new modes of education have given too great a latitude in the articles of dress, and dissipation, and self-indulgence. Every thing is to be avoided which tends to diminish that gravity and seriousness which God expects to find in all those who are flying from the wrath to come. It was observed of old, that when inconsiderate people are avoiding one extreme, they commonly fall into another, while reason and discretion keep the middle way. When Protestants laid aside the austerities of superstition, they began to see less harm in the liberties taken by the world. The kind of life to which the first Christians conformed, hath been considered as a sort of heroic piety, which had more of suffering and mortification than are now required of us; as if the way to heaven could be easier, while the number of our temptations is probably increasing from the refinement of modern times, which, instead of giving us more liberty, call upon us for a greater degree of caution and reserve.

To us JESUS CHRIST is the pattern of holiness, the great exemplar of perfection, of whom we are first to learn, what no heathen ever professed, to be "meek and lowly in heart ;" and accordingly, one of the best books extant on the Spiritual life, is entitled, "The Imitation of JESUS CHRIST." Its language is barbarous, but its matter is divine and heavenly, and hath administered instruction and consolation to thousands of devout Christians. The way of true devotion must still be understood to be the same humble, secret, unaffected, unaspiring practice of piety, as it used to be of old. The Cross, which JESUS CHRIST carried for our salvation, is still the true emblem of our profession, from our baptism to our departure out of this life, and is to be borne by us in our minds, as a daily admonition to patient suffering and self-denial.

To assist us in the great duties of prayer and meditation, books of devotion have their use; but to us of the clergy, the liturgy of our Church is the best companion; and the daily use of it in our churches and families is required by the canons. It cannot be denied, that from various reasons prevailing amongst us, we are much fallen off, of late years, from the practice of weekly prayers in our churches. Wherever this has been neglected, we should VOL. III.-74.

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exhort the people to the revival of it, if circumstances will possibly permit; and alarm them against a mistake, to which they are all exposed, from a fanatical prejudice of baneful influence, namely, that they come to Church only to hear preaching; and hence they are indifferent, even on a Sunday, to the prayers of the Church, unless there is a sermon.

JONES OF NAYLAND, PRESBYTER.-Lectures on Hebrews iii.

The Church, in its nature, always was what it is now, a society comprehending the souls as well as the bodies of men; and, therefore, consisting of two parts, the one spiritual, answering to the soul, and the other outward, answering to the body. Hence, some have written much upon a visible Church and an invisible, as if they were two things; but they are more properly one, as the soul and body make a single person.

In the twelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apostle gives such a description of that society, into which Christians are admitted, as will show us the nature of it. "Ye are come," says he, "unto Mount Zion," &c. . . . . The terms here used give us a true prospect of the Church. . . . . This is that Zion of the Holy One of Israel, to which the forces of the Gentiles were to flow from all parts of the world. . . . the city of the living God, distinguished from the cities of the world, as Jerusalem was from the cities of the heathens, who dedicated their cities not to the living God, but to the names of their dead idols. ..... This, being the city of the living GOD, must be an immortal society, for the living God does not preside over dead citizens; He is not the GoD of the dead, but the GoD of the living, and all the members of this society live unto Him. . . . . . It is, therefore, called the Heavenly Jerusalem, because it is of a heavenly nature; and it is called the Jerusalem which is above, which is free, and is the mother of us all... Its spiritual nature is further declared, in that it is said to comprehend an innumerable company of angels. . . . . In the communion of the Church the spirits of just men made perfect are also included. It is a society which admits only the spirits of the living, and as such cannot exclude the spirits of the dead; and this confirms what we said

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above, that the Church is a spiritual community, comprehending the dead as well as the living. . .

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But it is now to be shown, secondly, that as the Church of GoD hath always been the same in its nature, it hath likewise preserved the same form in its external economy: the wisdom of GoD having so ordained, that the Christian Church under the Gospel should not depart from the model of the Church under the Law. For as the congregation of Israel was divided into twelve tribes, under the twelve Patriarchs, so is the Church of CHRIST founded on the twelve Apostles, who raised to themselves a spiritual seed amongst all the nations of the world. . . . . There were then three orders of priests in the Jewish Church; there was the high priest, and the sons of Aaron and the Levites. In the Church of CHRIST, there was the order of the Apostles, besides whom there were the seventy Disciples sent out after them; and, last of all, the Deacons were ordained to serve under both in the lower offices of the Church. The same form is still preserved in every regular Church of the world, which derives its succession and authority from the Church of the Apostles: after whom the Bishops succeeded by their appointment, such as Timothy and Titus, in their respective churches. This authority has been opposed to the Christian as it was in the Jewish Church: Corah and his company rose up against Moses and Aaron for usurping a lordly authority over the people; so, in the later ages of the Christian Church, a levelling principle hath prevailed, which has appeared in many different shapes. .

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The Church has also been remarkably conformable to itself in its sufferings. There never was a time, so far as we can learn, when the true Church of GOD, with its doctrines and institutions, was not hated and opposed by the world: either persecuted and oppressed by powerful tyrants, or traduced and insulted by lying historians.

BISHOP.-Sermon on Matt. xvi. 18, 19.

The keys of the kingdom of Heaven here promised to St. Peter.... must be something quite distinct from that with which it hath generally been confounded, the power of remission and retention of sins, conferred by our LORD, after His resur

rection, upon the apostles in general, and transmitted through them to the perpetual succession of the priesthood. This is the discretionary power lodged in the priesthood, of dispensing the sacraments, and of granting to the penitent and refusing to the obdurate the benefit and comfort of absolution. The object of this power is the individual upon whom it is exercised, according to the particular circumstances of each man's case. It was exercised by the Apostles in many striking instances. It is exercised now by every priest, when he administers or withholds the sacraments of baptism and the LORD's Supper, or, upon just grounds, pronounces or refuses to pronounce upon an individual the sentence of absolution.

HEBER, BISHOP.-Sermons in England, No. xii.

We must return then, after all, (in ordinary cases, and where an immediate and supernatural commission from the HOLY GHOST is neither proved nor pretended,) to the appointment and ordination of those among our fellow-creatures who exercise a legitimate authority in the Church of CHRIST, and who, as being appointed by GoD, are placed in GoD's stead, and commissioned by Him to dispense those graces which are necessary for the feeding of His flock, and to designate those labourers who are henceforth to work in His harvest.

And having arrived at this point of the discussion, even if that discussion were to proceed no further, and if the Scriptures had given us no information as to the persons by whom this authority was to be exercised, the validity of our ordinations would still be sufficiently plain, and the danger of separation from, or rebellion against, our Church would be sufficiently great and alarming, inasmuch as, where no distinct religious officer was instituted by GoD, the appointment of such officers must necessarily have devolved on the collective Christian Church, and on those supreme magistrates who, in every Christian country, are the recognized organs of the public will and wisdom... It happens, however, to be in our power to show (if not an explicit direction of CHRIST for the form of our Church government, and the manner of appointing our spiritual guides), yet a precedent so clear and

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a pattern so definite, as to leave little doubt of the intentions of our Divine Master, or of the manner in which those intentions were fulfilled by His immediate and inspired Disciples. Nor will the force of such precedent and example on the practice of succeeding Christians be regarded as trifling by those who consider that it is on such grounds as these that the obligation rests of many observances which are allowed by all parties to be essential; among which may be classed the baptism of infants, the observance of the LORD's Day, and our participation in the LORD's Supper.

But, without entering into the question of the absolute necessity of this rule, and without judging those other national Churches which have departed from it, it is evident that those Churches are most wise and most fortunate, who have continued in the path which CHRIST and His Apostles have trodden before; and that religious insubordination is then most unreasonable and most dangerous, when exerted against a form of polity which the majority of our fellow-Christians, the wisdom of our civil governors, and the full stream of precedent, from the time of the Apostles themselves, combine to recommend to our reverence.

We find, accordingly, that our LORD, on His own departure from the world, committed, in most solemn terms, the government of His Church to His Apostles. We find these Apostles, in the exercise of the authority thus received, appointing Elders in every city, as dispensers of the word and the sacraments of religion; and we find them also appointing other Ecclesiastical Officers, who were to have the oversight of these Elders themselves; and who, in addition to the powers which they enjoyed in common with them, had the privilege, which the others had not, of admitting, by the imposition of hands, those whom they thought fit to the ministerial office. . . .

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And it is not too much to say, that we may challenge those who differ from us, to point out any single period at which the Church has been destitute of such a body of officers, laying claim to an authority derived by the imposition of hands from the Apostles themselves; or any single instance of a Church without this form of government, till the Church of Geneva, at first from necessity, and afterwards from a mistaken exposition of Scrip