kick against them, and denounce them as relics of Popery and instruments of priestcraft, indignantly repelling the notion, that there is any such forgiveness promised or allowed by the Word of GOD. Hear me dispassionately, dear brethren, while in few words (and, GOD knows, without any party bias) I endeavour to vindicate the Church’s teaching; and to guard it against both superstitious misuse and profane contempt. You know, of course, that Christ, in His life-time on earth, before His passion, commissioned certain disciples to go before Him into every city whither He Himself would come, and when they entered into any house, to pronounce peace upon its tenants, with the assurance that His peace should, in such case, always rest upon them, if they were worthy. You know, too, that just before His ascension, He invested the apostles with the power of remitting and retaining sins; and that they both exercised that power themselves, by absolving and excommunicating, and also handed it on to others—so that St. Paul tells the Corinthian presbyters, that to whomsoever they forgive anything, He forgives also, and that his forgiveness is the forgiveness of Christ. And you likewise know (if you are conversant with Church history) that the doctrine of ministerial absolution, and the practice of administering it, have been steadily maintained in all parts of the Church, from the apostolic age to the present. In one place, or time, the doctrine has been distorted; in another, the practice has been abused: but everywhere, and at all times, by Greeks and Romanists, by high-Churchmen, and by not a few low-Churchmen, it has been, and is asserted, that Christ gave by commission, and continues by His promise to be always present with His Church, power and command to use ministerial absolution. The Church of England claims that delegated power, and obeys that positive command. She does not blasphemously exalt her clergy, and plant them on the throne of GOD, to usurp His prerogative—to be judges between good and evil, and awarders of favour or wrath; nor, on the other hand, does she degrade them to mere voluntary reporters, such as any of yourselves might be, of statements contained in a published revelation: she sends them forth to minister, as in other respects, so in this, the grace which Christ would communicate through them for the good of the fold, whereof they are under-shepherds. It is nothing of their own that they minister; they can claim no honour, nor thanks, for ministering it, and woe to them if they withhold it when rightly sought; but to them it is intrusted to minister, and through their ministry it is to be sought. GOD, the Father, the primary Giver of every good thing, is nowhere directly approachable. Christ, the second Adam, to Whom all that pertains to man’s salvation is committed, sits at the right hand of GOD, the Father, and operates upon man only through the agency of the Holy Spirit. GOD, the Holy Spirit, does not convey Himself