the Holy Communion. Here is a third obstacle in the way of our receiving the grace of the Sacraments in the Roman Church, which surely requires our diligent examination, before it be passed over. That there is no such impediment sanctioned in Scripture, is plain, yet to believe in it is a point of faith with the Romanist. The practice is grievous enough; but it is not enough to submit to it; you must believe that it is part of the gospel doctrine, or you are committing one of those mortal sins which are to be confessed; and you must believe, moreover, that every one who does not believe it, is excluded from the hope of salvation. But, not to dwell on the belief in the necessity of confession itself, consider the number of points of faith which the Church of Rome has set up. You must believe every one of them; if you have allowed yourself to doubt any one of them, you must repent of it, and confess it to the priest. If you knowingly omit any one such doubt you have entertained, and much more if you still cherish it, your confession is worse than useless; nay, such conduct is considered sacrilege, or the sin against the Holy Ghost. Further, if, under such circumstances, you partake of the Communion, it is a partaking of it unworthily to your condemnation.
4. The unwarranted anathemas of the Roman Church is a subject to which the last head has led us. Here let us put aside, at present, the prejudice which has been excited in the minds of Protestants, against the principle itself of anathematizing, by the variety and comparative unimportance of the subjects upon which the Roman Church has applied it in practice. Let us consider merely the state of the case in that Church. Every Romanist is, by the creed of his Church, in mortal sin, unless he believes every one else excluded from Christian salvation, who, with means of knowing, yet declines any one of those points which have been ruled to be points of faith. If a man for instance, who has had the means of instruction, doubts the Church's power of granting indulgences, he is exposed, according to the Romanists, to eternal ruin. Now this consideration, one would think, ought to weigh with those of our own Church who may be half converts to the Roman; not that our own salvation is not our first concern, but
