- ception, though great, is yet to be pardoned; and to the
restraint of the presumptuous, and confusion of the profane, that the preparation required is strict, though practicable, and the denunciation such as ought to terrify the negligent, though not discourage the pious.
When eternal punishments are denounced against any crime, it is always evidently the intention of the writer to declare and enforce to those, that are yet innocent, the duty of avoiding them, and to those, who have already committed them, the necessity of repentance, reformation, and future caution. For it is not the will of God, that any should perish, but that all should repent, and be saved. It is not by one act of wickedness, that infinite mercy will be kindled to everlasting anger, and the beneficent Father of the universe for ever alienated from his creatures; but by a long course of crimes, deliberately committed against the convictions of conscience, and the admonitions of grace; by a life spent in guilt, and concluded without repentance. "No drunkard or extortioner," says the apostle, "shall inherit eternal life." Yet shall no man be excluded from future happiness, by a single instance, or even by long habits of intemperance, or extortion. Repentance and new life will efface his crimes, reinstate him in the favour of his Judge, restore him to those promises which he has forfeited, and open the paths to eternal happines.
Such is the crime of unworthy reception of the holy sacrament, by which "he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself;" to which no man can come unprepared, or partake of, if he is divested of the intentions suitable to so solemn a part of divine worship, without adding to the number of his sins, and, by a necessary consequence, to the danger of his soul. But though the soul is, by such an act of wickedness, endangered, it is not necessarily destroyed, or irreversibly condemned. He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, contributes, indeed, by eating and drinking, to his own damnation, as he that engages in fraudulent, or
