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his appendages to the supper, and conscious that they supplant an obedience, otherwise easy, to his Lord's command, his confidence will waver, and a shade pafs over his cheerfulness

By communicating after the primitive model, in reviving its frequency, and lopping off the redundancies of human fancy, this source of disquietude will be dried up. Our Master's memorial restored to its just respect; the reproach of disregard to his dying precept wiped away; the excellence of his simple institutions practically afserted; our "keeping of the feast" more pure, because more scriptural-will be sublime attainments. They will repay, a thousand fold, the sacrifice of adverse prejudice and habit. Singlenefs of heart in conforming to the obvious intentions of our Lord Jesus, will infuse into our obedience a vigour, and into our privileges a delight which are vainly expected from conformity to the devices of men; and which can be appreciated by those alone who have smarted from the sting of a misgiving conscience.

2. A harmony, at present impofsible, will be established in our system of public worship.

God is the God of order; and his word, which is the rule of Christian order, hath referred every duty to its proper place: ordinary duties to ordinary occasions; and duties extraor

dinary to occasions extraordinary. But our sacramental fast and thanksgiving days have reversed this order, by wedding extraordinary duties with ordinary occasions. Now, if our arrangement be right, that of the

Bible must be wrong. But as no Christian can impeach the latter, it must be admitted, not only that the former is faulty, but that difsolving the unnatural union between ordinary occasions and extraordinary duties, and reserving public fasting and thanksgiving for the seasons to which the scripture hath afsigned them, viz. providential emergencies, will be a needful, and a great reform. This will indeed curtail, by more than two thirds, the existing week-day observances, and reduce the supper of the Lord to a very simple thing. Exactly what it should be! Christ left it a very simple thing. By making it otherwise, men have only spoiled it: and be it remembered, that simplicity is the glory of all evangelical worship. It may have few charms for carnal profefsors; it may appear to them ignoble. and sordid; but in proportion as it characterises a church, is" the beauty of the Lord our God upon" her. And who will not count that beauty our honour and our blefsednefs?

3. Our judicial profefsion will be rescued from charges which it is now difficult, if not impofsible, to repel.

While we maintain that the feast of the supper is frequently to be celebrated, and keep it only twice a year-that communicating is an ordinary, and fasting an extraordinary duty; and yet blend them in our practice--that holydays having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be observed: and insist upon the religious observance of days which have no such warrant; it requires uncommon afsurance, or betrays contemptible weaknefs, to vaunt our own stedfastnefs, and bewail the departure of others from their avowed principles. This may render us objects of derision or of pity, but not of respect. We must lie under the suspicion, if not the reproach, of hypocrisy; because our pretensions are unsupported by our conduct. But if, in the hope of teaching others, we set out with teaching ourselves; if we exemplify our doctrines by the severe application of them to our own church; rectifying her mistakes, and banishing her corruptions; it will be manifest to the world, that we contend not for the pre-eminence of party, but for the claims of truth. Such honesty will throw a lustre round our character; and imprint a majesty upon our testimony, for which the usual clamour and acrimony would be too much honoured in being called a miserable substitute. Pafsion would be soothed, and

prejudice allured. Men would listen with candour to the expostulations of conscience. We should have the praise of consistency, if not of succefs. And though we might fail to convince an opponent, we should at least command his

esteem.

4. Frequent and simple communions will probably purge the church of unworthy members.

There is not a greater nuisance to Christianity, than men who usurp its name without its influence; who give to Christ the vapour of the lips, and to mammon the solid homage of the heart. They are a perpetual mildew on the blofsoms, a death-frost about the roots of social piety. In any denomination, one such professor is one too many: though intire freedom from them never has been, and never may be, the happiness of any earthly connection. In the little family of the master himself, a devil occupied the seat of an apostle. Highly favoured the church which has the fewest of them, and in which their numbers are diminishing! Perhaps there could not be devised a more effectual expedient of getting rid of them, than employing them in spiritual work. With abundance of formality, they may attend to the notorious externals of religion: and as a bribe to conscience, and a set-off to character, they may have no objection to the communion, if it

be not too often. Once or twice a year will do. But strip this precious ordinance of the additions which nurture legality, or flatter pride: let it be as plain as the Bible made it, and as frequent as a believer needs it: let there be nothing to render it impressive, but its subject; or alluring, but its spirituality; and mark the consequence. The former zealot will cool. Novelty, decency, example may secure his compliance for a while; but it will be strange if his impatience do not at last get the ascendancy. Without affection to Jesus Christ, he will grow tired of his supper. Without a principle of spiritual life, he will count spiritual worship intolerable: the more spiritual, the more intolerable: and the holy communion most intolerable of all. His soul will loathe the heavenly manna, and by degrees he will drop off. It is not afserted that this would be the course of every formalist. Of some it more than probably would. And every one who should thus become a self-detector, would be a clear deduction from the mafs of enmity, in a particular church, to the interest of truth and holiness.

5. A blessed fruit of frequent communions would be the promotion of brotherly love.

In nothing is the religion of Jesus more dishonoured, than in the want of that kind affection which ought to subsist between the

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