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The phrases were used in a special sense, and were descriptive of gifts calculated for the times, and emergencies under which they were conferred. Christianity was then in its infancy; converts were to be made from heathenism; and attention was to be attracted, not so much by the slow method of argument, as by the more decisive and prompt operation of authority. The Apostles could scarcely obtain a hearing, unless supported by miraculous powers, the proper evidence of their mission, to introduce a new religion.

The deficiencies, and the want of knowledge, in many of the newly-converted teachers, were to be supplied only by the extraordinary agency of the Spirit ;-the necessities of the continually and rapidly increasing church, could not be adequately provided for by the gradual process of education. Apostles, teachers, and other functionaries, must have been inspired with wisdom and knowledge, to qualify them for their several offices; otherwise the supply of them never could have kept pace with the daily and hourly increasing demand for their services.

These manifestations, therefore, were then given to every man, to "profit withal," given to him for the common benefit, for which they were indispensibly necessary. The re

ligion of Christ claiming to be of divine origin, required, as its proper evidence, miraculous manifestations of the Spirit. Its progress was miraculous, and required a miraculous preparation of qualified preachers.

But, in the present times, the state of things is materially altered. The religion is established. We no longer address unbelievers who have been educated in idolatry, and to whom the Christian religion is an entire novelty; we have no occasion to give a sign or a miracle, to prove that God "sent his Son into the world to save sinners." Those whom we address have been brought up from their infancy in this faith, and have ample means afforded them, both public and private, of being informed of the duties and doctrines of the Gospel.

If then, in the present day, a man pretend to extraordinary and miraculous manifestations of the Spirit, he is, primâ facie, bound to shew some ground for his being invested with such a gift. The text given by St. Paul still has force. "The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal;" to promote the general welfare of the church. We demand, therefore, how do these miraculous pretensions tend to "profit withal;" how would the church, as it is now constituted, be

benefited by such manifestations? In what respect does the general edification require, that God should deviate from the laws by which he ordinarily governs the moral and natural world, and from which both Revelation and the general history of mankind shew, that he does not deviate without some great, some adequate occasion? Where does such an occasion exist? May we not say to those who, after the miracles recorded in the Scriptures, require fresh signs-They have Moses and the Prophets; they have Christ and his Apostles: if they hear not Moses and the Prophets, if they hear not Christ and his Apostles; neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.

So far from being profitable to the whole body of the church, the ridiculous pretensions of impostors and fanatics to these spiritual manifestations have, in various ages of the Church, brought disgrace and ridicule upon the cause they were professedly intended to advance, and have tended to the encouragement of barbarous and degrading superstitions. Even in these times, enlightened as they are deemed, we have not entirely exploded these wild pretensions. In this country various instances have been exhibited among the most ignorant classes; of which

indeed, some, in folly and impiety, would not have been unworthy of pre-eminence amidst the superstitions of the most superstitious ages. In Ireland too, if we may credit the public journals, miraculous agency has of late been frequently held up as one of the powers of the faithful.

In one case the public have had to contemplate a disgusting and humiliating scene of barbarous ignorance and superstition, in the murder of an innocent child by a lunatic priest"; who, under the pretence of performing a miracle, was not only suffered, but encouraged by several spectators to proceed in his brutal work of death, in spite of the cries of his miserable victim, and notwithstanding the presence of its parents. Of the man under insanity no remark can be made, but what shall we say of those, who could stand by, and believe that his frantic mummery was the means of working a miracle? It will be said they were barbarous, they were ignorant. But are they the only persons of that persuasion, who admit the validity of pretensions to extraordinary manifestations of Spiritual agency? No! men of high station and authority in that Church, men well educated, teachers, have

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" Carrol's case, which occurred in 1824, shortly before this sermon was preached.

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encouraged the notion, and have published formal accounts of miracles so absurd, that were it not for the reputed acquirements, and the station of these persons who countenance such a belief, the subject would scarcely be sufficiently grave to be even mentioned in a discourse. The ancient history of the Popish Church abounds, it is well known, with legends of this description; and it is really to be regretted, that after the complete exposure of those, which took place at the Reformation, it should have been thought proper to have recourse to such miserable expedients.

Far from being profitable to the cause of religion; they only invite the extravagances of fraud and fanaticism; give scope to the sneers and scoffs of the infidel; and serve to distinguish and blazon the deplorable ignorance of the people upon whom they are attempted to be imposed.

We contend, then, that extraordinary manifestations of the Spirit are not to be expected in the present day; the test given us by the Apostle will not sanction them; they tend not to the common benefit, they profit not. They ought, therefore, to be viewed with

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Hohenloe's miracles, on which reports were, with all due solemnity, put forth by some of the Catholic Clergy in Ireland.

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