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In the To give,

truly said to preach the doctrine of "repentance and remission of sins" in the name of Christ. body of our Liturgy this doctrine lives. therefore, the Book of Common Prayer, with the Articles and Homilies of our Church, as wide a circulation as possible, is surely the most likely mean of diffusing pure Christianity, and of rekindling the sacred fires of love to our Redeemer, which once burned in the bosoms of those holy men by whom these formularies were composed.

In the Book of Common Prayer we have petitions suited to "all conditions of men," and to all the circumstances and trials in which the servants of God may be placed. In the 39 Articles, which are now circulated with the Prayer Book, we may see what were the doctrines preached by our Reformers, and what interpretation they put on those compositions which they had drawn up "for the avoiding of diversities of opinions, and for the establishing consent touching true religion.*"

The Book of Homilies, containing as it does, a full and comprehensive statement of the sentiments of our Reformers respecting the doctrine of faith and and its necessary fruits, will be a barrier in the understandings and hearts of our people against any innovations in Theology, and against any declension from the spiritual Fathers and Founders of our Church.

*See Articles, &c.

We live in an age when there are not wanting those who make it their business to "propagate," not the Scriptures of truth, but errors, and who are striving with all their energies, to oppose the increase of true and pure religion; injuring the truth by mixing it with heretical doctrines, and hindering the good effects of Christian knowledge" by exciting against it all the evil passions of pride and conceit, and blinding the consciences against any reverential sense of God's love, promises, and gifts of grace. It is surely, then, a matter of importance not only that our people at home, but that our Chaplains and Missionaries abroad should possess these invaluable Sermons. In them, as in the Articles of our Church, we have, as it were, a safeguard against the insidious insinuations of unbelievers.

If, then, the Socinian endeavor to lead us to "err from the words of knowledge," by making us believe with him that the Lord and Saviour is not our God; that our Redeemer was but man, and not a person of the Godhead; we may consult, in the first place, the language of the Articles, and also the full and authoritative exposition of that language in the Book of Homilies. If the Antinomian strive to persuade us to believe that faith alone shall save us ;that he that doeth righteousness" and obeyeth the Gospel is not righteous, but he only who believes in the Gospel and in the righteousness of Christ, we

* Proverbs, xix, 27.

shall there see that such doctrine tends to destroy the very end of believing, and that to profess it is at once to prefer the root of a tree to the fruit, and the means of good to the good itself.

The religious Books and Tracts which it is also the object of "the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge to distribute for the use of the poor, will counteract, in no small degree, the poison of those tracts of an infidel tendency, which are industriously circulated abroad and at home.

It appears from a work lately published in America that infidelity and atheism are making rapid strides in the United States.*

The work to which I allude states, that "in the city of New York there are three large societies of professed infidels, to the number of twenty thousand; that half of the male inhabitants of South Carolina are infidels, and that the population of the Valley of the Mississipi may be set down as half infidel."

"Attempts are now making to affiliate these Societies; and a spirit is breathed through the whole by means of the establishment of newspapers, and the dissemination of infidel tracts and books. Besides these there are immense editions of atheistical works printed at the various infidel presses, which are sold at a cheap rate, and, in some instances, great pains have been taken to distribute them gratuitously over the country."

The New England Magazine.

But these infidel principles are not confined to the country to which I have alluded. They still abound even among us, who have had, and continue to have, the superior advantages of being born and brought up in a nation wherein the most holy doctrines of the Gospel are the established religion of our faith and profession. Though the night of spiritual darkness has so long gone by, and we have the broad light of the Gospel revelation beaming in all the lustre of heavenly truth around us, yet the workers of wickedness and the enemies of God are still a numerous and formidable host.

Latitudinarian principles are weeds of quick growth, weeds which rapidly take root in uncultivated minds, and scatter their pernicious seeds far and wide, and fail not to to adulterate the good seed wherever it has spread. Whenever the barriers of religion are broken down, the barriers of civilized society no longer retain any strength or security. Without religion, or with a religion trampled under foot, man soon becomes a savage, worse than the savages of uncivilized and distant islands, having more subtlety of hatred, more powers of indulging it, and more objects upon which he may indulge it, and thus his last state consequently becomes, in malignity and guilt, in every respect, worse than the first.

The grand cause of all species of iniquity is, as St. Paul himself declares, a want of "love of God," a want of "a pure heart and a good conscience.* ”

* 1 Tim. i. 5.

What, therefore, concerns us to consider on the present occasion is, how far the evil is to be remedied in its early state of power, and in its first causes. Though God alone is able to give a new heart and create a right spirit within us, yet God works upon the spirits of His people as He does upon their bodies by means of secondary causes; and, therefore, we are bound in duty to make ourselves as instrumental as possible to the amelioration of the heart as well as the bodily welfare of our fellow creatures, by putting into their hands that Book which alone can be "a lamp unto their feet and a light unto their paths.*”

Let then the designing panegyrists of philosophic Theism, or the pretended admirers of other systems of religion which own not the true God, and know not the Lord Jesus Christ; let them embellish or advocate with their utmost powers all the little beauties of moral maxim and sentiment, which may here and there be discovered in the religious systems of a Confucius, a Zoroaster, a Socrates, or a Plato; -let them collect their richest stores of profitable truth for self-government or for consolation under self-denying duties and trials;-let them collect them from what quarter they will, and give them their full weight and value, that value will be only in proportion as they have received some faint impress of resemblance borrowed from what was manifested under the signature of God at Mount Sinai, or Mount Calvary..

*Psalm, cxix. 105.

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