aspect of society underwent no change; if, from the past and present, we were able with certainty to descry the future, so far as a provision for its ministers is concerned, we should have everything required of an efficient church. But society is in a state of constant fluctuation; the aspect it presents continually changes. Its different parts, at any given time, afford not a greater contrast to each other, than that, which, at different stages of its progress, each presents in contrast with itself. Temperance and luxury, simplicity and refinement, although fixed, and absolute as moral qualities, are relative and variable as to many of the modes in which they are expressed. As means increase, as circumstances change, that may denote the one, which previously marked the other.Where society is progressive, there is a constant transition of the refinements into the conveniences, while the latter are passing into the necessaries of life. But in this general progress of our nature, in this procession of its various ranks in which all are advancing in a path, where each keeps its relative position to the rest, we see the necessity that the provision which the mi nisters of religion are to receive, shall be of such a nature, that it may not, from being always of a stationary amount, prevent them from advancing in the general career. CHAPTER VII. OF THE DEGREE IN WHICH THE PROPERTIES BELONGING TO AN EFFICIENT CHURCH ARE TO BE FOUND EXEM PLIFIED IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, AS THEY If we keep in view the outline of what reason and Scripture point to as the means by which the influence of religion may be most effectually maintained, and if we observe how nearly, as far as circumstances have permitted, the Church of England has filled up the outline we have given, we shall find ample room on which we may stand justified for the peculiar efficiency we would ascribe to her. The ground-work of that efficiency, we consider to be laid in the correctness with which she estimates the views of Revelation, in respect to their bearings on the present life. Agreeably with these, she seeks to impress upon the minds of men, that in some measure they are but strangers, they are but pilgrims upon earth who seek a better and a heavenly country. But she is not forgetful, that from the tenour of these views, it equally results that they are not to look with contempt upon the present world, that they are not to remain indifferent to its duties, to abstain from its pursuits, or to consider its enjoyments indiscriminately sinful. It is therefore, that in enumerating the blessings for which she directs our gratitude towards the father of all mercies, while the spiritual have their due superiority assigned, those that are but temporal are not forgotten. While she calls upon us to thank him, above all, for the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory, by associating them with these, she gives their relative importance to the others. She thus lends men the sanction of her authority for believing that there is an innocent enjoyment of all the blessings of this life, and where an innocent, a laudable pursuit of all the means by which they are obtained. Proceeding still upon this great and leading principle, that neither by the light of nature, nor the views of Revelation, that neither by the course of providence, nor by the plans of grace, are duty and happiness to be considered as disjoined, this inference she confines not to the body of mankind. She extends it also to the teachers of religion, as partakers of the principles which are essential to the nature they have in common with those whom they are destined to instruct. Consistently with this conviction, she seeks to abstract her ministers from the pursuits, the occupations, and enjoyments which religion leaves open to the rest of men, so far only as may be necessary for securing to the latter, the advantages which their office is intended to confer. But in doing this, she has laid that office open to the capability of rendering services to man, of which, in kind, in number, and degree, he must otherwise have been as certainly, as he would have been unhappily, deprived. The accuracy of the views which she has taken, enables her to contemplate, to its full extent, the degree in which the time, and the attention of mankind at large, must be absorbed in secular employments and pursuits. By extending, as far as requisite, the inferences, which, by reason and |