taken towards the revision and amendment of the laws respecting oaths; and though ultimately the Oath of Supremacy must, in the course of such measures, come under consideration, yet in dealing with it the Legislature would experience, it should seem, some apparently insuperable difficulties. For how is the evil of the wording of the Oath to be remedied? How can it be accommodated to the actual state of our civil polity, as now constituted, without compromising the Royal Supremacy; and without omitting to protest against, nay, without virtually sanctioning the anti-christian usurpations of the Church of Rome over the Churches of her own communion, and likewise the Pope's known claims over all other Churches, as "the Vicar of Christ upon earth ?" The question is doubtless partly political, and it appertains to the King's majesty, and the two Houses of Parliament, to settle it as far as it affects the prerogative, and other temporal interests. But who could so properly give an opinion concerning the religious part of the question, as the Church of England, assembled in her great Councils? Who could in

this view so advisedly present petitions or addresses to the Monarch and the Legislature? What mere secular power could correct the Ordination Service, in which the Oath occurs?

I

To what tribunal can this be referred, but that of our spiritual Rulers and the convened representatives of the Clergy? Who but they are competent, as well by the national constitution as by scripture itself, to decide, for the Church, whether the Papal apostasy, and its spiritual invasions of the Saviour's authority, are really abated now-a-days; and whether a tacit consent to them in any form can be suffered to slip in among Protestants, without betraying the incommunicable sovereignty of Christ over his universal Church; and, lastly, in what duly-balanced expressions the Oath might be taken uprightly in the sight of God, and at the same time the protest against those anti-christian claims be maintained inviolate? In short, who can so properly contribute by suggestions or counsels, according to the recommendation of the high legal authority above quoted, "to simplify the terms of the oath," in a manner satisfactory on all sides to the consciences of men, as a well-conducted CONVOCATION?

CHAPTER VIII.

The Church's own Consultations, a principal mean of suggesting remedies for statistical defects, and for defects in theological educa

tion.

It deserves serious consideration, whether, in these times of unusual danger to religion and its ministers, it would not be fair to allow the Clergy opportunities of self-vindication in their own solemn Church-synod. There they might, of their own accord, suggest improvements in the administration of our admirable Churchpolity; there they might in so doing, (and by divine grace we hope they would,) manifest collectively in their proceedings a disinterestedness and integrity, commensurate both to their own sacred obligations, and to the perils of the present crisis.

One of the present symptoms of distemperature in people's minds is the habit, so freely in

dulged by the worst and often by apparently the best, of inveighing against all affluence, especially among the ministers of Christ, as essentially sinful. But what degree of property constitutes affluence? And at what point of this scheme of censure will you stop short of the extreme of counting all property essentially sinful? If you urge the example of our Saviour, how can you escape the obligation of voluntary poverty? But are there not instances in his Gospel of rich men who are called upon to be "ready to give, glad to distribute ?"-The plain state of the case, as far as it concerns the Clergy, is this. Our pious ancestors placed the higher orders of the Ministry on a level, as to station, with the higher orders of the State. And are men of rank and property, who need holy restraints more than others, to be alone left without ministers, their equals in outward station, whose solemn duty it is to exemplify to them, in their own class of life, the self-mortified enjoyments, and munificent alms, and ample missionary gifts, and other abundant religious charities, known and unknown by man, which constitute the appropriate, the peculiar task and privilege of riches? The highest exercise of virtue, indeed, is to be seen in meekly enduring, like our blessed Saviour, the greatest privations and sufferings from the hand of GOD. But to be humble and self-denying in the

midst of his gifts of plenty, is as really a gospel grace as to be resigned to his will in tribulation and want. Would to GOD that all whom He prospers, whether ministers or laymen, were led to ponder Bishop Burnett's charge and testimony, as on his death-bed, "to his brethren and successors in the Episcopal office."—" I wish," says he, "the pomp of high living, and the keeping high tables, could be quite taken away; it is a great charge, and no very decent one; a great devourer of time; it lets in much promiscuous company, and much vain discourse upon you; even civility may carry you too far in a freedom and familiarity, that will make you look too like the rest of the world. I hope this is a burden to you; it was, indeed, one of the greatest burdens of my life."-" I had not strength to break through that which custom has imposed "I pray God to help you to find a decent way of laying this down."-(His own Life and Times, vol. ii. p. 642, fol. 1734.)—But if some amply provided ministers be self-indulgent, our bitter railing, and keenness, among any of us, to equalise for them by main force their property, if we could,-what is it but the hidden love of riches harboured by ourselves, the seminal principle of dissoluteness lurking in our own

hearts?