ADVERTISEMENT

TO THE THIRD EDITION.

THE Author wrote and made public this book to do good. That it has done some little, he has the satisfaction of knowing: and that there may be an opening given for it to do still more, some friends, have suggested the propriety of substituting for its former title, An Essay upon the Holy Eucharist, the more popular and comprehensible one, A Dissertation on the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Prejudice

is generally more powerful than reason; while in no instance, perhaps, is it more strikingly so, than in the choice of a title page. The learned reader will doubtless prefer the original title, on the score of its more immediate application to the subject in question for it cannot be unknown to him, that some writers have considered the appellative of the Lord's Supper so little designatory, as even to proscribe its use; yet he will also concur with the Author in thinking, that any alteration in this respect, which shall multiply his chance of carrying the principal object into accomplishment, ought to be readily adopted, though at the surrender of an opinion, to which consequences, infinitely more important than the present, might be attached.

INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS.

CHAPTER FIRST.

It requires no great effort of sagacity to discover, that after the voice of reason has been long stifled between craft and credulity, the fruits of her speech are sometimes observed to be rashness and precipitation. At the Reformation, though one of the greatest periods of human improvement, there were yet those who, in the very days of that auspicious era, seemed disgusted with every thing of which they were in possession, and who evinced an eagerness to throw down all that was ancient and venerable, for no other reason, than that it was old and established, and associated with the other parts of their institutions; whilst in this factious enmity to received opinions, this blind and headlong predilection for the mischiefs of false reform, it never once en

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tered their heads, whether they were not tearing up by the roots some of the best and happiest principles of our nature. This spirit indeed for innovation and change, and not for real reform, has descended to modern times, unimpaired, and unadulterated.

Whoever, for instance, has examined with attention and impartiality the disputes in the last century concerning the nature and end of the Sacrament*, will perceive but little resemblance in the controversialists of that time, with all their real or fancied skill in philosophy, to our first Reformers, whose zeal for the purity of the common religion, while it raised the dignity

*The name of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, or the Holy Communion, though not of Scripture derivation, is certainly of high origin. We meet with it in Livy, lib. ii. cap. xxiv. ut Sacramento dicerent; and in the younger Pliny's letter to the Emperor Trajan, seque Sacramento non in scelus aliquod obstringere, &c. Epist. 97. lib. x. p. 819. Edit. Amstel. Perhaps we shall see this word in its true light, if we consider it as adopted by the church from the language and usage of the age: that we were enrolled in the church militant by the Sacrament of Baptism, as if it were an oath, and professed our continuance in the service by the Sacrament or oath of the Lord's Supper.

of man, by teaching him a purer theology, did not, in its prudential exercise of reformation, find that to be out of order merely because it had existed before,-in the errors and superstitions which these great and wise men overwhelmed,—in the substance of the system which they sought to amend, they first ascertained the evil complained of to be one of real magnitude, before they directed their attention to its cure*. Nor is it irrational to suppose, that they did so under the settled belief and conviction, that their operations would be attended with the

* Dr. Heylin, in his Introduction to the Life of Archbishop Laud, has thus justly described the views of our Reformers. "Nothing that was Apostolick or accounted Primitive, did fare the worse for being Popish; I mean for having been made use of in times of Popery, it being none of their designs to create a new Church, but to reform the old. Such superstitions and corruptions as had been contracted in that Church by long tract of time being pared away, that which was good and commendable did remain as formerly. It was not their intent to dig up a foundation of such precious stones, because some superstructures of straw and stubble had been raised upon it." p. 3-4. And again-" No regard had they to Luther or Calvin, in the procedure of their work, but only to the writings of the Prophets and Apos