POSTSCRIPT TO THE CLERGY.,

THE Consideration of writing to my brethren the Clergy, on a subject with which every minister of the Church is, from his profession, supposed to be acquainted, has more than once stopped my pen. But circumstances and situation may qualify one minister to speak more fully upon some particular subject than another, without his laying claim to any general superiority in professional knowledge. It having been the will of Divine Providence to

fix my residence in a place which has given me continued opportunities of lamenting the effects produced by a separation from the communion of the Christian Church, it is to be expected, that my thoughts should occasionally have been employed upon this subject. Such of my brethren as are placed in similar situations, may perhaps be obliged to me for bringing into one collected point of view the result of my reflections upon it.

And though the office assumed by me upon this occasion is not more honourable than that of the Gibeonites, who were but hewers of wood and

drawers of water for the service of the tabernacle, yet if, by collecting good and sound materials, I shall prove the instrument of conveying useful information upon a subject now as little understood as it is generally neglected, I shall hope that the merit of the design will be suffered to atone for the imperfection of its execution. I

To those who are advanced, and consequently (it may be supposed) well informed in their profession, these papers are not addressed; for to them nothing new can be said upon this subject; nothing, that perhaps might not be better said by themselves. But to those of my brethren who are not in the same state of advancement; who are unpossessed of the leisure or advantages necessary to the proper study of their profession, it may be a convenience to have information, which has been derived from various quarters, placed before them in some regular and connected form. forestall their judgment, I feel myself justified in saying upon this occasion, that if I have been deceived in the subject before me, I have been deceived with what I considered to be the best means of information in my hand, and the sincerest intention in my mind of promoting the Christian cause. Should the ground upon which I have trodden upon this occasion be deemed unsound, it appears to me, that there must be an end to all authority on subjects of this nature.

Without wishing to

From the general tendency of the human mind to extremes, the blind credulity of one age often leads to unbounded scepticism in another. But the implicit faith of the monk, who, as the story

goes, when Satan would have drawn him into heresy, by asking him what he believed upon a certain point, answered," Id credo quod credit ecclesia," and to the subjoined question, "Quod credit ecclesia?" cautiously replied, “Id quod ego credo," is not more contemptible than the profane licentiousness of a Paine, who would make his senses the only standard of his belief.

We do not disclaim private judgment, much less do we admit the infallibility of the Church. But if we have not discretion in these days to draw the line between an implicit obedience to authority, and an utter contempt of it, the experience of past ages seems to have been thrown away, and reason to have been given us for very little purpose.

"Call no man your father upon the earth, for one your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters; for one is your Master, even Christ;" is a text that has not unfrequently been strained beyond its original meaning. It was addressed by our Saviour to his hearers, with the view of guarding them against the extravagant superiority assumed by the rabbies over the disciples, and the blind submission with which their doctrines were received. So far as it applies to a similar subject, either to an assumed superiority in the teacher, who would exercise lordship God's heritage," or to the blind submission of the disciple, who makes his faith in man, rather than in the Divine word, the standard of his religious persuasion, so far it contains most wholesome instruction to religionists of every age.

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But when the idea, founded on this text, is carried to an extent to justify disobedience to the authority of the Church, upon what ground soever it may be maintained; such a wild principle of conduct being totally inconsistent with the object of a regular society, may be determined not to be within the meaning of a precept, delivered by the founder of that society, to those who were to become the members, of it.

The difficulty in this case has always been to establish the exact line of conduct, which will secure that government, without which the Church, as a society, cannot subsist; and that liberty to the members of it, necessary to free them from all usurped tyranny over their consciences. Men, according to the different objects which they have in view, and the ideas which they have formed upon the subject from the different lights in which it has been seen, have been continually drawing this line too much either to the one side or the other of that golden mean, in which reason, founded upon revelation, has placed it.

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Gregory Nazianzen, from the consideration of the fallability of synods, and the disputes which too often prevailed in them, spoke of them with a contempt incompatible with the least degree of reverence for their authority. Such writers as Le Clerc and Scaliger will not fail to record his saying. "Si aurem præbeamus viris, quorum alioquin auctoritatem spernere nequaquam possumus, de synodis veteribus loquentibus, nobis magnifica oratione describent αγίας και οικεμενικας συνοδές θεοφόρων. πατέρων συναθροισθεισας ετι τας βασιλειας τε μεγάλε