TO THE

STUDENTS IN DIVINITY

IN THE

UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN.

MY YOUNG Brethren,

I have complied with your request in publishing the following discourse. Though only a few hours were to elapse after I had heard that a tract was circulated among you, inculcating doctrines which appeared to me at variance with the doctrines of our Church, I could not allow the opportunity of addressing you to pass without commenting upon its erroneous views, and I hastily composed the following discourse. From the same view of the importance of the subject, I now publish it for your use; though well aware it contains nothing that has not perhaps been better put forward by others, and though I have been prevented by ill health from annexing to it a number of authorities such as the occasion demands. I feel, however, confident that if I

succeed in impressing upon you the importance of the subject, the more you inquire, the more firm will be your conviction that we hold fast the form of Church government delivered by Christ through his Apostles.

You have, however, my young friends, imposed another duty upon me. This Sermon was directed against a reply to the Tracts for the Times, and I must declare whether I appear as their advocate. From my station in this University you have a right to expect an explicit answer, and you shall not be disappointed. I am not the advocate of all that is contained in the Tracts for the Times. With the highest respect for the learning and piety of the Editors, with the sincerest gratitude to them for bringing forward many invaluable principles of our Church, which had almost fallen into oblivion, I must express my dissent from some of their opinions, as not in conformity with the doctrines of our Reformed Church. I have already explained to you, in my lectures, what appears to me the true doctrine of Justification, and I have also endeavoured to define the limits of authority assigned to Tradition by our Reformers, the two subjects on which the differences of opinion seem most likely to lead into serious

errors. I must add, however, that the latter volumes of the Tracts seem not to have been drawn up with the same prudent caution which marked the first, and that while I deprecate the senseless cry of Popery raised by those who have not read the Tracts, or do not know what Popery is, I cannot but lament that there does appear an attempt to bring forward obsolete practices and obsolete forms of worship, which are calculated to lead astray many weak disciples, and to offend unnecessarily many conscientious members of our Church.

You, my young brethren, have fallen upon dangerous times. It must be now your arduous task to steer your course between the bold claims of unbridled private judgment, which destroy the peculiar features of the Church, and the overstrained reverence for authority, which binds the intellect to the decisions of fallible men. It must be now your anxious care, amid the overflowings of ungodliness and the errors of superstition, to hold fast the form of sound words and contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. That the Holy Spirit, which alone can lead you into all truth, may give you strength and power to accomplish the work you are about to undertake, and may bring you unto that

agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, and to that ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ that there be no place left among you either for error in religion or for viciousness in life, is the earnest prayer

of

Your sincere Friend,

C. R. ELRINGTON.

A SERMON,

&c. &c.

HEBREWS, V. 4.

No man taketh this honor to himself but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.

THAT man has, in all ages and in all countries, been led to join in social union for the worship of his God, is a fact that must strike the most cursory observer. Do we look to the sacred writings, the earliest records of man ?—we find that religious and civil societies rose together. No sooner had the sons of Adam multiplied upon the earth, than they united with due solemnity to join in the public worship of the Most High, than "men began to call upon the name of the Lord." Do we trace the descendants of Noah, in all their wanderings after their impiety in the plains of Shinar?-this divine impulse appears a rem nant escaped from the general shipwreck, which human nature had suffered at the fall of our first

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