our flocks; let us give an anxious and diligent attention to their spiritual concerns. Let us all -but let the younger clergy, more especially, beware how they become secularized in the general cast and fashion of their lives. Let them not think it enough to maintain a certain frigid decency of character, abstaining from the gross scandal of open riot and criminal dissipation, but giving no farther attention to their spiritual duties than may be consistent with the pursuits and pleasures of the world, and may not draw them from a fixed residence in populous cities, at a distance from their cures, or a wandering life in places of public resort and amusement, where they have no call, and where the grave dignified character of a parish priest is ill exchanged for that of a fashionable trifler. We know the charms of improved and elegant society. Its pleasures in themselves are innocent; but they are dearly bought at the expense of social and religious duty. If we have not firmness to resist the temptations they present, when the enjoyment is not to be obtained without deserting the work of the ministry in the places to

lot

which we are severally appointed, because our may have chanced to fall in the retirement of a country town, or perhaps in the obscurity of a village, the time may come, sooner than we think, when it shall be said-Where is now the church of England? "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten," said our Lord to the church of Laodicea, whose worst crime it was that she was "neither hot nor cold." Be zealous, therefore, and repent. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches."

Let us betimes take warning.

SERMON XIV.

1 CORINTHIANS, fi. 2.

For I have determined not to know any thing among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” *

AMONG

MONG various abuses in the Corinthian church, which this epistle, as appears from the matter of it, was intended to reform, a spirit of schism and dissension, to which an attempt to give a new turn to the doctrines of Christianity had given rise, was in itself the most criminal, and in its consequences the most pernicious. Who the authors

of this evil were, is not mentioned, and it were

idle to inquire. They were run after in their day; but their names have been long since forgotten; nor is any thing remembered of them but the mischief which they did. The general

* Preached in the Cathedral Church of Gloucester, at a public ordination of priests and deacons.

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The

character of the men, and the complexion of their doctrine, may easily be collected from this and the subsequent epistle. They were persons who, without authority from heaven, had taken upon themselves to be preachers of the gospel. motive from which they had engaged in a business for which they were neither qualified nor commissioned, was not any genuine zeal for the propagation of the truth, nor any charitable desire to reclaim the profligate and to instruct the ignorant; but the love of gain-of power and applause, the desire, in short, of those advantages which ever attend popularity in the character of a teacher. A scrupulous adherence to the plain doctrine of the gospel had been inconsistent with these views, since it could only have exposed them to persecution. Whatever therefore the Christian doctrine might contain offensive to the prejudice of Jew or Gentile, they endeavoured to clear away by figurative interpretations, by which they pretended to bring to light the hidden sense of mysterious expressions, which the first preachers had not explained. While they called themselves by the name of

Christ, they required not that the Jew should recognize the Maker of the world, the Jehovah of his fathers, in the carpenter's reputed son; nor would they incur the ridicule of the Grecian schools, by maintaining the necessity of an atonement for forsaken and repented sins, and by holding high the efficacy of the Redeemer's sacrifice.

Such preaching was accompanied with no blessing. These pretended teachers could perform no miracles in confirmation of their doctrine: It was supported only by an affected subtlety of argument, and the studied ornaments of eloquence. To these arts they trusted, to gain credit for their innovations with the multitude. Not that the Corinthian multitude, more than the multitude of any other place, were qualified to enter into abstruse questions to apprehend the force or to discern the fallacy of a long chain of argument or to judge of the speaker's eloquence; but they had the art to persuade the people that they excelled in argument and rhetoric. They told the people that their reasoning was such as must convince, and their oratory