rack for confcience. You are complained of for requiring the minifters of other proteftant churches to be re-ordained, when they come among you, while you admit others, ordained by popish prelates, to exercife their miniftry without re-ordination. Your bishops are blamed for their rigid attachment to offenfive ceremonies, for which they contend tanquam pro aris et focis. In the name of God, my Lord, endeavour to remove these grounds of complaint, if they be true; or, if they be not, clear yourselves, and let all Europe know, that there is nothing, which the glory of God, and the good of his church require of you, that you are not ready to do; for, allow me to tell you, it is not enough for your juftification to affirm, that your own miniftry is lawful, and that they, who separate from you, are guilty of fchifm; you must go on, and prove that you give no caufe, no pretext for feparation-that on the contrary you do all in your power to prevent it-and that, far from chafing and irritating people's minds, you endeavour by all gentle methods to conciliate them. I beg pardon, my Lord, if I have given too freely into the emotions of my own zeal, &c." The cafe, then, is this. Epifcopalians, not being able to maintain their caufe by argument, endeavoured to do it by majority of votes. In order to procure thefe, they fent a false state of the cafe to the French proteftants. The French, as foon as they understood the true ftate of the cafe, complained of having been treated with duplicity, aud declared against the bishops, and against the caufe, which they were endeavouring to support. Had Mr. Claude lived a hundred years longer, he would have feen now and then a Burnet and a Hoadley making a few feeble efforts to relieve confcience: but generally fufpected, often abused, and always carried along the ftream by a fucceffion of Stillingfleets and Comptons. He would have feen a modeft petition for freedom from penal laws, unaccompanied with any request for eftablifhment, incorporation, preferment, or even the crumbs that fall from rectorial tables, rejected by English bishops. He would have been convinced, that it would be doing fuch men too much honour ever hereafter to afk their votes in favour of religious liberty, either in the daftardly fawning ftyle of free and candid difquifitions, or in the ner vous language of petitioning non-conformists, habituated to free inquiry at home, and frankness of expreffion abroad. In a word, he would have been more non-conformable than ever; he would have laid with one of old, (7) I wILL WALK AT LIBERTY, FOR I SEEK THY PRECEPTS, I WILL SPEAK OF THY TESTIMONIES ALSO BEFORE KINGS, AND WILL NOT BE ASHAMED. REMOVE FROM ME THE WAY OF LYING, AND GRACIOUSLY GRANT ME THY LAW! (7) Pfal. cxix. 45. 46. 29. Contents Contents of the First Volume. CHA P. I. On the Choice of Texts. - Parts of a Sermon five → Muft not contain too little matter nor too much The end of preaching Whether Proteftants fhould preach on Romish feftivals What fubjects are proper for ftated days of publick worship for occafional days for ordination-days for fermons in ftrange churches As for prophecies CHA P. IV. Of DIVISION. A text fhould not be divided into Examples Page many parts Two forts of divifion Divifion of the Sermon is proper in general for obfcure fubjects 43 for texts taken from difputes for conclufions of long dif for quoted texts for texts treated of in differ ent views Divifion of the text after the or der of the words How to divide a text in form Some texts divide themselves Nothing must be put in the firft branch of divifion, that suppo fes a knowledge of the fecond Divilion of fubject and attribute Eph. i. 3. Heb. x. 10. Heb. x. 10. Phil. ii. 13. 54 61 62 |