Page:A Pastoral Letter to the Parishioners of Frome.djvu/39

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by the Church in preaching, and in warning, and in exhortation, and in prophecy."—Page 396.

Now compare what I really said with what the memorialists make me to say.

I would put it to you,—are the two things alike? I would put it to you, Can you read the Bible to any effect without first having the grace of God? Can your natural state of sin possibly dare to approach God in His Holy Scriptures? No surely—you would all acknowledge that "without God you can do no good thing." You observe, I have just attributed to the Holy Scriptures the very highest of all possible excellency, as being so actually God Himself, that unregenerate man must not venture to approach them. With what more exalted gift, what higher and purer grace, efficacy, and virtue of Divinity could any one invest the sacred writings of God than to say man of his own nature cannot approach them? It was for that reason,—I remarked, the Bible in itself was useless as a means of grace,—"in itself" because man's heart must be opened before he can appreciate it. So it was with the two disciples at Emmaus; they walked with our Blessed Lord, conversed with Him, sat down with Him at meat, and yet did not recognize Him. Though they had the Scriptures, they were "slow of heart to believe," and as it were dead, till bread was broken, and then, by the Holy Spirit, their eyes were opened and they knew Him.

But I will not say more; judge ye what I have said. Do not be hasty of spirit, but read carefully and thoughtfully, and with a charitable mind, and I very little doubt the issue. May God forgive all wrong.


My brethren, there lies buried in your churchyard one whose memory I feel sure you venerate,—a very holy Bishop and confessor, who in times of peril to the Church of England, not altogether unlike the present, stood forth manfully to fight her battles: first, against the encroachments of a foreign ecclesiastical dominion which had no right to rule in England; and