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SURVEY OF THE PLATFORM

OF THE

CHRISTIAN CHURCH,

EXHIBITED IN THE SCRIPTURES

APPLIED TO ITS

ACTUAL CIRCUMSTANCES AND CONDITION,

With suggestions for its

CONSOLIDATION AND ENLARGEMENT;

COMPRISING

THE SUBSTANCE OF AN ESSAY

ON THE DIVINE ORIGIN AND SUCCESSION OF THE CHRISTIAN

PRIESTHOOD;

ON ITS NECESSITY AS A DIVINE APPOINTMENT;

AND

ON THE RELATION WHICH IT BEARS TO THE JEWISH PRIESTHOOD;

To which was adjudged

A PREMIUM OF FIFTY POUNDS,

BY

The Society for promoting Christian Knowledge and Church Union
in the Diocese of St. David's.

BY

HECTOR DAVIES MORGAN, M. A.
MINISTER OF CASTLE HEDINGHAM, ESSEX.

OXFORD,

PRINTED FOR J. PARKER;

AND F. C. AND J. RIVINGTON, AND J. HATCHARD, LONDON.

BY W. BAXTER, OXFORD.

1816.

011

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE period, which was limited for the production of the Essay, of which the substance is comprised in the following Survey, allowed no leisure for elaborate composition or extensive research. The subject was familiar to the Author, and he seized the opportunity of collecting from the Scriptures only a view of the constitution of the Christian Church, a design, which he had often meditated, but for which he had made no preparation, and which he proposed to execute in a very different form.

Since the premium was adjudged, he has availed himself of the advice of friends, on whose judgment he places the strongest reliance, and for whose assistance he returns his sincerest thanks. The original composition has been revised and considerably enlarged; exceptions have been anticipated and repelled, and the argument has been strengthened by a reference to the best writers on Ecclesiastical polity. The order of the first and second

parts of the proposed thesis has been inverted, to render the scriptural view of the subject more simple and uninterrupted; a new title descriptive of the method of the discussion has been adopted; and the work has been divided into Sections, to each of which is prefixed the substance of the argument which it contains. A more detailed Analysis supplies the place of the Table of Contents. References to the texts of Scripture, on which the argument is founded, are subjoined at the foot of the page; and the authorities of eminent divines are alleged in the notes, which comprehend such illustrations and remarks, as, though not irrelevant, would interrupt the series of the discourse. For all these alterations and additions the Author alone is responsible, and he is desirous of discharging the Committee, by whom the premium was adjudged, of all participation in any erroneous or offensive sentiment, which the work in its present state may be found to contain.

It would be ungrateful to dismiss the following sheets, without apprising the reader, that the premium, which called forth the original Essay, was the donation of the Right Honourable LORD KENYON; a nobleman whose constancy in doing good, whose intimate acquaintance with matters of ecclesias

tical polity, and whose cordial zeal in every thing which concerns the welfare of the Church of England, are such as become the pupil of WILLIAM JONES of Nayland.

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