in this calling, but, they whom slow parts, personal defects, or a depressed condition of birth and education, preclude from advancement in any other. The vocation in time comes to be thought mean and uncreditable-study languishes-sacred erudition declines-not only the order is disgraced, but religion itself disparaged in such hands. Some of the most judicious and moderate of the presbyterian clergy have been known to lament this defect in their constitution. They see and deplore the backwardness in youth of active and well-cultivated faculties, to enter into the church, and their frequent resolution to quit it. Again, if a gradation of orders be necessary to invite candidates into the profession, it is still more so to excite diligence and emulation, to promote an attention to character and public opinion when they are in it; especially to guard against that sloth and negligence, into which men are apt to fall, who are arrived too soon at the limits of their expectations. We will not say, that the race is always to the swift, or the prize to the deserving; but we have never known that age of the church in which the advantage was not on the side of earning and decency.

These reasons appear to me to be well found', and they have this in their favour, that they not suppose too much; they suppose not any practicable precision in the reward of merit, any greater degree of disinterestedness, cirnspection, and propriety in the bestowing of lesiastical preferment, than what actually takes e. They are, however, much strengthened, our ecclesiastical constitution defended with reater success, when men of conspicuous and owledged merit are called to its superior sta "when it goeth well with the righteous ity rejoiceth." When pious labours and exary virtue, when distinguished learning ent utility, when long or arduous servic 1 with affluence and dignity, when a and well-directed application to the

:

of religion, when wasted spirits and declining health, are suffered to repose in honourable lei. sure, the good and wise applaud a constitution which has provided such things for such men.

Finally, Let us reflect that these, after all, are but secondary objects. Christ came not to found an empire upon earth, or to invest his church with temporal immunities. He came "to seek and to save that which was lost;" to purify to himself, from amidst the pollutions of a corrupt world, "“a peculiar people, zealous of good works." As far as our establishment conduces to forward and fa cilitate these ends, so far we are sure it falls in with his design, and is sanctified by his authority. And whilst they who are intrusted with its gov. ernment employ their cares, and the influences of their stations, in judicious and unremitting endeavours to enlarge the dominion of virtue and of Christianity over the hearts and affections of mankind, whilst "by pureness, by knowledge," by the aids of learning, by the piety of their example, they labour to inform the consciences and improve the morals of the people committed to their charge, they secure to themselves, and to the church in which they preside, peace and perma nency, reverence and support-what is infinitely more, they "save their own souls;" they prepare for the approach of that tremendous day, when Jons Christ shall return again to the world and hurch, at once the gracious rewarder of the matience, and fidelity of his servants, t avenger of abused power and neg

THE USE AND PROPRIETY OF LOCAL AND

OCCASIONAL PREACHING:

A

CHARGE,

DELIVERED

TO THE CLERGY OF THE DIOCESS OF CARLISLE, In the year 1790.

SERMON IV.

THE USE AND PROPRIETY OF LOCAL AND OCCASIONAL PREACHING.

REVEREND BRETHREN,

TRE late Archbishop Secker, whose memory is entitled to public respect, as on many accounts, so especially for the judgment with which he described, and the affecting seriousness with which he recommended the duties of his profession, in one of his charges to the clergy of his diocess,* exhorts them "to make their sermons local." I have always considered this advice as founded in a knowledge of human life, but as requiring, in its application, a more than ordinary exercise of Christian prudence. Whilst I repeat therefore the rule itself, with great veneration for the authority by which it was delivered, I think it no unfit employment of the present opportunity, to enlarge so far upon its use and meaning, as to point out some of the instances in which it may be adopted, with the probability of making saluary impressions upon the minds of our hearers.

But, before I proceed, I would warn you, and hat with all the solemnity that can belong to any monition of mine, against rendering your disurses, so local, as to be pointed and levelled at rticular persons in your congregation. This ecies of address may produce in the party for om it is intended, confusion perhaps and shame, not with their proper fruits of penitence and nility. Instead of which, these sensations will accompanied with bitter resentment against preacher, and a kind of obstinate and detered opposition to his reproof. He will impute officiousness to personal enmity, to party , to the pleasure of triumphing over an adry without interruption or reply, to insult

chbishop of Canterbury's Third Charge to his ClerAbp. Secker's Works, vol. iv,