others they should forget themselves; lest they should lose the spirit of piety themselves, while they were endeavouring to fix it in others. Prosper, O God, the good thoughts, the good purposes, which Thou Thyself shalt inspire. I acknowledge Thy goodness, which has raised me above my brethren, and appointed me a Successor to Thy Apostles. O may I ever act agreeably to this character. May I never profane a character so holy and so divine, lest God should pour down his vengeance upon my ungrateful heart. Pardon me wherein soever I have been wanting in the several duties of my calling; and give me grace to be more careful for the time to come. Amen. How am I bound to adore Thy goodness, my great Master! Thou hast set me in office amongst the chief of Thy servants; but I will, for Thy sake, make myself the servant of the meanest of Thy servants. By me Thou communicatest Thy grace in the Sacrament; by me Thou teachest Thy people the truth; by my hands Thou adoptest them Thy children in baptism, feedest them with Thy body, comfortest them in affliction, armest them against the fear of death, and fittest them for a blessed eternity..... Give me such holy dispositions of soul, whenever I approach Thine altar, as may in some measure be proportionable to the holiness of the work I am about, of presenting the prayers of the faithful, of offering a spiritual sacrifice to God, in order to convey the body and blood of Jesus Christ, the true bread of life to all His members. Give me, when I commemorate the same sacrifice that Jesus Christ once offered, give me the same intentions that He had, to satisfy the justice of God, to acknowledge His mercies, and to pay all that debt which a creature owes to his Creator. None can do this effectually but Jesus Christ; Him, therefore, we present to God, in this Holy Sacrament... ....... I am a sinner, and yet I am appointed to offer up prayers for others. It is to the great God to whom I offer these prayers. To me the Church, the spouse of Christ, intrusts her desires, her interests, her necessities, and her thanks. What a trust is this! O may I never betray it! may I never obstruct Thy mercies to Thy Church by a formal service. Let me ever speak to God, and from God, with attention, with love, with respect, with fear, with purity of heart, and with unpolluted lips. Amen.... Reflect seriously what a dreadful account you have to give, if you say, "Peace, peace, when there is no peace;" or if you give the children's bread to dogs, that is, admit to the Lord's Table those that are unworthy of such a favour.... Endeavour to leave some impression of piety upon the minds of those with whom you converse. Jesus Christ did so always. Make no distinction betwixt the rich and poor, as to converse with one, and not with the other..... As to the disposal of the Church's revenues, the suggestions of avarice, of vanity, of pleasure, and of the world, ought not to govern me. I am only a steward, not a proprietor, and should be as criminal as those laymen that invade them, if I convert them to lay and secular uses; which side of sacrilege, very probably, took its rise from others observing the Church's revenues put to secular uses...... He, and especially that Minister, "that hath not the spirit of Christ, is none of His." He ought to perform all his duties in Christ's name, by His authority and power; and offer all to God through Him. Adore Jesus Christ as preaching, praying, absolving, and comforting, by you His Minister..... "The Priest's lips should keep knowledge." Whence this knowledge, but from the Holy Scriptures, which alone makes us sound in doctrine, and able to convince gainsayers. . . . . Men read the Gospel rather as judges than as disciples, which is the rise of all errors both in life and doctrine..... ... Purity of soul and body is a most necessary qualification in a Minister of Jesus Christ. To offer the prayers of the faithful to God with polluted lips, to break the bread of life with unclean hands, to receive that bread into a soul defiled with unchaste thoughts, how dreadfully provoking must it needs be. A blindness of spirit, an alienation from divine things, an incapacity to receive them, are the necessary effects of impurity...... Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. A Priest, who, in the exercise of his function, has an eye to the grandeur, repute, esteem of great men, presumptuous autho rity over the consciences of others, worldly advantages, &c. perverts the design of the Ministry. I Grant, O Lord, that I may regard nothing but Thy glory, that may a act and live for Thee alone, that my zeal for Thy glory, and the good of souls, may be the chief motive of all my actions. Amen. OXFORD, The Feast of St. Stephen. These Tracts are published Monthly, and sold at the price of 2d. for each sheet, or 7s. for 50 copies. LONDON: PRINTED FOR J. G. & F. RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD, AND WATERLOO PLACE. 1835. GILBERT & RIVINGTON, Printers, St. John's Square, London. TRACTS FOR THE TIMES. ON DISSENT WITHOUT REASON IN CONSCIENCE. "As one mass doth contain the good ore and base alloy; as one floor the corn and the chaff; as one field the wheat and the tares; as one net the choice fish and the refuse; as one fold the sheep and the goats; as one tree the living and dry branches; so doth the Visible Church enfold the true universal Church, called the Church mystical and invisible. And for this reason, and because presumptively every member of the Visible Church doth pass for a member of the invisible, (the time of distinction and separation being not yet come,) because this Visible Church, in its profession of truth, in its sacrifices of devotion, in its practice of service and duty of GOD, doth communicate with the invisible, therefore commonly the titles and attributes of one are imparted to the other."-Altered from Barrow on the Unity of the Church, vol. vii. p. 631. It is often asked, "Why should not a man attend both the Church and Meeting, if he derives benefit from both ?" And again, "Why should not a man be a Dissenter, though he have nothing particular to object against the Church, if he is not violent in his opposition to the Church? The following remarks, in answer to these questions, were written by a clergyman for the use of his parishioners. Many of you have made remarks to me on the subject of Dissent, when I have been visiting you in your cottages; and the substance of these remarks has apparently been, that it was of very little importance, whether a man belonged to the Church or dissented from it, because the difference is after all but small between Churchmen and Dissenters. You have thus spoken (as it would seem) sometimes with a view of drawing out my opinions, sometimes as a sort of defence or apology for your own, sometimes in order to invite an argument. I have purposely in my answers abstained from entering into the question, and confined myself to saying simply that I did not think as you did upon the matter. It would by no means have fallen in with the purpose for which I visited you on first coming to the parish, to have entered into any lengthened reasonings. My object in calling was to express my good-will towards you, and therefore to seek our points of agreement, and not our points of difference. At the same time you are not to suppose that I at all wish to conceal my sentiments, and it is because some of you may perhaps have an erroneous impression of what my opinion is on this subject that I now write this. My observations will be as short as I can well make them. I shall avoid as much as possible any thing like controversy, or any expressions of opinion as to the relative merits of this or that form of dissent, or any discussion of the particular Articles of Faith (so far as there may be said to be such at all) among the several persuasions around us.—Bear in mind, my object is to show you that Dissent is a sin. But before I proceed further I must make two observations, which I wish you to keep in mind, while you read these rémarks, because they will remove some difficulty, which you might otherwise feel in what follows. 1. I allow there may be conscientious Dissenters, nay, I hope in charity, there are many ;—but by a conscientious Dissenter I mean a man who separates himself from the Church, because he thinks he finds something in her doctrines or discipline so far contrary to scriptural truth, and the precepts of the Gospel, that by adhering to her, he would be putting an obstacle in the way of his own salvation. Other persons may think themselves conscientious Dissenters who do not go nearly so far in their condemnation of the doctrines or practice of the Church: nay, so far from it, that they would defend their Dissent upon the ground that there is no material difference between the system and teaching in the one, and the system and teaching in the other. But such men I do not call conscientious Dissenters, but careless or weak-minded persons, who cannot have thought much or seriously upon the subject, and who can hardly have read with attention what is to be found in the New Testament respecting the sin of |