high station of the prophets in the primitive church, you, who are this day to be admitted to a share in that sacred office, are admonished of the diligence with which we must devote ourselves to study, and of the assiduity which we must use in prayer, to acquit ourselves of the duties of our calling. The laity are admonished of the folly and the danger of deserting the ministry of those who have been rightly separated to that holy service, in the vain hope of edifying under their instruction, who can. not be absolved of the crime of schism upon any better plea than that of ignorance. To allege the apostles as instances of illiterate preachers, is of all fallacies the grossest. Originally, perhaps, they were men of little learning ---fishermen-tent-makers-excisemen; but when they began to preach, they no longer were illiterate; they were rendered learned in an instant, without previous study of their own, by miracle. The gifts, which we find placed by an apostle himself at the head of their qualifications, were evidently analogous to the advantages of education. Whatever their previous character had been, the aposttles, when they became preachers, became learned. They were of all preachers the most learned. It is, therefore, by proficiency in learning, accompanied with an unreserved submission of the understanding to the revealed word, but it is by learning, not by the want or the neglect of it, that any modern teacher may attain to some distant resemblance of those inspired messengers of God. APPENDIX TO SERMON XIV. 1 CORINTHIANS xii. 8, 9, 10. THE word of wisdom,—the talent of arguing, from the natural principles of reason, for the conversion of philosophical infidels. The word of knowledge, the talent of holding learned arguments from the ancient prophecies, and the writings of the Old Testament, for the conversion of Jewish infidels. Faith, a depth and accuracy of understanding, in the general scheme of the Christian revelation, for the improvement and edification of believers. The gifts of healing, and the working of miracles for the purpose of making new converts, and displaying the extent of the power of Christ. Prophecy, or the talent of foreseeing future events,--for the purpose of providing against the calamities, whether worldly or spiritual, that might threaten particular churches, such as famines, pestilence, wars, persecutions, heresies. Discerning of spirits,--for the better government of the church; and the gift of tongues, and the interpretation of tongues, which seem to have been very generally dispersed,--that every Christian might be qualified to argue with the learned Jews in the synagogues, from the original Scriptures, especially when the Jew thought proper to appeal from the Greek of the Septuagint to the Hebrew text: In these very remarkable passages, the apostle reckons up nine distinct gifts of the Holy Spirit, all of the extraordinary kind. In the 28th verse, he enumerates just as many ecclesiastical offices. The gifts and the offices, taken in the order in which they are mentioned, seem to correspond. GIFTS. OFFICES. 1. The word of wisdom, 2. The word of knowledge, 3. Faith, Apostles. Scriptures of the Old Testa ment. such 6. Prophecies , or predictions, { Mariky Tychicus, Onesimus, &c. 7. Dircerning of Spirits, Governments-Κυβερνησεις. ways. The fourth and fifth gifts, miracles and healing, seem to have changed places in the 9th and 10th verses. Miracles, I think, must take place as the genus, and healing must rank below it, as the species. Accordingly, in the 28th verse, miracles, or powers, are mentioned before healings. With this slight alteration, the list of gifts in the 8th, 9th and 10th verses, seems to answer exactly to the list of offices in the 28th : only, it is to be sup.. posed, that as all inferior offices are included in the superior, so all the higher and rarer gifts contain the lower and more common. Dr. Lightfoot, if I mistake not, hath remarked this parallelism of gifts and offices, in his Hore Hebraicæ. END OF VOL. I. BY SAMUEL HORSLEY, LL.D. F.R.S. F. A.S. LATE LORD BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH. VOL. II. New-York: PRINTED AND SOLD BY T. AND J. SWORDS, No. 160 Pearl-Street. 1811. |