Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

of the Faithful from the beginning of the world. All these have lived under their impression, and often sealed them with the sincerest testimony of their blood. These principles shine throughout the inspired writings of the Prophets and Apostles, and combine together in one gracious analogy, equally bright and beautiful to every spiritual eye, which is opened to behold it. They are, above all, the Word, the Voice, the Truth, of the everliving and unerring God.

§ 78. Whosoever, therefore, contradicts and renounces these fundamental Doctrines of Salvation, or does not receive and maintain them according to the fair and obvious sense. of the Confessions which state them, has no just claim to be considered as a member or minister of those Churches which were established upon such confessions; certainly not of the Church of England, which by authority declares,

L 5

clares, that no member of it "shall put his own sense or comment to be the meaning of an article (and much less a double or equivocal sense, and, least of all, those "mental reservations," of which Jesuits have been accused), but shall take it in the Literal and Grammatical sense." If he belong not to these constituted Churches, who in essential principles agree with

the visible and invisible Church of Christ from the beginning of the world; what must such a one be; and to whom or to what does he belong? If his faith be not the faith of God's Elect, may we not suspect, that it will turn out at last to have been a very delusive and a very dangerous. opinion? And to what end, to what a train of other mischievous principles, may not a serious error in the premises, like one in the first figures of a calculation, unavoidably lead him? He can be sure of no religious truth,

but

but as it stands revealed in his Bible, or clearly accordant with it: And will he follow, instead of this exact criterion, his own carnal and short-sighted reason, or the similar reasonings of men whose minds must be corrupt, if they are either destitute of the truth, or, what is much the same, if they venture beyond or fall short of it?

§ 79. It is not enough, that such a one has the name, the title, or the preferment, of a minister and member of the Church of England: He is, in very deed, a Dissenter; and a Dissenter of the worst and (because of his contrary profession) of the lowest and basest kind. This Church is not to be known merely by buildings, or habits, or preferments; but by those solemn and acknowledged declarations, which have been established by public laws, and avowed upon oath to be ex animo, or the heart-felt, sentiment and belief of every man, admitted to its holy offices.

L 6

offices. I shall not stay in this place to lament the perjury, the gross and horrible sin of perjury, which threatens to sink the excellent fabric of our Church into ruins, and to multiply Schisms and Separatists without number; but it may most truly be averred, that if a strict and formal oath to the Church cannot bind a man to its principles; then any oath, taken without a sense of its importance, or with a mind and sense in real contradiction to its object, either for worldly honour or for filthy lucre's sake, stamps the person, so taking it, for a bold and rank Nonconformist; and, may I not seriously add, for a Heretic and Hypocrite of the worst description, for whose moral turpitude in the case it is hard to find a name. He not only appears to be a Schismatic of the basest kind, but the great occasion of deplorable schisms. and separations to perhaps well-disposed, though uninformed, people about

[ocr errors]

about him. When such men come to appear before God, as they shortly. must, with this lie in their right hand; what what will they have to answer

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

what purpose became, ye Shepherds? And how fed ye, or attended, the flocks committed to your charge?"*

* The following description of true divines, drawn by one who was himself of great eminence, is submitted both for its beauty and use to the consideration of those whom it may peculiarly concern: "Non ad calidarum disputationum rixas instructi, non novarum inventionum opinione turgidi, non tumidi sermonis ampullis, et sesquipedalium verborum inaniis, se apud plebem juveniliter jactantes, non ambitionem vitæve fastum simplicitati apostolicæ et cruci Christi anteponentes; sed humiles, modesti, mansueti, pacifici, simplices et sapientes tamen, prudentes atque efficaces evangelicæ fidei ac pietatis præcones, Dei reverentes, magistratum honorantes, fraternæque unionis studiosi."

« ElőzőTovább »