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ligion aims at meliorating the wild stock of human nature. It teaches the thorn to bear grapes and the thistle figs .It purifies the fountain of human actions, the heart itself; and the fountain once clear, all the streams, in all their meanders, flow through the mazes of human life, comparatively with little pollution; and even that little may, from time to time, be removed by those merciful ordinances which are designed to cleanse and purify the heart by the operation of divine grace.

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The Eucharist is one and the principal of those ordinances. It is an ordinance peculiary adapted to the infirmity of human nature; for it is adapted to repair, while life remains, the decays of grace. The nature and efficacy of it I have attempted to explain, and have been guided by the Scriptures, and supported by human authority. After all, many will think differently from me on the subject; but while all who call themselves Christians agree in paying due honour to the institution, however they may understand it, let difference of opinion cause no violation of

charity.

charity. “Of several persons," says Bishop Taylor, "beholders of a dove walking in the sun, as they stand in several aspects and distances, some see it of a red, and others of a clear purple, while others perceive nothing but green, yet all allow and love the beauties of the bird; so do the several forms of Christians, according as they may have been instructed by their first teachers or their own experience, conducted by their fancy and peculiar principles look upon this glorious mystery, the Sacrament; yet all affirm sOME GREAT THING or other of it, and by their difference confess the immensity and the glory."

To this I add an opinion of a most ingenious and learned modern divine, the Norrisian Professor in Cambridge. "One man," says he," thinks that eating Christ's flesh and drinking his blood means only a commemoration of his death; another thinks it is emblematically accepting the benefits of Christ's sacrifice; a third thinks it is eating, in some inexplicable way, the substance of Christ's body into which the bread has been changed; a fourth, that it

is

is eating the substance of Christ's body along with the sacramental bread: still, therefore, I say, which ever of these is right, or if none of them be right, the WORTHY COMMUNICANT does that which is really meant in Scripture by eating the flesh of Christ and drinking his blood, and he gains all the benefit which God intended should arise from such eating and drinking; he does that which God hath commanded, and he obtains that which God hath promised."

Let it therefore be our chief care to become WORTHY COMMUNICANTS, and then, whether kneeling or sitting, whether we coincide exactly in our opinions or not, if we coincide in faith and charity, there is every reason to believe that we shall obtain pardon and sanctification. "The tree of knowledge," says Bishop Taylor, "became a tree of death to us, and the tree of life is now become an apple of contention. The holy symbols of the Eucharist were intended to be a contesseration and an union of Christian societies with God and with one another; and the evil taking of it disunites us from God, and

the

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the evil understanding of it divides us from each other." These sad effects will be avoided if we be duly careful to communicate with true faith and perfect charity, seeking THE TRUTH INDEED ALWAYS

BUT SEEKING IT IN LOVE.

"We are all alike in search of truth" the late learned Dr. Rotheram ;

says

"let

us therefore proceed amicably and charitably in the way: abstaining from all mutual violence, and from all vain and unbecoming confidence in ourselves, which is generally the ground of it, remembering that all are EQUALLY FREE, and all EQUALLY INTERESTED in the great and momentous pursuit; in the course of which, though all may not tread exactly in the same steps, though all may not be happy enough to discover and constantly pursue the most direct path; nay, though all may make frequent deviations from it, yet hoping that we are in the main tending the right way, and that we shall all meet in the end.

"It is far above our power to bring all to embrace the same opinions; but one thing is in our power-to think charitably

of

of each other; and to this we shall naturally be inclined, if we have those modest and humble sentiments of ourselves with which Christianity will inspire us. Were we all influenced by this spirit, we should then differ in opinion without being divided in affection,"

Perfect unanimity, in the present state, is scarcely to be expected. Mutual concession should be made, among the professors of Christianity, wherever concession is consistent with the preservation of essentials. The Eucharist is an essential; because to it are annexed the present benefits of GRACE and PARDON. It cannot be dispensed with; it must not be dishonoured. It is one grand mean of diminishing wickedness; and let all good men, however divided in modes of worship, UNITE in proclaiming to the world,

THAT WICKEDNESS IS THE DISGRACE AND MISERY OF MAN; AND RELIGION HIS PERFECTION AND GLORY.

FINIS.

APPENDIX

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