A LETTER to the Author of the Proteftant Diffenter's Anfwer to the Free Addrefs on the Subject of the Lord's Supper.

Reverend Sir,*

I THINK myself obliged to you for the

pains you have taken to write and publish your nine letters in answer to my Addrefs to Proteftant Diffenters on the fubject of the Lord's fupper, of which, in a polite card fent along with them, you beg my candid acceptance as a token of real respect. I thank you becaufe you have led me, as you will fee, tỏ còrrect fome mistakes, and to amend fome expreffions which had inadvertently escaped me, and more especially to make fuch additions to what I had written as appear to me to be favourable to my original and profeffed design in writing. You must, however, excuse me when I fay, that I

*In fome of the advertisements the author of this treatife is faid to be a minifter in London.

think your manner of writing is by no means uniformly candid, or respectful.

A fair and liberal critic will confider the real meaning of an author; and while he animadverts upon that, with the degree of severity which he thinks the nature of the fubject requires, he will overlook every thing else, and attribute flight inconfiftencies to inadvertence; unless he think them to be fuch contradictions, as thofe persons only are apt to run into, who have not truth for their object. In general you seem not to question my fincerity in what I write; but in one place, p. 104, you infinuate, that my expreffions are defignedly calculated to convey falfe and injurious ideas.

To me, Sir, you appear through your whole performance to have erred greatly on the head of fairness. Indeed there is hardly any thing that you pretend is wanting in my treatise, but what you yourself actually find in it, though not in the

very place where you expected it, or not expreffed in fuch a manner as you 'could have wifhed; but I fhall not trouble you, or the public, with a minute reply; especially fince you confefs a dread of my abilities to difcover faults in your writing, and to turn many parts of it into ridicule, p. 132.

The only view I have in writing to you is to obferve, that you and I do not really differ in our sentiments on this fubject, so much as the world may, imagine, from reading what each of us has written. In your whole chapter concerning the advantages that arise from celebrating the Lord's fupper, there are but few that you yourfelf have not found in my treatise; and the rest I have no objection to. As far as they are peculiar to the Lord's fupper, I think they are fufficiently implied in what I have written; however I never meant to exclude them.

When you say, p. 104, that you do not imagine that God is in any other fenfe pre

fent

fent in the facrament, than he is with good men in general, in attending his inftitutions; and that you do not pretend to a more immediate intercourfe with him upon that occafion, than in other exercifes of devotion, you fay all that I ever meant to contend for; but I do not agree with you in thinking that the perfons I censure do not imagine, or pretend to more than this. The writers of the Affembly's Catechifin certainly meant more, when they afferted that, by giving and receiving bread and wine, the worthy receivers are, by faith, made partakers of the body and blood of Chrift, with all its benefits, to their spiritual nourishment and growth in grace; and that by these fenfible figns Chrift, and the benefits of the new covenant, are reprefented, fealed, and applied to believers.

Bishop Burnet, alfo, certainly meant more than you do, when he said with refpect to the facraments, that Chrift does fill accompany them with a particular prefence in them and a blessing upon them; so that we, coming to them with minds duely pre

pared,

pared, do certainly receive, in and with them, particular largesses of the favour and bounty of God.

If fomething more was not imagined to be done on God's part, as well as on ours, in receiving the Lord's fupper, than in other religious exercifes, how came it to be confidered as fo much more hazardous to communicate than to pray; when in prayer we frequently make as folemn profeffions of obedience to Christ as we posfibly can make, confequently make ourfelves as culpable if we do not live up to them; and when we expect the divine prefence and bleffing in proportion to our fincerity and real devotion. All the dif ference is, that, in one cafe we make the profeffion by an outward fign, and in the other by express words, bearing the very fame conftruction.

I

You yourself, in more than one place, make the guilt of communicating unworthily to confift in professing a falsehood and declaring what is not true, p. 44, 46. If