Page:Brief inquiry into the origin and tendency of sacramental preaching-days (1).pdf/19

Rh worship should be modelled as near the Pagan and Jewish forms as possible. The clergy, with the same vitiated taste, and besides  very solicitous to procure themselves the favour of the great, transformed the Christian worship according to these patterns’. To the same purpose, speaks the late Dr. Erskine— ‘In the fourth century, defection from the primitive purity of the church, began more and more to appear. The most probable cause I can assign for this, is, that all then the religion of Christ being persecuted, few it, who had not felt the power of it on  hearts. But soon after, Christianity becoming established religion of the empire, a greater number of hypocrites from views of worldly interest, intermingled themselves with the true disciples of Christ; and in a century or two more, this little leaven the whole lump’— ‘Such nominal Christians could have no just sense of the use and benefit of the Lord’s Supper, and the obligations to frequent it. Having only the form of godliness, without the power of it, it is no wonder that the frequent return of religious exercises should be uneasy and disagreeable to them. Their example would soon followed by lukewarm Christians, who had fallen  their first love.’

From the foregoing extracts, we see to what these respectable Presbyterians attribute the first departure from the simplicity of Christian worship— to the introduction of crowds of unrenewed men into fellowship with the churches; and if similar causes produce similar effects, wherever this practice is continued, all attempts at scriptural reformation will be defeated by these characters. We need not wonder that the Reformers, with all their influence, could not carry their reformation, on this