ers, that the English word
"priest" has two significations,--the one according to its etymology,
through the French _pretre_, or _prestre_, and the Latin _presbyterus_,
from the Greek [Greek: presbuteros]; in which sense it is used in our
Liturgy and Rubrics, and signifies merely "one belonging to the order of
Presbyters," as distinguished from the other two orders of bishops and
deacons. But the other signification of the word "priest," and which we
use, as I think, more commonly, is the same with the meaning of the
Latin word _sacerdos_, and the Greek word [Greek: iepeus], and means,
"one who stands as a mediator between God and the people, and brings
them to God by the virtue of certain ceremonial acts which he performs
for them, and which they could not perform for themselves without
profanation, because they are at a distance from God, and cannot, in
their own persons, venture to approach towards him." In this sense of
the word "priest," the term is not applied to the ministers of the
Christian church, either by the Scripture, or by the authorized
formularies of the Church of England; although, in the other sense, as
synonymous with Presbyters, it is used in our Prayer Book repeatedly. Of
course, not one word of what I have written is meant to deny the
lawfulness and importance of the order of Presbyters in the church; I
have only spoken against a priesthood, in the other sense of the word,
in which a "priest" means "a mediator between God and man;" in that
sense, in short, in which the word is not a translation of [Greek:
presbuteros], but [iereus].

LECTURE I.

* * * * *

GENESIS iii. 22.

_And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know
good and evil_.

This is declared to be man's condition after the Fall. I will not
attempt to penetrate into that which is not to be entered into, nor to
pretend to discover all that may be concealed beneath the outward, and
in many points clearly parabolical, form of the account of man's
temptation and sin. But that condition to which his sin brought him is
our condition; with that, undoubtedly, we are concerned; that must be
the foundation of all sound views of human nature; the double fact
employed in the word fall is of the last importance; the fact on the one
hand of our present nature being evil, the fact on the other hand that
this present nature is not our proper nature; that the whole business of
our li