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DISCOURSE

MADE BY

THE LORD BISHOP OF ROCHESTER

TO THE

CLERGY OF HIS DIOCESE.

I CAN scarce think it worth my while, or yours, my good brethren, that I should now spend much time in any long general exhortation to your diligent and conscientious performing the duties incumbent on you, as you are "the mi"nisters of God, duly called according to the will of our "Lord Christ, and the order of this excellent church of "England."

Did I find there were here any absolute need to use many words towards the exciting your care in the several administrations of your holy calling; yet, I am persuaded, I myself might well spare my own labour, and your patience, on this subject; since all that kind of wholesome advice has been already so very sufficiently and so much better given you, in arguments deduced out of the holy scriptures, and most fitly applied to this purpose, by the venerable compilers of our public liturgy, in the forms appointed for the ordering of deacons and priests.

There, you know, this work has been so wisely and so fully, long ago, done to a bishop's hands; there all the parts of your weighty office are so judiciously laid before you; the high dignity and great importance of it, towards the salvation of mankind, is so substantially urged; the blessed fruits and everlasting rewards of well-attending it, and the extreme dangers of neglecting it, are so justly amplified; the necessity of adorning your doctrine by an innocent, virtuous, and pious life of your own, towards the rendering it efficacious on the lives of others, is so pathetically enforced; that, I am confident, the very best charge

a bishop could give to his clergy, were to recommend seriously to all their memories, as I now do most affectionately to yours, those very same questions and answers, those very same promises and vows, as you ought to esteem them, wherewith every one of you did most solemnly charge his conscience, at the time of your admission into holy orders.

I profess I cannot, nor, I believe, can the wit of man, invent any more proper method of instruction to men in your circumstances, from a man in mine, than to exhort you all to a continual recollection of, and meditation upon, those many and great obligations you then seemed voluntarily and cheerfully to lay on yourselves.

Whence there could not but ensue, by God's blessing, a firm resolution in your minds to endeavour the performance of them, and a holy perseverance in those endeavours, and in conclusion, the happy effects of all on yourselves, and the flocks committed to you: that by thus meditating on these things, and giving yourselves wholly to them, your profiting may appear to all; and that by taking heed to yourselves, and your doctrines, and continuing in them, you may both save yourselves, and those that hear you.

Wherefore seeing that, which else had been a bishop's proper business in such meetings as this, I hope, is, or may be so easily shortened for me by you yourselves, by your having recourse to a rule so well known, and so obvious to you, in a book, which ought scarce ever to be out of your hands; I shall the rather, at this time, purposely omit the prescribing you many admonitions, touching the matter and substance of the duties of your sacred function. Instead of them, I shall only offer you some few familiar considerations, which may serve as so many friendly and brotherly advices, concerning, chiefly, the manner and way of performing some of the principal offices of your ministry.

And, I trust in God, that if these advices shall be as carefully examined, and, if you find them useful, as industriously observed by you, as they are honestly intended by me, they may, in some sort, enable you to do laudably, and with commendation, the same things, which, I hope, you already do, without just exception.

Only, in this place, let me premise once for all, that whatever instructions I shall now give you, I intend them not only as directions to you, but especially to myself. As indeed, in all matters, that come under deliberation, he

ought to be esteemed no good counsellor, who is very ready and eager in giving, but averse from receiving the same counsel, as far as it may be also proper for himself.

The first advice I presume to set before your view shall relate to the manner of doing your part, in all the ordinary offices of the public liturgy.

As to that, it is my earnest request, that you would take very much care, and use extraordinary intention of mind, to perfect yourselves in a true, just, sensible, accurate becoming way of reading, and administering them as you have occasion.

A suggestion, which some perhaps, at first hearing, may think to be but of a slight and ordinary concernment: yet, if I am not much deceived, it will be found of exceeding moment and consequence in its practice: and of singular usefulness towards the raising of devotion in any congregation piously inclined: when your weekly, or rather daily labours of this kind shall be thus performed; I mean, not with a mere formal or artificial, but with such a grave, unaffected delivery of the words, as (if the defect be not in ourselves) will indeed naturally flow from a right and serious considering of their sense.

I pray therefore, take my mind aright in this particular. I do not only mean, that you should be very punctual in reading the Common Prayer Book, as the law requires; that is, not only to do it constantly, and entirely in each part, without any maiming, adding to, or altering of it, that so supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, may be made, by you, for all men ; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

If you do not so, you are liable to a legal punishment and censure. But my aim now is, not merely to prevent that, or to provide only against your breaking the law. What I intend is something higher, and more excellent; something that you cannot be punished for, though you do it not; but if you shall do it in any reasonable perfection, it will redound to the unspeakable benefit of your congregations.

The purpose then of this my plain motion to you is, in short, to beseech you all to employ much serious pains in practising the public and private reading of all your of fices, as the use of any of them shall occur, distinctly, gravely, affectionately, fervently; so as every where to give them all that vigour, life, and spirit, whereof they are capable which certainly is as great as in any human writ

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ings whatsoever; if we be not wanting to them in the repetition.

The truth is, whatever some may imagine to the contrary, such a complete and consummate faculty of reading the Common Prayer, Quam nequeo monstrare, et sentio tantum, is of so great difficulty, as well as use, that I am fully convinced, it very well deserves to have some place among our constant studies; at least in the first initiation into our ministry, if not throughout the whole course of it.

I could heartily wish, it were altogether needless for me to lay so much stress on this advice as I do. Yet, I hope, I may do it without offence; since it is not with design of censuring any particular men's failings or deficiencies, but only for the public good; that we may all strive to attain not only to a mediocrity, but to an excellency in this kind: which, in my small judgment, can never be done, unless we shall make this duty a business by itself, and assign it a special place among our other ecclesiastical studies.

It cannot be denied, but the church itself has provided for this with all imaginable circumspection; having solemnly enjoined every clergyman, besides the times of his public ministry, to read some very considerable parts of his Office, once a day, at least, to himself, except he shall be excused by indispensable business.

By which wise injunction, though, no doubt, the church intended primarily to produce and increase, in the minds of all its ministers, a frame of spirit perpetually serious and devout; yet, if that be also accompanied with a proportionable regard to the manner, as well as to the matter of our public prayers, this other advantage of well reading, what is so often to be read, will follow of course, and by necessary consequence.

It seems indeed to me, that the very way of performing all the outward acts of religion has so wonderful an influence towards obtaining the inward effects of it on our hearts and consciences, that I cannot but think we can never be too laborious in preparing and exercising our thoughts, and even our very voices, in private, for a public service of so great importance.

It is true, we generally value and esteem preaching as our great privilege and honour. And so far we are in the right. But we are not so, if we look on the reading of prayers only as our task and burden; and, as such, shall be willing to get rid of it altogether, or to get through it in any undecent manner, with such heaviness or precipita

tion, as, in any affairs of worldly interest, we would never be content with: a preposterous custom, which, if due care be not taken, may be very prejudicial and mischievous to our church, by quenching the spirit of devotion in our own people, and giving occasion to our adversaries to throw scorn and contempt on our otherwise incomparable liturgy.

Consider, I pray you, how can we expect that others should revere or esteem it according to its true worth, if we ourselves will not keep it so much in countenance, as to afford it a fair reading? if we will not do it so much common justice as to contribute, as much as lies in our power, that it may have an impartial hearing, equal at least to any other divine ordinance? if we shall refuse to lay as much weight on those devotions, which our whole church has enjoined us to pour out before the throne of grace, for the people, as we do on those discourses, which we make, on our own heads, to the people?

Wherefore, I say again, this very commendable skill of devout and decent reading the holy Offices of the church is so far from being a perfunctory or superficial work, a mean or vulgar accomplishment, or a subordinate lower administration, only fit for a curate; that it deserves to be placed among your ministerial endowments of greater superiority and preeminence; as being one of the most powerful instruments of the holy Spirit of God, to raise and command men's hearts and affections of the holy true Spirit of God, I say; which, though in our inward ejaculations, or private supplications towards Heaven, it often helpeth our infirmities, and maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered; yet, in the public worship, is most frequently pleased to operate by such words and sounds, as are expressed with the best utterance.

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So that now, with a just assurance, I may assert this to be a very proper qualification of a parochial minister; that he has attained to an habitual faculty of setting forth the public prayers to all their due advantage, by pronouncing them leisurably, fitly, warmly, decently; with such an authority in the speaker, as is, in some degree, suitable to the authority of what is spoken.

Thus much I may safely say, that the reader of the prayers, if he does his part, in the manner I have mentioned, by such a vigorous, effectual, fervent delivery of the words and conceptions, put into his mouth by the church itself, may give a new enlivening breath, a new soul, as it were, to every prayer, every petition in it: he may quicken

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