days are not without their danger! Still we hitherto remain. Still we have the promise of the text sounding in our ears. Still have we the contribution of our own endeavours to sustain the spiritual fabric whereto we belong. The circumstances that originate with ourselves to impair our ecclesiastical validity appear to be, firstly, a spirit of concession. The right hand of paternity is too often extended, when the glove over Edom, the gauntlet of defiance, should be cast down, and the sword of the Spirit grasped to combat and refute. Dissent may be inseparable from religious freedom, as prejudice and error are congenital with the human mind. But the wanderers from our discipline and doctrine forget that they have voluntarily destroyed their identity with the flock; freely abandoned the pasture and refuge of the true fold; and have wilfully resigned all inheritance in its spiritual safety and in the secular advantage which may thereto accidently belong. If, then, through some narrow gate of misconception or error they have “gone from us because they were not of us,” they cannot, in honesty, look that it should be widened for their readmittance, when that return, too, is with unfavourable design towards us and ours. Far be it from me to display unnecessary hostility towards any sect or denomination of men! but if, as I conceive, it be in supposition, that, by some compromise of doctrine or ceremony on our part, future stability may accrue to this Church of England, let us remember that Divine co-operation is not proposed to unworthy means, and that recorded experiment hath shown that it were even better that the Ark of God should tremble than that the hand of Uzzah should sustain its strength.