PREFACE.

THE following Sermons, published at the request of some who heard them, were under- . taken by the Author with a view to Three Objects. First, to shew, against modern Dissent, that the Church of England is a faithful witness for God's truth, and therefore entitled to the love of all good men Secondly, to make the members of her communion better acquainted with the grand doctrines which distinguish her from the Church of Rome, and so to keep them, by God's blessing, at the same distance at which the Reformers stood off from the Papal apostacy Thirdly, to let the Church declare, by her own voice, the injustice of the attempt of the New School in Oxford, to recommend to the public, through her name, the dangerous, antiprotestant doctrines which they are disseminating.

As to the first of these objects, the Author boldly challenges Dissent (which is now bent upon a system of attack) to prove that any one of the doctrines held by the Anglican Church, is at variance with the Scriptures. As to the second, he is confident, that to speak "mildly" of Romish errors, or to cease to protest against the same, is to desert the principles upon which the Reformed Church was founded. And as to the third, he cannot but express his indignant surprise that those very Articles, which so faithfully condemn the pernicious tenets of the Popish Religion, should be used by the party to which he has referred, to support their unfaithful advances towards Romanism.

The present time appears to the Author one of imminent peril to the Protestant interests of this Country. The advance of Popery, through its restoration to civil power, and the indifference of those who ought to have opposed its progress, has now become a more serious evil, from the indirect aid which the writers of the "Tracts for the Times" have given it. He trusts, however, that the National Protestantism will yet be maintained. He is willing to lend his hand to assist in the work. He sends forth these Ser

mons in the humble hope that they may, in some measure, contribute to that end. They are a plain exposition of the sentiments of the Church of England, as far as he has been able to understand them, by a comparison of the Articles with the general doctrine of the Church Service, the Book of Homilies, and the more private writings of the Anglican Reformers. Viewing the Articles upon which he has preached as a declaration of Scriptural truth against the deadly errors of Romanism, he has brought the Churches of England and Rome face to face, and endeavoured, throughout, to shew his hearers, by a plain statement of their opposite principles, the Scriptural character of the one, and the unscriptural character of the other. He commits the whole to the kind indulgence of the Christian Public, and laying it down, as a small offering of humble service, at, the feet of the Great Head of the Church, he earnestly prays that it

may receive His blessing.

St. Saviour's Southwark,

Sept. 28th, 1841.

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SERMON I.

OF THE SUFFICIENCY OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES FOR

SALVATION.

ROMANS, iv. 3.

"What saith the Scripture ?"

IN commencing a course of Sermons on the Articles of the English Protestant Church, it is necessary that I should make certain preliminary observations. In the middle of the sixteenth century, it pleased God, through the medium of His Word, to enlighten the minds of some of the Bishops and other Ecclesiastics of the Church in this country, over which the Bishop of Rome, contrary to apostolical institution and the universal practice of primitive times, had usurped, and exercised for a long period, the most injurious dominion. Brought by the Divine guidance to a perception of the truth contained in the Scriptures, they immediately began the work of Reformation-in this they were opposed; but, engaging the power of the monarch on their side, (whom various circumstances independent of religion, disposed in God's Providence, at that particular time, to act against the Roman

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