"If there is no effect," says he, "in a right sentence of the Church, because there is no effect in a wrong one, then it will follow that there is no effect in either of the Sacraments, when rightly received, because they want such effect in persons who do not rightly receive them. It may as often happen that the Sacraments are administered in wrong circumstances, and as void of that effect for which they were intended, as any wrong sentence of the Church be pronounced; but does it therefore follow that there is no effect in the Sacraments? that they are empty and useless to those who receive them rightly, because they are so to those who receive them otherwise?" It must either be affirmed, “that the Sacraments have no effect, or that the opus operatum is always effectual. For if you say they have any effect, though not always, then it is certain that the sentence of the Church may have effect, though not always. Whether your Lordship will own the popish doctrine of the opus operatum, or deny the Sacraments to be means of grace, that is, to have any effect, I cannot tell: but sure I am, if you do not hold one of these doctrines, you must own the Sacraments to have conditional effects in supposed circumstances; which will sufficiently confute your own strict demonstration that Excommunication can have no effect, because it has not in all circumstances1."

This, I suppose, is clear enough, and sufficiently

1 Law's third Letter to Bishop Hoadly.

disposes of the assertion that Excommunication can never have real effects. if it has no effects when unmerited.

Again, on the other hand, if we suppose the seltence to take effect in all circumstances, whether merited or unmerited, still there is nothing in this inconsistent with what we know of God's justice, either from nature or the Bible.

The difficulty of this supposition if it has any difficulty, must turn on the assumned unlikelihood that God should measure out His favours to men by any rule but their own deserts. For it will not be maintained that, if they can be supposed to gain or lose God's favour by any other means than their own deserts, there is any particular difficulty in placing excommunication and absolution among the means. If we find some men placed in a more favourable condition than others, with respect to the chance of obtaining God's favour here and hereafter, in consequence of circumstances over which they can have had no controul, and which in fact arose before themselves had done good or evil; it will hardly be said that excommunication cannot place men in a less favourable condition, nor absolution in a better, in these respects, simply because the person sentenced has not incurred [them] through his own conduct. Let these sentences be supposed to be administered in some cases by the merest caprice, or in the most complete ignorance, and still they will not, as far as we can see, have been more capricious, or less regulated by the merits of

the parties, than are those causes, which bring one man into the world under the guardianship of heathen parents, and another of Christian; which doom one to be educated in vice, and scarcely leave him a chance of escaping it, while they surround another from his very birth with such examples of holiness, that only great perversity can prevent his being enlightened by them. If it be said, that these causes are retained by God in His own hands, and that He sways them, unobserved by us, in such a manner as to exclude injustice; may it not be said with equal probability, that the caprices of men are in His hands, and that He makes them unconscious instruments of His will? But this is mere conjecture; the fact is all we are concerned with at present: and the fact is, that God does, in a great variety of ways, make the condition of some men more advantageous than that of others, with regard to raising themselves high in His favour both here and hereafter, without our being able to trace any connexion between these advantages and the merits of the parties; so that to consider excommunication and absolution as among these ways, is but to consider them of a piece with what we know to be consistent with God's justice.

It will perhaps occur to some persons, that it is pressing matters too far, to speak of the accidents of birth and education as affecting men's welfare in the next world for that at the last day all these things will be taken into consideration, and that each will be accepted "according to that he had,

not according to that be at no. Now I S undoubtedly true that these times vil te Taker into consideration and mereu avans mans accordingly indeed, were the true, the moral and religious condition of the varit vout it t shocking to be contenuated. £nd TL # *marked by the great Busby Butler szex dol 100 by any means imply that all persons conction here is equally advantageous will respen to fummary.” If it is a reasonable thing to thank God that we were born in a Christian land, and a pious parents, it cannot be reasonable to regard these as OLT nominal advantages; and be who should explain them away or reduce them to nothing, would ga far towards proving that Christ might as well have not died for us.

Thus much then we learn from the Light of Nature respecting the truth of the proposition that human desert is the only rule by which a just God can dispense His favours. How far these inferences are confirmed in Scripture, the following declaration of St. Paul will enable us to judge: “The children,” that is, Jacob and Esau, "being not yet born, neither having done good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that calleth; it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger, (as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.) What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For He saith unto Moses, I will have mercy on whom I

will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." And again, "Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, Why hast Thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour ?"

Such is the language of Scripture; it is also, as has been seen, the language of Experience; nor is there any thing in it irreconcilable with Reason and our natural notions of justice, as has been pointed out by the great and wise Prelate above quoted.

"It is not," says Bishop Butler, "unreasonable to suppose, that the same wise and good principle, whatever it was, which disposed the Author of Nature to make different kinds and orders of creatures, disposed Him also to place creatures of like kinds in different situations; and that the same principle which disposed Him to make creatures of different moral capacities, disposed Him also to place creatures of like moral capacities in different religious situations; and even the same creatures in different periods of their being."

To conclude then :-it has, I think, been shown, 1. That excommunication and absolution, though not amounting, either the one to damnation, or the other to salvation, may nevertheless be, the one a real spiritual blessing, and the other a real spiritual calamity: 2. That, though these