580 THE HOLINESS OF PLACES OP WORSHIP. vestry-men tochuse parish -officers and settle parish taxes, the choice of aldermen and common council -men in the city of London, in which they too often find such quarrels and mutual reproaches, such railing, such fraud, and falsehood inprocuring votes at elections, as is very improper to be indulged, or even the probability of it admitted in aplace, which has any real holi- ness in it. How many other secular affairs are sometimes tran- sacted in churches in the country, and in church-yards too, though they are consecrated, because they are large and conve- nient ? How many consecrated churches are appointed to teach little children their A, B, C, and all the rudiments of learning in them ? And are not boys often indulged to play in churches, while men meet to ringbells there merely for diversion, or for any trivial purpose ? Surely these places are not supposed to much real holiness in them, where these things are continu- ally practised, and universally connived at, if not publicly allowed. 2. Consider how many chapels in the nation are erected and used for religious worship, without any consecration at all : And the divine service is justly supposed to be as effectually per- formed, and as much accepted of God, as if it had enjoyed all the ceremonious formalities in the world to consecrate it. No are any former impurities supposed to render a convenient place unfit for divine worship, though there have been no purifying rites and forms to sanctify it. Has the royal banqueting -house, which was erected in the last age, and where our former kings celebrated other sort of festivals, than those of the apostles and martyrs, has it been ever consecrated by any of these forms, in order to make it a holy place for divine worship, which is regu- larly and constantly performed there in the present age ? 3. I could never learn, that the consecration of new churches and chapels, has any certain set of ceremonies, appointed for it by the laws of the land. There is indeed an ancient form pre- served, whereby Lancelot Andrews, bishop of Winchester, in the year 1617, consecrated a small chapel at Peartree near South- ampton, which I have several times seen, and gazed at it, as that very building which gives us the model for our present con- secrations. But I have not found any sufficient authentic acts of the kings or parliaments of England, whereby this is required or made necessary*. Upon thewhole then, I cannot find any great difference between the sentiments of the dissenters and the con- formists of our age, in this point, among wise and thinkingper- sons. They seem to agree, there is no such holiness inplaces, as weaker minds imagine. * This form of the consecration of churches, is found in bishop Sparrow's book, caned ee A Rationale of the Common' Prayer," in octavo; and in the same authors e. Collection of the Articles, Canons, Sec." of the chinch of England in quarto.
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