you please him better by utterly refusing the remembrance of the death of Christ at his supper, than they do who remember him at his table in a mistaken posture? Can you ever persuade your own consciences, that you who never comply with the tenderest pledges and memorials of his love, and reject his dying commandment, are better christians than they who practise this sacred duty with a mistaken gesture of humble worship, while they are called and invited to sit around this table? Examine yourselves, my friends, you that have never yet sealed a covenant with God the Father by the blood of Christ at his table, what are the true reasons of this neglect? Is it not sloth and negligence in spiritual things? Is it not a very shameful indolence about matters of religious importance? Is it not an unwillingness to make open profession of the cross of Christ, and to bind yourselves more publicly to all the practices of strict christianity and godliness? Converse over these enquiries with your own hearts, and let your own consciences determine, whether you are not vastly more to blame in neglecting to honour Christ in such an ordinance, appointed with his dying breath, than your brethren of the church of England, who conscientiously and devoutly practise this command of Christ, though it is in the posture of adoration, instead of the posture of communion at a feast; and let your own reproof awaken and shame you out of your guilty negligence. I mention no more the incumbrance of human ceremonies, but to proceed immediately to the third advantage for the increase of piety, which you suppose you enjoy amongst the protestant dissenters, and raise some serious enquiries upon it.

III. You are not confined to a perpetual repetition of set forms of prayer in your public worship.* This has been one ground of your disapprobation of the parochial worship of the nation. Some of yourselves, and your fathers before you, who have attended divine service there, have complained much, that coldness and indifferency of spirit and formality are ready to be introduced into your devotion by this means; and that your hearts are apt to grow dull, negligent, and drowsy, under this uniform and constant rehearsal of the same returning forms and phrases, especially considering that the minister is not suffered to omit any one appointed line in the book, though he thinks it never so improper; nor is he permitted to add or insert one new sentence in the midst of his collect, though never so many devout sentiments and petitions should arise in his mind while he is reading it, and though these petitions appear to him never so suitable to the present time, and place,› and congregation.

God forbid that I should say or think that forms of prayer are sinful things, or improper for our assistance! nor indeed am I so zealous against forms, as to imagine that a precomposed liturgy, in the main distinct parts of worship, confession, or petition, would be unlawful to be used. The directory of the assembly of divines at Westminster comes pretty near to such a design, still supposing that there be liberty for the minister to omit or add, to change and vary according to present occasion, and that he have leave to express a warm devout thought which is upon his heart, and that he is not constrained to forbid and suppress those pious sentiments and desires which may be hoped to be the motions of the good Spirit of God in prayer. I never imagined that well-composed forms prayer might not be used with such a liberty, and assist the real devotion of welldisposed minds either at home or at church. It is my opinion, they may be so managed

of

* See Dr. Calamy's Moderate Nonconformity Vol. III. pages 100, 105. Lay Nonconformity Justified, page. 19.

as to become a happy means to promote true religion in the hearts even of wise and advanced christians as well as children and weaker persons. I am verily persuaded that there are many holy souls address the God of heaven in a variety of prayers that are precomposed, and find spiritual improvement thereby. There are many devout minds who continually worship him in an acceptable manner, even in these forms of words, and that not only in public, but in their families also. And yet I cannot help thinking with you, that this method of worship, if there be a confinement to the constant repetition of one and the same form, has naturally some tendency to pass over the ears without due impressions on the heart, and to leave the worshipper under a coldness and indifference of spirit, which would be greatly relieved by a larger variety of sentiments and expressions in the public worship of every Lord's-day.

May I be permitted here to cite a few lines from the ingenious writings of the late Marquis of Halifax, who being a courtier in the reign of the two brothers, King Charles and James II. can never lie under the suspicion of being a dissenter. This noble writer, in a little book under a borrowed character, gives us his own sentiments of things. He tells us, that he is far from relishing the impertinent wanderings of those who pour out long prayers upon the congregation, and all from their own stock, too often a barren soil, which produces weeds instead of flowers, and by this means they expose religion itself, rather than promote men's devotion: On the other side, there may be too great a restraint put upon men whom God and nature have distinguished from their fellow-labourers, by blessing them with a happier talent, and by giving them not only good sense, but a powerful utterance too; this has enabled them to gush out upon the attentive auditory with a mighty stream of devout and unaffected eloquence. When a man so qualified, endued with learning too, and above all, adorned with a good life, breaks out into a warm and well-delivered prayer before his sermon, it has the appearance of a divine rapture; he raises and leads the hearts of the assembly in another manner than the most composed or best studied form of set words can ever do; and the Pray we's, who serve up all their sermons with the same garnishing, would look like so many statues, or men of straw in the pulpit, compared with those who speak with such a powerful zeal, that men are tempted at the moment to believe heaven itself has dictated their words to them.

But I recall myself from running out too largely on this point. My present business is to enquire of you, my friends, how stands the case with your spirits in public worship, who are not confined to the weekly rehearsal of these religious forms? What do you more than others? Are you more lively in the freer addresses of your souls to heaven without a confinement to set words and phrases? Are your spirits more humble, and your devotional thoughts in warmer exercise, while you are adoring the great and blessed God in a larger variety of language? Are your hearts more deeply affected with a sense of sin in your free confessions? Are you more fervent while you join in your petitions for pardoning mercy, for sanctifying grace, for deliverance from temptations, and assistance to perform duty? Are your spirits more importunate in pleading at the throne of grace? Is your love and gratitude more exalted in our more unconfined methods of thanksgiving and praise? Does your zeal and joy rise higher in blessing the name of the Lord your God, and Jesus your Saviour? In a word, are you more devout and spiritual in the house of prayer? Are you more free from that dulness, that indifference, that formality which you complain of, and which you profess to fear under the use of a constant form? If you

content yourselves with cold and lazy devotions, with thoughtless or wandering hearts in the place of worship, under those free ministrations which you desire for your greater advantage, your complaints and pretences against the established forms of the nation will hardly be excused from the charge of vain and insincere; and you may expect à severe reproof from the judgment-seat of Christ. Where are all your pretences to the life, and power, and spirit of devotion, while you have not been restrained to the use of a single form? What have you done in the house of prayer more than those who have not enjoyed your advantages?

IV. You not only worship God in your own chosen way, but you have the choice of your own ministers also. You join yourselves to what worshipping congregation you please, whether it be within the bounds of your own parish or no; and you are not confined to sit under such teachers as some rich patron shall choose and provide for you : And it is a melancholy thought, that too often a country parish is furnished with a preacher whom the patron chooses as the fittest companion for himself, and whose character in the main is not much superior to that of the patron either in the love of learning, in piety or virtue. And let it be numbered among your advantages for edification also, that however difficult it may be for a parish to get rid of an ill minister, yet your congregations have power to dismiss your ministers, if they prove immoral and scandalous, if they grow intolerably imperious and assuming, or shamefully contentious; if they become grossly negligent of the great work of their ministry, and continue so after all due admonition; if they be known to fall into gross and dangerous errors, and will publish them in opposition to the common sense and sentiments of the people; and such dismissions are sometimes practised among you, where just occasions have risen, and that without long and vexatious processes at law: So that you are not obliged to sit under the preaching of persons of a blemished character, or who are unqualified for the sacred work, or who are utterly unprofitable to your edification.

Well then, my friends, if you have not such public ministrations as edify and profit your souls, it is in a great measure your own fault, since you sit under such a ministry as you choose. One would presume that you hear their messages of holy things with satisfaction and delight. But while you enjoy this privilege, enquire of your own consciences, What have you profited more than others? Do your souls find a greater increase in knowledge, and in the power of godliness? Do you treasure up more of their words in your heart, and receive them with faith and love so far as they are agreeable to the word of God? Do you feed and live upon the sermons you hear? Do you attend on their messages of truth or duty with holy joy, and make them the food and support of your spirits? If you choose the person, and are pleased with the performances of him who ministers, it is a very considerable step toward profiting by his ministry. The word methinks should glide more easily into the heart, and have a powerful sway and influence on the conscience, when it is received from the man we love to hear: And indeed what sort of sermons can you ever hope to profit by, if not by the preaching of those whom yourselves have chosen? You have plainly this advantage above your neighbours, but is your improvement greater than theirs? But if we enter into particulars on this subject, we shall find that your advantages are more considerable even in your own

* See Moderate Nonconformity, Vol. III. p. 61, 154. Lay Nonconformity Justified, p. 5.

esteem, arising from the character and qualifications of the ministers whose labours choose to attend, and from the way and manner of their preaching.

you

It was the general desire of your fathers, and it is still for the most part your desire and endeavour to sit under such a ministry, as not only preaches the law, to convince you of sin, and to direct you to the several duties you owe to God and man, but which leads you into a sense of your degeneracy and ruin by the fall of Adam, and your impotence to restore yourselves; and gives you a large acquaintance with the methods of divine grace in the gospel, and the benefits of the new covenant, recovering you from your guilty and sinful state by the sacrifice and death of Christ, and enabling you, by his spirit, to perform the several duties prescribed. You desire such preachers as display the various glories of Christ in his sacred offices of a Mediator and High-priest, a King and a Judge, and lead you to practise all the divine, social, and personal virtues, by evangelical motives and evangelical assistances, as well as by the principles and obliga-· tions of the light of nature, and who insist frequently upon the peculiar themes of christianity and divine revelation.t

Now permit me to make the enquiry in my text. Those of you who do sit under such ministrations as you desire in this respect, What do you more than others? Are your souls more evangelical, more truly christian than your neighbours? Have you more of the temper and spirit of the gospel wrought into your very hearts and inward powers? Do you love Christ Jesus the Lord, and live upon him by daily faith and dependance, more than they who do not hear of him so often as you? Are you brought nearer to the throne of God, in more frequent and delightful performance of the duty of prayer, and in more humble, holy, and intimate converse with God; you who hear so much of Jesus Christ, the High-priest, of atonement and intercession, and of his readiness to bring you into the favour and presence of God? Do you hate sin more than your neighbours, since you are so often taught what it cost the Son of God to redeem you from it? Is the frame of your spirit and the course of your life more agreeable to the divine pattern that the holy Jesus has set you, and to the strict rules of his religion? You who are taught more of the ruin and impotence of nature, and the necessity of divine grace, are you more self-abased under a sense of your degeneracy and weakness, and do you seek the assistances of the Spirit of God with more importunity and holy fervours of devotion, that he may subdue sin, and raise you to higher degrees of holiness? What use do you make of the spiritual and evangelical preaching which you profess to attend upon, if the great ends of the gospel of Christ are not attained in and upon you, if you do not honour him more than others, if you are not made more like him, more holy and blameless before him?

Examine yourselves strictly, my friends, are you so watchful, so exact in all the virtues of temperance, sobriety, justice, truth, faithfulness, charity, meekness, forbearance, forgiveness, and all instances of brotherly love, as becomes those that profess much acquaintance

and

* Let it be observed here, that different nations and ages, and parties of christians, have their peculiar way manner in preaching. The primitive fathers and the moderns have very different fashions. The Germans and French, the English and Scots, the Cocceians and Voetians among the Dutch, the Arminians and Calvinists, the ancient Puritans and the zealous Churchmen of that day, the present Conformists and the Nonconformists, have their different manners partly in composing and partly in delivering their sermons: Nor is it strange that the protestant dissenters should think the way practised among them preferable to any other, and of more advantage toward their salvation.

See Lay Nonconformity Justified, p. 16, 17.

with the blessed Jesus, whose soul was divine truth and love, and whose life was all virtue, and piety, and goodness in perfection? Do you never give occasion to your neighbours to reproach yourselves and your ministers together, that you practise so little morality, because you hear so little of it preached? Have you not by this means exposed the preaching of the name of Christ to scandal, and the glorious doctrines of the gospel to infamy, as though they indulged the hearers of them in licentious practices?

Your own consciences must bear witness that we have endeavoured to declare amongst you the whole counsel of God, and neither kept back the doctrines nor the duties which our Lord has sent us to publish to men: We have taught you, that the great design of all the glorious transactions of God and Christ for your salvation, is, that you might be holy and without blame before him in love; Eph. i. 3, 4. We have assured you, that the grace of God which brings salvation to men, teaches you to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and religiously; and if you are purchased to be a peculiar people to God by the blood of his Son, it is, that you might be zealous of good works; Tit. ii. 11, 12, 14. Have you ever felt the influence of the dying love and the redeeming blood of Christ, softening and melting your hearts into a sincere sorrow for sin, and holy desires to love God, and be made like him? Has the gospel (which you yourselves profess to be so much a better spring of holiness than natural religion can furnish you with), has this gospel had its proper, and powerful, and sanctifying effects on your hearts and on your lives? Do you behave with so much more honour, justice, and goodness amongst men, and with so much more piety toward God as your advantage requires? You who have so often the great and evangelical motives of the life and love, the example, the sacrifice and the death of Christ set before you in public worship, has your love to God and man grown fervent in proportion to such persuasives? How dreadful will your case be, if after all pretences to an evangelical ministry, you disgrace the gospel of Christ in the ministrations of it, by intemperate, immoral, or irreligious lives? If you have better helps to holiness and virtue, according to your own sentiments, than others enjoy, let your consciences never be satisfied till your heart and life be reformed and purified in proportion to your professed advantages, lest you make Christ the minister of sin, and lest the preachers of a crucified Christ be exposed by your means as the licensers of unrighteousness.

Again, you profess to choose such a ministry as not only informs the minds in general of the truths and duties of christianity, but makes a particular search and enquiry into souls and consciences, and teaches the hearers by evidences and characters drawn from the word of God to examine and judge of themselves and their own state and case: You like such preaching best as enters into the various turnings of the heart of man, and unfolds and discovers the subtle workings of sin in the soul, and its manifold disguises to conceal itself from the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. You expect to hear your ministers address themselves distinctly to persons of various characters; to direct their discourse sometimes to the indolent and thoughtless sinner, or the conceited and presumptuous soul, in order to rouse them out of their security, and to thunder upon the sleepy consciences of men who speak a false peace to themselves, and awaken them to a sight of their mistake, and their infinite peril. You expect your ministers would sometimes enter into the particular case of convinced and awakened souls, and treat with them about their important and everlasting interests, and put them upon most earnest enquiries about the way to be saved; that we should assist them in their spiritual