of Christ's salvation; how much more does St. Paul's language apply to
the invention of an earthly priesthood--a priesthood neither after the
order of Aaron, nor yet of Melchisedek; unlawful alike under the law and
the gospel.

It is the invention of the human priesthood, which falling in,
unhappily, with the absolute power rightfully vested in the Christian
church during the troubles of the second century, fixed the exception as
the rule, and so in the end destroyed the church. It pretended that the
clergy were not simply rulers and teachers,--offices which, necessarily
vary according to the state of those who are ruled and taught,--but that
they were essentially mediators between God and the church; and as this
language would have sounded too profanely,--for the mediator between
God and the church can be none but Christ,--so the clergy began to draw
to themselves the attributes of the church, and to call the church by a
different name, such as the faithful, or the laity; so that to speak of
the church mediating for the people did not sound so shocking, and the
doctrine so disguised found ready acceptance. Thus the evil work was
consummated; the great majority of the members of the church, were
virtually disfranchised; the minority retained the name, but the
character of the institution was utterly corrupted.

To revive Christ's church, therefore, is to expel the antichrist of
priesthood, (which, as it was foretold of him, "as God, sitteth in the
temple of God, showing himself that he is God,") and to restore its
disfranchised members,--the laity,--to the discharge of their proper
duties in it, and to the consciousness of their paramount importance.
This is the point which I have dwelt upon in the XXXVIII^{th} Lecture,
and which is closely in connection with the point maintained in the
XL^{th}; and all who value the inestimable blessings of Christ's church
should labour in arousing the laity to a sense of their great share in
them. In particular, that discipline, which is one of the greatest of
those blessings, never can, and, indeed, never ought to be restored,
till the Church resumes its lawful authority, and puts an end to the
usurpation of its powers by the clergy. There is a feeling now awakened
amongst the lay members of our Church, which, if it can but be rightly
directed, may, by God's blessing, really arrive at something truer and
deeper than satisfied the last century, or than satisfied the last
seventeen c