as daily experience proves, that visionary enthusiasm and blasphemous nonsense, which so strongly characterized the ministry of WHITFIELD and of WESLEY, and terminated in a lamentable separation from our Church, rather than to advance that sober, rational, and consistent Christianity, which it was the object of our Reformers to pro

mote.

On this head however some difference of opinion may be maintained.

But there is a part of this subject, on which, it is presumed, no difference of opinion, among honest men, can subsist; a part which is most necessary to be taken into consideration by the Divines in question, because it ap pears immediately to concern them. The Church of England, it is well known, does not require any person to sacrifice his private opinion to her rule of faith. Those who think differently from her, on religious points, are, in this land of toleration, at full liberty to connect themselves with any sect of Christians, whose opinions may be in unison with their own. But what the Church of England requires, and what, as an ecclesiastical society, she has a right to require, is that every one admitted into her ministry, should fulfill the engagement into which he entered, as preparatory to such admission; and consequently consider himself committed by the doctrine, which she has authoritatively delivered. On no other principle, I conceive, can an established form of doctrine, be preserved in any Church. The consideration then, in this case, is not, whether the Scripture has been misunderstood on the subject in question, and the early Fathers of the Church, together with our own Reformers, have been in error upon it; and whether the Divines, who think proper to dissent from them, are qualified to improve on that form of doctrine, which, on such venerable authority, D d

has

has been established in this country; but the simple and only cousideration with Divines who have solemnly subscribed to such establishment, is, or ought to be, quid dixit ecclesia. For it must be remembered, that each of the Divines, to whom I am now referring, received a testimonium from three clergymen as a security to the Bishop for his admission into the ministry of the Church of England; whilst in addition to this testimony from others, the party himself, at the time of his ordination, solemnly declared his assent and consent to the doctrines of that Church, to the ministry of which he was about to be admitted. In this case, therefore, it is not to be expected, that the doctrines of the Church should be made conformable to the opinions of individual ministers; but that the opinions of the ministers collectively, should be in strict conformity with the essential doctrines of that Church, into whose ministry they have voluntarily entered. Should the consciences of any individual ministers not admit of such conformity, though I take not upon me to draw a conclusion for others, I certainly am at liberty to draw one for myself; and it is this; that were I at any time to find my opinions on religious subjects of importance, so essentially changed, that my conscience would no longer permit me to preach the doctrines which I had solemnly professed to maintain, I should see no other way, I conceive, of preserving my character as an honest man, but that of relinquishing an official situation in a Church, of which, under such circumstances, I could not continue to be a faithful minister.

DISCOURSE XII.

2 TIM. 111. 17.

That the Man of God may be perfect; thoroughly furnished unto all good Works.

IN pursuance of the object proposed on a former occasion, that of directing your attention to the plan laid down by the Church for the spiritual edification of he members, baptism was represented in my last Discourse, as the commencement of man's spiritual life; it being that Sacra ment which divine wisdom appointed to be the means of translating the baptized party out of his natural state, into a state of grace and acceptance under the Gospel Covenant, with a view to that perfect renewal of his fallen nature, necessary to D d 2 qualify

qualify him for admission into an heavenly society.

The correspondence which this plan of salvation bore to that compendiously described by St. Paul to Titus, was at the same time pointed out to notice. "Ac"cording to his mercy he saved us, by "the washing of regeneration, and re

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newing of the Holy Ghost, which he "shed on us abundantly, through Jesus "Christ our Saviour. That being justi"fied or saved by his grace, (in baptism)

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"

we should be made heirs, according to "the hope of eternal life." This lively hope, (as St. Peter calls it) into which we are begotten of God in baptism, was then represented as certain to be realized to all, in whom that " renewing of the Holy "Ghost," to which baptism was designed. to lead, had actually taken place. In this view of the subject, the renovation of man's fallen nature, by the subsequent operations of the Holy Spirit, becomes, in the economy of the evangelical system, the necessary consequence of his original regeneration by baptism; that is, it is that link in the cham necessary to preservé

the

the connection between the successive parts of the divine plan of redemption, in order to its final completion in glory.

Hence the words of the text were made applicable to that advanced degree of holiness, at which it was intended that the Christian disciple should arrive, as preparatory to his removal into a still more spiritual state.

In conformity with this idea, the design of his admission into the Church was represented to be this; that from a covenant state of grace and acceptance with God, in which, by that holy Sacrament, the baptized party is originally placed, he might, by the continued renewal of the Holy Ghost, of which the Sacrament in question is to him the divine pledge and assurance, be enabled to proceed to that fullness of stature in Jesus Christ, or to that completion of Christian character, which might entitle him to the distinction in the text, of "the perfect man of "God, thoroughly furnished unto all good "works."

The plan of salvation, under the Gospel, proceeds on the ground of man's fall in Adam,