and adviser within us. And He who knows our hearts
has for this very reason provided for us such an abundant
store of teachers and instructors, as a voice not from
within, but behind us, saying, " This is the way, walk ye
in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to
the left"."
But if conscience be thus obscure and uncertain, how,
it will be asked in alarm, is conscience a light within us,
the candle of the Lord ? How with all these doubts and
errors can we still be said to have the laws of the Lord
written upon our hearts, both by Nature and His Holy
Spirit; and written, as all wise philosophy declares, so
indelibly, that they never can be erased ? It happens thus,
that these laws are indeed written in our hearts, and when
ever a general case is submitted to them, our hearts answer
without a moment's hesitation, and answer unerringly.
Is murder wrong ? Is theft wrong ? Is adultery wrong ?
Ask, and only one answer will be given. But when a
particular case is set before us, if either we do not reflect
at all, or mistake its real circumstances and relations, or
consider as shifting and mutable the positive laws by
which it is to be judge'd, or do not rightly balance and
adjust conflicting duties, then we shall differ, and deceive,
and be deceived. And the light within us will be turned
into darkness ; that is, its light will be lost to us, as the
sun may be eclipsed, or the stars hidden without any loss
of their ownessential brightness; or as a telescope may iu
itself be perfect and unerring ; and yet entirely distort and
misrepresent objects not properly submitted to it, or when
its focus is not accurately adjusted. Before we can see
'" See Ductor. Dub. passim.

the moral character of a specific action in its true light,
our conscience must be set.
But the chief object of these remarks still remains. It
is to shew the grounds for selecting the marks suggested
in the following Sermon as indications, the only safe indi
cations, of a conscience rightly regulated and properly set
These marks are three. First, that it should assume a
prohibitory form ; secondly, that it should contradict the
bias of our own heart ; thirdly, that we should be willing
and able to support its decision by some external human
witness. And they all bear upon one point, the proof that
the voice which we follow, though heard within us, in
reality comes from without us, that it is the voice not of
man, but of God. For to this last rallying ground of a
deceitful rationalism, the conflict, which has been carried
on in this Church and countrj' for the last twelve years,
is now brought. It was commenced on the part of the
Church, with a struggle to restore an external standard of
Divine faith in the place of an internal, by bringing forth
the transmitted creeds of the Church, and the fundamental
doctrines of the Gospel, as passed from hand to hand, and
from mouth to mouth through successive generations from
the time they were promulgated by the Apostles, not
as wrought out by human reason, or as obnoxious to
human criticism. It brought out the external commission
of the Clergy, as preaching only what they received, and
ministering because they were sent, in contradiction to
those who would claim to burn incense on the altar of the
Lord", without the privilege of the priesthood, or to follow
teachers whomever they would choose, or at their will to
make priests of the lowest of the people. It replaced the
authority of kings on the same rock of an external divine
ommission, which no internal judgment of the subjects
" 2 Chi-on. xxvi. 18.

C

xvu

could supersede, instead of teaching that kings are made
by the people rather than by God, and that we may
dethrone them at our will according to a light within us.
It removed our belief in miracles from the quicksand of
plausible utility and internal evidence, to the sure ground
of external historical testimony to facts. It shattered the
whole doctrine of expediency in morals as having no founda
tion of law — none but internal calculation. It brought back
even the science of taste to fixed external rules, instead of
leaving it arbitrary and capricious. It taught us to read
the Scriptures not by the solitary eye of an individual, but
by the light of the collective external authority of the
great teachers of the Church. And it tried all questions
of ecclesiastical polity not by a standard of expediency
within our own breast, but by a fixed model and rule of
order without us, placed over us by authority, not invented
by ourselves. Nothing less or other than this has been
the nature of the controversy, which for the last twelve
years has been carried on within the bosom of this Church.
It has been a battle for external truth against the internal
deceptions of our own heart arid mind applied to all these
questions. One more ground remained, where they who
trusted to their internal light might take their stand. It
was the province of the conscience — there where it would
seem that no external element exists, and we have no
longer any thing- to guide us, save a voice within our own
hearts. It is for those who have never swerved from the
principles they first professed at the beginning of the
struggle, — who do still faithfully believe in and adhere to
an external standard of truth in all things — a standard
fixed by Almighty God and not alterable by man — who,
when they were contending for external authority, really
and honestly believed in its existence, and did not make
use of it as a pretext for ultimately promoting an ideal
b

xviu

theory of their own — and who can understand the whole
nature of this controversy, that it is no « question of words
and names,' but a battle for truth itself, for that which is
the foundation of all things — of life, of morals, of society,
of law, of religion, of the universe itself; it is for them to
prepare to fight this battle here upon its last ground, and
to fight it courageously and with confidence, sure that the
same blessing from God which has hitherto borne witness
to His Truth, will rest upon His Church still, though arms
which once wrought upon their side may now by some
mysterious change be turned against them.
For the question proposed in the following Sermon is not
a mere accidental suggestion from existing circumstances,
still less is it any correction or retractation of any of those
principles, for which the Church has been recently con
tending. It is an application of the same principles, only
to another part of tlie one great controversy; — a controversy
in which have been ranged, on one side, authority, order,
precedent, law, humility, self-denial, monarchy, a priesthood,
parentage, every power upon earth which claims to be in
stituted by God, and not to be dependent upon man — and on
the other side, self-will, and caprice, and license, throwing
themselves into the form now of the Papal Usurpation,
now of popular dissent — now of a tyranny, and now of a
democracy — now of superstition, and now of infidelity —
now of a scrupulous asceticism, and now of utter lawless
ness — but at every step and in every shape struggling to
undermine and overthrow the one great foundation of all
things, external truth.
It is because the marks indicated above of a conscience
rightly ordered, proclaim, its external objective character,
and invest it with an external authority, that they require
to be so carefully attended to.
It is not said that they will prove the decision of the

conscience to be correct or incorrect respectively, since
a prohibition from the conscience is not necessarily right,
as where it takes the shape of rejecting an innocent
ceremony of the Church. Nor is the assent of the con
science necessarily wrong, for then the acts of the best of
men done after due reflection and in accordance with the
law of God, would never be right. Whether the act be
really right or wrong depends on its according or not
with the standard of the law of God. Whether it accords
or not, we ourselves cannot pronounce infallibly. AVe
may be deceived. But there are circumstances under
which we have great reason to think we are not deceived,
and others under which there is considerable fear that we
may be. A wanderer in a wilderness, on finding himself
in a beaten path, cannot argue necessarily that the path
will conduct him home ; there is no proof of this till he
has reached home. But the chance of his reaching home
by it is far greater than if he were walking in no path at
all. And the use of this kind of signs in our present
imperfect state is perhaps the nearest approach we can
make to absolute certainty in any branch of knowledge,
even in those which can be brought under the cognizance
of our own senses. So a jury cannot decide a question turn
ing on chemical facts without the advice of a chemist, and
of the accuracy of that chemist's knowledge they cannot
judge immediately, for they themselves know nothing of
chemistry. But they can judge whether he is generally
regarded as a skilful man, whether he answers thoughtfully,
discreetly, and trustworthily. And this is within the compass
of all men; and therefore juries are selected even from the
inferior classes. So a reader of history is unable to test
its accuracy by his own knowledge of the facts, but there
are obvious signs of the intelligence and veracity of the
writer, of which signs he is a competent judge, and by

which he must determine his reception of the facts them
selves. And so in morals generally. Let us not complain .
that these signs are apparently so far removed fiom touch
ing the intrinsic criterion of the acts themselves. So are
all the signs, by which knowledge is conveyed to us in
nature : and even their seeming doubtfulness is of no
slight value in exercising and improving our moral nature.
It is part of our trial in this life.
Let us now proceed to them.
To the prohibitions then of conscience we may trust
with far more confidence than to its permissions. When
the voice of the Lord commands us, " Thou shalt not go °,''
our obedience we know will bring a blessing ; but when to
our importunate petitions it answers, " Rise up and go;" we
may fear lest the angel of the Lord may be standing in our
path ready to smite us. A prohibition assures us that at
least some attention has been paid to the four conditions
above given for securing a right hearing of the case, and
a right judgment; while an acquiescence in our wish,
though it does not disprove, yet cannot prove any thing
of the kind. A prohibition shews first that the mind is
really taking that biune form, without which there can be
no reflection or self-examination at all. With the de-
velopement of any antagonism within us arises at once
the proof that the mind is detaching itself fi-om itself,
contemplating itself as a distinct person, sitting on its seat
of judgment, and prepared to exercise its corrective and
admonitory functions. But assent and acquiescence may
be nothing but an indolent evasion of this office with all its
difficulties and pains. A prohibition proves more. It proves
that some attention at least has been given to the question.
When we wish to sleep while another is speaking to us, we
answer to observations addressed to us, ' Yes'— but never
" Numbers xxii. 12.

XXI

* No.' For Yes requires no reason to be assigned. This is
already supplied by the speaker. To a negative we must
adduce a reason of our own, which without attention is
impossible. Moreover to affirm that an act is good,
requires a knowledge of all its circumstances and all
its bearings. To deny that it is good the sight of one point
may be sufficient " ; since an action cannot be good unless
it be good in all its parts ; but becomes vicious by any
single defect. And this may be manifested even on a
partial examination. The slightest inspection of a single
deed may enable a judge to pronounce our title to an
estate insecure ; but he cannot declare its security against
every attack without minutely investigating our whole
title. And affirmation requires in some cases more proof
than negation. And until the strongest and most perfect
evidence has been adduced, no cautious adviser will
recommend a positive line of conduct involving a
change, though he can after very short consideration
decide that some other particular course is not tenable.
And thus when conscience issues a prohibitory mandate,
we have a warrant, which is wanting to its positive
assertions — a warrant that the mind really has examined
the question, and that even after a partial examination it
may have found abundant reasons for its decision.
But a prohibition also implies that the mind is recognising
and reverencing a law without it. An assent of the au
thority within us may be nothing more than a weak, timid,
temporizing compliance with the cry of that little democracy
of passions and appetites within us, which it is so hard to
rule, and so easy to indulge. A compliance of this kind,
unless accompanied by some direct limit to it, involving a
prohibition, saying to our self will, ' Thus far shalt thou go,
and no farther,' is in itself an entire surrender or abeyance
P See Bishop Saunderson De Conscientia.

xxu
of the whole regal function. It does not even pretend to
the name or appearance of law, of which the very nature is to
set bounds and limits to our movements, and to prohibit
us from transgressing them. The only two affirmative
commandments in the whole Decalogue enforce this careful
recognition and observance of the two forms of external
checks and laws set over us ; one form, the positive
statutes of the Almighty; the other, His commissioned
human functionaries. But a prohibition issued by ourselves
against our own inclinations, must rest on law — a law
without us, and a law of God. It can oppose to our pre
dominating appetite, not any other appetite nothing, but a
sanction superior to appetite, — to ourselves nothing but what
is external to ourselves ; — to man no higher authority than
man's, but what is divine. Nor is it of little moment, that while
to act under the impulse of our wishes, and with the silent
acquiescence of the governing principle within us, certainly
creates no virtue, as it exercises no self-denial ; so, whatever
be the intrinsic good or evil of the act itself, to subject
our will to a prohibition, whether from within or without,
is in itself a sacrifice of self, which must strengthen within
us the power of self-command, and must be acceptable to
God. It ensures the internal goodness of the act, — that
which depends on the state of our own will.
Let us add, lastly, that a prohibition beai-s on its face more
probability than an assent, of its proceeding from a careful
and experienced deliberation upon the claims of contending
duties. It is more like the decision of a skilful casuist.
The best lawyers are the most slow to hazard an affirmative
position. If a case is laid before them, where it is possible
to remain as we are without risking any new step, the
more they know of the intricacies and oppositions of law,
and of the difficulties of calculating unseen chances and
varying probabilities, the more urgent they are that we

XXIU
should not move. They will not hesitate to say that we
cannot and must not do one thing, but they will be very
loth indeed to presume on a distinct, unqualified assurance
that we should do another. Doubtfulness and hesitation,
which in moral cases, where the probabilities of right and
wrong are balanced, will always act as a prohibition of
moving, are the sure characteristics of a thoughtful and
patient search among conflicting or multiplied laws. A
bold and sweeping assent is at least an indication of
temerity. Nearly the same observations as the above may be
applied to the second test suggested of a conscience
rightly directed, — namely, its opposition to our inclinations.
This is indeed implied in the very nature of prohibition;
but the stronger the inclination, the more decisive the test
becomes. For it proves still more forcibly that the ruling
power within us is rousing and arming itself for that battle
against self, which constitutes our chief moral probation, —
which creates our moral perfection, — which in a Christian
indicates within us the presence also of a higher power,
than any mere natural consciousness of right and wrong, —
even the presence of the Spirit of God, pleading with us
in the sanctuary of our heart. It proves also more
knowledge of the relations and bearings of the case than
any voice can do, which only echoes our desires. For it
must rest on a distinct and additional view of the case ;
upon a view of that which opposes, as well as of that
which gratifies our wishes. It proves also that our con
science is abiding by some fixed, external law of God ; for
nothing but a law of God can be binding enough to bring
forward against a strong prevailing appetite. And it
indicates also a habit of balancing moral duties ; at least
it gives as a decision that advice, at which all doubt
ful calculations when rightly conducted must arrive, that

xxiv

where nothing certain can be pronounced, there it is always
safest to insure our own virtuous agency without risk, and
at any rate to take that line, which involves the greatest
self-denial, and in which we are least likely to be bribed
and blinded by the appetites within us.
And so, lastly, of the appeal to external human testimony.
The mere searching for this implies that the mind is willing
to regard and try itself with the eye of an outward judge
and witness — that it does really desire to act the part of a
faithfiil, unbiassed, impartial monitor, by associating with
itself an assessor superior to all those influences which may
be affecting its own opinion. It is to say with the Psalmist,
' Search me, and know my heart ; see if there be any
wicked way in me ''.' It proves also that the conscience
honestly desires to obtain assistance in viewing the case
in all its bearings, — for a mind industrious in seeking
information from others, is not likely to neglect any means
of information beneath its own eye. It proves also, so
long as the adviser to whom we recur without us, is really
an adviser placed over by God, that we do truly and
sincerely acknowledge and venerate divine authority where-
ever it is found. The more we detach our choice from all
considerations of personal and individual character, and
giveweight only to official authority, the more this reverence
for law as law appears, and the more clear it is that we are
not likely to deliver as doctrine from God the command
ments of men. And once more it indicates a sense of the
difficulties of conflicting arguments and laws, by taking
precisely the same step, which skilful and experienced
casuists always incline to adopt in such emergencies, by
referring the question to another arbiter, as far as possible
detached from any partial or interested influences.
Here then we may close. It is not said that the
1 Ps. cxxxix. 23.

XXV

presence of these tests will prove that the final decision of
the conscience is right. This, as was said before, can
only be proved by the conformity of the decision to the
standard of the Divine will. And this conformity will still
be a question on which we may find it difficult to decide,
or may be deceived. St. Paul thought verily that he was
conforming to that will by persecuting the Christians.
And those who banded themselves together to kill St.
Paul himself, believed the same. But the tests will prove
sufficiently that the conscience is at least in a sound,
healthy, and vigorous state, able with the assistance of
God's Holy Spirit to judge and pronounce aright. And
when in this state of the mind we have recourse to all
the means of enlightenment which God has appointed, to
the careful and reverent study of His Holy Word — to the
advice of her most learned and most holy ministers — to the
declarations of the Church generally, — to prayer, to fasting,
to deeds of mercy and charity, and especially to that
Holy Communion which imparts to us the mind and the
Spirit of Christ, together with His Body and His Blood,
we may be assured that we cannot err; so at least as to
kindle God's wrath against us, or to make ourselves
other than an object of His compassionate assistance and
love. It may be objected once again, that these are but poor
and unsatisfactory proofs that the decision of our con
science is correct. They are so; poor at least and unsatis
factory to those who will not be content in morals with
any thing short of that which is impossible, mathematical
demonstration — who will not accept here the same kind of
proof by which we may walk through life with safety in
matters of daily practice. Whether the eye itself sees
colours and figures and objects as they really are, how can
we judge ? Can we extricate ourselves from the body, and
c

XXVI

see things other than as the eye presents them to us ? Are
we not here obliged to rest content with certain tests of the
healthy, active, undiseased state of the organ itself; and
from that to infer, that what it pronounces to be red, is
red, and what it declares black, is black. In all cases of
human testimony and human decisions is it not the same ?
Do we not recur to their aid from the very reason that we
are ourselves incompetent to give an opinion on the
intrinsic nature of the subject on which they pronounce?
Are we not satisfied with knowing, that the persons to whom
we apply, whether judges, or physicians, or historians, or
masters of any art or science, are men in a very different
position from ourselves, masters of the subject, observant
of first principles and fixed laws, skilled in the application
and comparison of them? Has God vouchsafed to us any
further knowledge for the guide of our outward life ? Is
not the same amount abundantly sufficient for the internal
tribunal of the heart ?
These hints and outlines of a most important enquiry,
have stretched to a far greater length, than was at first
anticipated. They ought here to be supported by the
great authorities of our Church, who have treated of the
conscience — such as Bishop Sanderson, Bishop Bull,
Bishop Taylor, and others. But circumstances have
allowed only a short time for the preparing of the Sermon
itself, and still shorter to add these suggestions. They are
made chiefly for the sake of young men in this place, to
whom in the present state of things the question of con
science must frequently recur, and is little understood. And
there is no short available treatise to which they can be
referred. I pray God, that in the disturbed and critical
state of tender and undisciplined minds, nothing has here
been said which can lead them astray— nothing at variance
with the principles of wisdom and moderation on which our

Church is modelled — nothing which can either induce them
to despise and neglect that light of conscience, which is
the candle of the Lord within them, or, on the other hand,
can tempt them to trust to a false light within, which only
takes the name of conscience, or to omit any opportunity
of cleansing, setting, and adjusting the eye of their soul, as
God requires it to be set, when He would vouchsafe to
illuminate it with the additional light of His own Blessed
Spirit. Exeter College, Nov. 10, 1846.

Acts xxiii. 12,
And when it was day, certain of the Jews banded together,
and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they
would neither eat nor drink till they had killed
Paul. We may well beheve that our beloved Church in
appointing the service of this day had more than a
single object. In that humiUty which will not com
mence her daily worship without the confession of
her own sins, and in that charity which has excluded
fr-om all her other services every harsher word against
an enemy, who never shewed mercy to herself, she
might naturally have shrunk from a perpetual cele
bration of her own deliverance, when it involved a
like perpetual memorial of a brother's crime. But
she assuredly intended this commemoration as some
thing more than a thanksgiving. She established
it as a warning voice against a Power, which has
proclaimed itself the unwearied antagonist of the
Catholic Church, and of Catholic Truth in this land.
And she designed by it to admonish us against those
secret frailties within our own hearts, which, under
B

the temptations of the Evil one, may easily be
ripened into the most flagrant crimes.
It is the duty of the Preacher, on this occasion,
to obey such an intimation of the Church. And this
is to be done, not by railing accusations, which only
irritate, and may blaspheme— not by indiscriminate
censures, which wound truth as well as error — not
by exaggerations, which only provoke unbelief — least
of all, by refusing to discern saints of the Lord, and
outpourings of His grace in a Church, which,
however corrupted, is not yet wholly fallen. It
is to be done soberly, modestly, reverently, with
shame and abasement for our own unworthiness,
aud as by sinners kneeling with fellow sinners before
the face of their common Judge.
And such a spirit let us pray Almighty God, the
Father of us all, to pour into our hearts at this time —
' a time of trouble, and rebuke, and provocation,' — that
while His ministers do not shrink from uttering firmly
what the Church commands, they may utter it as
her servants, as a duty imposed upon them, rather than
presumptuously undertaken — as mourning, not tri
umphant — not as judging, but as warning others —
not as condemning brethren who have fallen, but as
men who wliile thinking they stand, take heed lest
they fall themselves.
There is one warning in the crime attempted this
day, as in the crime recorded in the text, which
melancholy events, events no longer to be passed by
with closed eyes, and sealed lips, but full of bitter

reflections on the past, and anxiety for the future,
render it our duty to press earnestly at the present
time upon all the members of Christ's fold, but
especially upon the young in this place.
It is the danger of a perverted conscience in con
troversies of religion. The men who planned the
massacre of this day, like the men who banded them
selves together with a curse to kill St. Paul the Apostle
of the Lord, were neither atheists, nor profligates.
They were not even lukewarm in doing supposed
service to their Maker. Rather they were zealots,
acting under a firm persuasion of duty, risking
even their life to serve their Church, fancying that
the voice of that Church was the voice of God,
trusting that eternal salvation and a crown of glory were
to be the rewards of assassination and treason; and
pledgingandpreparingthemselves, as Bishop Andrews
remarks, for their deed of blood by the three most
solemn ordinances of their faith, ordinances intended
for the very purpose of awakening and purifying the
conscience. Confession, Absolution, and the Lord's
Supper. Perhaps no act was ever planned (in the
common language of mankind) with a more full and
unshaken reliance upon the voice of conscience,
deciding on the exclusively Divine mission and au
thority of a particular Church.
And at this day, the young most chiefly, those among
us who are most weak, and most earnest, the tender
among the flock whom the Church would ' gather
in her arm and carry in her bosom,' ' the diseased
B 2

who are to be strengthened,' ' the sick who are to be
healed,' ' the broken hearted who are to be bound
up,' ' the lost and driven away, who are to be sought
and brought back to the fold,' all these are in an
especial manner exposed to the same fearful danger
of a perverted conscience in the most awful trial,
through which a human soul can be passed — a tempt
ation to abandon their Church, and not only to
abandon it, but (it may be as the natural result) to
engage with different weapons indeed from those
as on this day employed by others, but upon the
same principles and with the same hopes, in the work
of its destruction.
I will endeavour, therefore, shortly and plainly, to
pointoutsome fewpractical marks and tests by which in
this particular trial we may discern a conscience rightly
directed and therefore worthy of trust. And we may then,
with the blessing of God, be enabled to see, whether
any voice within our own hearts, or what is equally
needed that we be reminded of, any example even of
Masters in Israel, professing to follow such a voice,
can be pleaded at the judgment-seat of Christ, ifhke
the disobedient angels we " keep not our first estate,
but leave our own habitation," and go after strange
gods ; abandoning our own Church in which God
has cast our lot, and apostatising to the communion
of Rome, schismatically working in this land.
It is not necessary to state here abstractedly what
conscience really is. In the sense in which we appeal
to it, as commanding and justifying our acts, we all

know that it is the voice of God within us — a voice
speaking to us in the inborn, eternal, immutable
instincts of our common nature, as well as in the
immediate promptings of His Holy Spirit — that it is
a light to lighten our path, a warner against tempta
tion, a witness to our unseen innocence, a judge in
balancing our duties, in its blessed calm and peace a
foretaste of heaven, and of that peace with God which
passeth all understanding, in its terrors an avenger
of sin, and it may be, even in Hell, ' the worm that
dieth not, and the fire that never is quenched.' And
woe to the man who either resists its corrections, or
makes light of its authority !
But it is the voice of a spirit within us. And
within us there are other spirits which clothe them
selves in light, and speak like the Spirit of God —
' lying spirits, that put themselves as it were into the
mouth of a prophet*;' ' dreamers of dreams, that
even with signs and wonders bid us go after other
gods and serve them*;' ' false Christs, able, if it
were possible, to deceive the very elect ¦=;' ' a mystery
of iniquity working with all deceivableness of un
righteousness''.' As in the world of nature shadows
are coupled with light, — as in the Church the evil are
mingled with the good, — as fn the daily walk of life,
falsehood sits side by side with truth, hypocrisy with
sincerity, wisdom with the pretence to wisdom, while
in discerning between them lies our chief trial,
without which we can neither unfold, nor exercise,
" 1 Kings xxii. '' Dent xiii. 1. ¦= Matt xxiv. 24.
^ 2 Thess. ii. 10.

nor perfect our moral nature, so it is in the world of
our own hearts. There is a true conscience and a
false — one, which speaks to us from Heaven, and many,
which speak like it, yet rise from a very different source.
And scarcely any eye but that of God, or man's eye
guided by His eye, can discern between them. ' AU the
ways of a man are clean in his own eyes, but the Lord
weigheth the spirits'.' ' Every way of a man is
right in his own eyes, but the Lord pondereth the
hearts V
And by what outward marks, (for it is not proposed
to speak of inward acts, by which the eye of the
conscience is cleansed and enlightened, such as
prayer, the study of God's word, abstinence from
sin and self-indulgence, participation in the Holy
Communion, and other the ordinary means of
grace,) but by what outward marks we may be
enabled to distinguish a trust-worthy conscience, let
us now consider. And to apply the question to the
one case before us; let us first fix clearly in our
minds the precise office and function of the con
science in that trial of our souls, in which we are
tempted to separate from our own Church, and to
join the Communion of Rome in this land.
If we misunderstand the real nature of the con
troversy, if we submit to the conscience a question
which it is not privileged to determine, if we allow
the eye as it were to decide on sounds, the ear
on colours, or the taste on smell, the decision
• Prov. xvi. 2. f Prov. XX. 11.

must be worthless, and we are responsible for its
delusion. What then is the real and only ultimate question to
be decided in the present case ? It is not whether
this teaching of Rome be true, or that practice
superstitious, not whether the existing organization
of the Church of England be imperfect, or its state
ment of doctrine insufficient — it is not as to the
expediency of rallying the whole Church round
some visible centre of mistaken unity, or of
strengthening it by such a system against attacks
from a king or a populace ; nor is it any question of
comparative sanctity, or of comparative wisdom. These
may indeed form part of the question, — they may
be important in themselves, and in some cases influ
ence om' conclusion ; but the one question still
remains, to which by the confession of both sides,
every subordinate question both of discipline and
doctrine must be finally reduced. Which power in
this land is entrusted with the charge of our souls
by a Commission from Almighty God, the Bishop
of Rome, or the Episcopate of our own Church ?
A Christian is no Christian, except as a member
of the Body of Christ. As a member of that Body he
must dwell in a body politic, under some living and
visible ruler. If he voluntarily sever himself from
the communion of such a ruler, he severs himself
from the Kingdom of Christ. To the authority of
this ruler must be referred our conduct in all
matters of discipline, and our judgment more or

less in matters of doctrine. And as in a case of
disputed allegiance we are not allowed to choose our
side from preference to this law or that mode of
government, but simply by the legitimacy of the
title ; so in the Church, whatever be her appointed
constitution of God, we are bound to recognise and
conform to it, refusing obedience to acts which we
know to be unlawful, such as an idolatrous worship,
but submitting to the punishment of our disobedience
within her bosom, and bearing to be cast out, but
never to cast out ourselves, until by some certain
proof we learn that she herself has been rejected
by God. In this way we are bound to struggle for
the reformation of any branch of the Church into
which corruptions have crept. In this way must
a true Christian act, who had the calamity to be
born where the title of Rome is allowed, as in the
present state of Italy, and of France. And in the
same way he is bound to act in this country, to his
own acknowledged Church, unless it can be proved
irrefragably that that Church is an usurper, and that
Rome only has a claim to our allegiance.
This therefore is the simple question which our
conscience is called on to answer. By this the
whole conflict with Rome must be decided. And
if one cause more than another has brought down
upon us our present calamities, it has been the
suppression or inadequate enforcement of this point,
from the very beginning of the recent controversy;
and the encouragement given by some to regard it

as an open question, subordinate to questions of
doctrine, surrounded with difficulties and doubts,
undefined, undefinable, and for which no definition
is required. Whoever takes a different view of the controversy,
cannot understand it ; and whoever does not under
stand it, is not in a condition to submit it to the
decision of his conscience. For he must then decide
by some feeling, or prejudice, or antipathy, or upon
some imperfect or false view of the relations of the
Church, and of the duty of Christians to their Head.
He cannot be guided by that voice of God within us,
which bids us not only feel aud act, but first soberly
and carefully examine the true bearings and cir
cumstances of each case, — a process of inquiry in
which acuteness of feeling is far less essential, far
less distinctive of a true conscience than clearness
and accuracy of the intellect.
" He that answereth a matter before he hears it,
it is folly and shame unto him^."
Next, let us remember, that it is the essential
chai'acteristic of a true conscience, to be a voice
external to ourselves. It is heard indeed in our
own bosoms; but it must speak to us from some
other seat than that corrupted heart, which we call
ourselves. Look round upon the world, and every
where, in every system and constitution, there are at
least two parts; one which rules, the other which
must obey. And to rule is to resist ; it is to thwart,
^ Prov. xviii. 13.

10
to restrain, to rebuke, to condemn, to punish as
one armed with the functions of an independent self-
supported magistracy, placed over its subjects by a
hand superior to its subjects. The teacher among
the taught, the King among his people, the Church
amidst the world. Almighty God in the universe,
are all powers external to the creatures whom they
rule. Upon this their empire depends. And so
the conscience in the soul. Its very essence is to
speak as one having authority; to praise as one
superior to ourselves ; to witness to us as the eye of
God Himself; to shame us when we would fain glory;
to bind us down in fetters when we struggle against
it; to surprise us in our last lurking place; to startle
us from sleep, to goad on our indolence, to cry out
like ' Wisdom in the streets' ' to the simple and the
foolish'';' to take its seat on the seat of judgment, and
command us to be brought before it, not as if we
had power over its sentence, or had created its
jurisdiction, but as trembling reluctant criminals,
striving vainly to break away from the chains that
fetter, and the scourge that lashes us. And it is
by its possession of this power, that we recognise
its commission from the Most High. ' For there
is no power but of God, the powers that be
are ordained of God'.' That which we cannot
master, or destroy, though we would give worlds to
annihilate it, is a creation not of our own, but of
Him who made us. And the conscience is beyond
'¦ Prov. viii. ' Rom. xiii. 1.

11
our reach. We may fly from it for a time, may
fancy it dead, when it only sleeps ; may imagine that
we have stifled its voice, because by some self-deceit
we have never asked for a response, or never sub
mitted to it a true case ; but there is no known
human power, whether of habit, or recklessness, or
shamelessness, which can so extinguish conscience
as to prevent its rising up at last in all its teiTors.
It bides its time, waiting for the hour of midnight,
for the anguish of the sick bed, for the solitude of
the broken heart, for the disgust of satiated passion,
for poverty, for calamity, for the thunder to burst
from heaven upon our head, for the bed of death, for
the day of judgment, for the flames of Hell. It
cannot be destroyed, cannot be escaped. It is
therefore not of ourselves. It is good, and therefore
comes from the Giver of all good. It is the voice
of God Himself.
For this reason, when we would assure ourselves
that the voice within us is really the voice of
conscience, let us ask ourselves whether it be really
a voice from without. And of this there are three
signs. The first is, that its commands should take a
prohibitory, not an affirmative, form.
The second, that it should contradict the bias and
inclination of our own heart.
The third, that it should be supported by some
human testimony external to ourselves.
And now of the first.
It is a fixed rule of morals, that we are bound to

12
listen to our conscience when it speaks as the oracles
of God speak, ' Thou shalt not steal,' ' Thou shalt
not bear false witness,' ' Thou shalt not covet.' And
that we cannot disobey it without sin. ' To him that
esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is un
clean'.' But whenever it declares of any particular
act that it is good and lawful, being unsupported by
other external testimony, there we must distrust it
exactly in proportion to our distrust of our own
purity, our own enlightenment, our own moral per
fection. For the decision of the conscience is the
work of the whole mind, of the understanding as
well as of the heart, and is no separate instinctive
faculty which can affirm with authority, and be
followed with safety, except as the whole mind is
good. Many reasons may be given for this dis
tinction, but two will be sufficient for our purpose.
One is, that a prohibition upon our act bears on it
strong marks of an interference from without ; the
other is, that when we thus conform our wills to any
rule but our own, looking on that rule as the law of
God, we at least practise an act of religion, inure
ourselves to obedience and humility, and offer to
Him a sacrifice of our own self-will. And yet, even
this obedience to the prohibition of our conscience
must be tempered and restricted by two affirmative
commands of the Almighty, given to us within om-
own heart, as well as from Mount Sinai, and in
the Church. ' Thou shalt keep My Sabbaths,' that
is, all positive institutions of God, whether we
•¦ Rom. xiv. 14.

1.3
understand their moral meaning or not. And,
' Thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother,' all
who are set in authority over us. They who duly
value and reverently obey these positive injunctions,
and apply them to check the frivolous scruples of a
weak conscience, may universally and with safety
listen to the voice within them whenever it speaks
with a negative.
And the practical application to ourselves of this
fundamental rule lies here. When we abandon the
Church of our fathers, is it because our conscience
within us prohibits us from remaining within it;
tells us that it is unclean ; bids us come out of it ; or
does it simply urge us to join the Church of Rome ? If
the former be the case, we must be prepared to say of our
Church, not merely that " the heathen have entered
into it and defiled if" — not merely that " its carved
work has been beaten down with axes and hammers'"" —
not merely that " we are become a scorn and derision
to them that are round about us'," but that the
Voice of the Lord has been heard crying, " Let us
depart" — that His grace has deserted it, or never
was with it ; — that not being of the body of Christ,
and yet professing His Name, we must be leagued
with Antichrist. Among all the variety of excuses —
reasons they cannot be called — which have been
thus far alleged for acts of apostasy, this has never
yet been declared. Think whether in the face of
all that God has done for this Church and Nation,
' Ps. Ixxxix. I. '' Ps. Ixxiv. 7. ' Ps. Ixxix. 4.

14
especially in these latter days, it could be declared
without risking the unforgiven sin; without saying
of the Spirit of God, as manifested all around us,
' He worketh miracles by Beelzebub.' But until he
who quits the Church of England is prepared to say
this, he proclaims that God has not yet commanded
him to quit it. Where God Himself still dwells
with His quickening and restoring Spirit, even in a
faint adumbration of His glory, there man may still
remain. And let it not be said, that the command of con
science to desert the Church of England is equivalent
to a command to submit to the Church of Rome.
It is not. Other alternatives are offered. There are
temples of the Lord open elsewhere, open where there
could be no possibility of adding schism to heresy,
alpeais; that is, to the wilfulness of choosing our
own doctrines and our own position, instead of
acquiescing in the place where God has fixed us.
Has this alternative ever presented itself to our
minds ? Try the question thus : — Have we ever felt
at the first thought of being excluded from the
Church of our fathers, as if we were houseless and
shelterless, as having no where to lay our head, as
knowing one thing only, that we cannot remain
where we are, but not knowing where we are to go ?
Have we thought of the Churches of the East, of Scot
land, of America, of the Colonies, or even ofMissionary
Churches which we ourselves might help to plant,
without the shackles and encumbrances (be they

15
such or not) under which we murmur here ? Have
we looked to Rome solely as an asylum, when no
other refuge has been open to us; or have we
desired it with our eyes from afar, and rather left
the Church of England because we wished to join
the Church of Rome, than joined the Church of
Rome because we could not remain in the Church
of England ?
Even in that ' deceivableness of unrighteousness'
which worketh in our own hearts, it is not difficult to
find many marks, by which this grave distinction
may be discerned.
If a doubt should arise affecting the vital essential
character of the Church of England as a branch of
the Catholic Church, and prohibiting us to remain
within it, it will lead a really conscientious mind into
the following course of conduct. He will first of all be
startled, shocked, terrified. The doubt fastens infamy
on one, whom till this hour he has loved, and cherished,
and honoured as his parent. It pronounces himself
no child of God, but a child of wrath ; his hopes of
heaven vain; his trust in the stirrings of God within
him a delusion; even his baptism null. The blow to
any Christian mind must be most fearful. And he will
assuredly strive at first to drive the suggestion from
him as an artifice of Satan ; the more so as it is hinted
and implied in some vague indefinite suspicion, belied
not only by his present affection, but by his past expe
rience. If it be forced upon him again, he will com
pel it to take a definite shape, to fix on the particular

16
flaw and blemish in the title of the Church which
invalidates its authority ; whether this heretical doc
trine, or this act of schism, or this defect of external
commission. He will then honestly and steadily,
setting aside all prejudices and inclinations, not
turning an eye to other Communions, clearing his
mind especially from any lurking personal discom
fort, or dissatisfaction with his present state, first
see if this imputation can be really fixed upon it.
Where is the heresy of the English Church, in any
of its authorized declarations ? Where is the act
by which we have severed ourselves from the Catholic
Church of the Apostles ? Where is the failure in
our succession? And he will not charge the Church
as a Church with the sins or the errors of indi
viduals ; he will not be content with any doubts or
suspicions hanging generally over its title; the point
must be fixed and proved clearly, and to it he will ad
here. Then he will turn to the acknowledged standard
of the will of God, to some divinely authorized plan
of ecclesiastical polity, in which he will seek for a
clear positive declaration, that the charge against his
Church is fatal to its character, as a true member of
the body of Christ. And in this he will not be
contented with inferences, or surmises, or probabi
lities, or calculations of expediency. In a case of life
and death, every word must be supported out of the
mouth of at least two witnesses. If in the defect of
this positive proof, still the doubt hangs heavy upon
his mind, and cannot be shaken off by the advice of

17
teachers and friends, arfd active occupation in duties,
he must then prepare to guard himself against two
sins alike. ' For by two sins he is beset, one on the
right hand, and the other on the left. He must secure
himself against the danger of propagating a system of
possible error ; and this by retiring himself from the
ministry of the Church, if he serve at its altar, from any
office of teaching, from any work which contributes to
its extension. But he must guard also against the
possibihty of belying, traducing, and despising one
who may be, notwithstanding his doubts, his spiritual
mother. And in his heart, in his devotions, in his
closet, he must pay to her every office which gratitude
and affection can suggest — pray for her, love her,
honour her, defend her from slander, check every
irreverence in others, obey her most studiously and
zealously, lest he make her doubtful title a license for
his own certain sin. Never will an honest, delicate, reve
rent, and conscientious Christian, looking to a Church
which claims to be his parent, guard himself more
anxiously from every disparaging thought, from every
neglect of respect, from every word which may shake
the confidence and affection of others, than when he is
doubtful and only doubtful of her title to his own.
And if at last after patience, and all the aids of know
ledge, and renewed persevering enquiry, with fasting
and prayer, the doubt by evidence (which he cannot
resist) be turned into a certainty, then there will
come the parting — a parting of such exquisite bitter-
' See Bishop Sanderson De Conscientia, Lect. ii.
C

18
ness, of such remorse over a life spent hitherto
though ignorantly in the service of Satan, of such
mourning over the lost brethren with whom we had
walked as he thought in the House of God, of such
humiliation and self-abasement at his previous blind
ness, of such distrust of himself as only now for the
first time baptized with the Spirit of Christ, of such
tenderness for those who are left, such bewilder
ment and confusion of thought at former errors and
present strangeness, such fearful rending asunder of
his very heartstrings, when he thinks of parents,
and brethren, and countrymen, children it may be,
and wives, and dearest friends, who are now severed
from him by a gulph like that which separated
the rich man in Hell from Lazarus in Abraham's
bosom, that though his first prayer will be that
messengers be sent to testify to them that they
continue not in the place of torment, he will himself
long and strive to depart from this to some other
land, where he may at least be safe from the pos
sibility of schism, and will there retire like St, Paul
into sohtude and silence ; nor dare again to join in
the strife of tongues, till his wounds are healed, his
sight restored in the only way it can be restored by
long continued discipline, his path no longer needing
a stranger to lead him by the hand.
Such will be the movement of a truly enlightened
conscience prohibiting us to remain within the
Church. But if the bidding which we follow,
only allures us to the Church of Rome; from some

10
feeling or affection in our own hearts, — if it be our
own self-will — it \vill lead to very different conducfa
We shall begin with cherishing- some dream or
fancy of a system different from that in which we
live, more grand, or more powerful, or more
effective, as we think, in doing the work of God
upon earth, or in our own soul. We shall endeavour
to find some authority for such a system either in
some period chosen by ourselves in the History of
the Church, or perhaps, as more nearly at hand, in
the Church of Rome. Whatever repugnance we felt
at first to features in that Church, as we dwell on them
more habitually, they wUl become less harsh, till we
are pained to hear of any censure or disparagement
upon it. We shall still adhere to the Church of
England, not indeed as a condition which we should
choose, but as one which we do not find it necessary
or convenient to abandon. But we shall learn to
speak of it coldly, or even irreverently, not scrupling
to expose its defects to the eye of strangers, and
careless whether we detract fr-om it the affection of its
children. We shall complain of its restrictions as
if arbitrarily and needlessly imposed, forgetting by
whom they were made necessary, even by the
hostility of Rome. We shall impute its deficiencies
of organization wholly to the want of spiritual life,
though the mutUations have been made by a Power,
which Rome herself exasperated against us, and
the restoration of them has been prevented by fear,
which nothing has excited but the remembrance of
c 2

20
the sins of Rome. If we affect to throw ourselves
into its system more earnestly, as if to improve
and elevate it, we shaU strive not so much to de
velope the seeds of good which it contains, as to import
into it others from Rome even against the warnings
of the Church. We shall read the writers of Rome,
adopt her forms, use her language, pray in her
prayers, neglecting our own, and not fearing to adopt
even frivolous practices, which in the eyes of weak
brethren wiU ever identify us with the enemies of our
faith. We shall seek occasion to associate with the
ministers of Rome. We shall first long for restoring
the union of the Churches by reducing England to the
standard of Rome ; and then, when this attempt is
found impracticable, union wUl still be our object, but
union which can only be attained by individually suc
cumbing to Rome. And when we have thus been un
faithful, may we not say treacherous, servants to that
Church of whose bread we are eating, or at whose
altar we are ministering, our hearts will be prepared
to listen to the last voice of the Tempter, and the
final act of schism will be accomplished; whether
some rebuke from our ruler provoke us to betray
our master; or mere habitual contemplation add
weight to the seeming probabilities ; or we follow
the multitude to do evil ; or become entangled in
some net which our own vanity and love of notoriety
has spun ; or our minds have become so clouded
with our feelings, that we give up all attempt to
reason, and regard an emotion as conscience; or

21
sink a willing slave under the spell of some stronger
mind, and dare to call blindness faith.
II. And if we would trace still more clearly the
influence of our own self-will in forming that
decision which we suppose to proceed wholly from
our conscience, let us consider what is the besetting
temptation of our mind, and how far that feature in
the Romish system which most attracts and sways
us promises to indulge it. Let us take some
instances, instances of mere weaknesses, of good
tendencies, of tastes and affections, which we are
even bound to cultivate ; for grosser temptations
are not likely to be found in minds exposed to this
peculiar trial. Are we then conscious of the
frailty of our own heart, and are we longing for
some stronger outward stay and security against
evil? And does Rome offer its asylums from the
world, its searching eye and master hand to rule our
heart, its voice that never doubts, and never falters
to calm our anxieties and scruples, bidding us
•' stay in chariots, because they are many, and
horsemen, because they are very strong; rather
than sit still, and rest upon our real and only
strength, the Lord God of Hosts '"?" Or are we
curious and speculating? And does Rome with its
vast systems of " perverse disputings" intruding- into
things, which minister not to edifying, appear to us
as a tree of knowledge that will make us wise ? Do
we fancy in our spiritual pride that we are standing
" Isaiah xxxi. 1,

22
on the pinnacle of God's temple, and does it bid us
rely upon his supernatural grace, whUe we neglect
his ordinary appointed means of obtaining salvation
and wisdom, and so to throw ourselves down, without
any command from Him, trusting to the Angels of
Heaven ' to bear us in their hands?' And this is done,
remember, when either we dwell longingly on the
asserted miraculous jjowers in the Romish Church to
the depreciation of our own more ordinary privileges;
or think that we can act upon mere feeling, as a
prompting from above, without exercising our judg
ment and reason ; or what is more fearful, and in
these days no way improbable, trust to supposed
revelations and supernatural intercourse with the
world of spirits, while we neglect the simple but
most necessary means of preserving the eye of our
mind in sobriety and clearness. Are we creatures
of imagination, and does Rome with its pomp of
worship, and romance of religion, appear to us as
the apple to Eve, ' pleasant to the eyes?' Are we
alarmed at seeing the Church of Christ, the ark of
the Lord, tottering as it were to its fall ; and does
Rome bid us cease to think of the positive in
junctions of the Lord, of the system established
by his Apostles, and point out a better mode of
saving and strengthening it, till we put out our arm
to support it? Or do we long for the coming of
Christ's kingdom, for the putting of aU things under
his feet, and when the powers of this world seem
arrayed against him, and we would fain subdue them

23
to him, does Rome suggest some artifice, some
policy, some compromise of truth, some economy,
to overcome the resistance which truth must always
encounter in the world, and to establish Christ's
empire upon earth? Does it take us up to a high
mountain, and shew us all the kingdoms of the
world, and say to us, ' AU this power will I give
thee, and the glory of them, for that is delivered
unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it";' and
' All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall
down and worship me".' Are we alarmed at the
voice of the people, and doubt our power to rule
their madness with the simple word of the Lord i
and does Rome, unlike to Samuel, allow us, like
Saul, to disobey his express words, and under the
pretence of ministering to God's glory, to pre
serve what he has commanded us to destroy, a
worship which in us may be but a shadow of the
truth, but in others is a temptation to idolatry?
Or again; are we shocked and dismayed to see
the Church, the Child of God, in the hands of
mcked men, mocked, and buffeted, and spit upon,
and about to be nailed to a cross ; and does Rome
tell us that these sufferings and humiliations are
a proof that God has forsaken it, that the Spirit of
God is not with it; that we who have eaten its
bread, and drank out of its cup, and cast out devUs
in its name, must now deny our Master ? Or again ;
When God has commanded us to strike the rock of
" Luke iv. 6. " Matthew iv. 9.

24
the human heart, and to bring out of it the waters of
his Holy Spirit, and we doubt, and are impatient to
find no answer to our first stroke, then does Rome
bid us strike twice i', tempt us to use means which
God has not commanded ; a discipline more stem,
a prying into the heart more searching, an in
dulgence more lax, or an authority more imperious,
than He has entrusted to our hands ? And so we
might proceed through many other temptations
recorded in the Bible. We, hke Ahaz % may be
tempted by the pattern of an altar at Damascus,
' to cut off, and turn away, and remove,' the workman
ship of God's holiest servants, even the things made
after the pattern in the mount, and placed in the
temple of the Lord by command of the Lord Him
self. We may be impatient at the bounds set to the
spiritual rule of the Church by the things which
must be rendered to Caesar ; and the events of this
day admonish us, that in such a spirit the authority
of kings may become to us a Naboth's vineyard.
If like David we reckon the glory of the people of
the Lord, not by his presence dwelling in a little
flock, but by the multitude of an host, Rome may
tempt us to number the people. Like Jehosaphat ',
we may be seduced to ally ourselves too closely with
an Ahab, and false prophets may persuade and
prevaU with us to go up together against the
enemies of the Lord to our own destruction. Even
reverence for the saints of the Lord may be turned
•• Numb. XX. 11. 12 Kings xvi. 11. "¦ 1 Kings xxii.

25
into sin and ruin, if Rome tempt us, as she does
tempt us, to say, ' I am of Paul, and another, I am of
ApoUos, and another, I am of Cephas '.' Even the
earnestness which seeks to God for advice and for
counsel, may mislead us to offer sacrifice ourselves
without waiting for his appointed ministers'. Even
a rebuke and a condemnation from our Master may
so gall and wound our spirit, as to tempt us like
Judas to beti-ay the Lord of the Christian Church
into the hands of the Chief Priest of the Jews.
Let us not think that the voice which would
delude us from our Church is not the voice of the
evil one, because it takes the form of some seem
ingly innocent affection, bidding us follow an object
which promises to indulge it without sin.
III. But besides the form of prohibition, and the
contradiction of our inclinations, there is another
proof required, that the voice of our conscience is
external. For the very purpose of anticipating,
confu'ming, correcting, and in some cases of super
seding this voice, God has established in the world
teachers and authorities of his own, witnesses of his
will among our fellow men, whom as we did not create,
so we cannot destroy, and can scarcely suborn, and who
from their very functions must stand, for the most part,
as Bishop " Butler tells us, on the side of God against
the prophets of Baal in our own hearts. They are
charged to teach us before we are wiUing to learn,
to proclaim laws which we are reluctant to obey, to
punish when we go wrong, to speak with the voice
' 1 Cor, iii. 4. ' 1 Sanuiel xiii. 9. " Analog, ch. iii.

26
of experience, when we are young either in years or
knowledge, and to hold up the light of his truth,
and pass it down from hand to hand through aU
generations, but as a light shining in a dark place.
And they cannot faU from out the world — any more
than conscience can be extinguished, however it
may be suspended, or the Church of Christ be
destroyed, however it may in part be corrupted.
He who cannot find either in his parent, or in his
king, or in the Church, the three appointed human
witnesses of God upon earth, any voice to support
him in abandoning- his religious Communion, may
be assured that his conscience is deluding him.
But with us in the present instance this cannot
happen. Whatever be our indifference to our
parent, however we may think that kings and rulers
in the State, who have abdicated their commissions
fi'om God as the maintainers of his own true
Church, are no longer authorized to speak on
questions of religion ; and that the. salt having lost
its savour, may be trodden, as it will be trodden,
under-foot of men — no one can pass from his own
branch of the Church into the Communion of Rome
without desiring and being able to plead some voice
of man to support his internal opinion. And yet we
are not free from danger.
The value of any human testimony to the voice of
our conscience depends upon conditions the same as
before. It must be a testimony really and truly
without us — not chosen or suborned by ourselves,
not an echo of our own voice, or a reflection of our

own image, or an idol of our own creation, which we
first make with our own hands, whether out of sUver
and gold, or out of a stock and a stone, and then bow
down to it and worship it. It is written not only in the
law of Moses, but in the eternal law of nature, on which
all evidence and truth must rest upon earth, " The
testimony of two men is true'." And by the follow
ing tests we may know if we are appealing to a
witness really independent and external, or only a
shadow of ourselves, and therefore worthless. Let
us ask ourselves if we are following a guide, neither
our parent, nor our ruler in the State, nor an
authorized minister of our own Church, or not our
own appointed pastor, or in this place not the in
dividual charged with our instruction and responsible
for our souls. Do you read his books in preference
to those recommended by your own teachers ? Do
you seek his society to the exclusion of theirs? Do
you abide by his advice in contradiction to them?
Do you bring forward his name and opinions as a
sanction for acts which they disallow ? Do you feel
a secret pride and excitement in spreading his
name, in copying him, in bringing others within his
influence, in gathering round him a little band of
foUowers, which if not gathered round some official
organ of the Church by the hand of the Church
itself, must be a sect and a party ? Do you feel
resentment when his opinions are disputed, or his
influence opposed by others who speak in the name
' John viii. 17.

28
of the Church ? When compelled, as you may be
compelled, to differ in common with him from rulers
set over you by God, do you feel more pain and self-
distrust, more humUity and longing for peace, more
unwiUingness to oppose their voice, more anxiety to
guard from disrespect their official character, even
whUe you may be bound to dispute their personal
wishes, than you feel interest, and exultation, and
excitement in the hope of victory, as in a conflict
under a leader, whom you have chosen, for a cause
which you have undertaken in some wUful petulant
spirit ? If you cannot answer these questions as they
should be answered, be assured the testimony of
your guide is but an echo of your own self-will. It
can never be pleaded at the last day for acts of
presumption and rebellion. His voice may be
right, or it may be wrong. But you in either case
are guilty. Do not dare to call such conduct con
scientious. Do not profane such a holy and awful
name to describe the devices and imaginations of
your own heart.
And we also who have the charge of the young
in this place may well guard against unconsciously
encouraging this delusion. To earnest, active, and
affectionate minds, full of zeal for the glory of God
and the saUation of man, it is a temptation here to
gather round us all whom we may influence for good,
not without at times breaking in upon those distinct
provinces and charges which are marked by the
duties of our office. Attendance upon a particular

29
parish church, especial intimacy with any individual
who forms the centre of a society, above all any more
solemn and confidential religious communication
with teachers under whom the young are not placed
by external appointment, may easily foster and ripen
their natural tendency to heap teachers to themselves,
and to choose prophets of their own, rather than obey
the prophets set over them by God. In the larger
fields of its polity, our Church has most anxiously
guarded against any such intrusion into the labours
of others, any such breaking down our neighbour's
landmarks, any such presumptuous creation of arbi
trary centres of religious influence distinct from the
centres of the Church.
She has done this seemingly, at times, with a sacri
fice of spiritual energy, and of the life of religion to
its forms. But she has done it most wisely; and the
melancholy result which has ultimately closed any
infringement of her rule at various periods of her
history, may well bring us to sit down in humility,
and patience, and in faith in the wisdom of her
restrictions. But there are cases, in which it may be said, I
foUow my own appointed teacher ; him under whose
care God Himself has placed me, and whom I am
commanded to obey. But let us reflect. When
Almighty God places over us any teacher, he appoints
him not as an individual, but as an officer and dele
gate of his "Church. And only as an officer of the
Church does he possess an external authority over

30
you. While he propounds the doctrines of the
Church, ministers the sacraments of the Church,
exercises the discipline of the Church, pleads with
us in the name of the Church, so long he bears an
external commission, and his testimony to our con
science is most vaUd, whether he excuse or correct,
whethef he advise or rebuke, whether he condemn
or absolve. But beyond this he is a private indi
vidual. And if we follow him beyond this, we follow
of our own choice. He is but the echo of our own
will, an idol of our own heart; and his testimony so
far is valueless.
How we may be prevented fr'om sinning under
any delusion in this point, we may easily learn.
Let us carefully separate in our own minds the
official and the personal authority of our teacher.
Let us constantly compare and confirm his state
ments, as he himself should accustom us to do, with
the voice of the Church speaking through other
channels. Let us not be afraid to doubt and differ
from his opinions when they pass beyond, still more
when they are at variance with, the Church ; not
presumptuously and petulantly, but modestly and
reverently, and under the guidance of others who
are also ministers of the Church. Never let us
throw ourselves blindly under his control to follow
wherever he leads; to accept, as indisputable, from him
opinions of his own which we cannot understand.
And once again, I wUl repeat it, let us guard even
against trifling acts which gradually gather our

31
attention and affection round some one centre not
appointed by the Church, and thus form the nucleus
of a party. Such is that servile imitation of manner,
or gesture, or pronuntiation, which the Fathers con
demned in the foUowers of the great Basil. Such
are too close and frequent associations. Such are
unnecessary appeals to his judgment in matters
unconnected with liis office. Such is the natural
but suspicious zeal, which kindles into resentment
when he is censured or condemned. Such is con
fining our society to those who follow in the same
train with om'selves. Such is the habitual indulgence
of some peculiar phraseology, so attractive to an ex
clusive circle, forming a little world of their own. Al
mighty God commands us to have faith, but it is faith
in Himself and in His Church, not in any ' father
upon earth.' He commands us to love and honour
om- teachers in the Lord, but to love and honour them
as men who bear a light from heaven in a vessel of
clay. And he would see us humble and meek. But
humility is not to stifle our reason, nor meekness to
destroy that moral agency for which He created us.
If we have not observed these rules, and yet
appeal to the witness of our teacher, we cannot be
sure that to us he is an external authority. We
cannot bring his testimony to corroborate the voice
of our conscience.
Nor is it needless to add, that we are bound even
in the height of gratitude and reverence for holiness
wherever it is found, and especially when found in

32
those from whose lips we are drinking knowledge,
StiU to remember that holiness, such holiness as
most attracts the eye and heart of man, is no neces
sary guarantee for divine truth. Religious truth,
and moral holiness, must come as they are ranged
in the Decalogue. Truth first, and holiness next.
Sanctity is an internal evidence. We measure it
by a standard in our own breasts. We judge of its
existence by our own eyes. Often we mistake for it
a mere outward semblance of piety, stiU more often
estimate it by the absence of carnal faults, and a
triumph over carnal desires, thinking little of the
hidden indulgence of pride, or fancy, or curious
speculation, or what we call the innocent propensities
of our nature.. And the truths of the Church are
conveyed to us through channels, and are tested by
evidence independent of the personal character of
those who deliver them. The Gospel was preached by
Judas. The voice of a thousand saints cannot make
one article of faith historically true. The voice of
a thousand sinners proclaiming it cannot render it
false. Let us remember that fact, which has become a
proverb. Nearly every crime of heresy and schism has
begun, notwith a proud or hypocritical, (it is the decla
ration of Bishop Sanderson,) but with a most real and
earnest resolution to mortify the body of sin. From the
Gnostics to Origen and Montanus, from them to the
Puritanism of England, from that to Wesley and Whit
field, and sects even of our own day, prayer, and fast
ing, and asceticism, and voluntary poverty, have been

33
again and again unable to save a heart beset with some
temptation to disobedience from falling into heresy
and schism. And let us beware of following even
those whom we believe to be saints of the Lord,
where the Lord Himself does not lead the way.
And this may suggest another test, as to the spirit,
whether of wilfulness or of obedience, in which we
have followed our teacher. There are marks, — marks
requiring no deep research but obvious to a common
eye, and distinctly laid down by our Lord Himself,
which we are bound to require from our teachers in
the Lord. And if we follow as a teacher in the Lord
one who possesses them not, or who even exhibits their
contraries, our blood is on our own head. We follow
him then not from conscience, but in wilfulness, as one
who should trust a guide who confessed himself
ignorant and blind. ' Of his own self he does
nothing.' ' He judges only as he hears.' ' He seeks
not his own wUl, but the will of Him that sent him' —
that is of the power whose commission he bears. ' He
hath another that bears witness of Him^ He receives
not honour from men', and hath no honour in his own
country ^ His doctrine is not his own, but his that
sent Him. He seeketh not his own gloi-y ". His word is
not yea and nay, but in Him is yea", — one fixed,
definite, uniform doctrine, setforth in characters which
' he may run that readeth,' and which may always be
compared with the sound form of Catholic truth. He
' John V. 30, 32. • John v. 41. * John iv. 44.
° John vii. 16—18. ' 2 Cor. i. 19.
D

34
declares not what he is seeking to find, but what
he has heard and seen^ ' He buUdeth not again the
things which he destroyed'.' He suffers reproach
with patience ». ' He continueth in the things which
he has learned, and has been assured of, knowing
of whom he has learned themi-.'
These and many other signs of the same kind are
pointed out for our guidance in the Scriptures.
But there is still another case in which we may
delude ourselves to the belief that we are obeying
an external law, and following an external teacher
witnessing to the truth of our conscience, when in
reality we are indulging cur own self will. He who
throws himself into the Romish Schism may plead
as his authority and rule the voice of the ancient
Catholic Church, for which he is bound to set aside
the voice of his own insulated communion. He
knows its voice, and follows it. His own Church
claims no allegiance except as its representative. It
matters not therefore to which branch of the tree of
life he attaches himself, so long as he is not severed
from the root. But it is a fundamental law of
human society, that inferior members may not
thus detach themselves from their place, any more
than a soldier in an army may at his own will change
his post, or abandon the subordinate officer placed
over him, under pretence of complying with the
supposed wishes of his General. With the assertion
" John viii. 26. ' Gal. ii. 18. » 1 Tim. iv. 10.
^ 2 Tim. iii. 14.

35
of such a license, all order, system, and subordina
tion is destroyed. The Chm-ch must perish. And
if there be any anathema written clearly in the decrees
and records of the Ancient Church, it is one
against such a principle. Council after CouncU has
protested against any infractions of the strict lines and
framework of ecclesiastical polity. If we act on such
a theory, it is on a theory of our own invention. If
we say that in these latter days the whole polity
of the Church is disturbed, and confusion entered
into it, every one breaking down, as he will, his
neighbour's landmark — to join in such acts of dis-
tm-bance, to increase and perpetuate the confusion —
to take advantage of the mischief and misery pro
duced by the wilfulness of others that we may indulge
the same wUfulness ourselves — surely such a mise
rable plea no Christian will dare to make before
either his conscience, or his God.
It is an open avowed elevation of the standard of
self will. And it is a melancholy symptom of the
depth to which the wilfulness of these latter days has
penetrated, when such apologies for schism are
maintained, as they are among ourselves, even by men
who plead most earnestly for obedience and order.
That is a far better state of mind, (so far as
such a word can be used of a state essentially
miserable,) in which we are disposed at once to
acknowledge the Church of Rome as the only true
representative of the Church of Christ in this land,
and to yield to her voice as an authority set over us
D 2

36
by God — our own Church being abandoned as wholly
alienated from Christ. But let us trace even here
the working of the same self will.
There are indeed cases in which a transition may
be made from one religious community to another,
without any deep learning or minute enquiry,
and yet conscientiously. Any one brought up in
a religious society whose doctrines, and discipline,
and authority are professedly invented by man,
wrought out by man's reason, or fancy, at some one
period of Christianity, not handed down as unaltered
and unalterable from the Apostles and our Lord, such
anone when there is presented to him a polity, claiming
to teach only what it has received, and to minister
only in the name of another, and that other Christ
Himself, may without any long delay deliver himself
from one state of certain human error, and pass into
another where at least there is the profession and the
outward badge of divine truth. He cannot be safe
where he now is. God cannot have intended him to
remain there. He has only to choose between a
teacher who professes that he is authorized by Christ,
and another who confesses that he is not, and the
choice is easy. Such is the case of any one who
from any sect of dissent passes into any branch of the
Catholic Church.
But such cannot be the case with any one of us.
No where upon any page of the records of our
Church has she by any voice which could authori
tatively stamp her with the charge, either delivered

37
her doctrine as her own, or claimed her commission
from herself, or sanctioned the infidel principle that
we are to search for and discover, and pronounce
upon divine truth by the mere light of our own under
standing, and our own feelings. She never repudiated
her allegiance to the Catholic Church of old — never
in things fundamental broke that golden chain which
holds together the Church of Christ throughout all
ages. Rather even in the hour of sharpest temptation
she clung to this with a tenacity, which no spirit
from man could have infused. Whoever charges
her with such deeds must be prepared to prove that
charge both now in the face of man, and at the day of
judgment, before the Angels in Heaven. He must
prove it, not by the acts of this individual ruler, or
the temper of this period, or the words of teachers
severally. Such things are never translated into the
formal decisions of society. It must be proved by
acts of synods, by the words of her formularies, by
the injunctions of her rulers acting collectively and
in due order in the promulgation of authoritative
decrees. And with our Prayer Book and Ordination
Service before us, who will dare to avouch it !
Therefore in our present trial we are called on
only to decide between two Teachers, each professing
to bear an authoritative commission from the Lord,
the Church of Rome, and the Church of England.
And they must each produce their credentials. And in
demanding, and deciding on these credentials, what
reason have we to suspect that we are rather following

38
our self-wUl than obeying the command of our
conscience ?
First then, it is a serious and alarming thought,
that the primary movement to this awful trial, the first
opening our ears to the voice of the stranger, must
come from within. It must be an act of our own
choice. Had we been living in a foreign land where
every thought of religion would force upon us the
thoughts and the claims of Rome ; had we been
exposed to the solicitations of her emissaries, as too
often are exposed the poor, the aged, the dying, and
the young ; had we been perishing for lack of spiritual
food in some dry and barren land where no water is,
and Rome had offered to draw for us out of her own
cisterns; had we been beset by this melancholy strife,
where we could not escape it, in the bosom of our
own homes ; then we might have pleaded necessity
and compulsion, for listening to her temptations.
But we have been living here; here, from whence
her ministers and her influence are most anxiously
excluded ; here, where we are warned at every step
against them; here, where we are trained in a system
of positive truth, the best of all securities against her
errors ; here, where the young at least have practical
duties sufficient to occupy their whole attention ;
here, where each day is developing all those internal
evidences of the truth of the Church of our fathers,
most likely to forearm our reason and to interest our
affections in obeying her. We must go to seek
Rome. Rome cannot come to seek us. She wiU

39
not dare to come tUl we invite her. Our first step
therefore has been wilful. And whether wilfulness
be traced in our subsequent enquiry, we might
learn by signs before given, — by the indulgence of
our fancy, by our wanton dallying with the allurements
of Rome, by our petulance, uneasiness under control,
resentment at opposition, arbitrary choice of books,
companions, teachers, — by our disrespect to our rulers
in the Church, neglect of its great writers, straining of
its formularies to suit an interpretation of our own, or
endeavouring to improve it, as we fondly think, not as
she desires to be improved, but after a pattern of
our own invention. But a single sign is sufficient.
One thought of irreverence towards the Church which
is bearing us in her bosom, one cold calculation
on the expediency of abandoning her, will prove that
our conscience is still sleeping, — that we have no
sense of the obligation of a child to his parent, even
when that parent is weak and imperfect ; and that to
plead that same conscience as if it were awake and
commanding us to acknowledge the authority of a
parent in Rome, is hypocrisy.
Even if both titles be equally doubtful, — even if
we feel bound, and rightfully bound, to abstain from
all raiUng accusations against Rome, questioning if
she may not prove the Mother of ourselves, and the
Prophet of the Most High ; yet the same conscience
which bids us thus act, would bid us act as dutifully
to the Church, in which we still are nurtured, — to
love, honour, obey it, humbly, docilely, and meekly.

40
in all her injunctions, in our prayers, our fastings,
our almsgiving, our studies, our attendance on divine
worship; following within her bosom her ordinances,
not our own, and still less, those of a Power which
repudiated, and, it may be, blasphemes her. And
with a failure in the discharge of these duties perishes
the plea of conscience during the prosecution of our
enquiry. But we must advance still farther.
Have we demanded of Rome the credentials of
her claim to our obedience, or succumbed to her,
confessedly in ignorance ? The plea of ignorance
which has been often made, the plea of incapacity to
judge and decide for ourselves, is in itself an
indisputable proof that we have acted wilfully.
Ignorance requires us to stand still, to rest with
confidence and quietness where God has placed us.
It never can justify us in risking a step in the dark.
And any voice within us counselling an act of such
infatuation cannot be a voice from God; it cannot be
our conscience, that conscience which is the eye of
the soul filled with light, and judging only oi what
it sees with clearness.
But we have demanded her credentials. Think
if we have demanded and examined first the cre
dentials of our own Church. This is the first step
which reverence would prompt and conscience com
mand. The present possessor of our allegiance is
the first who has a claim to our attention. In
judging any question of a disputed title, to fix

41
arbitrarily on the precedency in hearing, is as much
an act of self-will, as much a betrayal and confirmation
of secret prejudice, as to judge without hearing at
all. And the possessor claims to be heard first.
Before we listen to the tale of the calumniator of our
Parent, our Parent may well claim to prove her
innocence, if she has strength and wiU to substantiate
it positively, rather than be content with a mere
faUure of proof in the accuser.
And our Church has this strength and will. It
does not stand merely on the defensive. It produces
its vouchers, appeals to its authorities, carries us
back to the records of the Ancient Church. And
before we can have mastered these, even in the
hundredth part, with learning, and criticism, and
wisdom to aid us, how many years must we spend
in patient and anxious study ! Have we spent
them ?
But we have done this ; — our search has not
satisfied our mind, and we have then proceeded to
examine the credentials of Rome. — What credentials?
Its internal evidence, or its external? The proofs
which she herself would produce, — a theoretical unity
of her own devising, — a comparative sanctity, which
it is impossible we can estimate, — a comparative
wisdom, of which our own ignorance is the standard, —
miracles which we cannot test, — an expediency
which we cannot calculate, — a splendour and a power,
which God has set rather as a warning mark
upon the empire of Satan, than upon his own little

42
flock sent out into the world midst wolves? Not
one of these can be tried and estimated except by a
deceitful balance within our own hearts. The pro
cess of judging by internal evidence is the very
process against which we have been warned again and
again, never to pronounce by it on divine truth. It
is but another word for that reliance on the guidance
of our own deceitful heart, which has been the source
of all heresy, and schism, and unbelief, and crime
since the beginning of the world. And if we now
maintain it — we, who so earnestly have struggled to
restore an outward standard of truth — the balance of
the sanctuary — even we in flying from the abominations
of a presumptuous rationalism have become merely
rationalists ourselves.
No, it will be said, we have not so argued; we
have rested on external evidence, in which our
reason and affections have no voice ; and which we
can only listen to and obey. It is false; it cannot
but be false; one reason supersedes all others.
Rome has no external evidence to produce. The
very nature of her theory precludes the possibility.
She cannot produce the testimony of any distinct
independent witness ; for by the claim of supremacy
she absorbs them all in her own person. AU the
branches of the Catholic Church become only
members of her body, derivatives from her source,
echoes of her voice, creations of her wiU. They are
but so many portions of herself; they cannot bear to
her any testimony from without, as the Eastern

43
Church, as Scotland, as America, as aU the in
dependent branches of the Church Catholic through
out the world, as Rome herself can be made to bear to
the claims of England. She has no external pattern
in pi-unitive antiquity; her defenders at length con
fess it. Or, if attempts be stUl made to discover one,
it is supported by documents so forged, so spurious,
so falsified, or interpolated, or misapplied, by the
confession of her own sons through whose hands
they have passed, that while doubly powerful for this
very reason against her, in her favour they are im
potent. No court of evidence would admit them.
A single erasure in a deed precludes its production;
with a license to expurgate in its hand, how can
Rome even claim a hearing ? Even if a pattern could
be found, it would be useless, since comparison is
impossible. Her own system is fluctuating and
vague. The extent of the supremacy is unsettled ; it
cannot therefore be attested. If her claim is made
to rest upon a right to develope Christian doctrine,
that right at once destroys any fixed standard, any
power of comparison. The claim itself is made by
the voice of Rome alone. And that claimant is indeed
suspicious, .who, thus, abandoning the duty of speak
ing only ' what he has heard and seen,' ' speaks of
himself,' ' speaks to his own glory,' speaks what no
one can test whether it be true or false, speaks in
direct opposition to the Apostle, ' TJiough we or an
angel from Heaven preach any other Gospel unto

44
you, let him be accursed';' speaks against our Lord
Himself, and ' teaches as doctrine the commandments
of men ;' speaks against the Catholic Church, ' The
pillar and ground of the truth ^' when it declared the
doctrines necessary to salvation, and prohibited any
addition to them under a most solemn anathema. It
has no miracles capable of being subjected to ex
amination, or of being applied to the confirmation of
its peculiar theory. Granting them to exist, they
prove only that the Spirit of God has not abandoned
it as a branch of the Catholic Church. They cannot
prove any right of developement, because every
developement of revelation must be attested by the
more sure word of prophecy" likewise, and prophecy
it has none. Prophecy warns us against the
miracles, prohibits the developement, alarms us, to
say the least, at the whole aspect and appearance of
Rome, by signs too marked to justify our indifference
to any power in which they appear.
Nor can Rome appeal to Scripture, for Scripture she
herself denies to be a sufficient standard. And the
supremacy is not found in Scripture, or found only
in a metaphor, of which the very nature is vagueness
and indeterminateness. She has not even the united
testimony of her own children, for they differ in the
extent of her rights, in the fundamental article of her
creed. She has not even the title of possession, for
she is mourning over her mutUated empire, and
" Gal. i. 8. M Tim. iii. 15. ' 2 Peter i. 19.

45
revolted subjects. Rome has no external evidence.
The fact is of incalculable importance. It proves
beyond dispute, that they who are seduced to her Com
munion are seduced not by then conscience, but by
some wUful spirit secretly abiding in their own hearts.
It explains the phaenomenon of infidelity, which so
closely follows in her train. It accounts for the
likeness of her system to the sects which seemingly
stand on the other side of the Catholic Church,
founded openly on internal evidence, on rationalism
and self-will. It accounts also for its frequent
alliance with them. It is a thought of great awe,
when we reflect on those who have fallen under her
temptations. May God grant that it be to us a
thought of confidence and warning, if we should
ever be beset by the same tremendous trial !
There remains but one more case to be noticed,
a case not of reasoning, or research, in which the
apostasy may be justified by the plea of conscience
confirmed by external evidence. It is a case which
here can only be alluded to, alluded to cautiously,
reverently — as one full (to thoughtful minds) of alarm
and compassion, — one which they will not pass over
as the fool would pass it over with scorn, and which
requires to be treated in these days in a very different
spirit, from that with which it has been dealt with in
the centuries just gone by. It is the case of a super
natural visitation. May God save us from saying in
our hearts*, ' since the fathers fell asleep, all things
' 1 Peter iii. 4.

46
continue as they were from the beginning of the
creation.' May He save us from the presnmptuous
ness of denying, that in these latter as in the former
days. His Spirit may plead with men almost face to
face, making ' young men see visions, and old men
dream dreams s ;' making His glory break forth, like
hghtning out of the clouds, from all parts of that
visible temple in which He invisibly dwells ; ' com
forting the souls of the righteous who serve God
with fastings and prayer night and day '',' ' and
revealing to them His looked for redemption.' But
may He save us also from forgetting that there are
around our bed and about om- paths spirits of evU,
as well as spirits of good, and that souls which cannot
be tempted by any common temptation, — souls which
have triumphed over the lusts of the flesh, and the
lusts of the eye, and the pride of life, may be tempted
by lying wonders, and may fall. And they are, and
have been tempted, (the records of the Church are
fuU of such warnings,) when thefr thoughts have
been swallowed up in some one exclusive pursuit,
severed from practical duties in the world, heated by
strong feehng, weakened by bodily exercises, fastened,
in solitude and darkness, upon the invisible world,
plunged day after day in meditation upon mysteries
hidden in its depths, and untempered by sober
relaxation and intercourse with their fellow men.
And He who knows our weakness and has com
passion upon our infirmities, seems carefully in His
« Acts ii. 17. >¦ Luke ii. 37.

47
Holy Word to have placed upon these two kinds of
extraordinary visitations, — the one from His own
good Spirit, the other from the spirit of evU, — the
same distinctive marks, by which in other cases we
distinguish external truth from inward Ulusions.
Some of these, such as the calmness, and sobriety
and absence of fear and trepidation, which attend the
presence of God's holy angels, are recognised by
fathers of old, who lived in days when such ex
periences were not uncommon. But the marks
affixed to them in the Scriptures are all-sufficient
for ourselves. And they appear to be these : —
Either that they never command any even seeming
deviation from an express law of God previously given ;
or if the command should seem to bear this aspect,
(it cannot do more than seem,) then they confirm
their authoritative mission by witnessing it either
to two or more persons, without the possibility of
mistake, (as in the case of Cornelius,) or by some
continuous public repeated manifestation, (as in the
case of the Prophets of old,) which precludes all
doubt of an external divine agency. Even if an
angel seem to speak unto us as by the word of
the Lord', bidding us turn aside to eat and drink
when the Lord has before commanded us ' to eat no
bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by the way
that we came ;' we must beware lest he he unto us,
' and our carcase come not into the sepulchre of our
fathers.' They may be trusted if they come to us as
' I Kings xiii. 18.

48
to Samuel, bidding us go to EU the Priest. They never
can be trusted, if coming to us in the Temple of the
Lord, and as to Ministers in that Temple, they bid
us violate and trample it under foot, leaving us no
mark or testimony by which to confirm our doubts,
but a vision before our solitary eye, or a fancy in our
solitary heart. They may add to, but they never
wiU supersede, the ordinary arrangements of His
Church, so as to raise up Prophets in Israel
destitute of any external mark of their divine ap
pointment which may be seen by his people, and yet
authorized to disturb and violate the fundamental
laws of his Ecclesiastical Polity, the institutions of
his Apostles, the ordinances of Christ Himself.
Thus much at least we know, if we adhere to the
analogy of God's dealings as revealed in the Holy
Scriptures ; and beyond this we have no guide to
lead us, because we have no other authoritative
statement of such supernatural interpositions — -none
guaranteed by the same testimony of the Church,
as confirms the whole Volume of Inspiration.
And with the sobering thoughts suggested by this
last trial of our frail nature, our imperfect enquiry
must be ended. It brings us to a conclusion,
full of grief and pain when we look to those who
in their trial have fallen — full of comfort to those
who have been shocked and startled at their fall — as
if truth must be with men whose lives were so full
of goodness. And may it prove, with God's blessing,
a warning to those, (if any there are amongst us,)

49
who may be tempted to follow their footsteps, in
submission to a voice within them, which they fain
would call their conscience. Let us not profane
a word so holy. Say of those who have abandoned
their Church that they were earnest — say they were
zealous — say they were yearning after visions of things
better than the poor realities around them — say they
were wearied with the sins of Christ's servants, and
the dreariness of the world, and the madness of the
people. Shght not their acts of self-sacrifice ; calum
niate not their motives; rail not on them; triumph
not; judge not, where judgment can be avoided in
compassion to others. But call not an act of schism
an act of conscience. Woe to them that adulterate
the language of truth and goodness ! Woe to them
that unsettle the common standard of right and
wrong ! " Woe to them that call evil good and
good evil, that put darkness for light and light for
darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for
bitter''." Let us not so sin against the souls both
of others and of ourselves.
But when these words of painful but most necessary
harshness have been uttered, let us now prepare to do
that, which must be done, before we leave these walls,
lest the words turn in our hearts not to a blessing but
a curse. Directly we have been warning ourselves who stand;
indirectly we have been condemning brethren who
have faUen. Let us put aside every high thought,
¦¦ Isaiah v. 20.

50
every memory of past contentions, every bitter resent
ment, if such amidst the strife of tongues and the
anxieties of this day, have ever crept into our minds,
and let us now stand afar off, not so much as lifting
up our eyes to heaven, and pray that God would be
merciful to ourselves as sinners. Let us compare
ourselves with those who are gone — men of zeal, men
of piety, men of prayer, and watchings, and fastings,
and almsgiving, andpm-ity of life. And yet the tempter
has taken advantage of some secret flaw within their
hearts, some lack of humUity, or unregulated affection,
or dream of fancy, or impatience, or rashness, or want
of knowledge, to lead them into a sin at which we
shudder. ' But if these things be done in a green tree,
what shall be done in the dry ' ?' What shall be done
with us, who cry, ' The temple of the Lord, the temple
of the Lord"",' if we do not walk in its courts as in the
sanctuary of the Most High ? They have despised
their Church, as believing that it is despised of God.
Do we believe it honoured of God, yet make it
despised of others by dishonouring it ourselves ?
They left it for a rule more stern. Do we obey its
rule even in its mildest form? They offered to
Almighty God a sacrifice of their own invention; a
sacrifice of many a comfort, many a pleasure, more
than He required. Do we offer Him any sacrifice
at all? They impaired their bodies, perhaps their
judgment, by excess of mortification. Where are
our fastings, oin- watchings, our alms, our surrender of
' Luke xxiii. 31. ¦" Jerem. vii. 4.

51
any thing for Christ's sake, to lay by the side of
theirs? It is a most humbling, a most shaming
consciousness, that we can see the sins of others,
when we cannot practise their virtues; and that we
are at times compelled to sit as judges, when we
ought ourselves to be standing as criminals ready to
be condemned.
And yet, God grant in His mercy, that such shame
and such remorse may hang over our hearts and
press upon our lips, whenever we are compelled to
speak of those whom we have lost — few indeed in
number — -few — how few! (blessed be God's infinite
mercy even in the hour of visitation,) compared with
the many who are safe, — the thousands whom in one
short space, not by the principles which are now
made the apology for schism, but by a teaching, as
opposite to it as light to darkness, the Church has
recovered to her bosom, and has built up in her holy
faith, and has fUled with a spirit from heaven, whUe
before, they were as sheep without either fold or shep
herd, as clouds driven about in the air by every wind of
doctrine. But lost they are to us, — to one from his
home — to another from our common fireside — to
another from beneath his own wing and instruction —
to another from his daily walk — or from the house
of prayer, or from the altar of the Lord. Even of
those who walked in the house of God as friends,
one has been taken, and another left. And we are
standing now beside the places which they once filled,
almost as before the open graves of men departed.

52
Let there come to us, as from out their graves — it
will be a bitter but most wholesome anguish — the
thought, that we ourselves may not be whoUy guiltless
of then- fall. Had we lived up to the teaching of
our Church — had we set before them a spectacle of
more holiness, more self-devotion, more zeal, more
unworldliness, more prayer, more unity of spirit in
the bond of peace — they might have found within
her bosom that sign from Heaven, which the weak
ness of their faith was cravdng. Had we provided
for them some means of working in the vineyard of
the Lord, as they desired to work, under a sterner
discipline, and with more sacrifice of self, — had we
created for them some new field of labour, untried
and yet how worth the trial, their spirits might
have found rest here, and their arms have been
saved to us, instead of giving strength to our foes.
Had we been more merciful to their wants, more
watchful over their errors — had we kept our own
tongue from bitterness, and the tongue of the fool
and the blasphemer from evil-speaking, lying, and
slandering, some wounded hearts, too weak to bear
the scorn which God has appointed for His Prophets,
might have been spared from seeking sympathy and
love in the bosom of a stranger. Or had we re
membered the words of the Lord, " If thy brother,
the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter,
or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend which is as
thine own soul, entice thee, saying. Let us go and
st-rve other gods which thou hast not known, thou

53
nor thy fathers, thou shalt not hearken unto him ;
neither shaU thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou
spare, neither shalt thou conceal him ; thine hand
shaU be first upon him to put him to death," — had
we remembered this, our voice might have risen ere
now to warn, and denounce, and condemn; and
the sheep might not have followed to a lie, deceived
by its connection with truth. And had we prayed
for them as we might have prayed, God's goodness
might have saved them all. But they are gone,
and we are left; left with a fearful charge of young
and perishable souls ; left with the charge almost of
the souls of a mighty people, among whom the
plague has begun. It has begun; but only begun.
It has fallen, may God be praised, but on few heads,
and for the most part where all expected, upon the
weak and sickly of the flock. And the strong will
now be stronger, that they are severed from the
danger of infection, and from the temptation of most
injurious suspicions. But we cannot conceal the
evU. The plague is within our gates. May God
in His infinite mercy raise up His Spirit within us,
and in His Church throughout the land, that we
may take our censers, and put on incense, the
incense of prayer, and holiness, and alms, and every
good deed, and in the Blood of Christ our Lord
' make now an atonement for the people, and stand
between the living and the dead, that the plague
may be stayed"^ !' " Numb. xvi. 47.
BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD.

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