Samuel Seabury

“ And when it is our unhappiness to break our baptismal covenant, and forfeit our right to God's promises, by our sins and misdoings--how gracious is God, to permit us, upon our repentance, again to renew it at His Holy Table! again to repeat our vows of obedience, and regain our title to His heavenly promises! It has ever been the doctrine of the Catholic Church, that as when we worthily receive Baptism, we obtain through Christ remission of all past sins," so when we worthily communicate at God's Altar we obtain remission of all the sins committed since Baptism. ”

“ If what I have said be agreeable to the truth and nature of our Holy religion, your own good sense will enable you to see how indispensably necessary your attendance at the Holy Altar is, to keep up your union with Christ, and through Him with the Father. For how can you be living members of Christ's Body, without partaking of that nourishment by which the whole Body is fed and kept alive? ”

“ For the Holy Communion is, at least, as great an instrument of holy living as prayer, and the efficacy of both, on our part, rests on the same circumstances--penitence and faith: The former denoting our conversion or departure from sin, the latter our reliance upon God, and trust in His mercy and goodness. Should I go further, and say that prayers offered up at the Altar have more efficacy with God than other prayers have, it would be saying no more than the Catholic Church has always said and taught. ”

“ For when people turn from the highest act of Christian worship, and refuse to commemorate the love of their Saviour in dying for them by communicating at the Holy Table in the unity of His Church, How is it to be known that they are Christians, beyond the mere profession? ”

“ And why should any one keep himself in such a state as that he must sin against God, either by disobeying His positive law, or by unworthy attendance upon His ordinance? Why does he not rather repent of his unworthiness, and amend his life? God is ready to bless his efforts if they be sincere, and to accept his penitence.
It is to be regretted that the word damnation is used by our Translators in rendering a passage of St. Paul to the Corinthians--for that seems to be the occasion of the great terror of unworthy receiving. ”

“ And the God of peace be with you—"make you perfect in every good work to do His will"—keep you in the unity of His Church, and in the bond of peace, and in all righteousness of life--guide you by His Spirit through this world, and receive you to glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord. ”

“ But to receive Baptism is not a more express command of Christ than to receive the Holy Communion; and why there should be more solicitude about the one than the other, I cannot conceive.-- It is just as necessary that the new life we receive in Baptism should be continued, as that it should be begun. Now all life must be continued by the use of such food as is proper to it--the natural life by natural food--the spiritual life by that which is spiritual. God has provided and ordained the food of this world for the support of our natural life ”

“ That the Holy Communion is not only a commemoration of Christ's death, but a memorial or representation of His sufferings and death made before the Almighty Father, to put Him in mind of the meritorious sacrifice of His blessed Son on our behalf. ”

“ Accordingly, when our Saviour gave the first intimation of this Holy institution, He expressed Himself in terms that imply not only remission of sins, but all other benefits of His passion, "Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. Behold the Christian's privilege! and consider what injury ye do to God, what injustice to yourselves, by your wilful neglect of the heavenly feast.
4. That the Holy Eucharist is one of the instituted means of grace and holy living--the appointed instrument of conveying the Holy Spirit to us. ”

“ The rich despised the poor--the powerful those beneath them. They waited not till the brethren were come together, but they who came first ate their own supper by themselves. The rich, who could provide plenty of delicate food, ate and drank to excess; while the poor, who could bring little or nothing, not being permitted to partake with the rich, went away hungry from a feast of charity.--At such disorderly feasts the Holy Supper was celebrated among them. ”

“ The cravings of natural hunger make you impatient till it is appeased with food; and the health of the body requires that this food be supplied several times in a day. Faith is the hunger—the earnest desire of the soul. They who are blessed with it will hunger and thirst after righteousness, i. e. obedience to God. They need no exhortation: For they will bless God for, and gladly embrace, every opportunity of testifying their ready obedience to a command from which they receive such large supplies of grace and consolation. ”

“ The sick man, who complains of his aches and pains, and who laments his misfortune in being obliged to bear such a load of misery and disease as must shortly put a period to his life, and yet obstinately refuses all the remedies which can alleviate his distress and restore him to health, because they are bitter, or not exactly suited to his taste, becomes the object of our compassion--we pity his unreasonable and foolish conduct. ”

“ The great excuse for not coming to the Communion, and to which all others, where there is any hope of doing good, may be referred, is that of unworthiness. And it is probable, a sense of their deficiencies, and a strong apprehension of the sin of unworthy receiving, keep more well disposed people from the Communion than any other reason. Let such well disposed people consider the danger of disobeying God, as well as the danger of unworthy receiving. By refusing to communicate, they sin against God's positive law ”

“ To me it is, and to all good Christians it must be, an afflicting circumstance, in congregations who seem to have a serious sense of religion, and of their duty to frequent the worship of God, and who apparently join with devotion in the common service of the Church, to see so few who act as though they really believed the religion they profess. ”

“ I readily own too, that a person who approaches the Holy Table without due reverence and devotion, without considering the dignity of the Holy Mystery, and the difference between receiving the Body and Blood of the Lord, and eating and drinking common bread and wine, does not receive the Lord's Body, is guilty of the Body and Blood of Christ, and is in danger of bringing God's judgments upon him by his unworthy receiving. ”

“ To people who have a lively sense of their imperfections and failings of this kind--who conscientiously refrain from the Holy Communion, because they fear they are not good enough to come to it, and who do not make the excuse merely for excuse sake, without any intention of ever complying with their duty of frequenting the Holy Table, I would propose the following considerations. ”

“ That habits, and gross acts of sin, render a person unworthy to communicate, there can be no doubt. There is as little doubt, that the same state renders him unfit to pray, or do any act of religion, acceptably to' God. I will go further, and say, that it would be a profanation of the Holy Communion for him, while in this state, to come to it.--And it would be so far from doing him good, that it would do him hurt, by hardening the heart in impenitency. ”

“ For when God's Priest offers up the elements of bread and wine upon the Holy Altar, they are thereby made God's property; and being blessed and sanctified by prayer and thanksgiving, they become, through the operation of the Holy Ghost, the Body and Blood of Christ in power and effect. ”

“ To convince them of the impropriety of their conduct, and reclaim them to a decent and worthy behaviour, he then sets before them the solemn institution of the Holy Ordinance, as he had received it by revelation, from Christ Himself. And the force of the Apostle's argument seems to be--that Christ distributed the sacramental elements equally to all the Apostles, in token that He devoted Himself to death equally for them all, and directed them to eat of it at one table in remembrance of, and as a memorial before God, of his love to them all, and in token of their mutual love and union. ”

“ But though sinful habits, and single acts of gross sin, render us unworthy to approach God's Table, till repentance reconcile us to Him, yet sins, as they are called, of infirmity, ignorance, surprise, are not attended with that malignity. ”

“ And though they have in them the nature of sin, being contrary to the holiness and purity of God, yet by the merciful terms of the Christian covenant, they shall not finally condemn us, provided we do not willingly live in them, but watch and strive against them, humble ourselves before God under the sense of them, pray earnestly to Him to be delivered from their power by the might of His Spirit, and trust to His mercy through the Redeemer that He will not impute them to us. ”

“ For however they may wish it, they never will be free from the unworthiness of coming short. of their duty, from mere weakness of nature. Every created being must be imperfect in this sense. And did those lapses which proceed from infirmity and imperfection render us unworthy to partake in the Christian Sacrifice, no mortal could approach the Altar without sin. Upon this supposition, Apostles and Martyrs, and the best Christians that ever lived, have offended in commemorating their Saviour, and have sinned even by obeying Him. ”

“ That if they stay till they are worthy, in the sense in which they seem to understand it, before they will venture to partake of the Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood, they will never partake of it at all, but will live all their life, and die at last in the neglect of Christ's command. ”

“ Till they come to a better mind, they will give no attention, and till they do, no reason or persuasion can take any hold of them. I flatter myself there are few, I hope none, among you in so hopeless a condition. Most people intend to consider the subject of religion some time or other, and to make up for all deficiencies by their after diligence. ”

“ They were all men of like passions with us, and felt the weaknesses of nature as we feel them.--Conscious of their extreme inability to do any good thing without some degree of alloy or mixture of sin, they most humbly acknowledged their unworthiness to perform any of those services which God required of them ”

“ Negligence, and indisposition to reflection, and attachment to the world, and the lust of sensual pleasure, by continuance, grow stronger, and death closes the scene, before any resolutions of the future amendment are carried into effect. ”

“ For the Corinthians, therefore, to exclude the poor for whom Christ equally died, to whom the sacred symbols of His Body and Blood were equally distributed, from a due share in their feast of love, without supplying their hunger with necessary bread--was so far from worthily eating the Lord's Supper, that it was not even to discern the Lord's Body, i. ”