to all manner of impiety and vice. And among the many ill effects of our paſt confuſions, this is none of the leaſt; That in many congregations of this Kingdom, Chriſtians were generally diſuſed and deterred from the Sacrament, upon a pretence that they were unfit for it; and being ſo, they muſt neceſſarily incur the danger of unworthy receiving; and therefore they had better wholly to abſtain from it. By which it came to paſs, that in very many places this great and Solemn Inſtitution of the Chriſtian Religion was almoſt quite forgotten, as if it had been no part of it, and the remembrance of Chriſt's death even loſt among Chriſtians: So that many Congregations in England might juſtly have taken up the complaint of the Woman at our Saviour's ſepulchre, They have taken away our Lord, and we know not were they have laid him.
But ſurely men did not well conſider what they did, nor what the conſequence of it would be, when they did ſo earneſtly diſſwade men from the Sacrament, 'Tis true indeed the danger of unworthy receiving is great; but the proper inference and concluſion from hence is not, that men ſhould upon this conſideration be deterred from the Sacrament,
but that they ſhould be affrighted from their ſins, and from that wicked courſe of life, which is an habitual indiſpoſition and unworthineſs. St. Paul, indeed (as I obſerved before) truly repreſents, and very much aggravats the danger of the unworthy receiving of this Sacrament; but he did not deterr the Corinthians from it, becauſe they had ſometimes come to it without due reverence, but exhorts them to amend what had been amiſs, and to come better prepared and diſpoſed for the future. And therefore after that terrible declaration in the Text, whoſoever ſhal eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, is guilty of the body and bloud of the Lord, he does not add, therefore let Chriſtians take heed of coming to the Sacrament, but let them come prepared and with due reverence, not as to a common meal, but to a ſolemn participation of the body and bloud of Chriſt;But
