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doubt, therefore, that the angel of the church of Smyrna, was distinguished for his poverty among the seven selected churches, as he was to be yet more distinguished for his tribulations; and thus by degrees, we begin to gather together the elemental idea of this epistle, ver. 7, that it is written to set forth, both by instance and by general doctrine, the example of a church outwardly beset with every form of. affliction and want; yet, through faith in Him who is the first and the last, was dead and is alive, prevailing unto this day against all outward accumulations of adversity; for the encouragement of all churches, and for the demonstration of the triumphs of faith, over the wildest and cruelest oppositions and persecutions of the world. Poverty then is no sign of God's disfavour to a church any more than persecution; nor is it any sign of a church's weakness, but contrariwise of a church's prosperity, so that they be rich in faith towards God. For, behold, in these seven cardinal instances, there are two, - the one distinguished for its poverty, the other for its abundance, whereof the former is blessed with all consolations, the latter treated with indignant threatenings by the Lord; whereof the former still subsisteth in strength and honour, the latter is lost both to memory and to sight.

Some, looking to this distinction have rashly conIcluded, that therefore a church should be established in poverty, and it hath passed into a maxim in the North, that a poor church is a pure church; and that the Church of Scotland is founded upon the rock of poverty. God forbid that she should not be founded upon some better foundation than this! No: such reasoners abuse and wrest the Scriptures which commend not poverty as a blessing or a good, but comfort those that are under it, as being in a trial, which, through their faith will redound unto honour and glory in the day of the Lord. Godliness hath the promise of this life, as well as that which is to come, and the Psalmist boasteth in God, "I have been young and now am old, yet have I never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." That maxim which has got into the mouths of certain puritanical or churlish men, savours more of the mendicant orders of the Papacy, or the sacrilegious spoliation of the nobles which went on at the time of the Reformation, especially in Scotland;

than it doth of any reverence for the church, or enlightened view of her prosperity. The true doctrine concerning the outward estate of a minister, is given by our Lord in the code of instructions, which we have already referred to, in these words (Luke x. 7, 8): " And in the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give for the labourer is worthy of his hire. Go not from house to house. And into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you." This evangelical canon is that upon which the Apostles went; or if at a time they departed from it, as did Paul and Barnabas, it was with the reservation of the right when they pleased to resume it: as may be seen set forth at large in the ix th chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians; and by this canon every church, and every minister ought to regulate himself. And what is the spirit of the canon? Not obligation to any particular condition of life, as poverty; nor preference of one to another, but indifference to all; a willingness to abound, a willingness to want, a willingness to be in riches, a willingness to be in poverty. This is the noble dignity, this is the royal liberty of the minister's calling, to sit and feast with the king in his palace, to sit and fare with the king's poorest subject in his cottage, and to be as much at home with the one as with the other. Oh, it is a poor, crude, yea, and wicked `view of our office, to say that we should be kept poor; as if upon being entrusted with the keys of the kingdom of heaven, we might not be entrusted with any portion of this world's goods. I do admire, while I perfectly penetrate that good-natured care of us incompetent ministers, which moves so many of our liberal statesmen to argue that there should be no livings in the church above such and such a value, and none below such and such a value. The laity indeed may be trusted with untold wealth; a citizen with a plum of money, a noble with the lands of a county, and the revenues of a king: but a clergyman is not so to be entrusted, and must be put under the tutelage of our most parsimonious and economical exchequer. The church lands, which the piety of our fathers devoted unto the necessities of the church, must be taken under the management of the Lords of the Treasury, who have managed their concerns so well as to involve their country in many

hundred millions of debt. God forgive me if I speak lightly or irreverently, but my heart is embittered with the clamours which I hear from all men, concerning the trustlessness of the servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, the angels and ministers of the churches; who, let me say it, though there be shameful exceptions, live poorer and die poorer than any other class of the community above the rank of a day-labourer. Ignoble age! ungenerous children of generous fathers! where now is your liberality to the church of the living God? Methinks ye are preparing for another such abominable sacrilege as heretofore was transacted in these lands at the Reformation. O ye nobles of Scotland, who left the church in beggary, tell if ye be at this day the richer for all the plunder which ye made of your mother's estates? Are you at this day the less incumbered with mortgages, that ye did incumber the reformers and first preachers of Scotland with want, bare want and miserable poverty? And yet behold, O Church of Scotland, how the poverty of thy reformers and thy ministers was not able to embarrass or prevent thy prosperity, but did rather bind thee round the neck of thy people, and write thy worthiness upon the tables of their hearts. Though thou wast sore hampered in thy purposes of good for the realm of Scotland, by the avarice and the sacrilege of the nobles, thou wast only the more endeared to the body of the nation, who witnessed thy labours for their salvation, in the midst of poverty and nakedness. And when the day came of thy sore tribulation, and thy covetous nobles turned away their face from thee, thou foundest in the devotedness of the people that arm of strength which set thee in thine honourable place;-the poorest, and the most efficient, the worst rewarded and most laborious of all the Christian churches. But be not vain of thy poverty, or churlish towards thy sister's grandeur. Join not those sons of Belial, who under the name of reforming the church, would meddle with her sacred treasures, ruin themselves, and, if they could, ruin her. The office of the deacon, and the charge of the deacon, and the goods of the church which are under his administration, dare as little be intermeddled with, as the higher trust of the elder. In these things no king, no parliament, no, nor people, may interfere. The talents committed to the minister,

the trusts committed to the elder, the goods committed to the deacon, are all alike and equally put beyond, the power of any civil interference. I do not go aside to dilate on these things; but, perceiving the gathering storm, I would do my part to warn the church and the nation, and to deliver my own soul. They say afflictions never come single; and I foresee that if this infidel or liberal principle get the upper hand in the administration of the state, it will to a certainty bring both the spiritual and the temporal estate of the church under its cruel hands. It was so in the primitive church, that all-tolerant Rome did ever when it persecuted the faith, plunder also the goods of the exclusive and intolerant Christian. I say exclusive and intolerant, in the contrary sense in which Paganism was, and our present infidelity is, liberal and tolerant. The spirit of Pagan Rome, and of liberal Europe at this day, is to put no difference so far as this world is concerned, yea, and if they could, so far as another world is concerned, between men of any or of no creed whatever. And a Christian, as he believeth God to be true, and tendereth his own eternal well-being, must stand up on the contrary part and affirm that this is a lie; that God, both in this world and in that which is to come, doth put the extremest difference between him who worships and obeys the name of Christ and him who doth not, or who worships or obeys any other name. These contrary spirits must come to issue, as to issue they ever came in ancient Rome, until power changed in the days of Constantine and Theodosius, from the liberal indulgence of all religions, into the exclusive patronage of the religion of our Lord Jesus Christ; and when they come to issue in this case, I feel assured that the goods of the church, over which the deacon is consecrated, will be invaded by law, even before the doctrine and discipline of the church, over which the elder is consecrated. Nay, but what else at this present moment is that proposal for an act of parliament to bring in secular persons with authority to administer the collections made in our churches for the poor, which heretofore have been inviolably administered by the ministers, elders, and deacons of the churches? And, as if to make way for such secular inroads, the proper guardianship of deacons has been discontinued, notwithstanding the frequent and positive injunctions of the

General Assembly. It is always so: our own unfaithfulness is the occasion of God's judgment. We despise or undervalue his ordinance, and we lose the temporal or spiritual blessing which it was intended to convey. Why are there no bequests to the poor of the parish as heretofore? Because there is no order of deacons standing in their place, whom God might honour. Why have poor rates become necessary in Scotland? Because there is no order of deacons to take care of the poor. Political economists will laugh this to scorn; but believing churchmen, if any there be, will consider the matter. For my

own part, I will walk in the ordinances of the church; and if I fail, I shall meanwhile have secured to myself friends who will be able to receive me into everlasting habitations.

The true principle, therefore, upon which an angel of the churches should feel and act, is never to mind his outward estate, be it rich or be it poor, so long as he hath bread to eat and raiment to be clothed withal. But if he should be in want of necessary supplies for himself and his wife, or for his children, he ought then to tell the church, whereof he is angel, that the Lord will not prosper their worldly industry, that he will disappoint their hopes and defeat their labours, until they shall have provided for the ministry of his altar. And if the people refuse to hear the Lord speaking by his lips, the Lord will speak in another way, and make himself be heard. Let not his faithful servant fear. God will not leave him desolate. His children shall not beg their bread. I am afraid to encourage the pride of my brethren, the ministers of the Church of Scotland, for we are too high-minded already; but in proof of God's faithfulness I will speak it, that the sons, often the fatherless sons of her ministers, have attained in every city to the highest and richest preferment. So much for God's faithfulness to their fathers' and to their mothers' prayers. But let me tell the whole truth: these sons of the Scottish clergy are in general unmindful of the God of their fathers. I speak a word which I can too well verify in this the city of my habitation. But still the word of God standeth sure: " him that honoureth me I will honour." The lesson taught by this part of the epistle to the church in Smyrna is, that no poverty nor tribulation

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