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cese, where they happen to spend a little time, they usually affect so much pomp and dignity in their manner, and their discourses are so dry and unevangelical; so stiff, so cool, so essaical, so critical, so ethical, so

think proper to ride. Our order has had its day; and a pretty long day it has been! The pope has ridden the bishops, the bishops have ridden the priests, and the priests have ridden the people. The tables are now turning; and we parsons must be contented to be ridden by the people. But if the people, in their zeal for freedom, should proceed to cast off the Divine yoke-and there is some danger!-If they should insolently reject the authority of Jesus Christ, our only Lord, and Master, and Saviour, he will visit their offences with a rod, and their sin with Scourges. He has a right to our services. We are not our own, but are bought with a price, and no man shall refuse him subjection, and prosper. Every thinking person must feel that he is a dependent creature, and insufficient for his own happiness; a sinful creature, and incapable of atoning for his own transgressions. Among the bishops of the church of England, may be found characters the most respectable for every moral, literary, and religious attainment. I add, that several of the bishops and clergy of the Irish church, have been also highly respectable, as well as many of the inferior orders of our own clergy. So likewise have been many of the bishops and clergy of the French church. Usher, the Irish archbishop, was not a pious man only, but even a walking library, in point of learning. Newcombe is a character of the most respectable literary kind. Warburton used to say of Taylor, "he had no conception of a greater genius upon earth than was that holy man."-Where too was there ever a more admirable character than the author of Telemachus! or more learned men than Camet, Du Pin, Montfaucon, and others among the French clergy? Our own Cotes, though but a private clergyman, and young in years at the time of his decease, is said by Watson, to have been Second to none but Newton in sublimity of philosophic genius. But as the learning, piety, genius and amiableness of manners of Fenelon and his brethren, could not excuse and make tolerable the corruptions of the church of France, so neither can the learning, genius, and piety of the bishops and clergy of England and Ireland, excuse and make justifiable the more tolerable corruptions of the churches of these two countries. -We must either simplify and evangelize our ecclesiastical constitutions, or they must fall. I speak this, not from any personal pique or disappointment, not from a love of novelty and change, but upon the authority of the prophetic Scriptures-with a view to the near completion of the 1260 mystical years-and from a

heathen-like, that the poor of the flock can receive little or no benefit and edification.

These learned gentlemen are so afraid of approaching too near the Methodists,(1) both in their doctrines,

solemn and awful contemplation of the revolutions which are so rapidly taking place all through Europe. The act of union was unwisely managed. What right has any one generation to legis. late for all future generations? and especially to tie up their hands from making changes and improvements adapted to the taste of the revolving ages? Upon this principle christianity itself, and even the present constitution of England, is an improper innovation on the wisdom of former ages.

It is evident from the opposition of Horsley, to the abolition of holidays, that we may not expect from the bench of bishops the smallest concessions towards a reformation in the ecclesiastical part of the constitution. To me, however, what we usually call holidays appear in the light of very serious evils to the community. Let a man conscientiously observe the Lord's day, and I will excuse him every other holiday in the calendar.

(1) Methodist is a term of reproach, which has been made use of for many years, to stigmatize all the most serious, zealous, and lively professors of religion. It is not confined to any one sect or party; but is common, more or less, to all who are peculiarly animated in the concerns of religion. In the church of England, all those ministers and people are called Methodists, who believe, and preach, and contend for the doctrines of the thirty-nine articles of religion. And Arians, Socinians, and Formalists of every description, who continue to attend public worship in the establishment, are considered by the undiscerning world as her only true members. In short, all who embrace, with a lively and zealous faith, the doctrines of the said thirtynine articles, among all the denominations, are by way of ignominy, denominated Methodists. To be zealous, in the most important of all concerns, is held as a proverb of reproach! You may be a zealous philosopher, a zealous politician, or a zealous sciolist of almost every description, and you shall meet with approbation and praise; but if you discover any considerable degree of warmth and zeal for the grand peculiarities of the gospel, and vital, practical. experimental religion, then the devil and all his industrious servants will stigmatize you with every name which they consider as opprobrious and disgraceful. Indeed, Methodist is in the eighteenth century, what Puritan was in the seventeenth. After the restoration, people, to shew their aversion to the Puritans, turned every appearance of religion into ridicule, and from the extreme

and manner of preaching, that their sermons are cast more in the mould of Seneca, or Epictetus, than in that of Paul; and delivered with all the apathy of an ancient philosopher.

"How oft, when Paul has serv'd us with a text,

Has Epictetus, Plato, Tully preach'd?"

Hence these learned prelates are found to do but little good. Such preaching never was of much use to the Christian church. Christ crucified alone is the power of God unto salvation. Now and then, indeed, in the course of three, four, five, six, or sometimes even ten or twelve years, these shepherds of Christ's flock parade through the country, paying their respects to the great, and holding confirmations; but where is the spirit of a Peter or a Paul to be discovered? Or, to come nearer to what might be expected, where is the spirit of a Burnet,(2) a Leighton,(3) a Beveridge,

of hypocrisy, flew at once to that of profligacy; so now, abundance of people are so alarmed at the idea of being thought Methodists, that they absolutely give up the peculiar doctrines of the gospel, and become as lukewarm, and indifferent to all religion, as though it was no part of their concern. And yet these wiseacres, in the true spirit of the ancient Scribes and Pharisees, keep roaring out, the church! the church! the temple of the Lord! the temple of Lord are we!

(2) This excellent man was extremely laborious in his episcopal office. Every summer, he made a tour, for six weeks or two months, through some district of his bishopric, daily preaching from church to church, so as in the compass of three years, besides his triennial visitation, to go through all the principal livings of his diocese.

(3)Leighton was a most exemplary character, both in his private and public capacity. The life and writings of few men are more worthy of imitation and perusal. He laboured hard to bring about some reformation in the state of things in his own day, and when he found all his efforts ineffectual, he quietly withdrew, resigned his preferment, and lived in private. What Burnet says of him can never be too often repeated, and too generally known.-"He had the greatest elevation of soul, the largest compass of knowledge, the most mortified and heavenly disposition, that I ever yet saw in mortal. He had the greatest parts, as well as virtue, with the most perfect humility that I ever saw in man; and had a sublime

a Hall, a Ken, a Bedell, a Reynolds, or a Wilson, to be seen? Our confirmations and our ordinations(4) for the sacred ministry, are dwindled into painful and disgusting ceremonies. Besides, is it to be supposed, that the whole of a bishop's business is to ordain ministers, and hold confirmations, to spend their time in

strain in preaching, with so grave a gesture, and such a majesty, both of thought, of language, and pronunciation, that I never once saw a wandering eye where he preached, and I have seen whole assemblies often melt into tears before him; and of whom I can say with great truth, that in a free and frequent conversation with him for above two and twenty years, I never knew him to say an idle world, that had not a direct tendency to edification; and I never once saw him in any other temper, but that which I wished to be in, in the last moments of my life."

Locke gives us a similar account of Pococke, "I can say of him what few men can say of any friend of theirs, nor I of any other of my acquaintance; that I do not remember I ever saw him in one action, that I did, or could in my own mind blame, or thought amiss in him."

(4) Burnet took large pains in preparing young people for confirmation, and used every means in his power to encourage and excite candidates for ordination to come with due qualifications. He complains in the most affecting terms, of the low state in which they usually appeared before him. The state of things is not much improved since that great prelate's day. We have at this -time, indeed, a very considerable number of men in the establishment, of the utmost respectability, both for learning, piety, and diligence in their calling; but, when we consider, that the clergy of this country, independent of Scotland and Ireland, are a body of 18,000 men, the number of truly moral, religious, and diligent characters, is comparatively small. This is one main reason of the prodigious increase of the Dissenters and Methodism; and for the same reason infidelity is at this moment running like wild-fire among the great body of the common people. There never was a time when there was greater need of zeal, and humility, and condescension, and piety, and diligence and attention to the grand peculiarities of the gospel in our bishops and clergy, than in the present day. If we as a great body of men paid by the state for the purpose, rouse not speedily from our supine condition, and come boldly and manfully forward-not in a fiery, persecuting spirit, but in the spirit of our Divine Master-we shall neither have churches to preach in, nor people to whom to. preach Let the bishops and clergy of England look at their brethren in France -and arise-set out on a new plan-or be for ever fallen!

secular engagements, and to attend their place in the house of lords? Is it for these purposes solely they are each of them paid by the public, from two to twenty thousand pounds a year?

"Good, my brother,

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,

Shew me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whilst, like a careless libertine,

Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads."

Can we, or ought we to be surprised, that many of our worthy country men should be drawn aside into the paths of infidelity, when it is considered what is the general conduct of our spiritual superiors, and how the above sacred ordinances are frequently administered? Is it possible the Scriptures should be true, and our secular and lukewarm, our negligent and unpreaching bishops, to be in favour with the Divine Being? If they be in safety for a future state, surely religion must have changed its nature. Their episcopal conduct is the reverse of Paul's injunctions to Timothy, and the bishops of the church of Asia; to give themselves wholly to the work of the ministry, and to take heed to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made them overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. The Lord of the invisible world hath said, and he who hath the keys of death and hell hath said: Strive to enter into the strait gate, for many shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able: Wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be who go in thereat; because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. If commands and declarations like these be true, then woe! woe! woe! to the bishops of England! May we not say of them, with too general an application, but with some few honourable exceptions, as good old Latimer said of his most reverend and right reverend brethren in his

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