Revision of the Liturgy; Five Discourses. I. Absolution. II. Regeneration. III. Athanasian Creed. IV. Burial Service. V. Holy Orders. with an Introduction - Softcover

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Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1860. Excerpt: ... DISCOURSE V. HOLY ORDERS. rpHERE are two principal instruments by which the work of Christ is carried on in the world; His Word, and His Church. The one speaks to the soul of man as a separately accountable being; addresses him in the name of Him who made him, and bids him, for the sake of safety, of strength, and of happiness, to enter into living union with the Source and Spring of life. The other, the Church, offers to him whose soul the Word has awakened, the opportunities of exercising that union in acts of special devotion, of receiving instruction in the details of truth and of duty, and all this not as an isolated unit but as the member of a body bound together by common hopes and wants and aids, by unity of relations and identity of interests. Besides this office towards men who already believe, the Church has a further object regarding those who do not. It was designed to be, and in so far as it has fulfilled its position it has been, the representation in act of that which the Gospel exhibits in word, the peace, the strength, and the happiness which results from a living union with Christ, and through Him with God. Thus it both arrests the attention, and attracts the affections, of men, towards Him from whom alone all its grace flows. In some former discourses I have been guiding your thoughts more directly than usual, to this twofold agency of the Church and of the Word of Christ. Not wishing to enter into matters beyond our own province, nor to discuss any of those complicated questions which divide nominal Christians in this country, as elsewhere, into various communities, I have selected some leading illustrations of the consistency of the teaching of our own Church with reason and Scripture; taking, as a matter of course, those on which misconceptions and differences...