fund of the Episcopal Society has advanced from four hundred and seventy-five, to upwards of eight hundred dollars; at the same time, a very considerable number of bibles, prayer-books, and religious tracts have been gratuitously distributed by the society, among the needy members of the Church, aud others. The number of instituted rectors in the diocess, is nine. The whole number of clergymen, fifteen; three more than were reported at the last meeting. PENNSYLVANIA. There are, at this time, in the state of Pennsylvania, thirty clergymen of the Episcopal Church; the greater part of whom are engaged in the discharge of parochial duty. The following persons have been ordained deacons, in this diocess, since the last General Convention: Richard S. Mason, William A. Muhlenberg, Henry R. Judah, Samuel C. Brinckle, Manning B. Roche, Thomas Breintnall, William Westerman, Joseph Spencer, John Rodney, Bird Wilson, William S. Wilson, Charles G. Snowden, John Johns, Samuel Bacon, Henry Pfeiffer, and Samuel Sitgreaves, jun. The following deacons have been ordained priests: the Rev. George Sheets, the Rev. Albert A. Muller, of South-Carolina, the Rev. Jacob M. Douglass, the Rev. Charles M. Dupuy, the Rev. Thomas P. May, the Rev. Frederick Dalcho, M. D. of South-Carolina, the Rev. John V. E. Thorn, the Rev. Bird Wilson, and the Rev. Samuel Bacon. There are, at present, the following candidates for orders in this diocess: Samuel Marks, Charles P. M'Ilvaine, Ephraim Bacon, James Doughen, John B. Bankson, Robert Piggot, Richard H. Morgan, Joseph Mason, Peter Van Pelt. This diocess has been deprived by death, of the Rev. Absalom Jones, the Rev. Thomas P. May, and the Rev. John Campbell. St.Thomas's Church, Whitemarsh, St. Luke's Church, Germantown, and Christ Church, Leacock, Lancaster county, have been consecrated by the Bishop. New churches are erecting at Lancaster, Easton, and Mantua. Four recently organized parishes have been received into union with the Convention of the diocess. The number of baptisms since the last General Convention, has been one thousand six hundred and sixtyeight, and of confirmations, seven hundred and twenty-four. The number of communicants reported to the last diocesan Convention, is one thousand five hundred. From the representations of the missionaries who are sent out under the patronage of the Society for the advancement of Christianity in Pennsylvania, the agreeable intelligence is derived, that a degree of religious sensibility is perceptible among the members of our communion generally, and an attachment to the distinctive principles of our Church,which, it is hoped, will, in time, lead to the most beneficial results. Under the influence of this pious zeal, the missionaries, who have been sent into the interior parts of the State, have been thankfully received and cordially welcomed; and under their labours, congregations have been collected and organized,which will soon be able to erect for themselves places of public worship, and support their pastors. Societies have been established and respectably supported, for Sunday school instruction, for distributing the Book of Common Prayer, and religious tracts. The Episcopal fund is rapidly increasing, and the corporation for the relief of widows and orphans of clergymen has an extensive fund which promises to answer the purposes of its establishment. Upon the whole, it may be remarked, that the Church in Pennsylvania, under the blessing of her divine Founder and Head, is as rapid ly increasing in prosperity as, when all circumstances are considered, we have any reason to expect. POETRY. For the Churchman's Magazine. David's Lamentation over Saul and Jonathan. 2 SAM. i 19-27. The savage lion quits his lair, Their temper'd swords they dye. V. Let bitter tears be shedLet sackcloth o'er thy limbs be spread, And grief thy notes employ. Wild be the strain, and deep, That rolls on the list'ning ear; And let its melting murmurs sweep, Above their untimely bier. VI. 'Mid gasping warriors low, In the scatter'd ranks of death, The breast where love was, wont to glow With more than female fire, Lies pale and void of breath. But hush the strain-unstring the lyre The minstrel's voice be dumb; The quiv'ring chords in vain aspire To wake the mighty from the tomb. EREMUS. New Haven, April 18, 1831. From the Christian Remembrancer." Sincerily no Equivalent to the Or the general value of sincerity in the common affairs of life, and more especially in our religious conduct, there can be no question.Without it, as we all know, the warmest professions of friendship, and the most solemn engagements, are empty and worthless-without it, our piety, however fair in its outward shew, and set off with the strictest observance of rites and ceremonies, is but a wretched hypocrisy, useless to ourselves, and insulting to the majesty of heaven. Can we then, it may be asked, estimate its value too highly? I answer that we may-and that we do estimate it too highly, when we make it an equivalent to the truth itself. Sincerity is confessedly of very high importance -but are we hence to conclude, that it is all in all ? Because sincerity in the profession of the true religion is indispensable to our salvation, is it to become a matter of indifference of what religion we are, of what communion or denomination, or whether we are of any religion, any communion, or denomination whatever, pro-, vided we be but sincere in our opinions? Is man on the most momentous of all questions, to suffer his thoughts to follow just where his caprice and fancy may lead, and hope To shelter his extravagancies under Vol. I. No. VIII. [No. 8. the plea of sincerity? Is the care of our heavenly Father to communicate his will to mankind, so beautifully described in the Scriptures, by his sending his servants the Proph ets, " rising up early, and sending them"-are all his admonitions to his chosen people to walk steadily in his statutes are all the doctrines, and precepts, and promises of the Gospel-nay, the very shedding of the precious blood of the ever blessed Son of God come but to this, that a man may be equally safe with or without them? And yet what is this but a fair statement of what was, and, I fear, is still but too prevalent an opinion amongst us. Let à man now-a-days, deny the divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ-let him broach the most unheard-of doctrines-let him dissent from a pure and Apostolical Church, in which he has been born and educated, and hitherto passed his life-let him be of this or of that communion, or of no communion whatever; still, forasmuch as he follows his conscience, however uninformed and biassed, and consequently however unfit a judge in such a matter his conscience must be; forasmuch as he is secure in his profession, and secure of his own integrity, he has nothing, we are told, to fear from the divine displeasure, however great and fundamental may be his error; he has every thing to hope from the divine favour, even though he may have placed : 29 himself out of the covenant of prom- sincere? Let me descend however more to particulars. We have in the Holy Scriptures three Persons expressly mentioned under the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and to these three are assigued every possible attribute of divinity. We have the Father declared to be God; the Son, God blessed for evermore; the Holy Ghost, God, whose temples we are. We have many collateral arguments of great weight, all tending to the same point. We have the authority of the earliest and best antiquities decidedly in favour of what, for brevity's sake, has been termed the doctrine of the Trinity in unity: and can we suppose, that because a man in the pride of human reason, or from whatever other cause, (God knoweth the heart,) chooses to work himself into a sincere disbelief of all this, that therefore his error is blameless, nay, for the sake of his sincerity, even acceptable to the glorious Being, whose right he so openly invades ? ise. Yet surely, where the truth is within our reach, it is not enough for us to be sincere, unless we are sincere also in the truth. It is not enough that we have a confident persuasion that we are right, for this may be the result only of feeling and prejudice, but we must have submitted this persuasion in the best manner in our power, to the test of those Scriptures, that are alone "able," as they themselves declare, "to make us wise unto salvation." A man may err, even when he is most conscientious in his error: he may think and feel himself to be in the right, and yet be no less in the wrong. Nay, as Law has well remarked, "a little knowledge of human nature is sufficient to teach us, that our sincerity may be often charged with guilt; not as if we were guilty because we are sincere, but because it may be our own fault that we are sincere in an ill-grounded opinion. It may have been from some ill conduct of our own, some irregularities or abuse of our faculties, that we conceive things so wrongly. And can we think so much owing to a sincerity of opinions, contracted by ill habits and guilty behaviour? Certain conditions in the way of moral qualifications may be considered as affixed by the great Giver of all good gifts, to the attainment of the truth. If men then, will not comply with these conditions; if they are resolved to bring down the word of God to the weak and erring decisions of their individual reason, and believe nothing that they cannot comprehend, tho' it be in its very nature above their comprehension; if they will set up their own unsupported and isolated opinions against the interpretation and doctrines of ages, as if they alone of all the faithful servants of God, were blessed with the spirit of God, and fitted to declare the truth, can we wonder that they should so often err, even when they may be most We hear the further mention of a visible Church, existing as a distinct society, under its own laws and rules governed like its earlier branch, the Jewish Church, by three sepa rate orders; by our Lord, as the great Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, by his twelve Apostles, and the seventy disciples during his abode on earth; and on his removal from it, by the Apostles, and the Bishops their successors, the Priests and the Deacons, in one uninterrupted succession down to the present day. We have this Church set forth as a building fitly framed together, divided indeed for purposes of exterternal communion, into several compartments or national Churches, yet still but one building, one universal or Catholic Church, having "one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, and Father of all," and built up on the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being at once the Head and chief Corner stone. We are implored even by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that we all speak the same thing: that there be no division among us; no separation from the external communion of that branch of Christ's Church, of which we happen to be members; but that we be perfectly joined together in the same mind, and in the same judgment. If then, after all these strong testimonies, a man can bring himself to believe that there is no mention whatever of a visible Church in the Holy Scriptures; no institution of a regular Priesthood for the due administration of the holy Sacraments, and the conveyance of God's graces to his penitent people; no warnings against that wantonness of separation,which is the unhappy feature of the present times; and no such thing, in a word, as schism, or the sin of schism, is his sincerity any sufficient justification of his error? We are taught, moreover, to avoid foolish questions, to hold fast the faithful word, and contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the Saints, and testified by the Church of God through all ages. If men then will heap to themselves teachers, and suffer themselves to be carried about by every wind of strange doctrine, are they the less to blame because they are sincere in their folly Far am I, in any thing I have now said, from presuming to sit in judgment on any individual of the numerous sects that are daily rending the Church of Christ. In error, or out of error, to his own Master he standeth or falleth. But I must contend, and that most strongly, against the general principle, that it is a matter of indifference, what our religious opinions may be, provided that we are but sincere in maintaining them; because it is a principle that would go the length of asserting, that whatever we conceive to be right, cannot be wrong; because it would set up sincerity as an equivalent to the truth, and an equal recommendation to the divine favour; because it would open a privileged door to every possible excess in doctrine, and end ultimately in the entire subversion of religion itself. The only sincerity, that can avail us, before whose eyes Jesus Christ has been evidently set forth, is sincerity in the truth; the truth, as it is in Jesus. The only course to fit ourselves for the reception of this truth is to cultivate the disposition of seriousness, humility, and teachableness; a readiness to do God's will, and an earnest desire of, and an entire reliance on the assistances of his blessed Spirit. The only safe guides to the knowledge of the truth, exclusive of God's assisting grace, are, 1st and above all others, the Scriptures in their plain and legitimate sense. And 2dly, what I add without fear, and what every day's experience teaches me more and more the value of, The avowed declarations of our own pure and Apostolical Church, the opinions and interpretations of the most pious and learned of her divines, and the acknowledged traditions of the first and early Christians; and lastly, on our own parts, a conscience improved and enlightened by, and referring all its decisions to the Word of God, and a judgment freed from the bias of all evil affections, and consenting, without any compromise of its own freedom, to be taught and guided by the unerring Spirit of God. |