ΤΟ THE CLERGY AND CHURCHWARDENS OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF BRISTOL The following Charge PRINTED AT THEIR REQUEST IS DEDICATED BY THEIR AFFECTIONATE AND FAITHFUL SERVANT THE AUTHOR. A CHARGE, &c. MY REVEREND BRETHREN, Although this is the first day on which it was possible for me to invite your attendance, consistently with technical impediments incident to a new Jurisdiction, as well as with previous and not less important obligations; yet I feel it due both to you and to myself to assure you of the anxiety with which I have looked forward to the commencement of our official intercourse, however much I may now have reason, from the state of my health and occupations ever since my appointment, to wish that it had been longer delayed. With the greater part of this Archdeaconry I have been long and intimately enough acquainted to know that the vigilance of the Diocesan, and the judicious oversight of the Rural Deans, had left little room in matters of ordinary Administration for the inter position of additional authority. Neither do I alledge the critical condition of the Church as a motive to any unusual zeal or promptitude in the discharge of settled obligations: for the interests of Religion committed to our custody, independently of external accidents, are of far too solemn and paramount a nature to render any such occasional excitement necessary to stimulate us to the due performance of our responsibility. But the construction of a new Jurisdiction out of districts previously unconnected seemed to demand the earliest practicable exercise of functions assigned with a view to greater unity, and more effective discipline and co-operation. It was accordingly my intention, and I did not resign it without regret, to have entered before now on a personal Visitation of the several Parishes, so as to be enabled to report, before our next assembling in the presence of our Diocesan, the entire Ecclesiastical condition of the Archdeaconry. From this design, which the state of my health has subsequently rendered impracticable, I was previously dissuaded by a consideration of the present unsettled condition of the Ecclesiastical Law, and the consequent expense and inconvenience which I should thus have caused to the Clergy and Parishes without any adequate results. Of the matters practically involved in such a visit of enquiry there are so many in which essential alterations were proposed by the Commissioners appointed seven years ago to enquire into the practice and Jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts, that the adoption of their recommendations, anxiously expected by the Church, would, in many instances, have rendered my interference superfluous, though it might be necessary, by superseding the Ordinary's Jurisdiction. As I should be sorry in the execution of my duty to give directions which might prove either invidious or ineffectual, I could have no difficulty in deferring a proceeding equally unnecessary and premature, and which I hope, with the Divine blessing, to be better qualified to effect hereafter, when I shall have had the advantage of more personal intercourse with the Clergy, to whose kindness and experience I confidently look as the means and measure of my own usefulness; and shall have supplied the deficiency of my knowledge in regard to Parochial details from the answers returned by the Churchwardens to the Articles of Enquiry at this our first Synodical Assembly. Such indeed seems to be the proper meaning and legitimate use of a General Visitation, and such the object of that address which, under the sanction of long custom, you would naturally expect from me to-day. It has been asked indeed by what right the Ecclesiastical Officer, whose functions are acknowledged to be originally derivative and ministerial, in place of confining himself to those duties of itinerating inspection which very early procured for him the title of the Bishop's Eye, occasionally usurps what is conceived to be the exclusive prero |