tihvavy of Che €heolo0(cal Seminar;)? 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 REVEREND JESSE HALSEY, D.D. 
 
 BX 5141 .A3 V383 1860 
 Vaughan, C. J. 1816-1897. 
 Revision of the liturgy 
 
CTamliritip : 
 
 PKIJfTED BY C. J. CLAT, 
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PBESS. 
 
REVISION OF THE LITURUY: 
 
 I. ABSOLUTION. II. REGENERATION. 
 III. ATHANASIAN CREED. IV. BURIAL SERVICE. 
 V. HOLY ORDERS. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION. 
 
 BY i/ 
 
 CHARLES JOHN VAUGHAN, D.D. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 AND 23, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, 
 
 ILonion. 
 
 FIVE DISCOURi 
 
 CHAPLAIN IN OKDINAEY TO THE QUEEN, 
 AND LATE HEAD-MASTER OF HAHKOW SCHOOL. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 MDCCCLS. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/revisionofliturgOOvaug 
 
TO MY ABSENT FRIEND, 
 
 GEORGE EDWARD, 
 BISHOP OF CALCUTTA. 
 
 a 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Intboddction ix 
 
 I. Absolution i 
 
 II. Eegeneeation . , . . , . . 23 
 
 III. The Athanasian Creed 42 
 
 IV. The Burial Service 64 
 
 V. Holt Oedees 98 
 
 a 2 
 
INTKODUCTION. 
 
 TT has been the apparent result of all recent 
 efforts in Parliament for the revision of 
 our Liturgy, to postpone rather than to ad- 
 vance the object which they have had in view. 
 It was so in 1840: it has been so again in 
 i860. The difficulties of revision are made 
 more apparent, and its advantages more pro- 
 blematical, by every such discussion. 
 
 The Church of England has practically 
 lost its machinery for self-modification. To 
 deal conclusively with questions of doctrine or 
 even of ritual. Convocation has no power, and 
 Parliament little fitness. The one represents 
 but a part of the Church — but a part even of 
 
X 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the Clergy — even of the Clergy of one Pro- 
 vince; the other includes many who are not 
 of the Church at all. If the demand for 
 change could be made as precise as it is now 
 vague, and. as harmonious as it is now dis- 
 cordant, there would still remain the questions, 
 to whom is it to be addressed, and where re- 
 sides, if not the power, yet the right, to grant 
 it or to refuse ? 
 
 Nor is it only that the question is beset 
 with practical difficulties. The difficulties of 
 the process are great : but the dangers of the 
 result, whatever it be, would be far greater. 
 
 A revision once effected must give a ten- 
 fold stringency to subscription. It could no 
 longer be pleaded then, as it may justly be 
 pleaded now, that ancient forms of worship, 
 and ancient statements of doctrine, must ne- 
 cessarily contain expressions not wholly suit- 
 able to modern feehng, and that the difficulty 
 of alteration may reasonably excuse some lati- 
 tude of individual interpretation. Whatever 
 remains after revision must be taken as it 
 stands, and interpreted, at least for a genera- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xi 
 
 tion or two, according to its grammatical sense. 
 If this be so, where, after a revision made 
 under present circumstances, would be our 
 national Church? 
 
 It is no small blessing, in the eyes of all 
 but party theologians, that there should be 
 room within the pale of a common worship for 
 men of various opinions. It may even be re- 
 garded as one instance of God's Providence 
 over our Church of England as at present 
 constituted, that we have Articles and Formu- 
 laries drawn from very various sources, and 
 incapable perhaps in some points of a perfectly 
 logical coherence. It is thus that excellent 
 men, of conflicting doctrinal notions on many 
 topics of secondary and on some of primary 
 importance, have been enabled to worship to- 
 gether, and even to minister together, in a 
 common Church and at a common altar. It 
 is thus too that reasonable men have been 
 practically warned against intolerance towards 
 each other, because each felt that, if he had 
 something with him, he had also something 
 against him; if the Articles spoke his Ian- 
 
xn 
 
 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 guage, the Liturgy here and there might seem 
 to speak the language of his opponent ; and 
 he who would claim indulgence in reference 
 to the one, must give that indulgence in re- 
 ference to the other. 
 
 It has been well said that there is a 
 wide difference between compromise and com- 
 prehension. The one might be effected by 
 a general vagueness of expression, by the 
 omission of all that is distinctive and point- 
 ed, and by such a softening and lowering 
 of the tone of doctrine as should make 
 it equally agreeable to the Calvinist and 
 the Arminian, to the Romanist and the So- 
 cinian. The other is best attained, if not in 
 theory yet in practice, by embracing within 
 one Book of Prayer, as we believe it to be 
 embraced within one Book of Revelation, the 
 enunciation of opposite parts and sides of the 
 truth ; of that truth which God sees in its real 
 consistency, but which man must be contented 
 in this life to see rather in its apparent con- 
 flict, to grasp for the present in its disjointed 
 fragments, and to wait for the time when he 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xiii 
 
 shall be enabled to piece back those fragments 
 into the whole from which they have been 
 broken off for use. If we were reconstructing 
 our Church, the desire of peace might drive 
 us into compromise: God, who has given it 
 to our generation as it is, has enabled us 
 thereby to make it minister to comprehen- 
 sion. 
 
 To do this effectually, it is needful that 
 plain language should be employed both by 
 the rulers of the Church towards its ministers, 
 and by the ministers of the Church towards 
 their congregations. Truthfulness, generosity, 
 largeness of mind and largeness of heart, were 
 never more required than in the interpreta- 
 tion of that position which a minister, and 
 even a worshipper, in the Church of England 
 occupies as such. 
 
 Every man ought to be able to respect 
 those scruples which have debarred some ex- 
 cellent men from the ministry of our Church, 
 and have rendered the entrance of others upon 
 that ministry a matter of doubt, misgiving, 
 and anxiety. But I have the strongest con- 
 
XIV 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 viction that in nine cases out of every ten 
 those scruples would have been removed, and 
 in the remaining case greatly mitigated, if the 
 candidate for Ordination could have depended 
 upon hearing from his Bishop such words of 
 counsel and encouragement as should autho- 
 rize the maintenance of an honest freedom, 
 sanction the exercise of individual thought, 
 and warrant the expectation of a kind con- 
 struction. Let it be not timidly whispered 
 but boldly said, "In declaring your acceptance 
 of the Book of Common Prayer, you do not 
 profess that there is nothing in that Book 
 which you might yourself have been glad 
 to express somewhat differently. Viewing it 
 historically, as a compilation ; viewing it intel- 
 ligently, as an ancient document; accepting 
 that construction which the common sense of 
 men puts upon it in practice, and which the 
 rulers of the Church, to whom your profession 
 of consent is to be made, understand to be the 
 meaning in which you accept it; you declare 
 yourself willing to lead the worship of the con- 
 gregation in the words of this Book, and to 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XV 
 
 take it as the directory of your own teaching. 
 Nothing is here asked of you which you could 
 only give by a disingenuous sophistry. It is 
 enough to justify your place amongst the mi- 
 nisters of a National Church, if you can say 
 from the heart, That, of the various Christian 
 communities known to you in this country, 
 this is the one which most commends itself to 
 your judgment and conscience; that it is the 
 Church of your choice and of your affection ; 
 that you are able with confidence and comfort 
 to worship in its words, to minister in its of- 
 fices, and to teach in its spirit." 
 
 I believe that such language, calmly and 
 firmly held by the rulers of the Church of 
 England, would go further than any liturgi- 
 cal revision to remove or allay conscientious 
 scruples. "What is needed for the comfort of 
 the scrupulous, is rather construction than 
 change ; rather interpretation than alteration ; 
 the authoritative assurance that there is no 
 dishonesty in their position, rather than such 
 an adjustment of that position as, in accom- 
 modating them, must exclude others. 
 
xvi 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It may certainly be urged that, if this be 
 all which is to be understood by Clerical sub- 
 scription, the terms of that subscription ought 
 to be shaped accordingly. If no other change 
 can be made, at least let thus much be done 
 to remove ambiguities and to relieve scruples. 
 There are at present in use various forms of 
 declaration, attached to various occasions in 
 the Clerical life. There is, for example, that 
 which is required as a preliminary to Ordi- 
 nation ; when the Candidate declares that he 
 "willingly and from his heart subscribes to 
 the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, and to 
 the three Articles in the Thirty-sixth Canon 
 one of which is, ''That the Book of Common 
 Prayer contains in it nothing contrary to the 
 Word of God, and that it may lawfully so be 
 used; and that he himself will use the form 
 in the said Book prescribed, in public prayer 
 and administration of the Sacraments, and 
 none other." There is, again, that required 
 as prehminary to appointment to a Curacy; 
 when, in addition to a renewal of the decla- 
 ration made at his Ordination, the Curate 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XVll 
 
 has also to declare his conformity to the 
 Liturgy of the United Church of England 
 and Ireland. There is, once more, that re- 
 quired on institution to a Benefice ; when, in 
 addition to the renewal of both the previous 
 declarations, the Incumbent has to declare, 
 openly before the congregation, his "un- 
 feigned assent and consent to all and every- 
 thing contained and prescribed in and by the 
 Book of Common Prayer," as well as to the 
 Thirty-nine Articles of Eeligion. No doubt 
 the language of the last (more particularly) of 
 these three declarations is needlessly stringent. 
 Its very emphasis enfeebles it. Common 
 sense puts upon its terms a construction 
 which alone makes them tolerable, but which 
 at the same time leaves little save the pro- 
 mise to conform, and the certainty that no 
 honest man will promise conformity to that 
 with which he does not in the main sym- 
 pathize. 
 
 A clear distinction may be drawn between 
 alteration of the Prayer-Book and alteration 
 of the terms of subscription. The one can 
 
xviii 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 scarcely be separated from discussions of doc- 
 trine: the other is a matter of simple legis- 
 lation, to be decided on the common grounds 
 of reason and experience. A nd, while I be- 
 lieve that much may be done, even under 
 existing circumstances, for the comfort of the 
 scrupulous, by a bold assertion and candid 
 recognition of the practical meaning of any 
 such forms of declaration, however expressed ; 
 I yet should rejoice to see those forms recon- 
 sidered and revised, in the conviction that 
 those whom they distress or exclude are in 
 many cases amongst the very worthiest to be 
 employed in the Church's service, and that 
 no forms can ever be devised which will really 
 bar the entrance of the mercenary and the 
 unscrupulous. 
 
 That a feeling of disappointment will be 
 the result, in many quarters, of the recent dis- 
 cussion in the House of Lords, cannot, I fear, 
 be doubted. A regret may be permitted that 
 no common ground could be discovered on 
 which the advocates and opponents of change 
 might have met each other advantageously; 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xix 
 
 no clear distinction practically drawn between 
 changes of arrangement and changes of doc- 
 trine, between revision of services and revision 
 of subscription ; no amendment moved, ex- 
 pressive of respect for scruples of conscience, 
 recognizing the importance of the subject, 
 dividing it into its parts, and providing 
 an opportunity for the further consideration 
 of one of them. But all these things might 
 have been, without making any approach to 
 the satisfaction of the loudest complainants. 
 Their real battle-field is that of doctrine ; their 
 real object, not the extension, but the nar- 
 rowing, of the limits of our communion ; and 
 the entrance upon this ground, under present 
 circumstances, would be the signal for a dis- 
 ruption, not perhaps fatal to the existence, 
 but certainly disastrous to the nationality, 
 of the Established Church. 
 
 More and more necessary does it become, at 
 such a moment, to assert, clearly and strongly, 
 the reasonable as well as the comprehensive 
 character of the Church that is. Let it be 
 seen that there is room within its boundaries 
 
XX 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 for all who honestly hold the essentials of the 
 Christian Faith. Let it be seen that there is 
 nothing irrational in that amount of acqui- 
 escence in its more questionable formularies 
 which is involved in Church-membership or in 
 Clerical subscription. Let everything be done 
 to soften, nothing to aggravate, the disap- 
 pointment of the conscientious. Let them be 
 invited to beheve that even those forms of 
 faith or worship to which they have felt most 
 repugnance are capable of a less obnoxious in- 
 terpretation, and that, approaching their con- 
 sideration in a calm and quiet spirit, they 
 may hope to find at least a partial satisfaction 
 of the scruples by which they have formerly 
 been disquieted. 
 
 The following Discourses refer to some of 
 those questions which are connected by com- 
 mon consent with that of the revision of our 
 Liturgy. With one exception, they were de- 
 livered at Harrow, with those special hopes 
 and aims which are repeatedly expressed in 
 them. I allow them to retain their original 
 form, trusting that it may give them an in- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xxi 
 
 terest which they could not otherwise possess 
 with some of their readers. 
 
 Their pubhcation at this time has two 
 special objects. 
 
 First, I desire to mitigate, if I cannot hope 
 to remove, the objections felt by many of the 
 more Evangehcal Clergy to certain expres- 
 sions in our Service-Book. I believe that the 
 tranquil consideration of some of those pas- 
 sages has been disturbed by prepossessions 
 or misapprehensions which are capable of 
 an almost easy correction. And I would 
 earnestly assert for every man the right to 
 apply that correction, without stopping to 
 enquire at each step whether it is leading him 
 to the precise sense designed for the par- 
 ticular passage by its individual compiler. 
 There has been a Providence at work beside 
 and above the human authorship; and the 
 very loss of the Church's machinery for 
 change justifies us in seeking the animus 
 imponentis rather in the present than in the 
 past. Only let us be sure that we speak 
 according to the Word of God; and the words 
 
 b 
 
xxii 
 
 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 of men, where they are fairly capable of two 
 constructions, may be interpreted (if so it be) 
 rather by truth than by intention. 
 
 Secondly, I have before my mind a case 
 with which my professional life has made me 
 familiar, and to which most of the following Dis- 
 courses more or less directly refer. I desire to 
 minister to the want of that young man who is 
 turning aside from the ministry of the Church 
 solely on the ground of difficulties found in the 
 Prayer-Book. Such cases, we know, are of 
 frequent occurrence. Difficulties about the 
 truth of Revelation, about the doctrines of the 
 Gospel, are of a different order. I fear they 
 too are on the increase. And they impose 
 a grave responsibility upon all those who, in 
 our Schools and Universities, have under- 
 taken to guide the studies and to lead the 
 thoughts of those who must exercise here- 
 after a wide influence, and whose own safety 
 and happiness are matters of deep concern. 
 But with these I am not dealing here. I am 
 contemplating a case in which the difficul- 
 ties experienced respect rather the Church 
 
INTRODUCTION-. 
 
 XXIU 
 
 than the Gospel; rather the consistency of 
 our Church's Articles and Formularies with 
 Scripture, than the truth or authority of Scrip- 
 ture itself. And often has a single scruple 
 on this which I must call by comparison a 
 minor question affected the whole work, if not 
 the final issue, of a valuable life. Often has 
 it sufiiced to divert from the profession of a 
 Clergyman one who had every desire for it 
 and every qualification. The following pages 
 are designed to assist in overcoming such 
 scruples; to show that the words of our 
 Church, even where most liable to miscon- 
 struction, are yet consistent, when rightly in- 
 terpreted, with the teaching of the Word of 
 God. Deeply thankful shall I be, to Him who 
 alone can grant the blessing, if in any single 
 instance such should be the result. 
 
 But I would add yet one word upon the 
 subject of scruples in general. 
 
 It is a first principle of morality that a 
 scruple is to be respected. It is not to be 
 overborne by others, it is not to be dis- 
 regarded by ourselves. Its existence is a fact. 
 
xxiv 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and as such it must be recognized. But the 
 encouragement of scruples, the fostering of 
 scruples, the multiplication of scruples, is no 
 duty, but the very contrary. In themselves, 
 scruples are a weakness, are an evil, are a dis- 
 ease. Where they fasten upon things which 
 good men have done conscientiously, and 
 have enjoyed God's blessing in doing, and 
 have lived usefully and died peacefully in do- 
 ing, scruples are much to be suspected of being 
 temptations rather than virtues. It is a first 
 duty to obtain full information upon the 
 point on which a scruple has settled, and it 
 is a second duty to open the mind to the 
 due influence of that information and of 
 the reasonings which spring out of it. It 
 does not follow that, because a scruple has 
 arisen, therefore it must be ratified. Nor 
 does it follow that, because a scruple exists, 
 therefore it must be paramount. A scruple 
 may be one element in a dehberation, but 
 it must not be the whole of it. 
 
 In the choice of a profession — to apply these 
 remarks to the case before us — a man may 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XXV 
 
 say this to himself : " God has given me cer- 
 tain gifts, of disposition, of character, of edu- 
 cation, of ability, of attainment : these all 
 point in one direction, towards the profession 
 of a Clergyman : that is my choice : that I 
 believe to be the work in which I can best 
 serve Him. I have been a member of the 
 Church of England from my youth up. I pre- 
 fer that form of worship to any other. No- 
 where else do I find the same order, the same 
 sobriety, the same soundness of doctrine, the 
 same reasonableness of belief, the same ac- 
 cordance with good sense, good taste, and 
 good example. In its services I find quiet- 
 ness without tameness, and fervour without 
 enthusiasm. These things all concur in guid- 
 ing me towards its ministry as my life's work. 
 On the other side, there is a scruple. I do 
 not understand, or I do not like, the use of 
 certain words in the Baptismal Service, or in 
 the Ordination Service, or in the Athanasian 
 Creed, or in the Burial Service. Some of 
 these things appear to me to be liable to the 
 imputation of a tendency towards Bomanism, 
 
xxvi 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 others towards unreality, others towards un- 
 charitableness. I know that many good men 
 have not so viewed them. Perhaps I may 
 hereafter view them differently. In the 
 meantime, let me take into account my whole 
 case. On the one side, there is what I cannot 
 but regard as a call from God to do His 
 work. On the other, there is a scruple, I 
 must weigh the one against the other. Is 
 the case such that the negative must out 
 weigh the positive ? Is the case such that 
 the Bishop to whom I apply for Ordination 
 will refuse me, or ought to refuse me, know- 
 ing all? Is the case such that my hands 
 would be tied, my mind fettered, or my lips 
 sealed, in the exercise of my ministry? Or 
 can I appeal to God who knows my heart, 
 that my desire is to do Him service in any 
 station of life to which He caUs me, and can 
 I, in choosing this — choosing it with the 
 knowledge of some difficulties and some ob- 
 jections — throw myself upon the belief that 
 it is His will for me, and go forward in HLs 
 Name 1" 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xxvn 
 
 In such a balancing of conflicting alter- 
 natives lies the chief duty as well as the 
 chief perplexity of life: out of it, we may 
 well believe, will issue that which is right 
 and good, that which would not result from 
 a more one-sided or a hastier judgment. 
 Happily it is the testimony of those who 
 have had experience in youth of painful 
 scruples, that a life of healthy activity is 
 generally rewarded by their eventual dis- 
 appearance. 
 
 Harrow Cottage, Southborough, 
 May 25, i860. 
 
DISCOUESE L 
 
 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 rptlE subject of Absolution, or release from 
 committed sins, is at all times the most so- 
 lemn and anxious question that can occupy an 
 immortal soul. It is generally the one question 
 which occupies that soul's latest energies Avhen 
 it is quitting earth and anticipating eternity. In 
 that day, however severe the bodily conflict, 
 there is generally found time also and strength 
 for this one enquiry, Who can forgive my sins? 
 
 On a subject thus important, and which will 
 one day be seen to be so by all, it is well 
 that the mind should be thoroughly and early 
 informed, that it may at least be able to suggest 
 the right answer when eternal life or death may 
 be felt to hang upon it. 
 
 Why doth this man thus speak Uasphctnics? 
 was the question of the Scribes in the Gospel 
 
 1 
 
2 
 
 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 History: icho can forgive sins hut God only? 
 And it "was a true and just question, though it 
 came from scoffing lips. On the supposition that 
 Christ was a mere man, it would have been blas- 
 phemy, that is, the assumption by a creature of 
 the Creator's properties, to say, as He had said, 
 to the sick man before Him, Son, thy sins be 
 forgiven thee. It was not the inference, but 
 the supposition, which was wrong; not the con- 
 clusion, but the premises: if Christ was a mere 
 man, it would have been blasphemy to claim the 
 power of forgiving sins. 
 
 Now, although eveiy one who calls himself a 
 Christian would shrink with horror from ascribing 
 to any created being the independent right to 
 forgive sins, yet we all know that, in some pro- 
 fessedly Christian communities, and by some per- 
 sons even in our own, a derived right of that 
 nature has been both claimed and gi-anted: the 
 power of absolution has been held to reside in a 
 Christian priesthood, Avith many influences which, 
 if true, are full of importance, and, if untrue, 
 must greatly endanger the spiritual state of those 
 who rely upon them. 
 
ABSOLUTION. 
 
 3 
 
 It is in no controversial spirit that I ap- 
 proach this subject. It is obviously a matter of 
 the greatest practical importance. It lies at the 
 root of our whole conception of the Gospel. It 
 is one which must present itself, sooner or 
 later, to every thoughtful mind. And it is one 
 which is so intertwined with some portions both 
 of the Scriptures and of the formularies of our 
 Church, that a few words may not unfitly be 
 devoted to it before we turn to that more posi- 
 tive side of the truth of which no one can dis- 
 pute the vital importance. 
 
 Is the power of forgiving sins, in the name 
 and by the authority of Christ, committed to 
 any human mind or voice? Did Jesus Chiist com- 
 mit to His first Apostles, or to any Avho should 
 come after them in the ministerial office, the 
 power to absolve men from their sins or to re- 
 fuse to do so? 
 
 There are two passages in the Gospels which 
 have been so understood. The former of these 
 is that well-known verse in the 16th chai)ter of 
 St Matthew's Gospel, in which our Lord, address- 
 ing the Apostle Peter, says, / will give unto 
 
 1—2 
 
4 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 thee the leys of tJie Jdngdom of heaven: and 
 whatsoever thou shalt hind on earth shall be 
 bound in heaven : and v)hatsoever thou shalt loose 
 on earth shall be loosed in lieaven. 
 
 It has been taken for granted that the keys 
 here spoken of are, if I might so express it, the 
 keys of the outer gate of the kingdom of heaven, 
 those by which admission into the heavenly king- 
 dom is given to men; and consequently that the 
 gift of these keys to the Apostle implied the 
 power to admit men into or to exclude them 
 from the blessings of forgiveness and salvation, 
 according to the dictates of an infallible insight 
 into their spiritual condition, motives and cha- 
 racter. According to this interpretation, the power 
 spoken of was exercised by St Peter, on the 
 one hand when he admitted the three thousand 
 souls into the Christian Church on the day of 
 Pentecost, or subsequently the first Gentile con- 
 verts in the house of the centurion Cornelius— 
 and on the other when he detected the fraud 
 and sealed the destiny of the hypocritical Ana- 
 nias. In the one case he used the keys of the 
 kingdom to admit, in the other to exclude. 
 
ABSOLUTION. 
 
 5 
 
 But how instantly is the whole of this fabric 
 overthrowi by a reference to the Scriptural use, 
 in other jjlaces, of the figure of the keys of the 
 kingdom! The origin of it is clearly seen in a 
 passage which occurs in the 22nd chapter of the 
 prophet Isaiah, The first subject of that passage is 
 the deprivation of a treasurer in the household of 
 a king of Judah, and the substitution of another 
 in his i)lace. Go, get thee unto this treasurer, 
 even unto Shehna, tvMch is over the house, and 
 say ... Behold, the Lord loill carry thee away 
 with a mighty captivity ...and I will drive thee 
 from thy station ... And it shall come to jjass in 
 that day, that I ivill call my servant Eliahim 
 the son of Hilldah...and I will commit thy go- 
 vernment into his hand . . . and the Jcey of the 
 house of David will I lay tipon his shoulder ; 
 so he shall open, and none shall shut; and lie 
 shall shut, and none shall oj^en. This passage is 
 employed in the 3rd chapter of the Revelation of 
 St John to furnish one of the descriptions of our 
 Lord Himself in His relation to the Churches. 
 These things saith He that is holy, He that is 
 true, He that hath the Icey of David, He that 
 
6 
 
 ABSOLUTIOJT, 
 
 openeth and no man shutteth, and slmtteth and 
 no man openeth; He, in other words, who is the 
 supreme Treasurer of God's household, and whose 
 authority is absolute to issue or to withhold its 
 stores. 
 
 Thus the keys of the kingdom of heaven com- 
 mitted to St Peter, become not the keys of the 
 gate of entrance, but the keys of the several 
 chambers in which its stores are deposited. The 
 office is the very same with that designated by 
 St Paul as belonging to all the Apostles. Let a 
 man so account of us, as of the ministers of 
 Christ, and sfeicards of the mysteries, the revealed 
 secrets, of God. It is the same with that de- 
 scribed by our Lord himself to the same Apostle 
 St Peter, when He said, Wlio then is that faith- 
 ful and ivise steivard, tohom his Lord shall make 
 ruler over His household, to give them their por- 
 tion of meat in due season? It is the same 
 substantially with that which is employed on the 
 same subject in the 13th chapter of St Matthew's 
 Gospel, Therefore every scribe which is instructed 
 unto the kingdom of heaven, is like unto a man 
 that is an householder, which hringeth forth out 
 
ABSOLUTION. 
 
 7 
 
 of his treasure tilings new and old. I will give 
 unto thee the heys of the Jcingdom of heaven is, 
 in other woi'ds, / ivill make time a steward of 
 mij treasures, that thou mayest dispense them to 
 others, in the exercise of a judgment enlightened 
 from, above as to the nature of those treasures 
 and the ivants of those to whom they are to be 
 disjyensed. 
 
 Again, the authority to bind and to loose, con- 
 veyed in the same verse to St Peter, has been 
 sometimes conceived to refer to the retention or 
 remission of sins ; to the setting men loose from, 
 or retaining upon them, the guilt of their past 
 transgressions. How strange a perversion of the 
 simple meaning of the original ! To bind and to 
 loose are, in Jewish language, to forbid and to 
 permit : the promise that Avhat the Apostle bound 
 or loosed on earth should be bound or loosed in 
 Heaven, is the promise that what they forbade 
 as contrary to their Master's will, should be for- 
 bidden with the authority of God, and what they 
 permitted or sanctioned as according to their 
 Master's will, should be permitted or sanctioned 
 with the authority of God. It constituted the 
 
8 
 
 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 Apostles infallible interpreters of the mind and 
 mil of Chi-ist. ^Vbatever they said or wrote, in 
 special cases or in general, should carry with it 
 the decisive authority of Christ and of God. 
 
 There is one other passage, and but one, which 
 could cause any difficulty in connection vdth. this 
 subject. We read in the 20th chapter of St John's 
 Gospel, that, on our Lord's first appearance to 
 the assembled disciples after His resurrection. He 
 iised these remarkable words : Receive ye (lie Holy 
 Ghost: xvliose soever sins ye remit, tlicy are re- 
 mitted unto them: and ivhose soever sins ye retain, 
 they are retained. 
 
 Now, whatever variety there may have been 
 in the interpretation of these words, no one will 
 suppose them to mean that the Apostles or any 
 other men were to have the power of forgiving 
 sins or refusing forgiveness, arbitrarily, by rules 
 of their own, or by no rules. No human being 
 could have authority to do more than declare for- 
 giveness, and that by God's sentence, not his own. 
 Whose soever sins ye remit or retain can only 
 mean. Whose soever sins ye declare to be remitted, 
 or declare to be retained, that is, to be still upon 
 
ABSOLUTION. 
 
 9 
 
 them. And when it is added, they are remitted, 
 or else, they are retained, this must express that 
 God in Heaven would ratify that declaration or 
 that denial of forgiveness which the Apostles, in- 
 spired by the Holy Spirit, announced upon eai*th. 
 
 In the case of the Apostles, the remitting or 
 retaining of sins had two modes of exercise. It 
 might, in their case, be individual. They had the 
 gift, for certain purposes at least, of discerning 
 spirits. They were enabled, that is, at least in 
 certain cases, to judge infallibly whether a par- 
 ticular person was sincere or insincere. Thy heart 
 is not right in the sight of God...I jyerceive that 
 thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the 
 bond of iniquity... svich expressions, on the lips 
 of an Apostle, were sometimes more than mere 
 inferences from conduct : they seem to have in- 
 dicated an intuition and a certainty Avhich cannot 
 exist without direct inspiration. Tlius then the 
 Apostles might, in such instances, be said to re- 
 mit or retain (that is, authoritatively to declare 
 the remission or retention of) individual sins. 
 They might say to one. Thy sins are forgiven, 
 and to another, Thoio art yet in thy sins; and 
 
10 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 God above in either case would confirm and i-atify 
 their sentence. 
 
 But far more often, even in the case of the 
 Apostles, the remitting or retaining of sins was 
 general. They declared to their hearers the re- 
 mission of sins on the conditions of repentance 
 and faith, the retention of sins in the absence of 
 this mind. Without exercising an individual in- 
 sight which would have been commonly unpro- 
 fitable or injurious, they proclaimed the terms of 
 forgiveness, and urged men to fulfil them. Thus, 
 as in the other passage it was promised to them 
 that whatever they bound or loosed (that is, for- 
 bade or sanctioned) should be ratified in Hea- 
 ven ; so here, with reference to a particular sub- 
 ject, the most important of all, it is promised 
 that the Holy Spirit shoidd so guide them into 
 all truth that they shoidd be able to declare 
 with iufixllible certainty whose sins should be for- 
 given and whose retained, and by what marks 
 the presence or the absence of forgiveness might 
 be discerned by the individual soul. 
 
 It is in this latter sense, the general as 
 opposed to the personal declaration of forgive- 
 
ABSOLUTION. 
 
 11 
 
 ness, that these words are still used in our 
 Service for the Ordination of Priests. Whose sins 
 thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and ivhose 
 sins thou dost retain, they are retained. The 
 insight into souls, possessed by Apostles, is de- 
 nied to us : but the commission which makes 
 us ministers of the Church of Christ in this land 
 authorizes us to declare the remission or reten- 
 tion of sins, with an authority which Christ in 
 Heaven Avill ratify so long as it is regulated by 
 His Word and exercised under the teaching of 
 His Spirit. 
 
 And thus too it is that in various Services 
 of our Church a form of Absolution, varying in 
 its terms, but uniform in its principle, is appoint- 
 ed to be read by those who are in possession of 
 the fuU Orders of a Presbyter. Tliere are three 
 such forms. One, used in the celebration of the 
 Holy Communion, is precatory in its terms ; dif- 
 fering from a prayer only in being addressed to 
 the congregation instead of being offered, like 
 other prayers, in their name. Almighty God, our 
 heaverdy Father, who of His great mercy hath 
 promised forgiveness of sins to all them that ivith 
 
12 
 
 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 hearty repentance and true faith turn unto Him; 
 have mercy tipon you; pardon and deliver you 
 from all your sins. The second, familiar to all of 
 us in the Daily Service, is authoritative but general. 
 Ahnighty God...ivho desireth not the death of a 
 sinner... and hath given poiver and commandment 
 to His ministers to declare and 2^^onounce to 
 His people, being penitent, tlve Absolution and 
 Remission of tlieir sins ; He 2JCirdoneth and ab- 
 solveth all them that truly repent and unfcignedly 
 believe His Holy Gospel : WJierefore let us beseech 
 Him to grant us true repentance and His Holy 
 Spirit. The third, authoritative, like the last, but 
 also, unlike that, personal in its form, is contained 
 in the Service for the Visitation of the Sick; 
 where, after every sign of real penitence has been 
 manifested — confession, restitution, forgiveness of 
 injuries, hearty desire for God's forgiveness — the 
 Minister is directed to apply, in that extremity, 
 to the individual soul demanding it, the assurance 
 of actual pardon, in terms expressly rehearsing 
 the conditions on which alone it is given. Our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, tcho hath left pioicer to His 
 Church to absolve all sinners, icho tridy repent 
 
ABSOLUTION. 
 
 13 
 
 and believe in Him, of His great mercy forgive 
 thee thine offences: and by His authority com- 
 mitted to me, I absolve thee from all thy sins. 
 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 
 of the Holy Ghost. Language so definite and 
 so positive may be open to misunderstanding or 
 abuse ; but at least we see how carefully it is 
 guarded, and how entirely the comfort of the in- 
 dividual absolution is made dependent upon the 
 individual repentance. If the repentance be in- 
 sincere or shallow, the individual absolution passes 
 back again into the general. 
 
 Such explanations of the language of the Scrip- 
 tures and of the Prayer-book can never be un- 
 seasonable in any congregation : and in this more 
 particularly they appear to me to be needful, 
 partly because many of you will eventually be 
 ministers of the Word in our National Church, 
 liable therefore to many perplexing scruples, or 
 else some serious errors, on this very subject ; 
 and partly because, even as laymen, you will parti- 
 cipate, I trust, throughout life in that Church's 
 ordinances, and ought to be its intelligent and 
 earnest champions in a world of captious men 
 
14 
 
 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 ever ready to mistake and to misrepresent it. 
 Be Avell assured that, in the judgment of calm 
 and dispassionate enquirers, it is not the Church 
 of England which is superstitious, but only some 
 of those who use its name falsely. The Church 
 of England knows of no Priesthood to interpose 
 between the soul of man and God: the Church 
 of England knows but of One Priest, and He is 
 our great High Priest passed already through 
 the heavens. The priests of the Church of Eng- 
 land profess no authority but that which Jesus 
 Christ expressly committed to His Church; the 
 authority to repeat to later generations the terms 
 of salvation declared once for all by His Apostles 
 and by Himself ; to proclaim a free forgiveness, 
 and an open access for the soul of man through 
 the blood of Jesus into the verj- sanctuary and 
 presence of God. 
 
 Where does our Church seek forgiveness? 
 Where does our Church place the real power of 
 absolution ? We possess in one of the collects— and 
 it is but a sample of the rest— a definite exposition 
 of doctrine upon this great subject, and an appli- 
 cation of that doctrine to the deepest wants of man. 
 
ABSOLUTIO^f. 
 
 15 
 
 0 Lord, im beseech Thee, absolve Thy people 
 from their offences: that through Thy bouufiful 
 goodness tve may all be delivered from the bands of 
 those sins ivhich by our frailty we have committed: 
 Grant this, 0 heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ's 
 sake, our blessed Lord and Saviour'^. 
 
 Is not a Church which thus speaks, not iu one 
 place only but in every line of its Ai-ticles and 
 its formularies, fulfilling indeed its vocation upon 
 earth as a ivitness and a keeper of Holy Writ, not 
 decreeing anything against the same, nor enforcing 
 anything besides the same to be believed for neces- 
 sity of salvation ? 
 
 Thy people. Our Church never suffers us to 
 forget our standing-place. We are already God's 
 people. ]\Iade so by creation : made so for the 
 second time, when the first claim was sorely 
 vitiated, by Redemption : made so for the third 
 time, Avhen the second claim might have seemed 
 someAvhat too vague and general, by individual 
 Baptism into the very body and Spirit of Christ. 
 For by otie Spirit were we all baptized into 
 one body... and were all made to drink into 
 
 1 CoUect for the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity. 
 
16 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 one Spirit. Unthankful we may have been, care- 
 less we may have been : we may have thought 
 scorn of His pleasant land, and given no cre- 
 dence unto His word; but His people we are 
 still : till death comes, we are His people, and the 
 sheep of His pasture. 
 
 But His people have sinned — 0 how much and 
 how often ! and the chains of sin are galling — and 
 we struggle in them, and fret against them, and 
 weary ourselves, and find no release : O wretched 
 man that I am, who shall deliver me from tJie 
 body of this death? O Lord, we beseech Thee, 
 absolve Thou Thy people from their offences. 
 There is strength there, in the Almighty, for any 
 work however difBcult : grace there, in the Father 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, for any gift, however 
 unspeakable : turn thither thy weary steps ; direct 
 thither thy failing eye : He wiU help. He wiU de- 
 liver thee : He desires not the death of any sinner. 
 
 Absolve Tliy people frmn their offences. "What 
 offences? future offences? temptations which may 
 come upon us? sins into which we may fall? Xo : 
 sins already committed ; sins that are past. 
 
 But are not past sins past ? Are not oflFencesj 
 
ABSOLUTION. 
 
 17 
 
 once committed, committed and done with ? Why 
 shoxild we ask to be absolved from past sins? 
 
 We all know — we have all found for ourselves 
 — that sins done are never done with. No sin ever 
 perishes : the most that we can look for is that our 
 sins should be, as the Psalmist says, covered, so 
 that the eye of God may not rest upon them, nor 
 the enemy fasten upon them to drag them back 
 into judgment. But in how many more cases are 
 they not even covered; or covered only by our- 
 selves; by our own refusal to see or to acknow- 
 ledge them : and then they are indeed a drag and 
 a burden to us, drawing our eyes doAvnwards and 
 clogging our onward steps, forbidding us to hope 
 because we are guilty, and to work because we 
 are siuful. Guilt and sin are the two fetters of 
 man. 
 
 Lord, absolve us. By Thy act of free forgive- 
 ness, let the fetter of guilt fall off from us. By 
 the gift of Thy free Spirit let the fetter of sin 
 fall off from us. The one is done; the other is 
 promised. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth 
 us from all sin: the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus 
 
 shall set me free from the rule of sin and death. 
 
 2 
 
18 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 0 how soon might this prayer be answered, 
 if any soul out of this multitude were aroused 
 to utter it heartily! Why should there be any 
 delay in breathing it? Shall we be fitter to use 
 it, worthier suppliants, to-morrow, or next month, 
 or next year, than to-day? Shall we not rather 
 have incurred an added load of accumulated trans- 
 gression? And does God ask whether we are 
 worthy suppliants? Does He give only to those 
 who need nothing? Does He cleanse only the 
 pure, does He absolve none but the free? 
 
 Nay, it is the urgency of our want that quali- 
 fies us to be suppliants: it is the verj- weight 
 of our burden that makes us need to be set free. 
 And again I say, 0 how soon might fi-eedom 
 come to any one of us, if we only asked earnestly 
 for the absolution of God! This day, even in this 
 night, might come the first sense of the loosen- 
 ing chain; that sense which in comparison with 
 the fiUl thraldom is itself lightness and liberty 
 and life; that sense of relief which brings mth 
 it hope, and draws us powerfully onward towards 
 the fulness of its accomplishment. 
 
 That through TJitj bountiful goodness ice may 
 
ABSOLUTION. 
 
 19 
 
 all he delivered from the hands of those sins 
 which hy our frailty we have committed. 
 
 By our frailty. I know not that any distinc- 
 tion is here meant between sins of frailty and 
 wilful sins. Rather may we feel that all sin is 
 the outgroAvth of frailty. Nor is that any excuse 
 for sin: our fi-ailty is in great part our own 
 doing: our frailty, if it be let alone, will lead 
 us into all sin, and sin, wherever it reigns, reigns 
 unto death. Nor yet does it need that we should 
 find excuses for our sins: the blood of Christ 
 is all availing: if only we feel our want of it, 
 it will not fail us in power. 
 
 Every one of the sins which by our frailty 
 
 we have committed is a band, a chain, a fetter, 
 
 upon our souls. It is of the nature of sin to 
 
 repeat itself : we cannot sin once, and cease : if 
 
 we yield to sin once, the next time it comes it 
 
 claims us as pledged to it: it reminds us, as it 
 
 were, of a tacit promise, and it takes for granted 
 
 our acquiescence. Terrible yet just recompence! 
 
 The wages of sin are not all future. Sin gives 
 
 earnest-money as well as wages. If its wages are 
 
 death, its earnest-money is the facility of sinning. 
 
 2—2 
 
20 
 
 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 And despair too, aud the approaches to de- 
 spair, which consist of diminished hope— the con- 
 sciousness of its being improbable that Ave shall 
 resist temptation, of its being more likely than 
 not (judging from the past) that we shall sin 
 against God — these things are amongst tlie hands 
 of sin: from these too we need to be delivered. 
 
 And the prospect of deliverance lies in prayer, 
 in prayer to God through Christ. Grant this, 
 0 heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ's sahe, our 
 blessed Lord and Saviour. Every scattered ele- 
 ment of hope is here drawn together. He to 
 whom we pray is already our Father: He for 
 whose sake we ask it is already our Lord and 
 our Saviour. 
 
 Unless then the whole of the Gospel be a 
 fable, or unless we know of some special term 
 which excludes us from the compass of a free, 
 a universal redemption, there must be on the 
 part of God a willingness to absolve, proportioned 
 to the greatness of our need, proportioned to the 
 simplicity of our faith, proportioned to the ear- 
 nestness of our desire. 
 
 Let not these great and precious promises 
 
ABSOLUTION. 
 
 21 
 
 pass by us like the idle wind. A day is coming 
 when we shaU greatly want them, when with 
 bitter unavailing tears we may bewail our dis- 
 regard of them. Let the prayer for forgiveness 
 ascend this night from all our hearts. You little 
 know the comfort of that prayer. You have 
 known perhaps, in days of childish innocence, 
 what it was to turn again to a father or a mother, 
 saying, I have sinned: you have known the sweet 
 calm that was diffused through the whole soul 
 by sorrow for having done wrong followed by 
 the assurance of a human forgiveness : will you not 
 believe that He who ordained every part of man's 
 being designed to show us by this example the 
 blessedness of His own forgiveness, and the rea- 
 diness with which it lies ever open for th^ soul 
 that unfeignedly longs for it? It is one of those 
 happinesses which require no time, no delay cer- 
 tainly, for their realization. He who really asks 
 God's forgiveness through Christ may have it at 
 once : and he who has once tasted it will certainly 
 come for it again. If so be ye have tasted that 
 the Lord is gracious, is the availing motive 
 with us all for seeking Him again. And be well 
 
22 
 
 ABSOLUTION. 
 
 assured that whatever really draws us towards 
 Grod draws us towards holiness : there is nothing in 
 mercy favourable to sin: there is nothing in the 
 doctrine of a perfect absolution but the persuasive 
 summons to a life-long sanctification. 
 
DISCOURSE II. 
 
 REGENERATION. 
 
 'HERE is one subject, which has caused much 
 
 perplexity to the serious, and giveu a great 
 handle to the scoifer: it is the term now to be 
 examined; the word regeneration. 
 
 The word itself occurs but twice in the Scrip- 
 tures. But kindred expressions are found there, 
 which must be taken into account along Avith it, 
 if we would comprehend the subject 
 
 Regeneration is a metaphor. And like other 
 metaphors it is capable of more than one appli- 
 cation. ' 
 
 Strange as it may seem, in this one brief and 
 obvious remark is contained the key to aU the 
 difficulties of the subject, and the correction of 
 its chief perversions. 
 
 Regeneration is a metaphor. It expresses by 
 a strong figure a great change ; a change so great 
 
24 
 
 REGENERATION. 
 
 that it may be compared to that which an infant 
 undergoes when it is bom, when it is brought out 
 of darkness and silence and inactivity into a world 
 of light and sound and energy. 
 
 Any change important enough to bear the 
 stress of such a comparison, any change that is 
 from evil and towards good, any change by which 
 a living being is transferred from a condition of 
 disadvantage or suffering into one of benefit and 
 of happiness, may be designated by the title of 
 regeneration. 
 
 The writers of the ancient world were not un- 
 acquainted with the term before us. ^Mien the 
 great Roman orator alludes, in a private letter, 
 to his recent restoration from exile to the com- 
 forts and interests of his social and political life 
 at Rome, he calls that restoration his iTaXiyyevecria, 
 his regeneration. And when this same expression 
 was adopted by our Lord and His Apostles into 
 the vocabulary of the Christian Faith, did it 
 therefore cease to be a metaphor? Or did it 
 become so restricted in its possible or legitimate 
 uses as to have henceforth but one definite mean- 
 ing, but one single idea to which it coidd be 
 
KEQENERATION. 
 
 25 
 
 applied without en-or, or but one shade and 
 degree of that idea to which henceforth it must 
 be rigidly tied down? Such has been too often 
 the tacit assumption : and out of that assumption 
 has arisen an interminable war of words, in which 
 if there may have been something of real and 
 essential difference between the combatants, there 
 has been far more of misunderstanding and mis- 
 take, which would have been instantly cleared 
 away, in many instances, by the repetition of the 
 few words already employed, "Regeneration is a 
 metaphor, and, as such, is capable of many applica- 
 tions." One may have applied that metaphor, 
 and another may have refused it, to Christian 
 Baptism: and yet he who applied and he who 
 denied it may have meant all the time, if not 
 l^recisely the same thing, yet at least two things 
 so slightly, differing from each other as to be re- 
 ducible, by mutual explanation and by tranquil 
 consultation, to a harmony sufficient for prac- 
 tical pui-poses and highly serviceable to the com- 
 mon interests (for they are never really at vari- 
 ance) of charity and of truth. 
 
 I mil refer to two or three passages of Scrip- 
 
26 
 
 REGENERATION. 
 
 ture, by Avay of illustration of the remark just 
 made. We will notice first the two places (there 
 are but two) in which the substantive rendered 
 regeneration is found in the volume of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 The former of these is found in the 19th chap- 
 ter of St Matthew's Gospel, at the 28th verse. 
 
 St Peter, having just witnessed the departure 
 of the young man who could not be persuaded 
 to give up his riches for Christ, said to our Lord, 
 in a spirit not perhaps wholly free from self-con- 
 gratulation and self-confidence, Behold, we have 
 forsaken all, and followed TJiee; we have made 
 the sacrifice which the rich young man found to 
 be impossible ; tchat shall we Jmve therefore? 
 what shall be our reward ? And Jesus said unto 
 them. Verily I say unto you, tliai, ye tchich have 
 folloived me, in the regeneration when the Son 
 of man shall sit in the throne of His glory, ye 
 also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the 
 twelve tribes of Israel. 
 
 The regeneration ivhen the Son of man shall 
 sit in tlie throne of His glory. Here therefore 
 the term is apphed, neither to Baptism, nor to 
 
REGENERATION. 
 
 27 
 
 conversion ; to nothing past, or capable of becom- 
 ing so in this life ; but to a totally diflferent sub- 
 ject, that great renovation and reconstitution of 
 the whole of man's being, which shall accompany 
 the second coming of Christ, when the dead shall 
 be raised incorruptible, and God, as never before, 
 shall dwell with us and in us for ever. The re- 
 generation here spoken of is that glorious change 
 which is described by St Peter, in the 3rd chap- 
 ter of the Acts of the Apostles, as the times of 
 restitution of all thhigs, as the times of refreshing 
 which are to come from the j^'csence of the Lord; 
 by St Paul, in the 8th chapter of his Epistle to 
 the Romans, as a deliverance f rom the bondage 
 of corruption into the glorious liberty of the 
 children of God, for which he says that the whole 
 creation, not the Christian Church only, is, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, yet with infallible signs 
 of anxious desire, waiting and Avatching ; by St 
 John, in the 21st chapter of the Revelation, as 
 the result of the word of Him that sat upon the 
 throne, BeJiold, I malce all things new... Behold, 
 the tabermicle of God is ivith men, and He will 
 dwell with them, and they shall be His peojjle. 
 
28 
 
 REGENERATION. 
 
 and God Himself shall he loith them, and he 
 their God; and God shall wipe away all tears 
 from their eyes ; and there shall he no more death, 
 neitJier sorroiv, nor crying, neitJier shall there 
 he any more pain; for the former things are 
 jmssed atvay. 
 
 ^Ye must never forget that the first application 
 in Scripture of the word regeneration is to this 
 great and momentous change which is as yet all 
 future. That remembrance will be enough, of 
 itself, to prevent our ever narrowing the sense 
 of regeneration to any one definite and exclusive 
 application. 
 
 The other use of the word itself is in the 3rd 
 chapter of St Paul's Epistle to Titus, at the 5th 
 verse. Not hy worhs of righteousness which ive 
 have done, hut according to His m^rcy He saved 
 us hy the washing of regeneration and reneiving 
 of the Holy Ghost. The word translated tvashing 
 should unquestionably be rendered by the term 
 laver. By the laver, or bath, of regeneration. 
 Nor can there be much doubt that the meaning 
 of the exjiression there is the ordinance of Bap- 
 tism. As our Lord said, He that believeth and 
 
REGENERATION. 
 
 29 
 
 is' baptized shall he saved, so St Paul, expanding 
 His words, says, God saved us by these two things ; 
 the laver of regeneration which is Baptism, and 
 the inward renewing of tlie Holy Ghost. According 
 to the parallel passage in the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, Having our hearts sprinUed from an 
 evil conscience, and our bodies washed ivith p)ure 
 ■water. According, once more, to the saying of 
 St Peter, Baptism doth also noio save us; not 
 the putting away of the filth of the flesh, not the 
 mere outward rite, the sprinkling with water, but 
 tlie answer of a good conscience toward God, 
 the profession of faith accompanying the outward 
 rite, and springing out of the convictions of a 
 changed heart. 
 
 So widely different are the two applications in 
 Scripture itself of a term which controversialists 
 assume to be incapable of more than one. 
 
 It will be desirable to add yet two other illus- 
 trations of the meaning of regeneration in Scrip- 
 ture, though the uses of the very word itself are 
 already exhausted. 
 
 In the first chapter of the first Epistle of St 
 Peter we have this expression : Blessed be the 
 
30 
 
 KEGENERATION. 
 
 God and Father of our Lord Jems Christ, ivJto 
 according to His abundant mercy Jiath begotten 
 us again, or rather, begat us again, regenerated 
 us, unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus 
 Christ from the dead. Here the resurrection of 
 Christ is described as the regeneration of Chris- 
 tians to a living hope. No individual feelings, 
 and no individual change, are here brought into 
 vicAv : but Christians are said to have been once for 
 all regenerated by the actual resurrection of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. That event was the reproduc- 
 tion as into a new life of all who shall be interested 
 in it. As the regeneration spoken of in St Matthew 
 is all future, so the regeneration spoken of by 
 St Peter is all past. The resurrection of Jesus 
 Christ was the regeneration of the whole Church. 
 It is in virtue of that one event, that all that 
 we have and all that Ave hope for from God is 
 communicated to us. The event itself was our 
 regeneration. ^Yhat can more clearly express to 
 us the freedom of the Scripture phraseology in 
 its application even of this one term? 
 
 But the subject can in no sense be completed 
 without a distinct, though it be a brief, reference 
 
REGENERATION. 
 
 31 
 
 to that great discourse in the 3rd chapter of St 
 John's Gospel, which alone brings fully into view 
 the most important part of the truth involved in it. 
 Verily, verily I say unto thee, Exce2)t a man he 
 begotten again, or, from above, lie cannot see the 
 Jcingdom of God. Verily, verily I say unto thee, 
 Except a man be begotten of water and of the 
 Spirit, he cannot enter into the Icingdom of God. 
 That ivhich is begotten of the flesh is flesh, and 
 that ivhich is begotten of the Spirit is S2nrit. 
 
 He who came to our Lord as Nicodemus did, 
 by night indeed as though ashamed of being seen 
 to come, yet with an evident desire to learn of 
 Him, must first be taught how deep a work is 
 needed to make a man a Christian ; no less a 
 work than that of regeneration itself, of being 
 introduced, as by a second birth, into a new world 
 of thought, feeling, and action. This regeneration 
 is described as effected by ivater and by the 
 Spirit. Even as elsewhere the work of Christ on 
 the human sovl is described as a baptism tuith 
 the Holy Ghost and with flre, that is, with the 
 Holy Ghost in the character as of fire, burning 
 up corruption, and kindling the soul with a new 
 
32 
 
 REGENERATION. 
 
 energy of life and light ; so here the same work 
 is described as a regeneration with water and 
 ivith the Sinrit, with the Holy Spirit in the cha- 
 racter of cleansing and purifying water, washing 
 the soul from its defilements, and refreshing it as 
 with a cool and invigorating stream. With the 
 Holtj Ghost and with fire is the one figure ; with 
 xvater and with the Spirit is the other. And I 
 know not that we need see in the original ad- 
 dress to Nicodemus anything of a more formal 
 or ritual character. I know not that the words 
 would convey to his mind more than this idea of 
 an imi)ressive and appropriate figure. If so, the 
 expression there employed, and the appointed sign 
 of water in Baptism, will become two co-ordinate 
 testimonies, the one by word, the other by act, 
 of the same great necessity of an inward and spi- 
 ritual cleansing. Just as the discourse in the 6th 
 chapter of St John's Gospel, upon the living 
 bread from heaven, and the appointed sign of 
 the broken bread in the ordinance of the Lord's 
 Supper, express, the one in word and the other in 
 act, the same spiritual truth, the necessity that our 
 souls should be sustained in life by receiving 
 
REGENERATION. 
 
 33 
 
 into them daily by faith the very presence of their 
 Saviour Christ. 
 
 It may be, however, that in the discourse with 
 Mcodemus we are designed to see (though he 
 could not see it) the twofold condition, already 
 referred to, of a Christian's salvation ; the out- 
 ward ordinance and the inward grace. He who 
 said elsewhere. He that believeth and is hajytized 
 shall be saved, may have intended thus early to 
 intimate, and to leave for ever on record, that 
 baptism and the inward Spirit are the joint re- 
 quirement for admission into His kingdom. Not 
 by the outward sign alone ; for Baptism, like cir- 
 cumcision, to avail anything, must be that of the 
 heart, in the sjnrit and not in the letter: yet not 
 without the outward sign ; for that was Christ's 
 institution, and he who despises it trifles with the 
 command of Christ. By one Sinrit were ye all 
 baptized into one body: neither the Baptism nor 
 the Spirit can be dispensed Avith : for the two 
 together constitute the Christian's regeneration, 
 and what God has joined man must not sever. 
 Repent and be baptized every one of you in 
 the name of Jesus Christ for the remission 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 KEGENERATION. 
 
 of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 We have thus seen the term regeneration, or 
 its equivalent, employed in four different modes 
 in as many passages of the Holy Scriptures. 
 Denoting in itself nothing more than a great and 
 radical change, it is applied in Scripture once to 
 the universal effect upon the Church of Christ's 
 resurrection, once to the universal effect upon 
 the Church of Christ's second Advent, once to 
 the individual effect of the ordinance of Baptism 
 as distinguished from the renewing of the Spirit, 
 and once to the individual effect upon the soul, 
 either of the Holy Spirit alone in His character 
 of the cleansing water, or else of the conjoint 
 operation upon the soul of the outward bajitis- 
 mal water and the inward cleansing of the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 It is not to perplex still further a question 
 already sufficiently intricate, but rather to throw 
 the light of Chi'istian wisdom and love upon a 
 scene of dark and bitter conflict, that I have 
 pointed out these varieties in the Scriptural use of 
 the figure involved in the term regeneration. The 
 
REGENERATION. 
 
 85 
 
 Christian world is divided into two parties of eager 
 and often acrimonious disputants upon the ques- 
 tion which they designate as that of baptismal 
 regeneration. Assuming that they all mean the 
 same thing by the term thus employed, they are 
 at issue only upon this, whether Scripture and 
 the Church of England represent regeneration 
 as invai'iably accompanying Baptism. And while 
 the impugners of that doctrine are often driven 
 into subtle and disingenuous shifts to explain away 
 terms employed by our Church with sufficient 
 distinctness to preclude reasonable doubt, its 
 champions, mth equally or perhaps more injurious 
 consequences, interpret the Church's words in a 
 manner which certainly that Church never in- 
 tended. When the Chui'ch, on every completion 
 of the rite of Infant Baptism, addresses the 
 congregation in the words, Seeing now, dearly 
 heloi'ed brethren, that this child is regenerate; 
 the one party will regard this as at best a cha- 
 ritable hope, destitute of all certainty, and con- 
 veying therefore no comfort and involving no 
 practical result ; and the other gives such a sense 
 to the word regenerate as all must recoil from 
 
 3-2 
 
86 
 
 REGENERATION. 
 
 ■who remember that the Holy Spirit is not a thing 
 but a Person; not a material gift which may lie 
 dormant in a dormant soul to germinate per- 
 haps years afterwards in a period of consciousness 
 and awakening reason, but a living Agent exer- 
 cising a mysterious but real influence upon living 
 agents, present, as to any Scriptural use of that 
 terra, only where He is operative, felt in His 
 comfort or visible in His fruits. ' 
 
 If you should ever be taught to put forced 
 constructions upon the words of your Church's 
 Services or Articles, refuse, steadily refuse, to do 
 so. If you do not understand them, confess that : 
 if you do not see their consistency with other 
 words of hers or with Scripture, suspend your 
 judgment until the time comes when you must 
 either declare, or refuse to declare, that you give 
 your unfeigned consent to everytliing contained in 
 the Book of Prayer and Faith. But refuse to 
 trifle with yourselves and with your convictions 
 by saying that, when the Church says that a 
 child is regenerate, she means that perhaps, by 
 a separate act of which she knows nothing, he 
 may be or may hereafter be regenerate ; or that. 
 
REGENERATION. 
 
 37 
 
 when taught in her Catechism to declare yourself 
 to be a child of God, a member of Christ, and 
 an inlieritor of the kingdom of heaven, you only 
 express your faith in a possibility that at some 
 remote day you may become so. 
 
 On the other hand, if you are bidden to be- 
 lieve that a change of heart has taken place in 
 a heart which is incapable of all change ; in a 
 little infant which has as yet in exercise no affec- 
 tions, passions, principles, or powers of judgment; 
 refuse there also, refuse resolutely, to be imposed 
 upon by names and forms ; adhere firmly to those 
 dictates alike of conscience and of Scripture 
 which teach you that the Holy Spirit is a living 
 Person, and that, like the wind to which our Lord 
 compares His operation, though thou canst not 
 tell ivhence it cometh nor whither it goeth, yet at 
 least thou liearest the sound thereof, and judgest 
 of its presence or absence by its manifestations 
 and effects. 
 
 What shall we say then? Say, as our Church 
 teaches us to say, I believe that every baptized 
 child is regenerate ; is, as the following words 
 explain the meaning, grafted into the body of 
 
38 
 
 REGENERATION. 
 
 Christ's Church. Regeneration is a figure, and 
 a figure capable, as we have seen in Scriptui-e, 
 of various applications. It may be applied wher- 
 ever a real and important change takes place in 
 a man's moral or spiritual condition. It might 
 be applied — if it were not confusing so to apply 
 it— it might be applied with perfect propriety to 
 that greatest of all moral and spiritual changes 
 by which a sinner returns from the error of his 
 Avays and finds forgiveness and rest in Clirist. 
 But it may be applied with perfect propriety 
 also — and it is thus that we apply it in the Ser- 
 vice for Infant Baptism— to that change by which 
 a new-born infant is taken out of the world of 
 nature and transferred by an ordinance of Christ's 
 appointment into the Avorld of grace ; that change 
 by which the promises made generally to mankind 
 are sealed personally upon him; by which God 
 in Christ takes him, as it were, aside by himself 
 and sets His mark upon him, promising to do 
 for him aU that he needs to keep and to save 
 him, promising to be his Father and to own him 
 as His son. 
 
 Is this a change too trifling to be designated 
 
UEGEXERATION. 
 
 39 
 
 by a term so emphatic? Little do we know of 
 our own privileges, little do we honour as we 
 ought Gk)d's greatest gifts to us, to little purpose 
 have we studied the records either of heathen 
 experience or of Christian revelation, if we allow 
 ourselves thus to judge. Is it nothing to be the 
 subjects of an ordinance instituted by Christ Him- 
 self and preserved to us by a Providence eloquent 
 of Divine love ? that we have not been left even 
 with a Bible only, to make out what we could of 
 God's purposes towards us and dealings with us, 
 to frame for ourselves our conceptions of Him 
 and to settle for ourselves the relation in which 
 we will place ourselves towards Him, but have 
 been, as it were, prevented with the blessings of 
 goodness ; brought, when we were yet imconscious, 
 within the fold of Chi-ist's Church ; shielded and 
 nurtured there during years of incapacity and in- 
 experience ; taught, as we were able to bear it, 
 what it most concerned us to know ; preoccupied 
 in mind and heart for Christ ; above all, so placed 
 and so circumstanced that we might be told with 
 truth and with confidence from the earliest dawn 
 of reason, that we were already the children of 
 
40 
 
 REGENERATION. 
 
 God — made so by Him ; already members of 
 Christ — made so by Him ; ab-eady inheritors, by 
 right and title, of the very kingdom of Heaven? 
 Place yourselves, but for one moment, in imagin- 
 ation, out of the pale of these blessings ; imagine 
 yourselves destitute up to this time of the know- 
 ledge of God, of Christ, and of Heaven ; left to 
 grope your way amongst natural instincts, guesses, 
 and sentiments ; left to find out God by search- 
 ing for Him, or rather to live utterly without Him 
 in the world ; and then surely, if you compare 
 this condition with that which is yours, with what 
 you are at the worst, you wiU see that indeed 
 the figure is no exaggeration ; that, in compari- 
 son with heathenism, it is no fiction to speak of 
 Christianity itself as regeneration ; that, much as 
 may yet have to be wrought in you before you 
 can enter into the kingdom ; great as may be 
 your need of increased faith and hope and love ; 
 nay, if even you need that second regenei-ation 
 Avhich is the conversion of the baptized sinner to 
 his God; stiU it is something, something which 
 prophets and righteous men of old woidd have 
 sold aU they had to purchase, to have been once 
 
REGENERATION, 
 
 41 
 
 brought within the promises of the covenant, 
 when, being yet a little child, Christ, as it is 
 written, called you to Himself, tooh yoio np in 
 His arms, put His hands upon you, and blessed 
 you. 
 
DISCOUESE III. 
 
 THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 
 
 rpHERE is one portion of the Sei-vices of our 
 Church, so full of deeply important matter, 
 yet at the same time so often misused and mis- 
 construed, that I have thought it well deserving 
 of special and separate consideration. And yet 
 if I were to say that the subject of this discourse 
 wiU be the Athanasian Creed, I almost fear 
 that it would be regarded as the announcement 
 of an impractical, an miinteresting, an almost re- 
 pulsive subject. 
 
 We are all aware of the treatment which this 
 Creed has received at the hands of many worship- 
 pers and some ministers of our Church. Dislike 
 and contempt for it have been sometimes openly 
 exhibited where such exhibitions are most wrong 
 and indecent. Persons have been seen to seat 
 themselves with an air almost of defiance when 
 the first sound of the Whosoever will he saved 
 
THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 43 
 
 fell upon their ear in the house of God. Some 
 Christian ministers never read it, and many mem- 
 bers of the congregation never join in it. Par- 
 ticular expressions in it have furnished the scoffer 
 with his readiest weapons of attack, and (which 
 is much more to be lamented) have caused to 
 certain minds, in the prospect more especially 
 of entering the ministry of the Church, seasons 
 of deep disquietude, resulting, it may be, in the 
 discarding of that armour which they were just 
 girding on for the life-long combat of the ordained 
 soldier of Christ. 
 
 Now on all these accounts it is most impor- 
 tant that the mind should be early prepared to 
 estimate aright this portion of our Church's wor- 
 ship. It is not in the tone of excuse or apology, 
 but rather in all the confidence of sincerity and 
 truth, that we would approach the consideration 
 of the Athanasian Creed. If apology were needed 
 for any phrase or any sentiment contained in it, it 
 would be amply found in the ancient date of its 
 origin and in tlie historical circumstances which 
 attended its composition. 
 
 You can never expect to find in a very 
 
44 THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 
 
 ancient document an exactness of adaptation to 
 the taste or the feeling of a later age. Expres- 
 sions which were perfectly intelligible to the 
 writer and to the first readers, may become dif- 
 ficult of explanation when the clue to their 
 meaning is lost by time. Other expressions, which 
 were justified at the time by a recent experi- 
 ence of the serious consequences of error, may 
 sound harsh beyond what is necessary when the 
 en'ors to which they refer have passed into the 
 dim back-ground of a remote antiquity. Or it 
 may be, again, that a form of speech which was 
 usual and natural in dealing with opponents in 
 a distant age, is stronger and more condem- 
 natory than the polished ear or (let us be- 
 lieve) the charitable judgment of our own time 
 can hear or use with entire approbation. All 
 these things may be: and yet the composition 
 which contains these drawbacks to its hearty ac- 
 ceptance with us may be, all the time, trae and 
 valuable ; a needed protest against eiTors possible 
 because once prevalent ; a sound summary of 
 a faith once delivered to the saints, or a solemn 
 warning against corruptions by which that faith 
 
THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 45 
 
 may be, because it has been, disfigured or muti- 
 lated. 
 
 Or it might happen, once again, that great 
 practical difficulties may beset the modification 
 or alteration of a Church's formularies, either from 
 the absence of an authority qualified to undertake 
 it, or from the risk — always a serious considera- 
 tion — of the rashness with which change might 
 be attempted, and the impossibility of fixing 
 definitely beforehand to what objects it shall be re- 
 stricted or at what point limited. All these things 
 may leave for long, perhaps for ever, on the pages 
 of a Common Prayer-Book, defects and blemishes, 
 to be acknowledged with candour, yet acquiesced 
 in Avith patience, by those who still estimate too 
 highly the work of the Church, and sympathize too 
 deeply with its principles, to allow themselves to 
 entertain the question of deserting its ranks or seek- 
 ing elsewhere a freedom of judgment which the 
 Church itself is ever ready to concede to them so 
 long as it stops short of wilfulness and of licence. 
 
 AVhen a few such admissions have been made 
 with reference to the Athanasian Creed, we shall 
 have said enough to prepare ourselves for its 
 
46 THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 
 
 serious study, and, as I believe, for its devout 
 and thankful use. 
 
 We can little appreciate in this late age of 
 the world the magnitude of those dangers through 
 which the Providence of God, and let us add the 
 promised presence of Christ by His Spirit, once 
 steered the storm-tossed ark of His Church. "We 
 read now, with an indiflFereuce not unmingled with 
 impatience, of the heresies of Nestorius, Apolli- 
 naris, and Eutyches, perhaps of Arius himself, and 
 we marvel at the importance attached to them by 
 men who were regarded as wise and learned in 
 their generation, and who saw in these subtleties 
 matter for apprehension which we regai'd as fan- 
 ciful, or a justification of censures which we listen 
 to as unchristian. Yet it was by means of these 
 repeated protests against error on the right hand 
 and on the left, that the truth of Kevelation was 
 preserved to us unsullied. And a closer examin- 
 ation of these several so-called heresies would 
 probably detect in each the germ at least of a 
 disastrous and fatal misconceiition of the character, 
 office, or doctrine of Him in whom our one hope 
 centres. As these successive roots of bitterness 
 
THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 47 
 
 were cleared away, the faith of Christ was gradu- 
 ally shaped into a form somewhat more set and 
 systematic than we might have desired, but yet 
 one more distinctly expressed and more easily to 
 be recognized ; a form less beautiful perhaps than 
 in its first heavenly freshness, but on the other 
 hand better quahfied to do battle with the count- 
 less hosts, open and secret, of its earthly enemies. 
 
 Nor was the one form in reality exchanged 
 for the other. If the Articles of Faith, and some 
 forms of worship, had become more rigidly sys- 
 tematic than when the Gospel first came from the 
 hands of its Divine Author, yet the Church still 
 possessed the record of that Divine Original, and 
 might read in the Holy Scriptures the very words 
 of Christ Himself, the account of the very life 
 which He lived for us, and the very death which 
 He died. In the one, she had those definitions 
 and deductions which the perverse ingenuity of 
 man had rendered necessary, to guard the sim- 
 ple fi-om being misled, and to inform the enquirer 
 as to her rules and doctrines: in the other, the 
 Scriptures of truth, she had the living words by 
 which souls are nourished, and through which the 
 
48 THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 
 
 Spirit of man holds communion with the Spirit 
 of God. Each of these two had and has its use : 
 we doubt not which is the more precious, but we 
 beheve tliat both ai-e indispensable. 
 
 Read then the Creed before us as the record 
 of those feelings of confidence and of thankful- 
 ness with which the Church of the fifth century 
 re^•iewed the way by which God had led her 
 through the labyrinth of human error into the 
 clear light of a formed faith and an established 
 doctrine. Each one of its doctrinal clauses is, 
 not so much the statement of a truth, as the re- 
 pudiation of an existing and dangerous error: 
 each one tells of a peril through which the faith 
 had passed and from which God had given it a 
 good deliverance : each one must have thrilled 
 the hearts of those who first sang it with the 
 sense as of a shipwreck escaped, with the comfort 
 and joy of a Divine intervention and rescue. And 
 if we cannot now enter, as of course we cannot, 
 into the very feelings of those who wrote and 
 read it as a hymn of triumphant praise, let us 
 not forget to thank God for that quietness and 
 calm which He has given to His Cliurch on earth, 
 
THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 
 
 49 
 
 SO far at least as the substance of its faith is 
 concerned, and let us not rashly throw away those 
 bulwarks of sound doctrine which testify to His 
 past mercies, if they be not still needed as in- 
 struments of protection and defence. 
 
 The subjects embodied in the Athanasian 
 Creed are beyond all question the most import- 
 ant that can occupy the thoughts of a Christian 
 worshipper. There is a wide difference between it 
 and any other. Between it and the Apostles' 
 Creed there is a difference so wide that, even 
 apart from external evidence, we could tell from 
 their contents that whole centuries of strife and 
 trouble had rolled between them. Thankful might 
 we be, if the simplicity of the Apostles' Creed 
 had continued to be, as once doubtless it had 
 been, sufficient to express all that Christians need 
 utter as the symbol of tlieir common faith and 
 the condition of their united worship. It better 
 represents, no doubt, the Gospel as it came from 
 Heaven : but it does not therefore follow that a 
 more elaborate and in some respects less attractive 
 summary of belief may not have been rendered 
 necessary by the experienced exigencies of the 
 
 4 
 
50 THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 
 
 Gospel as it abode on earth. "Wlien the ingenuity 
 of Eastern speculation had once begun to busy 
 itself with the formation of theories as to the 
 great Object of worship and the person of the 
 incarnate Word, it was needful that, negatively 
 at least if not positively, the truth upon these 
 subjects should be expressed, so as to banish 
 errors which had already crept in, and ijreclude, 
 as far as might be, the rise of others, in a region 
 where all error is vital and all variety is at once 
 discord. 
 
 The Church wearied with conflict is in a dif- 
 ferent position from the Church just founded. It 
 must reflect upon past perUs ; it must rehearse 
 its experience in words heretofore unuttered. The 
 Church which was once satisfied to speak of an 
 Almighty Father, JNIaker of Heaven and earth, of 
 His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and of the Holy 
 Ghost, must now combine into a more connected 
 whole these distinct elements of faith and wor- 
 ship ; must use terms, imperfect indeed but not 
 inexpressive, to assert the union in one Godhead 
 of these three Divine Persons; declaring that to 
 each one by Himself are ascribed in the Holy 
 
THE ATHANASIAX CREED. 51 
 
 Scriptures, all the incommunicable properties of 
 a perfect Divinity — self-existence, eternity, immen- 
 sity, omnipotence, dominion. Deity — and yet on the 
 other hand maintaining as the one foundation of all 
 true religion, that there is but One God, and One 
 Lord; that the Object of all faith is, not Three, 
 but One ; that, while we worship one God in Trinity, 
 that Trinity itself must be worshipped in Unity. 
 What is there in this but the expression, with 
 such distinctness as human thought and human 
 language can supply, of a truth implicitly if not 
 explicitly taught in every page of Scripture, and 
 with regard to which no expression but that of 
 Scripture itself would have been needful, had not 
 erroneous expressions of it made it necessary, as 
 time advanced, to elaborate the true? 
 
 Thus is it also with regard to the second 
 great subject of the Athanasian Creed, the Per- 
 son of our Lord Jesus Christ. It might have 
 been enough, as in the first age of all it was 
 enough, to take for granted with reference to our 
 Saviour that double character which the first 
 view of the New Testament evidently gives Him, 
 of Divinity and humanity, God and Man, with- 
 
 4—2 
 
52 THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 
 
 out attempting to define the limits of either ele- 
 ment, or the method of their coexistence and 
 combination. It was better so : that was the 
 form in which God sent, in which Christ brought, 
 to us the Gospel. We saw there that Christ was 
 Man ; we saAV also there that Christ was God : 
 we were not told how He could be the one and 
 yet also the other : we only saw that He was this, 
 and that He was that, and yet that but One Per- 
 son was spoken of — God in power and wisdom, 
 Man in sympathy and in circumstance : this was 
 the Gospel as it came, and we mourn over that 
 necessity which drove men to define what God 
 had given. But that necessity which was to be 
 lamented was not therefore to be evaded : man 
 had defined erroneously, and therefore the Church 
 must define correctly. Man had said, Christ is 
 one, and therefore He is only God, or else, there- 
 fore He is only Man : the Church must express, 
 however imperfectly, that He is both ; not only 
 pei-fect God, Mith one half of man's nature, His 
 body, appended to Him, so that the Divinity was 
 the sold to the human body; but perfect Man 
 also, of a reasonable soul as well as human flesh 
 
THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 53 
 
 subsisting, yet with both these parts of a perfect 
 humanity so taken into the perfect Divinity, as 
 that, though the natures were two, the Person was 
 one. Man had said, The nature of Christ is two- 
 fold, and therefore what happened to Him who 
 had the one part of that nature did not neces- 
 sarily happen also to Him who had the other : the 
 Man Avas born, the Man suffered, the Man died, 
 but not so the Divine Man, the God and Man : 
 and in this the Church saw that which was peril- 
 ous to the unity of Christ's Person, that Avhich 
 had been the root of a thousand fanciful notions 
 as to the method of the incorporation of the God- 
 head in the JManhood, and found it needful to 
 assert, beyond the possibility of any evasion of her 
 meaning, that our Saviour is not two but one 
 Christ, one not indeed by any conversion of the 
 Godhead into flesh, but yet by a taking of the 
 Manhood into God, so that henceforth God and 
 Man should be one Christ. 
 
 And then, when these deeper mysteries have 
 been thus premised, how majestic and how touch- 
 ing is that brief summaiy of the events which 
 befell the Saviour, and the events in which we 
 
54 
 
 THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 
 
 all have so deep, so awful, a concern ! How grave 
 the application thus made of matters which per- 
 l)aps seemed till then to bear but slightly upon 
 human duty or destiny! At tchose coming all 
 men shall rise again ivith their bodies; and shall 
 give account for their own loorhs. And they that 
 have done good shall go into life everlasting : and 
 they that have done evil into everlasting fire. 
 
 I have reserved for latest mention those ex- 
 pressions in the Creed now before us, which have 
 in fact caused far greater difficulty to serious 
 minds than the parts on which I have dwelt. 
 With respect to the doctrinal statements of the 
 Creed, they are contented with saying that they 
 do not fully understand them; that there are 
 amongst them expressions with which they cannot 
 sympathize, as well as many in which they heartily 
 concur. But there are also expressions which 
 they at once condemn as presumptuous and un- 
 chai-itable; those which speak of agreement with 
 every part of this Creed as the necessary con- 
 dition of salvation : Which Faith except ei-ei-y one 
 do heep v-hole and iindefiled: tvithout doubt he 
 shall 2)erish everlastingly... He therefore that ivill 
 
THE ATHANASIAN CREED. OO 
 
 he saved must thns think of the Trinity... This is 
 the Cat Italic Faith: ivhich except a man believe 
 fdithfaUii, he cannot he saved. 
 
 I suppose there is no one on whose ear these 
 expressions have not faEen somewhat harshly. 
 We cannot be satisfied with the explanation, that 
 they are a charitable warning ; that, the truths 
 contained in the Creed being the truths of God's 
 Revelation, it is an act of brotherly kindness 
 to testify to men the peril of disbelieving them. 
 We all feel that the words themselves bear rather 
 the aspect of threatening than of warning ; that 
 they breathe the spirit of the Law rather than 
 of the Gospel ; that they would neither have been 
 written if the Creed were of a later age, nor re- 
 tained if the Church could readily and safely 
 have removed the part ^\^thout discarding the 
 whole. All men agree to understand these clauses 
 in a modified and limited sense. There does not 
 exist the man Avho would apply them quite literally 
 to the person, at all events, of him who doubts 
 or differs from some of the details of doctrine 
 to which they are appended. We all agree that 
 at least they must be applied only to wilful 
 
56 THE ATHAN ASIAN CREED. 
 
 uubelief ; to tlie rejection of the whole or a part 
 of the truth by one who has had every opportunity 
 of receiving it, and has dehberately, from wrong 
 motives, refused and rejected it. And, as we 
 never can know for certain the motives which may 
 have prompted such a rejection, Ave should be 
 afraid to apply the awful words thus used to any 
 individual, almost to any class of oi)inion, of whom 
 or of which we have ourselves had experience. 
 Further than this, we observe that the words 
 themselves, iu their strictest original meaning, can 
 scarcely have been designed to apply to eveiy 
 minute detail into which the Creed enters, but 
 rather to the great fundamental doctrines of the 
 Trinity in Unity, of the union of God and Man 
 in Christ, and of the more practical revelations 
 which form its conclusion ; in other words, to 
 the general revelation of the great Object of our 
 worship, and of the purposes of mercy and judg- 
 ment which He has made knoAvn to vis in Christ's 
 Gospel, 
 
 Let me remark, before I pass on, that there 
 is such a thing as a tacit repeal of words which 
 may still be retained iu our formularies of faith; 
 
THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 57 
 
 certainly that there is such a thing as an authori- 
 tative construction put upon such words by an 
 almost universal consent ; and that this tacit re- 
 peal, or authoritative construction, applies in the 
 strongest manner to the words before us, so far 
 as regards their apparent condemnation, without 
 regard to circumstances, opportunities, or motives, 
 of all those who differ in one iota from any one 
 particular of the abstruse and mysterious doctrines 
 here enunciated. No candidate for the holy office 
 of the ministry ought to have his conscience 
 hampered or his peace disturbed by the inability 
 to accept literally phrases which every wise ruler of 
 the Church and every thoughtful minister for several 
 centuries has interpreted with a wide latitude. 
 
 But, wide as is the latitude which we must allow 
 and claim in the interpretation of these Avords 
 of solemn threatening, we must never forget that 
 that latitude has limits, and that there are classes 
 of men, and there are individual men, though 
 we dare not and woidd not define them, to whom 
 terms such as these are strictly appropriate. 
 
 It is with faith as with practice. No Christian 
 would scruple to say with St Paul, Be not deceived: 
 
58 
 
 THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 
 
 neither idolaters, nor adulterers, nor thieves, ncyr 
 drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall 
 inherit the Jdngdom of God. We speak thus in 
 general : and yet we should neither point out the 
 persons to whom such denunciations are applicable, 
 nor forget tlie possibility of a repentance Avhich 
 may transfer the individual transgressor into a 
 most opposite class of men. It is with minds as with 
 lives. Our Saviour Himself says, He tJiat hdieveth 
 and is baptized shall he saved : hut he that be- 
 lieveth not shall he damned. And it has sometimes 
 been suggested that that verse might well be sub- 
 stituted in the Athanasian Creed for the somewhat 
 more definite, and at all events human words in 
 which a denunciation similar in its general im- 
 port is expressed. That awfid saying of our Lord 
 shows us that there is an unbelief which is fatal 
 to man's salvation : we presume not to fix its 
 limits or to guide its application : we know that 
 He who uttered it is Himself alone the Judge of 
 either, and that He wiU know how to estimate 
 aright the degree of light which has been neg- 
 lected, the circumstances and the opportunities 
 which have palliated or aggi-avated the giiilt. 
 
THE ATHAXASIAN CREED. 59 
 
 But with ourselves is our concern. And tlie 
 Atlianasian Creed, in what are called its condem- 
 natory clauses, echoes the language of our Lord 
 Himself in reminding us that every man is resjwn- 
 sihlc, oiot for his conduct only, but for Ms belief 
 If it were only for this testimony, it would be well 
 worthy of its place amongst the documents of 
 the Christian Faith. 
 
 A man is responsible for his faith as well as 
 for his conduct ; for what he believes as well as 
 for what he does. 
 
 Too often we judge differently. We say, A man 
 cannot make himself believe. Belief is an involun- 
 tary act : if it is forced, it is nugatory. This is true, 
 and not true. A man cannot suddenly say, I will 
 believe this : but every man may, and every man 
 does, influence his belief by forming or refusing to 
 form certain habits of mind and life. 
 
 There are habits of mind which bear directly 
 upon this residt, of faith or unbelief. Early in 
 life we begin to form them. There is a vanity 
 which shows itself in cavilling at what is most 
 surely believed by others. There is a wilfulness 
 which plays with truth ; a waywardness which will 
 
60 
 
 THE ATHAXASIAN CREED. 
 
 rather go wrong than follow. There is an indo- 
 lence which will not grapple with a difficulty ; and 
 there is a disingenuousness which is blind to the 
 most convincing argument if it points toward 
 the sacrifice of a pleasure or the exertion of an 
 efibrt. These evil habits of mind are often formed 
 early : and they lead, one and all, straight towards 
 unbelief ; such an unbelief as is certainly not venial 
 but deeply culpable. 
 
 If the Gospel be true, these are faults which 
 must tell upon our ability to accept it. The Go- 
 spel demands of us, first and last, candour ; a 
 readiness to weigh evidence, to consider demands 
 of duty, to ponder consequences, with the simple 
 desire to know what is tme that we may do what 
 is right. If this quality be wanting, in any one 
 of its parts, the Gospel, if it be true, has no 
 chance with us : its call is that for which we have 
 no ear, its evidences are those for which we have 
 no judgment. 
 
 This is one of the most serious statements that 
 can be addressed to the young. They are form- 
 ing habits of mind ; and upon their habits of mind 
 will depend their faith. 
 
THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 
 
 61 
 
 "Wliat a solemn import does this give to mat- 
 ters which at the time may be regarded as almost 
 indilFerent ! Vanity, wilfulness, indolence, per- 
 verseness, these things, if tliey be suffered in us 
 early — and no one but we ourselves by God's 
 help can eradicate or counteract them — these 
 things may cost us our faith, and if our faith, 
 then our salvation. He that helieveth not the Son 
 shall not see life : but the torath of God abideth 
 on him. 
 
 This is one of the two reasons why a man is 
 responsible to God, answerable at the cost of his 
 soul, for that soul's belief. Unbelief is the re- 
 sult of habits of mind, in the formation of which 
 he has been, throughout, and alone, the agent. 
 
 The other reason is, that liabits of life, as 
 well as of mind, tell directly and powerfully upon 
 the belief. And these may be of two kinds ; ha- 
 bits of act, and habits of neglect ; sins of omis- 
 sion, and sins of commission. 
 
 Every time that Ave omit our morning or our 
 evening prayer, we are contributing towards the 
 inability to believe. Every day that our Bible 
 remains closed, we are contributing towards the 
 
62 THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 
 
 inability to beUeve. Every day tliat we live M'ith- 
 out God in our world, whatever that world be, 
 whether the world of youth, or the world of age, 
 the world of business or of amusement, of intel- 
 lect or of society, we are contributing, directly 
 contributing, towards the future inability to be- 
 lieve. 
 
 Why so? Because faith is the spiritual sight 
 of God ; and the eye that is unused to God's 
 presence becomes at last incapable of it. 
 
 But we cannot stop even here. We have one 
 word still to add. Every time that we sin, we 
 are counteracting the possibility of future belief. 
 Every word by >vhich we dishonour God, trifle 
 Avith things holy, or blunt the reverence of an- 
 other, tends to prevent our ever believing. Every 
 unkind and uncharitable and violent word, is 
 slowly but surely undermining our belief of the 
 truth. Every falsehood we utter, every equivo- 
 cation, every disguise of the fact, every misre- 
 presentation and deception, is forming in us the 
 habit of infidelity. Still more, far, far more, every 
 impure thought, eveiy unholy imagination, is cre- 
 ating in us the inability ever to believe. 
 
THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 63 
 
 And again we ask, Why so? Because these 
 things are making it our interest to disbelieve 
 tlie Gospel. Because the Gospel says, They who 
 do such things shall not enter heaven ; and there- 
 fore they who do such things must hope at last 
 that the Gospel is a fable. 
 
 0 the solemn, the tremendous issues of the 
 life that now is ! If in one sense each day we 
 live is a distinct unit, for the supply of the wants 
 of which we ask God and trust Him implicitly 
 with the morrow; in another sense the whole life 
 of man is a continuous, an unbroken chain, each 
 link of which is firmly riveted into the link that 
 follows. Now we are sowing — one day we shall 
 reap — nay, nay, we are reaping too ! Each day 
 we live is bearing fruit in the next, and that in 
 eternity. Thoughts are telling upon mind, words 
 upon character, acts upon Ufe ; and the product 
 of all these is the immortal man, hewn and shaped 
 by his own workmanship into a temple of the 
 evil one, or else a habitation of God. Lord, so 
 teach lis to number our days, that we may apply 
 our hearts unto loisdom. 
 
DISCOUESE IV.' 
 
 THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 "y^^E are taught in the Apostles' Creed to dis- 
 tinguish between tlie Holy Catholic Church 
 and the Communion of Saints. In one point of 
 view the distinction may be said to lie between 
 a community of living Christians and a commu- 
 nity of Christians whether living or dead. The 
 Holy Catholic Church may be regarded as com- 
 prising only the present generation of Christ's 
 earthly congregation ; the Communion of Saints 
 as including within its ampler bound the whole 
 assembly of the faithful both in earth and 
 Heaven. 
 
 But a more carefid consideration will show a 
 second point of difference between the two ex- 
 pressions. If in one sense the Communion of 
 Saints is a larger body than the Holy Catholic 
 ^ This Discourse was published separately in 1854. 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. 65 
 
 Church; the hitter embracing only the Church 
 Militant, the former the Church both Militant 
 and Triumphant; in another sense, the propor- 
 tion will be inverted, and the Holy Catholic 
 Church become the wider and more promiscuous, 
 the Commiuiion of Saints, the narrower and the 
 more exclusive, of the two. The Holy Catholic 
 Church is the Visible as opposed to the Invisible 
 Church; the nominal and professing, as distin- 
 guished fi-om the real and the spiritual, body of 
 Christ. CatlioUc, because confined to no race 
 of men and to no form of Christianity, but includ- 
 ing all who in every place call upon tJie name 
 of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours. 
 Holy, not by duty only or profession, but in a 
 higher and sti'icter sense; because amidst and 
 within that community, though not eflfectually in 
 the heart of each one of its members, the Holy 
 and Eternal Spirit dwells. ^Vliereas the Commu- 
 nion of Saints is that Chui-ch within tlie Church, 
 that shrine (if we might so express it) mthin 
 the temple, that Holy of Holies beyond what 
 itself from the proximity of the Divine habita- 
 tion is all holy, which, visible only, in its dis- 
 
 5 
 
66 
 
 THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 tiuctness, to an all-seeing Eye, comprises none 
 but the true and the real amongst many nominal 
 worshippers, and will furnish hereafter the seve- 
 ral stones of that new and spiritual fabric in 
 which the throne of God and of the Lamb is to 
 be erected as its final glory. 
 
 Now this distinction, if consistent with God's 
 revelations, is one full of important doctrine. 
 
 We say that it was the design of Christ that 
 there should exist in the world until His second 
 coming a body of men, united by the acknow- 
 ledgement of a common faith, by a participation 
 in common ordinances ; a body constantly on 
 the increase, until it should become at last com- 
 mensurate with the habitable earth ; the mem- 
 bers of which should pass unquestioned and un- 
 challenged by each other, as by Him, through a 
 life-time of uncertain duration, and be subjected, 
 at death or after death, to a searching and sifting 
 process which should decide, once for aU, upon 
 the sincerity and consequently upon the destiny 
 of each. 
 
 The Gospels furnish ample illustration, ample 
 proof, of this statement. 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 67 
 
 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, 
 that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every 
 hind: which, vohen it was full, they drew to 
 sJiore, and sat doivn, and gathered the good into 
 vessels, but cast the bad away. So shall it be at 
 the end of this world: the angels shall come forth, 
 and sever the wicked from among the just, and 
 shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall 
 be wailing and gnashing of teeth. 
 
 The kingdom of heaven: the state of things 
 under the Gospel. The call of the Gospel shall 
 have this effect. Not that the net cast into the 
 sea shall enfold some, and exclude others. Not 
 that the test of character in the good and the bad 
 shall be the entrance, or the refusal to enter, into 
 the fold of the Christian community. Doubtless 
 in some senses this is true. But here it is differ- 
 ently stated, diffei-ently viewed. Good and bad 
 enter alike. The net encloses both kinds. It is 
 left in the sea until it is full. Till then the pro- 
 cess is indiscriminate. Not till it is full — and 
 that time is not yet come, for the Gospel net is still 
 out in the wide waters, gathering of every kind — 
 not till it is full, and that is not till the end of 
 
 5—2 
 
68 
 
 THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 this world, will it be draAvn in towards the shore, 
 that the work of distinguishing and discriminat- 
 ing may succeed that of collecting and of gather- 
 ing. The net that encloses all, both bad and 
 good, is the Holy Catholic Church ; the visible, 
 the professing, the nominal Christendom : the 
 vessels into which the good are finally gathered 
 may represent that smaller, that more select, that 
 as yet indistinguishable community, Avhich, from 
 its actual and personal contact with the life-giv- 
 ing Spirit, is described and shall one day be mani- 
 fested as the true Communion of Saints. 
 
 It is thus that in the parable of the Marriage 
 of the King's Son, a distinction is drawn between 
 the promiscuous assemblage who throng the pa- 
 lace of the royal host, and the guests who are 
 qualified, by the jiossession of a peculiar attire, to 
 partake of a banquet which is not for all. If in 
 that parable the language of other passages of 
 Scripture may seem to be in one point reversed ; 
 the accepted spoken of as the multitude, the re- 
 jected but as one amongst many; we are taught 
 rather to infer from this the individual penetra- 
 tion of that searching scrutiny, the impossibility 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. G9 
 
 of but one untrue member passing unchallenged 
 through that last ordeal, as well as the certainty 
 of the coexistence, till then, within the pale of 
 an outward Christianity, of the Christian in name 
 and the Christian in deed. 
 
 Now, not to multiply quotations upon a point 
 sufficiently obvious to a careful student of Scrip- 
 ture, let us pass on to view some of the conse- 
 quences of this truth ; the designed existence, 
 throughout all ages, of this distinction between 
 a Holy Catholic Church and a true Communion 
 of Saints. 
 
 But first we should notice that the toleration 
 of a nominal as well as a true Church of Christ 
 does not necessarily preclude the operation of 
 discipline. While our Lord forbids the attempt 
 to pull up prematurely and forcibly the tares 
 which in the present Dispensation grow so abun- 
 dantly amidst the wheat; the attemjit, made by 
 so many, to prejudge human character, to ex- 
 clude from the sympathies and the charities of 
 a common Christianity those who appear to the 
 self-constituted inspector to be Christians only in 
 name; neither He, nor His Apostles after Him, 
 
70 THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 deny to His earthly Church the right to banish 
 from their company those who bring scandal upon 
 their name and His, or to pronounce, on evi- 
 dence duly weighed, that sentence of excommu- 
 nication which severs the link of union between 
 the soul of man and those blessings and aids of 
 the Holy Spirit which are promised only to the 
 Church of God. 
 
 Our Lord prescribes an appeal to the Church, 
 that is, to the assembled Christian congregation, 
 in cases of deliberate and obstinate injury done 
 to one of its members; and sanctions by His 
 express authority the regarding as a heathen inan 
 and a ]7nhlican, that is, as one between whom 
 and us there exists no tie but that of a common 
 humanity, the man who neglects to hear, or in 
 other words to recognize and to obey, the de- 
 cision of the Church upon the case brought 
 before them. 
 
 And St Paul, in a well-known passage of his 
 first Epistle t© the Corinthians, actually pronoimces 
 upon an otFender, by the authority of Christ 
 Himself, a sentence of exclusion and banishment 
 from the Christian body so abrupt and so for- 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 71 
 
 midable that it is described as a delivering to 
 Satan for tJie destruction of the flesh, in the 
 hope that, by the awakening of timely fear and 
 of deep repentance, the soul may he saved in 
 the day of the Lord Jesus. 
 
 Such acts of discipline were by no means un- 
 common during several centuries of the Church's 
 history. 
 
 In our own Church at the present time they 
 may be said to be virtually extinct. 
 
 In one place the language of regret is uttered 
 over the fact of their cessation. In the Commi- 
 nation Service, with which we enter year by 
 year upon the season of Lent, after recording 
 the practice of the Primitive Church to put to 
 open penance such 2^ersons as stood convicted 
 of notorious sin, it is added, Instead whereof, 
 until the said discipline may be restored again, 
 which is much to be loished, it is thought good 
 that the general sentetices of God's ctirsing against 
 impenitent sinners should be read at this time 
 in the 2^resence of you all, &c. 
 
 Elsewhere a partial attempt is made to re- 
 store this disciijline. Thus in the Rubric at the 
 
72 
 
 THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 opening of the Commumon Service, directions 
 are given for the exclusion from that ordinance 
 of any o^yen and notorious evil doer, or of any 
 persons heticeen wlwm malice and hatred is 
 perceived to reign, until, in the former case, an 
 open avowal shall be made of repentance and 
 purposed refoi-mation, or, in the latter, assurances 
 of forgiveness be exchanged and wrongs mutually 
 redressed. The same feeling is indicated also in 
 the direction prefixed to the Burial Service, that 
 those words of hope and of blessing are not to 
 be used over anij that die excommunicate or have 
 laid violent hands npon themselves. 
 
 It is needless to say, what all are aware of, 
 that these regrets in the first case, and these 
 directions in the other two, have been equally 
 frustrated by the event. We continue to express. 
 Lent after Lent, a wish for the restoration of 
 Church discipline : but every year makes us feel 
 more and more strongly that the thing is im- 
 possible : it is one of those past ideas which could 
 only be transplanted into the age in which we 
 live, by an effort as unnatural as it would cer- 
 tainly be short-lived. With regard to exclusions 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 73 
 
 from the Communion, we know how rarely a 
 Clergyman can possess that kind and amount of 
 proof, with reference to the misconduct or the 
 enmities of his Parishioners, which could alone 
 make it safe for him to proceed to an extremity 
 which the very same Rubric requires that he 
 should be prepared to establish to the satisfaction 
 of a legal tribunal. We know, in short, that prac- 
 tically the direction is disregarded. Conscience, 
 or the dread of public opinion, may suggest to 
 an evil doer the propriety of abstaining from 
 such an attendance : but, so far as the Minister 
 is concerned, he might with almost absolute safety 
 risk the chance of being repelled from the Lord's 
 Table : few Clergymen will hazard even a private 
 remonstrance ; almost none will take upon them- 
 selves the consequence of a public prohibition. 
 And with reference, finally, to the threatened ex- 
 clusion of the dead from the ordinary form of 
 Christian burial, we all know that penalties of 
 a most serious kind are attached to the refusal 
 by a Minister to utter any one of the prescribed 
 words of hope and of confidence over the most 
 depraved of human offenders : he must give thanks 
 
74 
 
 THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 to God for the sure and certain hope of another 
 world by the grave of the drunkard or the adul- 
 terer : even he who has died by his OAvn hand 
 must be interred with the same fonnality of bene- 
 diction, unless a judicial verdict, difficult and 
 rare of attainment, shall pronounce that the act 
 which destroyed life was done with the clearest 
 exercise of reason, and that no iiassing cloud ob- 
 scured for a moment the understanding Avhich 
 dictated the sin. 
 
 Now there are those who look upon this ces- 
 sation of all ecclesiastical discipline, for such in- 
 deed it is, as not only a great loss but a great 
 crime. They think that a community which has 
 relinquished or been deprived of the power to 
 punish, has parted with one of the chief charac- 
 teristics of a true Church. They urge, and not 
 unreasonably, the scandal brought upon a con- 
 gregation by the immorality of one of its wor- 
 shipjiers or its communicants. And not staying 
 to enquire whether the progress of events, the 
 change of circumstances, the overriding hand of 
 God's government, may possibly have created 
 some compensation, partial or complete, for the 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 75 
 
 loss which they deplore, they can only exhaust 
 themselves in fruitless efforts to reimpose upon 
 the Church of the nineteenth century every insti- 
 tution of the fifth or of the tenth. 
 
 But may it not be worthy of a moment's re- 
 flection, whether indeed the restoration of a (so 
 called) Church discipline is thus obviously and ne- 
 cessarily desirable? whether it might not involve, 
 not inconveniences only, but injuries and evils? 
 whether we may not still possess, though in a 
 different form, many of the greatest advantages 
 of the most rigid discipline? and whether those 
 we have not, may not have been taken from us 
 by a vast combination of circumstances, bringing 
 with them more than an equivalent for all that 
 they have superseded? 
 
 Wliile the Christian body, whether in the world 
 generally, or in a particidar city or district, was 
 a small and compact community, definitely marked 
 out from the heathenism or the Judaism that 
 surrounded it ; while the Christian profession of 
 each member of it was a matter of special and 
 individual choice ; while, moreover, the Gospel 
 had still, if I may so express it, its character to 
 
76 
 
 THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 earn, and incurred the greatest risk of being 
 slanderously and blasphemously defamed ; it was 
 on the one hand possible, and on the other neces- 
 sary, that every one who openly belied his faith 
 by his life should be cut off from the society which 
 he contaminated. Just, perhaps, this might be 
 at all times : but in such times it was also possible, 
 and it was also expedient. Great crime, or even 
 great carelessness, was then a thing patent and 
 self-confessed. And a disregard of such things 
 on tlie part of the Christian body would have 
 argued an indifference or a timidity which might 
 have injured their Master's cause in the world. 
 
 How is it now? now, when the world itself 
 has changed sides ? now, when all alike are bound 
 by the responsibilities, and entitled to the privi- 
 leges, of a Christian profession ? Imagine for one 
 moment the consequences, in any Parish with 
 which we are acquainted, of an attempt on the 
 part of the Minister, whether acting alone or 
 with assessors, to bring to ecclesiastical punish- 
 ment all offenders against Christian morality. How 
 inextricable would be his perplexity, when he 
 sought to deal honestly with his oym conscience. 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 77 
 
 as to the cases which it was his business to in- 
 vestigate and to denounce ! How terrible the 
 suspicion of connivance in every instance that 
 escaped his vigilance ! How dreadful the elfects 
 of having laid against any man an unproved or 
 a half-proved charge ! How exhausting, how se- 
 cularizing, how demoralizing, the influence upon 
 his o\ra heart and character, of hours spent in 
 the prosecution of such enquiries ! How ruinous 
 to the tone of his public and his private minis- 
 trations ! How destructive to the whole estima- 
 tion of his sacred office amongst those to whom 
 he ministers ! How unequal, how iniquitous, 
 after all, must be the result of so precarious, so 
 accidental, so arbitrary a process ! How great the 
 injury, even to those morals Avhich it is the object 
 of all such endeavours to protect, from the public 
 exposure of the details of secret offences ; secret 
 until the hand of the Church is uplifted to strip off" 
 the disguise Avhich veils them ! Would the result, 
 on the whole, be serviceable, or the conti-ary, to 
 the cause of holiness and of God? Would the 
 punishment, be it what it might, of such scandals 
 be capable of being made an equivalent for the 
 
78 THE BURIAL SERVICE, 
 
 mischief of their publication? Would the removal 
 of a few such individual blemishes (even when 
 notorious and flagrant) from the Christian congre- 
 gation, the open expulsion of a handful of evil 
 doers from the society of Christians and from the 
 ordinances of Gods worship, at all compensate 
 for the enormous extension of the knowledge of 
 their existence, involved in the determination to 
 drag them to the light? Is it not far better that 
 they should be left, even as now, to the interpo- 
 sition, when they can no longer be concealed, of a 
 tribunal either avowedly or at least practically 
 secular ? 
 
 But is it indeed true that discipline is now a 
 thing unknown? 
 
 In the first days of the Gospel, as every one 
 even slightly acquainted with the literature and 
 history of those times is well aware, flagrant im- 
 morality was, not the exception, but the rule, of 
 the society amidst which the Church of Christ was 
 planted. I do not say that there were none whose 
 lives were pure, or whose principles of judgment 
 were moral. I do not say that there were none, 
 amongst the orators, poets, and historians of Rome, 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 79 
 
 who felt deeply, and severely stigmatized, the pre- 
 vailing wickedness of their countrymen. I do not 
 say that then, any more than in later ages, men 
 paraded industriously before the eyes of the world 
 the vices which they indulged and cherished. I 
 suppose that even then there was just enough of 
 virtue and of conscience to make it worth while 
 for any one who valued his character to cloke his 
 profligacy in hypocrisy. But, whether disguised 
 or displayed, there can be no question that a 
 general corruption of morals marked the age in 
 which Christianity entered the world, and was con- 
 stantly on the increase during some centuries 
 which followed. The exhortations and arguments 
 of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, on topics 
 which we now regard as requiring neither the one 
 nor the other from a Christian teacher; some of 
 which we read with a blush, or presume to pass 
 over, as matters on which the natural conscience, 
 apart from Revelation, is sufficiently enlightened 
 and informed ; show that not only the world which 
 surrounded the infant Church, but that Church 
 itself, was destitute to a great extent of the re- 
 straints and aids of a strong public opinion on 
 
80 
 
 THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 points of moral conduct, and needed, in the same 
 proportion, a system of severe discipline -within 
 the Christian body to secure its conformity in any 
 tolerable degree to the standard of a Divine re- 
 quirement. 
 
 But now, through God's blessing upon primitive 
 doctrine and primitive discipline within the en- 
 closure of His Church, a vast change has been 
 wrought in the moral condition of the world. 
 The principles of Christian morals have impreg- 
 nated the atmosphere of human society. In this 
 one respect, if in no other, it has doubtless been 
 for good that Christianity should have become 
 the religion of kingdoms and empires as well as 
 of individuals. The effect of its adoption as the 
 nominal faith of the Western world has at least 
 been favourable to morality if not to holiness. 
 Men who acknowledged the Gospel as their creed 
 and called Christ their Master could not any 
 longer justify, though they might be too weak to 
 relinquish, practices which the Gospel proscribed 
 and against which Christ denounced judgment. If 
 the practice of the world remained unaltered, at 
 least its principles rose with the profession of 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. 81 
 
 Christianity. There was now a tribunal which 
 could sit in judgment upon the inventions of men, 
 and pronounce authoritatively upon the orthodoxy 
 of rival philosophies. It would no longer be pos- 
 sible for a man calling himself a Christian to 
 avow the idea that pleasure was the chief good, 
 or that acts of the body were immaterial in the 
 estimate of the God and Judge of souls. And it 
 was much more than this. For beside and within 
 this juster scheme of morality there came into 
 existence also a considerable and an ever increasing 
 amount of true devotion and of spiritual holiness. 
 There were many who held Christianity as a form ; 
 but there were some who felt its power. There 
 was not only a Holy Catholic Church, but within, 
 though by no means co-extensive with it, a Com- 
 mxmion also of Saints. And that which was the 
 creed of the one was the faith of the other. Tliat 
 which was the profession of the one was the life 
 of the other. So that there was always before the 
 eyes of men who nominally adopted and outwardly 
 bound themselves by the rules of Christian mo- 
 rality the spectacle of men like themselves who 
 loved and obeyed those rules, exemplifying the 
 
 6 
 
82 
 
 THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 possibility of their performance, and sLaming 
 those who said and did not. It was impossible 
 that this obedience should be witnessed from age 
 to age without results. It acted with real and 
 persuasive power upon the society within which 
 it was displayed. What might otherwise, under 
 the influence of a long course of inconsistent 
 profession, have become a merely nominal code 
 of duty, was saved from this fatal deterioration 
 by the sight of its living energy in some, and 
 became more and more established from gene- 
 ration to generation as the rule of life and 
 the standard of judgment, even for those who 
 too often, through infirmity of purpose, or the 
 power of evil habit, failed to exemplily it in 
 themselves. 
 
 Now the point to which I desire your attention 
 is this : that, in proportion as public opinion has 
 become more and more Christian and more and 
 more influential; in proportion as the nominally 
 Christian world has learned to judge more correctly, 
 and to express its judgment more decidedly, upon 
 questions of morality; in proportion, finally, as 
 the advance of intelligence has brought with it 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. 83 
 
 increased facilities for the avowal and enforce- 
 ment of the judgments of this public opinion in 
 the way of approbation or censure; in the same 
 degree it has become less necessary that the 
 Church should exert itself to discover and to 
 punish cases of irregularity or of sin. This is one 
 of the innumerable instances in which the course 
 of events, under the overruling hand of God's 
 Providence, has introduced a change of means, 
 without involving a loss in the result. It is no 
 longer necessary for the Church to vindicate those 
 principles of morality in which even the world 
 agrees with her. The Church has been too long 
 in existence to be under any risk of misconstruc- 
 tion as to her Master's or her own rides of judg- 
 ment. She may, if circumstances so require, 
 leave her own members to the operation of the 
 ordinary sentences of public opinion, without any 
 apprehension of the consequences to her own 
 character, or to the cause of truth and holiness in 
 the world. If he who has openly sinned is no 
 longer put to an open penance before the Chris- 
 tian congregation, he is not therefore left un- 
 punished by a tribunal the principles of which he 
 
 6—2 
 
84 
 
 THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 can better appreciate, and the operation of whose 
 edicts no flight can evade. 
 
 In maintaining that the necessity for Church 
 discipline, not indeed (for this is a different case) 
 over the ministers, but over the members, of the 
 Christian congregation, may have been superseded 
 by the general diffusion of an enlightened public 
 opinion, I shall not hesitate to take as an ex- 
 ample of my meaning that which has been to 
 so many conscientious persons one of the great- 
 est stumblingblocks, the Burial Service of our 
 Church. 
 
 In that Service, appointed for promiscuous use 
 in the case of all baptized persons — with the two 
 exceptions, which in fact are of the rarest occur- 
 rence, that of persons legally excommunicated, 
 and that of those who are pronounced by the 
 verdict of a jury to have laid violent hands on 
 themselves without the excuse of insanity — in that 
 Service (amongst other expressions of similar im- 
 port) Grod is declai'ed to have tciTien to Himself, 
 of his great niercy, the soul of our departed 
 brother, and his body is committed to the 
 ground in sure and certain hope of the resitr- 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 85 
 
 rection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 Now it is urged that of few comparatively 
 amongst the departing members of his congrega- 
 tion could a Clergyman declare with confidence 
 that they died in sure and certain hope, that they 
 rested in Christ, that they were delivered, in the 
 sense obviously intended, out of the miseries of 
 a sinful world. Far more often, alas ! is he called 
 to lay in the grave persons who have given no 
 sign, in life, of faith or devotion. Not unfre- 
 quently, those who have been notoriously neglect- 
 ful, through life, of the appointed means of Chris- 
 tian improvement. Occasionally, those whom no 
 doubtful rumour has accused of living in sin ; the 
 dishonest, the drunkard, or the adulterer. Rarely, 
 but in the experience of many Clergymen once or 
 twice, a man who has ended a life of reckless im- 
 morality by a deliberately self-inflicted death, 
 but whom, nevertheless, the indulgent and not 
 unamiable weakness of those who sat in judgment 
 upon the circumstances of his decease has rescued 
 from the unavailing penalty of his crime by a 
 verdict of temporary derangement. 
 
86 
 
 THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 How, it has been asked, can an honest or reve- 
 rent man thank God in the presence of his people 
 for such a life and for such an end? "What is this 
 but a mockery of devotion, displeasing to God, 
 perhaps injurious to man? 
 
 And two remedies have suggested themselves 
 for a necessity so painfid. 
 
 The one is, to give a Clergyman some discretion 
 as to the use or omission of the strong expressions 
 referred to. Over a parishioner whose faith and 
 love have been beautifully expressed in Ufa and in 
 the closing scene of hfe, he may still give thanks 
 as now, and express the sure and certain hope 
 which his heart approves and ratifies. Over 
 another, the evidences of whose piety have been 
 less conclusive, he may omit the language of 
 certainty; he may express perhaps a hope, but 
 refrain from adding to that hope the dispropor- 
 tionately positive epithets : while in a third case, 
 where not only the hfe has been careless or im- 
 moral, but the very death has taken place under 
 circumstances of clear and notorious guilt, he may 
 refrain altogether from the utterance of one hope- 
 ful or encouraging word, and register by his 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 87 
 
 silence beside the open grave a sentence of con- 
 demnation wliich he anticipates but too surely as 
 vvi'itten in Heaven. 
 
 Doubtless there is something jjlausible in this 
 proposal. But are we indeed prepared to commit 
 to the best of earthly pastors a decision, for our- 
 selves or for our kindred, so awfully responsible? 
 Here and there, it may be, a wise and well-judg- 
 ing man will exercise aright the power entrusted 
 to him. He will allow no differences of opinion, 
 and no ambiguous rumours, to influence him in 
 the selection of those phrases which are to give 
 comfort or anguish to the surrounding mourners. 
 But how shall Ave protect ourselves against the 
 eccentricities of those ministere — and they are not 
 unknown amongst us — who regard the expression 
 of a confident assurance of safety, or even the 
 assertion of a consciousness of Divine election, as 
 necessary conditions of a Cliristian death-bed? 
 How are we to secure ourselves or others from 
 the effect of a morbid scrupulosity or a narrow- 
 minded sectarianism, Avhen once the use or the 
 refusal of certain expressions in the Service for 
 Christian Burial is connected with the opinion of 
 
88 
 
 THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 the officiating priest upon the state and prospect 
 of the departed soul? 
 
 Another proposal has been, to mitigate, for all, 
 the strength of that language in which the con- 
 gregation expresses its thanksgiving for the dead. 
 Let the words sure and certain be omitted. Let 
 some other expressions be moderated and quali- 
 fied. And let the Service thus amended be used 
 indiscriminately over all. 
 
 Thus, in order to make room for the unbeliever 
 or the suicide, the sure word of promise, which 
 has comforted and quickened for so many gene- 
 rations the heart of the mourning Christian, is to 
 be exchanged for something tamer and more 
 general ! Long will it be before such an alteration 
 will cease to shock and to stagger those who re- 
 member the Service in its older and better ver- 
 sion. Long will it be before the ear ceases to 
 expect and to miss the too well-remembered form 
 of sound words, Forasmuch as it hath pleased 
 Almighty God of His great mercy to taice unto 
 Himself the soul of our dear brother here de- 
 parted, ive therefore commit his body to the 
 ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 89 
 
 dust ; in sure and certain hope of the resurrection 
 to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 And what, meanwhile, will have been gained by 
 it? Shall we be better able to utter over the 
 notorious sinner the words of modified hope? 
 Shall we be able, any more than before, to an- 
 ticipate, with ever so faint a peradventure, the 
 entrance into God's kingdom of one of those of 
 whom an Apostle, in the name of his Master, has 
 warned us that they cannot enter it ? Yet by the 
 very fact of the change we shall have made our- 
 selves responsible, in a far different sense from 
 the present, for the literal accuracy of every word 
 that we retain. 
 
 We may feel for the scruples, and admire the 
 courage, of those Clergymen of our Church who 
 have braved obloquy and borne penalties rather 
 than partake in an act which to them was pro- 
 fane: if they so regard it, they have no choice, 
 cruel as we must deem the enforcement of the 
 law in such cases, but to refuse and to suffer : and 
 yet, while we respect their devotion, we cannot 
 applaud their judgment. The true remedy for 
 their difficulty is not to be sought either here or 
 
90 
 
 THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 there ; either in the permission to omit, or in the 
 endeavour to moderate, the terms of Christian 
 hope in which we commit to the ground the body 
 of our departed brother; but in a larger and a 
 truer view of the position of Christ's Visible 
 Church on earth, and of our own duty as its mem- 
 bers. Let us resolutely and fearlessly contemplate 
 aU that is involved in it. There is a great com- 
 munity gathered by Christ's command out of every 
 part of the world, and consolidated by one rite of 
 inauguration, the Sacrament of Christian Baptism. 
 This community is designed to be taken on its 
 profession : each member of it is to pass for what 
 he calls himself : he is to enjoy all the privileges, 
 and incur all the responsibilities, of a Christian : he 
 is not to be met at every turn with the language 
 of suspicion or of mistrust : when he is sick, he 
 is to be ministered to as one of the Christian body : 
 when he dies, he is to be laid in his grave with 
 the words which appertain to the condition of a 
 departed Christian. So long as the Church main- 
 tains this principle, and refrains from arrogating 
 to herself the power of discerning spirits ; so long 
 no harm is done by the recognition of individual 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 .91 
 
 membership, even where it addresses as a partaker 
 of the Christian hope one whose life most plainly 
 forbids it. It is only when the Church steps out 
 of her proper province and ventures to pronounce 
 upon the sincerity or insincerity of her individual 
 members ; it is only when she avows, or acts as 
 if she considered, that the words of Christian 
 charity used to one of the baptized are words 
 not of general but of particular application, stamp- 
 ing as genuine a faith which after all may be a 
 counterfeit; it is then and then only that mis- 
 chief can reslUt from her practice, and the protest 
 must be entered, not against the practice itself, 
 but against an erroneous and perverse inference 
 from it. 
 
 I question indeed whether any omission or mo- 
 dification of particular expressions in the Burial 
 Service to adapt it to the individual character 
 could convey a more awfid lesson than that which 
 is involved in the promiscuous use of the Service 
 as it stands, and the contrast in certain cases be- 
 tween the words employed and the circumstances 
 which contradict them. There is, if I might ven- 
 ture so to express it, a sort of solemn protest in 
 
9^ THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 the hopes and the thanksgivings uttered over the 
 grave of the sinner, which is far more thrilling in 
 its testimony agauist sin and for holiness than any 
 omission or any qualification that the ingenuity of 
 man could have devised. " That is what ought to 
 have been true of him : that is what ought to have 
 been his life and his death : that is what ought 
 to have been prognosticated and anticipated as to 
 his eternal prospect : that is what the Church shall 
 still say of him, for he wore to the last the veil 
 and the form of a behever, and the day of the 
 final disclosure is not yet." And at the same time, 
 perhaps, it is the suspicion, or the more than sus- 
 picion, of every bystander that this man did 
 wear a disguise when he called himself a Chris- 
 tian ; that the hopes of the Gospel were never his ; 
 that his life was not a Christian's life, nor his 
 death a Christian's death. And therefore this is 
 but the consistent close of a long drama ; the last 
 scene of a life, it may be of hypocrisy, it may be 
 of silent negation ; the final exercise of the 
 Church's toleration; the consignment of an un- 
 worthy, a spurious son, to the judgment of One 
 who is greater than we and knoweth aU things. 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 93 
 
 True to her great principle, true to the law of her 
 very existence, the Church judges no man : it is 
 for her to believe, and, where she cannot believe, 
 to hope, all things of all men : to the last, she 
 must refrain from every effort to read the heart, 
 to interpret the life : what a man called himself, 
 that wUl she call him : and if he dies professing 
 himself a Christian, she will utter over his lifeless 
 remains the thanksgiving which so supposes him. 
 
 The subject which has now engaged us is fiUl 
 of serious admonition and of solemn warning. 
 
 We must beware of that natm-al impatience 
 which is ever prompting the enquiry, Wilt Thou 
 then that we go and gather them up ? It is a na- 
 tural enquiry ; because we can scarcely avoid 
 observing the conduct one of another, and judg- 
 ing as we observe. Nay, for certain pui-poses it 
 is not only natural, but necessary, thus to observe 
 and thus to judge. It is not required of us, but 
 forbidden, that we should cultivate indiscriminate 
 friendships, or associate on terms of intimacy with 
 all who call themselves Christians. On this point 
 we have the direction of Revelation itself. / ivrite 
 unto you, St Paul says, not to Tceep company 
 
94 THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 with any man who, being called a brother, a 
 Christian, that is, is a fornicatm; or coi^etous, 
 or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or 
 an extortioner: with such an one no not to eat. 
 This is the rule for our own conduct. For our- 
 selves, we must beware of those evil communica- 
 tions, those associations with evil persons, which 
 may corrupt or lower the holiness of our own 
 lives. But this is yet a different thing from judg- 
 ing another. That office is not ours. To his own 
 Master he standeth or faUeth. Let us rejoice, 
 and not murmur, when we see any indication, 
 in such a man, of adhesion or return to the 
 faith which he professes. Let us regard him as 
 still a brother, though undutiful, erring, or fallen. 
 Let us watch for his good rather than his evil 
 characteristics. Let us consider ourselves, lest we 
 also be tempted. And if we hear of his death, 
 if we stand by his grave, let us still treat him as 
 a child of the covenant, and consign him, if it be 
 but with trembling awe, to the mercies of the 
 Saviour of sinners. 
 
 And for ourselves, how grave a warning does 
 the thought of a Visible Church suggest to us ! 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. 
 
 95 
 
 How does it remind us that there is such a thing 
 as having a name to hve and being all the 
 while dead ! How does it caution us against trust- 
 ing in a position which by its very nature is am- 
 biguous, precarious, temporary ! What is it to us, 
 that we should for a few short years eat and 
 drink in Christ's presence, and hear Him teaching 
 as in our streets ? What is it to have called Him 
 Lord, Lord, or sat before Him to hear His Gk)- 
 spel? This may show us to be members of His 
 Church on earth; but does it give us, of itself, 
 any passport into His Church in heaven? No, 
 there is an Invisible as well as Visible Community ; 
 a Church of the first-bom registered in Heaven, 
 as well as an earthly congregation comprising 
 peoples and nations. Do we belong to both of 
 these, or only to one? 
 
 Finally, the existence of a Catholic Church 
 on earth, and the large toleration which it is re- 
 quired to extend to its members in its estimate of 
 their condition in life and in death, is not only 
 compatible -with, but itself proclaims, the approach 
 of a day of final judgment which is to hegin, as 
 an Apostle has written, at the HoKse of God. 
 
96 
 
 THE BUEIAL SERVICE. 
 
 Under the government of a just God, the present 
 mingled scene cannot be for ever. It cannot be 
 that the evil and the good should be permanently 
 intermixed ; the former as well as the latter going 
 in and out freely in the very sanctuary of God. 
 If the tares and the wheat are allowed thus to 
 grow together, it can be only for a time ; there 
 must be a day of separation coming ; there must 
 be a time of rectification and readjustment which 
 shall correct the unequal issues of our earthly ex- 
 istence. They who would clear the temple of 
 God now of aU things that oflFend, they who 
 would go apart by themselves into an inner shrine 
 of exclusive worship into which no unclean person 
 shall enter, httle know that they are not only 
 attempting an impossibility, they are also endea- 
 vouring to remove from the earth one of the clear- 
 est proofs of a coming judgment ; they are seeking 
 to set the thrones at once for judgment ; they are 
 presuming to seat themselves in the tribimal of 
 the All-wise, and thus to defeat one great portion 
 of the design of His appearing. It is the sight of 
 wide-spread confusion ; the observation of much 
 that defiles within His temple ; the present tola- 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE. i)7 
 
 ration of much false profession ; the benediction 
 pronounced beside the grave of the ungodly ; it 
 is these things which loudly herald the approach 
 of the Refiner and the Purifier ; these, which pre- 
 dict, by necessitating, judgment ; these, which 
 make a man say, in the very bewilderment of a 
 hope long deferred. Verily there must he elsewhere 
 a reward for the righteous: doubtless there is a 
 God who shall hereafter judge the earth/ 
 
 7 
 
DISCOURSE V. 
 
 HOLY ORDERS. 
 
 \ rpHERE are two principal instruments by which 
 the work of Christ is carried on in the world ; 
 His Word, and His Church. The one speaks to 
 the soul of man as a separately accountable being ; 
 addresses him in the name of Him who made 
 
 strength, and of happiness, to enter into living 
 union with the Source and Spring of life. The 
 other, the Church, offers to him whose soul the 
 Word has awakened, the opportunities of ex- 
 ercising that union in acts of special devotion, 
 of receiving instruction in the details of truth 
 and of duty, and all this not as an isolated unit 
 but as the member of a body bound together by 
 common hopes and wants and aids, by unity of 
 relations and identity of interests. 
 
 Besides this office toward s men who al ready 
 believe, ! the Church has a further object regarding 
 
HOLY ORDERS. 
 
 99 
 
 those who do not. It was designed to be, and in 
 so far as it has fulfilled its position it has been, 
 the representation in act of that which the Gospel 
 exhibits in word, the peace, the strength, and 
 the happiness which results from a living union 
 ATith Christ, and through Him with God. Thus it 
 both arrests the attention, and attracts the affec- 
 tions, of men, towards Him from whom alone all 
 its gi-ace flows. 
 
 In some former discourses I have been guiding 
 your thoughts more directly than usual, to this 
 twofold agency of the Church and of the AYord 
 of Christ. Xot wishing to enter uito matters 
 beyond our own province, nor to discuss any of those 
 complicated questions which divide nominal Chris- 
 tians in this coimtry, as elsewhere, into various 
 communities, I have selected some leading illus- 
 trations of the consistency of the teaching of our 
 own Church with reason and Scripture; taking, 
 as a matter of course, those on which misconcep- 
 tions and differences are most likely to arise, and 
 desiring that you should regard these as examples 
 only, and what was said upon them as only an 
 indication of far wider and more convincing proof. 
 
 7—2 
 
100 
 
 HOLY ORDERS. 
 
 I have reserved for latest consideration the all- 
 important question, what can we do, any or all 
 of us, now or hereafter, to assist the Gospel of 
 the grace of God in doing its mighty and bene- 
 ficent work. 
 
 But, when we would answer this question, we 
 must in the first place greatly narrow it, in order 
 to bring it Avithin the scope of a single dis- 
 course. 
 
 We can all of us best help the Gospel, by 
 receiving it into our own hearts, and living as 
 those who have done so. By faith in things 
 unseen, by devotion to Christ, by pureness, by 
 kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, 
 we can all, from our very earliest years, remind 
 those around us of the existence of Christ, and 
 become living witnesses to His truth. 
 
 And without this there is nothing else that 
 we can do for Him. No loudness of profession, 
 no violence of zeal, no eloquence of persuasion, 
 can do anything really for Christ, unless in heart 
 and soul we who speak for Him are first His. 
 
 But to-day my appeal to you must presuppose 
 all this. 
 
HOLT ORDERS. 
 
 101 
 
 I have tried to set before you the beauty and 
 the power of Chi-ist's mission, and to show you 
 that our o\m Church faithfully represents His 
 doctrine. Now I would urge you to consider, 
 every one of you, from the eldest to the young- 
 est, whether there may not be a call to you to 
 take an active, a personal, part in spreading 
 Christ's Gospel through the ministry of Christ's 
 Church. 
 
 I know that there are those amongst you Avho 
 have other calls to which they cannot but listen. 
 Some have positions marked out for them already 
 in life, which it would not become them to refuse 
 or to forsake. And some have professions so 
 clearly indicated to them by their own inclinations 
 or the wishes of their friends, that they are already 
 all but pledged, and cannot well turn aside from 
 the path once chosen. Nor would we ever wil- 
 lingly speak as though we thought that there 
 was no sacred calling but one; that there was 
 indeed any work in life upon which Holiness to 
 the Lord might not be inscribed, or in which a 
 Christian might not render to his Master a true 
 and an acceptable service. Evil would it have 
 
102 
 
 HOLT ORDERS. 
 
 been for our armies if in the late war* there 
 had not been many a Christian soldier to animate 
 and guide the rest: evil would it be for that 
 generation of our country in which there were 
 not many a faithful lawyer, physician, and mer- 
 chant, to be the salt of common life, the witness, 
 amidst business, amidst politics, and amidst plea- 
 sure too, that there is a God above us and a 
 Heaven beyond. 
 
 But all these positions and these professions 
 are sure to be full. They have attractions obvious 
 and tangible ; excitements of ambition, of energy, 
 of wealth, of honour, which appeal loudly to the 
 desire and the will of men. They need no plead- 
 ing for : they oifer and they give their reward. 
 Meanwhile how is it with that other profession, 
 which, alone of all, is not only consistent with 
 Christianity, not only capable of being made to 
 serve it by a resolution and a fidelity rarely to 
 be met with though most precious when found, 
 but is itself the very work of Christ on earth, the 
 very carrying to the lives and hearts of men of 
 the message whereby we must be saved? 
 
 1 This Discourse was delivered in 1856. 
 
HOLY ORDERS. 
 
 103 
 
 This profession, too, has, and ever will have, 
 attractions of its own, similar to those of which 
 Ave have spoken. Men who love ease more than 
 fame will be attracted by a life which offers ease 
 to the self-indulgent and the indolent. "Family 
 livings," as they are but too truly called, the latter 
 half of the name showing by what standard they 
 are measured, and the former by what considera- 
 tions they are too often bestowed, will continue to 
 secure to the Church the services of yoimger and 
 less gifted sons, while the elder enjoy the family 
 estates, and the abler seek distinction in diplo- 
 macy or at the bar. But alas for that Church 
 which has to receive such aid, and to be thankful 
 for it ! Alas too for the base ingratitude, the 
 deep-seated unbelief, of those who thus express 
 their opinion of the Christian ministry, while they 
 hope to be saved through Christ's Gospel ! 
 
 How different would be the estimate of this 
 despised and slighted caUing, if men awoke to a 
 consciousness of the national need, and to confi- 
 dence in the divinely appointed remedy ! 
 
 Who can look around him upon the face of 
 his country, who can read the statistics of crime 
 
104 
 
 HOLT ORDERS. 
 
 or take up the daily newspaper, Avithout feeling 
 in his inmost heart that, if tliere be, as he believes, 
 a balm in Gilead, there is at least no physician to 
 apply it ? What can a handful of men do to stem 
 this tide of conniption ? If the food provided by 
 the creative power of Christ is to feed so vast a 
 multitude, at least there must be hmnan voices to 
 bid the men sit down, and human hands to dis- 
 tribute His miraculous supply. But how can this 
 be done, with a population doubling itself in half 
 a century, and a parochial machinery scarcely 
 augmented at all? Above all, how can this be 
 done, Avhen long neglect on the one hand, and 
 utter inadequacy of instrimients on the other, has 
 spread amongst our people an mdifference which 
 disregards and an infidelity which defies worship ? 
 If in such times the Gospel is to be heard at aU ; 
 if the wiiole case is not to be despaired of, and 
 the living and life-giving Word is not to be 
 replaced by schemes of physical and mental im- 
 provement which may gain in superficial extent 
 what they want in reality and depth ; surely there 
 should be a vast increase in the number of those 
 who undertake the ministry, and the very ablest 
 
HOLY ORDERS. 
 
 105 
 
 and best of men should be those who are ordained 
 to the office. 
 
 Yet what is the case? The same complaint 
 is heard on every side : inferior men must be 
 admitted to the ministry, because the harvest is 
 great and the labourers are few; because the 
 parishes must have ministers, and really qualified 
 ministers are not to be found. 
 
 Again and again has the attempt been made 
 to raise the standard (as it is caUed) of examina- 
 tions for Holy Orders, by rejecting unsparingly 
 all candidates who are found to be, intellectually 
 or in point of character, unfit : and again and yet 
 again the attempt to do so has been frustrated 
 by the necessity of having men and the impos- 
 sibility of finding fit men. Hence a heavy bm-den 
 rests upon the hearts of those who are solemnly 
 charged, as in God's sight, to lay hands suddenly 
 on no man: and while they mourn over the 
 necessity, or vainly struggle against it, the Church 
 suffers, souls perish, and the limits of the Re- 
 deemers kingdom rather narrow than widen. 
 
 It is the remark of those who know well one 
 at least of the two Universities which are the 
 
106 
 
 HOLT ORDERS. 
 
 principal sources of ministerial supply, that the 
 last few years have tended visibly to diminish the 
 interest which was once taken in theological stu- 
 dies, and the amount of religious information 
 possessed by those who there enter and graduate. 
 The Word of God is less and less knoAvn, so far as 
 the intellectual knowledge of it is concerned : as 
 to the other kind of knowledge, who can tell? 
 Yet where the Bible is not thought worth knowing, 
 how can it be hoped that it is thought worth 
 feeling? The man who disdains to study God's 
 Word, can scarcely be supposed to be walking 
 carefully in the light of it. 
 
 And it is a further remark, pointing in the 
 same direction, that it is now some years since, 
 in that University at least— in the other there are 
 certainly some bright exceptions — almost any man 
 of firstrate intellect has devoted himself to the 
 ministry of Christ's Church. Again and again, 
 one after another, those who seemed to be desig- 
 nated to it by every sort of fitness, by blameless- 
 ness of life, by seriousness of spirit, by depth of 
 interest in everything that could inform or elevate 
 the minds of others, it may be even by parental 
 
HOLY ORDERS. 
 
 107 
 
 wislies and by early desires and intentions of their 
 own, have turned aside from that path of highest 
 usefulness, and sought a far less congenial occu- 
 pation in some task of political routine or (at best) 
 of secular education. 
 
 Doubtless those who look below the surface, 
 or whose recollections go back but a few years 
 into the past history of that University, will find 
 for all this some means of explanation, without 
 ascribing it altogether to a fatal decay of interest 
 in Christ's cause on earth. There was a time — 
 and it has left an indelible mark upon the history 
 of our National Church — when theology was there 
 but too much attended to ; when a strain was put 
 upon faith which often snapped it in the effort ; 
 and when (worst of all) some men, desirous of 
 drawing others into their own superstitious exag- 
 gerations, began by shaking altogether the foun- 
 dations of their belief, and then telling them they 
 might as well believe all since they could prove 
 nothing. Every one knows the end of these 
 things : I need not speak of it here. 
 
 Then came a reaction : who can wonder at it ? 
 Faith thus treated became discreditable : men re- 
 
108 
 
 HOLY ORDERS. 
 
 coiled from the consequences, and not unnaturally 
 mistook the cause. 
 
 We can understand it : but where is the com- 
 fort of this? The Church suffers, Avhatever be 
 the explanation: mil it ever recover fi-om it? 
 
 Yes, we will hope it : and we will not hope it 
 only : we will also pray for it, and labour. We will 
 do what we can, you and we in our respective 
 places, to repair the mischief. 
 
 We wiU hold up before you the office of a 
 Christian minister as the noblest calling to which 
 you can devote yourselves. We will tell you that, 
 far above the grandest professional success, far 
 above the wealth of the most eminent lawyer, far 
 above the eloquence of the most powerful orator, 
 far above the highest standing-point of the judge, 
 the general, or the statesman, is his distinction, 
 Avhen it is weighed in the balance of the sanctuary, 
 who has been wise, under God, to win souls. Be- 
 fore the youngest of you, who has not yet thought 
 of his profession, and before the eldest of you, 
 who has all but pledged himself to his, will we 
 place, late or early, this as the highest of all con- 
 ceivable ambitions, this as the du-ectest path to 
 
HOLT ORDERS. 
 
 109 
 
 an immortality of glory, to have borne the hum- 
 blest part in carrjing the everlasting Gospel into 
 the souls of men, in bringing back, if it were but 
 one sinner, into the fold and to the feet of Christ. 
 If there be those amongst you who refuse this 
 calling— and I have already said that there are 
 many, very many, who must do so — let it be, not 
 because it is too mean for you, but too lofty : not 
 because your station is too high for it, nor your 
 means too ample, nor your abilities too command- 
 ing, but because God has not counted you worthy 
 of being employed in this branch of His work, or 
 has at all events by His Providence designated 
 you for another. 
 
 But then, if this ambition is to be realized ; if 
 the life of a Clergyman is to bring to you any- 
 thing of the happiness and the reward of which 
 it is capable ; remember, I beseech you, that it 
 must be chosen for its own sake, and not for that 
 of its comparative leisure, its speedy maintenance, 
 or its possible advancements. In proportion as 
 any such thoughts intrude themselves, the work 
 of your calling Avill be spoiled and vitiated. The 
 success of a lawyer or a physician may be mea- 
 
110 
 
 HOLT ORDERS. 
 
 sured by the extent of his practice or the rapidity 
 of his elevation : the true success of a Clergjinan 
 lies in saving souls. Miserable indeed is his life 
 who looks off from this object to fix his eye upon 
 emolument or preferment : his temptations to do 
 so are the same with those of other men ; but he 
 professes to teach how temptations may be over- 
 come, and what he preaches he must try to prac- 
 tise. When his eye is single, and his whole heart 
 consequently full of light, then will he find himself 
 happy in his work, and in due measure blessed 
 and prospered in it : he serves a faithful JNIaster, 
 Avho will often encourage him here, and certainly 
 own him hereafter. ^Vlien his eye is evil ; when 
 the light that should be in him is darkness, be- 
 cause he has forgotten his vocation and turned 
 aside to other objects ; then ivill there be a sense 
 of want in his soul ; he will probably miss his 
 earthly objects, and certainly forfeit the heavenly. 
 
 If the office of a Christian minister is ever to 
 be honoured as it ought to be, it wiU be by the 
 young men of the higher classes amongst us form- 
 ing a right estimate, early, of its greatness and its 
 holiness. You might remove, to an unlimited ex- 
 
HOLY ORDERS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 tent, the evil of which I have spoken. By learning 
 thus early, some of you to covet, and all to re- 
 verence, the ministerial office, you may affect, far 
 more widely than you now imagine, the general 
 appreciation of it in the class to which you belong. 
 This is what is wanted : not that all of you should 
 become Clergymen, but that all should feel what 
 that office is ; that those who choose it should 
 do so with a right mind, and that those who do 
 not choose it should enter upon other callings as 
 if they were sacred too. 
 
 It is from a place like this, if from any quai-ter, 
 that the ranks of the Christian ministry might 
 best be replenished. The Church of England, so 
 far as its humbler ministers are concerned, is a 
 poor Church : the wealth it has is unequally dis- 
 tributed, and all its resources, if equally divided, 
 woiUd go but a little way towards meeting the 
 demand made upon it by the poverty and the 
 ignorance and the suffei'ing which surround it. 
 Many of you coidd afford to serve Christ in the 
 ministry, and receive nothing or next to nothing 
 from it : that poverty which too often makes the 
 office despised, should in your case make you 
 
112 
 
 HOLY ORDERS. 
 
 seek it: yours might be the peculiar happiness 
 of preaching the Gospel of Christ freely, of giving 
 rather than receiving, of going forth, like your 
 Master Himself, not to be ministered unto but to 
 minister. 
 
 But far more than this : the Church needs 
 all the power and all the influence with which 
 the highest education can invest its ministers. 
 These are not the days — have there indeed ever 
 been any days? when an ignorant, ill-educated, 
 unenlightened ministry can do the work of Christ 
 usefully. Knowledge is abroad : all can criticize, 
 many can judge justly : Avhat can be so disgraceful, 
 what so insulting, as to have every department 
 of literature interesting, and sermons dull ? ^Miat 
 so hopeless as to persuade a man that you can 
 guide him to Heaven when you know not your own 
 way about earth ? Alas ! that the Gospel is de- 
 spised is too often the fault of those who pre- 
 sume to speak upon it to educated men, them- 
 selves being uneducated ; who reckon upon in- 
 fluencing souls by the tame repetition of a few 
 formal doctrines, and charge their own inefficiency 
 to the hardheartedness of their hearers. 
 
HOLY ORDERS. 
 
 118 
 
 No, he who would be a Clergyman in these 
 days need never fear lest he be too much 
 educated for his office. Depend upon it, it is not 
 education which makes men preach above their 
 congregations, nor is it want of ability which makes 
 a preacher simple. The more deep a man's know- 
 ledge, the more clear, generally, will it be : the 
 more largely he is acquainted with men and 
 things, yes and with books also, the better able 
 will he be to appreciate varieties of attainment 
 in others, and to adapt himself to the condition 
 of those whom he would guide. 
 
 And, therefore, he of you who would hereafter 
 enter this highest and most desirable profession, 
 must be diligent fi-om early years ; after His ex- 
 ample, who, when He was yet but twelve years old, 
 was found in the temple, gathering such instruction 
 as He could receive from human and very faulty 
 teachers. 
 
 But there is a necessity beyond this, yet deeper, 
 yet higher. It is written that every high-priest — 
 and the same might be written also of every 
 Clei-gyman— must be able to have compassion on 
 the ignorant and on them that are out of the way, 
 
 8 
 
114 HOLT ORDERS. 
 
 inasmuch as lie himself also is compassed with 
 infirmity. With infirmity, and with the sense of 
 it; but not with that to which infirmity some- 
 times leads. Tempted in all points like as we 
 are, it was said of Christ, yet without sin. And 
 though no one else can be without sin, still this 
 should be the aim, from the first, of every one, 
 more especially, who designs himself for the 
 ministerial office. To have yielded to sin — still 
 more, to have lived in sin — is no qualification, 
 but the contrary, for sympathy with the sinful. 
 To know well our own weakness, our own sinful 
 tendencies, yes our own deep sinfulness, is one 
 thing : this he must have who would ever minister 
 to souls. But ^:>?<rc in heart he must also be ; or 
 he will not faithfully represent his Master's spirit. 
 And therefore from the earliest days he must 
 desire and he must practise this grace. He must 
 look upon himself, while yet a boy or a young 
 man, as devoted and dedicated to a heavenly call- 
 ing ; that, when he stands hereafter ministering in 
 God's House, no unhallowed thoughts may intrude 
 themselves upon his devotion ; when he has to 
 ofier hereafter counsel to the sinful or comfort to 
 
HOLT ORDERS. 
 
 115 
 
 the penitent, no consciousness of similar trans- 
 gression may either enfeeble his utterance, or turn 
 his sympathy with the sinner into a sympathy 
 with the sin. 
 
 The harvest truly is plenteous, hut the lor 
 bourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of 
 tJie harvest, that He will send forth labourers into 
 His harvest. 
 
 Yes, the harvest is Christ's own, and He alone 
 can supply it with the labourers who are fit to 
 reap it. 
 
 The harvest is plenteous ; neyer surely more 
 so than now. See how suffering the world is ; 
 how bold the language of the scoffer ; how feeble, 
 at best how few, the faithful among the faithless. 
 Yet see too how men want the Gospel ; how their 
 souls are crying out for it ; how they are all busy 
 in finding for themselves just that which Christ 
 has sent to them, could they but receive it 
 Whatever their case is, whatever their want, what- 
 ever their disquietude, the remedy lies there, could 
 they but take it. But wise men are wanted, and 
 good men, men candid and charitable and pity- 
 ing and earnest, fit men and many of them, to 
 
IIG HOLY ORDERS. 
 
 carry the remedy about, and to apply it skilfully. 
 And here are we, with the world all before us 
 to choose our station in it almost where we will, 
 with education and health and influence, with 
 soaring ambition many of us, with kind hearts, 
 and desires perhajis to be useful, and wishes too 
 to save our souls : and yet we had rather set 
 ourselves to gather perishable money, or to make 
 a figure in this short-lived world, than earn a 
 share in the fulfilment of that glorious promise. 
 They that he wise shall shine as the brightness 
 of the firmament, and they that turn many to 
 righteousness as tlie stars for ever and ever. 
 
 Pray then to the Lord of the harvest that He 
 will move hearts, here and there, by His Spirit, 
 to desire His special work. Far above all the 
 renown that has attended or may hereafter attend 
 this School, as the nurse of scholars or soldiers, 
 of poets or statesmen, would be that of having 
 furnished a goodly band of labourers to reap that 
 Avide-spread field which is white already for har- 
 vest. And let the rest, who cannot reap, look on, 
 not as unconcerned, but as deeply interested specta- 
 tors. Let them at least give what they can, and 
 
HOLY ORDERS. 
 
 117 
 
 give it early ; their esteem, their respect, their 
 prayers, their sympathy. If all cannot be Christ's 
 ministers, all can be Christ's servants. And all 
 who serve Him shall hereafter see Him. They 
 too shall be owned as His, in the day when the 
 Angel shall come out of the temple, and shall 
 cry with a loud voice to Him that sitteth upon 
 the cloud. Thrust in Thy sicMe, and reap: for 
 the time is come for Thee to reap : for the harvest 
 of the earth is ripe. 
 
 THE END. 
 
CEambriige : 
 
 PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY. M.A. 
 
 AT THE UNIVEESITT PRESS. 
 
By the same Author. 
 
 THE GREEK TEXT, WITH ENGLISH NOTES. 
 
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 ^ppljang, ftitt anir faster: 
 
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18 
 
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 Introduction to the Study and Use of the Psalms. 
 
 By the Rev. J. F. Thrupp, Author of "An Investigation into 
 the Tuivogiaphy, &c. of Ancient Jerusalem," &c. 2 vols. 8vo. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Rays of Sunlight for Dark Days: A Book of Selections 
 for the Suffering. Royal 32mo. elegantly printed. 
 
 V. 
 
 An Elementary Treatise on Quaternions. With numerous 
 
 Exam|)ies. By P.G. Tait, M.A., Professor of Katural Philosophy 
 in the University of Edinburgh. 
 
 YI. 
 
 A Treatise on the Dynamics of a Rigid Body. By 
 
 E. J. RouTH, M A., and C. A. SiiiTH,B.A., Fellows of St. Peter's 
 
 College, Ca.i.bridge. 
 
 VII. 
 
 A Treatise on Geometry of Three Dimensions. By 
 
 Percival Frost, M.A., St. John's College, aud Joseph Wolsten- 
 HOLME, M.A., Christ's College, Cambridge. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 An Elementary Treatise on Statics. By George Rawlls- 
 
 soN, M.A., late Professor of Natural Philosophy in Elphinstone 
 Instil ui ion, Bombay, formerly of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. 
 
 IX. 
 
 A Treatise on Trilinear Co-ordinates. By N. M. Ferbees, 
 
 M.A., Fellow and Mathematical Lecturer of Gonrille and Caius 
 College. 
 
 R. CLAY, PKINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.