ON

THE OFFICE AND DUTY

OF

PROTESTANT MINISTERS,

AND THE

RIGHT OF EXERCISING THEIR

PULPIT LIBERTY;

IN THE HANDLING AND TREATING OF CIVIL, AS WELL AS RE LIGIOUS, AFFAIRS....AND MORE ESPECIALLY IN TIMES OF PUBLIC DANGER, AND CALAMITY.*

MY DEAR SIR,

I HAVE carefully read the sermon that came

enclosed to me in yours of the fifteenth instant; and cannot but think the subject well chosen, and highly seasonable. The thoughts you have chiefly dwelt on, are truly interesting; and their frequent intrusion shews a mind more deeply impressed with its sub

This letter was written on Braddock's defeat, in answer to one from the Reverend Thomas Barton, then exercising his ministerial office in the frontier counties of York and Cumberland, Pennsylvania, as missionary to "the venerable society in London, for propagating the gospel in foreign parts.".... The author intends both this letter, and the address to the colonies, which follows it, " On the opening of the campaign, 1758," as a kind of preface to the following Sermons on Special Publie Occasions, and an apology, where it may be necessary, for the manner or expression, in any particular parts of them.

VOL. II,

ject, than attentive to external niceties and method. But, for this very reason, perhaps, the sermon may be more generally useful to such readers as want to have the same truths set in various points of view; so that I have been very sparing in my proposed alterations of method. Some transpositions and abridgments I have, however, offered to your consideration, agreeably to the confidence you are pleased to repose in me.

There is, if we could hit upon it in composition, a certain incommunicable art of making one part rise gracefully out of another; which, although it is to be seen by a critic only, will yet be felt and tasted by all. To please in this respect is well worth our warmest endeavours. We are debtors alike to the wise, and the unwise; the learned Greek, and the foolish Barbarian. None but a few choicer spirits, have sense and goodness enough, to be captivated by the naked charm of Religion. Vulgar souls need to be roused from the lethargy of low desire, and to have their love of God and goodness, excited and enflamed. Hence, Religion must be taught, as it were, to breathe and to move before them, in all the grace and majesty of her most winning and attractive form.

We shall, therefore, err greatly, if we flatter ourselves that it will cost us less labour to preach or write to the ignorant, than to the intelligent. To please and profit the latter, requires sense only. To please and profit the former, requires sense and art both.

I am obliged to you for your kind expressions towards me. An intercourse of compliment would ill suit the seriousness of our characters; and, in re

gard to any small services I have been able to render you, I am more than repaid in observing that I have, in some measure, been instrumental in supplying our poor back-settlers, with a minister of the blessed gospel; who, in this day of our visitation, will, to the best of his abilities, stem the tide of popular vice and folly, and disdain to appear cold to the cause of his God, his king, or his protestant country.

I know, however, that your appearing warm in these grand concerns, will even procure opposition to your ministry, as well as objections to all sermons of this kind. You will hear it said" That a minister "professing to be a disciple of the meek and blessed Jesus, should confine himself to subjects purely

spiritual and eternal. What have the clergy to do "with civil and temporal concerns? And as to blow“ing the trumpet of war, and declaiming against ་་ popery, a subject so long ago exhausted, what pur66 pose can it serve, but to kindle the flame of perse"cution, and banish Christian charity from the habi"tations of men?"

These objections will seem plausible to many, though they will not so much be levelled against any particular performance, as against every protestant minister in general, who shall have the noble resolution to discharge the important duties of his office, in the present emergency. I shall, therefore, endea vour to strip such objections of their false varnish, and shew that to admit them in their full force, tends clearly to involve the world in error and slavery.

It is indeed a melancholy consideration that such a task should be necessary at this day, even under the

happy auspices of liberty and a reformed religion. But I know that, in the course of your duty here, you will find arguments still wanting to combat prejudices of this kind, and even to plead before very partial judges the cause of a protestant ministry. And it is our good fortune that such arguments may readily be produced, even upon principles of reason and good policy, if those of a higher nature should be refused.

We may grant that, in the infancy of time, when men lived in a dispersed state, it was possible that every one might be priest as well as king in his own family. Not being as yet collected into larger societies, men were not then engaged in that constant round of action, which hath since been the lot of their short-lived posterity. Their manners were more simple; the distinctions between right and wrong were less perplexed; and they had leisure to attend not only to the dictates of a heart less corrupt, but also to those positive injunctions, received occasionally from God himself, conversing face to face, or handed down from their first parents, in pure and faithful tradition.

But although in these times of simplicity, as they are described to us, we may suppose every man capable of discovering his own duty, and offering up the pure and spiritual worship of his own heart, yet such a worship was too refined, abstracted and solitary, to last always. Human affairs soon became more complicated. Societies were necessarily formed; and this sacred intercourse of individuals, with the Father of Love, soon began to decay. The avo

cations of life made many forget it; and many more were too much sunk in ignorance and indolence, to mark those displays of wisdom, power and goodness, which ought to raise it in the breast. Such persons could see the sun set and rise, and could turn their sight upon the spacious sky, without adoring the Maker's greatness, or extolling his wisdom. They could wander, with unconscious gaze in the midst of nature, neither listening to her voice, nor joining in her grand chorus to creative goodness.

Now it was easy to foresee, that this defection of individuals from their Almighty Parent, might not only spread itself into general corruption, but involve particular societies in temporal misery. It, therefore, became necessary to institute a social worship, by which all the members of a community might be assembled, in one solemn act, to give some public mark of that homage of heart, which was universally agreed to be due to the supreme head of the social system.

From this time, then, a chief ruler, to administer law and superintend the public weal, was not a more salutary institution, than the separate institution of an order of men to preside in these solemn acts of devotion, and to form the minds of the people to the knowledge both of law and duty. For action follows opinion; and, in order to act right, we must first learn to think right.

Thus, the priesthood, seems to rest on the same foundation with society itself, and takes its rise from the necessity of human affairs, which requires some institution for assisting the busy, rouzing the indo