religion? Do not thousands of Churchmen live and die without receiving
of the first principles of the Reformed Church of England. They think all earnest, eloquent, zealous, hard-working clergymen cannot be far wrong. And when you tell them that there is an avowed determination among many clergymen to unprotestantize the Established Church, to get behind the Reformation, and to bring back the Romish Mass and the Confessional, you are too often smiled at as an alarmist, and are not believed. It is my deliberate conviction that unless English lay Churchmen can be awakened to see the real nature of the existing differences about the Lord's Supper, there will come in a few years the disestablishment, the disendowment, and the disruption of the Church of England. Half the lay Churchmen seem so absorbed in politics, or fine arts, or cotton, or iron, or coal, or corn, or shipping, or railways, that you cannot get them to look at religious questions. Of the other half, too many are crying "Peace, peace." when there is no peace, and insisting that every "earnest" clergyman should be allowed to" do what is right in his own eyes, to break the law, and to be let alone. In short, unless a change comes soon, our candlestick will be taken away, and our Church will be ruined.
The paper now in the reader's hands is a humble contribution to the cause of truth about the Lord's Supper. It is truth as I find it in the New Testament, truth as I find it in the authorized formularies of our Church, truth as I find it in the writings of our greatest English divines; -- it is this truth which I advocate in these pages.
1. Is the Lord's Supper a subject of primary importance in the Christian religion? Do not thousands of Churchmen live and die without receiving it? Do not the majority of church-goers turn their backs on it, and always go away when it is administered? How is this?
Nothing can possibly be of small importance which the Lord Jesus Christ ordained and appointed. Our Lord most distinctly commanded His disciples to "eat bread" and "drink wine" in remembrance of Him. What right has any Christian to disobey this commandment? No doubt a man may be saved, like the penitent thief, without having received the Lord's Supper. It is not a matter of absolute and indispensable necessity, like repentance, faith, and conversion. But it is impossible to say that any professing Christian is in a safe, healthy, or satisfactory condition of soul, who habitually refuses to obey Christ and attend the Lord's Table. If he is