unlawful commerce, may be said, with great propriety to traffick for damnation, or to set his soul to sale; yet as it is certain, that fraud is not unpardonable, if it shall afterwards give way to justice, so neither is the profanation of the sacrament a crime, which the goodness of God cannot forgive, if it be succeeded by true devotion. The whole life of man is a state of probation; he is always in danger, and may be always in hope. As no short fervours of piety, nor particular acts of beneficence, however exalted, can secure him from the possibility of sinking into wickedness, so no neglect of devotion, nor the commission of any crimes, can preclude the means of grace, or the hope of glory. He that has eaten and drunk unworthily may enter into salvation, by repentance and amendment; as he that has eaten and drunk worthily may, by negligence or presumption, perish everlastingly.
This account of the guilt of unworthy reception makes it necessary to inquire, whether by the original word in the text be meant, as it is translated, damnation, the eternal punishments of a future state; or, as it is more frequently interpreted, condemnation, temporary judgments, or worldly afflictions. For, from either sense, the enormity of the crime, and the anger of God enkindled by it, is sufficiently apparent. Every act of wickedness that is punished with immediate vengeance, will, if it be aggravated by repetitions, or not expiated by repentance, incur final condemnation; for temporal punishments are the merciful admonitions of God, to avoid, by a timely change of conduct, that state in which there is no repentance, and those pains which can have no end. So that the confident and presumptuous, though it should be allowed that only temporal punishments are threatened in the text, are to remember, that, without reformation, they will be only aggravations of the crime, and that, at the last day, those who could not be awakened to a just reverence of this divine institution, will be deprived of the benefits of that death, of which it was established as a perpetual commemoration. And those who are depressed
