SERMON X.

(Preached, Sunday, Oct. 18, 1846.)

COMMINATION.

1 COR. xvi. 22.

If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.

ANATHEMA means accursed, excommunicated; it is the expression that has ever been used when the Church has been launching her heaviest censures against errors in doctrine, however gross; against no sin in practice, however grievous, could any denunciation be found stronger than this.

St. Paul, in the course of this his first letter to the Christians in Corinth, had been blaming them much for not keeping up the discipline which he had taught them to observe, while he was with them. In his absence he heard that there were amongst them schismatics, creating divisions, and saying, "I am of Paul, I of Apollos;" there were fornicators, there were those that partook of idol sacrifices, and there were those who profaned Christ's body and blood at His own holy and awful table; there were heretics also, who denied the resurrection of the dead; above all, there was one still allowed to remain within the pale of the Church, who had been an incestuous adulterer,

"had been guilty," St. Paul says, "of such fornication, as was not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife."

And what was worst of all, they were not distressed about the evil that was done amongst them; they were satisfied, they gloried, "they were puffed up," he tells them, and did not mourn. This their glorying, the holy Apostle warns them, was not good; a little leaven of sin was leavening their whole lump. He required of them that they should "purge out" this leaven of sin from amongst them, that they might be fitted to keep the Christian Passover as disciples of Christ, ever living in the joy of His resurrection. And now, at the close of his Epistle, in the words I have taken for the special subject of this discourse, words written with his own hand, that they might have a still greater weight with them, he, as their supreme spiritual judge on earth, pronounces a general sentence on all such offenders. "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema;" accursed, excommunicated. For the one common source of all sin and heresy, is want of love to our Saviour. For he that loves the Lord Jesus Christ, keeps the commandments; and he that keeps the commandments, that desires to do God's will, he has the promise that he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God. So that," as Bishop Wilson has observed, "in these words of St. Paul, there is a positive direction to the Church to excommunicate all such as plainly show they have no love for Christ, all such as are scandalous and profane in their life or creed "." And so far as any Church fails to lay her anathema on them which do such things, she has, we must confess it, reason to dread lest the guilt of her sinful children, whom she thus leaves uncorrected, may lie on her own head.

'Sacra Privata, p. 179, Oxford Edition.

And this is a subject of shame and fear to the whole Church of Christ on earth in these evil days; for, alas! what branch of the Church has now preserved at all, as it ought to have done, this Christian discipline?

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It is a subject of shame and fear to us all; of shame, in that having been so loved, we do not take more pains to keep the Lord's body such as the Lord would have it to be of fear, lest when He come again, we should find that we have incurred His displeasure; lest, having neglected to judge ourselves here, we should then incur eternal judgments. These thoughts of shame and fear are naturally suggested to us by the very words of the text. The sentence on him whose doctrine or works show that he does not love his Saviour, is not merely, let him be anathema, but anathema maranatha; and this word, maranatha, signifies in Syriac, the Lord is come; or, the Lord cometh; and it is added here to express the reason and justice of this awful sentence, as though it had been God's own Son come from heaven to earth to save him. Whosoever knowing this, loves not his Divine Saviour, such an one is justly under the curse, and justly to be excluded from communion with Him. Or again, if we take it to mean, the Lord will come, God's coequal Son is coming to be our judge, to judge His Church; must we not put away from us the unclean thing, lest wrath break forth upon us on that awful day?

This sense of shame, this fear, so moved the Bishops of the early Church, that those who had been guilty of any deadly sin, such as fornication, adultery, were for several years entirely shut out of the very doors of the Church, excluded from all participation in its services. Gregory of Nyssa mentions that, in his time, persons were entirely excluded from religious offices, three years for fornication, six years for adultery, then for as many years admitted only to hear the lessons, without being allowed so much as

to join in the prayers; at the end of this time they were allowed to pray with the congregation, and then, after another period of equal length, they were at length re-admitted to the Holy Communion.

Thus, according to the testimony of this Father, a penance and separation of nine years in all were required for fornication, of eighteen for adultery; in the case of murders this was lengthened to twenty-seven years, divided into three periods of nine in each state of penance, as above; first, outside the Church doors, then as hearers, and lastly, as joining in the prayers, but still shut from the Holy Communion. But in cases where persons fell away, unforced, into sins of idolatry, or deadly heresy, like what Manicheism was then, and Socinianism is now, such an one would stand condemned to penance all his life; he would be obliged to put up his prayers apart from the rest of the faithful; and would stand for ever debarred from all participation of the body and blood; only in extreme danger of death, would he be allowed to communicate.

Those who had been forced into compliance with idolatrous practices by pain or torments, were restored after a certain time of penance, according to the circumstances of the case.

In the earlier period of their penance, while utterly expelled from joining in public worship, they used to stand or kneel at the doors, repeating by themselves the penitential psalms, and entreating the prayers of persons entering into the congregation, whom they hardly ventured to call their brethren. And before they were restored to the peace of the Church, they were required to make a public profession of their past sins and present repentance, in the face of the whole congregation.

And this discipline was not only applied to such as were convicted on the evidence of others; persons were encouraged publicly to acknowledge their sins, when they

might have concealed them, and submit to penance for them, as a means of counteracting the baneful effects of past sin, and of proving and exercising their repentance, and thus obtaining mercy from God. This ancient discipline, which can clearly be shown to have existed in the Church in the very earliest age to which we can trace up her history, was even then considered as the great appointed medicine for the healing of men's souls, when diseased through the influence of grievous and wilful sin 2.

It would lead me far beyond the limits of a single discourse to attempt to show how this godly discipline was by degrees corrupted, and at length, as one may say, lost. For whatever benefits may result in some cases from private confession to a priest, and private penance performed under his direction, this is plainly a discipline wholly differing in kind from this of public confession, and public penance, the loss of which we deplore, and the restoration of which we desire.

When I speak of public confession of sins, I would not be thought to question the undoubted truth, that in times like these, the public confession of particular sins in many cases, might tend rather to scandal than edification.

And, indeed, in the early Church, this was by no means

2 The object of public penance is twofold; first, it is designed for the benefit of the persons themselves who submit to it, that they "being punished in this world," and so brought to a humble and contrite state of mind, "their souls might be saved in the day of the Lord;" secondly, for the good of others, that "being admonished by the example of those whom they see thus put to open shame, they might be more afraid to offend."

66 Penance, of course can, under no circumstances, have an expiatory power, although submission to penance is a sign of true repentance, such as is acceptable with God, and may move Him to pardon us. Neither can any outward penance avail at all towards our pardon, unless there be that inward penance Christ requires, which consists of contrition, confession, an amendment of former life, and an obedient reconciliation to the laws and will of God."-See Bishop Wilson, Sacra Privata, p. 203, Oxford Edition.