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SEVEN SERMONS 
 
A SERIES 
 
 OF 
 
 SEVEN SERMONS 
 
 ON THE DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE AND OF THE CHURCH 
 OF ENGLAND RESPECTING THE 
 
 SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM, 
 
 THE 
 
 RITE OF CONFIRMATION, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 SACRAMENT OF THE LORDS SUPPER, 
 
 IN THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS: 
 
 PREACHED IN ST. MARY'S, WALTHAMSTOW, IN VIEW OF THE CON- 
 FIRMATION OF THE YOUNGER MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH 
 RESIDING IN THAT PARISH. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM WILSON, B. D., 
 
 Vir.VR OF WALTHAMSTOW. 
 
 WALTHAMSTOW: 
 PRINTED FOR AND SOLD BY G. BIRD, WOOD STREET. 
 
 1840. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/seriesofsevenserOOwils 
 
The Reader is requested to mule the following 
 
 correction : 
 
 Page 106. lines 10, 11, for "Sacraments'' read Sacrament. 
 

 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 
 The Sermons contained in this volume were not 
 composed with a view to publication. They are 
 printed as they were addressed by the Author to 
 his congregation. Should they, in their present 
 form, minister to the benefit of any of those over 
 whose spiritual interests he has watched, not with- 
 out anxious and affectionate solicitude, for now 
 more than eighteen years, his most earnest wish 
 in thus submitting them to their perusal will be 
 attained ; but he is not without hope that the pro- 
 duce of the sale of them, the whole of which he 
 cheerfully devotes to that object, may serve as the 
 commencement of a fund to be expended both 
 in promoting among the poorer members of one 
 part of his flock, that infant education which these 
 Discourses have incidentally but especially in view 
 to enforce, and also in affording larger facilities 
 for the work of the ministry in a district remote 
 from the parish church. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Nature of the Rite of Confirmation in its con- 
 nexion with the Sacrament of Baptism 1 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 The Obligations and the Hopes of Parents in respect 
 of their Children baptized in Infancy 19 
 
 SERMON III. 
 The Nature of the Office and the Duties of Sponsors . . 37 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 To Candidates in view of their Confirmation 52 
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 To Candidates on the Hopes and Demands of the 
 Church of them after their Confirmation 69 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 
 To the Congregation as composed of Confirmed Mem- 
 bers of the Church 85 
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper a Means of Grace 
 " generally necessary" to those who have been Con- 
 firmed 104 
 

 
 SERMON I. 
 
 ^«*r: 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE 
 
 RITE OF CONFIRMATION 
 
 IN ITS CONNEXION WITH THE 
 
 SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM. 
 
 2 Kings xxiii. 3 : 
 And all the people stood to the covenant. 
 
 The circumstances which led to this public renewal 
 of a profession of faith and obedience on the part of 
 the Church of God in Judaea, are very simply nar- 
 rated in the context. 
 
 It would appear, that during the course of the cor- 
 ruption of the true worship of God which had been 
 taking place throughout the reigns of Manasseh and 
 other apostate kings, diligent search had been made 
 for all copies of the law of God, whether in the tem- 
 ple or elsewhere, in order that by their destruction 
 the principal impediment to the universal prevalence 
 of idolatry might be removed. The gates of hell, 
 however, did not prevail against the true Church of 
 
 B 
 
I CONFIRMATION IN ITS, 
 
 God. The great principles of that law were still 
 in such measure handed down from one generation 
 to another, that even the wicked were restrained from 
 the open renunciation of the worship of the true God, 
 and the righteous found in them a light, faint as it 
 might be, whereby to guide their doubtful steps, or 
 to direct them in the religious instruction of their 
 children. Meantime some, perhaps mutilated copies 
 or distinct parts, themselves injured and corrupted, 
 would doubtless still be retained. And the context 
 leaves it clear, that in the midst of the general 
 destruction of the copies of the Law, some pious 
 priest had secreted, somewhere within the precincts 
 of the temple, that which had been originally written 
 by the hand of Moses, and from which alone all copies 
 must have derived their correctness and authority. 
 
 During the reign of idolatry, this copy was thus lost 
 to the Church. But when the good King Josiah pro- 
 posed to restore the true worship of God, and, so far 
 as he could make himself acquainted Math them, the 
 dominion of those principles of conduct which had 
 been a subject of Divine Revelation, he gave direc- 
 tions for the repair of the neglected temple ; and there 
 Hilkiah, the high-priest, in making preparation for the 
 desired work, discovered again the hidden treasure — 
 the copy of the Law which had been written by Moses 
 himself.* 
 
 This book of Moses was the record of the covenant 
 which God had made with his people, and in which 
 they had of late been but imperfectly instructed. The 
 
 * 2 Clivou. xxxiv. 14. 
 
CONNEXION WITH BAPTISM. 6 
 
 King determined to make it the rule of his own con- 
 duct, and bearing in mind his obligations to be a 
 nursing father to the Church, he took measures to 
 bring together all the families of the people, " both 
 small and great ;" and " he read in their ears all the 
 words of the book of the covenant which was so found 
 in the house of the Lord." To this time, the people 
 had, from adverse circumstances, attained to only an 
 imperfect acquaintance with the terms of the cove- 
 nant, according to which they had all been devoted to 
 God in their infancy.* Now, the inspired Law is un- 
 folded before them — every word, every blessing and 
 every obligation, is plainly and affectionately stated to 
 them in the words of the Sacred Volume ; and what 
 is the result? " All the people," it is said, both small 
 and great, " stood to the covenant." 
 
 I have thus read my text, for the present and for 
 six succeeding Discourses whbh it is my intention 
 to address to you on the subject of Confirmation. 
 The light which it may contribute to that subject 
 will appear as we proceed. 
 
 The distinct topics of my seven Discourses will 
 be the following : 
 
 I. An Explanation of the Nature of the Rite of 
 Confirmation. 
 
 This will be followed successively by six Ad- 
 dresses, viz. 
 
 II. To Parents, in reference to their Children 
 whom they have devoted to God in Baptism. 
 
 III. To Sponsors, — " Godfathers and Godmothers." 
 
 * Gen. xvii. 12—14. 
 b2 
 
1 CONFIRMATION IN ITS 
 
 IV., V. To those persons who have not been con- 
 firmed, but who intend to present themselves to the 
 Bishop at a suitable time for that purpose. 
 
 VI. To the Congregation who have been con- 
 firmed, and are now by their own profession bound 
 by the covenant to which they have stood. 
 
 VII. To those who are now Candidates for Confir- 
 mation — after they shall have been confirmed, in view 
 of their participation of the Sacrament of the Lord's 
 Supper. 
 
 May the God of light and mercy vouchsafe his 
 grace and assistance to the feeble efforts of his Minis- 
 ter, enabling him faithfully to deliver his mind of the 
 truth, and blessing all of you by the instruction which 
 
 you may receive 
 
 I am this morning to address you on The Nature 
 of the Rite of Confirmation. I make my appeal 
 calmly to your judgment. I ask only your unpre- 
 judiced and prayerful attention. 
 
 Before, however, I enter very intimately into the sub- 
 ject thus proposed to me, I must detain you on some 
 preliminary and, indeed, introductory observations. 
 
 In the first place, then, I observe, that it is the 
 primary purpose of the existence of a Church to pro- 
 mote, in obedience to the principles of Holy Scrip- 
 ture, the efficacy of those means through which the 
 Saviour has promised the communication of his grace* 
 — in prayer, for instance, in praise, in the public preach- 
 ing of the word, in the sacraments, and in all parts of 
 
 * Eph. iv. 11— 1G. 
 
CONNEXION WITH BAPTISM. O 
 
 discipline for the edification of the body of Christ. 
 In endeavouring to effect this, it is needful that the 
 Church always, either in precept, where there is 
 direct instruction, or in principle, where the rule is 
 not literally prescribed, taking the Scripture for her 
 guide, shall construct her services with a view of at 
 once illustrating that which she would enforce, and, if 
 possible, of securing and expressing the sincerity of 
 those to whose edification she ministers. Thus all 
 which is divinely appointed in the Sacrament of the 
 Lord's Supper, (to pass, for the present, other of her 
 services,) takes place in the solemn blessing of the 
 elements, in the actual participation of the bread and 
 wine, with the utterance, by the minister, of words in 
 accordance with those made use of by the Lord when 
 he first instituted that Sacrament ; — all the rest of the 
 service is afiirmatory, under the discretion of the 
 Church, of the faith and sincere devotion of those who 
 minister and those who participate. In Confirmation, 
 again, (to which subject I shall presently return,) the 
 solemn rite is fulfilled in the prayer and blessing of 
 the Bishop in the laying on of hands ; — the rest of the 
 service is amrmatory, under the discretion of the 
 Church, of the faith and sincere devotion of those 
 who minister and those who participate. In Baptism, 
 the Sacrament is administered in the appointed use of 
 water, " in the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
 and of the Holy Ghost;" — all the rest of the service, 
 I repeat it, is afnrmatory, under the discretion of the 
 Church, of the faith and the sincere devotion of those 
 who minister and those who participate. 
 
 But, though this view of the subject takes away 
 
O CONFIRMATION IN ITS 
 
 from the immediately divine authority, not of the 
 Sacraments or the rites and ordinances, so far as 
 they are directly appointed of God, but of the services 
 with which they are accompanied and ministered, it 
 yet throws open before us, as members of that 
 Church, the field of self-examination ; and if we are 
 persuaded, as well we may, (for inquiry on this point 
 is the paramount duty of every true Christian,) that 
 the Church has wisely used her discretion in con- 
 structing her services after the model of Scripture, it 
 then prescribes limits and offers aid to our humble 
 and prayerful efforts to discover the nature of those 
 blessings and those obligations which belong to us as 
 adopted children in the family of God.* 
 
 The connexion of these remarks with the subject 
 now before us will presently appear. 
 
 And, in reference to that subject, the first point to 
 which it applies is the mutual and inseparable depend- 
 ance of the Sacrament of Baptism and the rite of Con- 
 firmation, which the Church understands and en- 
 forces. That dependance is so intimate, that it is im- 
 possible rightly to state the nature of Confirmation, 
 without having first unfolded to you the scriptural 
 doctrine of the Church on the nature of the Sacra- 
 ment with which it is so connected. The time 
 demands of me that, on the present occasion, this 
 statement shall be as concise as possible. 
 
 The question so brought under our view, and on 
 which the whole mainly depends, may be expressed in 
 the following terms : 
 
 * 1 Cor. xiv. 26, 40, xi. 16; Heb. xiii. 7—9, and 17. 
 
CONNEXION WITH BAPTISM. / 
 
 M What position does Baptism hold in respect of 
 that Regeneration or New Birth, without which no 
 man can either see the kingdom of God in this world, 
 or enter into its glory in another ?" 
 
 Now, on this subject, as on very many others, the 
 Scriptures speak, not doubtfully, indeed, but vari- 
 ously, and in such a manner that, by negligent, hasty, 
 prejudiced, self-confident reading, we are likely to 
 pervert them to error. 
 
 The following are conclusions to which they lead 
 us. I beg only your calm attention. My object is to 
 explain, not to explain away, the doctrine of the 
 Church. Truth is wronged and our edification is 
 impeded when we fear fixedly to contemplate that 
 which claims to be Scripture verity, but which, for 
 lack of adequate consideration, we take for granted to 
 be erroneous. 
 
 The essential part, then, of Regeneration, is that 
 great moral change which passes on the human heart, 
 by the influence and power of the Holy Spirit,* after 
 the image of Christ. Of the commencement of this 
 moral change, no man can accurately and definitely 
 speak. Inward conviction — the order of Providence 
 — the word of God — may in the hands of its Divine 
 Author be the effecting instrument.! The Church 
 affirms, (as we shall presently observe,) in more senses 
 than one, that Baptism is a means whereby we receive 
 the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof. Once 
 commenced, it proceeds and increases through life ; 
 
 * Ezek. xi. 19, 20; John iii. 6. 
 f 1 Pet, i. 23—25 ; John iii. 8. 
 
o CONFIRMATION IN ITS 
 
 and of the efficacy of the divinely-appointed means to 
 this end, Baptism is a pledge to assure us. Thus far, 
 however, we must here remark, that to this great 
 moral change of the heart and of consequent charac- 
 ter, all the spiritual blessings of the covenant are 
 promised, in this world and the next.* 
 
 The external and visible part of the New Birth is 
 the rite of Baptism. By this we are, under the bless- 
 ing of the Holy Spirit, introduced into and made 
 members of the Church of Christ on earth, and so 
 partakers of all those external privileges which that 
 Church inherits in her militant state, and through 
 which it is promised that the Holy Spirit shall pro- 
 mote the spiritual and eternal interests of the soul, 
 and our discipline and edification to be the everlasting 
 temple of God in heaven.f No man has a covenant% 
 right to partake of these privileges of the Church 
 until he has been made a member of that Church 
 through the sacrament of Baptism. § 
 
 In the larger and stricter sense, then, Regeneration, 
 or the New Birth, includes both of these parts — the 
 change of the moral nature, and Baptism into the 
 Church on earth. || For, although " with the heart 
 man believeth unto righteousness, with the mouth 
 confession is also made unto salvation." 
 
 But the Scriptures are not always careful to assert 
 this connexion. They sometimes speak of the great 
 
 * Rom. ii. 25, 28, 29, viii. 1, 9, 14—17. 
 
 f Acts ii. 37—42, viii. 36—38; Heb. x. 22, 23; Eph. iv. 
 15, 16. 
 
 t Col. ii. 10—15. § Mark xvi. 15, 16. 
 
 || Mark xvi. 16; Gal. iii. 26—29. 
 
CONNEXION WITH BAPTISM. 
 
 change which is the essential part of the New Birth, as 
 itself the Regeneration to which all covenant blessings, 
 for time and eternity, are attached. At other times, 
 they affirm the same blessings in view of the outward 
 sign which brings with it the means to the attainment 
 of that end. And there are not wanting passages of 
 Scripture in which the presence of both is either as- 
 serted or implied In the same Epistle of Peter, for 
 instance, we read first that we are "born again, not of 
 corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word 
 of God, which liveth and abideth for ever ;"* and 
 then — after the figure of the ark which floated in 
 safety on the waters — " baptism doth also now save 
 us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but 
 the answer of a good conscience towards God) by the 
 resurrection of Jesus Christ.'"f To which the Apostle 
 Paul responds when he affirms, " Not by works of 
 righteousness which we have done, but according to 
 his mercy he saved us, by the laver, the bath, the 
 font of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy 
 Ghost."+ 
 
 From all that has been said, it would appear that in. 
 one view of this question, and that a limited one, the 
 two points of the New Birth cannot be said ordinarily 
 to have their origin at the same time. 
 
 Is the candidate for Baptism moved to approach 
 the font by inward repentance and faith, which the 
 Church requires ?§ Then the great moral change 
 has already taken its commencement. But does he, 
 
 * 1 Pet.i. 23. f 1 Pet. iii. 21. 
 
 X Tit. iii. 5. § See the Catechism. 
 
 B 3 
 
10 CONFIRMATION IN ITS 
 
 impelled by whatever cause, approach self-deceived, 
 or, as we shall presently observe, in necessary igno- 
 rance ? Then the right to the external privileges is 
 accorded before the great moral change has taken 
 place. In the former instance, there is a period 
 during which, whatever may be the spiritual attain- 
 ments of the candidate for admission into the Church 
 on earth, the covenant claims to the privileges of that 
 Church ; and in the latter instance, whatever may be 
 the promised efficacy of the means of grace, the claims 
 to the essential and spiritual privileges of the Gospel, 
 are equally suspended. 
 
 That the Church so interprets Scripture is manifest ; 
 for in reference to the sincere and enlightened partici- 
 pators of Baptism, although, as we have seen, she 
 requires of them the signs of the previous commence- 
 ment of the great moral change, in repentance and 
 faith — she plainly declares that the grace of the Sacra- 
 ments is not the first movement of the Spirit of God 
 in the heart, but that by the Sacraments, as means of 
 spiritual good to us, peculiar and exclusive in their 
 nature, "he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not 
 only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our 
 faith in him;" that same faith, with a consistent re- 
 pentance, having been already required of them who 
 come to be baptized. But she so affirms the outward 
 sign to be a part of the New Birth, by which we are 
 introduced into the Church militant on earth, that, 
 in a large but definite sense, though she requires in 
 those who approach in sincerity and ask an interest in 
 the blessings of the Church, that which is a manifesta- 
 tion of the effectual previous commencement of the 
 
CONNEXION WITH BAPTISM. 11 
 
 spiritual life, she restricts her definition to the quick- 
 ening and confirming grace of the Sacraments, and 
 declares that the two parts of the New Birth being 
 now associated, herein and thus the baptized is rege- 
 nerated and born again — born of water and of the 
 Spirit. So much for those who at the time rightly 
 receive the Sacraments. With them, the period of 
 suspended blessings precedes the participation of 
 Baptism. 
 
 But the Church follows out this rule in reference to 
 infants, and to others, who are charitably received 
 into the number of God's people on their perhaps 
 ignorant profession of a right faith. The proper sign, 
 on the part of God, of the Church, and of the member 
 of the Church, of the right of the baptized to all the 
 blessings conveyed by promise to God's people, is the 
 permission to partake of the Sacrament of the Lord's 
 Supper, and therein to approach the footstool of the 
 throne of grace as one accepted and fully blessed in 
 Christ Jesus. 
 
 Now that privilege the administration of Baptism 
 does not necessarily convey. Time is given for sub- 
 sequent self-examination, for the instruction of the 
 Church, the use of the means granted to the baptized, 
 and the examination of appointed ministers, followed 
 by the Confirmation of the Bishop, before the full 
 membership of the baptized is ratified. In the case, 
 then, of those who are baptized in necessary igno- 
 rance, as of infants, or of those whose profession of 
 faith and repentance is charitably received, the sus- 
 pension of privilege takes place after the reception 
 of the outward sign, and that privilege is ratified in 
 
12 CONFIRMATION IN ITS 
 
 the rite of Confirmation. Though Baptism is in " the 
 laver of Regeneration," the renewing of the Holy 
 Ghost takes a far wider range, and includes in its 
 course the grace of Baptism as the distinctive and 
 connecting element of the New Birth. 
 
 And now, to make these matters yet the more clear, 
 let us occupy a few moments in contrasting with what 
 has been said, and with each other, the prevailing 
 errors of the present day. They lie, as for the most 
 part all errors lie, in extremes. 
 
 There are those, for instance, who think that Rege- 
 neration is so exclusively in that which is the essential 
 part of it — the great moral change of the heart — that 
 the outward rite is, at the most, only figurative, and 
 may therefore be, without danger, altogether set aside. 
 They live and they die unbaptized.* 
 
 Others, and they are many, very intimately symbol- 
 ize with these. They dare not resist the plain intima- 
 tions of Scripture, that the Sacraments are "generally 
 necessary to salvation ;" but then, as though in this 
 one instance a legal ceremony had been reserved to 
 the Church, they satisfy themselves in the misbelief 
 that those Sacraments are not in a peculiar sense a 
 means of grace, but only an outward figure or type, 
 which is to produce a sort of natural movement in the 
 affections; that they are "merely badges and tokens 
 of Christian men's profession," and not, by God's 
 mercy, "effectual signs of grace." 
 
 The Romish Church, on the other hand, with those 
 who symbolize or draw near to symbolize with her, — 
 
 * 2 Kings v. 8—14; Matt. iii. 13—17. 
 
CONNEXION WITH BAPTISM. 13 
 
 and, sooth to say, at the present time we are even in 
 danger of this, — the Romish Church, so far from re- 
 stricting Regeneration to the moral change of the 
 heart, attributes all to the ministration of the external 
 sign, by the hands of those who are appointed to 
 baptize, and holds it forth to be believed, that, without 
 regard to the state of him who seeks Baptism, or even 
 of him who ministers it, the grace is communicated, 
 as from a deposit of grace entrusted to the Church, 
 to whomsoever it may be who partakes of the Sacra- 
 ment ; and that, strange to say, Baptism, as such, 
 brings with it remission of original sin, justification, 
 sanctification and eternal life. 
 
 Amidst all these conflicting errors, the Church of 
 England takes a safe and middle course. 
 
 She never administers Baptism — the Sacrament of 
 the New Birth — without, in the case of them of riper 
 years, the presumption of the spiritual life in those 
 who are to be partakers of it ; and then she regards 
 the uniting grace of both the sign and the spiritual 
 sanctification of the heart, as the grace of Regenera- 
 tion. 
 
 The case of infants offers a necessary exception. 
 They who doubt whether God enters into covenant 
 with man in his extremest infancy, may obtain satis- 
 faction by reading the seventeenth chapter of the 
 book of Genesis. The Church has from the first held 
 it to be according to the mind of God in the Scrip- 
 tures, that Baptism should be administered to infants.* 
 Docs she, then, believe that in the case of infants 
 
 * Acts ii. 38, 39 : Mark ix. 13—16. 
 
14 CONFIRMATION IN ITS 
 
 grace accompanies the administration? So far as the 
 necessity of the case will allow, she does. For re- 
 pentance and faith, in the nature of things she cannot 
 look ; the signs, that is, of antecedent spiritual life, 
 she cannot expect. But these things she does look 
 for in the parents and sponsors. She brings to her aid 
 earnest and fervent prayer, which God has pledged 
 himself to hear and to answer. She claims a solemn 
 promise, that from the first movement of feeling and 
 intelligence, the child shall be carefully trained up to 
 the service of God ; and then — can she doubt it ? — she 
 believes that the Spirit of God is present, attesting in 
 that Sacrament the truth of God's promises, and sanc- 
 tioning the delegated authority of the Church to admit 
 even an infant into the number of her members, to 
 hold a covenant right to the use of all those means of 
 grace to which God has promised his spiritual bless- 
 ing. 
 
 In the case of adults, the New Birth into the out- 
 ward Church in view of all her privileges, is perfected 
 by Baptism after the commencement of the great 
 moral change which is wrought in the heart by the 
 operation of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 In the case of infancy, the New Birth by Baptism 
 into the Church, in respect of her formal but effectual 
 privileges, may accompany, it may precede, the great 
 moral change ; and so that great moral change take 
 place after the admission of the baptized into the 
 Church, in view of a participation of her external but 
 effectual privileges. Until that change has com- 
 menced, the spiritual and eternal blessings of the 
 covenant are suspended, and the baptized has, there- 
 
CONNEXION WITH BAPTISM. 15 
 
 fore, no right granted to him to partake of the other 
 Sacrament — the pledge, as that Sacrament is, of his 
 personal interest in the higher and ultimate blessings 
 of the covenant. 
 
 In this middle course the Church of England holds 
 her way ; avoiding the errors of both extremes — 
 regardless of metaphysical niceties — desirous alone of 
 being scriptural, and successful in her attempt. 
 
 We are now prepared to enter on our statement of 
 the nature of the rite of Confirmation, and, after our 
 introductory remarks, little time need be occupied in 
 making that statement. 
 
 No person who carefully reads in the New Testa- 
 ment the history of the early Church, can reasonably 
 doubt that the labours of the subordinate ministers 
 were under the revisal of the higher officers of the 
 Christian community — that the apostles visited the 
 several churches to examine into the effect of the 
 ministry of the word, and, as it is there expressed, 
 with what exact intention I do not now pause to 
 inquire, to confirm the churches. It is as little to be 
 doubted that, in conveying the blessing of the high 
 office which they held, they laid their hands on the 
 converts whom they so acknowledged and received. 
 And it is equally manifest that God mercifully concur- 
 red in the Confirmation so administered.* Now, with- 
 out offering any speculation on the nature of the Con- 
 firmation to which reference is made in these pas- 
 sages, the Church, we may observe, in the use of her 
 discretion, imitates, as far as the case will allow, the 
 
 * Acts xiv. 21—23, xv. 41, viii. 14-17; Heb. vi. 2. 
 
\G CONFIRMATION IN ITS 
 
 apostolic practice. The baptized and instructed are 
 presented to the Bishop, who, on being assured of 
 their faithfulness and sincerity, confirms to them the 
 blessings of the covenant to which they have surren- 
 dered themselves. 
 
 Where the candidates have been baptized in their 
 riper years, then, in Confirmation, on the declaration 
 of those who present themselves, that they hold to the 
 profession which they made at their Baptism, the act 
 of the subordinte minister is acknowledged, and the 
 full admission of the baptized into the privileges of the 
 Church is confirmed by the highest officer — the Bishop. 
 Nor does the Church doubt, that as the extraordinary 
 gifts of the Spirit were conveyed by the laying on of 
 the hands of the apostles, so, in this instance, the 
 Holy Ghost is present, and, with measured blessing, 
 sanctions the work of his appointed servant. 
 
 Where Baptism has taken place in infancy, though 
 the mode and issue of Confirmation is the same, yet 
 the conditions are somewhat changed — they partake of 
 that character which the necessity of the case requires. 
 Here the use of the means of grace, instruction, know- 
 ledge, faith, obedience, have all taken place, within the 
 promises, indeed, but after Baptism, by which those 
 promises, so far as they regarded the means of salva- 
 tion, were visibly signed and sealed. 
 
 What, then, is the actual state of a young person, 
 who has been baptized in infancy, before and in 
 respect of Confirmation*? 
 
 I will illustrate it by a supposed, but possible case. 
 
 It had been possible that an estate should have been 
 given to him in his infancy, to the actual possession of 
 
CONNEXION WITH BAPTISM. 17 
 
 which certain conditions were attached, which he must 
 himself thereafter recognize and attest— it might have 
 been now given to him on a covenant, to the terms 
 of which his parents or other representatives were 
 required, for the present, to affix their signatures — 
 solemnly engaging thereby, with the aid afforded to 
 them by the returns of that estate, carefully and ear- 
 nestly to administer an education suitable to the 
 expectations so created. The personal possession or 
 the ultimate loss of the benefit intended would, in 
 such a case, depend on the result of the education so 
 administered — the personal concurrence, that is, of the 
 infant, when at an age to determine and act for him- 
 self, in the terms to which his representatives had 
 pledged their sincerity. In this case, would there not 
 be, as it were, a renewal, even to a constructive re- 
 originating of the covenant — its obligations and its 
 blessings — when the signature was so affixed? The 
 mind of him who bestowed the gift itself would not, 
 indeed, be changed. The gift itself could scarcely be 
 said to be enlarged. The benefactor has throughout 
 surely kept and performed his part of the covenant ; 
 but the full appropriation has been, by necessity of 
 the, as yet, imperfect intentions and will of the infant 
 respecting it, to the present moment suspended. 
 
 In such a supposed case, we have an illustration of 
 the state of one baptized in infancy, in respect of Con- 
 firmation. The blessings of the covenant were con- 
 ditionally but, in the means, actually given to him at 
 his Baptism — given, in fact, not to himself indivi- 
 dually, who, of the necessity of the case, was incapable 
 of appreciating and using them, but to his parents and 
 
18 CONFIRMATION, &C. 
 
 representatives, for his good — to be expended in his 
 instruction and discipline for everlasting life ; and, 
 when he arrived at a suitable age and adequate reli- 
 gious attainments to be claimed by himself and con- 
 firmed to him on his own sincere profession of faith 
 and obedience. 
 
 These things being premised, respecting the state of 
 those who have been baptized in infancy, the nature of 
 Confirmation is in all cases the same. The person 
 presenting himself to be confirmed, declares before 
 the Church, that he stands to the covenant. The 
 Bishop acknowledges the declaration, renews to him 
 the promises of God's grace and favour, and, by the 
 highest earthly authority in such a case, admits him to 
 the full participation of the blessings which God has 
 given to his Church on earth, in anticipation of and 
 preparation for her glory in another world. 
 
 Much is still left to be observed on this subject. A 
 wide field of instruction is thrown open before me. 
 On the next Sunday morning I shall address those of 
 you who are parents, and who have devoted children 
 to God in Baptism, in view of their subsequent Con- 
 firmation. 
 
SERMON II. 
 
 THE OBLIGATIONS AND THE HOPES 
 
 PARENTS 
 
 IN RESPECT OF THEIR CHILDREN BAPTIZED IN 
 INFANCY. 
 
 2 Kings xxiii. 3: 
 And all the people stood to the covenant. 
 
 The arrangement I proposed of subjects for my 
 Lectures on Confirmation, leads me this morning to 
 address those of you who are parents, and who have 
 devoted your children to God in Baptism, in view of 
 their being hereafter presented to the Bishop to be 
 confirmed. 
 
 The subject is in a high sense exclusive, and in 
 some part fraught with difficulties ; not because it is 
 in itself wanting in simplicity, but because it lies so 
 near to every man's convictions, and so forces itself 
 on every man's thoughts, that there are few who do 
 not come at last to imagine that their own opinion 
 
20 
 
 OBLIGATIONS AND HOPES 
 
 respecting it is truth, and, in consequence, to give 
 slight attention to the argument which ought to dis- 
 pose them to suspect that they may somehow have 
 mistaken first principles, and be pursuing their course 
 in fatal, though not irremediable error. 
 
 We have before us, then, the following twofold 
 question : " What are the obligations and the hopes 
 of parents in respect of their children, yet in in- 
 fancy, who by their choice and concurrence were, 
 short! ij after their birth, baptized into the Church of 
 Christ?" 
 
 On this subject, without distinctly again referring to 
 the division so suggested, I shall arrange the thoughts 
 which I have to offer to you under the three following 
 heads : — the obligations of Christian parents in respect 
 of their baptized children — the rayige of their duties, 
 and — the proper limits of their hopes; that is, in 
 other words, my discourse will contemplate severally 
 yourselves, your children and the COVENANT. 
 
 For, I presume, as, indeed, I have already hinted, 
 that, although the Church does not, for reasons to 
 which I shall have occasion to refer in my next Lec- 
 ture, recognize the parents, as such, in the order of her 
 baptismal service, yet you heartily concurred in your 
 child's Baptism ; that, being yourselves Christians 
 you did so from conviction, after much meditation 
 and prayer; and, moreover, that, knowing as you did, 
 that Baptism itself takes place in the use of the few 
 words and the very simple administration which our 
 Lord himself instituted, your concurrence included, 
 freely on your part, all the doctrine of the Church, 
 and the large views of obligation and blessing which 
 
OF PARENTS. 21 
 
 her form of Baptismal Service implies. You were 
 yourselves, it may be, present, and so personally and 
 devoutly gave your sanction to all this ; and, in a 
 sense to which I shall again refer, as it were, renewed 
 your own acquiescence in all the terms of the cove- 
 nant, in the Baptism of your child. 
 
 What, then, is the distinctive outline of the relation- 
 ship thus unfolded to our view? We have here a 
 parent, not (most unreasonable and unchristian pre- 
 sumption!) deferring the use of the effectual sign and 
 pledge of the covenant, until the intellect and, in 
 some sense, the passions shall have attained their 
 maturity, but knowingly and purposely bringing to 
 the " laver" a very infant, in a state necessarily and 
 utterly incapable of any conception of the part which 
 he is fulfilling — of either assent or disapproval; 
 laying that infant under obligations which have respect 
 to the eye of the all-wise God ; and claiming for it, on 
 the terms of a covenant, conditional blessings which 
 contemplate his whole existence, both in the present 
 world and in the next. 
 
 Now, with such a statement before us, what must 
 be the original reflections suggested to us '? 
 
 The Scriptures contemplate the whole range of 
 human life — all its capabilities, all its dangers, its 
 present and its future hopes and fears, with the inti- 
 mate connexion of all these with the several relation- 
 ships which attend us and influence our movements 
 and our habits, in our immediate state ; and in this 
 large view they affectingly make their appeal — " Can 
 a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not 
 have compassion on the son of her womb ?" May we 
 
22 OBLIGATIONS AND HOPES 
 
 not add, Can a father, possessing a knowledge of the 
 terms of the highest human happiness, and affirming 
 his own supreme and earnest desire to be interested 
 in those terms, neglect to use the power which is 
 granted to him to bring his child within the range of 
 the blessings so offered to him? Can Christian 
 parents willingly fail to " train up a child in the way in 
 which he should go," in order to the attainment of the 
 favour of God in the present world, and his eternal 
 glory in the next ? 
 
 But you have already acknowledged this your obli- 
 gation — this covenant obligation of your nature and 
 the existence of your offspring — and, in effect, you 
 have professed, before the Church, your firm but 
 dependant determination to fulfil it. Had you been 
 Heathen parents, you might have been imagined igno- 
 rantly to surrender your child to the pledged educa- 
 tion of his sponsors ; but you are Christian and 
 enlightened parents. You gave your child willingly 
 and intelligently to the terms of the Christian cove- 
 nant. You have learned to discriminate between 
 your own duties and those of the sponsors. You never 
 intended to surrender the education of your child to 
 them; but your concurrence fully implied, that what- 
 ever depended on you for the preparation of your 
 infant for the high destiny which was before him, you 
 would yourselves give. The Church received your 
 child as devoted to the Lord. The child was again 
 placed in your arms and restored to your home, that 
 you might fulfil your pledge, and do all which a 
 parent might do to promote its everlasting welfare. 
 But that performance, so far as you are concerned — 
 
OF PARENTS. 23 
 
 and how far, too, for the child also ! — involved the 
 security of those blessings which, in presenting him 
 for Baptism, you seemed to demand for your infant. 
 
 Can any thing be imagined more consistent with 
 all we are taught to believe respecting God, the grace 
 of the Gospel and the economy of his Church, than 
 the combination thus brought before us ? — A cove- 
 nant for the salvation of a responsible being in in- 
 fancy — wherein, for the present and eternal welfare 
 of the child, God promising the gift of his Spirit, the 
 Church, the parents, the sponsors, are all made inte- 
 rested parties, and, (the appropriation of those blessings 
 left still suspended,) the pledge is given on all hands 
 to minister such a holy training and discipline, that, 
 the Holy Spirit graciously blessing human endeavours, 
 the infant, as years proceed and nature asserts her 
 maturer powers, may learn to refuse the evil and 
 choose the good, and so devote himself to the service 
 of the Most High, that he may claim the gracious 
 boon. 
 
 Taking a lower view of human existence, I ask, in 
 illustration of what has been said, Has not many a 
 parent, holding his infant in his arms, anticipated with 
 confidence, in the education he intended to administer, 
 his future station and destiny in the present life? 
 Had that parent held consistently to his confidence, 
 and had adequate assistance been given to him from 
 above, the result would have certainly followed, and 
 his hopes and purposes certainly been fulfilled. 
 
 But here another question demands our careful 
 notice. 
 
24 
 
 OBLIGATIONS AND HOPES 
 
 If an infant may be the subject of a covenant before 
 he is capable of estimating either the obligations which 
 are thereby bound upon him, or the blessings which 
 are so conferred, and that, all dependant on the result 
 of education to which God has promised his concur- 
 rence and blessing — at what moment must that educa- 
 tion commence? When may a child be said to be 
 first capable of religious education ? 
 
 Now I will not hesitate to assert, in the first in- 
 stance, what I will immediately proceed to illustrate, 
 that an infant is received into covenant by Baptism, 
 because from the moment of his Baptism, were that 
 Baptism administered as early as the covenant seal 
 was granted to the Church of Israel, — from the 
 moment of his Baptism, he is not only capable of, but 
 necessarily subject to an education which affects his 
 religious character and hopes. Religious influences 
 begin with the birth — they become conditions of the 
 covenant of salvation at Baptism. 
 
 Let us see how this applies. 
 
 "We were born, all, children of wrath — that is, with 
 propensities of mind easily developed and formed to 
 sin by those incitements to evil by which we are sur- 
 rounded, and which have vitality and direction given 
 to them by the Prince of the Power of the Air — but 
 which may also be subdued to the renewal of the 
 heart by holy influences, blessed and quickened by 
 the Holy Spirit of God. 
 
 They who have treated of the training of the young 
 in the way in which they should go, have taught us, 
 for the most part, to arrange the subject under two 
 heads — those of instruction and education — the latter 
 
OF PARENTS. 25 
 
 implying all proper modes of unfolding and giving 
 vigour to the mental and bodily powers; and the 
 former, the communication of knowledge, whether 
 religious or other, for its various purposes. And they 
 add, generally, that the desired end is to be promoted 
 through learning, discipline and example. Now all 
 this is very true, if applied at the right time and after 
 the right mode, — these are parts of a truly reli- 
 gious training, if they are administered on religious 
 principles and for truly religious ends ; but they do 
 not reach the subject before us, — they do not contem- 
 plate, that is, the very infancy of human life, — they 
 begin not with the obligations of the covenant. 
 Education, to be effectual of its ends, must adapt 
 itself to the actual state, powers, or want of power, of 
 the educated. An infant is incapable of the forms of 
 truth ; its movements of thought and of observation 
 are, in the first instance, if they may be said to exist at 
 all, of the very feeblest texture. And yet is an infant 
 capable of the strongest impressions, and all the move- 
 ments of its being are subject to influences from 
 without. 
 
 Is this true? Observe then the consequences which 
 follow upon it. 
 
 The foundations of all character are in morals — that 
 is, in the first instance, in the dispositions of the heart ; 
 and those dispositions are not in themselves reason- 
 able, though they become eventually subject to a mind 
 governed by reason ; but meantime, before reason can 
 be said to have any direction, and therefore long 
 before it is cultivated to the exercise of its powers, 
 the heart may be influenced and subdued. In truth, 
 c 
 
26 OBLIGATIONS AND HOPES 
 
 the whole question now before us, is involved in the 
 use of another instrument in the right training of the 
 young. Before discipline or example or instruction, 
 and more largely, for the ends we have in view, 
 throughout the progress of all these, is sympathy. 
 
 A very infant (baptized whenever he may be) sym- 
 pathizes with parental love and parental authority, 
 before he is able to discriminate and assent to either 
 the one or the other ; and therein is the commence- 
 ment, and, for a time, the whole substance, of religious 
 education. I may illustrate this by an appeal to any 
 affectionate mother before me, on the marked influ- 
 ence of soothing sounds, or of sharp and irritating 
 intonations, whether addressed directly to the child or 
 otherwise, on the very nature of infancy — and I may 
 ask such, if they have not observed how progressively 
 these infant emotions have combined themselves with 
 the opening faculties of attention, contemplation, de- 
 finite desire, the acquirement of knowledge, and the 
 rest ? 
 
 The religious education, then, of an infant is in the 
 right regulation of the sympathies, and, for this, in the 
 direct and marked and expressed, always expressed, 
 dominion of religious affections — those affections, 
 without reason, in the first instance, and subse- 
 quently, but orderly, combining themselves with all 
 the enlarging means of discipline and instruction. 
 
 And all this is as, in the first instance, but the pre- 
 paring of the soil for the future seed of truth, not one 
 grain of which has yet been dropped into it; and sub- 
 sequently, the loosening, the weeding and watering of 
 that l >i\, that the growth of that which has been judi- 
 
OF PARENTS. 27 
 
 ciously committed to the bosom of the earth may be 
 the more healthful and productive. Religion is Truth 
 germinating, striking, growing and made fruitful in the 
 sympathies of the heart, and thence in the conduct of 
 the whole life. 
 
 And now, however diversified may be the instru- 
 ments of the education of the young, and they are 
 necessarily many, have we not clearly discovered the 
 appropriate place of that part which is administered by 
 the parent ? Knowledge and some sort of discipline, 
 a child must gradually obtain from every hand ; but 
 all this, and from the very commencement of life and 
 the first opening of the faculties, in due subservience 
 to the higher and proper ends of a religious life, wisely 
 regulated by paternal authority, and affectionately 
 mingled with the love of a mother's heart, — all this, for 
 the purposes of the covenant, he must receive from 
 his parents alone ! 
 
 And here I touch upon a subject which has been 
 before my mind throughout my discourse. Has it 
 not throughout been implied that parents, in order to 
 fulfil their covenant duties to those whom God has en- 
 trusted to their care, must themselves be, in the high- 
 est and proper sense, religious? — that their religion 
 must sink deep into their affections, and as deeply move 
 and regulate the sympathies of their hearts ? It is not 
 enough that they approve what is right, or even com- 
 municate and enforce it. It is not enough, in this 
 primary view, (for how can an infant observe it?) that, 
 as a question of example, their lives be, even to the 
 utmost limit of self-denial and obedience to the known 
 will of God, surrendered to the obligations of religion. 
 b2 
 
28 OBLIGATIONS AND HOPES 
 
 They must feel what is holy, and give due and consist- 
 ent expression to it. The love of God in their souls 
 must contemplate the manifestations of the Divine 
 compassion to their child as well as to themselves ; 
 their desire of salvation must involve his eternal wel- 
 fare ; their faith and diligence and hope must include 
 within their range all which is connected with the spi- 
 ritual well-being of their infant. The religion of a 
 parent, in fact, embraces — includes within itself, also 
 the religion of the child; and, in a very important 
 sense, the parent cultivates the manifestations of the 
 grace of God in his offspring by cultivating them in 
 himself. 
 
 There is this, moreover, attendant on what has thus 
 been stated. The early movements of a life devoted 
 to God are like the tender shoots first springing forth 
 from the earth, which need the watchful care and 
 cultivation of the husbandman, but reward his con- 
 tinued and persevering anxiety by the vigour and 
 fruitfulness of their growth. When religion first com- 
 municates of its holy influence to the mind after the 
 natural powers are matured, how frequently do we 
 see its progress and growth in perverted forms — the 
 fruit is hardly brought to perfection. But when it 
 has been administered while the sympathies alone 
 Mere awake, the knowledge, faith, holiness, experi- 
 ence of the parent accompany the progressive increase 
 of all which is holy in the child, until habits are 
 formed and every pledge is given of a self-denying, 
 sober and persevering consistency throughout the 
 religious life. 
 
OF PARENTS. 
 
 29 
 
 But our remarks must here assume a different form. 
 Whatsoever may be the apparent connexion between 
 a rightly-administered education and good results, 
 that connexion is by no means original and certain. 
 The nature of a pla?it, indeed, will perhaps neces- 
 sarily obey the hand of the cultivator ; but man is 
 born in sin, and his tendency is from the womb to go 
 astray ; — religion finds not in his bosom a native soil 
 or a favouring atmosphere. Whence, then, do the 
 fond hopes of a religious parent derive their firm- 
 ness and stability '? Do you say they must rely on the 
 grace of God, and submit silently to his manifested 
 will ? How frequently are great truths uttered, which 
 become erroneous by the mode in which we receive 
 them ! A negligent and unconditional reliance on the 
 grace of God, or that which regards that grace as so 
 distributed as to leave the Most High unfaithful to his 
 promises, are unjustified equally by Scripture and by 
 fact. 
 
 Let my text rather supply the answer. The grace 
 of God flows from the fountain of the Divine Mind 
 through the channels or means by which he has said 
 that he will communicate it. When God first gave 
 that law to which my text refers, he declared his 
 mind respecting it — " I make a covenant."* Does 
 our heart, with the people of Israel, respond to the 
 affirmation of the Most High? Do we on our part 
 say, " I stand to the covenant !" Then the blessings, — 
 the grace of that covenant are ours. Our hopes rest 
 safely on what God has promised to communicate to 
 
 * Exodus xxxiv. 10. 
 
30 OBLIGATIONS AND HOPES 
 
 those who are, according to the covenant, obedient to 
 his will. 
 
 How, then, does this apply to the question now 
 before us ? 
 
 To us the words of the covenant are all the words 
 of the Bible — the law perfectly developed, fulfilled 
 and illustrated. Do you ask me then, what good 
 hope you have that your efforts to train up your child 
 in the way in which he should go, will be effectual of 
 the desired end? I answer, asking again, Do you 
 stand to the covenant? And to obtain a safe answer 
 to this last question, let us return to what has been 
 already suggested respecting education, and trace its 
 connexion onward through life. 
 
 Must you be yourself truly religious in order to 
 communicate, not religious knowledge alone, but, 
 which is equally and primarily necessary also, reli- 
 gious influences to your child ? Your religion must 
 personally be the religion of the covenant, or it 
 is not within the sphere of the blessing ; it must be 
 the religion, that is, of the Bible. Fall short of this, 
 and on what do your hopes rest ? You have no as- 
 surance of God's blessing and grace but in Christ 
 Jesus. Worldly parents will probably train up their 
 children to various measures of worldliness. A merely 
 moral parent will educate for morality. He who, 
 from whatever cause, holds partial or erroneous views 
 of the truths and obligations of Scripture, will impress 
 on the mind and character of his offspring all the un- 
 certainty, or all the self-will and obstinacy, of error. 
 
 These are natural results, without the blessing of 
 God. And where even truth prevails, that which is in- 
 
OF PARENTS. 31 
 
 consistent in practice, from a like cause must produce 
 similar results. You may appeal to the actual state of 
 society for a proof of all which is here asserted. You 
 may there fix your thoughts on the varied forms of 
 human character, and easily trace, in each case, results 
 to their causes. In how many instances cross lights 
 of truth, admitted partially and suspiciously, have 
 made only " darkness visible " ! In how many more, 
 (the terms of the economy of our salvation having 
 been administered negligently and subordinately, — 
 that is, having been made doubtful and dishonoured,) 
 men have attained to the maturity of intellectual 
 power and acquirement before they have escaped 
 from the very infancy of religious knowledge and 
 character ! He alone who stands to the covenant, in 
 all its requirements and in view of all its promises, 
 has a just right to hope for the attendant grace of 
 God — and that hope will never be disappointed. But 
 how seldom is this the actual state of things ! How 
 generally do even religious parents feel themselves 
 driven back, as it were, by their own inconsistencies 
 and errors, to a reliance on the grace of God alone, 
 almost irrespectively of the covenant of grace ! 
 
 But the subject is larger yet. If we must ourselves 
 be obedient members of the covenant, fully to justify an 
 expectation of the blessings promised in the covenant 
 for our children, we must also minister their education 
 after the same rule. To train up a child in the way in 
 which he should go, is to train him up in the way of 
 the covenant ; that is, in plain words, in the way of the 
 Bible. If you wish all the promises made to your child 
 in Baptism to be fulfilled, you must from the first 
 
32 OBLIGATIONS AND HOPES 
 
 dawn of his intellectual and moral nature, and until he 
 is of age to take these things on himself, instruct and 
 educate him in simple accordance with the Scriptures. 
 All the ordinary motives which prevail among men in 
 respect of the training of the young, must at best be 
 secondary, in your view, to those which you find 
 there ; and if opposed in any measure to the right and 
 large influence of the truth as it is in Jesus, they must 
 be cordially and wholly deprecated and renounced. 
 
 You must take for granted all which the Scriptures 
 — the words of the covenant — say respecting the 
 actual, the fallen, the corrupt, the naturally lost state 
 of your infant, and bear in mind that in education 
 you are not merely unfolding that which has a ten- 
 dency to good, but that you have yet more to do in 
 correcting and restraining to a contrary and opposing 
 habit that which is essentially evil. 
 
 The standard of righteousness to which you propose 
 to raise your child, must be that of the Word of God, 
 comprising all its various parts — repentance for sin, 
 faith in Christ, conversion, obedience to the known 
 will of the Most High, self-control, consistency, per-, 
 severance. 
 
 You must endeavour, as soon as possible, to find a 
 place in the heart of your child for those motives 
 which the covenant affords and to which it appeals. 
 To regulate his conduct by the desire of present good 
 or reputation, or even of affording pleasure to you, 
 are at the best but secondary motives. Let them, as 
 soon as possible, be made second to those which arise 
 from a contemplation of the grace, the love, the glory 
 of the cross. How numberless are the motives to 
 
OP PARENTS. 33 
 
 obedience to the covenant which are afforded by the 
 Gospel ! From these, as a wise master-builder, the 
 parent must choose, adapting them to the rising, the 
 ever-varying exigencies of the case — these, from the 
 first desire of the pardon of sin, to the fear which is as 
 darkness, and the hope which is full of immortality. 
 
 Then must you bear in mind that (to warn and to 
 encourage you) the Scriptures bring before us in- 
 stances of success and of failure in the education of 
 the young. 
 
 Like Hannah, give your child to God, and train 
 him to his high destinies from his birth — the holiness 
 of a Samuel may be the result. 
 
 Like Abraham, command your children and your 
 household after you, that they keep the way of the 
 Lord to do judgment and justice — and the blessings 
 of the covenant shall rest upon them. 
 
 But be unlike Lot, who relied on the natural force 
 of religious education, and took his children into the 
 world, where they perished with the wicked. 
 
 Be unlike Aaron, who set his children an example 
 of idolatry, and his first-born perished in their im- 
 piety. 
 
 Be unlike Eli, whose weak affections put not ade- 
 quate restraints on the evil tendencies of his sons — 
 and he lived just long enough to see and repent under 
 the fearful punishment which came upon them. 
 
 Is there, then, in truth a reasonable and sure hope 
 
 in obedience to the terms of the covenant? Happily. 
 
 the promises are not only given in general terms to 
 
 those who are in Christ Jesus, but they attach them- 
 
 c 3 
 
34 OBLIGATIONS AND HOPES 
 
 selves to those means through which the grace of God 
 is conveyed to us. 
 
 To the reading and the hearing of the Word of God, 
 the blessing of faith and of obedience is attached. 
 Let it, then, be one of your first objects to make your 
 child acquainted with the Scriptures, and dispose him 
 to read for the promised ends. 
 
 To the observation of the Sabbath peculiar grace is 
 given. Place your child in circumstances, and largely 
 form such habits in him, as may assure to him this 
 result. 
 
 He who asks, we read, shall be heard and answered 
 in Christ Jesus. Instruct your child in the holy art of 
 prayer. Pray with him. Let prayer be a household 
 custom. Lead him onward to the personal habit of 
 prayer, as you would teach him the first movements 
 of his person or his tongue. 
 
 All the economy of the Church, too, is arranged to 
 make effectual the blessings of the covenant. Far, 
 far from efforts to educate, be controversial forms of 
 religious truth; but education to holiness, including 
 edification in union with the body of Christ, must 
 connect itself with the ordinances of the Church. 
 How large is this subject, and how neglected ! And 
 yet is there therein something intimately connected 
 with that which is more immediately before us. The 
 Church is the mother of us all. Her very existence 
 in the favour of God depends upon her faithful minis- 
 trations to the spiritual and eternal welfare of his 
 children, and that in modes best calculated to pro- 
 mote true religion in all periods of the life. The 
 
OF PARENTS. 35 
 
 wise parent will trace the connexion of his best hopes 
 with obedience to her institutions. He will train up 
 his child with a view of his entering seriously and 
 affectionately into her services, that he may partake, 
 now and for ever, of the blessings which God has 
 granted to her in her Saviour. 
 
 But, after all, as the grace of God connects the 
 means of our spiritual welfare with their results, so 
 prayer, of God's mercy and through the intercession 
 of our ascended Lord, seeks and secures to us that 
 grace. All our endeavours must be in vain without 
 the persevering exercise of this duty. None can be 
 in vain. if, being according to the covenant, they be 
 forwarded by that grace which will assuredly be 
 accorded to us in answer to our earnest, persevering 
 and faithful prayers. 
 
 Am I asked, then, wherein lie the obligations and 
 the hopes of truly Christian parents, in respect of 
 their children whom they have already presented at 
 the font for Baptism, and intend soon to present to 
 the Bishop to be confirmed ? I answer, Like the 
 Israelites, with the volume of inspiration open before 
 them they have in their own name and for their 
 children, " made a covenant before the Lord, to walk 
 after the Lord, and to keep his commandments and 
 his testimonies and his statutes, with all their heart 
 and all their soul, to perform the words of the cove- 
 nant which are written in that book!" Like the Is- 
 raelites, then, let them " stand to the covenant"! 
 
36 THE DUTIES 
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 THE DUTIES OF SPONSORS, 
 
 2 Kings xxiii. 3 : 
 And all the people stood to the covena?it. 
 
 I have been studiously careful thus far, in my 
 Lectures on Confirmation, to note the distinction 
 which exists between that which is of Divine appoint- 
 ment and authority in a religious rite or sacrament, 
 and that which the Church has judged expedient to 
 add thereto ; the one being absolutely necessary to 
 the existence of the rite or sacrament, and the rest 
 necessary to those alone who have bound themselves 
 to the prescribed mode of the observance of it. For 
 instance, addressing his eleven disciples in Galilee, 
 our Lord thus renewed the institution of the Sacra- 
 ment of Baptism : Go, ye, and teach all nations, bap- 
 tizing them in the name of the Father, and of the 
 Son, and of the Holy Ghost. All, then, which is of 
 Divine authority in the Sacrament of Baptism, takes 
 place when he who may rightly undertake that office 
 either immerses or sprinkles with water, as the case 
 may be, one adequately taught, " in the name of the 
 
OF SPONSORS. 37 
 
 Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." All 
 the rest of the service is added by the Church. 
 
 But although we may thus have reached the limits 
 of Divine authority, and may therefore truly say that 
 he who is not thus far baptized is not a Christian, we 
 have not reached the proper limits of obligation — 
 obligation which may not be safely transgressed by 
 him who claims the hopes of the covenant. The 
 Apostle Paul more than once expresses himself in the 
 following manner, and, in this instance, in reference 
 expressly to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper :* 
 " All things are lawful for me, but all things are not 
 expedient ; all things are lawful for me, but all things 
 edify not." Beyond, then, the direct and prescribed 
 authority of Divine law, expediency and edification, 
 when once discovered, afford rules to guide the heart 
 and the conduct of enlightened Christians. 
 
 But this assertion, though thus far apostolic, needs 
 much guarding in its application. 
 
 In proportion as we claim for ourselves to be judges 
 of what is expedient and for edification, must we be 
 cautious, humble, prayerful — not laying as a burden 
 upon others that in which we think we have disco- 
 vered a safe rule for our own thoughts and conduct. 
 
 But, on the other hand, the Church, under condi- 
 tions which I will presently suggest, may safely enjoin 
 upon her members that which she believes to be expe- 
 dient to the edifying of the body of Christ. 
 
 These things, however, she may do — never without 
 Scripture — always in strict accordance with principles 
 plainly deducible from the Word of God — and, where 
 
 » 1 Cor. x. 23. 
 
38 THE DUTIES 
 
 it is possible, taking her initiative from some element 
 of the proposed service or institution, which is of 
 confessed Divine origin, and to which she can therein 
 plainly and throughout refer. 
 
 That which the Church urges as expedient, that is, 
 must be of the nature of the development of a known 
 and acknowledged Divine law, and thus far gather 
 to itself authority from that law ! 
 
 Now if this rule prevail, the Church must always 
 indeed retain her institutions under correction of the 
 farther light of that to which she traces them as to a 
 source. But, on the question of the force of what is 
 so said to be expedient and for edification, if it be pos- 
 sible by an appeal to the whole history of the Church 
 of the Saviour, especially in its earliest and least cor- 
 rupted periods, assisted by the Word of God, to dis- 
 cover wherein she has throughout enforced that which 
 is according to the mind of the Most High, would it 
 not argue, to say the least, a most unsafe religious 
 state, whatever might be the private sentiments of an 
 individual respecting that expediency, (for opinions 
 vary with the progress of knowledge,) so to oppose 
 those sentiments to the judgment and experience of 
 the Church on these matters as to promote divisions '? 
 Doubts in individuals may stimulate inquiry, but they 
 must not be followed out to the creation of schism. 
 
 The principles which have guided the Church in 
 the purest periods of her history, in obedience to 
 what she has deemed expedient for the edification of 
 her members, when constructing her religious ser- 
 vices, it is by no means difficult to trace. 
 
 She has kept ever in view, on the one hand, the 
 changeless faithfulness of God, and, on the other, the 
 
OP SPONSORS. 39 
 
 sinfulness of man. She has looked upon the promises 
 of the Divine "Word as in themselves infallible, but 
 she has at the same time contemplated the infirmity of 
 human beings, to whom those promises are addressed, 
 as rendering them, so far as man can judge, of uncer- 
 tain personal application. She has never doubted the 
 efficacy of the means of grace through which the pro- 
 mises are made sure to us, but she has not hid from 
 her eyes that he who uses these means may be in a 
 state of mind unprepared to be a recipient of that 
 grace. 
 
 With all these things before her, the Church has 
 constructed her services in such a manner as to seem 
 to involve contradictions. She dare not hesitate to 
 affirm the certain fulfilment, on his part, of all which 
 God has promised. But on the part of the recipient 
 of his grace, she has proceeded with the utmost care 
 and circumspection. 
 
 The service for the Baptism of Infants is a large 
 illustration of all that has been thus affirmed. 
 
 In that service it is manifest the Church believes 
 that Baptism is the means appointed by God for intro- 
 ducing the recipient into the number of his people 
 on earth, in order to farther instruction and grace to 
 everlasting life. To the baptized, the promises of 
 God given to the Church begin, immediately on their 
 introduction into the Church, to be effectual, through 
 the Spirit, on the conditions on which those promises 
 are held forth. 
 
 She illustrates her view of this principle, and therein 
 of the faithfulness of God to his promise to receive 
 all who come to him, by reference to an act of the 
 
40 THE DUTIES 
 
 Saviour, in itself disconnected from Baptism. He 
 took into his arms and blessed infants presented to 
 him by their parents or friends, and rebuked those 
 who forbad them. 
 
 And because she regards no promise of the new 
 covenant as isolated from the rest, she farther affirms 
 the truth of God by the use of other means on which 
 he has said that results shall follow, including that 
 which she anticipates through the Sacrament. She 
 reminds the people, that if God blesses the Sacra- 
 ments, he hears prayer also, and therefore guides 
 them in asking for the Holy Spirit, that the greatest of 
 all gifts may be bestowed on the baptized.* 
 
 Then, on the other part, knowing as she does that 
 the promises, though in themselves true, are yet, in 
 respect of individuals, conditional, and that although 
 God knows the heart and may pronounce the blessing 
 without reserve, man — the Church — does not know 
 the heart, and must therefore presume alone the exist- 
 ence of that which assures the effect of the means ; — in 
 her great caution, where affirmation of a prepared and 
 holy state can be affirmed before witnesses, as in the 
 case of adults, she demands both the witnesses and the 
 affirmation ; but where, as in infants, that state cannot 
 be affirmed, knowing, from the testimony of Scripture, 
 that God does nevertheless enter into covenant with 
 infants, and calling in the aid of the promises given, 
 not to education as a whole, but in particular to all 
 those means which must be daily and hourly used in 
 order to such an education, she appoints sponsors — 
 
 * Comp. Matt. vii. 7, and Luke xi. 9—13. 
 
OF SPONSORS. 41 
 
 godfathers and godmothers — who, in faith of God's 
 promises, and in sincere purpose to make faithful use 
 of the means to the desired and promised end, at 
 once pledge themselves for the child, and offer them- 
 selves in all their efforts and prayers as channels, if I 
 may so express myself, through which the grace of 
 God may flow to the infant. 
 
 You hesitate to receive this. Your mind reverts to 
 facts. You look around you and ask, Where are the 
 manifestations of these things? 
 
 I speak not, for the present, of things as they are, 
 but as they ought to be. I am not describing the 
 actual state of the Church, but the principle which 
 pervades her institutions and her services. The 
 Church errs not in doctrine, but she fails in disci- 
 pline. Well were it for true religion, if, instead of 
 satisfying themselves with endeavouring to find out 
 what they suppose to be the mistakes in principle of 
 the Church, men would strenuously and personally 
 endeavour to give force and efficacy to her institutions 
 for effecting the purposes of grace amongst them ! 
 
 And now, what would be the state of the case if the 
 discipline of the Church were followed out in respect 
 of the sponsors of baptized infants *? 
 
 Have you never reflected on the very peculiar posi- 
 tion which a sponsor is supposed to hold when present- 
 ing a child at the font for Baptism "? He makes his 
 responses in his own person, and yet he would seem 
 in those responses also to personate or be the repre- 
 sentative of the child. Now there is only one mode in 
 which we can explain or justify this assumption of the 
 Church, and that is in a presumed full and unreserved 
 
42 THE DUTIES 
 
 belief of the promises of God, conjoined with a deep 
 and consistent sincerity of heart and conduct in him 
 who fills the responsible office. Let the sponsor only 
 believe that God will fulfil his promises, hear prayer, 
 and bless the means of education from the Baptism of 
 the infant ; let him sincerely and humbly intend to make 
 use of those means from the moment when the child 
 shall have been received into the Church — then all is 
 in its place and order in the service ; the sponsor may 
 speak for himself and for the child — he may anticipate 
 the blessing, and be prepared to receive that blessing 
 on the part of the child, and from that time forward 
 minister it to him for his present and his eternal 
 good. He may believe, as the Church teaches, that 
 now, (for in respect of the infant this is the first act 
 of covenant education,) now God hears, now God 
 answers, now God gives his Holy Spirit, now God 
 receives the infant into the number of his children — 
 inheritors of the privileges of the kingdom of heaven 
 in this world, in view of the great issue in the next. 
 
 As has, then, been already affirmed respecting 
 parents who have devoted their children to God in 
 Baptism, so now, with the services and institutions of 
 the Church before us, must the like be affirmed of 
 sponsors. 
 
 Godfathers and godmothers must, in the view 
 of the Church, be holy persons. They must person- 
 ally and practically and perseveringly respond to all 
 the terms of the covenant. They must, the Church 
 elsewhere affirms, as a formal affirmation of all these 
 things, be participators of the Sacrament of the Lord's 
 Supper. They must truly believe all the promises 
 
OF SPONSORS. 43 
 
 of God's Word which bear (and they all bear) upon 
 the commencement and the progress of the disci- 
 pline and education of the human mind. They must 
 be willing to involve their own spiritual and eternal 
 interests in those of the child whom they represent. 
 They must intend, seriously, to do all which lies in 
 their power to promote the truly religious education 
 of the infant until the mind be formed to respond 
 according to the answers which they have given, on 
 his behalf, in the solemn service of his admission into 
 the Church; and they must be ready now to com- 
 mence, in the full assurance that, God inspiring and 
 aiding their sincerity, the effort shall not be in vain. 
 
 The discretion of the Church in appointing this 
 office for the edification of the body of Christ, may be 
 made yet more manifest. 
 
 It would appear that, in the earliest ages, the spon- 
 sors of infants were, for the most part, though not 
 exclusively, the parents themselves.* They pledged 
 themselves, in the face of God and the congregation of 
 his people, to bring up the child, which they now pre- 
 sented at the font, in the nurture and admonition of 
 the Lord. Their promise was accepted, and the 
 child thereupon enrolled amongst the members of the 
 Church. 
 
 Days of persecution, however, and the case of the 
 parentless infants, left, from whatever cause, in the 
 hands of Christians, rendered this mode of security for 
 the holy discipline of the opening mind uncertain. 
 The caution of the Church was awakened, and soon 
 she added others, as godfathers and godmothers, to 
 
 * Bing. Ant., Vol. III. p. 552. 
 
44 THE DUTIES 
 
 watch over the spiritual welfare of those who were yet 
 lambs of the flock. That which was, in the first 
 instance, assistant only to the office of the parent, 
 became soon a distinct obligation. Our Church has 
 adopted the result. She forbids parents to be spon- 
 sors. The caution, while it presumes the fidelity of 
 the natural relationship, superadds that which repre- 
 sents only the spiritual obligation, and so at once 
 distinguishes the spiritual nature of the New Birth, 
 of which Baptism is the sign and external part and 
 means, and secures the right direction of the efforts of 
 parental love ! 
 
 Do you acknowledge the wisdom and the suitable- 
 ness of such an institution, so far as the first ages 
 of the Church were concerned? I ask you, then, are 
 there no reasons shewing it to be as wise and as suit- 
 able in the present day ? 
 
 Do parents in the present day so effectually perform 
 their promises respecting the religious education of 
 their baptized children, in the large and proper sense 
 of that term — parents among the rich as well as parents 
 among the poor — that there is no need of the assistant 
 security afforded by the obligations of the sponsors, if 
 those obligations were indeed obeyed ? 
 
 Do you ask me, then, what are the duties of a spon- 
 sor in the mixed state of things in which that office is 
 assumed in the present day? You in effect ask me 
 what the parent, as an enlightened member of the 
 Church of England, who heartily concurs in her ser- 
 vices, and who makes choice of the sponsor, in effect 
 concedes, in respect of his office, if both the one and 
 the other be indeed sincere. 
 
 His office, I answer, relates exclusively to the reli- 
 
OF SPONSORS. 45 
 
 gious interests of the child, so far as they are involved 
 in his education. 
 
 So long as the parent lives, the sponsor may not 
 directly interfere with the education of the child. 
 
 But nothing is conceded to him, if he may not, with 
 courtesy, as the apostle expresses it, supervise that 
 education, so far as it affects the interest of the soul; — 
 if he may not influence the course of it through the 
 parent, and so co-mingle, as it were, his own affec- 
 tions for that end, with those of the natural guardians, 
 educators and instructors of infancy. 
 
 Nor does the parent fulfil his duty in these respects, 
 if he do not, as opportunity serves, take counsel with 
 the sponsor; if he do not make known, as soon as 
 may be, to the child, the Church-relationship which 
 has been so created, in order that the influence of cha- 
 racter in the sponsor may combine with his own 
 advice and counsel to the end in view. 
 
 Then, as you know, all this is ultimately a matter of 
 grace in the daily fulfilment (and there will certainly 
 be a daily fulfilment) of the promises of God ; and as 
 the Church, as it were for more enlarged security, has 
 connected prayer for its efficacy with the co-ordinate 
 efficacy of the Sacrament, so, in the fulfilment of the 
 conditions which rest on all the parties interested, 
 prayer is the most efficacious of the means to be used. 
 The great first duty, and, after ceaseless concurrence in 
 all others, the last duty of the sponsor is earnest 
 prayer to God for the child he represents, accom- 
 panied, as we have seen, by all possible and reason- 
 able efforts, without which prayer is of no promised 
 efficacy. 
 
46 THE DUTIES 
 
 Do you, then, ask from me ministerial advice on 
 this solemn and responsible subject? 
 
 I advise you never to undertake the office of Spon- 
 sor without, first of all, earnest prayer to God for his 
 correction and guidance in that which is proposed 
 to you. Ask that your way may be made plain before 
 you. 
 
 Then, in like manner, satisfy yourself that, whether 
 in measured forms or not, the parents do intend to 
 devote their child to God in infancy and through life. 
 
 Require, in plain words require of them a right un- 
 derstanding, and, if possible, a concurrence respect- 
 ing the intention of the Church service in Baptism, 
 and the obligations consequently binding on all parties 
 who unite therein, both the parents and yourself. 
 
 Claim permission, on the part of the parents, not 
 uselessly to intermeddle in family regulations, or in 
 the purposes and authority of the father and mother ; 
 but, as a sponsor, to watch kindly and courteously 
 over the progress of religious education in the child ; — 
 to examine, to advise, and, as the times admirably 
 serve, to place occasionally in his hands books of wise 
 and suitable instruction. Let me here mention one 
 book which has lately been put forth by the Society 
 for Promoting Christian Knowledge, as, so far as it 
 relates to this subject, admirably calculated to pro- 
 mote your views, and in all other respects as admira- 
 bly instructive to all faithful members of the Church 
 of England. I refer to the book entitled, " The 
 Liturgy compared with the Bible." 
 
 Then let it be your prayerful determination to keep 
 ever and seriously in view the whole period between 
 
OF SPONSORS. 47 
 
 the Baptism of the child and his Confirmation. Let 
 it be your ceaseless object to prepare him for that 
 latter rite, and intend not to rest satisfied until by the 
 public recognition of the Bishop, following upon his 
 own sincere profession of faith and obedience, and 
 accompanied by the earnest united prayers of the 
 Church, the Bishop, the child and yourself, the bless- 
 ings of the covenant which were assured to him in 
 his Baptism, but in their larger and more personal 
 measure hitherto suspended, are made his own. 
 
 I almost anticipate the thoughts which pass the 
 minds, perhaps, of some now before me — "How can 
 such things be ?" "This is surely to follow out the sub- 
 ject beyond its possible limits." " Such days are gone 
 by." "We must yield to the force of circumstances in 
 the age in which we were born and live !" 
 
 The days of sincerity, that is, and of truth are gone 
 by, and we must be content to be hypocrites and to 
 mock God ! 
 
 If the Church of England is to see better times, as, 
 within the ordinary range of the life of those before 
 me, I doubt not she will — if, that is, she is to become 
 the efficient instrument of a large increase of vital 
 religion in our country, it will be, not through the 
 adoption of the varying fancies which are afloat re- 
 specting supposed errors in her doctrines, but through 
 a cordial renewal of her discipline — and so far as we 
 are concerned, that renewal must take its commence- 
 ment in the proper recognition on the part of parents 
 and of sponsors of their duties in respect of infants 
 baptized into her society. When, in accordance with 
 the services, parents and godfathers and godmothers 
 
48 THE DUTIES 
 
 begin to understand and to perform their duties to the 
 infant members of the body of Christ, then brighter 
 anticipations of the glory of the latter days will dawn 
 upon us. 
 
 And here let me touch on a subject far, indeed, 
 from being new, but which has been lately pressed on 
 my attention, and on which I have cordially and 
 gratefully reflected. 
 
 In the earlier ages of the Church, the office of 
 Sponsor soon (as a question not of divine authority, 
 but of wise and wholesome expediency) came to be 
 regarded as, in a subordinate but most important 
 sense, a church-office.* It was undertaken and fol- 
 lowed out as a duty incumbent on those who desired 
 as private Christians, and on principles of Christian 
 charity, to promote the glory of the Saviour in the ex- 
 tension of his kingdom and the good of their fellow- 
 creatures. Many of those who habitually partook of 
 the Lord's Supper, felt themselves bound by this obli- 
 gation. They did this, as you know, in times of igno- 
 rance and persecution, when the facilities of Christian 
 instruction were comparatively few. We live in better 
 days, wherein every means is offered to promote the 
 religious education of children in all classes of society. 
 The press — the school — the Church — all teem with 
 truth, and it is negligence alone (if it be not some- 
 thing worse) which leaves the young in whom we are 
 interested ignorant of that in which our present hap- 
 piness and our eternal salvation are involved. Will 
 the time be yet long delayed when we shall see 
 
 * Bing. Ant., Vol. III. p. 561. 
 
OF SPONSORS. 49 
 
 righteous communicants acknowledging it as an obli- 
 gation of Christian charity, themselves instructed 
 in the truth and partakers of grace, to accept the 
 office of sponsors to the children of the ignorant 
 and uninstructed, with the clear understanding that 
 they shall have liberty to watch the progress of reli- 
 gious education in those whom in this manner they 
 have voluntarily undertaken to represent ? Meditate 
 on these things with seriousness, self-devotion, and 
 prayer. 
 
 It remains to me now to realize to my mind the 
 fact, that I have more than probably before me many 
 persons who have, perhaps, frequently undertaken to 
 fill the office of sponsor to children. 
 
 And, addressing myself to such, I would ask, Did 
 no thought of self-reproach penetrate your mind when 
 the announcement was just now read, that a Confirma- 
 tion was shortly to be held for this parish, in this 
 immediate neighbourhood ? 
 
 The average number of Baptisms in this parish in 
 each year is about 110. Of these, the average number 
 of deaths in each year, between the birth and the age 
 appointed for Confirmation, is thirty. Three years 
 have now passed since that holy rite was administered 
 in these parts. What, then, are the facts which are 
 before us? Without regard to those who before neg- 
 lected this paramount duty of the Christian, and they 
 were many, the result in view of the last three years is 
 this. There are 240 young persons who are of age 
 to present themselves for instruction and examination 
 by the appointed ministers of the Church, in order to 
 their Confirmation ; and, taking a large, and yet, I do 
 
 D 
 
50 THE DUTIES 
 
 believe, strictly speaking, and in view of all to whom 
 it might apply, a very limited measure, there are at 
 this moment, in respect of this parish, 720 godfathers 
 and godmothers ; and, if the order of the Church were 
 obeyed, adding to these the parents of the children, 
 (subject of course to all accidents which qualify num- 
 bers in such a case, and in a world of dying creatures,) 
 there are, on the whole, 1050 persons who are respon- 
 sible to the Church and to God for the education in 
 the Christian faith of those for whom they undertook 
 to respond, and whom on the present occasion the 
 Church asks again at their hands. 
 
 Do no compunctions penetrate the hearts of such 
 persons ? 
 
 I would again urge it upon you, that the office is 
 not of divine institution, and the undertaking of it 
 was therefore altogether voluntary on your part. 
 
 Have you, still to restrict myself to the sponsors, 
 either partially or altogether neglected your duty? 
 Then, advise with the parents — there are yet two 
 months before you. Bring the young persons under 
 the instruction of your appointed ministers. Assist 
 sedulously in that instruction yourselves. And from 
 this moment let' the conviction of your negligence 
 add vigour to other motives for earnest and persever- 
 ing prayer, that the efforts so put forth may not be in 
 vain. 
 
 Addressing such persons, then, with the deepest 
 consciousness of the obligations to which I refer, and 
 with as deep ministerial affection, I will conclude my 
 discourse in the language suggested by my text. What 
 is required of parents and sponsors who have volun- 
 
OF SPONSORS. 51 
 
 tarily, and in common, taken upon themselves the 
 highest of Christian duties, with all the conditions and 
 the promises attached to them — the religious educa- 
 tion of the young — until, as now, they shall be pre- 
 sented to be examined as to their Christian attain- 
 ments and character, and if found prepared for that 
 rite, solemnly confirmed? "What is required of them, 
 but firmly and consistently to "stand to the cove- 
 nant"? 
 
 I remind parents and sponsors, that on the next 
 Sunday morning my address will be made to those 
 who are to be presented to the Bishop for Confirma- 
 tion. 
 
 And I remind them, too, that their fidelity will be 
 put to the test by the number of names which shall be 
 sent to the parochial ministers during the present week 
 of young persons desirous of instruction and examina- 
 tion, in order to their being presented at the appointed 
 time to the Bishop. 
 
52 TO CANDIDATES 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 TO 
 
 CANDIDATES FOR CONFIRMATION. 
 
 2 Kings xxiii. 3 : 
 And all the people stood to the covenant. 
 
 Deeply important as have been the subjects hitherto 
 submitted to our consideration during the course of 
 my Lectures on Confirmation, that on which I enter 
 this morning appeals to yet deeper feelings, and de- 
 mands even yet more awakened attention than the rest. 
 I have attempted to throw light on the nature of the 
 sacred rite to which my Lectures more immediately 
 refer. I have earnestly addressed, successively, the 
 parents and the sponsors of those who, with their 
 pledged concurrence, were devoted to God in Bap- 
 tism in the earliest days of their infancy. This morning 
 my discourse contemplates those of you who, having 
 been so baptized into the Church, are now of age to 
 make a public prof ession of your faith, and openly to 
 
FOR CONFIRMATION. 53 
 
 claim the blessi?igs which were then conditionally 
 assured to you. 
 
 Is it possible to imagine a state which involves 
 more solemnly-important considerations than, I will 
 not say that which I have supposed, but that in which 
 all those among you of suitable age, who are yet un- 
 confirmed, do at this moment actually exist? The 
 question is now put to you by the Church, " Will 
 you stand to the covenant, of which you were made a 
 party in the earliest days of your infancy ?" And on 
 the answer which your heart may return to that ques- 
 tion are suspended your destinies for the eternal 
 world. 
 
 A reluctant mind, deceived by the master-error of 
 the present day, which seems to demand intellectual 
 and moral liberty, but which the rather refuses to be 
 made conscious of the necessarily painful removal of 
 the galling chains of a corrupt nature, in order that it 
 may truly be set free, may, even in youth, spurn from 
 it the idea of religious obligation bound upon it in the 
 infancy of life. 
 
 Do you then, indeed, imagine that natural liberty, 
 whether in view of the intellect or the heart, in mat- 
 ters connected with your religious welfare, has any 
 existence either in you or in others ? Does life itself, 
 bestowed upon you by your Creator, bring no respon- 
 sibilities which are parallel to those which were bound 
 upon you in your sponsors ? Does it bear with it no 
 original obligation to obey your parents' will, and, as 
 time proceeds, to make the glory of God and your own 
 everlasting interests the supreme objects of your exist- 
 ence? Can you escape from the judgment which 
 
54 TO CANDIDATES 
 
 shall at the last be pronounced upon you in view 
 of the effect of education, or the circumstances or 
 relationships of life, or that you were born and have 
 been nurtured in a Christian country, in the midst of 
 Christian institutions, and with the examples of both 
 the evil and the good before you ; and all this irre- 
 spectively of the obligations of Baptism, and alto- 
 gether beyond your control? Men talk of liberty, but 
 who that lives can rid himself of responsibilities which 
 involve the everlasting welfare of his immortal soul ! 
 
 So strongly, indeed, does this appeal to the natural 
 convictions of every man, that I doubt whether there 
 be an individual before me who, after a moment's re- 
 flection, would not feel himself bound to gratitude to 
 God, step by step, that he was born of Christian 
 parents, in a Christian country, to be subject to the 
 guiding influence of a Christian education, under the 
 guardian institutions of a Christian Church — all taking 
 their first efficiency to his spiritual benefit, so far as 
 he is personally concerned, in his being associated 
 with and united to the body of Christ by Baptism in 
 his infancy. And this is your actual state. 
 
 Let me, then, again remind you, that the Sacrament 
 of your Baptism took place wholly in that part of the 
 service which is according to the institution of our 
 Lord himself — the appointed use of water by him who 
 has authority to baptize, " in the name of the Father, 
 and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." All the rest 
 of the service has been arranged and is used at the 
 discretion of the Church. But, farther observe, that 
 in using that discretion it has been the Church's pur- 
 pose, under guidance of Holy Scripture, to follow out 
 
FOR CONFIRMATION. 55 
 
 the principles, the grace and the obligations involved 
 in the Sacrament, and so to construct the service as 
 to make it in this view intelligible to all. It is true 
 we were baptized according to the services of the 
 Church of England, but that is only, in other words, to 
 say, we were baptized in forms which were intended 
 to be, and are, according to the principles of the 
 Word of God. Had no other form been used but 
 that which was instituted by the Lord, the same prin- 
 ciples, so admirably followed out by the Church, 
 would still have been necessarily, and to an equal ex- 
 tent, involved. The Baptism of infants, not now to 
 speak of adults, involves the necessity, that is, of Con- 
 firmation. If it be needful that we should enter the 
 Church of Christ by the Sacrament of Baptism, it is as 
 needful that we should, in the progress of time and 
 the establishment of our principles, make personal 
 confession of our faith , and claim the blessings of the 
 covenant for ourselves. 
 
 Against one prevalent error on this subject I will, 
 at this point in my discourse, affectionately but ear- 
 nestly warn those to whom I now more particularly 
 address myself. 
 
 To ignorant and listless minds, which cannot brook 
 the labour of accurate investigation and severe 
 thought, hard terms and strong assertions serve for 
 argument and the affirmation of truth. All which 
 urges the necessity of forms and means to the edifica- 
 tion of the body of Christ, is said by such persons to 
 have had its origin in the Bomish Church, and the 
 mind is instantly prone to reject it as Popish. What- 
 ever has had its origin in the errors of Borne, by all 
 
0(3 TO CANDIDATES 
 
 means reject; but be very careful lest, making the 
 attempt in ignorance, you presumptuously uproot that 
 which prevailed in the purer days of the Catholic 
 Church before those errors had taken their origin, 
 and which have their sanction, as the institutions of 
 the Church of England, for the practical efficiency of 
 the baptismal covenant, have their sanction, in the 
 usages of the apostles themselves. 
 
 Then may I not ?— I do most urgently — press on the 
 consideration of the younger members of my flock, 
 that it ill becomes them to form strong opinions, far 
 less to rest upon or to be guided by any such opinions 
 of their own, on subjects like these. 
 
 I am quite aware that this suggestion is in the pre- 
 sent day, a day which is sinfully impatient of sub- 
 mission, judged to be antiquated and obsolete. But 
 discipline will gradually return to us; and respect 
 will be shewn by the young to the regulated religious 
 authority of Christian parents, sponsors and the 
 Church. 
 
 But are these, in truth, the reasons which prevail, 
 perhaps, with many of the young persons of this 
 parish, to withhold their names on the present occa- 
 sion ? Altogether the contrary. The negligence of 
 parents and of sponsors has originated many such in- 
 stances. And where Confirmation has been proposed 
 to the young themselves, and they have refused to 
 comply with the wish so expressed, or hesitate to 
 present themselves to the Bishop, the reluctance has 
 for the most part taken its rise in a secret conviction, 
 that were they to conform in this instance to the in- 
 stitutions of the Church, they would be binding upon 
 
FOR CONFIRMATION. 57 
 
 themselves obligations to which they are not yet pre- 
 pared to be subject. 
 
 Do you, then, intend — for the question is now put to 
 you — do you indeed intend to renounce, not the 
 sources of misery in this world and for ever, which 
 your sponsors at your Baptism promised you should 
 cordially renounce, — but do you now renounce yov.r 
 faith in Christ, your allegiance to God, your privilege 
 of prayer, your interest in the means of grace ; and 
 for the future are you content, through that renuncia- 
 tion, professedly to be to the Church as a heathen man 
 and a publican ? 
 
 You have, in fact, no ultimate escape from such an 
 alternative. If you propose to stand to the covenant 
 of your Baptism, the Church now requires of you to 
 affirm in public your fidelity, and to receive permission 
 to claim a personal interest in her communion. 
 
 Happily, there are many of you, we have reason to 
 know, in whose hearts no such reluctance has place. 
 Now arrived at a suitable age, you earnestly desire to 
 recognize the obligations and secure the blessings of 
 your Baptism. To you, it is the most gratifying event 
 of life that you were early devoted to God, and that 
 from that moment to the present you have been under 
 the guardian care of those who have nurtured and 
 instructed you in the way of righteousness — unfolding 
 to you the truth as you were able to bear it — restrain- 
 ing you from evil, and by their example and whole- 
 some authority leading you in obedience to the known 
 will of God. 
 
 You need no persuasion to the performance of a 
 duty which your religious education has ever disposed 
 d3 
 
58 TO CANDIDATES 
 
 you to believe to be paramount. You ask only an 
 assurance from those who are appointed to be your 
 public instructors, that you are in a state prepared for 
 participation in the rite which is now before you. 
 
 To meet the wish so implied is my purpose in the 
 present discourse, and in that which is to follow upon 
 it on next Sunday morning. 
 
 I will endeavour to answer severally in these two 
 discourses the following questions : 
 
 What is required by the Church of persons who 
 present themselves to be confirmed? 
 
 And, How must such persons subsequently guide 
 their conduct, in order that, to use the language of 
 the Church, they may continue to be the ch/ddren of 
 God for ever, and daily increase in his Holy Spirit 
 more and more, until they come into his everlasting 
 kingdom ? 
 
 In entering to-day on the former of these subjects, 
 I perceive at once the necessity of restricting myself 
 to principles. The subject is itself too large for the 
 limits of a public discourse; and, moreover, the parti- 
 culars of which it is formed are more suitable for the 
 private and personal instruction and examination of 
 the appointed ministers, which must precede the grant 
 of permission on our part, that you should on the 
 present occasion present yourselves to the Bishop to 
 be confirmed. 
 
 We ask, then, in general terms, what is that state of 
 mind, indicative of religious attainments and charac- 
 ter, which the Church regards as requisite to Confir- 
 mation by the Bishop ? 
 
FOR CONFIRMATION. 59 
 
 It is involved in the answer to the affecting ques- 
 tion, then to be addressed to you, 
 
 " Do ye here, in the presence of God and of this 
 congregation, renew the solemn promise and vow that 
 was made in your name at your Baptism ; ratifying 
 and confirming the same in your own persons, and 
 acknowledging yourselves bound to believe and to do 
 all those things which your godfathers and godmothers 
 then undertook for you? : ' 
 
 The requisite state of mind expresses itself in the 
 simple response — " I do." 
 
 What those few but pregnant words intend, must be 
 discovered by careful comparison of the Baptismal 
 Service, the Service for Confirmation, and the Cate- 
 chism, with each other, and all and several of these 
 with the inspired Word of God. 
 
 Without attempting, on the present occasion, to 
 follow out this comparison, I may content myself with 
 observing that, 
 
 In the first place, the Church requires of you ade- 
 quate knowledge of the great principles and forms of 
 truth and Christian obligation. She is not like the 
 heretical Church of Rome, which nourishes ignorance 
 in her members in order that she may enforce her 
 doctrine of tyranny in the hands of her priesthood — 
 that, regardless of the administrator and of the recipi- 
 ent, there is a necessary effect of that which she minis- 
 ters. The Church of England begins with the birth — 
 appoints pledged instructors — and when their work of 
 education and instruction is completed, examines and 
 receives her enlightened members into full commu- 
 nion. 
 
60 TO CANDIDATES 
 
 Time, I have said, will not permit me now to enter 
 into the particulars of knowledge which she thus 
 requires. 
 
 It is for you, candidates for Confirmation, to pass 
 the period still allowed to you in serious study of these 
 matters. Compare diligently the services to which I 
 have referred in all their parts, and with an unpreju- 
 diced mind, with each other and with Holy Scripture. 
 The newly-published book which I recommended to 
 your notice last Sunday — I speak of the work entitled, 
 " The Liturgy compared with the Bible" — will 
 greatly assist you in this. Presume not that you are 
 already acquainted with these things. You may, as 
 we express it, know the Catechism by heart, and yet 
 remain in ignorance respecting them. The oldest 
 student needs yet to persevere. Step by step, search 
 out the thoughts there suggested to you, and confirm 
 what you know by large illustrations from the "Word 
 of God. So occupy yourself until the appointed day. 
 Let it be a duty of secret hours, but in difficulties 
 seek the aid of your parents, your sponsors, or your 
 ministers. Ignorance will dispose you to presume 
 the existence of adequate knowledge. Inquiry opens 
 to us our deficiencies, and perhaps leads us to the 
 conviction suggested by the apostle, that we know 
 "nothing yet as we ought to know." 
 
 But we are in much danger of resting here. There 
 are many, it is to be feared, who have an adequate 
 knowledge of the truths and obligations of religion, 
 without any consistent impression of its power. 
 
 In addition, then, to knowledge, the Church requires 
 of you a living and effectual faith in all which the 
 
FOR CONFIRMATION. 61 
 
 Gospel sets before you. " All this I steadfastly 
 believe." And by faith she intends, not a mere cold 
 assent of the understanding, but, what the Bible in- 
 tends in that term, such a conviction as may move 
 and regulate the heart and the life — a faith which 
 worketh by love — a faith which is not dead, being 
 alone, but living and fruit-bearing. 
 
 And the subjects of religious knowledge are the field 
 over which a living faith has its range. Observe, then, 
 that the examination of your minister is of little be- 
 nefit to you, without a previous and concurrent self- 
 examination on your part — a self-examination that 
 contemplates all which knowledge throws open before 
 your mind. Is this, then, an occasion for renewing 
 and enlarging your knowledge "? As each point passes 
 under review, secretly inquire of your heart whether 
 you so believe it as to make it a governing principle 
 of your life ; all, for instance, which the Word of God 
 affirms respecting yourself, your Saviour, the guidance 
 and aid of the Holy Spirit, your conduct in the pre- 
 sent world, and your hopes or fears in the next. Do 
 you truly, that is feelingly and practically, believe all 
 these things ? 
 
 The Church farther requires of you the disposition 
 humbly, but cheerfully, to submit yourself to and 
 obey the known will of God. 
 
 It is true, that for conciseness she sums up the par- 
 ticulars of that obedience in the compendium of the 
 moral law included in the Ten Commandments, but 
 she is far from restricting our obligations thereto. 
 Rightly interpreted under the light of the Gospel, 
 they offer to us the germ of all we owe to God and to 
 
62 TO CAXDIDATES 
 
 our neighbours ; and in pledging our submission to 
 them, we do in truth take the whole revealed will of 
 God for the law of our life. On these two, love to 
 God and love to our neighbour, hang all the law and 
 the prophets. 
 
 Another field of self-inquiry is thus thrown open 
 before us. Knowledge contemplates the rules of action 
 as well as the principles which dispose us to obedi- 
 ence. Are you, then, in search of knowledge to pre- 
 pare you for the holy rite ? Take each requirement 
 into the chamber of your heart. Are you there (the 
 book of Revelation open before you) in sincerity ad- 
 dressing the inquiry to the throne of heaven, — Lord, 
 what wilt thou have me to do? Knowledge recog- 
 nizes the law and ascribes to it the authority of God. 
 Obedience makes use of that which is so recognized as 
 a rule of submission and of action. Has your religion 
 led you thus far? Are you sincerely adopting for 
 yourselves the pledge once given by your sponsors on 
 your behalf — " At this moment my heart is fixed. / 
 will obediently keep God's holy will and command- 
 ments, and walk in the same all the days of my life" ? 
 
 The Church requires more of you. She looks for 
 a cordial renunciation of all sin, and a purpose to 
 resist all temp)tations to iniquity. 
 
 It is after contemplating the inner seeds and ele- 
 ments of evil, the pageantry of the vain world, and 
 the dominion of that base spirit whose whole being is 
 imbued with iniquity, and whose every purpose is the 
 dishonour of God and the destruction of souls, — with 
 these in view, the sincere servant of his Lord, asking 
 confirmation of his privileged communion with the 
 
FOR CONFIRMATION. 63 
 
 Church, is supposed and required to adopt the thrill- 
 ing affirmation of his sponsors — I renounce them 
 all ! Do these words express the deep and sincere 
 feeling of your hearts ? Are you ready, now and for 
 evermore, to break allegiance with the prince of the 
 darkness of this world ? Are all the vanities of life 
 fading from your view ? Have you already com- 
 menced the inward and deeply-felt struggle with the 
 law which is in your members warring against the 
 law of your mind ? To all this does you heart sincerely 
 respond — I renounce them all ! From this time for- 
 ward I serve not Satan, not the world, not the lusts of 
 my own heart, but wholly and alone the Lord Christ ! 
 Again, the Church expects in those who are con- 
 firmed a deep sense of their inability, of themselves, 
 to believe and to do that which is required of those 
 who would partake of the blessings of the Gospel. 
 11 Thou art not able to do these things of thy- 
 self." Thou canst not of the natural power of thine 
 intellect believe all which thou hast attained to know. 
 Thou canst not of the strength of thy natural will 
 either awaken good desires in thy heart, or carry out 
 those desires into good effect. Now this also is either 
 a subject of knowledge, or an inward deep-felt convic- 
 tion of the heart. Is that conviction yours? Does 
 the commandment of God appear to you exceeding 
 broad, and do his promises seem as exceedingly de- 
 sirable, and yet you feel your inability so to obey the 
 one as to secure to yourself the other ? The value of 
 a Saviour — the wisdom of the economy of our salva- 
 tion — the daily aid of the Holy Spirit — all these things 
 we estimate as we are sensible of our own unprofitable- 
 
64 TO CANDIDATES 
 
 ness. " What the law could not d( 
 through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the 
 likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in 
 the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be 
 fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after 
 the Spirit." All this you know. Is your knowledge 
 intimate — the knowledge of consciousness — awaken- 
 ing in your soul, in forms of self-reproach, humiliation, 
 penitence, desire of the full and perfect atonement of 
 the Saviour, dependance, a hope which lays hold of 
 that which is within the veil? 
 
 This the Church requires of you — an inward feeling 
 of the truth — I can do none of these things of myself! 
 
 The Church, nevertheless, looks for a holy but de- 
 pendant resolution to put forth the effort, which must 
 derive its efficacy from above. " Yes, verily, and 
 by God's help, so I will." 
 
 It belongs to true religion to attempt what it is im- 
 possible to perfect, and so to do what it can effect, 
 although it cannot reach to the bounds of the desires 
 of the heart. And there is a wide difference between 
 this and self-confidence. He who affects to know 
 himself, and forms holy resolutions in reliance on his 
 own strength, is a self-deceiver; but it is of faith, and 
 it is the most sure evidence of the Christian efficiency 
 of our belief, with the eye of the mind intently fixed 
 on our utter inability to do any thing which is well- 
 pleasing to God, yet to make firm resolutions, and 
 follow out those resolves into action, dependant on the 
 grace of God: for true religion recognizes not only 
 what we ought to do, but the promise of assistance 
 also if we make the attempt. 
 
FOR CONFIRMATION. 65 
 
 I repeat it, then, have you this pledge of the sincerity 
 with which you purpose to offer yourself for Confirma- 
 tion, that you have truly resolved, by God's grace, 
 from this moment to renew the purposes of your 
 parents at your Baptism, and, now, to devote yourself 
 to God? 
 
 It is this which on your part gives truth and efficacy 
 to the rite of which you are about to partake. Exa- 
 mine, then, I beseech you, the motives which prevail 
 in your heart. Is it your understanding alone which 
 assents, or have you indeed full purpose of mind in 
 accordance with that to which with your lips you 
 intend to give response ? 
 
 Farther, to assist you in your inquiry into the fitness 
 of your actual state for participation in this holy rite, 
 the Church looks forward to the future, and presumes 
 that the spirit by which you are now moved has in it 
 that which will continue the same unto your life's 
 
 END. 
 
 Never was there a worse fallacy than in the thought 
 that Confirmation is a terminating service — a sign that, 
 religious education being now complete, the confirmed 
 may for the future guide himself by his own discre- 
 tion, and even defer to some future time the more 
 marked obligations of the faith which he thus pro- 
 fesses. Rather, on the contrary, is it the beginning of 
 a renewed life. Hitherto the Church has looked 
 upon you as under the guidance of others. Now she 
 expects that you should begin to take your place 
 among those who, in all right principle and holy pur- 
 pose, are going onward to perfection. 
 
 Realize the solemn service to your mind. You are 
 
66 TO CANDIDATES 
 
 about to stand in the presence of your parents, your 
 sponsors, the minister who has examined you, the 
 Church, the Bishop by whom the Confirmation is to 
 take place, and God, the great Searcher of hearts, with 
 the book of Revelation open, as it were, before you, 
 and well knowing all which, in accordance with the 
 principles of that changeless record of the Divine pur- 
 poses and will, has been promised and claimed for 
 you. You are about to acknowledge yourself no 
 longer your own, but bought with a price — the precious 
 blood of your Saviour. You are about to affirm the 
 sincerity of your purpose and desire to continue, 
 in holy obedience and love, the child of God for ever. 
 You are about to appeal to your actual state — your 
 heart as seen by the all-wise God — as an assurance 
 that you are sincere, and, in order to avoid all sus- 
 picion of possible duplicity, to express your mind in the 
 simplest terms — " I do." All this is shortly to pass. 
 And is there indeed to be, as uttered by you, some- 
 thing of spiritual, something of eternal life in those 
 words ? Or shall they be the concentrated expression 
 of hypocrisy, deceit, inward rejection of the Saviour, 
 despite of the Spirit of God, daring mockery of the 
 Most High, recklessness of the loss of your soul ? 
 Will you fearlessly and carelessly repeat the words of 
 acknowledged obligation ; claim, in letter, the blessings 
 of the Gospel, and then go back to your home and to 
 your ordinary occupations, still under the dominion 
 of sin, a lover of the world, a slave of passion, wearing 
 the badge of your profession without any due influence 
 from its grace, to live without God in this world, and 
 having no hope for the next! 
 
FOR CONFIRMATION*. 67 
 
 The Church requires of you an acknowledgment 
 that the service of Confirmation is a renewal of the 
 living energy of a holy life, to be continued through- 
 out your existence in this world, and merged at last in 
 that of eternity. 
 
 One other indication of a prepared state she requires 
 — sincere, heartfelt, persevering prayer. His special 
 
 GRACE THOU MUST LEARN AT ALL TIMES TO CALL FOR BY 
 DILIGENT PRAYER. 
 
 We have not a right view of that which the Gospel 
 throws open before us — our sinfulness; our inability to 
 do any thing acceptable to God ; the binding nature 
 of our responsibilities ; the exceeding holiness of the 
 law ; the fearful issues which are suspended on our 
 obedience ; the provision which is made for our resto- 
 ration to the favour of God, and the renewal of our 
 heart and life by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and 
 after the image of him who is " the first-born among 
 many brethren;" — the proffered recognition of all these 
 things is ineffectual of any good result, unless it move 
 us to earnest and continuous prayer. Desiring, fear- 
 ing, hoping, distrusting ourselves, and yet resolved by 
 the promised grace of God, these things we must call 
 for by diligent prayer. 
 
 The Church, then, does not ask of you alone, What 
 is the measure of your knowledge? — what have you 
 resolved ? — what is the direction of your desires and 
 your efforts ? — but, For what do you in your secret 
 heart and habitually pray ? There is no life in know- 
 ledge, no sincerity in desire, no purpose in resolution, 
 no dependance in faith, no holiness, no hope without 
 prayer. 
 
68 TO CANDIDATES FOR CONFIRMATION. 
 
 In this, then, I conclude my address to you for this 
 morning. 
 
 Recognize the propriety of your wish now to pre- 
 sent yourselves to the Bishop to be confirmed, in 
 the measure of the spirit of prayer of which you 
 are conscious. Then pray earnestly to God to give 
 you his grace to aid you in the necessary previous 
 duty of self-examination — to discover your actual state 
 ■ — your preparedness or your want of preparation 
 for that holy rite. Pray as earnestly that the bless- 
 ing of God may rest on your parents, your spon- 
 sors and your ministers, in the advice and instruction 
 which, in the course of their inquiry into your fitness, 
 they may give to you. Pray for the Holy Spirit to give 
 a right direction and force to all the movements of 
 your mind in view of what is before you. Pray for the 
 Divine presence when you may offer yourselves before 
 the Church for the purpose you have in view — his pre- 
 sence recognizing and blessing the congregation, the 
 Bishop, and especially yourself. That which is thus 
 begun in prayer will issue in holiness and be pro- 
 longed to eternal life. 
 
 To what have I thus far advised you, but in sin- 
 cerity, firmness of purpose, dependance on the grace 
 of God, and assurance of his faithfulness, to " stand to 
 the covenant" ? 
 
SERMON V. 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 TO 
 
 CANDIDATES FOR CONFIRMATION. 
 
 2 Kings xxiii. 3 : 
 And all the people stood to the covenant. 
 
 I find it needful, in entering on this second part of 
 my Address to the Candidates for Confirmation, in 
 order to prevent all misconception of what I may 
 think it my duty to bring under their notice, to state 
 again, as plainly as I may, the limits which are pre- 
 scribed to me. 
 
 I presume, then, that I have before me enlightened 
 and faithful members of the Church of England ; not 
 those who attend the services of the Church because 
 habits early formed so dispose them, or because they 
 have not yet come to the conclusion that she ought to 
 be deserted by them, or because they have never 
 made this a matter of serious examination, and have 
 by consequence no fixed principles respecting it, — but 
 
70 TO CANDIDATES 
 
 those who from conviction, and cordially, surrender 
 themselves to her institutions and submit to her rule. 
 
 With the course which others pursue, I claim no 
 right, and I am sensible of no disposition, to inter- 
 meddle. But deeply and inwardly should I be con- 
 victed of guilty reserve, if, with the purpose of con- 
 ciliating those whom I know to be in error, I were to 
 withhold from the candidates for Confirmation and 
 others of you to whom I immediately address myself, a 
 plain statement of that which I equally know to be ac- 
 cording to the truth. 
 
 My obligation, indeed, to state, without reservation, 
 the requirements of the truth, is, if possible, the more 
 stringent on the present occasion. " If the trumpet 
 give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself 
 for the battle ?" The want of definiteness, and there- 
 fore the changeful inconsistency of principle and of 
 conduct, among those who call themselves Christians, 
 which is characteristic of our day, is properly to be 
 traced to the doubtfulness of religious instruction 
 under which generations have now been born and 
 passed away. The sin of insubordination has thus 
 become as familiar to us as the first elements of 
 thought by which our principles are formed and our 
 life is guided. 
 
 I address myself directly, moreover, to those who 
 are candidates to partake of a rite which, in this coun- 
 try and in this our day, though not in view of the 
 universal church and of the earliest periods of the 
 Gospel, is peculiar to the Church of England ; and 
 who therefore acknowledge themselves bound, not 
 only, though supremely, to that which Holy Scripture 
 
FOR CONFIRMATION. 71 
 
 requires of them to believe and to do for their soul's 
 health, — but subordinate!}', yet with equal sincerity, 
 to the services which the Church has set forth as at 
 once explanatory and in strict obedience to what is 
 stated and enforced in the inspired Word of God. 
 
 Jfliat the Church requires of such persons in 
 order to Confirmation, I have already attempted to 
 unfold. 
 
 What the Church hopes and demands of such 
 persons after Confirmation, is this morning to form 
 the subject of my discourse. 
 
 I shall construct my sermon, then, very much in 
 the form of advice for the guidance of the conduct of 
 those of this parish whom the Bishop shall, on our 
 certificate of their due preparation, receive, examine, 
 pray for and bless, in the name of the Father, and of 
 the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 And to such persons I may perhaps best commence 
 my Address by directing their attention to the form of 
 words, in the use of which, as an earnest prayer, with 
 the laying on of hands, Confirmation takes place : 
 
 "Defend, Lord, this thy child (or this thy ser- 
 vant) with thy heavenly grace, that he may continue 
 thine for ever, and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit 
 more and more, until he come unto thy everlasting 
 kingdom.'' 
 
 Now observe. There is no part of religious obli- 
 gation more essentially practical than prayer. We 
 ask for grace to enable us to be obedient to the will of 
 God, for his glory and our own spiritual and eternal 
 welfare — we ask, sincerely purposing both to seek and, 
 
72 
 
 TO CANDIDATES 
 
 if attained, to concur in the sacred tendencies of that 
 which may be bestowed upon us — or else we pray not 
 at all. 
 
 We might apply this to the prayer for Confirmation 
 which I have cited, and, without further remark, 
 change its several clauses into the form of exhortation 
 and advice to those who have been confirmed. First, 
 however, let us turn our attention to the prayers 
 which immediately follow upon, and are therefore in- 
 tended to be farther explanatory of the mind of the 
 Church in her supplications for those who are now 
 introduced into the full enjoyment of her privileges. 
 
 I pass over, for the present, the Lord's Prayer, 
 which is strongly illustrative of the principle affirmed, 
 and restrict myself to the two Collects of which the 
 rest of the service is composed. There, too, have we 
 supplications for grace — but how expressed *? 
 
 "Almighty and Everlasting God, who makest u$ 
 both to will and to do those things which are good 
 
 and acceptable unto thy Divine Majesty let thy 
 
 Holy Spirit ever be with these thy servants, and so 
 lead them in the knowledge and obedience of thy 
 word, that in the end they may obtain everlasting 
 life." 
 
 And again, " Vouchsafe so to dibect, sanctify 
 and govebn, both oub heabts and bodies in the 
 
 WAYS OF THY LAWS, AND IN THE WOBKS OF THY COM- 
 MANDMENTS, that through thy most mighty protec- 
 tion, both here and ever, we may be preserved in 
 body and sozil, through our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
 Christ:' 
 
FOR CONFIRMATION. 73 
 
 The primary desire expressed in these prayers is 
 manifestly for the gift of the Spirit ; but the gift of 
 that Spirit is sought for truly practical ends — to stir 
 up the mind to the right pursuit of heavenly things, 
 and to make effectual the dispositions and the ener- 
 gies so awakened to the attainment of faith and holiness 
 in the present life, and eternal happiness in the next. 
 
 In addressing you, then, in respect of the obliga- 
 tions which the Church regards as binding upon you 
 for ever after, and in respect of, your Confirmation, I 
 will arrange what I may have to say under the several 
 clauses expressed or implied in the prayer offered by 
 the Bishop when administering the sacred rite. 
 
 First, then, Let the primary, the ruling principle 
 of your subsequent religious life be in the thought 
 that you are a child, — A servant of God. 
 
 We are, indeed, to pray for all men — even for those 
 who are far out of the pale — even persecutors of the 
 Church of Christ ; but for those only who are acknow- 
 ledged members of that holy body could words be 
 addressed to heaven, like those of the introduction to 
 this prayer. This, for whom we pray, is thy child — 
 
 THY SERVANT. 
 
 And there is here no vain presumption. Was your 
 Baptism, in one important view, regarded as the first 
 devotion of your life to the service of God — your 
 admission into the family of Christ for instant educa- 
 tion, and, as your powers should open, instruction 
 after his will, in dependance on the promised aid 
 of his Spirit? Were you thus declared a child of 
 God in faith of the efficacy of that which even then 
 took its commencement ? You have at your Confir- 
 
 £ 
 
7 A TO CANDIDATES 
 
 mation declared that your judgment, your heart and 
 your conscience concur in all this, and you have 
 claimed for yourself the acknowledged privileges of a 
 child of God! On your own profession — on your 
 ratification of the vows of your Baptism, we recognize 
 you as such. From this time forth, then, let this be 
 the dominant thought of your mind — I am a child — 
 I am a servant of God ! 
 
 The practical unfolding of this principle is the sub- 
 ject of the other clauses of the prayer; but how valu- 
 able is the acknowledgment of the principle itself! 
 
 Henceforth, if you are indeed sincere in all you 
 have professed of faith and obedience, the Church 
 publicly recognizes the fact, that the guilt and the fatal 
 consequences, for this world and the next, of the cor- 
 ruption of your nature which you inherited from your 
 fallen progenitor Adam, have passed away ; that you 
 have a living and effectual interest in the cross of your 
 Redeemer ; that the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of 
 God, has cleansed you from all sin ; that the gracious 
 promises of the Word of God, adapted as they are to 
 all the varying conditions of the Christian's state, and 
 bestowed through the all-deserving Head to the still- 
 undeserving body, the Church, are held in store for 
 you ; that you have the gift of the Holy Ghost, for all 
 the ends of a holy and a hopeful life. To you, who 
 have thus received the Saviour, God Most High has 
 given power to become his child, through faith in his 
 name. 
 
 In this large view, let the ruling thought within you 
 be ever this — "I am a child of God — a servant of his 
 will. Truth is addressed, grace is offered to the 
 
FOR CONFIRMATION. 75 
 
 worldly as to aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, 
 and strangers to the covenant of promise ; but to me 
 they are held forth as to a child reconciled to my Hea- 
 venly Father in Christ Jesus. Obedience is exacted 
 of them as in view of all the obligations of an offended 
 law, and all the suspended penalties which justice is 
 even now prepared to enforce ; but of me, as of one 
 whom his Father loves, and in contemplation of the 
 favour, promises and grace of the better covenant," 
 " What shall we say then ? Shall we continue in sin 
 that grace may abound ? God forbid ! How shall 
 we that are dead in sin, live any longer therein ? 
 Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into 
 Jesus Christ were baptized into his death ? Therefore 
 we are buried with him by Baptism into death ; that 
 like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the 
 glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in 
 newness of life." 
 
 Never, then, forget this your new relationship, 
 openly commenced at your Baptism, and confessed 
 and ratified at your Confirmation. The mental repose, 
 the confidence, the cheerful and ready obedience of a 
 child to his parent, concentrate in the filial affection 
 of his heart. Let your mental repose, your holy 
 dependance on God, your free and full obedience to 
 all his known will as revealed throughout his word, 
 have their abiding-place and their living service in the 
 Spirit that dwells ever within you — the glow of a holy 
 affection which ascends upward to the presence of the 
 Most High, and there expresses the deepest desires of 
 the soul in the language of a child-like confidence and 
 love — Abba ! Father ! 
 
 e2 
 
76 TO CANDIDATES 
 
 Then, Look to your Heavenly Father, in and 
 through the Lord Jesus Christ, for defence against 
 all the dangers of your religious course. "Defend, 
 Lord, this thy child." 
 
 We have on a former occasion observed, that all 
 resolutions of good made in dependance on ourselves, 
 are but a vain mockery offered to the Most High. 
 Sin has brought upon us an utter inability to do that 
 which is pleasing and acceptable to God. The 
 prayers which compose the service of Confirmation, 
 we have seen, imply the same. 
 
 We may, for instance, in truth and sincerity, at the 
 present moment affirm our full belief in God's Word, 
 our readiness to submit ourselves to the obligations 
 of his law, and our cordial renunciation of the world, 
 the flesh and the devil. But have we power to pre- 
 serve alive for one succeeding moment the spark of 
 grace which is within us ? When it has subsided and 
 is apparently quenched, can we renew the hidden 
 energy and fan it to a flame ? 
 
 Alas ! no sooner shall the words and the prayers of 
 Confirmation have passed — words of affirmation and 
 resolve on your part, and words of holy intercession 
 and blessing from him who is appointed to minister 
 the rite, than the contest with evil will be renewed. 
 You will carry away with you from the house and 
 presence of God a sinful nature, prone to wander from 
 him who hath bought you with his blood. The law 
 which is in your members will still and fiercely war 
 against the law which is in your mind. You will 
 return to worldly concerns, which are divided by a 
 narrow line alone from those of unblushing iniquity. 
 
FOR CONFIRMATION 11 
 
 You will, perhaps of necessity of relationship, go 
 back to those who are prepared to lead you into all 
 the gaieties of a vain and deceitful life. The prince of 
 the power of the air will be instantly, as he will be 
 continuously, waiting to snatch the holy seed from 
 your heart, or, by devices numberless, to nip its 
 growth, or effectually check its productiveness, and 
 make you barren of the results of the grace of God. 
 
 You believe now, it may be, with the brightness of 
 an inward and undisturbed conviction — who shall say 
 that from some unexpected quarter the dark cloud of 
 infidelity shall not arise and gradually veil your mind 
 in the obscurity of unresisted error ? 
 
 Your resolution to devote yourself to the one ser- 
 vice of God, is now, perhaps, without qualification. 
 Are you sure that no after-thoughts of listlessness 
 shall be suggested, and your energy shall not subside 
 into coldness and indifference ? 
 
 If, indeed, you are rightly impressed with the obli- 
 gation of this holy rite, you inwardly tremble when 
 such thoughts are made to pass before you. 
 
 How suitably does the Church guide your resolu- 
 tions which she encourages you to express ! 
 
 Dost thou renew the solemn promise and vow that 
 was made in thy name at thy Baptism ? 
 
 I DO. 
 
 Our help, she adds, is in the name of the Lord. 
 
 Happily, evil, and the returning suggestions of 
 evil, assume not suddenly supremacy of power 
 over the mind. Temptation leaves time for prayer. 
 A consciousness of our own infirmities is the very 
 position in which the soul supplicates divine aid. 
 
78 TO CANDIDATES 
 
 Never, then, let the thought escape you, that in God 
 is your defence. As it were by a holy habit of mind, 
 flee for succour, when the sound of danger first awa- 
 kens on your ear, to M the covert of his wing." Build 
 up your hopes on the truth affirmed to the apostle, 
 " My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is 
 made perfect in weakness," Be sincere. Think faith- 
 fully of this, and then, like the apostle in the midst of 
 all dangers, you shall be able to say, " I take plea- 
 sure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in 
 persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake ; for when 
 I am weak, then am I strong." 
 
 Next, in accordance with the expectations of the 
 Church respecting you after Confirmation, I advise 
 you, — In the steady and persevering use of the 
 mxaxs for the attainment of the grace of God, let it 
 he your object to continue to be the child of God to 
 the end. 
 
 So the Church prays for you — that, defended by his 
 heavenly grace you may continue to be his for 
 ever. 
 
 Bear ever in mind, then, that it is of God's grace 
 alone that you have any desire or ability to believe in 
 and serve him. That grace has brought you, if, in- 
 deed, you are sincere, now openly to profess your 
 faith in him, and your desire and purpose to be obe- 
 dient to all the obligations of his Gospel. That grace, 
 too, can alone make your holy resolutions effectual 
 through the various means which he has appointed to 
 this end ; and to this end those means must be con- 
 tinually used. 
 
 Be careful never to neglect the private and personal 
 
FOR CONFIRMATION 79 
 
 duties, which are the more intimate means of grace in 
 the continuance of a religious life. 
 
 Let no day pass without devotional study of some 
 portion, short as it may be, of the Word of God. 
 " Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest" what there 
 unfolds itself before you. 
 
 Set apart a fixed period of every morning and even- 
 ing for meditation, prayer and praise. These are the 
 links in the chain which connects the commencement 
 with the issues of faith and obedience. 
 
 Regulate your whole life — every arrangement, every 
 pursuit — by the principles of the Word of God, that 
 through every event of your existence some good may 
 be derived to your spiritual and eternal interests. 
 
 Carry your religion into your heart — make that 
 your cherished oratory. Thither let all your powers of 
 reflection and adoration frequently retire. There 
 first transact with God, the Church, the world and 
 yourself, the great business of your salvation. There 
 renew your penitence, your faith and your obedience. 
 Look to the past, the present and the future, and, 
 with judgment to the line and righteousness to the 
 plummet, fathom the depths of principle and of 
 thought. 
 
 Then come forth into life again. Bring with you 
 the seeds of holiness. Be in fact, what in language 
 you so freely profess — a Christian, after the example 
 of your risen Lord. Take your religion with you into 
 business ; into society ; into all the movements of 
 home ; and all the stirring scenes of which each of us 
 forms a part. " Whatsoever things are true, what- 
 soever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, 
 
80 
 
 TO CANDIDATES 
 
 whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
 lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, — if there 
 be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on 
 these things. Those things which ye have learned 
 and received and heard, and, through the writings of 
 apostolic men, have seen in them, do, and the God of 
 peace shall be with you." 
 
 But I forget not that the great blessing of your 
 Confirmation is the cementing, as it were, of your 
 communion with the Church, for all the blessings 
 which God has bestowed upon and secured to her in 
 Christ. What I have said, then, of private and per- 
 sonal duties as means of grace to you, may with equal 
 force be urged in reference to all the obligations of 
 communion with the saints of God. 
 
 Frequently have I, throughout my discourses on 
 Confirmation, endeavoured to trace the distinction 
 between that which is of direct scriptural injunction, 
 and therefore, even in respect of its form, of imme- 
 diate divine authority, and that which is of the dis- 
 cretion entrusted to the Church, for the edification 
 of her members ; not of directly divine authority, 
 indeed, but unquestionably binding upon and benefi- 
 cial to those who' concur in the institution of them, 
 and believe that they are truly derived from and 
 grounded upon Scripture principles. To such, (and 
 such are all those who are, of their own choice, con- 
 firmed according to the modes of the Church,) her 
 doctrine and her discipline — her discipline not the less 
 than her doctrine — are effectual means of edification. 
 
 You believe that God is not a God of confusion, 
 but of order. You conscientiously perceive that 
 
FOR CONFIRMATION. 81 
 
 without order there is no edification, and that order 
 and discipline you recognize in the institutions of the 
 Church. She is your acknowledged guide in the 
 observance of the Sabbath, in the services of God's 
 house, in the arrangements of worship, in the reading 
 and hearing of God's Word. Distinctly and properly 
 as these may be, of their own nature and in them- 
 selves, means of grace, they are so to you after the 
 manner in which the Church ministers them. You 
 judge not others — why should you? To their own 
 Master they stand or fall. But, instructed as you are, 
 the means of your edification are arranged for you 
 according to the discipline of the Church of England. 
 Most earnestly do I advise you with all unchanging 
 strictness to adhere to that discipline. 
 
 There are enough in the present day to tell you that 
 it is of little consequence where you go, and accord- 
 ing to what form you worship, so that you hear that 
 which commends itself to your individual mind and 
 feelings as the Gospel of Christ. Discipline, that is, 
 they would seem to say, on the one hand, and sub- 
 mission for edification on the other, are matters of 
 individual taste. 
 
 Now I warn you seriously against both the exam- 
 ple and the advice of such persons. 
 
 I do sincerely respect those who, having, from 
 whatever cause, fallen into the error of believing that 
 the discipline of the Church of England is not accord- 
 ing to the Word of God, do charitably, but consist- 
 ently, altogether avoid and absent themselves from 
 her services, and attend to other modes of edification. 
 But fearful indeed appears to be the state of others 
 e3 
 
82 TO CANDIDATES 
 
 who, thinking these to be matters of no importance, 
 encourage, as well by their example as by their words, 
 that spirit of confusion which is so prevalent in the 
 present day. 
 
 Quench within your heart, I beseech you, an un- 
 holy desire of novelty and excitement. Deceive not 
 yourself by the imagination that a spirit which has 
 broken loose from wholesome restraint, and justifies 
 itself in a resistance to control, by holding that modes 
 of discipline are of minor importance, is a spirit of 
 Christian charity and love ; but rather gratefully and 
 perseveringly, and soberly too, and in the fear of 
 God, make use of the ordered means of your edifi- 
 cation which the Church has provided for you. 
 
 And, therefore, let nothing hinder you from an early 
 and an unceasing participation or the Sacrament of 
 the Lord's Supper — a means of grace as it is — the 
 pledge of the efficiency of all other means — a bond 
 of communion — an occasion, frequently recurring, 
 inwardly to renew, and openly to profess and seal, 
 that covenant by which you have, with purpose of 
 heart, surrendered yourself to be the Lord's. 
 
 But, farther, in the prayer of Confirmation the 
 Church seems to admonish you that it is of the nature 
 of a justifiable assurance of the favour of God, that 
 your religion be in every respect progressive. May 
 he daily increase in thy Holy Spirit more and 
 
 MORE ! 
 
 The words are strikingly impressive. They intend, 
 no doubt, the same as those of the apostle, addressed 
 to us in the form of exhortation — " Grow in grace." 
 All grace is from the Spirit of God, who bestows it 
 
FOR CONFIRMATION. 83 
 
 upon us, dwelling himself in the heart, and thereby 
 manifesting his presence and his sanctifying power 
 through the various means which he has appointed 
 thereto. In the passage to which we have referred, 
 growth in grace is said to accompany growth in know- 
 ledge of the Lord and Saviour. In other parts of 
 Scripture, its increase is set forth as fruitful in the 
 larger attainment of other Christian virtues: we are 
 babes in Christ before we reach to manhood and to 
 the maturity of the spiritual life. 
 
 Acknowledge this, then, practically. Be it your 
 supreme object to abound more and more in every 
 good word and work. Daily, by watchfulness, self- 
 denial, diligence and prayer, " add to your faith vir- 
 tue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge tem- 
 perance, and to temperance patience, and to patience 
 godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to 
 brotherly kindness charity : for if these things be in 
 you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither 
 be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ." 
 
 The spirit of true religion in the soul is restless of 
 its present state and acquirements. It aspires to some- 
 thing more adequate to the demands of the law — more 
 accordant with the example of the Saviour — more un- 
 reservedly obedient to the new affections which glow 
 upon the heart. " Know ye not that they which run 
 in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So 
 run, then, that ye may obtain." 
 
 But this borders on the last topic of advice to which 
 the Church invites our attention by this prayer, and 
 to which I will very shortly, in conclusion, refer. She 
 
84 TO CANDIDATES FOR CONFIRMATION. 
 
 looks that the confirmed live in anticipation of the 
 eternal issue of their faith and obedience — until he 
 
 COME UNTO THINE EVERLASTING KINGDOM. 
 
 For you have limited views of your Confirmation 
 unless you connect it with your everlasting welfare. 
 
 For the future, then, conduct your life in anticipa- 
 tion of the perfections and the glories of another 
 world. Live, not by sight, but by faith. Look, not 
 at the things which are seen, which are temporal, but 
 at the things which are not seen, which are eternal. 
 Be urged forward to all which is good, be restrained 
 from all which is evil, be moved to unceasing and 
 intense interest in the things which are profitable 
 to your salvation, by an inward but supreme grati- 
 tude to your Lord, and a sincere love of his appear- 
 ing. And let the thought keep watch at the door of 
 your heart — let it present itself there with the dawn 
 of the morning — let it guard every movement of your 
 soul, every word of your lips, and every action of 
 your life, during the day — let its form fade on your 
 perceptions only when you surrender yourself to the 
 repose of the night — " Yet a little while, and he that 
 shall come will come, and will not tarry." Mean- 
 while, " the just shall live by his faith ;" — " but if any 
 man draw back," his Lord, at his coming, " shall have 
 no pleasure in him." 
 
 " Stand" faithfully, then, and perse veringly, " to the 
 covenant," if you desire to hail the appearance of your 
 Lord with joy, and with him enter into his promised 
 glories in heaven ! 
 
COMMON OBLIGATIONS 85 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 
 COMMON AND MUTUAL OBLIGATIONS 
 
 OF THOSE WHO ARE 
 
 CONFIRMED MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 2 Kings xxiii. 3 : 
 And all the people stood to the covenant. 
 
 In my five preceding Discourses on Confirmation, I 
 have endeavoured to occupy the attention of the mem- 
 bers of this congregation who are more immediately 
 interested in the approaching administration of that 
 sacred rite. I now address those of you who have 
 already partaken of it, and are therefore presumed 
 to be in the enjoyment of the privileges, and, by 
 profession and acknowledgment on your part, 
 bound by the duties which it at once assures and 
 enjoins. As the Bishop has prescribed the sixteenth 
 year as suitable for Confirmation, may I not hope that 
 all persons before me above that age will listen to 
 my discourse as especially contemplating themselves V 
 That personal application of what may be said, I 
 am desirous, in the first instance, to encourage. 
 
86 OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 There is, perhaps, nothing more difficult, because it 
 is opposed to the ordinary habit and current of our 
 thoughts, than to realize and seriously contemplate in 
 all their bearings, our actual relationships with God 
 and our fellow-creatures. Of what we are, as intel- 
 lectual and sentient beings, we are, perhaps, imme- 
 diately conscious. But of what we are — what are our 
 privileges and what our obligations, in the relationships 
 of life, as they become more remote from our ori- 
 ginal consciousness, men scarcely care to inquire. 
 
 It is, on this account, of the first importance to 
 inquire accurately into the nature of the Christian 
 Church, and to propose to ourselves, as an attainment 
 of the highest practical value, to discover what is 
 involved in membership of that holy communion. 
 What do we intend when we say — I am a member of 
 the Church of Christ? or, I am a member of the 
 Church of England, which is a part of the visible 
 Church of Christ? 
 
 Now the term which we render " Church" is used in 
 the Scriptures in various senses. To all of these it is 
 not needful to my present purpose to refer. 
 
 So far as we are immediately concerned it intends, 
 a society or assembly of persons called out, as the ori- 
 ginal term intends, from the rest, and at once contra- 
 distinguished from them and associated together by 
 certain divine laws, institutions, privileges and duties, 
 and all these for certain ends, divinely purposed and 
 definitely understood. 
 
 That in the term Church, reference is distinctly 
 made to the calling of her members, the primary idea 
 of a Church seems to contemplate the state of the 
 
COMMON OBLIGATIONS 87 
 
 society of which we have spoken, in the present world, 
 as contradistinguished from that of her members, 
 before they had attended to the Gospel invitation, and 
 of those who still remain in their unregenerate con- 
 dition. But in view of the end for which that calling 
 takes place, and the only source of the efficiency of 
 the means which are appointed to be used for that 
 end, the idea of the Church limits itself to those who 
 are sincerely obedient to the truth in the present 
 world, and those who are in the enjoyment of the 
 fruits of the great propitiation in the next. 
 
 On the whole, the definition of the Church may be 
 made to include all who are called in the visible world, 
 and all who are glorified in that which is invisible ; 
 or, it may be restricted to that which is visible here : 
 or, it may be yet farther limited, for reasons hereafter 
 to be alleged, to the members of the great community 
 which may be associated under distinct laws and 
 modes of discipline in nations, in districts, in congre- 
 gations, in households ; but never in such sense as to 
 imply a disruption or separation from the unity of the 
 whole ; the minor divisions are always included under, 
 merged in, and form an essential part of that by which 
 it is territorially embraced, until the earthly limits be 
 those of the world, and the whole range of her commu- 
 nity be regarded as the whole number of the faithful.* 
 
 The ideas of this subject in which we are for the 
 present the most interested, and which bear most inti- 
 mately on that which is now before us, are those of the 
 universal Church in this world, and of our national 
 
 * Eph. v. 23— 27 ; Col. i. 24; 1 Cor. xvi. 19; Acts xx. 17; 
 Rev. ii. 1; 1 Cor. xiv. 23; Rom. xvi. 5; Heb. xii. 22—21. 
 
00 COMMON OBLIGATIONS 
 
 Church as an integral part of it — or the Church, whe- 
 ther by that term we intend the whole or a distinct part, 
 as subjected and presenting itself to the limited per- 
 ception of human beings, and therefore called visible. 
 
 And, still to restrict ourselves for one moment to 
 the intention of the name by which this community is 
 designated, and as introductory to what I may have 
 farther to offer, it would appear to be primary to the 
 idea of a Church as existing in the present world, that 
 it has been divinely instituted, in the first place, for 
 the calling of men out of the world to the Saviour, 
 and then, for the gradual preparation of those so 
 called, through the sympathies and the energies of the 
 body into which they are so brought, for the final con- 
 summation of the Divine will respecting those who 
 believe in, love and obey him, in another world. 
 Calling, then, and edification are the great objects 
 proposed to the Church of God on earth, whether 
 regarded in its undivided unity or in its subordinate 
 divisions. 
 
 What does this necessarily imply, but that the 
 Church is the province of Divine grace for the disci- 
 pline and education for eternal life of all who are 
 included within her pale, and that from her goes forth 
 the warning and the invitation which, through the 
 power that accompanies it, calls men out of darkness 
 into marvellous light ; from being aliens and foreigners 
 to become fellow-citizens of the saints and of the 
 household of God ; from a state of willing darkness 
 and ignorance without, to that of accepted inquirers 
 and learners and disciples within ? 
 
 It may be said that these remarks are general and 
 
OF THE CHURCH. 89 
 
 indefinite, and that they need farther explanation. 
 Let ns seek that explanation in a part of the "Word of 
 God wherein the subject is discussed, in contempla- 
 tion of that view which is now open before us, and so 
 approach to the application of it which I especially 
 propose to myself this morning ; I allude to the fourth 
 chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians. 
 
 There we learn respecting the Church, the following 
 leading truths. 
 
 For the Church herself, in view of the Divine pur- 
 poses for which she was instituted in this world, the 
 apostle there instructs us that 
 
 There is one only visible body (I refer to the 
 fourth verse), of which Christ himself is the Head. 
 That Church may contain many recognized divisions, 
 but still is the truth asserted : " As the body is 
 one and hath many members, and all the members 
 of that body being many are one body — so also is 
 Christ." (1 Cor. xii. 12.) 
 
 Then this one universal body is pervaded by one 
 only Spirit — the one source of spiritual life and energy 
 and sympathy ; producing every where and in all the 
 same manifestations and fruits of holiness and love. 
 
 And to this one holy society, so united in all which 
 is visible and all which is invisible, there is one hope, 
 one ultimate expectation from their obedience to that 
 calling which brought them into the number of God's 
 people. They all depend on the same grace, and all 
 anticipate the same eternal glory ; therein still to be 
 one undivided Church in Christ for ever. 
 
 In view of that calling which is the function of the 
 Church for the " increase of the body," we learn in 
 
90 OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 the fifth verse of the chapter before us, that There 
 is one Lord, who is exalted to be Head over 
 all things ; who sends forth his servants into the high- 
 ways to compel men to come in ; by whose authority 
 they address their call to mankind, and by whose grace 
 that call is made effectual. 
 
 And the terms, we farther read, at once of the 
 ministration on the part of those who are appointed to 
 teach, and of obedience on the part of the hearer, are 
 one and the same. Even before the canon of Scrip- 
 ture was complete, one rule of faith prevailed in the 
 Church, which had been delivered by apostolic men, 
 and deposited in the records of each congregation; and 
 that faith, in its elements, was offered generally to man- 
 kind, and became the one universal condition of their 
 being received into the Church. 
 
 And for that privilege, there was but one Baptism, 
 in profession of the same faith, "in the name of the 
 Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." So 
 believing and so baptized, they who were obedient to 
 the heavenly calling were born again into the Church, 
 and their reception was sealed by the one pervading 
 Spirit of that holy and elect body. 
 
 The apostle having so spoken of the unity of the 
 visible Church, both in her vital structure and in her 
 ministry of the truth to others, for the increase of her 
 society, through the heavenly calling, proceeds next to 
 trace her communion with the Father of all, for her 
 edification to eternal life, and the enjoyment of his 
 presence and glory in heaven. 
 
 The one Holy Spirit and the one Lord and Saviour 
 have been mentioned. The conditions of Baptism, 
 
OF THE CHURCH. 91 
 
 however, have not thus far been fully asserted. He 
 adds, then, that to this Church universal — in heaven 
 above and throughout the world in which we live — 
 there is one God and Father of all, whose divine 
 love first originated the great scheme of the salvation 
 of the Church, whose wisdom accompanied its deve- 
 lopment, whose glory is manifested in the midst of the 
 saved in heaven, and who still overrules and directs 
 all to the fulfilment of his purposes in the Church, in 
 her preparatory and militant state, in the present 
 world : for there he dwells in the holy body ; is pre- 
 sent in all her institutions ; ministers grace in all her 
 services; and makes the visible society of his redeemed 
 people his habitation. 
 
 From this point, in the striking chapter before us, 
 the apostle speaks more particularly of the other, and 
 it may be termed proper, end of the divine institution 
 of the Church — the edification of her members in 
 preparation for her eternal inheritance. 
 
 And on this subject he would seem to take it as for 
 granted, that "the edifying of the body of Christ''' 
 must take place through the Divine blessing on the 
 instruction which should be given to them, according 
 to the one changeless faith, and through the discipline 
 by which that instruction is made practical and en- 
 forced. The perfecting of the saints is here said to 
 take place through teaching ; and all the divinely-ap- 
 pointed institutions of the Church are plainly implied 
 to have this in view. 
 
 Men have been admitted into the Church by Bap- 
 tism, on their profession of the elements of a true faith, 
 whose foundation-principle is in the doctrine of the 
 
92 COMMON OBLIGATIONS 
 
 ever-blessed Trinity. In the particulars of that faith, 
 so far as they are revealed, from the infancy and igno- 
 rance of their New Life, must the Church undertake to 
 instruct them ; that, daily, and to the term of their 
 earthly life, they may grow in grace as they grow in 
 the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 
 Then, for this end, (I refer now to the 11th verse,) 
 different orders of men were divinely appointed within 
 the Church, who might at once devote their whole 
 time to the work of the ministry, and also, according 
 to their measure and office, receive of God grace for 
 the efficiency of that in which they wrought for the 
 instruction and edification of the Church. To some 
 the Lord gave, not the office alone, but the grace of 
 apostleship ; to others, that of prophets ; and in like 
 manner to the rest. The God of order thus made use 
 of one of the confessed principles of his own divine 
 nature, for the restoration of fallen man to his own 
 image and glory. 
 
 The next step in this wonderful economy, and the 
 last to which I shall find it needful to refer, is de- 
 scribed in the sixteenth verse. For the purposes of 
 order, rule, discipline and instruction, it has appeared 
 that it pleased God not to step aside from the types 
 which he had impressed on all sentient and all intel- 
 lectual nature, and which he had brought out in broad 
 relief in the earlier, but the true though typical Church 
 of the Jews, and, as it were, to create in its stead a 
 democracy in the Christian society, — but he fixed the 
 divine discipline and appointed the gradations of 
 rule — powers which should be — to which the Church 
 should render respect, and from which she should 
 
OF THE CHURCH. 93 
 
 look for instruction and guidance. It appears, how- 
 ever, from the verse before us, that although, for the 
 ends in view, suitable grace was bestowed on all the 
 various orders of the ministry, grace was not withheld 
 from even the meanest member of the sacred body. 
 The ministry were as the larger channels through 
 which the current of life first flowed for the nou- 
 rishment of the common whole ; — they were the 
 branches connected with the great source of all 
 life. But the Divine purposes found not here their 
 limitation. The same stream of life, imbued with 
 adequate grace, flowed also and continuously through 
 every member of the body, and for the same purposed 
 end. "From whom the whole body, fitly joined to- 
 gether and compacted by that which every joint sup- 
 plieth, according to the effectual working in the mea- 
 sure of every part, maketh increase of the body, unto 
 the edifying of itself in love." 
 
 And we here approach, as you perceive, the imme- 
 diate purpose of my discourse. 
 
 But before I enter upon it, suffer me to occupy 
 your attention for a few moments on a subject which, 
 although apparently but collateral to it, is yet in our 
 day of the utmost moment, for serious consideration. 
 
 A long train of events, not difficult to be traced, 
 has happily led thoughtful men to meditate patiently 
 on the Divine purpose in the establishment of a 
 Church among mankind: — on her structure and her 
 uses; — and very especially on the claims of the 
 Church of England to be an integral part of that 
 Divine economy for the salvation of mankind. To 
 minds so occupied, with the Bible and the history of 
 
94 COMMON OBLIGATIONS 
 
 the Church open before them, it was impossible that 
 any other conclusion should arise but this — that the 
 belief of a right doctrine is to be made effectual of the 
 promised end in this world, as preparatory for the 
 next, through the administration of a right discipline ; 
 that one chief end of faith as a practical principle, is 
 the sanctification of the heart and the renovation of the 
 life of him who believes ; and that as men are not 
 left to believe what their reason may seem to disco- 
 ver or their tastes to approve, so no more is the pro- 
 gress of edification after an order which human beings 
 may choose to construct for themselves. 
 
 These are safe rules ; and to these and much more 
 in their particular development, we owe, in part, the 
 more awakened attention of Christians in the present 
 day to certain persons of acknowledged talent, infor- 
 mation and piety in one of our Universities. 
 
 To the persons to whom I refer, with many who 
 have associated themselves with them, I say we are in- 
 debted for the more marked awakening of our attention 
 to the points at which I have hinted — to the structure, 
 the obligations and authority of the Church ; — to the 
 promised efficacy of the Sacraments ; — to the apostolic 
 commission of which the ordained ministry, in a sub- 
 ordinate measure, partakes ; — to the primary aid 
 which we derive from the records of the first ages of 
 the Church, preserved by the Fathers as witnesses of 
 the truth of the Inspired Volume ; — to the necessity 
 of obedience to the orders of the Church; — and espe- 
 cially of effectual and persevering self-denial for the 
 subduing of the flesh ; — and the rest. 
 
 But it is deeply to be regretted that, altogether and 
 
OF THE CHURCH. 95 
 
 doubtless sincerely professing the contrary, there are 
 not wanting among them those who do yet, in truth, 
 approach, in some instances, with almost childlike 
 temerity, the very precipice of Romish error, and 
 want only, it would seem, the recklessness to take the 
 last step which separates them from the gulf below. 
 That these persons deny the sufficiency of the Scrip- 
 tures, and look by way of increase to saving know- 
 ledge, not for the witness of divine truth — for which 
 they may justly and well look, in the earliest records, 
 but for the opinions of the Fathers, — men of like 
 passions and tendency to error with ourselves ; — that 
 they attribute to the Sacraments a necessary grace, — 
 not in view of the promise which is fulfilled immedi- 
 ately by God who gives, — not in view of the faithful- 
 ness of the receiver, — but in view alone of the minis- 
 tration by him who is appointed to that office ;* — that 
 
 * Is it scriptural, moreover, and according to the doctrine of 
 our Church to say, as some do affirm, that the grace of the Sacra- 
 ment is " supernatural grace," in any other sense than as all 
 divine grace is "supernatural" ? The next step is only after the 
 ordinary mode and tendency of human error. " What is the 
 meaning of the popular phrase, ' The Age of Miracles' ? Is 
 not every age of the Church an age of miracles ? Is there all the 
 difference, or, indeed, any thing more than the difference between 
 things seen and unseen, (a difference worth nothing in faith's 
 estimate,) between healing the sick and converting the soul; 
 raising man's natural body, and raising him in Baptism from the 
 death of sin ? Is the wonder wrought at the marriage of Cana a 
 miracle, and the change which the holy elements undergo as con- 
 secrated by the priest, and received by the faithful, no miracle, 
 simply because the one was perceptible to the natural eye, while 
 the other is discerned by the spiritual alone ? Protestants must 
 take care what they are about when they speak at random against 
 the Church of Rome, lest they pave the way for things as far 
 worse than Popery as irreligion is worse than superstition ; first 
 
96 COMMON OBLIGATIONS 
 
 they claim for the priesthood in absolution, not only 
 the declaration on authority of the readiness of God 
 to forgive, but a very part in the ministration of that 
 forgiving grace, as bestowed in virtue of their office; — 
 that they purposely withhold from the people the clear 
 statement of the great fundamental doctrines of our 
 religion, and would preach in measured and veiled 
 terms even the cross of the Redeemer; — that they 
 affirm that sin after Baptism is in a high sense unpar- 
 donable ; — that they exalt the Church to the neglect 
 of the Saviour; — that they justify, in some form, 
 prayers for the dead; — that they seek to restore to 
 our churches symbolical representations, and ceremo- 
 nial observances which, as in former times, must 
 again, if adopted, " give occasion to many supersti- 
 tions ;"* — but, above all, that they darken and render 
 
 rationalism, and next infidelity." See British Critic, Number 
 LIV. p. 260. 
 
 * A diligent, careful and affectionate, but unprejudiced study 
 of early Ecclesiastical History, by all who wish well to religion, 
 and to whom it has pleased God to grant the opportunity for so 
 doing, is at all times desirable and important, and, perhaps, the 
 more especially so in the present crisis of the Church. But, we 
 must bear seriously in mind that the Church has never been in- 
 fallible, except as under the immediate guidance and authority of 
 the Saviour himself and his inspired apostles. Romish errors 
 have not been the only errors by which she has been from time 
 to time polluted. In one view, then, we profitably study early 
 Ecclesiastical History, when it is our especial aim to discover, not 
 alone how the Church has guided herself in the purer ages of 
 Christianity, but in what form, and how gradually, in points, per- 
 haps, in the first instance, of very minor importance, but which 
 eventually merged in the errors of Rome, she diverged in disci- 
 pline and in doctrine from that which is plainly, and after the 
 testimony of Holy Scripture, in accordance with the apostolic, 
 and therefore divine model. Let us not lose or trifle with the 
 experience of now more than eighteen centuries. 
 
OF THE CHURCH. 97 
 
 obscure, to say the least, the great doctrine of our 
 religion, justification by faith alone ; — that they assert 
 and urge these and other like vain fancies, we regard 
 them only as beacons to warn us of our danger ; — we 
 learn from their example, that an enlarged mind, ex- 
 tensive knowledge, and even sincerity and piety itself, 
 will not preserve us from error when once we have 
 diverged from the beaten path of the Word of God. 
 
 But I return to the point in my subject from which 
 I digressed. 
 
 The one great object of the association and con- 
 tinued existence of the Church, is to render effectual 
 of its purposes the economy of the Gospel for the 
 salvation of mankind, first by the ministration of the 
 Truth for the calling of men out of the world, and 
 then within her own community, through the instru- 
 mentality of the appointed ministers, and through 
 the common grace bestowed upon all her members. 
 
 Twice has your membership been asserted. You 
 were admitted into the Church by Baptism; — your 
 engagements and your blessings were renewed and 
 ratified at your Confirmation. And now, in the pre- 
 sence of God and of each other, and in the presence, 
 too, of those persons who are about to partake of the 
 solemn rite, and may justly look to you for both an 
 example and encouragement, I ask you, Have you 
 stood to the covenant? Do you now stand to the 
 covenant? Are you obeying the impressions natu- 
 rally awakened in your minds by the events which are 
 passing before you ? and do you secretly renew your 
 purpose, by God's help, to persevere in your fidelity to 
 the end ? 
 
.98 COMMON OBLIGATIONS 
 
 In view, then, of your Confirmation in the faith, 
 privileges and obligations of the Gospel, still referring 
 to what has been said, I proceed to inquire what is 
 justly to be expected of you as a member, in the high- 
 est sense, of the Church universal, and then subordi- 
 nately of the Church of England ? I will hint only at 
 a few of the heads under which this expectation would 
 seem properly to arrange itself. 
 
 I. In the first place, the Church expects of you, 
 A growing acquaintance with the Holy Scrip- 
 ture, and a growing conviction of its supreme 
 authority. 
 
 It was after the reading of the law — all it com- 
 manded and all it promised — that the people of the 
 Israelitish Church are said in my text to have stood to 
 the covenant. The Church universal is the pillar and 
 the ground of the truth as it is revealed in the Bible. 
 All which restricts and all which adds to the written 
 Word of God, and the authoritative revelation of his 
 mind, is heresy or schism. The call of the Church is 
 by the voice of the Word. The edification of the 
 Church is based on the principles, doctrines, precepts 
 and promises of that Word, and of these, in their order 
 and bearing and place, that edification is properly the 
 development. 
 
 The Church of England, too, as a part of the 
 universal Church, demands the same of you. She 
 uses the privilege accorded to her to make institu- 
 tions and construct her services for the edification of 
 her members ; but her purity of faith and practice is 
 in this, that she refers all to the Scripture, and uses 
 the testimony of the records of the first ages of Chris- 
 
OF THE CHURCH. 99 
 
 tianity only as witnesses, of the first importance in- 
 deed, in the interpretation of the Word of God. 
 
 The Church of England has in her bosom some 
 who are cold, formal, political, and in other respects 
 unworthy members of her community. Why? Because 
 she has amongst her members those who do not per- 
 sonally and perseveringly give themselves to prayerful 
 study of the Word of God ; — who do not " compare the 
 Liturgy with the Bible." If they loved and read and 
 prayed over the Bible more, they must love with con- 
 vinced and filial affection the services and the institu- 
 tions of the Church of England for their good ! Are 
 you then Bible-studying Churchmen? 
 
 Again, the Church universal and subordinately the 
 Church of England, of which you are confirmed mem- 
 bers, expects of you, 
 
 II. To concur cheerfully in her discipline, and 
 cordially to make use of her services, in view and with 
 earnest desire of the grace of which they are means. 
 
 Observe the argument of the apostle in the chapter 
 of the Ephesians to which I have referred. Grace is 
 given to the ministry, and grace is bestowed upon 
 every member of the Church for the common benefit, 
 the universal and individual edification, of the body. 
 
 Again, then, I remark, that even though your life 
 be free from any gross manifestation of the dominion 
 of sin, yet if your religion be formal alone, and there 
 is no communication of vital principle and nourish- 
 ment to the understanding, the heart and the life, 
 through the services of religion, you obey not the ex- 
 hortation of the apostle — " I beseech you walk worthy 
 of the vocation wherewith ye are called" — the calling 
 f2 
 
100 COMMON OBLIGATIONS 
 
 which, even formally obeyed, has made you a member 
 of the visible Church of Christ. Away, then, with 
 controversy — life affords not time for it — except 
 where the subversion of error constitutes a duty of 
 our profession. Let each man of you be deeply, 
 sincerely engaged in rectifying his own deficiency of 
 concurrence, for his spiritual good, in the institutions 
 and services of the Church. Her very prayers both 
 teach you the necessity of knowledge and faith and 
 obedience and self-denial and love and hope ; and 
 they afford you the language most suitable for the ex- 
 pression of all. Let your spiritual life and your 
 external religious conduct take their principles, in- 
 deed, as these take their principles, from the Word of 
 God, but their form and modes of existence and ex- 
 pression from the guidance which the Church thus 
 administers. 
 
 III. The universal Church primarily, and the 
 Church of England subordinately, moreover, expects 
 of you, confirmed in her community ', to be the means 
 of the communication of 'the grace which you receive 
 through her, to others. The Church is compacted 
 and edified " by that which every joint supplieth." 
 
 The chief offices of the Church we have seen are 
 twofold, calling and self-edification. 
 
 And, now, is vital religion of so large influence on 
 your heart, that you deny yourself, and earnestly and 
 practically desire and pray and labour that through 
 her appointed ministers the Church maybe made in 
 our day the instrument of the large diffusion of the 
 knowledge and power of the Gospel throughout the 
 world? I speak of the Church of England, especially 
 
OF THE CHURCH. 101 
 
 in connexion, as it is, with a State which has now so 
 large dominion, and therefore obligation as well as 
 opportunity to fulfil what is thus enjoined on her. 
 What do you individually supply towards this end? 
 
 Then, for your own immediate neighbourhood — the 
 baptized of this village — the several officers of this 
 parish — her men of business and her unoccupied resi- 
 dents — her heads of households — parents — children — 
 servants — is it your sincere and practical aim — all 
 confirmed as members of the Church of Christ — to 
 diffuse through your own hearts and lives and energies 
 and prayers, the principles and productiveness of an 
 economy of grace ? "What are you supplying towards 
 the compactness and growth and edification of that 
 part of the body of Christ to which you belong? 
 
 And earnestly do I wish that this evidence of our 
 communion were yet more manifest in our public ser- 
 vices, when we meet together for the worship of God, 
 — in prayer, praise, hearing of his word, and in the 
 participation of the Sacrament of the Supper of the 
 Lord. Bear in mind, then, that in the public ordi- 
 nances of the Church, there may be many things expe- 
 dient to order and discipline, which are only remotely 
 connected with salvation. Even the rubrics of our 
 Prayer-Book may be well studied and obeyed as for- 
 mal aids to the common benefit of a congregation asso- 
 ciated in worship — they may tend to compactness of 
 the body, without otherwise affecting the interest of the 
 life. Let there be unity of modes among us, even a 
 hearty and universal response of Amen at the close of 
 our prayers, as well as a unity of faith, of love, of 
 obedience and of form. Ours is common prayer, 
 
102 COMMON OBLIGATIONS 
 
 worship in common — in communion, if you will. We 
 meet not to hear another pray, but to join in prayer 
 ourselves ; not listlessly to pause while another reads, 
 but to take part, to respond aloud, and so having 
 fellowship and sympathy in the common emotions of 
 the Church, at once to minister to and partake of the 
 blessing which is desired and partaken of by all. 
 
 Then does the Church ask nothing of you in respect 
 of those who are now about to be confirmed ? Look 
 to it, brethren ; — so far as opportunity serves, again, I 
 beseech you, aid privately in their instruction, and by 
 diligence and prayer, according to your relationships, 
 be desirous that they may be partakers of your grace. 
 
 IV. One other expectation does the Church indulge 
 of those who have been confirmed. She looks that in 
 the use of her services and in the communion of her 
 members, you be yourselves, collectively and indi- 
 vidually, edified and built zip into Christ the Head. 
 
 Great privileges, of instruction, grace and devo- 
 votional service, have you now, many of you for a 
 long time, enjoyed as members of our apostolic 
 Church. Do you render back the blessing which 
 has thus fallen upon you? — a living, feeling, holy 
 gratitude to the Giver of all good ! 
 
 How does the Church give forth in her Articles the 
 idea of her own community ? 
 
 The visible Church of Christ is "a congregation of 
 faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is 
 preached, and the Sacraments duly administered ac- 
 cording to Christ's ordinance, in all those things that 
 of necessity are requisite to the same." 
 
 When shall that idea be fulfilled ? When shall we 
 
OF THE CHURCH. Kjo 
 
 recognize in our congregations, assemblies of faithful 
 men; — true to their principles, and daily built up in 
 their most holy belief through the privileges and obli- 
 gations which belong to them; — daily, with greater 
 earnestness of self-denial and prayer, as they have 
 pledged themselves, renouncing the works and domi- 
 nion of the devil, the pomps and vanity of the world, 
 and the sinful lusts of the flesh; — daily increasing in 
 the fixedness of belief in all the Articles of the Chris- 
 tian faith, and daily walking with more cheerful readi- 
 ness and exactness of holy life in all the command- 
 ments of the law ? 
 
 To you, my brethren, is the appeal now made. May 
 God grant that it be not in vain ! 
 
 The Word of God is freely opened before you. The 
 Church points to that Word — explains its doctrines 
 and enforces its obligations. You have professedly 
 surrendered yourselves to her guidance, and claim to 
 be obedient members of her community. What, then, 
 is left to you but to keep ever in mind the vows of 
 your infancy, and, till the stream of natural life shall 
 cease to flow within you, to stand to the covenant ! 
 
104 THE SACRAMENT OF 
 
 SERMON VII 
 
 THE SACRAMENT OF THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 A MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 GENERALLY NECESSARY" TO THE SALVATION 
 OF THE CONFIRMED. 
 
 2 Kings xxiii. 3 : 
 And all the people stood to the covenant. 
 
 When last I addressed you from this text, I had 
 especially in view those of my congregation who were 
 about to present themselves to the Bishop to be con- 
 firmed. The administration of that solemn rite has 
 now taken place. More than ninety persons* were 
 then admitted to a participation of the highest privi- 
 leges of that holy community which is the body of 
 which the adorable Saviour is the head — the one 
 fountain of all grace — the source of eternal glory. 
 
 * It appears from the Register-books of this parish, that of 
 those who have been baptized into the Church, and are come to 
 years of discretion, only one-fourth of the males and one-half of 
 the females present themselves for Confirmation. 
 
THE LORD'S SUPPER. 105 
 
 With what feelings you then presented yourselves 
 before the assembled congregation — with what deep 
 penitence on account of your sins — with what sincere 
 humbleness of mind — what confiding faith in the one 
 great sacrifice — what utter renunciation of sin — what 
 firmness of purpose to forsake, for the future, all 
 worldliness, all vanity, all lusts of the flesh — with what 
 prayerfulness and reliance on the Divine grace you 
 determined for the rest of your life to present your 
 bodies a sacrifice — reasonable, holy and lively, is 
 known only to yourselves and to God. It becomes 
 your ministers to hope the best, and diligently to pro- 
 vide that you be not without motives and instruction 
 which may, by God's infinite mercy, dispose you to 
 continue to the end in that path on which you have 
 thus happily entered. I will endeavour, then, on the 
 present occasion, to shew you, that as it is one of the 
 greatest privileges and blessings granted to you, so is 
 it a paramount duty arising out of your Confirmation, 
 to partake of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper; 
 and that this privilege and duty is an effectual means 
 of grace which can never be safely dispensed with 
 throughout the course of your future life. 
 
 If I detain your attention, in the first instance, on 
 subjects which more than ordinarily demand thought- 
 ful consideration, and if, moreover, I occasionally 
 refer to statements already made in the course of my 
 Sermons on Confirmation, look, I pray you, for the 
 interpretation of my purpose in the truth, that there is 
 demanded of us, as followers of Christ, a reasonahli' 
 as well as a holy and a lively sacrifice in service, — 
 and that there is in the present day, unhappily, on the 
 f3 
 
106 THE SACRAMENT OF 
 
 one hand, an impatience of all idea of efficacy in the 
 Sacraments beyond that of the ordinary means of 
 grace, and on the other, through fear of the evil con- 
 sequences of laxity of principle on these subjects, a 
 tendency to the fatal errors in the contrary extreme, 
 invented and defended by the heretical Church of 
 Rome. 
 
 Various are the opinions which have from time to 
 time, and with various parties or individuals, pre- 
 vailed in respect of this as well as of the other Sacra- 
 ments ; — that, for instance, the religion of Christ being 
 essentially a spiritual religion, all the ordinances of 
 that religion are merely spiritual, and therefore the 
 outward signs are not necessary to the Sacrament ; — 
 that the outward signs, although necessary, are signs 
 only, calculated to aid in producing the effect of the 
 divine institution; — that in this form, in a limited 
 sense, it is only a feast of communion ; — that, so far 
 from this being the case, those outward signs, though 
 still partaking of the nature of the elements, bread 
 and wine, partake also of the nature of the very body 
 and blood of Christ ; — that, partaking therein, we do 
 in truth, in a sense in some sort natural as well as spi- 
 ritual, eat his flesh and drink his blood ; — that all this 
 is deficient of the Church doctrine on the subject, 
 which, say others, is this — that the bread and wine no 
 longer, after the consecration of the priest, retain of 
 their own nature, but become the very body and the 
 very blood of Christ ; and that in the celebration of 
 the Lord's Supper, a sacrificial renewal of the offering 
 on the cross actually and effectually takes place, which 
 they, the Romanists, term the Sacrifice of the Mass. 
 
THE LORD'S SUPPER. 107 
 
 What, then, affirms the Church of England on this 
 interesting subject? 
 
 "The Supper of the Lord," she teaches in her 
 28th Article, "is not only a sign of the love that 
 Christians ought to have among themselves, one to 
 another, but rather is a Sacrament of our Redemption 
 by Christ's death; insomuch that to such as rightly, 
 worthily and with faith, receive the same, the bread 
 which we break is a partaking of the body of Christ ; 
 and likewise the cup of blessing is a partaking of the 
 blood of Christ." 
 
 " Transubstantiation," she adds, (or the change oi 
 the substance of bread and wine,) " in the Supper of 
 the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy Writ, but is re- 
 pugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth 
 the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to 
 many superstitions. 
 
 "The body of Christ is given, taken and eaten in 
 the Supper, only after a heavenly and spiritual man- 
 ner. And the mean whereby the body of Christ is 
 received and eaten in the Supper, is faith." 
 
 Observe, then, the distinctive elements of this defi- 
 nition of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. 
 
 The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the Church 
 seems to say, is truly a feast — a communion of holy 
 love with the members of the Church of Christ, in 
 participation of the effectual signs of our redemption — 
 the broken body, and the blood which was shed, of the 
 adorable Saviour — of participation, because we are 
 blessed of God with pardon, and hope through the 
 redemption of Christ, not only, as it were, by remote 
 imputation, but by our being united with him, and so 
 
108 THE SACRAMENT OF 
 
 made personally interested in the promises which are 
 in him yea and amen. And the perfection of the 
 sign, she farther holds, is not solely in the eating of 
 the broken bread and the drinking of the wine. As 
 both the one and the other, when consumed, minister 
 to the vigour, the health, the very structure of the 
 person, so the participation which they represent is, in 
 a heavenly and spiritual sense, intimate, healthful, 
 personal — personal in respect of each individual, and 
 in respect also of the communion of the Church as 
 members of the same body, one with another — of 
 which Christ is the Head, and therefore of all unitedly 
 with him. 
 
 And in all this the Church vindicates her defini- 
 tion of a Sacrament, which, she affirms, consists of two 
 parts — the outward and visible sign, and the inward 
 and spiritual grace, made one Sacrament by the grace 
 of the secret renewal of the covenant of pardon 
 through Christ, in which the soul is strengthened and 
 refreshed, and made fruitful to the glory of God and 
 to everlasting life. The outward visible signs are 
 still the " creatures of God" — bread and wine. The 
 inward and spiritual grace are, "the body and the 
 blood of Christ," in that spiritual sense in which the 
 Lord affirms, " I am the living bread which came 
 down from heaven : if any man eat of this bread, he 
 shall live for ever : and the bread that I will give is 
 my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. 
 — Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the 
 flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have 
 no life in you." But because the Church intends to 
 imply no change in the elements, bread and wine. 
 
THE LORD'S SUPPER. 109 
 
 through the consecration, or setting them apart for 
 this holy purpose by the priest, she teaches us to 
 believe that on our part the sacramental transaction 
 takes place through faith, and the blessing is spiritu- 
 ally bestowed upon, and effectually received by, the 
 believing — a faith which is of common efficacy to 
 those who sincerely communicate in this Sacrament of 
 the body and blood of Christ. To this subject we 
 shall have occasion again shortly to return. 
 
 Meanwhile, it is needful to our present purpose to 
 observe, that the principle which prevailed in the in- 
 struction given by the Saviour to his disciples, is for 
 like reasons to be traced in the institutions which he 
 formed for the establishment and edification of his 
 Church. The elements, but not the development of 
 all truth, were involved in that which he addressed to 
 them, as he the more plainly affirmed in the instruc- 
 tion he gave to them on the very occasion when 
 he first instituted this Sacrament : " I have yet many 
 things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
 now. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth is come, 
 he shall guide you into all truth." That Spirit 
 spake in the apostles and guided their minds in what 
 they wrote, unfolding the truths which had been al- 
 ready spoken by the Lord, for the edification of the 
 Church. To the Epistles, then, as explanatory both 
 of the words of the administration and also of all 
 which the Saviour had before uttered in remote and 
 hidden reference to the subject, we must look for the 
 larger understanding of our Lord's purpose in the in- 
 stitution of his Supper — how we are to explain more 
 at large, that is, the transaction which is thus de- 
 
110 THE SACRAMENT OF 
 
 scribed : " As they were eating, Jesus took bread and 
 blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, 
 and said, Take, eat ; this is my body. And he took 
 the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, 
 Drink ye all of it ; for this is my blood of the new tes- 
 tament, which is shed for many for the remission of 
 sins." 
 
 As the Church, moreover, has professedly con- 
 structed her sacramental service, restricting the admi- 
 nistration itself to the form used by the Lord, yet, on 
 the whole, in the larger view of the farther develop- 
 ment of the nature of the Sacrament, as the subject 
 unfolds itself in the writings of the apostles, we may 
 profitably occupy a few moments in directing our 
 attention to a comparison of some of the doctrines 
 which the Church has introduced into her service, 
 with the statement of similar doctrines by either the 
 Lord himself, or his immediate messengers of the 
 truth. It is one step in commendation of the Church, 
 if her apparent obscurities be in common with those of 
 the Word of God. 
 
 We must restrict ourselves, in each instance, very 
 shortly, to a few points. 
 
 I. In the first place, then, the Church lays down, as 
 a first principle in' the administration of this Sacra- 
 ment, that "by Christ's meritorious cross and passion 
 alone we obtain remission of our sins, and are made 
 partakers of the kingdom of heaven :" for such ends, 
 no room is left for confidence in the communion of 
 either this or the other Sacrament. In like manner 
 and in equally plain terms speak the Scriptures. 
 "This man," they say, (Heb. x. 12—14,) "after he 
 
THE LORD'S SUPPER. Ill 
 
 had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down at 
 the right hand of God ; for by one offering he hath 
 perfected for ever them that are sanctified." 
 
 II. But the Church farther states, as a first principle 
 in view of this ordinance, that God " hath given his 
 Son our Saviour Jesus Christ not only to die for us, 
 but also to be our spiritual food and sustenance in this 
 holy Sacrament." " The cup of blessing which we 
 bless, it is asked by the apostle, (1 Cor. x. 16,) is it not 
 the communion of the blood of Christ? — the bread 
 which we break, is it not the communion of the body 
 of Christ?" which seems only an implied but autho- 
 ritative explanation of the striking words of our Lord 
 (John vi. 56) — "My flesh is meat indeed, and my 
 blood is drink indeed : he that eateth my flesh and 
 drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him." 
 
 III. In near accordance with this, we find it asserted 
 in our services, that as often as we partake rightly of 
 this Sacrament, we are "partakers of his most blessed 
 body and blood" — that is, partakers in the merits of 
 his sacrifice. In like manner we read in 1 Cor. xi., 
 after a simple statement of the mode in which the 
 Sacrament was first instituted — "As often as ye eat 
 this bread and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's 
 death till he come :"* and this in intimate connexion 
 with the previous recapitulation — " Take, eat; this is 
 my body; this do in remembrance of me." "This 
 cup is the new testament in my blood." 
 
 IV. Then we are taught to pray, in partaking of 
 this Sacrament — " Grant us, gracious Lord, so to eat 
 
 * Comp. 1 Cor. xi. 26 and 27. 
 
112 THE SACRAMENT OF 
 
 the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his 
 blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by 
 his body, and our souls washed through his most pre- 
 cious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, 
 and he in us." And how strikingly does the Word of 
 God accord with all this ! John vi. 53 — 58 : " Whoso 
 eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal 
 life, and I will raise him up at the last day ; for my 
 flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed : he 
 that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth 
 in me, and I in him : as the living Father hath sent 
 me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth of this 
 bread shall live for ever." 
 
 V. The same striking passage involves in it the 
 doctrine of the words in which the Church administers 
 the sacred elements: "The body of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, which was given for thee — the blood of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee — preserve 
 thy body and soul unto everlasting life." 
 
 VI. But we are taught farther to profess our belief 
 that those who have duly received these holy myste- 
 ries, being in common fed with the spiritual food 
 of the most precious body of the Saviour Jesus Christ, 
 are " very members incorporate in the mystical body 
 of the Son of God, which is the blessed company of 
 the faithful." And this, do not the Scriptures abun- 
 dantly justify? Truly mysterious! "We are mem- 
 bers of his body, of his flesh and of his bones." (Eph. 
 v. 30.) "For as we have many members in one body, 
 so we, being many, are one body in Christ." (Rom. xii. 
 4, 5.) Is this, then, connected with the subject before 
 us? It is confessedly spiritual in its intention. Is it 
 
THE LORD S SUPPER. 
 
 113 
 
 sacramental also ? " The cup of blessing (I repeat the 
 quotation for what follows) which we bless, is it not 
 the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread 
 which we break, is it not the communion of the body 
 of Christ ? For we, being many, are one bread and 
 one body: for we are all partakers of that one breads 
 (1 Cor. x. 16, 17.) "My Father giveth you the true 
 bread from heaven ; for the bread of God is he which 
 cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the 
 world." (John vi. 32, 33.) 
 
 VII. The Church, however, carefully guards us 
 against the idea of a necessarily saving consequence 
 from the participation of "the outward and visible 
 part or sign" of the Sacrament. " The danger is 
 great," she affirms, " if we receive the same unwor- 
 thily : for then we are guilty of the body and blood of 
 Christ our Saviour ; we eat and drink our own damna- 
 tion, not considering the Lord's body." This and the 
 parallel passage of the Word of God mutually, indeed, 
 explain each other : " Whosoever," saith the apostle 
 (1 Cor. xi.), " shall eat this bread, and drink this cup 
 of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body 
 and blood of the Lord ; for he that eateth and drink- 
 eth unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to 
 himself, not discerning the Lord's body." The Lord's 
 body is therein truly, that is, sacramentally shewed 
 forth; but he who believes not, does not recognize the 
 symbol. Set apart, consecrated to this holy purpose, 
 he desecrates and uses it for common ends. Appeal- 
 ing, as it does, to holiest emotions of the heart, he 
 receives it in self-confidence, negligence, pride and 
 unbelief, not discerning the Lord's body and the 
 
114 THE SACRAMENT OF 
 
 Lord's blood. The most effectual of means of grace 
 becomes thus to him a source of the deepest con- 
 demnation. 
 
 VIII. The strong language thus used by the in- 
 spired writer implies the importance of the subject, 
 and the greatness and certainty of the blessing, as 
 well as the high dignity which God himself has at- 
 tached to this Sacrament where it is rightly received. 
 We are therefore prepared for the counter assertion 
 of the Church in respect of the faithful recipients : 
 " The benefit is great if, with a true penitent heart 
 and lively faith, we receive that holy Sacrament (for 
 then we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ, and drink 
 his blood; then we dwell in Christ, and Christ in us; 
 we are one with Christ, and Christ with us.)" It is 
 needless that I place beside this extract the parallel 
 passages of the Word of God. To do so were only to 
 repeat what has already been brought forward. The 
 sacrifice of praise which is implied in the narrative, 
 may sufficiently assure us of the conviction of blessed- 
 ness in partaking of the sacred elements which pos- 
 sessed the minds of the first Christians. " And they 
 continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fel- 
 lowship, and in breaking of bread and in prayers, and, 
 continuing daily, with one accord, in the temple, and 
 breaking bread from house to house, did eat their 
 meat with gladness and singleness of heart ; praising 
 God, and having favour with all the people." 
 
 But the subject here returns again to the point from 
 which we digressed. 
 
 Thus much we have learned respecting the doctrine 
 of Holy Scripture and of our Church, that our pardon 
 
THE LORD'S SUPPER. 115 
 
 and acceptance with God are alone through the merits 
 and death of the Saviour, who became on the cross the 
 one only, full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation 
 and satisfaction for our sins ; but that in partaking 
 rightly of the Lord's Supper, we do therein sacra- 
 mentally, but spiritually and truly, so partake of the 
 body and blood of Christ, that as our bodies are nou- 
 rished and preserved in life by the creatures of God — 
 bread and wine, set apart and consecrated to this end — 
 so our souls are, after a spiritual manner, nourished 
 and preserved in life by the body and blood of Christ, 
 and thus, he being in us, and we in him, our hope in 
 his merits and death is re-assured and confirmed; — that, 
 after the same mode, all the Church, rightly partaking 
 of the feast, have communion, through this mystery, 
 both with each other and with the Lord, sacramentally 
 confirming that unity which shall never be divided ; — 
 and that all this sacramentally takes place, both indivi- 
 dually and in common, through the immediate energy 
 of a living faith. " To such as rightly, worthily, and 
 with faith receive the same, the bread which we break 
 is a partaking of the body of Christ, and likewise the 
 cup of blessing is a partaking of the blood of Christ." 
 
 It is of the utmost importance, then, for us to know 
 what is the nature and range of that faith which is 
 productive of such great and mysterious results in the 
 participation of this Sacrament. The statement may 
 be made in few words. 
 
 It has sufficiently appeared that the effectual energy 
 of faith in the participation of the Sacrament of the 
 Lord's Supper, must be subsequent upon, or perhaps 
 rather arise out of, a simple reliance on the sacrifice of 
 
116 THE SACRAMENT OF 
 
 Christ, without and antecedent to the Sacrament, for 
 all pardon and all grace. 
 
 Thence arising, this energy of faith must regard, 
 with an unhesitating confidence, the participation of 
 the Lord's Supper as a means divinely appointed, 
 peculiar in itself, and, to sacramental ends exclusive, 
 of " strengthening" the bond of unity between the soul 
 and Christ, for the ends of his great sacrifice, and 
 refreshing it in that spiritual life which is to have its 
 issues in eternity. 
 
 This sacramental faith must, moreover, have in it of 
 the nature of holy and uniting communion with that of 
 others of the faithful who partake therein, in view of 
 that fellowship in which we are spiritually — that is, 
 through the one Spirit (Eph. iv. 4) in the visible 
 Church, in communion of the one body and, sacra- 
 mentally, one bread in Christ. 
 
 Then, in respect of the nature of this faith, it is at 
 once the most simple, the most large, and altogether 
 singula)' and exclusive of all the energies of faith. 
 There is this distinction between the operations of the 
 imaginative powers and those of faith. The imagina- 
 tion gives a transient form to things which have possi- 
 bly no existence — truth, that is, is a mere accident alone 
 of what we imagine. Faith, on the other hand, real- 
 izes what is true ; — it is the evidence of things not 
 seen, and the very substance of things hoped for. 
 Truth, and the conviction of truth, and the realizing 
 of the truth, are all necessary to the effectual, saving 
 faith of the Christian. 
 
 Now, in many respects, all the energies of a true 
 faith are alike ; — in some, where faith is sacramentally 
 
THE LORD'S SUPPER. 117 
 
 called into energy, it is peculiar and exclusive. Faith 
 cometh by hearing, and then it is conversant with 
 those things, the truth of which rests on the authority 
 of God's Word, and is received by the understanding 
 and the heart. In the Sacrament, of which we now 
 more particularly speak, the Saviour has condescended 
 to make use of the subordinate operations of our nature. 
 Through what we hear, see, feel, taste, the truth is pre- 
 sented to us. The service in which we are engaged is, 
 like our own being, complex. The whole nature is 
 brought into the religious energy, and thus the sacra- 
 mental act of faith is the concurrence — the submission 
 — the very eucharistical self-sacrifice of the faithful in 
 gratitude and love to the Saviour. " Here we offer and 
 present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and 
 bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and lively sacrifice 
 unto thee ; — humbly beseeching thee, that all we who 
 are partakers of this holy communion, may be fulfilled 
 with thy grace and heavenly benediction." 
 
 And here a very interesting and important question 
 presents itself to us. What is the place which the 
 participation of this Sacrament holds in the economy 
 of our salvation ? The Church teaches, that, like the 
 others, it is " generally necessary to salvation." In 
 what view is this to be regarded as a truth ? 
 
 In discoursing on the offices of the Church, we 
 observed that the institution and structure of that 
 holy body had chiefly two ends in view, — calling and 
 edification^ — the calling of unbelievers into the faith, 
 obedience, privileges and society of the Church, and 
 the progressive edification of the saints. There are, 
 then, two Sacraments, — the one contemplating the 
 
118 THE SACRAMENT OF 
 
 efficiency of the former of these duties, and the other 
 attendant on and ministering to, whilst it seals and 
 confirms the latter. The Sacrament of Baptism is the 
 Sacrament of our calling into the Church. The Sacra- 
 ment of the Lord's Supper is the Sacrament of our 
 edification therein. The one is the Sacrament of our 
 birth into the number of Christ's people, the other is 
 the Sacrament of growth and increase in the divine 
 life — our healthful progress towards the maturity of 
 holiness and joy in heaven. The Sacrament of Bap- 
 tism, once administered, is necessary to our new birth 
 into the relationships, the privileges and the obliga- 
 tions of the family of the Saviour. The Sacrament of 
 the Lord's SwpipG\\freqitC7itly partaken, is necessary 
 to the strengthening and refreshing and nourishing of 
 our soul, through the personal and frequent renewal 
 on our part of the covenant by which we surrender 
 ourselves to the salvation which is alone by Christ 
 Jesus. Baptism introduces us into the Church; but 
 he who, though baptized, does not habitually partake 
 of the Sacrament of the Supper of the Lord, is yet but 
 at the threshold of religion — he is a babe in Christ — 
 he hesitates at the very gate of the Church, and gives 
 no promise that he will persevere to the end. 
 
 And do not such thoughts address themselves affect- 
 ingly to you who have lately presented yourselves to 
 the Bishop for Confirmation ? You have proceeded 
 farther than the first entrance of the Church. You 
 have been instructed in the way of righteousness, and 
 have openly declared your conviction of the truth of 
 the Gospel — openly affirmed your determination, by 
 God's grace, to renounce the world, the flesh and the 
 
THE LORD'S SUPPER. 119 
 
 devil, and to serve faithfully the Lord Christ. All 
 this has been publicly acknowledged and ratified. 
 The foundation is thus laid, and the building may from 
 this time proceed. You are placed now among, not 
 those alone who have obeyed the heavenly calling, but 
 those who are henceforth to be edified, and built up with 
 the body of Christ. The appointed sacramental means 
 of this is the participation of the Supper of the Lord. 
 
 I. Very earnestly, then, and affectionately, in the 
 first place, do I advise you, my young friends, to pre- 
 sent yourselves to partake of this holy Sacrament. 
 No injunction of our Lord is more definitely enforced 
 than this — " Do this," — eat this bread which is my 
 body, and drink this wine which is my blood, — " in 
 remembrance of me." Have your convictions led 
 you thus far ? — are you persuaded that the Gospel is 
 true, and involves ail your happiness in this world and 
 all your hopes in another; and, for the attainment of 
 these, that you must become and be acknowledged a 
 Christian ? — and shall your religion end there ? This 
 is manifestly one — the most affecting — the most 
 effectual means of grace. But what intend we by this 
 very commonly used term ? A means of grace is a 
 means by and through which the Holy Spirit influ- 
 ences the mind to its edification. To neglect wilfully, 
 then, a means of grace, is to grieve the Holy Spirit of 
 God ; and to persevere in that neglect is ultimately to 
 quench his kindly movements in the mind, and to drive 
 him from us. You cannot — you ought not to expect 
 to prosper as a Christian, unless you obey the 
 Saviour's command in thus sacramentally appealing to 
 him for his grace. You may, indeed, as alas ! too 
 
120 THE SACRAMENT OF 
 
 many do, still cling to the name, regulate your life in 
 some respects by the precepts, and hold the reputa- 
 tion of being a Christian ; but in truth you will fall 
 again, as they manifestly, in various measures, fall, 
 under the dominion of the lusts of the flesh. You 
 will give your heart to the world. You will be con- 
 tent, fearful self-deception ! to live without God, and 
 having no hope laid up for you in heaven ! Far from 
 you be all this! Rather henceforth " use all diligence 
 to make your calling and your election sure." And 
 as the chief appointed means, in connexion with 
 others, of giving energy and success to your labours, 
 gratefully associate yourself with the Church in this 
 commemorative festival of love. 
 
 II. But, I pray you, approach that table in a pre- 
 pared and right spirit. With a discriminating faith 
 " discern" there " the body of the Lord." Think not 
 of the bread and wine alone, but, solemnly and afFect- 
 ingly, of the very flesh and blood of the Saviour ; and 
 remember with gratitude the purpose of his sacrifice 
 on the cross. In these things let your faith be alive 
 and in energy when your lips press the signs of your 
 redemption, and your heart is pouring itself forth in 
 adoration and prayer. 
 
 And, to remember the meritorious blood-shedding 
 of your Lord, is, in truth, to recall to your mind your 
 own sinfulness and need of divine forgiveness. Be 
 yours, then, a spirit of true penitence and humbleness 
 of mind. Let your sins now pass in review before 
 you. Though forgiven, for Christ's sake, let them 
 never be forgotten by you — let them never cease to 
 awaken regret in the deepest feeling of your heart. 
 
the lord's supper. 121 
 
 Come, too, in peace with all mankind. " Forgive, 
 and ye shall be forgiven." The spirit which harbours 
 the seeds of hatred and vengeance against a fellow- 
 creature, is not a spirit of prayer; it cannot be sacra- 
 mentally engaged in the service of God. 
 
 And then, here present yourselves to God. At the 
 table of the Lord repeat, in the secret chamber of 
 your heart, all which on your part took place at your 
 Confirmation ; — renew your covenant with the Most 
 High ; — ask the fulfilment of all his promises to you 
 in Christ; — resolve, as he shall assist you, to " lead 
 henceforth a new life, following the commandments of 
 God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways." 
 
 We can never be worthy of, that is deserve, the 
 blessings assured to us and conveyed by the Supper of 
 our Lord, but we may partake of it and of them in a 
 prepared and suitable state of mind — we may wor_ 
 thily, with a right faith, right views, a holy disposition 
 and firm reliance on God's grace to enable us to be 
 for the future obedient to his will, eat of that bread 
 and drink of that cup. 
 
 III. I seriously advise you, moreover, to partake of 
 that Sacrament now. Let not the present opportunity 
 pass away from you unimproved. The feeling which 
 disposes you to defer this duty, under the plea of fur- 
 ther consideration, is a feeling of reluctance which 
 will most probably issue in a total neglect of this 
 divinely-appointed means of grace. 
 
 And observe, moreover, that now, for the first time, 
 and by the especial direction of your Bishop who con- 
 firmed you, an opportunity is afforded to you, in the 
 administration of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, 
 
 G 
 
122 THE SACRAMENT OF 
 
 for giving assurance of your sincerity in all which you 
 affirmed and took upon yourself at your Confirma- 
 tion. Did you at that time ratify the promises of your 
 Baptism, appealing for aid to the grace of God ? 
 Behold in this sacred ordinance an offer and a pledge 
 of that grace ! The solemn declaration — the affecting 
 appeal — have scarcely passed from your lips, and will 
 you already hesitate to make use of the privileges 
 which have been granted, and determinately to follow 
 out the professions of obedience which you have so 
 freely made ? Not my fears, for I have as yet no 
 reason to doubt your sincerity, but my anxious desire 
 that you should continue in the word of your Saviour, 
 and shew yourselves to be his disciples indeed, thus 
 plead with you. I pray you now to bind yourselves 
 by yet stronger obligations to his service, through a 
 public participation of the Sacrament of his body and 
 blood. 
 
 IV. But, in the last place, my desire for the promo- 
 tion of your spiritual and eternal welfpre through the 
 use of this appointed means of grace, does not limit 
 itself to your attendance on the present occasion. 
 
 I, exhort you very frequently to be a participator 
 of that holy Sacrament. It is effectually a Sacrament 
 of renewal. Such is the " fault and corruption of 
 your nature," that you are subject to a ceaseless ten- 
 dency to suffer thoughts of your Saviour to slip from 
 your mind, and, with him, to cease to remember the 
 bond of gratitude, love and obedience which you so 
 deeply owe to him, and which has now lately been 
 solemnly confirmed. Pass, then, for the future, a life 
 of habitual self-government and self-examination. 
 
THE LORD S SUPPER. 
 
 123 
 
 Close not your eyes against your own infirmities. 
 Suspect the influence of all events on your religious 
 feelings, purposes and character. Be willingly sensi- 
 ble of your need of the frequently repeated renewal of 
 an impression of the obligation of the Gospel on your 
 mind, and of the grace which can alone make such an 
 impression effectual of its proper ends. And gladly 
 let it thus be "known and read of all men," that, 
 whatever others may choose, you have determined to 
 serve the Lord ! 
 
 Happy for us will it be, when this short life, with all 
 its cares and responsibilities, shall have passed, if it 
 shall be found that, having been introduced into the 
 Church of Christ by the Sacrament of Baptism, rati- 
 fied our solemn pledge at Confirmation, and fre- 
 quently sought the grace of God, and renewed our 
 humble claim of his mercy in Christ Jesus, and our 
 willing and cheerful surrender of ourselves to his ser- 
 vice in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, we 
 have throughout, and to the end, " stood to the cove- 
 nant !"