"The Sacrament," says Jerome, " of the old, i. e. the Jewish Laws, does not justify."*

"The Sacraments of God are," he elsewhere says, "to preach, to bless, to confirm, to administer the Communion, to visit the sick, to pray."+

He says also: "To celebrate the Sacraments of Christ, is to hear the word of Christ, and to keep it." And here, you will observe, Jerome applies to all our Christian duties the word which, among Protestants, is confined to two external rites.

In the Catechism of our Church, both Baptism and the Lord's Supper are called Sacraments ordained by Christ; and yet, in the ordinary phraseology of Christians themselves, Baptism very rarely, but the Lord's Supper always, are denoted by that appellation.

I shall introduce into my enumeration of the Christain Fathers the learned St. Austin.

He speaks of the Sacrament of the Scriptures the Sacrament of the Eucharist- the Sacrament of Regeneration-the Sacraments or oaths by which Christians are bound to Christ- the Sacraments of the Old and New Testaments - the Sacraments of the Old and New Law. He explains why the burthens of the Sacraments, by which he means ceremonial observances, of the Old Law, were many. He states that the Sacraments of the New Law are very few, very easy, and most excellent.

"Peter and Judas," says he, " gave one and the same Sacrament, or pledge of fidelity."

*Tom. ii. vide Index.

+ Tom. ix. 50.

He speaks of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist.

Let me conclude with Arnobius, whose erudition and eloquence entitle him to notice.

Arnobius says,..

. . acted up to the Sacraments or solemn pledge of the truth, i. e. of the Gospel.*

Thus you see the latitude, with which the word sacrament is used by the most celebrated fathers of the Christian Church. We are under no obligation to imitate them, and at the same time, we have no right to condemn them; because, in all their various applications of the word, they meant to point out the important and sacred nature of the subjects upon which they employed it. Here, my brethren, it is highly proper to remind you that the word is not of divine, but of human origin. It occurs not even once in the preaching of our Lord, nor in the Acts of the Apostles, nor in any one of the Epistles of the New Testament. It is not to be found in any Christian writer of the first or second centuries. It was probably employed and probably used by the Christians, when, availing themselves of the marked signification which it bore in the military art of the Romans, the Christians transferred it to the hallowed doctrines and discipline of their own religion; and we shall presently see a similar origin of another word, in which the phraseology of the Greeks was carried over to two particular rites, which the Christians revered highly,

* Veritatis sacramenta patefecit. P. 3.

and observed solemnly. In descending to later ages, we shall find considerable difference of opinion among Christians upon the proper and improper application of the word. I hold, however, that we ought always to look upon the definition of the word, as quite arbitrary, and that every religious community has an equal authority to define it according to their own views of the conformity, which their respective tenets and discipline may have to the precepts of the Gospel; and never let it be forgotten, that the term itself, as I told you, is not found in holy writ, and therefore, that men must be left to their own judgements and their own conscience in giving a larger or narrower extent to what they would call sacraments.

The Church of Rome contends for seven sacraments, that is to say, baptism, the Lord's supper, extreme unction, holy orders, matrimony, confirmation, penance.

As to one of them, penance, our Church, so far from considering it a sacrament, has not provided for it any particular form of devotion; it belongs to juridical or pastoral discipline rather than to doctrine or worship; and whether it be private, or public, or solemn, it is used only as an ecclesiastical punishment, which affects the penitent.*

Our Church totally omits extreme unction; but it has appointed religious services for holy orders, for confirmation, and for matrimony; and at the same time it does not assign to them the properties

* See Burnet, vol. iii. p. 73.

of a sacrament, which, according to the definition which they have adopted, must have a visible sign or ceremony ordained of God, and such a sign our forefathers ascribed to baptism and the Lord's supper exclusively. For baptism therefore and the supper of the Lord, it has ascribed special and appropriate services, and such as correspond with the definition which includes the condition of a visible sign or ceremony ordained of God. Thus far, the definition is correct, for the sign in baptism is water, which, not Christ indeed, for he never baptized, but which the Apostles used for converts, whom they had been commissioned to baptize and to disciple (for that is a more proper word than teach) in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and the sign in the Lord's supper is bread and wine, of which our Lord himself partook at the original institution of what is now called the Sacrament. When our ecclesiastical rulers prepared a catechism for the instruction of the young we must suppose, that they would not omit what seemed to them material, nor connive at what they thought pernicious; yet abstaining here from censure upon the five Sacraments, which, in the preparation of articles for public and learned teachers they reject, in the catechism they temperately and prudently are content with saying, that Christ ordained only two Sacraments as generally necessary to salvation, and they specify them by their two names. Surely then, as five of the Sacraments are tacitly rejected rather than expressly reprobatedsurely then, the difference of opinion between

ourselves and the Romanists is quite compatible with sincerity and seriousness in both; and while the faith and the devotion of both carry with them these two properties, deeply am I concerned that such difference should not only have occasioned bitterness of temper and asperity of language, but, as we know from the melancholy history of our own country, have brought down upon many conscientious Protestants a sentence of condemnation to the flames.

Bishop Taylor calls the doctrine of the Seven Sacraments, not an impious superstition, but an unnecessary and an unscholastic paradox. Now, to those who look upon the five Sacraments, which we reject, as supported by the written Gospels and those oral traditions, which to them are jointly the measure of faith, the belief of that doctrine would not be unnecessary, and the disbelief of them would be inconsistent. Again, I cannot agree with the learned and pious prelate, when he calls the doctrine unscholastic. It has been maintained by the most able schoolmen, and many of the arguments alleged for it are derived from the discussions and expressed in the language of the schools. If that doctrine therefore corresponds with the arbitrary definition of a Sacrament, as a genus, and constitutes one of the species included under it, then surely, no violence is done to the principles of legitimate reasoning, where the conclusions flow, as I think they do, from the premises. Granted it must be by Protestants that the premises are not accompanied by sufficient proofs to support their truth; but the conclusion