than can be contained in one Church The complaint is too true and worthy of the care of publick Authority to redress it but this is no just reason for Separation though it be a reason for such persons who are shut out of their own Parish Churches to go to others where they can be received for where publick Authority has not made sufficient provision for Parochial Communion men who love their souls must provide for themselves in the Communion of the Church CHAP. II. Concerning Irreverence in Worship ANother great miscarriage which many professed Christians are guilty of is an irreverent performance of Religious Worship if that may be called Religious Worship which is not attended with all the solemn expressions of reverence and devotion There are so many instances of this that the very naming of them will be thought sharp and satyrical There are but few Christians who put on that true gravity and seriousness of looks and behaviours as becomes the presence of God and the solemnity of Religious Worship You shall see some gazing about them with a roving and wandring eye as if they came only to see and to be seen to observe every new face or new dress and garb and therefore too often set themselves out with that fantastick gaiety which more becomes a Play-house than a Church You shall see others talk or whisper or laugh to the great offence and scandal of all serious and devout minds Others instead of worshipping God sleep away the Prayers or Sermon or both as if they were not concerned in either It is possible indeed for very devout men sometimes to be surprized with sleep but it is a great indecency when ever it is so and requires great care to prevent it in our selves and others and is a great contempt of God and of his Worship when it grows into a custom and men as naturally dispose themselves to a sleeping posture as if it were the design of their coming to Church You shall see others sit all the time of Divine Service which would be thought a very great rudeness when we put up a Petition to an earthly Prince this was unknown in the ancient Church wherein for some Ages they did not so much as sit either while the Scriptures were read or expounded and Eusebius relates a famous Story of Constantine the first Christian Emperour that when he made a Speech to him in his own Palace concerning the Sepulchre of our Saviour he heard it standing though it were very long and would not be perswaded to sit down saying That it was not fit to consult our ease while we hear any discourses concerning God and that it was more agreeable to piety to hear Religious discourses standing And what would that Religious Emperour have thought to have seen Christians in publick Assemblies pray sitting And indeed I have often thought what should be the reason of that universal practice of sitting when we sing Psalms for Psalms of praise and thanksgiving are as much the worship of God as Prayer and therefore equally require a posture of Devotion Thus uncovering the head has at least among Christians been alwayes accounted an act of Reverence as pulling off the Shooes was among the Eastern Nations and therefore becomes the presence of so great a Majesty But I shall not take notice of every particular instance of such miscarriages but endeavour to convince you of the great evil and undecency of such irreverence in Worship and that from these two considerations 1. The nature of Religious Worship especially considered as publick 2. From the peculiar presence of God and holy Angels in Christian Assemblies 1. From the nature of Religious Worship especially considered as publick Now Religious Worship consists in a great awe and reverence for the Divine Majesty when we are possest with a great sense of that infinite distance which is between God and us and our constant dependence on him which makes us approach his presence with great humility of mind with a profound admiration of his infinite perfections with thankful acknowledgments of his many and great blessings bestowed on us and with souls devoted to his service and obedience hence Religion is so often called the fear of God because Religion is founded in a great awe and reverence for God So that where there is no true reverence of God there is no true Worship of him and where ever the mind is thoroughly affected with this religious fear it will discover it self in our words and looks and actions Our souls have the government of our outward man and our passions discover themselves in our looks and behaviour It requires very great art either to conceal those passions which we have or to counterfeit those which we have not for there is such a sympathy between our souls and bodies that they powerfully affect each other and our wise Maker so contrived our frame that though the secret motions of our minds cannot be seen yet they discover themselves by those external and visible impressions they make on our bodies without which mankind could never know one another nor have any pleasure or security in mutual conversation For no wise man cares to converse with those who can so artificially diguise themselves that you can never know what their inward resentments are Which shews that according to the frame of our natures an inward reverence for God will shew it self in external actions and therefore that it ought to do so for as God has united the soul and body into one man so he has united their motions and actions too without which there can be no one perfect act of Religion or Vertue to worship God with the body without the soul is hypocrisie to worship God with the soul without the body is either impossible because our inward passions will discover themselves by some external signs when we have no design nor interest to conceal them or is very lame and imperfect and unbecoming this state of life We must glorifie God both with our bodies and with our spirits which are Gods he made them both and united them for his service and for the same reason redeemed them both with the blood of his Son But we shall better see the necessity of this by considering the nature of publick Worship for publick Worship consists in publick signs of honour no man has a Window into our souls to discover the secret devotion of our hearts and therefore visible Worship must be expressed in visible actions in the external reverence of our words and gestures and behaviour that is in such actions as express the great humility of our minds that great sense we have of the infinite Majesty of God and our own meanness and worthlessness and all those passions and affections which become Divine Worship and therefore rude and unmannerly approaches to God such as would not become the Majesty of an earthly Prince whatever inward devotion we may pretend to is not external and
yet the time of Morning and Evening Sacrifices were the usual hours of prayer observed by pious and devout men who sent up their prayers together with the Sacrifice Thus Ezra tells us at the Evening Sacrifice I fell upon my knees and spread out my hands unto the Lord my God and to this the Psalmist alludes Let my Prayer be set before thee as incense and the lifting up of my hands as the Evening Sacrifice For since the fall of man we cannot expect that God should hear our prayers for our own sakes we can make no atonement and expiation for our own sins nor offer him any just compensation for them and therefore under the Law God appointed Expiatory Sacrifices to be offered by the Priests who were Gods Ministers and now under the Gospel God has sent his own Son into the World to be both our Priest and our Sacrifice the acceptation of our prayers depends upon the power of his Intercession and the power of his Intercession upon the merit of his blood for with his own blood he entred once into the holy place having obtained eternal redemption for us We must now go to God in his Name and plead the Merits of his blood if we expect a gracious answer to our Prayers Now for this end was the Lords Supper instituted to be a Remembrance of Christ or of the Sacrifice of the Cross to shew forth the Lords death till he come which as it respects God is to put him in remembrance of Christ's death and to plead the Vertue and Merit of it for our pardon and acceptance It is a visible prayer to God to remember the sufferings of his Son and to be propitious to his Church his body and every member of it which he has purchased with his own blood And therefore the ancient Church constantly at this holy Supper offered up their prayers to God in vertue of the Sacrifice of Christ there represented for the whole Church and all ranks and conditions of men For this reason the Lords Supper was called a Commemorative Sacrifice because we therein offer up to God the Remembrance of Christ's Sacrifice and therefore in the ancient Church the Altar or the place where they consecrated the Elements was the place also where they offered up their prayers to signifie that they offered their prayers only in vertue of the Sacrifice of Christ and that the very remembrance of this Sacrifice in the Lords Supper by vertue of its Institution did render their prayers prevalent and acceptable to God and therefore in the very first account we have of the exercise of Christian Worship we find breaking bread and prayers joyned together The efficacy of our prayers depends on the merit of Christ's Sacrifice and the way Christ hath appointed to give our prayers an interest in his Sacrifice is to offer them in the holy Supper with the Sacramental remembrance of his Death and Passion 2. If we consider the Lords Supper as it respects Christ himself and is a Remembrance of him so it contains all that peculiar Worship which the Christian Church payes him as a thankful acknowledgement of his great love in dying for them as will appear if we consider what it is to do this in Remembrance of him For 1. This signifies to keep this Feast as a publick and solemn Commemoration of our Lord we ought to remember our Saviour and think of him as often as we can but this holy Feast is a publick celebration of his fame and memory we must not only think of our Saviour as we do of an absent Friend who is very dear to us but we must remember him as some Nations do their publick Patrons and Benefactors with solemn and festival joyes The Lords Supper is a Feast instituted in honour of our Saviour wherein the whole Church must call to mind his noble acts and shew forth his praises and perpetuate the memory of them from one generation to another We must call to mind his great and astonishing love and recount all his victories and triumphs over Sin and Death and Hell and him who had the power of death that is the Devil We must sing praises to the Lamb of God who was slain and is worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing This is the proper work of a Religious Feast to call to mind the works of God and ascribe unto him the glory due unto his Name This is the true reason of all Religious Festivals The Seventh Day Sabbath was originally instituted in honour of the great Maker of all things who finished the Creation of the World in six dayes and rested on the seventh and was changed to the first day of the Week in remembrance of the work of our Redemption and the Resurrection of our Saviour from the dead The Feast of the Passeover was for a memorial of that deliverance the children of Israel had from the destroying Angel who smote all the first-born of the Egyptians but spared their houses which was but an obscure type of our greater deliverance by Christ of which the Lords Supper is instituted as a perpetual memorial All these holy Feasts were for a remembrance that is to call to mind the wonderful works of God to praise his great name and by a contemplation of his wisdom goodness and power in making and governing the world to inflame our souls with love and joy and wonder till our thoughts and passions grow too big and vehement to be suppressed in our own breasts but break forth into publick songs of praise and thanksgiving And thus we must remember our Saviour in this holy Feast by making publick thankful and joyful acknowledgements of his great and mysterious love and all the mighty things he hath done for the redemption of mankind When our Saviour says Do this in remembrance of me he requires us to keep this Feast with the publick expressions of that love and honour which we bare to his memory as a testimony of our thankfulness to him for all that he hath done and suffered for us as a profession of our faith and hope and trust and affiance in a Crucified Jesus that we own him for our Lord and Saviour and are not ashamed of his Cross nor afraid of any sufferings for his sake 2. The Lords Supper is the peculiar worship of Christ considered as a God incarnate the word was made flesh and dwelt among us the eternal son of God the uncreated wisdom of the Father came down from Heaven and cloathed himself with flesh and blood and became man as we are that he might be capable to dwell among us without that terrour and astonishment which his unvailed glory carries with it which is too bright and dazling for mortal eyes to gaze on and that when he had lived here a poor despised afflicted life in the condition of a Minister and a Servant he might die as a Sacrifice
and I live by the Father so he that eateth me even he shall live by me This is that bread which came down from heaven not as your Fathers did eat Manna and are dead he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever Where our Saviour gives the reason why those who eat him shall live for ever because he himself shall live for ever though he must die he was to rise again into an immortal life and an eternal Kingdom as the reward of his death and sufferings and therefore this holy Feast is a certain earnest of immortality to those who feed on him and we need not indeed doubt this since it conveys the holy Spirit to us as St. Paul tells the Romans But if the Spirit of him that raised up Iesus from the dead dwell in you he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you But possibly some may object that all this which is attributed to the Holy Supper we receive at our Baptism the pardon of our sins the gift of the Spirit and the promise and earnest of immortality for so we are Baptized for the remission of sins and we are baptized as well as made to drink into one Spirit and those who are baptized into Christ have put on Christ and we are buried with Christ by baptism into death that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father so we also should walk in newness of life for if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection Now all this I grant to be true and therefore Baptism not the Lords Supper is our regeneration or new birth we are raised into a new life are renewed and sanctified at our Baptism and have the Holy Spirit bestowed on us as the author and principle of a new life but the continuance of this grace and the daily assistances of the Holy Spirit especially when we have grieved him and made him withdraw from us by our sins depends upon our diligent attendance at the Table of our Lord. It is not enough that a man is born into the world unless he have constant food to preserve his life and thus it is with the new creature and therefore the Supper of our Lord is Bread and Wine the stay and support of life to signifie to us that these supplies of grace which we receive at this Feast are as necessary to our Spiritual life as our daily food is to the support of a bodily life and therefore our Saviour calls himself the bread of life which came down from Heaven of which the Manna was a type and figure now we know Manna was their constant food the only Bread they had which signified that this heavenly Manna is the daily support of our spiritual life and therefore we know the ancient Fathers by our daily bread in the Lords Prayer did generally understand the Sacrament of the Lords Supper which they called the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Bread of God All which may convince us from the very nature and reason of the institution that frequent communione are as necessary to our spiritual growth and increase in holiness to repair the decays of our graces and to renew our strength and vigour in serving God and to procure the pardon of sin after a relapse and to call back the holy Spirit when he is withdrawn from us as bread is to keep our bodies in constant repair and did men love their souls as they do their bodies they would no more neglect the Supper of our Lord than their daily food 4. The Lords Supper is the principal part of Christian communion and therefore as necessary as the communion of the Church is to debar any persons from the Lords Table is to shut them out of the communion of the faithful and they are never restored to full communion till they are restored to the communion of this holy Feast while discipline was preserved in its glory and vigour in the ancient Church no Christian durst turn his back upon the Table of our Lord as nine parts in ten now often do indeed they could not well communicate as faithful Christian people without receiving the Lords Supper The Catechumens and Penitents were admitted to publick instructions and to such prayers as were proper for them but they were dismissed when that was done and not admitted to be present at the worship of the faithful who were in full peace and communion with the Church the principal part of which was the Holy Supper Indeed St. Paul attributes the union of Christians in one body to Christ to this holy Feast He calls the Cup the communion of the blood of Christ and the bread the communion of the body of Christ and assigns this as one reason of it for we being many are one bread and one body for we are all partakers of that one bread From whence it is plain that we are united to each other by partaking of the same bread for we are one bread as well as one body which places Christian unity in a joynt participation of this Holy Feast This also unites us to Christ makes us his body because we all feed on his body the Church is his body as being fed and nourished with his body which both shows us how necessary the peace and unity of the Church is to give us an interest in the Sacrifice of Christ for the vertue of his Sacrifice is contained in the holy Supper and this must be celebrated in the communion of the Church and withal how essential this holy Supper is to Christian communion as uniting us all to Christ in one body For shame then let not those men cry out against Schism and Schismaticks who separate themselves from the body of Christ in that part of Christian communion which is most essential to Christianity it is a much less evil not to hear a Sermon together nay sometimes not to pray together than to joyn in all other parts of worship but to break company at the Lords Table where if ever they ought to appear as one body and one bread to set up Altar against Altar is somewhat worse is a greater and more incurable Schism than to absent our selves from the Lords Table but for my part I cannot excuse those men from being Schismaticks who live in an habitual neglect of so necessary a part of Christian communion and could the ancient discipline of the Church be revived such men should know that Christian communion in any religious offices is a priviledge which they do not deserve and which they should not have Having thus explained our obligations to frequent Communion in the holy Supper of our Lord which I judge so plain and evident that no honest impartial Inquirer can resist the evidence of them and of such great weight and moment that no