The accounts which I have given you of the operations of the spirit is widely different from the vague and extravagant position of some English teachers, and will show you that the Church is not answerable for their mistakes.

Let us then do unto other Churches the same justice, which we may reasonably require of them to do to our own. Never will the rash and wild positions of Reginald, Tolet, or other bigoted individuals induce me to give my assent to the unseemly and intemperate assertions of some Protestant Divines, that the "Romanists pray with their lips, and we with the heart that we exclusively pray with the understanding, and they with the voice - that we pray, and that they only say prayers."

Every Pope, every Cardinal, every Prelate, every Priest, every Deacon, every layman in the Church of Rome, would repel the charge with just indignation; and sure I am, that an eye-witness of their behaviour at the sacramental table would acknowledge such an invidious comparison to be not only uncandid, but unfounded.

God forbid that by you or by myself the bending knee, the uplifted hands, the downcast eye, the low and tremulous voice, or the solemn and profound silence of the Romanist, should be imputed to ostentatious hypocrisy, to formal compliance with cus tom, to an understanding which sees not, and to a heart which feels not. No Romanist, I am fully persuaded, has so learned Christ. Why, then, should the Protestant and the Romanist mingle in

vective with argument, and tarnish the general lustre of that cause which they respectively believe to be the common cause of truth, by an angry spirit, which certainly is not the spirit of their common religion. Rather let us suppose that, in their professions and in their actions, both are desirous to follow the revealed word of God, and let us admit that, where the intentions of both are equally upright, the mistakes of both must be equally venial.

I have censured those Protestants, who would represent the religion of the Romanist as belonging to his lips rather than to his mind; and with equal justice do I condemn the haughty and uncharitable language of those Romanists, who accuse the Church of England with coldness, and with scantiness in its regulations for the Lord's Supper. I shall not here insist upon many impassioned and sublime addresses to the Deity, which our Church has wisely adopted from the Roman Mass. I content myself with that part of it, in which we profess to eat the bread and drink of the cup in remembrance of Christ. Shall we then be told, that in the concise, simple, serious, affectionate language of Christ, in the command given to his disciples, there is no allurement to our curiosity, or taste, or gratitude-none to our curiosity, in contrasting the character and conduct of our Master with those, which the character and conduct, which the history of various nations ascribe to other founders of religion-none to our taste in discerning those pure and choice beauties of composition, which are perceived alike by the learned and the unlearned, because they flow from nature rather than art-none, to our gratitude, when we remember not merely the words of Christ, but the occasion upon which he spoke them, when for our sakes he was upon the point of shedding his righteous blood? Shall we be told that the sincere and ardent desire to obey that command faithfully does not constitute a sacrifice well pleasing unto God? Far be such rashness and such uncharitableness from the bosom and the tongue of every human being, who pronounces the hallowed name of Jesus Christ.

I told you just now, that in describing the Sacrament, Christian writers had not only taken that name from the military oath of the Romans, but that they had likewise borrowed another term from that religious rite, which by the Greeks was supposed to excel all others in solemnity and importance. I mean the Eleusinian mysteries, instituted in honour of Ceres. As the expression has, unfortunately, I think, been admitted into our communion service, I am bounden to show you the origin of it.

The word mystery then is sometimes used for particular doctrines of the Gospel, as was the case also with sacramentum ; sometimes it is used for the whole collective religion of Christ. In both of these uses it contains, not any proposition concerning the essence of the deity, but those moral dispensations, which are facts, and which, as such, can be fully comprehended by reason; but which are called mysteries, because they were unknown

before the coming of Christ. That Christ was sent by the Father is a fact that he taught the most holy doctrine is a fact that he worked miracles is a fact that he died upon the cross is a fact that he rose from the grave is a fact that his religion would be preached to the Gentiles is a fact and all these facts are so far mysterious, as that they could not be known to us without a revelation from God.

But farther, the word in the Greek language is sometimes used in an unfavourable sense, as when Josephus calls the life of Antipater, son of Herod, a mystery of wickedness: and Dionysius Halicarnassus says also of Theopompus, that he "developed the mysteries or secrets of falsely seeming virtue, and of concealed vice." The writer of the Apocalypse tells us that upon the forehead of the woman (chap. xvii. v. 5.) was written, "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots, and abominations of the earth."

My subject leads me rather to consider the favourable meaning of the word. Herodian calls the military oath of allegiance, which I before mentioned to you, the venerable mystery of the Roman Empire, meaning the secret power by which that empire was preserved. In reality, the word more generally bears a favourable sense, and therefore it was applied by Christian writers to the ceremony of Baptism, as we rarely apply it, and also to the ceremony of the Lord's Supper, as we apply it frequently. But when the Christian writers in the Greek language called these ceremonies μυστηρία, τελετὰς, μυσταγωγία,* they evidently and almost confessedly transferred to their own use the pompous and imposing language of the heathens upon the greater or the lesser Eleusinian mysteries to which I adverted: and they supposed that the Lord's Supper, designated by these words, would appear more important and more venerable in the sight both of heathens and believers. Hence, too, the verb μύεσθαι, which meant, among the heathens, to celebrate the Eleusinian mysteries, signified among Christians to celebrate the Lord's Supper. Not only the ceremony itself was called μύησις, but the act of participation bore the same name; and another heathenish word, μύσταγώγεισθαι, meant, to be imbued with the doctrines of the Sacrament, and externally to partake of it. The Greek Church has adopted the words τελετή and μυστηρίων τελετή, and it pronounces them occult, holy, and venerable. How far Christians were successful in their endeavours to make the Sacrament an object of greater veneration among their heathenish neighbours is uncertain. The experiment among them was more likely to fail than to succeed, while to the mind of a Christian it might carry a more awful appear

* The Sacrament is called also by the Greek writers the holy mystery-the mystery of our Lord-the great mystery of our salvation-the mystery of peace and unity among Christians. See Baronius-Exercitat. xvi. cap. 43. p. 388-409.

There seems among them a sort of enthusiastic predilection for the term; and when it had been established by custom, it could hardly have been opposed, without offence to orthodox believers.