347 CHARGE TO THE CLERGY OF THE DIOCESE OF GLOUCESTER, 1767. MY REVEREND BRETHREN, Our Blessed Saviour, in His divine discourses to his disciples, intermixes indiscriminately the precepts which He designed for the future use, both of the preachers and hearers of the Word, at such time as the followers of that religion, which He was sent to teach, should be formed into a church. A method most proper for the regulation and government of a free society like the Christian, in which the teachers are rather monitors to men taught before of God, than instructors in new principles to an audience, who was to swallow implicitly whatsoever was delivered to them. on This method of instruction is carried throughout the whole Sermon on the Mount, where the precept is sometimes addressed to the future hearer, and sometimes to the future teacher of the Word; and this, not only on different subjects, but on one and the same. As for instance, that natural penetration men have, and quick sight, into the faults and blemishes of others, and blindness to their own: a moral phenomenon so strange and perverse, as well as general and constant, that the ancient masters of wisdom were forced to have recourse to a mythologic fable to explain it,—a fable implying that it was by the positive appointment of the Author of our being. But it was the way of ancient wisdom to make plain things mysterious; otherwise a little attention to human nature would have easily discovered the cause of this unequal measure distributed to ourselves and others. Vice is in itself so odious, that it always shocks us when fairly seen. In another's case nothing hinders our observation, and many things concur engage our attention: in our own, self-love either gilds the vice, so as to give it some faint resemblance of virtue; or, on the other hand, so clouds it, as to make its deformity evanid and indistinct. to This self-delusion is the subject of our Saviour's censure, which is equally directed to the hearer and the teacher. The hearer he severely upbraids, where he says, "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" And to his reproof of the teacher, he subjoins this direction: "How wilt thou say to thy brother, brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite! first cast out the beam that is in thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye.' The present occasion invites us to turn our thoughts upon this reproof and direction to the ministers of religion, from whence it may be gathered that these pupils of the great physician of the soul must, in order to render their spiritual prescriptions successful, begin with themselves, and practice upon their own disorders. "Physician cure thyself," being the formulary which nature prompted the patient to address to his physician when he observed this previous self-discipline had been neglected. What I shall, then, my Reverend Brethren, attempt to shew you is, that without this home preparation, 1. We shall never gain that confidence in our spiritual patients, which is necessary to dispose them to co-operate with our endeavours in the cure of their disorders. And secondly, 2. That though we should be so fortunate to gain their good-will, yet our ignorance in the methods of curing moral disorders would render our ministry vain and fruitless. For there are two requisites in the art of healing; the one is the patient's good opinion of his physician; and the other, the physician's ex† Luke, c. iv. v. 23. *Matthew, c. vii. v. 3, 4, 5. |