rist, it is not in the minister's power, properly speaking, to deny them the privilege of either; if they are utterly unqualified, it is not in his power to admit them to either, if he will be just to his commission, and faithful to his trust. So neither can he, with an equitable judgment, declare the impenitent to be absolved, nor retain the sins of the penitent; for this is slaying the souls that should not die, and saving the souls alive that should not live; it is making the heart of the righteous sad, whom God hath not made sad; and strengthening the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life; as God complains of the false prophets, by the prophet Ezekiel, xiii. 19-22. All this is a manifest abuse of the ministerial powers, tending directly to discourage virtue, and encourage vice; and all such judgments God Himself will reverse, and punish the maladministration of his unfaithful stewards."-Second Sermon on Absolution.-See Appendix to Eccles. Antiq. vol. ii. p. 1113, ed. 1846.

So long as these things continue to be done, and acquiesced in, as at present, the parish priest can have little right to complain that his faithful warnings are slighted, and his denunciations of Divine wrath explained away; for by ministering in one and the same tone to those who have walked after the flesh, and to those who have walked after the Spirit, the moral code is virtually withdrawn, (in the eyes of the ungodly at least,) and the ground yielded to the universalist, or infidel, who denies point blank the Apostle's dogma, that "they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Gal. v. 21.

Such conduct contrasts strangely with the acknowledged character of the English clergy. Whilst, therefore, we thankfully venture to say of them, that, as a body, they are never surpassed, and seldom equalled, in truthfulness, ingenuousness, simplicity, and godly sincerity; whilst we know them to shrink with abhorrence from every approach to falsehood, subterfuge, and evasion, in all the manifold relations of private life; we are not prepared to turn away with any triumph of conscience, from such a reflection as the following:

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'By nothing can the deadening effects of habit, or the inferior influence of godly zeal, when in conflict with mere human motives, be more clearly evidenced, than by the matter of fact and purely routine kind of way, in which men of high devotion in other parts of their work, have suffered themselves to prostitute our saintly burial service; trying, as it were, to sanctify therewith the graves of persons whose more fitting sentence had been that passed upon Jehoiakim, to be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem.'— Religious Liberty, &c. p. 19.

Other and prior causes, however, may be assigned for this sad inconsistency, over and above mere habit, and those (abstractedly)

better human motives, the love of peace and a good name, pity for survivors, &c., to which allusion seems to be made. It is traceable, for instance, in one point of view, to a high respect for temporal authority and law, to a praiseworthy dislike of agitation, and a dread of evil consequences from exposing defects in the Church, in days of rebuke and blasphemy; and on such grounds, perhaps, many who think that they have realized our want of discipline, with all its attendant evils, have been accustomed to comfort themselves in inaction, and to compromise the matter with their scruples. But, viewed from another point, it is to be referred to the existence of a mass of legal fictions, overlaying the system of our ritual and constitutions; and mainly owing to the great change in the relations of Church and State, brought about by State tyranny during a century and a quarter, in which the Church has not been suffered to adapt her language and laws to her ever-varying circumstances. Hence, have been devised modes of defence, for palpable acts of profanation, founded on no firmer basis than a grammatical construction of the nicer sort, such as in private life would be deemed little better than jesuitical evasion, or mere sophistry2; and apologies have been republished usque ad nauseam, drawn from no higher source than a supposed necessary latitude, miscalled charity, contingent upon the establishment of the Church: an assertion which, if true, would simply prove that the enemies of a State connexion are better judges of what tends to the glory of God, than those who advocate its maintenance.

Before quitting this topic, we will adduce one more extract from the sermon of Bingham already quoted-an extract which will both show how essentially characteristic of the priest's office, corrective discipline appeared to that learned and pious man, and also how important is its relation to the personal holiness of its

2 A remarkable example of the extent to which this method influences and warps minds commonly ingenuous, is given in the late Charge of the Bishop of Exeter, 1848; where an advocate for altering the standard of orthodoxy, is convicted upon his own confession (or boast) of having accepted the orders, ministry, and offices of the Church, not with an unfeigned "assent and consent" to the things themselves, but only to their "use" as though their voluntary "use" might be innocently approved, apart from an approval of their contents; or as if the Church, which requires that assent in such plain and decided terms, had foreseen and purposed this novel interpretation of her language. Surely, such handling of sacred things is no less than putting a premium upon prevarication; and, to a conscience unhardened by traditionary fictions, would be as offensive as sheer dishonesty! The annual dumb-shows of disciplinary intention enacted in Visitation Courts, is but a remove better; and when it is carried out to the farce of admitting notorious schismatics to the office of warden, on the plea of the archdeacon's office being "simply ministerial," (a plea which we are glad to see controverted by the highest legal authority,) it is quite as bad.

agent; how close the connexion between the exercise of that divine trust, and high sanctity in its possessor.

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But, above all, such a man cannot, with any tolerable decency or freedom, discharge the office of punishing and correcting others, who is himself most justly liable to rebuke and censure. With what face can he debar others from Baptism or the Eucharist, who is himself unqualified to receive either? or exclude others from the church, who is himself unworthy to enter into it? Nothing, therefore, can be a greater engagement upon ministers to lead holy and pure lives, than the consideration of the commission which Christ has given them to retain or remit other men's sins, whether in a sacramental way, or a declaratory way, or a precatory way, or a judicial way; because, without purity, they can by no means answer the end of this office, and the nature of their trust; but their mal-administration will rise up in the judgment against them and condemn them.

"2. A second thing which this office of retaining and remitting sins requires of ministers, is great diligence in their studies and labours, without which they can never be able sufficiently to discharge it. The Church, indeed, has made some part of this work tolerably easy, by a prudent provision of many proper general forms of absolution; such as the forms of administering the absolution of the two Sacraments, and many general forms of declaratory and precatory absolution; to which, in her wisdom, she may add proper forms of excommunication and judicial absolution. But when this is done, there still remains a great deal more belonging to the full discharge of this office, for which the Church can make no particular provision, and therefore that must be left to the industry and diligence of ministers in their particular studies and labours. And this requires both a diffused knowledge and great application to be able to understand the nature of all God's laws, and the bounds and distinctions betwixt every virtue and vice; to be able to resolve all ordinary cases of conscience, and answer such doubts and scruples as are apt to arise in men's minds; to know the qualifications of particular men, and the nature, and degrees, and sincerity of their repentance, in order to give them a satisfactory answer to their demands, and grant or refuse them the several sorts of absolution, as they shall think proper, upon an impartial view of their state and condition. He that thinks all this may be done without great labour and study, and a diligent search of the Holy Scriptures, the rule and record of God's will, seems neither to understand the nature of his office, nor the needs of men; nor what it is to stand in the place of Christ, and judge for Him between God and man. The priest's lips should preserve knowledge;' and a man that considers the large extent of that knowledge, together with the great variety of cases and persons to which he may have occasion to apply it, would rather be tempted to cry out with the Apostle, ' Who is sufficient for these things?' And if this be not an argument to engage a man to industry in the office of a spiritual physician, it is hard to say what is so."-Sermon II., on St. John xx. 23, in Appendix to Christ. Antiq.

V. The fifth topic which we proposed to urge in behalf of a restoration of Corrective Discipline was, that the want of it is the greatest scandal chargeable upon us, and a constant source of schism.-It is evident that this and the succeeding propositions are only subordinate and accessory to the four already discussed; but they are sound arguments notwithstanding; and this, the fifth, is especially important as being calculated to correct that error which makes the lamentable prevalence of Dissent a reason for not restoring Discipline.

To prove this in detail would involve voluminous reference to the writings and published speeches of the leading Separatists of the last half century, and such a rehearsal of railing accusations as ourselves and our readers may well be spared, when the notoriety of the fact is considered: it is as notorious, as it is both illogical and yet consistent with a zeal which is not according to knowledge; and far as we are from defending secessions upon such a plea, we can perfectly understand with what power, when skilfully handled, such a plea must tell upon tender consciences, ill instructed in the nature of the visible Church, and in that scriptural casuistry, which would teach them that unity is not to be violated because unfaithfulness on the part of ministers or people is painfully realized; but that offences must needs come, and that a sense of them is a true call from God to attempt their remedy. Many of our readers will have witnessed and lamented the secessions of which we speak; secessions, not unfrequently, by the most earnest of their flocks; who have plunged into schism from a persuasion that to remain with us were to partake the guilt of acquiescence in our apparent apathy to discipline, and without a conscious difference from the Church in doctrine. The lack of discipline, and its consequences, once brought home to them, they become deaf to that reasoning which would previously have preserved them from falling upon this stumbling-stone; nor is there any mystery in this, for they are the exception rather than the rule, among religious people, who grasp, with all the energy which prompts to independent action, more than a single principle. One beautiful truth keenly apprehended too often absorbs the mind, and eventually perverts the conscience: thus one sacrifices purity for unity, another unity for purity; each so exclusively possessed by the transparent truthfulness of his own conviction, as to overlook its connexion with other and harmonious ordinances. Persons in whom no vivid and heart-stirring apprehensions of religious duty ever kindled an emotion, whose even tenor of compromise forbids the existence of an inspiring sense of any sacred thing, may stand aghast at the inconsistency of the seceders, and affect a pious horror at their

blindness: they themselves have "never been so tempted:" but, in place of being proud thereof, let them rather take shame that no sacred jealousy for the honour of their Lord, and for the souls of men, ever brought them within reach of trials so purely spiritual, -their temptations are of a lower range and nature; and let them reflect, whether they are not verily guilty concerning their brother; and whether the woe denounced against the offenders of Christ's little ones may not apply to them, for suffering this handle of reproach to be still within Satan's power.

Souls of higher tone, and greater zeal, will prefer to pity and compassionate the fallen ones; and being themselves not ignorant of a struggle for the submissive acceptance of truths which our present evil state gave occasion to the enemy to present to them as being incompatible, will bless God that by grace they stand, whilst others equally sincere have lapsed, and are no more with us. Of this latter description, there is reason to believe, are many of the Plymouth Brethren; a sect which seems to attract more seceders from the Church than any of its contemporaries, not excepting the Romanist; and evidently depends for its continuance rather upon the continuance of the great scandal amongst us, than upon any original heresy of its own. The prime motive to their schism has been (as we judge from cases known to us) their ideal of a pure communion; an ideal which is not less surely the exaggeration of a truth professed but not practised by the Church, than certainly impracticable, to the extent of their exaggeration, so long as "tares and wheat" are a fit emblem of the Church Militant: for the Church proclaims it to be her solemn duty to exclude all open rebels against God from her communion, and to disown those who by their works disclaim their baptism. For such as these she holds are not as tares to wheat, but as thistles to figs: there is no similarity in their appearance, no danger of mistake in eradicating them; they are not the plausible hypocrite, or the man of merely suspected Mammon worship; but open and presumptuous offenders against faith and morals and Scripture, and Christian antiquity, attest no single article of the Creed, not excepting even the Încarnation, more distinctly and peremptorily, than the duty of the Christian ministry to purge the Visible Communion of Saints from such spots in their feasts of charity. The Plymouth Brethren first

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3 The force of our argument in no way depends upon the correctness of the illustration, the right or wrong interpretation of the tares and wheat. It is enough for our purpose to have adduced abundant proofs of the power and obligation of discipline, both from Holy Scripture and our own formularies: but having alluded to this parable, we think it right to give in this place two ancient expositions of it, with reference to that power and obligation, for the purpose of meeting a cavil not unfrequently raised upon it. St. Jerome, on Matt. xiii. 28-30, says,