arifen from fomething elfe than the genuine principles of chriftianity. It was a long time before there was any fuch idea as excommunication from the Lord's fupper only.

If I be asked, whether it be not hazardous for a person of a dubious or indifferent character to receive the Lord's fupper; I anfwer, you may judge for yourfelves, by confidering, that receiving the Lord's fupper, is the fame thing as ftanding up in the face of the world, and faying, I am a chriftian. This declaration, certainly, implies an obligation to live as becomes a christian; and therefore, if the person who makes it be a bad man, he will be more inexcufable than if he had not been a chriftian, and could not have made that declaration; but if a man be, in fact, a chriftian, the obligation to a christian-like behaviour is much the fame, whether he declare his belief of christianity before the world, or not. The one is only a more folemn or formal thing than the other, but precisely of the fame nature. They differ

may

only in this, that in one case I express my fentiments by an action, or ceremony, and in the other by words bearing the very. fame conftruction. It cannot be said that they differ fo much as a common affertion and an oath, which however are both, in a manner, of equal obligation upon an honeft man. Befides, coming in a con-. flant way to a place of chriftian worship almost amount to a declaration of a man's being a christian, and therefore lays him under the fame obligation. You, therefore, who are afraid to receive the Lord's fupper, have the fame reason to be afraid to attend public and chriftian worship, provided you really join in it. Both actions are declarations of your being chri flians, and of your obligation to live as becomes fuch; and the one is just as hazardous as the other.

If there had been any thing particularly hazardous in receiving the Lord's fupper, more than in joining in other religious exercifes; I cannot help thinking that our Lord would, himself, have given fome in

timation

timation of it, at the time of the inftitution. But nothing of this kind occurs. I allo cannot think, that, if the apostle Paul had folemnly warned the Corinthians of this danger, when he first preached the gospel among them, and no doubt administered the Lord's fupper too, they could ever have fallen into that very indecent and irreverent method of conducting the fervice. Nay, I cannot conceive how this abuse could have arifen, if the primitive manner of celebrating the Lord's fupper had not made it something more like a chearful entertainment, than it doth among any fect of christians that I am acquainted with at prefent. But our more decent and frugal method is better calculated to prevent abufe.

If I be asked, whether particular preparation be not neceffary to receiving the Lord's fupper; I answer freely, that I apprehend nothing more is neceffary, than to coming to public worship in an ordinary way. This act of religion, only requires that ferious and compofed state of

mind, which is a temper that a good man (who never indulges himself in criminal exceffes) habitually carries about with him; and supposes only that due sense of the nature of what we are about which may be recollected at once, without particular preparation. And it is well known, that the primitive christians of the first centuries, received the Lord's fupper every Lord's day, as a part of their common worship.

Some argue the propriety of prepara tion for the Lord's fupper, from its analogy to the Jewish paffover, of the preparation to which we read, John, xix. 14. But this is the only place in which the preparation of the paffover is mentioned; and as Mark, xv. 42. calls the fame day the preparation of the Sabbath, it probably referred to this, and not to the paffover. Besides, that day did not precede the day on which the paffover was eaten. Our Lord had eaten it the day before.

SECTION

SECTION II.

The qualifications of communicants more particularly confidered.

ABOUT the time of the first planting

of chriftianity, the grossest vices were exceedingly prevalent in all the Gentile world; and according to the teftimony of Jofephus, the Jews were not lefs abandoned. The picture that St. Paul draws of them both, towards the beginning of his epiftle to the Romans, is indeed fhocking.

Now it can hardly be fuppofed, that when persons of these characters, and who had formed these habits embraced chriftianity (upon the conviction that Chrift was a teacher sent from God) their hearts and lives were inftantly, i. e. miraculously changed. An excellent parable of our Saviour leads us rather to confider the reception of christianity, as the receiving of feed into the ground, which requires time

and