calculated, not only to answer the immediate ends of this Institute, as already described, but also to awaken to solemn reflection the minds even of the inconsiderate and worldly, than the existence of a people in the midst of them statedly assembling together, in obedience to the command of him whom they believe to be the Saviour of the World, thus to acknowledge their common spiritual relation to him and to each other; commemorating his propitiatory death, joyfully receiving, with the ritual emblems or visible tokens thereof, the inestimable blessings purchased thereby, and cheerfully renewing their pledge of fidelity to the person and cause of their Divinė Lord, and of devotedness to his service. It seems scarcely necessary to add, that the due and proper effect of the commemoration of this solemn and interesting rite on the surrounding ungodly world, will essentially depend on the select character of the communicants, viz. that they are children of God and disciples of Christ in the New Testament sense of these appellations; and also on the constant and universal maintenance of this great and essential distinction in all the churches of the Lord Jesus, throughout the world. To confound this distinction, by indiscriminately admitting to his table persons who are properly classed with the children of this world, is evidently, so far, not to solemnize the rite, but to profane it; not to honour and obey Christ, but to dishonour and offend him.

No person can doubt these things who reads the New Testament with serious attention, and has an enlightened apprehension of what he reads. Such doubt could only arise from inconsideration, moral obtuseness of mind, or rivetted prejudice against the holiness of the divine requisitions; while every candid man must acknowledge that if the spiritual and moral requisitions of the Scriptures were not marked by perfect holiness, they would be destitute at once of their most distinguishing characteristic, and the main evidence of their divine origin.

Now, of course, my Lord, it is not my design to insinuate, that the foregoing expressions of the sentiments and feelings with which the Lord's Supper ought to be observed are logical inferences from the brief statements of Scripture concerning this rite; but only to intimate, that they are the sentiments and feelings which are scripturally suggested to the mind, and impressed on the heart of the pious and enlightened communicant by our Lord's emphatic words, "Do THIS IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME." But, my Lord, are the declarations of the Catechism adapted to impress the mind with any such sentiments and feelings? Are not, on the contrary, some of them calculated to prevent any such sentiments and feelings? Nay, are they not adapted to make impressions on the mind nearly allied to, if not quite resembling those which are made on the mind of the Romanist by

his views of the Eucharist.

Let the sentiments

and feelings which have been expressed in the preceding brief view of the design and ends of the Supper, be contrasted with the Answer in the Catechism to the Question, What is the inward part or thing signified by it? "The body and blood of Christ." Now, my Lord, I most respectfully ask, is this answer really adapted to convey to the mind a single scriptural idea of the "inward and spiritual" things represented in the most instructive and interesting institute to which they relate; and whether, when coupled with the words which follow them, they do not convey to the mind a decidedly popish sentiment? As to the papal administration, or rather gross perversion of this sacred rite, perhaps it may be with truth affirmed, excepting some of the extravagancies of the Hindoo mythology, that no imagination of the human mind has ever involved such enormous and accumulated absurdity as this papal dogma concerning the Eucharist. While a deliberate and approving reception of it is totally inconsistent with a sound exercise of the understanding, it is no less a severe reflection upon the understanding of others to propound it as an article of religious belief. But this insult to the universal reason, common sense and common senses of mankind, sinks into insignificance when compared with the prodigious mass of human guilt and moral mischief which it is perpetually accumulating in its wide-spread

practical results. And yet,-"Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askalon,"-the Protestant Church of England literally and plainly declares in her Catechism, designed for the instruction of her youth, this same dogma-not to condemn it as a heresy, involving the deepest prostration of the human intellect, and charged with death to the immortal soul-but as a fact to be believed, as a truth to be received, and, by implication, "generally necessary to salvation!”

The Catechism, without any explanation or qualification whatever, declares that the body and blood of Christ," are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper." Now in these words it is not only affirmed, as Romanists themselves affirm, that the body and blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful communicant, but that his body and blood, thus taken and received, constitute the inward part of (or thing signified by) this divinely-instituted rite! and, as though this were not enough of the papal heresy, it is further declared, in answer to the Question, "What are the benefits whereof we are partakers thereby? that the benefits resulting to the faithful from their participation of the Lord's Supper consist in the strengthening and refreshing of their souls—(which your Grace will doubtless admit, unexplained as it is, to be an exceedingly vague and indeterminate expression)—and this strengthening and refreshing

of the soul, is not said to be effected by the various christian truths represented by the breaking of the body, and the shedding of the blood of Christ, and by the scriptural improvement of those truths under the influence of the Holy Spirit,* but, literally, by the body and blood of Christ themselves. It may be also proper to notice, that the Question to which this Answer is given, indirectly recognises the same papal heresy still more distinctly and palpably. The question is, "What are the benefits whereof we are partakers thereby?" Now, it appears from the Answer which precedes this Question, that the means to which the adverb "thereby" refers are the body and blood of Christ, which are positively affirmed to be "verily and indeed taken and received." If this be not, in effect, the doctrine of transubstantiation, I confess myself unable to conceive what that papal dogma really is. Now, I ask, what essential difference is there between saying that the faithful Protestant participant of the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper "verily and indeed” takes and receives the body and blood of Christ, and the declaration of the Romanist at the Offertory, that the bread and wine will, by a miracle of power and grace, become the body and blood of the Son of God? Nay, the Protestant affirmation of the heresy is the stronger of the two; for the papal declaration only declares that the transub* Vide pages 63-67.

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