Church a doctrine derived from Holy Scripture, of which that church, in immediate succession to the divinely-inspired writers, had the best advantage for knowing the true sense.

But when this sublime doctrine became obscured, by the world's blinding the eyes of Christians, faith failing, and sensuality prevailing, this spiritual banquet, the foretaste of heaven, became less and less frequented, and the desire of it lamentably languished and decayed. But so it was foretold of the last degenerate times. "Because iniquity shall abound," said our Lord, "the love of many shall wax cold."

Lord! stir up thy strength, and come among us; that all Churches may know whence they have fallen; that they may repent, return to their first love, and do their first work, (Rev. ii. 4, 5,) to the glory of Thy GREAT NAME, FATHER, SON, and HOLY GHOST, Blessed for EVER. AMEN. **

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APPENDIX.

Ir may serve as a check and guard upon the foregoing very poor and imperfect attempt to state and illustrate the scriptural and primitive doctrine of the Christian sacrifice, to subjoin the most ancient form of its celebration now perhaps extant.

Providentially, there remains a large collection of the Liturgies which were used previously to the time when the Church of Rome new framed and altered hers. And it is very remarkable, that, although different in language and circumstantials, according to the manner and usage of different countries, in all the essentials requisite for the solemn celebration of our Lord's instituted memorial, there is a wonderful uniformity and agreement. That in the progress of time, and in the hands of men, corrupt and fallible as even the best of men are, they contracted errors, and declined less or more from the original standard, is not to be denied, but lamented. Yet, among so many exemplars, there was hope that they might be detected and reformed, by tracing upward and marking the rise of those deviations; that, rejecting such influx, the pure stream might be found and drawn from the fountain head.

· It has been generally agreed, that the Eucharistic Office in the eighth Book of the Apostolical Constitutions, is the most uncorrupt, and claims to be the standard to which all the rest, upon trial, are to be reduced. This Office was deposited in a private col→ lection, embracing the form of doctrine, discipline, and worship of the church, as then it was used; and so lying by, without being called into the public service of any particular church, it escaped the infec tious depravations, which the inventions of men, too apt to follow the devices and desires of their own hearts, had unhappily introduced into the worship of God.

The Liturgy, in the Constitutions, was rendered venerable by having stamped upon it the name of St. Clement, the Apostolic Bishop of Rome, and so called the Clementine Liturgy; although very strikingly different from that which is presently used in the Church of Rome.

But Rome, in all regards, must give the precedence to Jerusalem, and St. Clement bow to St. James, "the Lord's brother," the first Bishop of it. It would not be judicious positively to assert, that either the one or the other composed the respective Liturgies; but that such were the most early, the truly primitive forms of celebrating the most solemn and awful commemoration of our Redeemer's death and passion used in those churches; which, in all essentials, are the same, and therefore, the names of those blessed Saints most naturally and briefly gave title to them. 724, 12 The worthy attempt to restore the Liturgy of Je

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rusalem to its primitive purity was made, and by the blessing of God upon the most careful collation and patient investigation, was effected to the utmost approximation, toward the middle of the last century, by a primitively-learned Bishop of our humble Church in Scotland, Dr. Thomas Rattray of Craig hall, his hereditary property in Perthshire. In its then state of depression, he was raised up for a res viving blessing and comfort to it, by his amiable example of true Christianity in life and doctrine. He had read and studied the ancient ecclesiastical fathers and liturgies with great care: And being requested by a worthy Clergyman, who enjoyed his friendship, the Rev. Robert Lyon in Fifeshire, to publish the Clementine, and some of the other Liturgies, in a small volume, which might be very useful to the Clergy, he applied himself to collate them all to gether, and with the Clementine, as their best test; and at last made choice of St. James's as the first and fountain of them all: "as being," according to his own words, copied from his own hand-writing, "what I think we have no ground to doubt was the Liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem in the time of St. Cyril, and is generally owned to be of greatest authority and antiquity of any Liturgy, which we know to have been used in any Church. And this has produced what I now send you?ios i, per

The work, thus prepared for the press, was put into the hands of Mr. Lyon, who procured its being printed in London, in the year 1744, under this title: “The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem, Being the Liturgy of St. James-freed from all later

additions and interpolations of whatever kind, and so restored to its original purity. With an English Translation, and Notes, &c."

This work, in a thin quarto volume, is now rarely to be found, and it might prove a very acceptable piece of antiquity, and of no small utility, to reprint it.

The very venerable compiler had been Bishop of Dunkeld, but was desired and elected to the See of Edinburgh, whither he went; and thence it pleased God to translate him to an infinitely higher and happier station in the church above: for he died in Edinburgh, upon Ascension-day, 1743, to the great loss of those whom he left behind him on earth.

His worthily-dear friend and colleague, Bishop Keith, in the sermon which he preached upon occasion of his death, delineated his character in the following words :-" The sweetness of his temper, the inoffensiveness of his carriage, the sincerity of his heart, the innocency of his life, the candour, purity, and devotion of his mind, the modesty and humility of his spirit, were admirable; the last of these almost inimitable: ornaments all of them surely of great price in the sight of God. He adorned the church; the church did not adorn him. He took the sacred character upon him, not for any selfish end, but purely to retrieve the primitive worship of Christianity; and Reverend truly he was upon account of his Christian virtues, not for his office only. I have been of his particular acquaintance for twenty years; in all which space, and through the constant tract of correspondence I had with him, both by letters and in presence, I may with great verity de