It is not my intention upon this occasion to enter upon a minute investigation of those points of controversy which have recently been, and at present are, the subject of so much and general discussion. The limit to which I must confine my present Discourse precludes my doing so; nor do I consider the inability I am thus under of serious moment. I am not, however, intending to say, that in this variance of opinion, there is nothing of importance. If we were assembled in Convocation, empowered to make further reforms in our Church, or to discuss the need of them, our opinions with respect to the value of tradition, as a supplementary explication of Scripture, would be important in the extreme; so would be our opinions concerning the efficacy of the Sacraments, and the relative value of primitive ceremonies, if we were reconstructing our Baptismal and Liturgical offices: nor of less importance would be our opinions on the Apostolical Succession, if the decision were to rest with us whether the Church should recognise the ministerial functions of men not episcopally ordained. But, happily for us, these questions have been decided for us by the Church; and to the decision of the Church, by the very fact of our being her ordained ministers, we are bound unanimously to obey, and must receive her decisions as our common principle: this, I presume, none of you, my Reverend Brethren, will attempt to gainsay. I may be allowed, however, briefly to remark upon one or two of the most prominent topics of dispute; and first, then, as to the Apostolical Succession. Upon this subject, it is indisputable, there was no controversy up to the period of the Reformation. It was then, as it had been for fifteen hundred years, taken for granted that no man might presume to minister in sacred things, unless he were first appointed to the office by persons having authority to make the appointment, by their regular succession from the Apostles. Upon this point no one is more eloquent or more decided than our reforming Archbishop, Dr. Cranmer. [21] Accordingly, when in the reign of Elizabeth, the thirty-nine Articles were agreed upon in a Convocation of our Clergy, this doctrine was assumed:—“It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of public preaching or administering the Sacraments in the congregation, before he be lawfully called, and sent to execute the same. And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work, by men who have public authority given unto them IN”—not BY, but “IN”—“the congregation, to call and send ministers into the Lord’s vineyard.” [22a] And accordingly, in legislating on this subject, the Church of England ordains that, “no one shall be accounted and taken to be a lawful Bishop, Priest, or Deacon among us; or be suffered to execute any of the ministerial functions, except he be called, tried, examined, and admitted thereunto, according to our form of Episcopal Ordination; or hath had formerly Episcopal Consecration or Ordination.” [22b] Now I conceive, a more complete answer to the question—“Who are they that have authority in the congregation?” could not be given by a Church which, as we believe and declare, reverences Scripture and the ancient authors. And hence it is that, while a Minister of the Roman Church officiates among us, upon a recantation and renunciation of his errors, without further ordination; a converted Dissenting Minister is unable to do so; the one having had—and the other not having had—Episcopal Ordination. The time will not allow me to enter into that part of the discussion, whether an exact personal succession of Episcopally ordained Ministers, can, or cannot be proved. Suffice it however for us, that we are incontestibly assured, that the Institution itself has descended by an evident succession, even from the Apostles to ourselves. While men uncalled and uncommissioned venture to approach and minister at the altar—while our Apostolical descent is gainsayed, and the necessity of rightful ordination set at nought—it is bounden on us, my Reverend Brethren, who are Episcopally ordained, to show that we bear no visionary dignity—no barren privilege—but a most sacred office, full of divinely-appointed power to strengthen and to sanctify those that in faith discharge it. Let us show, by God’s help, in our lives and labours that, in the Apostolical Ministry, there resides a living influence, stamping it as the ordinance of Christ, and conforming His servants to Himself. If others must account for assuming a commission never given to them, we must account if we abuse and neglect that we have received; and ours will be the heavier reckoning. Let us then consider one another, within and without, to provoke unto love and to good works. Here is rivalry without collision—contention without strife. And God grant that a more abundant measure of a holier spirit, and a closer conformity to our Master’s pattern, impressed as a countersign upon our testimony, may henceforth and ever bear witness unto us, that if any are Christ’s, so are we Christ’s.

And now with regard to the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. I am really at a loss to conceive how any Member of the Established Religion, who candidly and without mental reservation subscribes to the Articles of our Church, can entertain any doubt upon it; and more particularly when the Offices for Baptism and Confirmation are so clearly, so absolutely, and so decidedly worded. That Regeneration at Baptism is the positive doctrine of the English Church, I cannot suppose will be denied. All those of our present bishops, who have alluded to it in their Charges, have distinctly declared and admitted this to be the case, as laid down in the twenty-seventh Article. Now the Regius-Professor of Divinity at Oxford (himself an opposer of the Authors of the Tracts for the Times), thus speaks:—“No subscription to the Articles can be honest and true, which falls short of an assent to the Doctrines contained in them, or which is made with any reservation. They are expressly set forth for the avoiding of diversities of opinions, and establishing true consent in religion.” At your ordination “The Articles are proposed to you, as giving the right sense of Scripture; and you are supposed, when you subscribe to them, to have accepted them as such. No qualification, therefore, no restriction is to be admitted, in the act of subscription to the Articles, however drawn from pious considerations of what is due to Scripture. They must then be interpreted by themselves, by the phraseology of the Church, and a knowledge of its intention in drawing them up, and proposing them to its members.” [24] It is clear then, my Reverend Brethren, as long as we continue in the ministry of the Established Church, we have no liberty of interpreting the Doctrines of that Church, in any other way than those Articles decide, to which we have solemnly subscribed. If we do so, we can with no honesty or consistency continue ourselves recipients of her honours and emoluments.

As to the efficacy of the rite of Baptism in infants, what need we, again, stronger or more satisfactory proof of the doctrine of our Church than these words of our Office which we are directed to use? “Seeing now, that this child IS REGENERATE and grafted into the body of Christ’s Church;” and again, “we yield thanks to God, that it HATH pleased Him to REGENERATE the infant with His Holy Spirit.”—It is a futile evasion to say, these words are used upon the faith of the Sponsors, and in the charitable spirit of anticipation by the Congregation, that the Infant may be hereafter regenerated;—for the very same prayer is enjoined to be offered up after Private Baptism, where there are no Sponsors and no Congregation.

But why are not the opposers of this positive doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration consistent?—In other cases, when arguing against those who are anxious to preserve the discipline of the Church, they insist upon “a literal and grammatical explanation;”—but here, the doctrine of the Article and Office not according with their sentiments, they are solicitous to evade this rule. In Dr. Cardwell’s History of Conferences connected with the revision of the Book of Common Prayer, it is stated that, at that of the Savoy in 1661, when it was suggested by the opposers of Regeneration at Infant Baptism, that the wording of the Office should be altered to signify that Regeneration might hereafter ensue;—it was decided by the Commission, composed of the Bishops and other learned Divines, that such alteration could not be sanctioned; that “the denial” of Regeneration at Infant Baptism “tends to anabaptism and contempt of the Holy Sacrament;” and therefore, that the Office, as it now stands, was strictly in accordance with the Holy Institution, and consequently the true doctrine of the Reformed Church. [26a]

I must here, however, limit my observations on controversial points of doctrine. Suffice it to say, as I have before remarked, that in all matters of doubt, we cannot do better than fulfil the vows we have made, and be guided by the plain and literal directions of the Articles and Rubrics of our Church, rather than trust to our own fanciful and fallible interpretations. No safer guide, my Reverend Brethren, can we follow;—for if she is at once the descendant of the purest, truest representative of the Church Apostolical—if the Articles of her faith be all of them proveable to demonstration, from the word of God, as the primitive times interpreted it—and if she has only done her duty to God and man, by refusing either to add to this sacred deposit, or to diminish aught from it—if she has rejected nothing of the forms of preceding ages, but their superstition, or, of their creed, but its novelties; and emancipating herself from a fictitious antiquity, has taken her stand at once on the times of our Saviour and His Apostles—if, in refusing to lord it over Christ’s heritage, she only leaves us “the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free,” [26b] after teaching us how to use it—if, in discarding earthly mediators and the protection of angels, she brings us directly to our King and Saviour, to the over-shadowing wings of Him who loved us, and the strength of the living God—if, in the majestic austerity off her formularies, she chastises the imagination and the attractiveness of will-worship, only to offer up the sacrifice of ourselves, our souls and bodies, in words which are the perfection of a reason elevated by faith, and modelled upon inspiration—if she refuses to limit the Saviour’s offices, or modify the Gospel message, because she dares not rationalize upon the ways of God, or tamper with her commission—if she discards the pomp and trappings of an external ceremonial, that she may not obscure the simplicity of the truth, and that she may be clothed in the Church’s true glory, the righteousness of Christ;—if such be the Church of England, as our fathers and fathers’ fathers have held her to be; and such, as while Scripture remains in its integrity, and sole authority over faith, nay, as long as the primitive fathers remain to interpret it, she can prove herself to be against all gainsayers; great will be the sin upon our heads if we refuse obedience to her as our guide, and great the crime towards those who come after us, of whose inheritance we are the guardians, if we permit so much as one stone of our holy house to be moved—if we suffer the efficacy of her Sacraments to be neutralized by modern scepticism—her offices to be mutilated by doubting priests and self-elected interpreters—and the beauty of her Unity to be marred by the Latitudinarian spirit of concession and expediency.

There is one practice which has so unhappily, in my humble opinion, obtained extensive usage as to render a notice of it, I conceive, very important; but that I might not be deemed presumptuous or illiberal in doing so, I will lay it before you in the very words of the present Bishop of St. David’s, as they occur in his last Charge, merely prefacing them by saying, I am confident the practice they condemn is a fruitful source of promoting disunion in the Church; and though it emanates, I am willing to acknowledge, from zeal in the cause of religion, it is a zeal without discretion, palatable, indeed, to Separatists, and consequently productive of schism. These are Dr. Thirlwall’s words:—“There are, I fear, not a few cases in which a lecture in a school-room, or some other common building, is substituted for the Church service, while the Church remains closed. Such a practice appears to me equivalent to an admission that our form of prayer is really a bar, not a help, to devotion, and may be advantageously superseded by the minister’s occasional effusions. I cannot distinguish such meetings from conventicles; the presence and presidency of the Clergyman only renders the implied admission more glaring and pernicious. It is a breach of faith to the Church, as well as a violation of an express engagement. The same remark applies to every departure from the Rubric, grounded on no other motive than deference to the taste and prejudices of a part of the congregation.” [28] Now I will not weaken the force of these powerful and sensible remarks of Dr. Thirlwall, by any further comment of my own on this point.

So much has been said lately of the necessity of our carrying out all the Rubric and Services of our Book of Common Prayer, that I must be allowed to make a brief allusion to it. No doubt, it is very desirable that we should do so; but I conceive, the lengthened omission of many of the injunctions of our Church, which has been suffered tacitly to take place, now renders their restoration exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. I am sure it would indeed be futile, and nearly impracticable, in most of our rural parishes, many with a widely-scattered population, consisting of the humblest rank of agricultural labourers. For instance, it is enjoined in our Rubric, that we should have daily service; and this, in towns and populous places, is highly proper, and ought, without doubt, to be carried into practice; but with many of us, whose flocks depend on the fullest measure of daily labour they are able to perform for their daily bread, it is not possible or reasonable to expect them to sacrifice their existence, and that of their families, to attend daily service in a Church, and that Church often remote from their place of employment. To such a case as this, the maxim of “Necessitas non habet legem” is manifestly applicable. But, my Reverend Brethren, do not let us shelter our laxity of ministration under one tangible and reasonable excuse: if we are unable to do all we are enjoined, let us at least show our zeal and sincerity in our holy calling, by doing what is in our power. I do maintain, then, that we ought to celebrate divine service in our Churches, upon each of the days on which we commemorate the leading events of the history of our Blessed Lord; not only His Nativity, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, but His Circumcision, His Manifestation to the Gentiles, and His glorious Ascension. I think, too, it is especially incumbent on us to pay a stricter regard to the solemn season of Lent than is generally done; that we should open our Churches for divine service on Ash Wednesday, and every Wednesday and Friday during that penitential Fast, which our Church most piously and reverently sets apart for self-examination and humiliation. I am quite confident it is not only practicable to obtain congregations on those days, but that the opportunity offered to our people of publicly worshipping God upon them, will be hailed with gratification and thankfulness; not, perhaps, generally at first, but yet progressively and encouragingly. I can instance one parish, not very remote from our own neighbourhood, where this has been essayed during the season of Lent now just concluded; a small and purely rural parish, and one offering, perhaps, as few features of encouragement to re-establish such a practice as any of us could name: the average congregations on the week days (exclusive of children) has been thirty-five, which, for the first renewal of the practice, I think will be allowed is a very satisfactory result; besides which, during and since the Lent weeks, the Sabbath-day congregations have manifestly and remarkably increased. Whatever may be said of the apathetic religious spirit of the people, I hold them to be, at heart, inclined to sacred things, and sincerely attached to the established reformed religion of this country. Let not us, my Reverend Brethren, be wanting in the zealous, earnest, and uniform practice of our duty, by carelessly and heartlessly offering to our flocks that divine spiritual food we have it in our power, under God, to supply, and we shall not find them backward or lukewarm in accepting its nourishment, and appreciating its value. We shall, in this way, more effectually subdue that monstrous hydra, Schism, which has reared its hundred-fold head amongst the heritage of Christ, than by wielding acrimonious weapons of controversy, or descending to heterodoxical concession and subserviency. As ministers of religion, it is our paramount duty to lose no practicable opportunity of impressing the vitality of its exercise upon those committed to our spiritual charge—of banishing all discord one with another—of evincing (not in theory only) that we are ministers of divine love and peace, so that it may be evident to all the world, in our conduct and bearing, that we live together in christian harmony and good-will.

Finally, my Reverend Brethren, in calling upon you to preserve inviolate the bond of Union which should firmly knit us together, who are the consecrated lawful Ministers and Stewards of the mysteries of Jesus Christ—let us bear in mind what awful responsibility rests upon us.—What is that exalted station we here occupy. And whom amongst us shall not these reflections constrain? To be the Lord’s especial portion—a remnant quickened from the dead—raised to a middle space between the throne of our exalted Master, and the spirits of a world redeemed; to be the visible representatives of an invisible Saviour, associated with Him in the administration of His earthly kingdom; concluding eternal peace, or denouncing eternal war, a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death;—doomed ourselves to an eternity of woe that cannot be deepened, or of glory that cannot be exalted;—Who shall minister before Him and not tremble? Who shall draw nigh to Him and not rejoice? Who can forecast our condemnation without despair, or contemplate our blessedness without an ecstacy?

Which of us that be worldly, heedless, unprofitable, shall endure His withering scrutiny, when He shall be revealed from heaven with fire?—or in the sunshine of His final acceptance, remember our toil and labour? Who shall bear in mind the contradiction and the cross, when the dead shall ascend up out of the depths of the sea, spread over the plains, and stand upon the mountains; when we and our people shall meet in the day of that mighty gathering; when the judgment shall be set—condemnation utter its thunders—and its voice die away in the tranquil peace of Heaven; and the New Jerusalem—the foundation and corner-stones whereof, with Him we are—shall be for ever with the inconceivable glories of Almighty God.

THE END.