TO THE

WORSHIPFUL SIR HERBERT JENNER, &c.

THE VEN. ARCHDEACON CROFT,

AND

THOSE CLERGYMEN

AT WHOSE REQUEST IT IS PUBLISHED,

THE FOLLOWING SERMON

IS WITH SINCERE REGARD INSCRIBED,

BY THEIR FAITHFUL SERVANT,

THE AUTHOR.

Α

SERMON,

&c.

LUKE xi. 17.

A house divided against a house falleth.

SELDOM, if ever, has our Church been placed in circumstances in which the warning of the text could merit more immediate, or deeper attention, than it claims at the present eventful period. It is neither my province nor my wish to discuss here the prudence or the necessity of those measures, by which maxims once considered as interwoven into the very heartstrings of our constitution have become a bye-word. Whatsoever opinions may be entertained upon the policy of these measures, it appears to me that the alarm they have excited is not commonly founded upon just notions of the real danger connected with them. They ought to be viewed rather as the effects, than as the causes of the danger which threatens the Church. They present an index of the real state of public opinion; whether that

opinion be soundly or unsoundly formed: they indicate that the maintenance of the Established Church, though not yet abandoned, has ceased to be held as an object of paramount and vital importance to that undefined, but well understood body, called the public; whose judgment, though gathered from various circumstances, rather than expressed in any conventional forms, irresistibly controuls the measures of our rulers: they prove that those who are slightly attached, those who are indifferent, and those who are hostile to the Church, are increasing in political power.

I will not aver, that among the advocates of the measures alluded to, some of her warmest friends and well-wishers may not be numbered, who are convinced, and perhaps justly, that in the existing state of things, her very strength lies in these concessions ; but I do contend, that these formed but a comparatively small portion of that influence by which his Majesty's Ministers were urged, perhaps I may say, compelled to adopt them.

The existence and the strength of this influence, and not its mere effects, is one of the great sources of danger to the Church; the measures themselves are but symptoms, to which it is our wisdom to attend. We should contemplate them, connected as they are with other, and not equivocal signs of the times.

Among these signs may be numbered the very urgency for reform of the Church. I speak not of moderate alterations, suggested by sober advi

sers, but of that eager clamour excited against her institutions and her ministers, at a time when it may be fearlessly affirmed, that the attainments of the clergy as a body (though there may, and ever must be exceptions) are higher, their deportment more exemplary, their usefulness more extensive, their zeal and activity more general, ardent, and conspicuous, than at any one period of our ecclesiastical history; when, in short, the exertion and diligence of her pastors, from the Archbishop to the Curate, seem almost to compete with the restless censoriousness and inquisitorial vigilance with which the public scrutinize their conduct, and cavil at their pretensions to support and respect.

When we combine this eagerness of censure in quarters whence other sentiments might have been expected, this clamour for reform, swelled as it is by the sudden friendship, the officious zeal, and reverend care for the Church, so loudly professed by some, whose attachment was never before known, or even suspected; when we combine these with the spread of indifference to the Establishment, with the increase of the religious or irreligious principles upon which the usefulness of a National Church is denied, with the visible workings of an avowed spirit of blasphemous hostility, not only to the Church, but to the Gospel itself, advancing daily in the formidableness of its encroachments, in the audacity of its demands, in the malignity of its calumnies, and in the undisguised iniquity of its plans;—we cannot but call to mind that association, with which every his