dition, the truth of the Creed is not to be canvassed but asserted. To guard, to expound, to enforce, this among other portions of the ancient depository of our faith, of our sacraments, of our orders, is the duty of individual ministers of the church. "They unfold and define its mysteries; they illuminate its documents; they harmonize its contents, they apply its promises. Their teaching is a vast system,-not to be comprised in a few sentences,— not to be embodied in one code or treatise; but consisting of a certain body of truth, penetrating the Church like an atmosphere, irregular in its shape, from its very profusion and exuberance; at times, separable only in idea from Episcopal tradition, yet, at times, melting away into legend and fable; partly written, partly unwritten, partly the interpretation, partly the supplement of Scripture; partly preserved in intellectual expressions, partly latent in the spirit and temper of Christians, poured to and fro in closets and upon the housetops, in liturgies, in controversial works, in obscure pamphlets, in sermons. To supply my portion of this secondary teaching, is my object in these Sermons. Commencing in each instance, from an undoubted verity, they will offer little of the excitement of polemical discussion; and conducted, according to the best of my ability, in the beaten way of truth, they will contain no bold

NEWMAN'S Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, viewed relatively to Romanism and Popular Protestantism.—Lecture x. p. 298.

speculation, and no novel interpretations. I shall sometimes, however, seek in the refutation of error, an impressive and interesting method of inculcating truth; and I shall often attempt to shew, that the collateral or subsidiary doctrines which may be advanced, are not unsupported by catholic consent. Without anticipating success in this attempt, I may, at least, express an assurance, that one who affords such a comment as I would wish to present to you, my brethren, on the most venerable portion of apostolic tradition, is not forgetting the duty of a preacher towards God, towards the church, towards his flock, and towards his own soul: and of this I am equally certain, that they who lend an attentive and confiding ear to such instructions, are not without an appropriate blessing; while their confession becomes more extended in its object, more influential on their hearts and actions, more acceptable to God, and a fairer and riper fruit unto salvation, of those truths which we believe in the heart unto righteous

ness.

B

18

SERMON II.

I BELIEVE IN GOD ALMIGHTY, MAKER OF HEAVEN
AND EARTH.

GENESIS i. 1.-God created the heaven and the earth.

ALTHOUGH We are distinguished as Christians by a knowledge of God, and our relation to him, not only as he is our Creator, but also as he is our Redeemer and Sanctifier; yet still we must not undervalue that branch of theology which teaches us to know aright God's being and attributes, as he is the Creator and Governor of heaven and earth: nor should we depreciate the moral consequences of that relation which exists between us and our God, from the mere fact of our being the work of his hand, and dependent, here and hereafter, on his will and bounty.

For our natural relation to God is the foundation of Christianity itself; and it is impossible to take a comprehensive view of the great Mystery of Godliness, without reverting to the most perfect notions that

we can form of God, and of man's relation to Him, before our redemption became necessary to save us from death, and to afford the grounds of new hopes and of new duties.

It was not God in Christ their Redeemer, but God their Creator, and supreme Lawgiver and Judge, that our first parents disobeyed, and so brought

"Death into the world and all our woe."

Whereinsoever, therefore, we differ from what we should have been had Adam retained his innocency, whether our difference be viewed simply as an evil, or whether it be viewed as an evil overruled to greater good, we bear about with us a memento of our relation to the Most High, as he is revealed to us in the first words of the sacred Scripture; as his being and attributes are written on the natural heart of man; and as we declare him to be the object of our faith in the first article of the Apostles' Creed, saying, I BELIEVE IN GOD ALMIGHTY, MAKER

OF HEAVEN AND EARTH.

Natural theology, then, is not a mere speculative science, as if, because our relation to God is now modified, all our duties were changed, and we stood entirely on new grounds of obedience and of subjection. Christianity is not a superstructure raised on the ruins of all our former relations with God, but it is as a glorious temple erected around the throne of the majesty of the Most High. As the present dispensation is a system of remedies for the consequences of sin against God our Creator, so does it

again inculcate and most powerfully enforce the laws of absolute Deity, and the dictates of natural religion. Messiah came not to destroy the law but to fulfil. What is Christ's inculcation of the first and great commandment, but a republication of that which had been our duty, though we had never fallen and never been redeemed: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength? Amplified and enforced in a thousand different ways, as is this commandment, by its situation in the Christian covenant, it remains the same in spirit and in its very letter, as if we still knew God only as our first parents knew him, and not as he is now revealed to us in the face of Jesus Christ.

Setting aside, therefore, the high interest of a study which places the divine Being before us as he is naturally presented to the reason of man, or at least as the reason of man is best adapted to receive him, and which involves the relation in which by far the larger portion of our race have stood with the Most High; it is clear that we, as Christians, are very intimately concerned in the study of the being and attributes of God, as the Creator and Governor of heaven and earth. I propose, therefore, for the purposes of this exposition, to resolve the first article of the Apostle's creed, into two parts: the first embracing a confession of God as the Almighty Creator and supreme Ruler of all things in heaven and earth, material and spiritual, visible and invisible; the second