xxii ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION. have thrown the longer notes into an Appendix, and that the student in divinity will now find, either in the body of the work, or in the Appendix, some proof of the following points, -that a ministry is expedient-that a ministry was ordained by God that Episcopacy is the form ordained-that the succession of bishops has been duly preserved in the Church of England-that the minor details of Church government have been left to human wisdom-and that a Confession of faith is a most important article among those details. In speaking of Episcopacy, I have used the arguments of Chillingworth and a modern Layman, Mr. Hey of Leeds, both on account of the intrinsic excellence of their reasoning, and from the wish to shew what can be urged on this important topic, by a Divine, who was no high-churchman, and by a Layman. 'I beg to refer to some judicious remarks on this point by my brother, in his translation of Neander. HADLEIGH, SUFFOLK, Sept. 26, 1831. CONTENTS. SERMON I. 1 Cor. iv. 1. Let a man so account of us, as of the Ministers of Christ, and Stewards of the mysteries of God. In the consideration of Christianity as a Religion for mankind, there is a certain point up to which its friends and its enemies can advance with an almost perfect agreement of sentiment. In the moral teaching of our Lord and his Apostles there is such a clear and triumphant superiority over every other system ever proposed to the world, that the voice of praise, which has ever been uttered by the advocates of Christianity, has been on this point re-echoed with almost equal warmth and zeal by at least the great majority of its adversaries. The declared unbeliever, indeed, could hope for little attention to his arguments, if he set out with denying a truth of which all are capable of judging. And they, who, though not in declared hostility to Christianity, are actuated by a spirit B wholly unchristian, the men of this world, the representatives of the spirit of ambition, of pleasure, and of commerce, are alive to the advantages which must accrue to them from the prevalence of the Christian principles of guilelessness and forbearance among those with whom they are to engage in the business of life. But when we advance from this ground, and speak of Christianity as a call of the Spirit, as containing within itself remedies for vice and assistances to virtue, of a higher order than the fears or the motives which morality can. urge, we speak to them who hear not, who cannot or will not understand. It is, in truth, the fatal error of man to tend perpetually to an exclusive subsistence in one part of that twofold nature with which he is endowed, sometimes to resign the practical for the speculative, but far oftener to sink the spiritual and intellectual in the earthly and carnal, to own no participation in the higher part of his nature, to resign its privileges, and forget its requirements. In this state the nutriment offered to one part of his nature, is neither adapted to the other, nor can be apprehended by it. For this is that fatal condition of which the Apostle speaks, declaring a truth no less in the philosophy of human nature than in pure religion, when he says that the carnal man discerneth not the things of the Spirit, because they 6 |