Communion of Saints, while united to CHRIST, our SAVIOUR, through the blessed Eucharist, we are by HIM united with GOD. Let us avoid all acts and thoughts that may distract our attention from the things unseen and eternal; and let our love to our GOD overflow in beneficence to our fellow-creatures, that men, seeing our good works, may understand that our's is a religion of faith, and hope, and charity, of love, and peace, and joy. Let us dedicate to the LORD the LORD's Day, and the happiness which shall result from so doing will not be earthly and temporal; it will bear the stamp of Heaven, and abide for ever! SERMON XI. MODERATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. PROVERBS IV. 25-27. "Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil.” THESE words may with great propriety be addressed, as an exhortation, to the members of the Church of England. Ever since the Reformation it has been the glory of the English branch of the Catholic Church that she has stood, unmoved, in the centre between two vicious extremes: the extreme, on the one hand, of Catholicism, which is Popery, and the extreme of Protestantism, on the other hand, which we will speak of as UltraProtestantism1. This is the Providential position of our Church; and it is necessary, very frequently, to remind the members of the English Church that such is the case, because such a situation, although in some respects advantageous, is by no means a satisfactory one. It is unpleasant to be so placed as to be exposed to a constant fire from either side. It has been the wisdom of the Church of England, ever since the first compiling of her public Liturgy; to keep the mean between the two extremes."-Preface to Book of Common Prayer. "The "Tis a hard condition," says Archbishop Laud. Church of England professeth the ancient Catholic faith, and yet the Romanist condemns her of novelty in her doctrine; she practiseth Church Government as it hath been in use in all ages and places where the Church of Christ hath taken any rooting both in and ever since the Apostles' times, and yet the Separatist condemns her for Anti-Christianism for her discipline. The plain truth is, she is between these two factions as between two millstones; * and it is very remarkable that, while both these press hard upon the Church of England, both of them cry out upon persecution." Laud against Fisher, Pref. Dr. Hammond, in his Preface to the View of the Directory, makes a similar remark, and says that the Church has ever been opposed by "Persecutors on both extreme parts: the assertors of Papacy on the one side, and the Consistory on the other; the one accusing it of schism, the other of compliance; the one of departing from the Church of Rome, the other of remaining with it. Like the poor Greek Church, our fellow-martyr, devoured by the Turk for too much Christian profession, and damned by the Pope for too little, it being the dictate of natural reason in Aristotle, that the middle virtue is infallibly known by this, that it is accused of either extreme as guilty of the other." So was it in the reign of Charles the First, so is it now. By Protestants we are reviled, because we are not sufficiently Protestant; by Romanists, because we are not, as they think, sufficiently Catholic ; and although this censure of the two extremes be, in fact, a eulogy, still it is natural that there should be a disposition on the part of many to shift their position, and to conciliate either the one side or the other as men happen to be inclined to one or other of the two extremes by which we are opposed. There is a disinclination to look right on, and to let their eyelids look straight before them; there is a desire to turn either to the right hand or to the left, men being forgetful that on either side there is evil. I do not attribute this inclination to conciliate those who are in that extreme, which we happen to regard with the greater favor, by making concessions to them either great or small, to any unworthy motive; although, without doubt, party motives do sometimes operate, and concession is proposed on the one side or on the other, to strengthen our hands, if the opponent in the opposite extreme be unusually powerful; but I trace it, in men of earnest minds and kind tempers, to the misapplication of one of the most pure, most charitable, most truly Christian aspirations of the human heart. Where, indeed, is the heart renewed by Divine Grace, in which there does not exist a yearning, a longing after unity and union with all who love the LORD JESUS CHRIST, whether he be Ultra-Protestant or Papist? Who does not look back with admiration to the time when Christian hearts were one, one in feeling, one in principle, one in doctrine, one in discipline, one in brotherly love, one in spirit, all members of one and the self-same body?1 How it gladdens the heart to read of the friendly intercourse which existed, in early times, between the several branches of the Church; when the Priest of Africa, travelling with commendatory letters from his Bishop, was sure of a brotherly reception in Asia, in Europe, even in Britain itself! When, wherever he went, if not asked to preach, he was honored by being requested to do what was then considered the highest of all earthly honors, to consecrate the Eucharist! How do we dwell upon that active correspondence between Patriarchs and metropolitans, whereby heresy was stifled at its commencement, and the truth as it is in JESUS confirmed, by the testimony and sentence of the universal Church! Among the dearest of our hopes for the Church universal, what hope is more fondly cherished than this, that it may be 1 Ephes. iv. 4. Col. iii. 15. Romans xii. 5. 1 Cor. xii. 4, 12. |