limits of

of a Church.

It was designed in short that a Church should Extent and have (as our 34th Article expresses it) "autho- the power rity to ordain, change, and abolish ceremonies and rites resting on Man's authority only:" (this, be it observed, including things which may have been enjoined by the Apostles to those among whom they were living, and which, to those persons, had a divine authority; but which are not recorded by the sacred writers as enjoined universally) "so that all things be done to edifying :" but that "as no Church ought to decree anything against Holy Writ, so besides the same ought it not to enforce the belief of anything as necessary to salvation."

joined,

§ 13. And we may also infer very clearly from Things enan attentive and candid survey of the Sacred things exWritings, not only that some things were things left intended to be absolutely enjoined as essential, at large.

and others left to the discretion of the rulers of each Church, but also that some things, again, were absolutely excluded, as inconsistent with the character of a Christian Community.

It is very important therefore, and, to a diligent, and reflective, and unprejudiced reader, not difficult, by observing what the Sacred Writers have omitted, and what they have mentioned, and in what manner they have mentioned each, to form in his mind distinctly the three classes

cluded, and

Points essential, in

just alluded to: viz. 1st, of things essential to compatible, Christianity, and enjoined as universally requisite ; and indiffer- 2dly, those left to the discretion of the governors

ent.

of each Church; and 3dly, those excluded as inconsistent with the character of the Gospelreligion.

These last points are not least deserving of a careful examination; especially on account of the misconceptions relative to them, that have prevailed and still prevail, in a large portion of the Christian World. It would lead me too far from the subject now immediately under consideration, to enter into a full examination of all the features that are to be found in most religions except the Christian, and which might have been expected to appear in that, supposing it of human origin; but which are expressly excluded from it. It may be worth while however to advert to a few of the most remarkable. The Christian Religion, then, arose, be it resucceeded membered, among a People who not only looked by those of for a temporal Deliverer and Prince in their

Temporal sanctions

a future

state.

Messiah, but who had been accustomed to the sanction of temporal rewards and judgments to the divine Law;°-whose Laws, in religious and in secular matters alike, claimed to be an immediate revelation from Heaven-whose civil

See Essay I., 1st Series: "On the Peculiarities," &c. And also Discourse "On National Blessings."

Rulers were regarded as delegates from "the Lord their God, who was their king,” and were enjoined to punish with death, as a revolt from the Supreme Civil Authority,-as a crime of the character of high-treason,-any departure from the prescribed religion. It arose in a Nation regarding themselves as subjects of a "Kingdom of God" that was, emphatically, a kingdom of this world and its most prominent character was its being "a Kingdom not of this world;" it was in all respects the very reverse in respect of the points just mentioned, of what might have been expected, humanly-speaking, from Jewish individuals, and of what was expected by the Jewish Nation; and it may be added, of what many Christians have in every Age laboured to represent and to make it. While the mass of his own People were seeking to "take Jesus by force to make Him a King" (a procedure which has been, virtually, imitated by a large proportion of his professed followers ever since) He Himself and his Apostles, uniformly and sedulously, both in their precepts, and in their conduct, rejected as alien from the character of the Gospel, all employment of secular coercion in behalf of their religion, all encroachment on "the things that be Cæsar's ;" and maintained the purely spiritual character of that "Kingdom of Heaven" which they proclaimed.

+

H

11

Christianity a religion without Sacrifice, Altar or Temple.

On this, every way most important, point, I have treated at large in the first Essay in this volume, and also, in the Essay on Persecution (3d Series), and the Essays on the Dangers to Christianity, (4th Series.)

§ 14. Moreover the Gospel-religion was introduced by men, and among men-whether Jews or Gentiles,-who had never heard of or conceived such a thing as a religion without a Sacrificing Priest, without Altars for Sacrifice,—without Sacrifices themselves,-without either a Temple, or at least some High Place, Grove, or other sacred spot answering to a Temple ;-some place, that is, in which the Deity worshipped was supposed more especially to dwell."

The Apostles preached, for the first time-the first both to Jew and Gentile-a religion quite opposite in all these respects to all that had ever been heard of before :-a religion without any Sacrifice but that offered up by its Founder in his own person;-without any Sacrificing Priest (Hiereus) except Him, the great and true High Priest,' and consequently with no Priest (in that

P Hence the name of Naos from valev, "to dwell." See Hinds's" Three Temples."

¶ See Discourse "On the Christian Priesthood," appended to Bampton Lectures.

sense) on Earth; except so far as every one of the worshippers was required to present himself as a "living Sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God;" and a religion without any Temple, except the collected Congregation of the Worshippers themselves.t

"The

Let any one but contemplate the striking contrast, between the confined-the local character,—of the Mosaic system, and the character of boundless extension stamped on the Gospel of Christ. "In the place which the Lord shall choose" (says Moses ")" to set his Name therein, there shalt thou offer thy Sacrifices." hour cometh" (says Jesus*) "when men shall neither on this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father:" "wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."y "In his Temple" (says the Psalmist ; i.e. in his temple at Jerusalem) "doth every one speak of his glory :" "there will I” (Jehovah) “dwell, for I have a delight therein :" "Ye are the

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Rom. xii. This offering the Apostle calls Ovoíav (@oav, a living Sacrifice," as distinguished from the slain animals offered up in other religions; and also λoyin λarpɛid, “a reasonable (i. e. rational) service," as opposed to the irrational animals slain on the altars.

'I have treated of this point in one of a volume of Discourses delivered in Dublin.