ADVICE ADDRESSED TO THE YOUNG CLERGY OF THE DIOCESS OF CARLISLE,

A SERMON

ACHED AT A GENERAL ORDINATION,

Holden at Rose Castle,

ON SUNDAY, JULY 29, 1781.

ADVERTISEMENT.

It is recommended to those who are preparing or holy orders, within the diocess of Carlise, to ead Collier's Sacred Interpreter, and the Four ospels with Clark's Paraphrase; and to candiates for priests' orders, carefully to peruse Tayor's Paraphrase on the Romans.

SERMON II.

ADVICE, ADDRESSED TO THE YOUNG CLERGY OF THE DIOCESS OF CARLISLE.

Let no man despise thy youth.-1 Tim. iv. 12. THE author of this epistle, with many better qualities, possessed in a great degree what we at this day call a knowledge of the world. He knew that although age and honours, authority of station and splendour of appearance, usually command the veneration of mankind, unless counteracted by some degrading vice, or egregious impropriety of behaviour; yet, that where these advantages are wanting, where no distinction can be claimed from rank, importance from power, or dignity from years; in such circumstances, and under the inevitable depression of narrow fortunes, to procure and preserve respect requires both care and merit. The apostle also knew, and in the text taught his beloved convert, that to obtain the respect of those amongst whom he exercised his ministry, was an object deserving the ambition of a Christian teacher, not indeed for his own sake, but for theirs, there being little reason to hope that any would profit by his instruction who de spised his person.

If St. Paul thought an admonition of this sort worthy of a place in his Epistle to Timothy, it cannot surely be deemed either beside or beneath the solemnity of this occasion, to deliver a few practicable rules of life and behaviour which may recommend you to the esteem of the people, to whose service and salvation you are now about to dedicate your lives and labours.

In the first place, the stations which you are likely, for some time at least, to occupy in the church, although not capable of all the means of rendering service and challenging respect, which fall within the power of your superiors, are free from many prejudices that attend upon hip

not only their own end, but, in a great measure, the very design and use of your vocation.

Having premised these few observations, I proceed to describe the qualities which principally conduce to the end we have at present in view, the possession of a fair and respected character.

And the first virtue (for so I will call it,) which appears to me of importance for this purpose, is frugality. If there be a situation in the world, in which profusion is without excuse, it is in that of a young clergyman who has little beside his profession to depend upon for his support. It is folly-it is ruin.-Folly, for whether it aim at luxury or show, it must fall miserably short of its design. In these competitions we are outdone by every rival. The provision which clergymen meet with upon their entrance into the church is adequate in most cases to the wants and decencies of their situation, but to nothing more. To -retend to more, is to set up our poverty not only the subject of constant observation, but as a ghing-stock to every observer. Profusion is n; for it ends, and soon too, in debt, in injuse, and insolvency. You well know how mean, in the country more especially, every man is thought of who cannot pay his credit; in what terms he is spoken of—in what light he is viewed-what a deduction this is from his good qualiaggravation of his bad ones-what

ties-what an

miss.

insults he is exposed to from his creditors, what contempt from all. Nor is this judgment far Let him not speak of honesty, who is etising deceit; for every man who is not ived. Let him not talk of liberality, out of his power to perform one act of not boast of spirit, of honour, of in , who fears the face of his creditors, eets a creditor in every street. There ness in frugality: the meanness is in and expedients, to which extravagance >ring men. Profusion is a very equivogenerosity. The proper distinction

is not between him who spends and who saves; for they may be equally selfish; but between him who spends upon himself, and him who spends upon others. When I extol frugality, it is not to praise that minute parsimony which serves for little but to vex ourselves and tease those about us, but to persuade you to economy upon a plan, and that plan deliberately adjusted to your cir cumstances and expectations. Set out with it, and it is easy; to retrieve, out of a small income, is only not impossible. Frugality in this sense, we preach not only as an article of prudence, but as a lesson of virtue. Of this frugality it has been truly said, that it is the parent of liberty, of independence, of generosity.

A second essential part of a clergyman's character, is sobriety. In the scale of human vices there may be some more criminal than drunkenness, but none so humiliating. A clergyman cànnot, without infinite confusion, produce himself in the pulpit before those who have been witnesses to his intemperance. The folly and extravagance, the rage and ribaldry, the boasts and quarrels, the idiotism and brutality of that condition, will rise up in their imaginations in full colours. To discourse of temperance, to touch in the remotest degree upon the subject, is but to revive his own shame. For you will soon have occasion to observe, that those who are the slowest in taking any part of a sermon to themselves, are surprisingly acute in applying it to the preacher.

Another vice, which there is the same, together with many additional reasons for guarding you against, is dissoluteness. In my judgment, the erying sin and calamity of this country at present, is licentiousness in the intercourse of the sexes. It is a vice which hardly admits of argument or dissuasion. It can only be encountered by the censures of the good, and the discourageme receives from the most respected orders of community. What then shall we say, when who ought to cure the malady, propagate the e