followers of Christ, with what grace can they insist, as Randal, and Erskine, and Brown, and others, have done, on a reformation that would only carry it to three or four times a year! There is something so incongruous in it, that thinking men rather let it alone altogether, than lay themselves open to the charge of such inconsistency.
On the whole, if sacramental preaching days be in their origin modern, in their nature unscriptural, in their tendency injurious— if they have put the Lord’s Supper out of its place, and surrounded it with a spurious solemnity— if they have marred its native simplicity, and obscured its genuine meaning— if they become the grand means of alluring carnal, unconverted men, to prostitute this sacred institution, and to deceive and ruin their own souls— if they give the world an unscriptural view of Christian institutions, and become an effectual barrier to reformation on this head, (and Presbyterians have often acknowledged, and deplored as much,)— if so, it is high time they were laid aside; and it ⟨is⟩ high time, too, that Christians, and especially Christian ministers, were seriously inquiring, how they shall be able to answer to God, for supporting and countenancing a system, so unscriptural in its nature, and so hurtful to saints and sinners, in its ⟨tendency⟩; and that too, it may be in direct opposition to the convictions of their own minds! To conclude, let the reader attend to the following queries, by the late Mr. Brown:— ‘Whether is it grace or corruption that most affects to add human devices to God’s worship to make it more splendid than Christ has left it? May not persons be as really ⟨guilty⟩ of popery, by doating on the splendid pomp ⟨of⟩ divine ordinances, that consists in the variety of ⟨days⟩, sermons, and ministers, as by doating on the ⟨variety⟩ of fantastic ceremonies used in the popish ⟨mass⟩? Ought we not to beware of adding to God’s
