weaknesses, an attention to the circumstances of his chosen people, equally consolatory and instructive'. Every page of holy writ supplies a proof of this statement, if any were wanting. Applied to our own times and circumstances, it encourages us in the belief that such accommodations as have taken place from time to time in the outward administration of the Church to the varying character of the people among whom it has to act, may be accompanied by the divine blessing; that practices in themselves indifferent may lawfully be employed in divine offices, as helps to human infirmity; that consecrated buildings, solemn music, peculiar vestments, emblematic rites, are things in themselves unobjectionable, and may be adopted, varied, and disposed by human authority, duly constituted in the Church'; nay, that in certain cases, and within certain limits, the pressure of necessity may be pleaded in excuse for some relaxations of ceremonial discipline, which, not always the best that can be imagined, but the best that may be practised, is, we trust, accepted, not for what it is, but for the

1 SPENCER, De Legibus Hebræorum, Lib. iii. Præf. et passim. Καθάπερ πατὴρ φιλόστοργος διὰ πολλοῦ χρόνου τὸν υἱὸν τὸν ἑαυτοῦ μιαροῖς ανθρώποις καὶ φθορεῦσι καὶ ἀσώτοις συναναστρεφέντα, καὶ πολλῆς ἀπολαύσαντα τροφῆς λαβὼν, μετὰ ἀσφαλείας καὶ σεμνότητος ἐπὶ πλείονι καθίστησιν αυτὸν ἀφθονίᾳ, ὥστε μήτε στενοχωρηθέντα τῶν προτέρων μνήμην λαβεῖν μήτε εἰς ἐπιθυμίαν ἐκείνων ἐλθεῖν· οὕτω καὶ ὁ Θεὸς βλέπων τοὺς Ιουδαίους περὶ τὰ αἰσθητὰ ἐπτοημένους, καὶ ἐν τουτοῖς πολλὴν ποιεῖται

τὴν ὑπερβολὴν ὥστε αὐτοῦς μηδέποτε εἰς ἐπιθυμίαν τῶν Αἰγυπτίων, ἢ τῶν παρ' Αἰγυπ τίοις ἐλθεῖν.—CHRYS. Hom. in Diem Natal. Christi, p. 358, tom. ii. Ed. Ben.

• Οὐ τοίνυν ἱερείων δεόμενος, οὐδὲ κνίσσης ὀριγνώμενος, θυειν προσέταξεν ὁ Θεὸς, ἀλλὰ τῶν ἀῤῥωστούντων ἰατρεύων τὰ πάθη· οὕτω δὴ καὶ τὰ τῶν εὐήχων ὀργάνων ἠνέσχετο· οὐ τῇ τούτων ἁρμονία τερπόμενος, ἀλλὰ κατὰ βραχὺ παύων τῶν εἰδώλων τὸν πλάνον, κ. τ. λ. THEOD. tom. iv. serm. 7, Ρ. 585.

hearty desires of those who would fain have it what it should be.

To conclude:-In thus seeking to illustrate the later branches of the divine economy by a comparison with the earlier, we have the express warrant of the Lord himself, and of his inspired apostles. It is no artifice of man's wisdom. In adopting the terms of the elder dispensation in an extended, and what is called a spiritual sense, we are fortified by the same examples. In the language of St. Paul and St. Peter, we are "children of promise'," "the Israel of God," "a royal priesthood, and a holy nation"," "we have come unto Mount Sion', and to the heavenly Jerusalem." "We have a high-priest, over the house of God"." "We have an altar"." In the use of these terms, therefore, we are fully justified. Their Christian signification is fixed by apostolic usage, of which we shall judge ill, if we see in it no more than an allowable play of fancy, or an accommodation to Jewish prepossessions. They are used in contrast to the carnal Judaism of the apostles' time, when the blinding veil of prejudice lay most heavily upon the heart of Israel; but in assertion of that implicit sense, which God's saints, in whatever age, the children of faithful Abraham, had always attached to them, and which was now made fully manifest.

In my next discourse I shall resume the subject which the above observations have in some degree interrupted, passing, as above indicated, from the Jewish temple to the Christian Church, with a particular reference to our own religious establishment, considered in a national point of view. The several questions thus brought before our notice, relative to the nature and

functions of the Christian Church in its catholic definition, as exhibited in the particular communities of which it consists, will be separately examined as they occur, with the several relations, civil and ecclesiastical, political and spiritual, sustained by the latter, particularly in our own country, and in the present crisis. The series of discourses thus announced, if, by the divine blessing, I be enabled and permitted to fulfil my purpose, is intended as a humble attempt to set forth and illustrate THE SCRIPTURAL CHARACTER OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH.

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SERMON II.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND CONSIDERED IN A

NATIONAL POINT OF VIEW.

PSALM CXxii. 6, 7.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.

THE considerations which may be supposed to have led the Psalmist to this pious conclusion, have already come under our review. In the verses which follow, he gives his own account of the matter. "For my brethren and companions' sake:" on behalf of my fellow-citizens and fellow-worshippers, I will now say, "Peace be within. thee." But above all, "For the sake of the house of the Lord our God," for the interest of religion, and for the glory of Jehovah, "I will seek to do thee good." By his firm adhesion to the institutions of his nation, by his example and by his prayers, he would maintain the honour of that temple in which, as we have seen, the pious Israelite beheld a shrine of solemn memory, a seat of covenanted mercy, and a sanctuary of awful hope.

What the temple on Mount Sion was to the Israelite of old, the church is now to that spiritual Israel, which bears the name and obeys the laws of Christ. What the former typified, the latter has fulfilled. A worship of spirit and of truth has succeeded to one of ceremonial observance; the liberty of the Gospel to the yoke of the Law. The restrictions of time and place have been removed. That which was particular, local, and tran

sitory, is now catholic, unlimited, permanent. Jerusalem is indeed but one. It may be extended, but it cannot be multiplied. Though in particular places it may be torn by faction or divided by schism, though its hedge may be taken down, and its walls broken up, yet is the true Jerusalem everywhere "builded as a city that is at unity in itself," single in its foundation, comprehensive in its plan, uniform in its superstructure. Our Church is only one, but it follows us to the ends of the earth, and in this happy land is brought to our own doors. In every town, almost in every village, and throughout every rural district, has been erected a house of prayer, whither we are invited to bring our oblations and to pay our solemn Vows unto the Lord. And, oh! may every English Christian exclaim, as he enters those hallowed structures, Lord, I have loved the habitation of thine house, and the place where thine honour dwelleth"."

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The analogy here touched upon may be still further pursued. What the temple, with its established service, was to the Jews, as a nation, the church and its stated ordinances are to us as Englishmen; an institution not merely entitled to our formal allegiance from the divine sanction which it claims, but recommended to our best affections by the most venerable and most endearing associations, by past recollections, by present comforts, and by future hopes. Planted in these islands in the remotest age of Christian antiquity, if not by the great apostle of the Gentiles himself, at least by some of his immediate successors,-a branch of that holy church. universal in which we profess to believe, it took root, and flourished, and bore fruit abundantly. Storms indeed have swept over it from time to time, and scattered its } Psalm cxxii. 3. 2 Psalm xxvi. 8.