ing at public prayer, hath been constantly practised by one or more members without the least. discountenance. And, of the many ministers I have consulted, I find not one who imagines the practice would give offence to any single congregation among us. Equally just and well supported is that other reproach, "That it is generally held among us "that the sacrament is for none but perfect and "consummate christians." After multiplying on this subject many words to little purpose, you are at last forced to retract this injurious imputation as to the Presbyterians, and acknowledge it to be false. You might have done the same by the independents, whom you still leave under its weight. For, though they are generally more minute, I fear, in enquiring after proofs of the sincerity of a man's christianity than the scriptures authorise them, yet there is scarcely one, I believe, to be found among the most rigid of them all, who will not declare that every sincere christian hath a right to the Lord's table. For, do they not all acknowledge that every such person is become, by the gospel covenant, a child of God and a brother of Jesus Christ? Will the most rigid independent say then, that such have not a right to eat of the sacramental supper? No, the truth of grace, they will tell you, be it in ever so weak a state, entitles to the sacrament. You wrong them, therefore, much by saying, that they hold it to belong to none but perfect and consummate christians. Thus groundless and ill-supported, Sir, are the defamations of your dissenting brethren, which your prejudices against them have, I fear, disposed you to receive with too much pleasure, and to have published to the world before you were sufficiently informed whether they were true or false. But suffer, I beseech you, the council of a friend. Put away far from you that little, ungenerous, unmanly, bigoted spirit, by which "You "advise the faithful to shun the conversation and "company of our ministers, as being notorious "sinners, and not to have any intimate unnecessary acquaintance with them, or familiarity in "common life."* Indulge the more christian and catholic disposition Dr. Nichols recommends, who informs the world with pleasure" of the "charitable correspondence and strict degree of "friendship,which subsists betwixt the established clergy and some of the dissenting ministers."+ It is because they know one another no better, that they do not love each other more. The natural consequence of shyness is estrangement; this too often produces aversion. The mind then becomes prepared not only for receiving with pleasure any scandalous and mean suspicions, but also for industriously propagating the grossest misrepresentations or the falsest accusations. Had you freely conversed with the dissenting ministers around you, as the learned Doctor Nichols advises, you had saved yourself a good deal of public mortification, which your injurious accounts both of their principles and practice have now unhappily drawn upon you. Cultivate at length, Sir, a familiar acquaintance with them. Their acquaintance will do you honour,---will edify and enlarge your mind,---will give you juster notions of men and of things than a mere college education is capable of doing, and prepare you for that happy world where bigotry and party zeal will no more alienate pious spirits, but where all the children of God are gathered together in From them you would have learned, that one. * Letter II. page 8. Letter I. page 83. the ceremonies of the sweeping cloak, of kneeling at ordination, of the people's holding up their hands at that solemnity, of striking a covenant with their pastors, of giving the name at baptism, are most of them never used at all in the greater part of the dissenting churches, and the others not in the least imposed; full liberty is given to use or to use them not: no stress is laid upon them; much less are they made indispensible terms of christian communion, as sponsors, the cross, and kneeling are with you. They would moreover, have told you, what you seem not to know, that it is not the mere using ceremonies against which dissenters object so much as the imposing them; the laying a stress upon them; the considering them as decorations and improvements of christian worship; not only useful, but necessary institutions, (as you had the irreverence to your divine Lawgiver to pronounce concerning sponsors,) and the making compliance with them terms of reception into the family and church of Christ. And, finally, they would have told you, that men's uncovering the head in prayer is by no means a mere ceremony, but a circumstance, or act of worship, which seems dictated by the light of nature, and is commanded by an apostle, 1 Cor. xi. 3, 4, 7; and that, therefore, your placing this in the rank of ceremonies practised by dissenters was (to return your own compliment) most certainly a very heedless and wrongheaded thing. "The neglect of private fasting," is another charge you advance against us," and insist con"fidently that you were right in saying it was "very little, if at all practised among us."* Dissenters, Sir, I presume, have read that instruction of their master, Matt. vi. 17. Thou, when thou * II, Defence, page 47. 2 fastest, anoint thy head and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but to thy Father which is in heaven. Though they affect not to flourish with their Vigils and Lents, (which, with sorrow, they see turned into little else than a religious farce by too many around them,) nor, like the Pharisee, are ostentatious in telling God and the world how often they fast, yet this duty, I am persuaded, is practised with much seriousness among them. Besides the excellent discourse of Bennet, to which you were referred, you call for more tracts. See another on the same subject in the Morning-Exercise, by Barker; and from the lives of the two Henrys, Allen, Baxter, Tross, &c. particularly of the late most ingenious and pious Abernethy, you may learn what are their religious sentiments and practice as to this matter. In many of their churches there are stated periodical fasts, besides the personal domestic ones, which, upon extraordinary occasions, are not unusual among them. But was it possible you should so alertly attack us on this head when you know it to be in our power with such advantage to retort! If " you. "have met with no sermons or tracts of dissen ters recommending private fasts,"---pray, have you met with any which discourage and forbid them? But, have you never met with your own LXXIId Canon, which says, "No minister "shall, without licence of the bishop under his "hand and seal, keep any solemn fasts, either publicly or in any private houses, other than "such as are appointed by law, nor be present at any of them, under pain of suspension for the "first fault, of excommunication for the second, "and of deposition from the ministry for the "third." This Sir, is the exalted foot upon which the duty of private fasting stands in your church! Could any thing then be more wise, more pertinent, or more just, then the censures you deal us here! As to the posture of standing at public prayer, for which also you had the sagacity sharply to reprehend us, besides the great variety of scripture examples which I produced in-its justification, you have had since, from a learned hand,* indisputable proofs from Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Clemens of Alexandria, Tertullian, Örigen, Cyprian, the Apostolical Constitutions, Jerome and Austin, that it was the posture in which the christian churches universally offered up their public and most solemn addresses to God through all the primitive times. So unlucky is your hand, that the bolts you fling at us, as debasers of the public worship, &c. alight directly upon the heads of some of the most sacred and venerable persons which either scripture or antiquity holds out to your view! 66 "But the instances of Abraham, Moses, Sa"muel, &c. standing in prayer serve (you say) to little purpose, unless it were also shewn that they were instances of such simple mere standing as is practised in our congregations."+ Yes, they are full to our purpose, because it appears not from the sacred story, but they were instances of exactly such simple mere standing, as is used among us. As to the other gestures of devotion which your imagination would supply, the scriptures are wholly silent; and you will excuse us, Sir, from accepting your fertile imagination as a proper supplement to the word of God. "The primitive christians (you observe) can"not be imagined to do no more then barely keep upon their feet. No, they prayed with hands "spread, and with eyes lift up towards heaven." Hence then, we infer, First,---That they did not. Chandler's Cafe of Subfcription, pages 11, 12, + II. Defence, page 76. |