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UNIV. OF

Southey's Common-place Book.

ECCLESIASTICALS;

OR, NOTES AND EXTRACTS ON THEOLOGICAL

SUBJECTS.

66

[Bishop Sanderson's inmost Thoughts.]

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[Want of the Bible in Paris.] UT since I have thus ad- "DURING the peace of Amiens, a comventured to unbowel my-mittee of English gentlemen went over to self, and to lay open the Paris for the purpose of taking steps to very inmost thoughts of my supply the French with the Bible in their heart in this sad business own language. Of this committee Mr. H. before God and the world; I shall hope to (Hardcastle) was one, and he assured me find so much charity from all my Christian that the fact which was published was litebrethren as to show me my error, if in any rally true-that they searched Paris for thing I have now said I be mistaken, that several days before a single Bible could be I may retract it; and to pardon those ex- found."-SILLIMAN's Travels, vol. 1, p. 167. cesses in modo loquendi, if they can observe any such, which might possibly, whilst I was passionately intent upon the matter, unawares drop from my pen ;-civilities which we mutually owe one to another, damus hanc veniam, petimusque vicissim, considering how hard a thing it is, amid so many passions and infirmities as our corrupt nature is subject to, to do or say all that is needful in a weighty business, and not in something or other to over-say and over-do: yet this I can say in sincerity of my heart and with comfort, that my desire was (the nature of the business considered) both to speak as plain, and to offend as little as might be."-Preface to Sermons.

[Religious Improvement.]

IN a dialogue or familiar talk by Michael Wood, 1554, it is said "Who could twenty years agone say the Lord's prayer in English? Who could tell any one article of his faith? Who had once heard of any of the Ten Commandments? Who wist what Catechism meant? Who understood any point of the holy baptism? If we were sick of the pestilence we ran to St. Rooke, if of the ague to St. Pernel, or Master John Shorne. If men were in prison they prayed to St. Leonard. If the Welshman would

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NO VIMU

WORDSWORTH ADAMS-STRYPE — BINGHAM.

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[Chancels no Popery.]

"THE use of the Chancel for the Communion service is so far from being Popery that the Papists and Popish Impropriators in England, permit the Chancels where they are concerned to lie the most disorderly and ruinous of any other, as I myself have seen in several places, they are not careful to repair or clean them; nor can they be brought to contribute to the Reformation of Churches but by mere compulsion, and they would be well enough satisfied to see all the Chancels and Churches in England lye in ruin, for this would be the most certain way to overthrow the Reformation and bring in Popery, which being planted again by Authority would soon oblige that party to rebuild the Churches."-BISHOP OF LINCOLN'S Charge, 1697, p. 22.

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that pleaseth God, nor that God requires ; but is a thing that God doth tolerate for the weakness of men. For as the father contenteth his child with an apple or a hobby-horse, not because these things do delight the father, but because the child, ruled by affections, is more desirous of these things than the father is rejoiced in the deed; so Almighty God, condescending to the infirmities of man and his weakness, doth tolerate material churches, gorgeously built and richly decked, not because he reSTRYPE'S Cranmer, p. 108. quires, or is pleased with such things.''

[Necessity of speaking in a Tongue understood by the People.]

ST. AUGUSTINE says, “there is a diligens negligentia, an useful negligence, proper in this case to Ecclesiastical teachers, who must sometimes condescend to improprieties of speech, when they cannot speak otherwise to the apprehensions of the vulgar. As he notes that they were used to say ossum instead of os, to distinguish a mouth from a bone in Africa, to comply with the underAnd for this standing of their hearers. reason, I doubt not, there are so many Africanisms, or idioms of the African tongue, in St. Austin, because he thought it more commendable sometimes to deviate a little from the strict grammatical purity and propriety of the Latin tongue, than not to be understood by his hearers."- BINGHAM, Vol. 14, p. 4. § 19.

Uniformity in Religion preserved by Force.

"Do they keep away schism? if to bring a numb and chill stupidity of soul, an unactive blindness of mind upon the people by their leaden doctrine, or no doctrine at all; if to persecute all knowing and zealous Christians by the violence of their Courts, be to keep away schism, they keep away schism indeed: and by this kind of disci

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