bring your preaching into contempt, and make your sermons and person the subjects of sport and merriment.

7. Dissemble not the truths of

God in any case, nor comply with the lusts of men, nor give any countenance to sin by word or deed.

8. But, above all, you must never forget to order your own conversation as becomes the gospel; that so you may teach by example, as well as precept, and that you may appear a good divine everywhere, as well as in the pulpit; for a minister's life and conversation is more heeded than his doctrine.

9. Yet, after all this, take heed that you be not puffed up with spiritual pride of your own virtues, nor with a vain conceit of your parts and abilities; nor yet be transported with the applause of men, nor be dejected or discouraged by the scoffs or frowns of the wicked or profane.'

'He would also,' adds Dr. Parr, exhort those who were already engaged in this holy function, and advise them how they might well discharge their duty in the church of God answerably to their calling, to this effect: You are engaged in an excellent employment in the church, and intrusted with weighty matters as stewards of our Great Master, Christ the great Bishop. Under him, and by his commission, you are to endeavour to reconcile men to God; to convert sinners, and build them up in the holy faith of the gospel, that they may be saved, and that repentance and remission of sins may be preached in his name. This is of the highest importance, and requires faithfulness, diligence, prudence, and watchfulness. The souls of men are committed to our care and guidance; and the eyes of God, angels, and men, are upon us, and great is the account we must make to our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the supreme head of his church, and

will at length reward or punish his servants in this ministry of his gospel, as he shall find them faithful or negligent. Therefore it behoves us to exercise our best talents, labouring in the Lord's vineyard with all diligence, that we may bring forth fruit, and that the fruit may remain.

This is the work we are separated for, and ordained unto. We must not think to be idle or careless in this office, but must bend our minds and studies, and employ all our gifts and abilities, in this service. We must preach the word of faith, that men may believe aright; and the doctrine and laws of godliness, that men may act as becomes Christians indeed. For without faith no man can please God; and without holiness no man can enter into the kingdom of heaven.'

Dr. Bernard, one of his chaplains, after stating that the bishop always preached on Sunday mornings, adds, in the afternoon this was his order to me, that, besides the catechising of the youth before public prayers, I should, after the first and second lessons, spend about half an hour in a brief and plain opening the principles of religion in the public catechism, and after that, I was to preach also. First, he directed me to go through the Creed alone, giving but the sum of each article; then next time at thrice and afterwards, each time an article, as they might be more able to bear it; and so proportionably the Ten Commandments, Lord's Prayer, and the doctrine of the Sacraments. The good fruit of which was apparent in the vulgar people upon their approach unto the communion, when, as by the then order, the names of the receivers were to be given in, so some account was constantly taken of their fitness for it.'

The Bishop's mode of dealing with those who were in danger of being drawn aside from the purity

of faith by visionary fancies is well deserving of notice. One of his clergy was understood to have adopted some peculiar notions relative to the restoration of the Jews. I sent,' says his Lordship, for the party, and, upon conference had with him, I put him in mind that his conceits were contrary to the judgment of the church of Christ from the beginning of the gospel unto this day, and that of old they were condemned for heretical in the Nazarites. But, find

ing that for the present he was not to be wrought upon by any reasoning, and that time was the only means to cure him of this sickness, I remembered what course I had heretofore held with another in this country who was so far engaged in this opinion of the calling of the Jews, (though not of the revoking of Judaism) that he was strongly persuaded he himself should be the man that should effect this great work, and to this purpose wrote an Hebrew Epistle, (which I have still in my hands) directed to the dispersed Jews. To reason the matter with him 1 found bootless; I advised him, therefore, that, until the Jews did gather themselves together, and make choice of him for their captain, he should labour to benefit his countrymen at home, with that skill he had attained unto in the Hebrew tongue. I wished him, therefore, to give us an exact translation of the Old Testament out of the Hebrew verity, which he accordingly undertook and performed. The translation I have by me, but before he had finished that task, his conceit of the calling of the Jews and his captainship over them, vanished clean away, and was never heard of after.

6 In like manner I dealt with Mr. Whitehall; that, forasmuch as he himself acknowledged that the Mosaical rites were not to be practised until the general calling of the Jews, he might do well, I

said, to let that matter rest till then; and in the mean time keep his opinion to himself, and not bring needless trouble upon himself and others by divulging it out of season. And, whereas he bad intended to write an historical discourse of the retaining of Judaism under Christianity, I counselled him rather to spend his pains in setting down the history of purgatory, or invocation of saints, or some of the other points in controversy betwixt the Church of Rome and us.' This advice so far prevailed with Mr. Whitehall, that he 'offered to bind himself to forbear intermeddling any way with his former opinions, either in public or in private, and to spend his time in any other employment that should be imposed upon him.'

The feeble and wavering policy of King James and his successor Charles, emboldened the Popish priests to assume great liberty, and to exercise their religion almost as publicly as the Protestants. Against such encroachments Bishop Usher felt it his duty to protest, and, was as a matter of course, accused as indulging a persecuting spirit; an accusation which he decidedly repelled. The Romish party not long after endeavoured to procure some concessions from government by the offer of maintaining at their own expense five thousand foot,, and five hundred horse. Just at this conjuncture, Bishop Usher was advanced to the Archbishopric of Armagh, and took an early opportunity as primate of assembling the Irish prelates to determine what course they ought to pursue. Twelve prelates accordingly met, and united in protesting against any further concessions to the Papists. The result was, that the Popish offer was rejected; and a voluntary contribution tendered towards the expenses of the Irish government, to which the Archbishop largely contributed.

valued by the irreligious. A vital and important doctrine may fall into desuetude, or be altogether removed, and a careless man feel no diminution of his pleasures. Hence decay makes rapid progress in religion. Hence the successors of St. Peter display scarcely a vestige of the religion taught in his epistles. Those churches of Asia, once the "joy and crown" of the apostles are gone, and the melancholy wanderer, amidst these fragments, seems to see inscribed on every wall, and to hear in every echo, "Know thou the God of thy father."

That this position is especially true of our own church, I would ground upon the purity of its principles. Its formularies have two qualities which place them in the very highest rank of uninspired compositions. In the first place they are Scriptural. The fathers of our church searching the quarry of Scripture, there discovered and appropriated those pillars of truth

the doctrines of man's depravity

-the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ-salvation through faith in that atonement-conversion by the Holy Spirit-and upon these they erected the national temple. In no human writings is the gospel of Christ in all its parts so fully, so wisely, so pathetically, so scripturally set forth as in the sanctioned books of our church-its doctrines are the Bible condensed into a smaller space and this I contemplate as her lofty distinction. Religion in her hands has not evaporated into a frigid scepticism, or wasted to a spiritless formality; but it is the unadulterated faith of the Scripture-the faith of

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Apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone." But there is a second feature of our church formularies scarcely less important--their comprehensiveness. Those who deeply reverence the Scripture, do not always study it with an impartial

eye. Attaching disproportionate importance to some passage, they insensibly tinge the whole volume with its particular complexion. Thus they narrow and systematize the broad and comprehensive truths of religion, and stamp their own image and superscription upon the pure gold of the sanctuary, and unfit it for general circulation. But how strikingly exempt are the formularies of our church from this defect! Univer

sality is their grand feature-and there is scarcely any thing in it to check its extension, till it embrace every spot where man can worship, or where God will hear. Nor let this feature of universality be undervalued it is the characteristic feature of Christianity itself-no longer the lamp of a solitary temple, it is a pillar of light to all the people of God. Such is the religion, such the church which among us disseminated its truth. the formularies which thus assimilate the child to the parent, and stamp it with a sacred image. Can there be a stronger reason why the Church of England's members should be taught that lesson with double emphasis-" Know thou the God of thy father."

Such

It is also peculiarly the duty of our church to go back to her first principles, because peculiar events in our national history have tended to draw many of us away from them. The events to which I allude are, the invasion of the Church and State at the time of the commonwealth. It is not one of the least disastrous circumstances of that melancholy period, that it tended to bring suspicion and contempt on many of the fundamental principles of the gospel. The invaders of the Church and State were, many of them, (God forbid that I should say all) men whose creed it is wholly impossible to reconcile with their practice. Avowing all those grand doctrines of religion, that are best

calculated to form good citizens and good men, they erected upon this sacred basis a superstructure of follies and crimes. They, as it were, borrowed the vessels of the temple to prostitute them to the indulgence of their own passions. And mark the consequence. Religion suffered the penalty of the unnatural alliance into which she had been forced. At the restoration the tide of popular feeling, in working back to its old channels, swept every thing before it. Puritanism was not the solitary victim of its impetuosity; but all that an enraged populace and a licentious court could in any way associate with puritanism, the vital principles of religion, the doctrines of original sin, of justification by faith in Christ, of conversion by the Holy Ghost, were all identified with it, and involved in one common ruin. For a season, the lessons of our blessed Lord and his apostles, were deemed the language of rebellion. Time, and the blessing of God, and the efforts of devout men, have, in a measure, corrected the national superstition: but, to this moment, the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel, and the faithful preachers of them are visited for the offences of the usurpation. Is this impious attempt to fix upon divine truth the follies and crimes of its false or overheated apostles never to cease? God forbid. Surely the time past suffices,' to have offered such indignities to the religion of Jesus Christ. Let us "know the God of our father," may the formularies of our church, handed down to us from her illustrious first fathers live in our memories and hearts. Such is my own impression of the superiority of the productions of that age, to those of a subsequent period, that I should be tempted to say, when the angel of the Reformation descended to trouble the stagnant pools of Popery, "those who first stepped

in," chiefly felt the healing efficacy. Most writings or formularies subsequent to these, either take from Scripture, or add to it, either shrink from its mysteries, or encumber its simplicity. These formularies come down to us signed and sealed with England's best blood. They come surrounded with the glory of the Reformation. They are identified with our liberties and conquests, with our independence at home, and our renown abroad, and with our possession of the blessed volume of divine truth. The army of martyrs seem throng around us to bear testimony to these writings, seem to arise from the flames, or to bend from the block to inculcate the lesson of the text," Know thou the God of thy father."

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I would confidently appeal to any pious man, whether when most humbled in spirit he has entered the sanctuary of the Lord, he has not found the services of the church then most consonant with his feelings? when, sensible of the purity of God's law, and of his own guilt and danger, has he not found the simple and humble confessions of our liturgy, just then, most exactly suitable to his convictions? No flattering allusion is ever made therein to any power, merit, or dignity, in man; but Christ is the only refuge under which the penitent is directed to repose. The voice of the church has for centuries, through the power of the Holy Spirit, conveyed peace to the contrite sinner in no accents but those of the Bible:- O Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world, grant us thy peace.' Grace, free, full, and everlasting, is the sole ground on which the certainty and perpetuity of our blessings are secured and in all our applications for those mercies, we are taught to breathe forth the spirit of self-renunciation— We do not presume, O merciful Lord, to come, trusting

in

our Own