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minister (says St. Paul) according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me." The Apostle (Bishop Andrews observes) is here speaking of his office, and nothing else. The Apostleship was a grace, yet no saving grace, else should Judas have been saved. Clearly, then, it is the grace of their calling whereby they were sacred, and made persons public, and their acts authentical, and they enabled to do something about the remission of sins that is not (of like avail) done by others, though perhaps more learned and virtuous than they, in that they have not the like commission. To speak with the least, as the act of one that is a public notary is of more validity than of another that is none; though (it may be) he writes a much fairer hand. This grace of a holy calling to the ministry of the Gospel was conferred on the Apostles by Christ, has been derived from them to us, and from us to others, to the world's end.”+

If, then, a commission was granted to particular persons for an especial purpose, and a blessing promised to the actual discharge of it; that blessing must be understood to be co-extensive only with the due discharge of the commission for which it was granted; unless it can be proved, that in consequence of some new revelation from heaven, the nature of that commission has been changed, or such circumstances have taken place, as will justify man in making an alteration in the Divine plan.

But the visible Church of Christ, which has

* Eph. iii. 7.

Bishop Andrews's Sermon on John xx. 22.

continued under the same episcopal form of government from the beginning, knows that there has been no new revelation, and that no circumstances have taken place to justify any alteration in this case; so far from it, that every alteration in the government of the Church has been considered to be an unwarrantable deviation from the original establishment of it; a deviation not likely to be attended with eventual success, unless it can be supposed that God (to whom all things are present) did not know the plan best calculated for the establishment of his Church.

Upon these grounds, therefore, it is concluded that the blessing originally promised to the regular discharge of the evangelic ministry, is confined to that discharge of it, because we have no warrant from scripture to authorise a contrary conclusion: and it is in conformity with this idea, which has prevailed in the Church from the days of the Apos tles down to the present times—namely, that it is the commission which secures the Divine confir mation of the ministerial act—that the sacraments in the Church have been considered as the only sacraments that are duly administered. It is in conformity with this idea that St. Ignatius says, "Let that sacrament be deemed effectual and firm which is administered by the bishop, or by him to whom the bishop has committed it.” And it was a similar idea, it should seem, that your favourite, Bishop Reynolds, had before him when he said, "There are excellent works, which being done without the calling of God, do not edify, but disturb * Vide Guide, p. 42.

the body. The way for the Church to prosper and flourish is, for every member to keep in his own rank and order, to remember his own measure, to act in his own sphere, to manage his particular condition and relations with spiritual wisdom and humility; the eye to do the work of an eye, the hand of a hand."*

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It has been from an unwillingness to give offence to those brethren who have departed from the Church, that less has been said on this subject, of late years in particular, than ought to have been said by the clergy upon it. The consequence of which has been, that a general want of discrimination has prevailed among Christians; few having a clear idea in their minds, of the characteristic difference between the Church and the meeting-house; between the sacraments administered in the former, and those administered in the latter; a circumstance for which I fear the clergy of the Church will be answerable, because it is a circumstance which has tended, perhaps more than any other, to to the growth of that indifference amongst uninformed Christians, with respect to the place of public worship which they frequent: and I wish it may not be from the judgment of the Head of the Church upon the clergy of it, for their great inattention to this important subject, that the knowledge of it is suffered to fall into that state of almost general decline, which portends ruin to that establishment which they are professionally bound to support.

It is, I am sorry to say, from that general igno * Vide Guide, p. 60.

rance about Church matters which now prevails even among members of the Church, that every minister who attempts to talk, preach, or write on these subjects as he ought, is deemed guilty of a breach of charity. What you say of me, on the page you have quoted from my book, in page 201, that "I deal out damnation by wholesale," only proves to me, that you can be little read in subjects of this kind; for otherwise you must have found yourself under the necessity of making the same memorandum which you have made in the margin of my book, in the margin of St. Ignatius', and St. Clement's, and St. Cyprian's writings; in short, on those of all the primitive fathers of the Church. Nay, I know not how St. Jude himself could escape your censure, when, speaking of those who in his days were perishing in the gainsaying of Core, he says, "these be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the spirit.”* The same idea is also to be found in St. Paul, where he says, that those "who cause divisions (in the Church) serve not our Lord Jesus." Those who separate from the communion of the Apostolic Church are condemned by St. Jude, as not having the spirit; and without the spirit of Christ, (the Apostle tells us) we are none of his.‡

But there is no need of taking you so far back in the history of the Christian Church, for conviction as to this point. I need only refer you to those excellent discourses, published by eminent divines of the Church of England, under the title of "London Cases," with a view of bringing back Rom. xvi. 17, 18. Rom. viii. 9.

* Jude v. 19.

nance.

visible Church is where the sacraments be duly (or rightly) ministered, according to Christ's ordie." But the canons above appealed to, give us to understand, that the Church of England is the only visible Church in this country: and that no meetings, congregations, or assemblies of Christians, separated from the Church of England, may rightly challenge to themselves the name of true and lawful Churches. It follows, then, from the comparison thus made between the Articles and Canons, the authority of both which you admit, that in the Church of England only, the sacraments are duly administered; and that it is only by a partaking of the sacrament of baptism, thus rightly administered, that the Christian becomes " into the Church."

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Should the foregoing premises have been fairly drawn, (and I am not conscious to myself that they are otherwise) the quotation from my book, which has given rise to this disquisition, must still stand its ground. The doctrine contained in it is the doctrine of the Church of England, and has been the uniform doctrine of the visible Church of Christ, from the days of its first establishment. According to this doctrine, the ambassadors of Christ are those only who have received their com mission from him through the regular channel which has been appointed to convey it; and according to the idea and language of St. Ignatius, those sacraments only are firm and effectual, which are administered by those ambassadors.

Such is the language which every minister of the Church, who has made himself properly acquainted

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