past generations of love and attachment to the faith for which they shall be allowed to suffer. It will assist in establishing their conviction, that they cling to no cunningly devised fables, but that they endure the "fight of afflictions" for the same principles, the same truths, and the same assurances, which the departed excellent of the earth had revered. It will nerve their courage and sustain their firmness, to know that those who went before them had sifted and examined the Church's pretensions, and by recorded testimony, by the more silent witnesses of faith and holiness, by (if need were) endurance of tribulation, set to their seal that all its promises were true. It is this which holy men of every age have done-borne this testimony, that the Church has been "perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;" assailed, like Jerusalem, by many a foe, but emerged unscathed from the conflict. Patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, have raised and sustained and prolonged the same song of declaration. And in our own land the same evidence has been heard amid the flames of Smithfield; and the martyrs of England have ascended from the sufferings of time to the raptures of eternity, leaving with their last breath their avowal upon record, that all the principles and hopes of the Church were based upon truth; and that, though men might rage, and the powers of darkness combine

to cast her down, the gates of hell never had been, and never would be allowed to prevail against her.

Such, then, my brethren, are the truths advanced by our text. It has shewn to us the character of the Church of Jesus, and the duty of her members in reference to her.

Independent of the general importance of the subject I have brought before you, I have been influenced by special considerations in calling your attention to the text we have just examined. We, if we all belong not to the spiritual Church of the firstborn, belong to the Church visible upon earth, and are members of one of its most distinguished departments—a department venerable from its antiquity, revered for its faithfulness, admired even by its enemies for the orthodoxy of its opinions, and standing deservedly high in the esteem of the world on account of the men of God it has formed and sent forth. The Church of England is a pillar and ground of the truth. She has passed through trials as severe and varied as ever probed the integrity and faith of a religious community; and in the hottest days of persecution she has been tried, and not found wanting. She has been a nursery of the learning and talents which have done good service, not to herself only, but to the cause of general Christianity. Yet all these her claims upon Christians have not shielded her from obloquy and unprovoked assault.

Things have been laid to her charge which she knew not; and, for the most part, she has held her peace and spoken nothing. But this has been construed into the silence of conscious guilt; and therefore the time seems to me to have arrived, for making her congregations understand that she can stand fearlessly on her defence, and that in all her peculiarities she is built and based upon the truth of God. It is this which I propose to establish before you, my brethren, the congregation to which, in the providence of my God, I am called to minister. And in order to discharge, as effectually as I may, the duty which (from a consciousness of its necessity) I have imposed upon myself, I propose, with the Spirit's assistance, to dwell for three succeeding sabbaths upon the most prominent of the Church's peculiarities. The order I prescribe to myself is this: to consider, 1st, The EPISCOPACY; 2dly, The LITURGY, and, 3dly, The CEREMONIES of the Church of England; making each of these the distinct subject of a separate discourse. And in treating upon each of these important topics, I trust to be enabled to demonstrate that our Church is formed and constructed on most sure warrantry of Scripture. We invite your attention, my brethren, we invite the attention of all, to the proofs which shall be brought forward. Our boast is this, that we have nothing to conceal, that we dread no scrutiny, we shrink from

no dissection of our Zion. We challenge investigation; we hold out the same language to doubting friends, and to concealed or open detractors : "Go round about our Zion: tell ye her towers: mark well her bulwarks, consider her palaces." We say to all, Try us, whether we be of the faith."

SERMON II.

EPISCOPACY.

2 TIMOTHY III. 1.

IF ANY MAN DESIRETH THE OFFICE OF A BISHOP, HE DESIRETH A GOOD WORK.

THERE are few sentiments of the scriptures of truth which will come home with more power to the Christian's spirit, or meet with a readier response from his heart, than that advanced in the memorable expression of David, "Behold, how good and pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." In a world so convulsed as ours, so filled with the elements of disorder, and distracted by the warfare of the most jarring materials, it is sweet to hear of the very name of unity. The thought of it is gladdening and refreshing to the mind. It carries us back in the reveries of recollection to those happier seasons of the world, when its tenants were harmonious, because they were sinless; and it hurries us forward in contemplation to those blessed times when the disorders of earth shall cease; when