SERMON I. Treasure in Earthen Vessels.—Faith, not Sight, the Recogniser of the Priesthood.

2 CORINTHIANS iv. 7. “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.”

The words rendered “in earthen vessels,” are easy enough as to their general sense. Ἐν ὀστρακίνοις σκεύεσιν, (the Apostle says,) where σκεύος may stand for any kind of utensil or household stuff. It is the word used in St. Matthew, “How can one enter a strong man’s house and spoil his goods;” [1] any of his household stuff or possessions; whilst ὀστράκίνοιν, (the same word which gave its name to the well-known Grecian ostracism, from the mode of voting,) signifying in its first sense that which is made of shell and therefore brittle, is often used in a derived sense for anything frail and liable to break, and when broken not to be re-joined. Therefore, again, it represents anything poor and mean, as compared with other stronger or more precious material. Thus, in his second Epistle to Timothy, St. Paul uses the very same word to denote those inferior vessels which are made for less honourable use: “But in a great house, there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of earth; ὀστράκινα;—and some to honour, and some to dishonour.” [2a]

We cannot, then, err as to the general meaning of the text, if we take it to express the fact that great gifts of God—treasure—may be, and are, according to His will, and for good and wise reason, lodged in weak and frail tenements, giving little outward sign of that which is hid within: great riches enshrined in poor and mean caskets, even as the soul of man dwells in the earthy tabernacle, (that red earth or clay which gave its very name to Adam,) when “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” [2b]

But St. Paul’s application of the figure here is somewhat different from the illustration just used. It is not life, or an immortal soul shrouded in a mortal body, of which he speaks, but some special gift or gifts of God for the use of His Church and people, which he declares had been entrusted to vessels of little “form or comeliness.” And it will be of much interest and importance both to trace out what this treasure is, and what are the vessels in which it is placed, as well as to insist upon the fact that the treasure is not the less, because thus shrouded or obscured; and that it gives no cause to deny the existence of the treasure, that those who bear it seem either so like other men as they do, or so little worthy in themselves of what they bear.

Now, to see what the treasure is, we need turn back but a little way. In the preceding chapter, speaking of himself and others charged with the ministry of the Gospel, the Apostle says, deprecating all high thoughts in those so honoured: “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament;” and then, after thus disclaiming all personal merit or glory, he goes on immediately to contrast the glory of the Gospel with the glories of the earlier dispensation. “For if the ministration of death,” he says, “written and engraven in stones was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.” [3a] Pursuing this thought a little further, and enlarging upon the glories of the ministration of the Spirit of the Lord which giveth life, he comes back; at the opening of the fourth chapter, more closely to the subject of his ministry, and says: “Therefore, as we have received this ministry, we faint not;” [3b] and after a word on the effect of the Gospel which he preached, that it led to the “renouncing the hidden things of dishonesty;” [4a] and another, as to its being sufficiently manifested to every willing heart, and so, if hidden, hidden only “to them that are lost, whom the God of this world hath blinded;” [4b] he returns once more to what it was which he preached, and declares how this great treasure,—“the unsearchable riches of Christ,” as he elsewhere describes it,—was entrusted to poor and weak instruments; “for we preach,” he says, “not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness,” (that is, in the natural world when He said, “Let there be light:”) “hath shined in our hearts,” (that is, in the new creation of the spiritual world,) “to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.” [4c] And then, in the text, he seems to meet an objection, that if his call and ministry in the Gospel were of so glorious a nature, the instruments thereof would bear more or higher marks of glory themselves, he adds the words of our text: “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” [4d]

And now, brethren, again I ask, what is the treasure, and to whom committed? Surely the ministry of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ, entrusted to human stewardship!

And who shall disparage this, or overlook it, or deny the gifts and treasure of and in those who bear it, though they be but as earthen vessels; though they look simply like other men; though they are “men of like passions;” though they have few or no high marks or tokens, to be discerned by man’s eye, of the greatness of the treasure which nevertheless they bear?

This thought, this warning against denying God’s gifts when lodged in earthen vessels, and so speaking against them as actually to make a new Gospel totally unlike to that which has been from the beginning, is especially a danger of our day: a day when men live so much by sight, and, alas, so little by faith; when restless and free enquiry ranges over every subject, and men pride themselves upon their refusal to submit to any authority but their own reason, or their own mere opinion, or to receive anything beyond that of which they can understand the mode and assign the use.

Not, perhaps, the most unfrequent of these attacks of the present time is directed against almost the very subject of our text: the reality of the treasure or gifts bestowed upon the ministers and stewards of Christ’s mysteries, because they are contained in earthen vessels. Whereas St. Paul fully claims and asserts that there is this treasure, and gives as the sufficient reason for its being so lowlily enshrined, that thereby it would be seen indeed that “the excellency of the power is of God, and not of man;” [6] these objectors deny there can be any such treasure as it is asserted there is, because it is not to their eye exhibited in or by, glorious, or sufficiently distinctive, instruments.

Take a case in illustration, very near indeed to the argument of the Apostle in this place. If our Christianity in our beloved Church of England is, and is to be, the Christianity which has been from the beginning, it cannot be without a priesthood, and an altar, and a sacrifice. I do not propose at this moment to go into the proofs of this, but rather to notice an objection which is sometimes triumphantly put forward, by modern infidelity or ignorance, as fatal to all such claims. It is said, that if it were so that there is a priesthood, (which it is intended to deny;—O sad and fearful thought! That any should be found to deny and refuse the chiefest means of applying to us the pardon of the Cross): but if it were so, then, it is said this priesthood must be seen to be such by some peculiar exhibition of its powers, by some glorious or distinctive appearance in the treasure-bearing vessels. So it is said, Whatever there may be elsewhere, the Church of England at least has no priesthood, and no priests. No! Can any one believe (it is added) that they are priests who are young men, as others, one day; and are ordained, with so little outward difference, the next? Can it be that prayers and a laying on of hands, even by bishops, can effect such a change when all looks so nearly the same? No, truly! If such there were, if such there be, if we are to believe in a power given of this kind, if the priest can consecrate, and offer upon the altar of God, let us see the difference. Let the young, who are to fill such an office, be educated, not as other young men are, living with them in social life at our schools and Universities, but as set apart for this from their earliest days. Let them be known of all as a separate kind or caste; let them have a distinctive dress; let them give up social life; let them, above all, renounce the married state, and give themselves up to pursue their avocation in the single life; and then, perhaps, we may be more inclined to believe in their sacrificial function; in their power to officiate sacerdotally at the altar; in the committal to them of the power of the keys, and all which is included in the idea of a distinct order and a priestly authority. Now all this, brethren, is mere man’s wisdom, setting forth, in truth, not what it really desires to find as the mark of a priesthood, if it might have this in vessels of gold or silver, but simply, if it may not disparage and deny a priesthood of Christianity altogether, (which yet it desires to do), at least delighting to deny it to us; to raise a prejudice against it, and to drive from the Church of England (if it were possible) all those who cleave to the statements of our formularies as they are, and to the faith once for all delivered and handed down to us.

But observe, brethren, what all this really amounts to. I am not saying whether there should not be (unto the more edification), a more distinctive theological education for the future priesthood than very often there is among us. I am not saying whether there might not, with advantage, be some greater distinction in outward appearance or dress, than we have among us generally, for those who minister in holy things. (Let it, however, here be remarked, that the greatest objection and hindrance as to this proceeds, as we well know, from the clamours of those who would first deny us all priestly character, and then reproach any who, claiming it, are anxious to mark it also by some outward difference.) I am not, however, now dwelling upon these things, nor even on what are the advantages or disadvantages of a celibate clergy, but I say that to suppose the presence or absence of these outward signs or marks should affect the essence of the priesthood, and men being in reality and truth ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God, in the full sense in which these words are understood in all the primitive writings and liturgies of the Church of Christ, shews, not only an ignorance of the very first principles of Christian worship, but a strange overlooking of the truth taught in the text, and confirmed to us in so many other places of Holy Scripture. If St. Paul confessed that, even with him, his ministry was confided to an earthen vessel; if there were no need and no likelihood that any of the primitive stewards of God’s mysteries should be distinguished as by a star upon their breast, or any insignia of their rank in the Apostolic band, then it can amount to nothing as a disproof of the priesthood of the ministry of the Church of England, that those who serve at her altars have but the outward look and bearing of other men.

We may even carry this argument further, if it may be so done with due reverence and humility. We may take, not merely prophets and Apostles, but our blessed Lord Himself,—our King as well as our great High Priest,—and say of Him, that, although of course it is not objectively true that He had any of His gifts or powers in an earthen vessel, (save in the sense that He took upon Him man’s nature, and so being of Adam’s race—yet without sin—had His share of the earth of which Adam was created); but though, I say, except thus, He held not anything in an earthen vessel objectively, still, on the other hand, subjectively, to man’s sight and apprehension, He veiled His Godhead, He emptied Himself of His glory, He obscured His greatness, so that nearly throughout His life and ministry He was passed over as a common man, or His claims denied, and Himself treated as an impostor. In spite of the holiness of His life, the tenderness of His compassion, the purity of His precepts, the marvels of His teaching, the abundance and power of His miracles, yet He was not received or accepted generally as other than a common man. The Jews were offended at Him. He was to them “a stumbling block,” as He was to the Greeks “foolishness.” He came in no outward manifestation of glory; He was not in kings’ courts; He had no armies or numerous followers; He won no carnal victories; He did nothing “to restore the kingdom to Israel,” in any sense which the Jewish nation could observe or recognise; nay, in His very priestly acts, and in that greatest of them in which He did in truth offer up the great sacrifice of all, He appeared to man’s eye in no such aspect. Even as a victim, He was only considered as a malefactor put to death, whilst it may be well doubted whether even His own Apostles had the least insight at the time into the nature of the sacrifice He made; and none of them had a single thought or perception of the priesthood which He exercised. So, indeed, He seemed to have “no form nor comeliness;” [10a] “His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men.” [10b] He seemed to have all He had in an earthen vessel, undistinguished and undistinguishable by the vulgar eye from others who were around Him, or who had preceded Him, with some pretensions to be teachers, or reformers of manners, but who had disappeared and left no trace behind them. Is it, then, so certain that those who now “seek after a sign” before they admit any claim to “the office of a priest in the Church of God,” and who look for various marks and distinctions in outward show or appearance before they will entertain the doctrine as belonging to the Church of England; is it, I say, so certain that they would not have rejected Christ Himself, as not coming up to their mark and requirement, if they had seen Him in the days of His ministration upon earth?

But let us pass on from the priesthood of our Lord and Saviour, and turn again for a moment to the Apostles and their fellow-labourers. Observe, I am not engaged in proving now their priestly character, nor the truth of the sacrifices, or altars of the Christian religion; (we may come to this another day;) but I am merely meeting the preliminary objection that there can be no such things, at least, none such in the Church of England, because our priesthood is not more manifestly set forth in outward show to the eye of the world, by a more distinctive priestly education, or a more distinctive priestly dress, or a more distinctive (as is supposed) priestly life as separated from social life; and this particularly by the exhibition of an unmarried clergy. As I have before said, I am not even giving an opinion on the advantages or disadvantages of some of these things; but I am asking the plain broad question, What right have we, from Scripture and Scriptural example, to say these differences are needful to the existence of a priesthood? Be the priesthood and ministerial powers of St. Peter and St. Paul, and others their companions, what they may, did they shew them forth as in vessels of gold and silver, or were they not what we may call obscured, undistinguished, not (in many particulars at least) dissevered from social life, but just like other men; in short, with their treasure borne in earthen vessels, however really great and precious in itself?

Carry your mind back, brethren, to Simon Peter with Andrew his brother, to James and John, the sons of Zebedee, fishing on the sea of Galilee. There is no reason, at I know of, to suppose that they wholly gave up this their occupation immediately upon their endowments at the day of Pentecost. They certainly pursued them as long as their Lord was with them, and after the Crucifixion. Nay, after the Resurrection; after Jesus had appeared unto the Eleven; after He had “breathed on them and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” and conveyed to them, (if any thing could do so,) the priestly power, saying, “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained,” [12] still Simon Peter said to the rest, “I go a fishing; and they said unto him, We also go with thee.” [13a] Will any one dare to say, Had they been true priests of God, they must have pursued another mode of life, and borne the marks of their office more demonstratively and visibly before the eyes of men? Will any say, We cannot receive it that the hands, engaged one day in casting a hook into the sea, or spreading or mending nets, can be those which exercise, the next, (or the same if so it be,) the Christian ministerial office,—in breaking of bread, and celebrating the most holy Christian mysteries? Will any say that the lips which called to their partners for help, or in direction as to the safety or management of their boats and fishing, must therefore be incapable of preaching the glad tidings of the Gospel, or of exercising the commission given them of binding and loosing in the name of Christ? Or, think of St. Paul, with his fellow-helper and companion in labour, Aquila, working with their hands at their craft, “for by their occupation they were tent-makers;” [13b] aye, even “working night and day,” that they “might not be chargeable” to others: and will any say, Herein they shewed themselves too like to other men to put forward any pretence or claim to have or exercise any priestly or sacerdotal function. Will any again call to mind that St. Peter was certainly a married man; (“Peter’s wife’s mother,” we read at one time, “was sick of a fever;”) as also certainly was Aquila the companion in labour of St. Paul, (for he came “with his wife Priscilla;”) or, once more, St. Paul’s own claim to the right (though he did not exercise it, but still the right) to marry if he thought fit; as he says, “Have we not power to eat and to drink? Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other Apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?” [14] will any consider so much, and then say, you must needs have a celibate priesthood, if you are to have any priesthood at all in the Church of Christ; or, if there be one, it must be one so separated from all earthly pursuit as to be recognised at a glance as of a different order?

Nay, my brethren, such things are surely no arguments of even a feather’s weight in the mouth of any man against a true priesthood in the Church of England; and one can hardly see how they can be supposed, by any sober-minded thinker, to be either contained in, or deduced from, Holy Scripture. They are, in fact, objections merely playing with the prejudices of those who have already come to a foregone conclusion, and intended rather to point an unjust shaft at the Church of England, through a mock admiration of the Church of Rome, than to advance the cause of truth. And this with no justice, even towards Rome herself, either in praise or blame; for Rome herself may have something to say in defence of her practice as to the distinctions with which she marks her priesthood, if looked on merely as matters of expediency and not of faith or doctrine; and at the same time, we certainly have no little reason to maintain that in many of these things, (and however there may be incidental disadvantages which we need not deny, on the ground of expediency also,) yet we come the nearer of the two to the following of the Apostles, in the not making too broad an outward distinction between priests and people, and in the not having laid a yoke hard to be borne, perhaps, as a wide and extended rule, too hard to be borne, upon our priesthood’s neck; and, in short, that we are at any rate close upon the very type and pattern which St. Paul mentions in our text, in that we too have our treasure in earthen vessels, and may, in one sense at least, rejoice that it is so, inasmuch as thereby it may be seen by all “that the excellency of the power is of God, and not of us.”

Further, it needs surely no words to prove that such objections and such line of argument in denial of our priesthood, can have but one effect, if they have any, namely, to forward the interests of the Church of Rome. This, I presume, ought in consistency to be the last wish of those who use them. But so it is, and in this way. There is no more possibility of any one, who has the knowledge of what Christianity has been from the beginning, being moved by such assertions to disbelieve the great doctrines of the priesthood, the altar, and the sacrifice, as belonging, and necessarily belonging, to the Church Universal, than there is of the words of the objectors moving mountains or drying up seas. We can no more unlearn the very first elements of the appointed mode of our applying to Christ for His intercession on high for us miserable sinners,—no more believe the Catholic truths which we have drunk in to be mere human figments and superstitious inventions,—than we could return to the system of Ptolemy, and believe the earth to be the centre round which the sun and the stars revolve. Nothing, therefore, can be gained in this direction by those who propound such views. But if it should be that any, who know what the Church Universal holds and has ever held on these points, should, by weakness or inadvertence, be shaken in their belief that the Church of England maintains these doctrines and preserves this sacerdotal order,—if any should come to think that perhaps after all she has not a priesthood, and an altar, and a sacrifice, then such would no doubt begin to fail in their allegiance to her, and be afraid longer to trust their souls to her teaching or her keeping. No well-instructed, patient, humble-minded member of the Church of England can, I think, be deceived by so sophistical an argument as that which we have been considering; but, of course, all are not well instructed, nor, perchance, are all patient or humble minded, and hence it may be, there is a danger. But if there be this danger, or if any defections should follow upon such defamation of our Church, those who put forth the libel must have upon their conscience the weight of having aided the Church of Rome against their Mother Church of England.

But to return; take but two brief illustrations further of our subject. You will remember the contention between St. Paul and St. Barnabas concerning “Mark, sister’s son to Barnabas,” whom “Paul thought not good to take with them,” and how it “was so sharp between them that they parted asunder one from the other.” [17a] Again, you will recollect the occasion when at Antioch St. Paul (as he says), “withstood” St. Peter “to the face because he was to be blamed;” saying to him “before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?” Consider that “the other Jews dissembled likewise with him, insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation;” and to such a point did this reach, that St. Paul declares he “saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel;” [17b] put all this together and then say whether, upon the grounds of the objection urged, any one might not far more plausibly have denied to the Apostles themselves any just power or fitness to rule or teach authoritatively in the Church of God, than any man can deny the priesthood of the Church of England because its power is not more demonstratively shewn among us.

Or, for a second point, note this:—Does, or did ever, the admission to the Christian covenant, and the wondrous gift of God, the new birth of water and of the Spirit, by which, as the Apostle plainly teaches, Christians are made the temples of the Holy Ghost; does it, or did it ever, make such outward show of difference as will enable man to decide, immediately and infallibly, who are Christ’s, and who are forfeiting or have forfeited the gift bestowed? Then, if there be not this palpable manifestation as to the Christian life in each, why should there be a more manifest and outward demonstration of the treasure of the priesthood? If the grace of Baptism be not thus self-evident, and ever recognised by sight, why must the grace of Orders be so either? Oh! when shall we learn to believe instead of to cavil; to use the blessings God gives us, not to dispute about them; to judge, not according to appearance, but to judge righteous judgment; to believe there is a treasure, even the treasure which the Church has ever believed and declared to be in her ministry and stewardship, though it be contained in earthen vessels?

One word more, brethren, of most serious weight and import, as to such objections and I objectors. Carry your mind back to the time of Christ, to the labours of Apostles and Evangelists, and the infancy of the Church, and see of what Spirit they are. I am not speaking, remember, of all who may, from one cause or other, not be able to receive the doctrine of the Christian priesthood and altar, and who, we may well hope and believe, many of them receive the blessing of these gifts of Christ, though they know it not; but I speak of the particular objection with which I have all along been dealing,—that there cannot be a Priesthood, unless marked by striking outward differences visible by all. And I ask, what would have been the part taken, if the framers of such a test, being consistent in their objection, had lived in the days of Christ on earth? Surely we should have heard them saying, aye, in spite of His mighty works and great High Priesthood, “Is not this the carpenter’s Son? Is not His mother called Mary, and His brethren James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us?” [19a] What is He different from another? Or what more likely than that expecting something different in show and demeanour in the great Apostle of the Gentiles, they would have joined in the reproach: “His bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible!” [19b] and have rejected Him?

If these things shew us the dangers of such a line of argument, let them keep us from any word said to countenance or support it. It is a solemn thought that we cannot, by even the most careless word of levity, express approval of such assaults upon the ancient faith, or sympathy with those who make them, without becoming sharers in their responsibility. For it is thus, by a few words here and a few there, that public opinion is formed or strengthened; and what can be more awful than to have helped to form it adversely to the truth of God, and in derogation of that “ministry of reconciliation,” and those means of grace, which He has appointed. Surely the sin of such must be, like that of the sons of Eli, “very great before the Lord,” when a prejudice is raised by which men, if they do not “abhor,” are at least taught to deny and despise, “the offering of the Lord.” At the same time, let us pray earnestly for them, for, we will hope and trust, “they know not what they do.” Let us not wish that they went out from us, but let us hope and pray that they may be turned to better things. Let us remember, too, as a ground of charity, that many fall into error here because too much, for many years, the teaching of the primitive Church and of Catholic antiquity has been overlooked as a guide to the due understanding of the Scriptures; and again, because the face of Christendom, alas, is not now so one and undivided as to present all truth in due form, and mode, and weight, to each man’s acceptance. The glory of our Reformation is, indeed, that it appeals to antiquity, and carries us back to the early Church; but these later days have too much overlooked this great principle of the Reformation. So it has happened, that what is, alas, the misfortune and the reproach of Christendom—I mean its divided state—may be, and we will hope is, some palliation before God for defect in those who wish to follow the truth, but are unable at the present moment to see or to accept it. So let us above all pray to the one great Lord of all, that in His good time the Church may again be one, not only in its essence, which it must be, (we believe in but “one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church,”) but also in its life, and in a re-established communion of the Saints; that being indeed, if it may be so, once more one, our Lord’s own prayer for it may be fulfilled, and His promise accomplished, and “the world believe that God hath sent Him.” [21a] And let us ourselves, brethren, ever remember that all we have in treasure is indeed in earthen vessels, and let us for ourselves be content to be reviled and threatened (yes, as the holy Apostle was, and his Lord and Master before him), for “the disciple is not above his Master, nor the servant above his Lord.” [21b] Neither, indeed, let us count it a strange thing, “as though some strange thing happened unto us,” [21c] if we have to “go forth bearing the reproach of Christ” [22a] and His Apostles; nay, rather, “being reviled, let us bless; being persecuted” (if so it be), “let us suffer it; being defamed, let us intreat;” yea, let us be willing to be “made as the filth of the world, and the off-scouring of all things,” [22b] so that we may but do our Master’s work, and preserve His truth in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, and win souls to Christ, and, if it may be so indeed, “finish our course with joy, and the ministry, which we have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the Gospel of the grace of God.” [22c]