they must know the Scriptures and the body of divinity better before they can be trusted with the care of souls. These things pierce one's soul, and make him often cry out, O that I had wings like a dove; for then would I fly away and be at rest.' What are we like to grow to? In what a case are we to deal with any adversary, atheist, papist, or dissenters; or in any sort to promote the honour of God, and carry on the great concerns of the gospel; when so gross an ignorance in the fundamentals of religion has spread itself so much among those who ought to teach others, and yet need that one teach them the first principles of the oracles of God.

"Politics and party eat out among us, not only study and learning, but that which is the only thing that is more valuable—a true sense of religion, with a sincere zeal in advancing that for which the Son of God both lived and died, and to which those who are received into holy orders have vowed to dedicate their lives and labours. Clamours of scandal in any of the clergy are not frequent, it is true, and God be thanked for it; but a remiss unthinking course of life, with little or no ap plication to study, and the bare performing of that which if not done would draw censures, when complained of, without ever pursuing the pastoral care in any suitable degree, is but too commón, as well as too evident."*

BISHOP GIBSON, 1728.

"They who live in these great cities, (London and Westminster,) or have had frequent recourse to them, and have any concern for religion, must have observed, to their great grief, that profaneness and impiety are grown bold and open; that a new sort of vice of a very

horrible nature, and almost unknown before in these parts of the world, was springing up and gaining ground among us, if it had not been checked by the seasonable care of the civil administration; thắt, in some late writings, public stews have been openly vindicated, and public vices recommended to the protection of the government, as public benefits; and that

*Pastoral Care, Preface to the third edition, 1713.

great pains have been taken to make men easy in their vices, and deliver them from the restraints of conscience, by undermining all religion, and promoting atheism and infidelity; and, what adds to the danger, by doing it under specious colours and pretences of several kinds. One, under pretence of opposing the encroachments of popery, thereby to recommend himself to the unwary Protestant reader, has laboured at once to set aside all Christian ordinances, and the very being of a Christian ministry, and a Christian church. Another, under colour of great zeal for the Jewish dispensation, and the literal meaning of Scripture, has been endeavouring to overthrow the foundations of the Christian religion. A third, pretending to raise the actions and miracles of our Saviour to a more exalted and spiritual meaning, has laboured to take away the reality of them, and by that to destroy one of the principal evidences of Christianity. Others have shown a great zeal for natural religion, in opposition to revealed, with no other view, as it seems, than to get rid of the restraints of revealed religion, and to make way for unbounded enjoyment of their corrupt appetites and vicious inclinations, no less contrary, in reality, to the obligations of natural religion than of revealed. And all or most of these writers, under colour of pleading for the liberties of mankind, have run into an unprecedented licentiousness, in treating the serious and important concerns of religion in a ludicrous and reproachful manner.'

BISHOP BUTLER, 1736.

"It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry; but that it is, now at length, discovered to be fictitious. And, accordingly, they treat it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of discernment; and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were, by way of reprisals, for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world."+ * Pastoral Letters, p. 2, second edition.

+ Advertisement prefixed to the first edition of the Analogy.

ARCHBISHOP SECKER, 1738.

"Men have always complained of their own times, and always with too much reason. But though it is natural to think those evils the greatest which we feel ourselves; and therefore mistakes are easily made in comparing one age with another; yet in this we can. not be mistaken, that an open and professed disregard to religion is become, through a variety of unhappy causes, the distinguishing character of the present age; that this evil is grown to a great height in the metropolis of the nation; is daily spreading through every part of it; and, bad in itself as any can be, must of necessity bring in all others after it. Indeed, it hath already brought in such dissoluteness and contempt of principle, in the higher part of the world, and such profligate intemperance, and fearlessness of committing crimes, in the lower, as must; if this torrent of impiety stop not, become absolutely fatal. And God knows, far from stopping, it receives, through the ill designs of some persons, and the inconsideratedness of others, a conțin ual increase. Christianity is now ridiculed and railed at, with very little reserve; and the teachers of it, without any at all. Indeed with respect to us, (the clergy,) the rule which most of our adversaries appear to have set themselves, is to be, at all adventures, as bitter as they can; and they follow it, not only beyond truth, but beyond probability; asserting the very worst things of us without foundation, and exaggerating every thing without mercy; imputing the faults (and sometimes imaginary faults) of particular persons to the whole order; and then declaiming against us all promiscuously, with such vehemence as, in any case but ours, they themselves would think in the highest degree unjust and cruel. Or if sometimes a few exceptions are made, they are usually made only to divide us amongst ourselves: to deceive one part of us, and throw a greater odium upon the other. Still, were these invectives only to affect us personally, dear as our reputations are and ought to be to us, the mischief would be small in comparison of what it is. But the consequence hath been, as it naturally must, that dis

regard to us hath greatly increased the disregard to public worship and instruction; that many are grown prejudiced against religion; nay, more, indifferent about it, and unacquainted with it. And the emissaries of the Romish church, taking the members of ours at this unhappy disadvantage, have begun to reap great harvests in the field, which hath been thus prepared for them by the labours of those who would be thought their most irreconcilable enemies.”*

"The necessity of a moral life most men will own in general terms; only what they are pleased to call so is often a very immoral one, both with respect to their fellow-creatures and the government of themselves. But regard to piety is strangely lost, even amongst persons that are otherwise tolerably serious. Many have laid aside all appearances of it; and others, who would seem to keep them up, do it with evident marks of indifference and contempt."+

To the sad testimonies given by these eminent prelates may be added the following, selected from the writings of devout and orthodox dissenters.

DR. JOHN GUYSE, 1729.

"The greatest number of preachers and hearers seem contented to lay him (Christ) aside; and too many there are among us that set themselves against him. His name is seldom heard of in conversation, unless in a way of strife and debate; or, which is infinitely worse, in a way of contempt, reproach, and blasphemy: and I am persuaded it never entered less than at this day into our practical godliness, into our solemn assemblies, into our dealings with God, into our dependencies on him, expectations from him, and devotedness to him.

"The present modish turn of religion looks as if we began to think that we have no need of a Mediator; but that all our concerns were managed with God as an absolute God. The religion of nature makes up the darling topics of our age; and the religion of Jesus is valued only for the sake of that, and only so far as it carries on the light of nature, and is a bare improve. * Eight Charges, p. 4. Edit. 1790. + Ibid. p. 21.

6

ment of that kind of light. All that is restrictively Christian, or that is peculiar to Christ-every thing concerning him that has not its apparent foundation in natural light, or that goes beyond its principles-is waved, and banished, and despised; and even moral duties themselves, which are essential to the very being of Christianity, are usually harangued upon without any evangelical turn, or reference to Christ, as fruits of righteousness to the praise and glory of God by him.' They are placed in the room of Christ, are set up independent of him, and are urged upon principles and with views ineffectual to secure their practice, and more suited to the sentiments and temper of a heathen than of those that take the whole of their religion from Christ.

"How many sermons may one hear that leave out Christ, both name and thing, and that pay no more regard to him than if we had nothing to do with him! What a melancholy symptom, what a threatening omen is this! Do we not already feel its dismal effects in the growth of infidelity, in the rare instances of conversionwork, and in the cold, low, and withering state of religion among the professors of it, beyond what has been known in some former days? May not these things be chargeable in great measure on a prevailing disuse of preaching Christ? And where will they end if the disuse goes on, and little or nothing concerning him is

to be heard among us? How should all the ministers

of Christ, that heartily love him, that are concerned for his honour, and for the honour of his religion, as Christian, be affected at these thoughts!"*

THE REV. JOHN HURRION, 1729.

"The malignant opposition made to him (the Holy Spirit) by some, and the vile contempt cast upon him by others, are things which have quenched and grieved him, and caused him to depart to that degree, as hereby almost all vital religion is lost out of the world. Hence

*Twelve Sermons delivered at Coward's Lecture, p. 261. Edit. 1729