TO THE READER. I HERE humbly offer you, Christian reader, some assistance in that great and good work which you have to do, and are concerned to do well, when you attend the table of the Lord; a work wherein I have observed most serious people desirous of help, and willing to use the helps they have ;-which I confess was one thing that invited me to this undertaking. I offer this service with all due deference and respect to the many excellent performances of this kind, which we are already blessed with, done by far better hands than mine; who yet have not so fully gathered in thiş harvest, but that those who come after may gather up plentiful gleanings, without robbing their sheaves. Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room-room enough to enlarge upon a subject so copious, and of so great a compass that it cannot be exhausted. I do this, also, with a just sense of my own unworthiness, and unfitness to bear the vessels of the Lord, and to do any service in his sanctuary. Who am I, and what is my father's house, that I should have the honor to be a door-keeper in the house of my God, to shew his guests the way to his table; and that I should be employed thus to hew wood and draw water for the congregation of the Lord? I reckon it true preferment, and, by the grace of God....his free grace, I |