and emulation, to promote an attention to character and public opinion when they are in it; especially to guard against that sloth and negligence into which men are apt to fall who are arrived too soon at the limits of their expectations. We will not say, that the race is always to the swift, or the prize to the deserving; but we have never known that age of the church in which the advantage was not on the side of learning and decency.

These reasons appear to me to be well founded, and they have this in their favour, that they do not suppose too much; they suppose not any impracticable precision in the reward of merit, or any greater degree of disinterestedness, circumspection, and propriety in the bestowing of ecclesiastical preferment, than what actually takes place. They are, however, much strengthened, and our ecclesiastical constitution defended with yet greater success, when men of conspicuous and acknowledged merit are called to its superior stations: "when it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth." When pious labours and exemplary virtue, when distinguished learning or eminent utility, when long or arduous services are repaid with affluence and dignity, when a life of severe and well directed application to the studies of religion, when wasted spirits and declining health, are suffered to repose in honourable leisure, the good and wise applaud a constitution which has provided such things for such men.

Finally, let us reflect that these, after all, are but secondary objects. Christ came not to found an empire upon earth, or to invest his church with temporal immunities. He came "to seek and to save that

which was lost;" to purify to himself from amidst the pollutions of a corrupt world, "a peculiar people, zealous of good works." As far as our establishment conduces to forward and facilitate these ends, so far we are sure it falls in with his design, and is sanctified by his authority. And whilst they who are intrusted with its government employ their cares, and the influence of their stations, in judicious and unremitting endeavours to enlarge the dominion of virtue and of Christianity over the hearts and affections of mankind, whilst "by pureness, by knowledge," by the aids of learning, by the piety of their example, they labour to inform the consciences and improve the morals of the people committed to their charge, they secure to themselves, and to the church in which they preside, peace and permanency, reverence and support—what is infinitely more, they "save their own souls;" they prepare for the approach of that tremendous day, when Jesus Christ shall return again to the world and to his church, at once the gracious rewarder of the toils, and patience, and fidelity of his servants, and the strict avenger of abused power and neglected duty.

THE USE AND PROPRIETY OF LOCAL AND OCCASIONAL

PREACHING:

A CHARGE,

DELIVERED TO

THE CLERGY OF THE DIOCESS OF CARLISLE,

IN THE YEAR 1790.

IV.

THE USE AND PROPRIETY OF LOCAL AND OCCASIONAL PREACHING.

REVEREND BRETHREN,

THE late archbishop Secker, whose memory is entitled to public respect, as on many accounts, so especially for the judgment with which he described, and the affecting seriousness with which he recommended, the duties of his profession, in one of his charges to the clergy of his diocess*, exhorts them "to make their sermons local." I have always considered this advice as founded in a knowledge of human life, but as requiring, in its application, a more than ordinary exercise of Christian prudence. Whilst I repeat therefore the rule itself, with great veneration for the authority by which it was delivered, I think it no unfit employment of the present opportunity to enlarge so far upon its use and meaning as to point out some of the instances in which it may be adopted, with the probability of making salutary impressions upon the minds of our hearers.

But, before I proceed, I would warn you, and that with all the solemnity that can belong to any admonition of mine, against rendering your discourses, so local as to be pointed and levelled at particular persons in your congregation. This species of address may produce in the party for whom it is intended confusion, perhaps, and shame, but not with their

*

Archbishop of Canterbury's Third Charge to his Clergy. Abp. Secker's Works, vol. iv.