creed; how do they throw down the rod and staff of the good Shepherd, and take for their support a broken reed, when they neglect this consoling axiom, that there is nothing binding upon man from God, which may not be effected by a holy perseverance. By such a faith mountains are cast into the sea, the dead are raised to life, the dumb speak, and the lame walk he who so believes, and sees distinctly the precept, or the beckoning hand, walks on the waters, stills the waves, and overcomes the world. It was this, which animated Apostles, in their conflict with Athens and Rome, with earthly wisdom and power. It was this which sustained protesting Luther; and this which made for Loyola and Francis Xavier, with all their faults, a name and place among the mighty dead. Without this graven on their hearts as the inspiration of all energy, none can be great, none good: and they who begin their inquiries touching any debated line of conduct, by investigating its feasibility before they have established and accepted its obligation, go far to distort their moral sense, and to forfeit God's blessing at the outset: they invite hindrances, paralyze motive, encourage Satan to oppose them, and court timidity, indecision, and doubt; because they postpone the oracles of God, and have no heaven-born impulse, no sufficient spring of action to maintain them, should they subsequently muster courage to begin. But, alas! how prevalent this habit has become; and how thoroughly has it leavened the majority of men in power. Where can we now look to witness the refreshing spectacle of an uncompromising allegiance to ascertained duty? The days of heroism in the field of Christian faith and morals, seem well-nigh numbered; and every one is prepared to yield! Princes and Prelates, Premiers and Parliament, all who should lead, are followers. The baneful influence of a false expediency threatens death to the influence of divinely-sanctioned principle; and every other man you reason with, expects you to be ready at once to wave your claims, or to defer your project, provided only his coward heart enables him to conjure up some bugbear of popular opposition. He has no locus standi for any action of his own, beyond the ease with which it may be effected, and is utterly incapable of appreciating any higher title to respect.

It will be thus with some of the opponents of a restoration of Corrective Discipline: they will reverse the due order of inquiry in all moral questions, and shrink from the analysis of duty, under cover of their fears of impracticability. Not daring to dispute the obligation, they will denounce the scheme as one subversive of peace, and beset with unknown peril, forgetting that the Apostle's language is limited: "If it be possible, live peaceably with all men.'

With such opponents to improvement, we cannot cast in our lot. But we are ready to allow that there are difficulties in the way of restoring Corrective Discipline (as in the way of a return to any good, but neglected, habit), and that they are great, and should be calmly weighed; but we decidedly protest against entering upon such a subject on the modern system; and whilst we deprecate exaggeration of the obstacles, we will not knowingly overstate the favourable arguments. Their topics may be arranged as follows:

I. The right use of Ecclesiastical Discipline is "a note, or mark," of the true Church.

II. It is a divinely-ordained instrument for the vindication of Christianity, the recovery of offenders, and the preservation of the faithful.

III. It is an integral part of episcopal functions.

IV. It is essential to purity of conscience, and consistency of ministration, on the part of the parochial clergy.

V. The want of it is a great scandal chargeable upon us, and a constant source of schism.

VI. The general moral state of England especially demands its restoration.

VII. Reason itself proclaims the necessity of it.

I. The first of these propositions in the second part of the Homily for Whit-Sunday; from which, however, since few persons are now ordained but with a licence as allowed preachers, and it is therefore not so often read or heard as aforetime, we will extract a comment upon the term ecclesiastical discipline, to show that it is there used in that sense which is alone applicable to our present argument. Having contrasted the notes of the true Church, as concerning doctrine and sacraments, with the traditions and customs of the Roman Church, the author of the Homily proceeds, thirdly, to a similar contrast with respect to ecclesiastical discipline, and says,-" Christ ordained the authority of the keys to excommunicate notorious sinners, and to absolve them which are truly penitent: they abuse this power at their own pleasure, as well in cursing the godly with bell, book, and candle, as also in absolving the reprobate, which are known to be unworthy of any Christian society." Alas! with how heavy a weight of censure do these words now fall upon ourselves; and how justly may the Romanist turn round upon us, and taunt us with our own reproaches. We must confess it, we are in this matter condemned out of our own mouth. A single glance at the results of the oftentimes excellent "Articles of Inquiry," proposed to Churchwardens at a Visitation, would prove to demonstration,

that our ecclesiastical discipline is reduced, from a practical system, to little more than a legal fiction.

But it is not from the Homilies alone that the written sense of the English Church is to be gathered, as to the importance and essentiality of Corrective Discipline. Evidence, equally strong after its kind, is afforded by her Book of Common Prayer, her Ordinal, Articles, and Canons. The Prayer Book, as might be expected, simply taking for granted the constant exercise of a power which its companion, the Ordinal, ever testifies to be inseparable from the office of bishops and priests; and notifying accordingly what portions of its sacred rites should be withheld from such as have fallen under its condemnation; the Articles defining the proper spiritual penalty which the highest exercise of that power involves, and the duty of the faithful towards the subjects of it; whilst the Canons minutely regulate and provide for the application of the said power, to the various offences against faith and morals, which Holy Writ arraigns before it.

Here, therefore, is available a mass of concurrent testimony, from all the witnesses to which reference in proof of our Church's mind and intention is wont to be made, speaking trumpet-tongued in condemnation of our present state, and sufficient of itself to convict of a most palpable dereliction of duty, as many of us as acquiesce in its continuance. But will it do so? If our experience were limited to books, and conversant with what ought to be, to the exclusion of what is, we may be excused for concluding that Churchmen, having satisfied themselves of the scriptural character of their Church's laws, would require nothing more for their enlistment in favour of a restoration of Discipline, than proof, such as we have given from her own mouth, that it is essential to her integrity, and that the spirit and system of her Services is contravened by its abeyance. But we are too familiar with the disposition and habits of the age, to dream of

6 See Rubrics before the Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, and the Burial of the Dead.

7 Article XXXIII.

8 The Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical of the Church of England—passim. In the first instance, and by primary legal obligation, the duty of making presentments is imposed upon churchwardens (though, by Canon 113, ministers may, and are required to, present in case of their neglect of duty), and it would appear from the substitution of a general declaration for the specific oaths formerly taken by wardens (see 5 and 6 William IV. c. 62), that they felt the guilt of perjury, as Alas! that charged upon them in the Canons, for forbearing to present offenders. either they should think themselves absolved from making presentments, by such a change; or that bishops should have sat in the Parliament which passed the substituting statute, without a righteous effort to render the correction of presented persons practicable, by rescuing ecclesiastical discipline from its thraldom under previous enactments.

In

satisfying all our brethren by any argument whose force depends merely upon their reverence for the voice of the Church. the abstract, and on points which involve no self-sacrifice, they both suppose and maintain the entire harmony of our Prayer Book, Ordinal, Homilies, and Canons, with Divine truth; but no sooner is some portion of them brought prominently forward, which neglect had cast into the background, than men at once give up the premises, in order to evade the inconvenient conclusion. It follows, that not only is it useless to claim from the laity, at least, a ready acceptance of, and respect for discipline, on the ground of their Church's written rules and doctrine, but that there is little prospect of a fair hearing at first for the very Word of God." We do not, however, doubt that if the clergy, as many of them as understand the subject, will press upon their flocks the abundant scriptural authority for the exercise of discipline, after the same persevering manner by which they have successfully promulgated some other forgotten truths, they may ere long create a sufficiently strong sense of its necessity, to ensure an effectual removal of the fetters which encumber it. And therefore we proceed to show, secondly,

II. That it is a divinely-ordained instrument for the Vindication of Christianity, the Recovery of Offenders, and the Preservation of the Faithful.

This threefold purpose will be sufficiently evident from the texts themselves, which we shall allege, in proof of the Divine institution of Corrective Discipline; we shall not, therefore, arrange the texts under the three several objects which they imply, to do which would frequently involve the repetition of the same text under each head; but shall take the scriptural exemplars and precepts in their scriptural order of relation, and leave the intelligent reader to test our assertion, by the materials with which we furnish him. To allude, very briefly, to what have been considered the earliest patterns of the sacred rite of excommunication; we observe that the expulsion of Adam from Paradise, which was a sort of excommunicating him from the place where he enjoyed the Divine Presence in the most immediate manner, has been of old regarded in this light. But the sentence passed upon Cain for fratricide, was a more exact type; for, first, he was to be turned out of the assemblies for religion (no longer to worship with his parents), which he calls being hid from God's face; secondly, he was declared unworthy to converse with the innocent, which is expressed by his being a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth; thirdly, he was devoted to destruction, so that it would have been no crime to kill him, (until God expressly forbad it,) as he complains when he saith, every one that findeth me shall slay me. All

this plainly foreshowed that God would have all wilful and obstinate offenders separated and excluded from the sounder part of his Church'. The introduction of Japhet into the tents of Shem, the designed High Priest of the true God; and the omission of the accursed Ham from that blessed privilege, by Noah; and the language of Jacob towards the blood-stained Simeon and Levi"O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly mine honour, be thou not united,” have both been quoted to the same purpose. But we pass on to the provisions of the Mosaic law, that kid Tv μedλóvτwv åyalwv (Heb. x. 1), which signified, with increased distinctness, the future discipline of the Christian body. For the carnal ordinances, suited to the genius of the Jewish people, and to those ages and parts of the world, were undoubted types of more spiritual observances, which were to succeed them in Gospel times; and the exclusions which were then incurred by ceremonial pollutions and natural diseases, were unquestionable signs of subsequent moral disqualifications. The persons who were legally unclean, under the Mosaic dispensation, being unfit for that legal worship, were justly shut out from it, and were, to all intents and purposes, in the state of excommunicate persons, as far as concerned the loss of their external privileges; and no marvel if, in a more spiritual religion, the spiritual sword cut deeper, when it is used on greater offenders. But if any are disposed to inquire how it comes to pass that we have, in the Old Testament, so few instances of excommunication for moral offences, like that of the tribe of Benjamin publicly denounced in a religious assembly, and all conversation with them cut off, for their abetting the lust and cruelty of the men of Gibeah (Judges xx. xxi.), two satisfactory replies are furnished by the sacred history; namely, first, the immediate infliction of Divine judgment upon the criminals, by death, as in the instances of Korah, Numb. xvi.; the Bethshemites, 1 Sam. vi.; Uzzah, 2 Sam. vi., which was equivalent to the highest sort of excommunication, the Schammatha; or by loathsome diseases, which involved exclusion from the congregation, and cut off the sufferer from civil and religious conversation, as in the instances of Miriam', Numb. xii.; Uzziah, 2 Chron. xxvi.; Gehazi, 2 Kings v.; whence arose the ordinary notion of the Jews, that diseases betokened sin; according to

9 Comber, from whose Discourse on Excommunication we borrow freely in this section of our subject, notes that learned men have found in the case of Cain, all the kinds of excommunication used afterwards among the Jews; viz. 1, the Niddui, or separation; 2, the Cherem, anathema or curse; and, 3, Schammatha, or exposing him to Divine vengeance.-Discourse, p. 10.

1 Numbers xii. 14; the LXX. render ȧpwpio0nrw Eπтà nμéρas. Ad hoc exemplum instituti apoptoμoì à Synagoga, et inter Christianos ab Ecclesiâ. Grotius in

loc.