because your elocution is more apt to offend by straining and stiffness, than on the side of ease and familiarity. The same plainness and simplicity which I recommend in the delivery, prefer also in the style and composition of your sermons. Ornaments, or even accuracy of language, cost the writer much trouble, and produce small advantage to the hearer. Let the character of your sermons be truth and information, and a decent particula rity. Propose one point in one discourse, and stick to it; a hearer never carries away more than one impression-disdain not the old fashion of dividing your sermons into heads-in the hands of a master, this may be dispensed with; in yours, a sermon which rejects these helps to perspicuity, will turn out a bewildered rhapsody, without aim or effect, order or conclusion. In a word, strive to make your discourses useful, and they who profit by your preaching, will soon learn, and long continue, to be pleased with it.

I have now finished the enumeration of those qualities which are required in the clerical character, and which, wherever they meet, make even youth venerable, and poverty respected; which will secure esteem under every disadvantage of fortune, person, and situation, and notwithstanding great defects of abilities and attainments. But I must not stop here; a good name, fragrant and precious as it is, is by us only valued in subserviency to our duty, in subordination to a higher reward. If we are more tender of our reputation, if we are more studious of esteem than others, it is from a persuasion, that by first obtaining the respect of our congregation, and next by availing ourselves of that respect, to promote amongst them peace and virtue, useful knowledge and benevolent dispositions, we are purchasing to ourselves a reversion and inheritance valuable above all price, important beyond every other interest or success.

Go, then, into the vineyard of the gospel, and may the grace of God go with you. The religion you preach is true. Dispense its ordinances with

seriousness, its doctrines with sincerity-urge its precepts, display its hopes, produce its terrors"be sober, be vigilant”—“ have a good report" -confirm the faith of others, testify and adorn your own, by the virtues of your life and the sanc tity of your reputation-be peaceable, be courte ous; condescending to men of the lowest condition ་་ apt to teach, willing to communicate;" so far as the immutable laws of truth and probity will permit, "be every thing unto all men, that ye may gain some."

The world will requite you with its esteem. The awakened sinner, the enlightened saint, the young whom you have trained to virtue, the old whom you have visited with the consolations of Christianity, shall pursue you with prevailing blessings and effectual prayers. You will close your lives and ministry with consciences void of offence, and full of hope. To present at the last day even one recovered soul, reflect how grateful an offering it will be to him, whose commission was to save a world -infinitely, no doubt, but still only in degree, does our office differ from his-himself the firstborn; it was the business of his life, the merit of his death, the counsel of his Father's love, the exer. cise and consummation of his own," to bring many brethren unto glory."

A DISTINCTION OF ORDERS IN THE CHURCH DEFENDED UPON PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC UTILITY

IN A

SERMON,

PREACHED IN THE CASTLE CHAPEL, DUBLIN,

At the Consecration of

JOHN LAW, D. D.

LORD BISHOP OF CLONFERT AND KILMACDUAGH, September 21, 1782.

SERMON III.

A DISTINCTION OF ORDERS IN THE CHURCH DEFENDED UPON PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC UTILITY.

And he gave some, apostles and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors und teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.-Ephes. iv. 11, 12.

IN our reasoning and discourses upon the rules and nature of the Christian dispensation, there is no distinction which ought to be preserved with greater care than that which exists between the institution, as it addresses the conscience and regulates the duty of particular Christians, and as it regards the discipline and government of the Christian church. It was our Saviour's design and the first object of his ministry, to afford to a lost and ignorant world such discoveries of their Creator's will, of their own interest, and future destination; such assured principles of faith, and rules of practice; auch new motives, terms, and means of obedience; as might enable all, and engage many, to enter upon a course of life, which, by rendering the person who pursued it acceptable to God, would conduct. him to happiness, in another stage of his exist

ence.

It was a second intention of the Founder of Christianity, but subservient to the former, to as sociate those who consented to take upon them the profession of his faith and service, into a separate community, for the purpose of united worship and mutual edification, for the better transmission and manifestation of the faith that was delivered to them, but principally to promote the exercise of that fraternal disposition which their new relation to each other, which the visible participation of the same name and hope and calling, was calculated to excite.

From a view of these distinct parts of the evangelic dispensation, we are led to place a real dif.