merited taunt: "Physician! heal thyself. Hypocrite! first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." In such humiliating circumstances, it is a poor subterfuge to exclaim against the defections and incorrigibleness of the times; and to console ourselves as being reproached for Christ. This is not witnessing for truth; but putting a cheat upon ourselves. The religion of Christ is not answerable for our folly: nor hath his reproach any affinity with reproach for inconsistency. The alternative, Christian brethren, is decisive, We must either act up to our profession, or sit down self-condemned, and silently bear our shame.

If we would have a good conscience, and an unblushing face; if we would present an invulnerable front to every foe, let us dare to acknowledge and to rectify what is amiss in ourselves. Let us not shrink from the scriptural test. If anything which custom has taught us to value as fine gold, should prove to be dross-to the dross with it! Let us have the Christian magnanimity to say, PERISH THE TRADITIONS OF MEN! THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD BE HONORED! Then may we expect his blessing; and we shall no longer

injure his truth, nor expose our profession to ridicule.*

Should it be demanded, how a week-day service of any kind, preparatory to the supper, is more defensible than public fasts and thanksgivings, or more consistent with the foregoing reasonings? I answer, Preaching the word, unlike those exercises, is an ordinary part of God's worship; and, if it do not displace any other duty, can never be unseasonable. But should any assert a previous week-day sermon to be essential, either to the right administration of the supper, or the right preparation for it—should it be considered as obligatory, by divine authority, on the conscience-should it jostle other duties out of their places-should it be a pillar of willworship--should it lead to erroneous notions of the sacraments, breeding a false reverence for the one, and sinful slight of the other. Could it be proved to have all, or any of these effects, the author would be the first to condemn and reject it.

LETTER VIII.

Some Popular Pleas for Sacramental Fasts and Thanksgivings, briefly Considered.

CHRISTIAN BRETHREN

AFTER all that has been said, will any still advocate our sacramental fasts and thanksgivings, by pleading that "they are of long standing in the church--are a laudable custom-are well meant--have been practiced by great and good men-are helpful to devotion-are either sin or duty; and if not the former, then certainly the latter?"

A word or two to each of these pretenses. As to their antiquity, I remark,

1. It is not true: we have already proved them to be quite modern; an innovation of yesterday.

2. Antiquity is a wretched standard of truth; the abominations of popery are more ancient than they, by several centuries.

That they are a laudable custom is begging the question, for it is the very thing in dispute. Beside, custom is not to be the rule of wor

ship. Many bad customs have crept into the church of God: and if their being once customs is a reason for their being always customs, the reformers acted very foolishly in throwing so many of them away. If it be not a scriptural custom, the longer it has stood the worse; the more mischief it has done; and the greater need for its immediate abolition. The injury done by custom to purity is the subject of old and heavy complaint. "Our Lord Christ called himself truth, not custom," saith Tertullian.

Their being well-meant is no better apology than the former. Good intentions do not sanctify a fault. The worst of things have sometimes been done with the best design. Zeal for God, not according to knowledge, has been a greater pest to his church than all the openly wicked schemes of Satan and his agents.

But great and good men have practiced them-And the argument will be conclusive whenever it is proved that great and good men never do wrong. Till then, we must look more at God's word than at their example. Great and good men have observed "days, and months, and times, and years;" and have used rites and ceremonies, the very mention of which, as parts or appendages of worship,

would excite among us just and universal indignation. Their errors were not so much their own as the errors of their day and place. They followed the fashion merely because it was the fashion, without serious examination, or perhaps any examination at all. This is undoubtedly the fact with respect to our sacramental fasts and thanksgivings; not one in a hundred of those who keep them having ever inquired into their reason and obligation. And this is the best apology for those worthies whose conduct is now held up as a model for

ours.

But the principle of this argument is utterly intolerable. It puts an everlasting stop to reformation. Had our ancestors acted upon it, we would have been still within the precincts of that synagogue of Satan, the church of Rome. They were more enlightened. Could they hear us allege their example in vindication of an unscriptural usage, they would be the first to resent the impiety. Not wishing us to be followers of them farther than they were of Christ, they would disown us as a spurious brood, and not the genuine sons of the Reformation. We have made miserable proficiency if we have not yet learned that maxim of Christian independence, not to call any man our master upon earth.