The Liverpool Standard, and General Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-09-12 00:00:00

"truths which lie bed-ridden in the d

at palliative efficacy it had

these truths from thi

imberic
He.lcefort

before them face to face
favour, it will be a custom wilfully persevered in and sup-
ported against the light of the clearest teaching and example.
It is worse than idle to expect to acquit themselves of this

responsibility, by acknowledg
which is like nothing but the homage whic

g the fitness of these truths,
h Vice pays to
it the reward of vice. It

Virtue, and can share in nothing

is in vain for the drunkard to condemn intemperance, or the
lewd to paint the beauty of chastity. Apostolic Christianity
is not to praise Apostles, but to imitate them. The subject
. .

of our enquiries is not speculative truth, but the practical
following of the Apostles, and practical indifference is self-
conviction. It is well for them to amuse us by their amiable
commendations of our object, but let me tell them that,
"before their own Master they snail stand or fall." They
will have to answer Hill, whether they tried to use the
influence which they tell us has bet

n them, to promote

the gre

t Chriv

[ley have happily the sense

of Christian piety to approve.

Seeing, then, that the cause is so impregnable, the tactics of

the opposition have been to impu

acter of ics ad-

vocates
hypocrit
the nature of things altered ? What shall we say of the
Church's cause, lying in the dust, whilst we are engaged in

g it indeed trt

and the m

tenants tt

ue, that we are the
)uld have us

the arts of party warfare over its prostrate carcase ? Sup-
re, indeed, so lost to religion, and to truth,

posing
that al

I the while we care not one jot for freqn,

!oak to hide our e

sole motive actuating us on the p

)O1 Clergy, the
D these

gy escape the im-

perative obligation to observe them ? Yet would this be the
practical result. We are, suppose, cowed down, brow-beaten
into silence ; the most ridiculous charges are believed against
us ; "such a body as the Clergy of Liverpool" are too
supreme to be the mark of our humble impeachments, and

things go on as before ; Churchmen continue flattering eac

other on the "primitive simplicity of their worship," and on

the apostolic way they only in all Christendom have found l
They are, by the consent of their teachers, flung back on a
system which, if our statements of fact be true, must be
radically different from that of the Apostolic Church. And
all this because the Clergy of Liverpool are "such a body."
I have said before that I do not wish to question the respect-
ability of this body; and I now wish it to be known that it is
not in scorn I have so often repeated this phrase. But I will

ask, since the consideration is thus forced upon us, in what
are they "such a body ?" I think Slr. Pollock would answer
—in their untiring opposition to Popery. But is this the
main duty of a Christian Clergy ? Does the faculty of ener-
getic declamatien raise very highly the moral character of
the man, or stamp the reputation of zeal and personal devo-
tion on "the labourer in the Lord's vineyard ?" The zreat
office of the Clergy is to build up the body of Christ, and seek
for His sheep, and His poor, scattered abroad. The monu-
ments of the pastor's true zeal are not to be found in the
audience pouring into the church or the theatre to listen to
the harangues of controversy, and leaving them reeking with
theological hatred against forms of error, whether Popish or
Protestant. It is not thus that the world was evangelised,
or that the masses of city corruption are to be leavened with
the Gospel of Truth. Self-sacrifice is the stamp of the pas-
tor's ministrations. Where are its monuments in this vast
community ? " Cireu►napice." I forbear to particularise

the result of the inspection

But it is charged against us, that our circulars of the pro-
posed Church do not put upon the front of the scheme the
repression of sin and error. Can anything equal the absurdity
of such a charge? Surely it must be taken for granted that
this is the object of all works of religion. The characteristic
of our scheme is in its mode of prosecuting that system, of
which this is the universal object; and, among fellow pro-
jects in this town, I have already remarked, that thespecialty
of the appeal was based on the differentia of our undertaking.
Yet, is not the end of a Church the worship of God? And is
not the prominent claim of our appeal this, that the project
was for the setting up and- carrying on of that system of
swors'aip in all its fulness, which was the only system of
Apostles, and is the only system of the Church of England ?
Is it nothing, that our first and private appeal, which was the
basis of the two subsequent editions upon which Mr. Pollock
has made so much idle comment, and which happens to coo-

ain the very passage afterwards transferred to the so-called
public appeal, to delude the Protestant public, and mask our
real intentions—is it nothing that this appeal makes the

!ncy of.Comrnunion,

ge staff of Clergy to ad

s parochial system? Alas