invited by us to study it; you are urged, every one of you in his private chamber, to reflect upon the excellent and consolatory lessons it contains. The Ministers of the Church of England have no superstitious forms to dazzle you with, no secret influence to maintain, no ceremonies to enforce, which are not evidently conducive to the cultivation of your best feelings, the establishment of your morals, the enlightening of your understandings, the just direction of your future conduct, and the general harmony of a pious and well organised society.

SERMON IV.

ON TAKING THE SACRAMENT.

Preached at Spofforth, on Christmas-day, 1817.

As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death, till he come.-1 Cor. xi. 26.

THE day on which our blessed Redeemer condescended to put on a mortal body, and the day which saw him nailed to the cross as an atonement for the iniquities of mankind, are two periods of the year at which Christians have been generally most desirous of participating in that holy sacrament, which on the last evening of his life he ordained in perpetual remembrance of his sufferings.

The institution of the Lord's Supper is related by three of the Evangelists, and by St. Paul, in the chapter from which the text is taken; and in the sixth chapter of

the Gospel of St. John, who alone has omitted the particulars of the last supper, the language of our Saviour has an evident relation to the ceremony he intended to ordain. "I am the bread of life"- 66

Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life, and him will I raise up on the last day." The accounts which are given by the other three Evangelists and St. Paul agree in the closest

manner.

St. Matthew writes, "As they were eating, Jesus took bread and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body; and he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of this, for this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins."

In St. Mark we find these words, "As they did eat, Jesus took bread and blessed, and brake it, and gave it to them, saying, Take, eat, this is my body: and he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank of it; and he said unto them, This is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many."

In St. Luke it is written, "He took bread and gave thanks and brake it, and gave it unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you; this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the New Testament in my blood, which is shed for you."

St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, used the following words, "The Lord Jesus, the same night in which he

was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks he brake it, and said, Take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for you; this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the New Testament in my blood; this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me." St. Paul goes on in the words of the text to explain, that as often as the bread shall be eaten, and the wine drank, in this holy ceremony, it will be taken in testimony of the death of our Saviour, until the end of the world, when he shall come again to be our judge.

This being the simple statement given by the inspired writers of the institution of the Lord's Supper, which was the mode in which he commanded all his followers to testify a grateful and perpetual recollection of his death, it appears strange that any persons professing to be disciples of Christ, and expecting to enjoy hereafter the advantages of his expiation, should think themselves justified by any excuse for neglecting to comply with this last injunction of their dying Saviour. But an unfortunate misconception appears to have rooted itself in the minds of some of the most respectable members of our community, who have alarmed themselves by an unfounded apprehension of some imaginary danger in approaching the table of their Redeemer.

In the earlier ages of Christianity so completely was the participation in this hallowed rite a test of Christianity, that the exclusion of a notorious ill-doer from the communion was one of the strongest acts of ecclesiastical authority. It is well known that in the former times of our history, the sentence of excommunication, which was the formidable process by which an individual was shut

out from the Church, and separated from all communication with Christians, little as it is now considered, except on account of the civil disabilities that accompany it, had the most powerful influence over the minds of our ancestors. The exclusion of those, whose vicious life and uncharitable demeanor gave public scandal to their neighbours, from the sacrament which all were desirous of receiving, was a less severe engine of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The Minister was ordered by the Rubric, if any man was a notorious open and ill-doer, or was at variance with his neighbours, or had done them wrong by word or deed, so that the congregation was thereby offended, to repel him from the Lord's table until he had amended his conduct, and made satisfaction for his offences: and the Minister, after so repelling him, was enjoined to give information to the Bishop, that proceedings might be instituted against the delinquent. But the propriety of excluding such ill-doers from the Lord's supper (however conformable to the language of St. Paul, who says, "with such an one, no, not to eat") was not a direct doctrine of our faith, or an article of our religion; nor had it reference to the security of those who were excluded, but to the purity of the church and of its members, who might have been contaminated by their communion. It furnished also, as long as there existed an universal desire to participate in the sacrament, a strong and powerful engine of church discipline, for the purpose of correcting the morals, and enforcing, in the most urgent manner, the necessity of immediate repentance and amendment. It rarely now happens that a minister repels an evil man from the sacrament, or that a church

warden presents him at the visitation; but the power which still exists, in former times was exercised more frequently. The strong language in the exhortations of the Communion Service was evidently set forth with the same intention of urging the congregation to an immediate reformation of their lives. Unfortunately they have failed of producing the effect that was desired, while they appear to have averted a large portion of the people from the most comfortable and salutary rite of our religion by giving rise in their minds to an imaginary fear of some peculiar danger in partaking of the sacrament, which is not founded on the language of our Saviour, which is not supported by any expression of his Apostles, which is not warranted by any syllable of the Gospel.

It was a general precept of our Saviour, that those, who sin from ignorance, or from thoughtless frailty, will stand in a very different situation on the last day from those, who knowingly, and through determined perverseness, rebel against their Maker; that those who add hypocrisy to vice, who clothe themselves with an outward garb of sanctity which proves that they are fully sensible of the nature and consequence of their iniquities, will be in danger of greater wrath than those who are led astray by the warmth of passion or the pernicious influence of bad example. "If ye knew not," says he, "ye were without sin;" and in another place, "Wo unto ye, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers; therefore ye shall receive greater damnation."

If therefore a man, conscious of an iniquitous course of life, feeling no sorrow for his depravity, but persevering