service of your Creator and more careful to practise every ap pointment of God, since you are disengaged from the appointments of men? Are your spirits more warmly engaged in spiritual things? Are you more zealous in your devotion? Have you the fear of God more constantly before your eyes, and the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ working more powerfully in your hearts? Say, my friends, while your outward worship is more uncorrupted with a mixture of human forms, have you more of the divine power and inward life of religion? And while you make the bible the only and the perfect rule of your faith and practice, are you more careful to observe all the duties of christianity, which the bible recommends, than those who join the additional inventions of men with them in their religious performances?

Alas! what will all your pretences to greater purity in the outward forms of worship avail you, if you are not more pure and more advanced in the spiritual parts of piety and religion than your neighbours? You will give occasion to others severely to upbraid you, and that with some appearance of reason too, that you really stand in need of these outward forms to assist you; that you want these rites and ceremonies to stir up your dull minds to the remembrance of your duty to God by their notable and spiritual signification, which is the very reason given for the use and continuance of them in the preface to the common-prayer. Unless you are more religious and holy without these forms than they are with them, thew will fling your pretence of separation for the sake of greater purity back upon your faces with huge and deserved reproaches. What! are you the persons who profess to cleare only to the pare ordinances of God's appointment? Do you abandon and renounce our ceremonious outward forms as though they were carnal, unclean and unholy, and yet shamefully neglect the inward, the spiritual and more necessary parts of true religion and godliness? And how wilk you be able to answer such sharp and righteous rebukes? Shall I be permitted to mention two or three of these ceremonies upon this occasion, that I may awaken and excite you thereby to various duties, and warn you against a neglect of them.

1. You have not the divine ordinance of baptism encumbered amongst you, with the human addition of the sign of the cross to be made on the forehead of the child*, which is appointed by the church as a token that hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil. You renounce this ceremony of the cross; but do you remember a crucified Saviour, and let him dwell upon your thoughts more than they do who make use of it? Are you more courageous. See Dr. Calamy of Moder. Nonconf. Vol. II. p. 179. Vol. III. p. 67. Lay Nonconf. Justified, p. 29.

and manful in the profession of the gospel in a dangerous hour? Are you less ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified in the company of infidels, or manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil, than they? Do you teach your children these duties, and shew the necessity of practising them without the assistance of this figure made on their foreheads? Shall we not give our brethren of the established church, occasion to charge us with hypocrisy for being so much offended at such a sign of the cross, which they use to put themselves and their children in mind of Christ crucified, if they see us negligent of the name, the doctrines and the honours of a crucified Saviour? Let us make it appear then to the world that we are faithful soldiers of Jesus Christ without this human badge of distinction; shew your neighbours that you can fight with courage and glory under his banner, against sin and Satan, without having passed under the figure of the cross in baptism, and that you stand in no need of the additional ceremonies of men to put you or your children in mind of your duty to the Son of God.

2. You are not required to provide godfathers and godmothers for your children in baptisin, who are called sureties*, by which the infant professes to renounce the devil and all his works, and to believe God's holy word and keep his commandments. You are ready to imagine that the promises of these sureties arise so high, as to give parents too much indulgence and excuse, for their own personal neglect of the instruction of the child, especially when the parent himself is not permitted to become a surety.

You who separate from the church of England do not think it needful or proper to have any sponsors, nor do you provide any such sureties for your children, and thereby you appear to lay yourselves under a strong and public obligation to educate them yourselves in the fear of God and in the faith of Christ. Now the question addressed to your consciences is this, Do you take more care in the pious and christian education of your offspring, than your brethren or neighbours of the parish, who have provided sureties to supply their own absence or defect? Are you more diligent and more solicitous to see your children brought up in the knowledge of the true God, and in acquaintance with Christ Jesus the Saviour? Are you more careful to inform them betimes of their duties to God and their duties to men, and to train them up in all the necessary and important doctrines and practices of the true religion? Surely your brethren of the established church will have abundant reason to reprove and censure you, who renounce the aid of sureties in the education of your children, and yet take so little care of them your

See Dr. Calamy of Moder. Nonconf. Vol. II. p. 147, 169. Vol. II. p. 66. Lay Nonconf. Justified, p. 27.

selves. "O cruel and profane parents! where is your tenderness? where your bowels of affection? How strangely and wickedly careless are you of the immortal interests of your own offspring, and the interest of God in them? Have you not devoted them to God and Christ in baptism, and yet neither teach them yourselves the way to the favour of God by Jesus Christ, nor make any provision for your neighbours to do it for you?" You will be condemned by the world and the church, you will be condemned by all your neighbours and by your own children, and you will be terribly condemned by your own consciences, and by Jesus the Judge of mankind, if you neglect this sacred work, or do it in so formal and trifling a manner as can have little or no effect on the hearts and consciences of your offspring.

It

3. Shall I take one step farther, and mention the appointment of kneeling at the Lord's-supper*, which is acknowledged to be an human institution, and not required in scripture. must be granted that the church of England, by a solemn caution, declares plainly that no adoration of the elements is intended thereby; nor do I enter here into the enquiry how far it is lawful or convenient, but it is certain that it offends the consciences of many of you, who cannot think that any other posture is proper for the receiving of this sacrament, than that of eating and drinking at a table, in which posture it was instituted. But the question that my text would address to your consciences on this occasion, is this-Are you as humble and as devout at this sacred solemnity, while you neglect this outward sign of humility, as your brethren are who practise it? Are you more penitent and self-abased under a sense of your sins, and more thankful for the condescending love of Jesus the Son of God, who came and died to save you? Have you as great a reverence for the blood of Christ, which was shed for the remission of sins, and do you adore God and the Saviour with a more contrite spirit and a warmer zeal? Do you partake of these sacred emblems of the body and blood of Christ with a most profound respect to him? Otherwise you will give your neighbours just reason to reprove and censure you, that you neglect at once the outward forms and the inward duty; that you renounce the posture of humble worship and forget the spiritual practice of it; that you have need to be rouzed from your seats at the table of the Lord, and be brought down upon your knees to confess your want of devotion and honour to the Son of God, and your want of humility and religious gratitude for his inestimable benefits. In vain you pretend scruples about the posture of your knees, if your hearts are not found in a very devout and adoring frame at so solemu

a season.

Dr. Calamy of Moder. Nonconf. Vol. II. p. 197, and Vol. III. p. 68. Lay Nonconf. Justified, p. 31.

But give me leave to make a further enquiry. While some of you profess to be displeased with kneeling at the Lord'ssupper, because it is performing such an institution of Christ in a gesture, which he has not instituted, do you think you are less criminal who never perform this duty at all, which our Lord and Saviour has so expressly instituted and commanded? Is this a proper way to shew your reverence for the body and blood of Christ, to abstain entirely from the appointed emblems and tokens of them? Will you dare to tell Jesus the Lord, upon his throne of judgment, that you were offended with your brethren, who kneeled down to worship him while they eat his bread and drank his wine, and partook of the feast to which he has called them; and yet that you dared from year to year, for twenty or thirty years together, to neglect this sacred feast entirely, and turn your backs upon this gracious ordinance? Can you imagine that 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 is not sloth and negligence in spiritual things? Is it not a very shameful judolence 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

*See Dr. Calamy's Moder. Nonconf. Vol. III. p. 100, 105. Lay Nonconf Justified, p. 19.

ground of your disapprobation of the parochial worship of th nation. Some of yourselves, and your fathers before you, wh have attended divine service there, have complained much, tha coldness and indifferency of spirit and formality are ready to b 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 of prayer might not be used with such a liberty, and assist the real devotion of well-disposed minds either at home or at church. It is my opinion they may be so managed 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 reigns of the two brothers, King Charles and James