worse a bad life. An irreligious, or unholy life ill becomes any who name the name of Christ; but most of all does it deform the character of one who clothes himself in the ministerial garb. A minister without piety is a monster in the church of God. His ugliness deters those who would approach the holy place so much, that all the exhortations which he gives them to enter thither, are to no purpose.-"He resembles those horrid shapes which the poets feign to have stood at the entrance of Elysium. It required uncommon resolution in any person to pass by them, and force his way into the abodes of the blessed."*

gen

The canonical government of the church in this country, is constructed upon the simple republican principle which pervades all our civil institutions.-Each state or diocess is secured in its state sovereignty, and has power to make such laws as are not incompatible with the eral constitution. An annual convention is usually held in each state or diocess, consisting of the regular clergy belonging to the same, and a lay deputy from every parish that chooses to send such a representative. Each state or diocesan convention has the right to elect four of the clerical, and four of the laical order, to represent it in the general convention which holds its session triennially. The general convention consists of two houses, and is constituted by these clerical and lay deputies thus elected, who form one branch, and by all the Bishops of the church who compose the other. A vote of both houses is necessary to the enactment of a law, and the law, when thus passed, is binding on every state or diocess that has acceded to the constitution. The frame of government which distinguishes the church has now attained to that stability and strength, and has settled into that happy balance of power and liberty which not even its friends hoped for, but which are substantiated by the evidence of many years of remarkable unity and expanding prosperity. From the reports handed in at

*See Smith's Lectures on the nature and end of the sacred office, a book which ought to be in the hands and heart of every clergyman.

the general convention of 1820, it appears that she continues to extend herself into the new states, as well as in those in which she has long been planted. May peace long continue to dwell within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces!

CHAPTER III.

On the Nature of the Church and of the Christian Ministry.

"THE visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the word of God is faithfully preached, and the sacraments duly administered according to Christ's ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same."*

It is a society, and every society is distinguished from the general mass of the community by its order and goernment. To the establishment of order and government, a regular appointment of chosen men to the administration of particular offices is essential.

This mode of reasoning as far as temporal affairs is concerned, we readily admit. Let it be applied to the case of the church, considered as a society, formed by God himself, under a particular government, calculated to promote the ends of its institutions; and we may conclude in one case as in the other, that personal qualifications furnish no dispensation for an outward appointment to an office of trust. "No man's gifts or qualities can make him a minister of holy things, unless ordination do give him the power."† Personal qualification in the minister is, indeed requisite to the proper discharge of the sacred office: but as this is a criterion which may sometimes deceive, and which in its nature is changeable and precarious, it is necessary for the effectual administration of the office, that a divine authority, and a blessing consequent upon that authority, independent of any personal qualification, should be

*Article xix.

Hooker's Eccles. Polity, Book v. Sect. 78.

inherent in the office itself. Thus the divine confirmation of the ministerial act is secured, and made to depend not on the personal qualification, but on the appointment of God: And thus the eye of the faithful is directed to the proper object, and God, not man, receives the glory. But without an external commission, and the delegation to some specific authority to confer it, according to Christ's appointment, how could we know whether we have a valid ministry or not? If any one may rise up in the church, and claim the power of exercising, or bestowing, this commission, merely by virtue of his being more holy than others, what limit can be assigned to the operation of the principle, and to the confusion that must ensue? Hundreds in the congregation, as well as one, may claim this right, and thus our Jerusalem whose characteristic it is, that she is as a city at unity with herself, would resemble a Babel, in which no one would understand his neigh bour. This is the crime," as the pious and eloquent Bishop Horne remarks, "for which the leprosy once rose up in the forehead of a monarch, and Korah and his company, holy as they thought themselves to be, went down alive into the pit."

It is manifest from the sacred scriptures, that of old, God had a visible church on earth, administered by men set apart for that office by peculiar ceremonies, and ac cording to an established and prescribed order; and that the blessings of salvation were promised only to those who had a covenant relation to, and connexion with, this visible church. The peculiar rite of initia tion into its bosom, and the particular form of its ministry, were matters of explicit command and direction from God. The mode of initiation into the christian church, and the indispensable necessity of its initiation are as clearly revealed in the New Testament, as the former are in the old; and as it regards the great principle upon which the christian ministry is organized, the apostle declares, that "no man has a right to take this honour upon himself, but he that is called of God as was Aaron""* *Heb. v. 4.

It becomes, therefore, an important inquiry, what is that mode of administration which was established by our Lord and his apostles, and to which "pertain the adop tion, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises." "!

The preface to the ordinal in our book of common prayer, has the following declaration:-"It is evident unto all men, diligently reading holy scripture and an cient authors, that from the Apostles' time there have been three orders of ministers in Christ's church-Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.-Which offices were evermore had in such reverend estimation, that no man might presume to execute any of them, except he were first called, tried and examined, and known to have such qualities as are requisite, for the same; and also by public prayer, with imposition of hands, were approved and admitted thereunto by lawful authority." This, being the sober and deliberate declaration of wise and good men who sealed their doctrines with their blood, cannot be supposed to have been made on siight grounds. The considerations which support the doctrine here laid down by our reformers could not be given at length in a work like the present. But it may not be unacceptable to those who have had no opportunity of examining the subject, to be put in possession of a few of the reasons which might be adduced in favour of this ресиliarity in our ecclesiastical system.

I. On analogies we depend only for illustration of argument and confirmation of proofs. We do not maintain, that, because there were three orders in the Jewish priesthood, there must, of necessity, be three in the christian. It is certain, however, that there is an intimate connexion between the two dispensations, and a strong resemblance between the positive institutions of the former, which, in fact, were, for the most part, typical, and those of the latter. We find, for instance, the church founded on the twelve apostles, answering to the congregation of Israel-divided into twelve tribes under the twelve patriarchs,-the seventy disciples appointed by Christ, answering to the seventy