and God laid as great a stress upon obedience there as in any moral instance whatever. To conclude, then, moral performances without the obedience of the heart are nothing; and positive performances without the like obedience are nothing; but the sincere obeying of God's voice in both is true religion and true morality." Scripture Vindicated, Part 3, pp. 37, 71.

66

The just reasoning of Mr. Wadsworth on the Lord's Supper applies with equal force to any other positive institution. "Some may say," he observes, sure God will not be so much concerned with a failure in so small a punctilio as a ceremony. True, it (the Lord's Supper) is a ceremony, but it is such a one that beareth the stamp of the authority of the Lord Jesus. If he appoints it, will you slight it, and say it is but a ceremony? It is but a ceremony; but you are greatly mistaken if you think that, therefore, there is no danger to neglect it. What was the tree of knowledge of good and evil but a ceremony? Yet for disobedience in eating thereof do you not know and feel what wrath it hath brought on the whole race of mankind? And tell me, was circumcision any more than a ceremony ? Yet it had almost cost Moses his life for neglecting to circumcise his son; for the angel stood ready with his sword to slay him, if he had not prevented it by his obedience. Exod. 4: 24, 26. So for the Lord's Supper, as much a ceremony as it is; yet, for the abuse of it, some of the church (at Corinth) were sick and weak, others fell asleep, i. e., died : and if God did so severely punish the abuse, how think ye to escape, that presumptuously neglect the use thereof? But I am regenerate and become a new creature ; I do not fear that God will cast me away for the disuse of a ceremony.

"Is this the reasoning of one regenerate? Surely

thou dost not understand what regeneration meaneth. Is it not the same with being born of God? And what is it to be obedientt o the Father but to do as he commandeth? And has he not commanded you, by his Son, to remember your Saviour in this Supper? When you have considered this, then tell me what you think of this kind of reasoning. I am a child of God; therefore I will presume to disobey him. He bids me remember Jesus in this Supper, and I will not. Methinks thou blushes at the very mentioning of it. And what if he should not cast thee quite off for this neglect? yet thou hast no reason to think but that either outwardly or inwardly, or both, he will scourge thee for this sin before thou diest." Supplem. to Morn. Exerc., Cripplegate, p. 243. I will add but one testimony more.

Dr. Gerard reasons thus: "A total disregard to the positive and external duties of religion, or a very great neglect of them, is justly reckoned more blameable, and a stronger evidence of an unprincipled character, than even some transgressions of moral obligation. Even particular positive precepts, as soon as they are given by God, have something moral in their nature. Suppose the rites which are enjoined by them perfectly indifferent before they were enjoined; yet from that moment they cease to be indifferent. The divine authority is interposed for the observance of them. To neglect them is no longer to forbear an indifferent action; or to do a thing in one way rather than another, which has naturally no greater propriety: it is very different; it is to disobey God; it is to despise his authority; it is to resist his will. Can any man believe a God, and not acknowledge that disobedience to him and contempt of his authority is immoral, and far from the least heinous species of immortality?" Sermons, vol. 1, p. 312.

8. Nor will a wilful or voluntary ignorance in the least diminish the crime of neglecting a positive institution. “The criminal cause," says the eloquent and profound Dr. Grosvenor, "of not seeing the evidence of such appointments are, in this case, as in many other cases, non-inquiry, laziness, prejudice, lust, pride, and passion. That an ignorance owing to these causes cannot be pleaded for a neglect of any of God's appointments, is so much the general sense of all casuists, that I shall only add here that it is at every man's peril how ke comes not to know the will of God, as well as not to do it. We must look to it how we came not to see the appointment, and must answer that to God and our own conscience. It is not enough to say, Lord, I did not know it was appointed; when the answer may justly be, You never inquired into the matter; you never allowed yourself to think of it; or, if you did, you resolved in your mind that you would not be convinced. You made the most of every cavil, but never minded the solution to any of your objections." Moral obligation to the positive appointments in religion.

9. Dear reader, I have now, in as brief a manner as possible, and rather in the very words of our Pedobaptist brethren than in any other way, stated the difference between the nature of a positive and a moral law; and shown that the authority of the lawgiver is the sole ground, and the words of the institution the only rule, of our obedience; and that thence it follows that the rule or words of the institution must be plain, clear, and explicit. I have interspersed a few remarks, and shall now sum up the whole in the few propositions of that dispassionate and powerful reasoner, Bishop Hoadly, a zealous Pedobaptist.

I." The partaking of the Lord's Supper" (and which

is equally applicable to the ordinance of baptism) "is not a duty of itself, nor a duty apparent to us from the nature of things; but a duty made such to Christians by the positive institution of Jesus Christ.

II." All positive duties, or duties made such by institution alone, depend entirely on the will and declaration of the person who institutes or ordains them, with respect to the real design and end of them, and, consequently, to the due manner of performing them. For, there being no other foundation for them with regard to us but the will of the institutor, this will must, of necessity, be our sole direction, both as to our understanding their true intent, and practising them accordingly; because we can have no other direction in this sort of duties, unless we will have recourse to mere invention, which makes them our own institutions, and not the institutions of those who first appointed them.

III. “It is plain, therefore, that the nature, the design, and the due manner of the Lord's Supper must, of necessity, depend upon what Jesus Christ, who instituted it, hath declared about it.

IV. "It cannot be doubted that he himself sufficiently declared to his first and immediate followers the whole of what he designed should be understood by it or implied in it. For, this being a positive institution, depending entirely upon his will, and not designed to contain anything in it but what he himself should please to affix to it, it must follow that he declared his mind about it fully and plainly; because, otherwise, he must be supposed to institute a duty of which no one could have any notion without his institution; and at the same time not to instruct his followers sufficiently what that duty was to be.

V. "It is of small importance, therefore, to Christians

to know what the many writers upon this subject, since the time of the evangelists and apostles, have affirmed; much less can it be the duty of Christians to be guided by what any persons, by their own authority or from their own imaginations, may teach concerning this duty. The reason is plain; because, in the matter of an instituted duty, (or a duty made so by the positive will of any person,) no one can be a judge but the institutor himself of what he designed should be contained in it; and because, supposing him not to have spoken his mind plainly about it, it is impossible that any other person (to whom the institutor himself never revealed his design) should make up that defect. All that is added, therefore, to Christ's institution as a necessary part of it, ought to be esteemed only as the invention of those who add to it: and the more there is added, (let it be done with never so much solemnity and never so great pretences to authority,) the less there is remaining of the simplicity of the institution as Christ himself left it.

VI. "The passages in the New Testament which relate to this duty, and they alone, are the original accounts of the nature and end of this institution; and the only authentic declarations upon which we of later ages can safely depend." Works, vol. 3, p. 845, &c.

10. I have now finished the first Essay on Baptism. The reader will probably say, and what has it to do with baptism? The subject is scarcely mentioned in it. True; neither may the building be seen as yet, although the foundation may have been laid with much care, labour, and expense. Still it is the foundation which supports the whole structure. The principles contained in this Essay are the foundation of the following Essays. And as these principles are recognised by the most eminent Protestant authors as legitimate, and used by