Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 1.djvu/235

 every day in the year. Our Church requires the first, and hath provided for the other, by ordering that the same Collect, Epistle, and Gospel which is appointed for the Sunday, shall serve all the week after; and by consequence the whole Communion Service, of which they are a part. And therefore, unless you receive it, and receive it often too, you will live in the gross neglect, if not in a plain contempt of command; as you will one day find to your shame and sorrow; for how well soever ye may otherwise live, this one sin is enough to ruin and destroy you for ever. "For," as St. James saith, "whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all." (James ii. 10.) And therefore, whatsoever else ye do, if ye do not this, but offend in this one point, you are liable to all the punishments that are threatened in the Law of. Neither is there any way to avoid them, except you repent, and turn from this as well as from all other sins.

And that ye may not think that the receiving of this Blessed Sacrament only now and then, as perhaps two or three times a year, will excuse you from the imputation of living in the neglect of command; I desire you to consider how the Apostles themselves and the Primitive Christians understood it. Which they sufficiently declared by their practice. For when our was gone to Heaven, and had, according to His promise, sent down the  upon His Apostles, and by that means brought into His Church about three thousand souls in one day, it is said of them, that "they continued stedfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers," (Acts ii. 42.); and of all that believed, it is said, that "they, continuing daily with one accord in the Temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, (ii. 46.) Where we may observe, first, that by breaking of bread in the New Testament, is always meant the Administration of the  Supper. Secondly, this they are said to have done, , from house to house, as we translate it; or rather in the house, as the Syriac and Arabic versions have it, and as the phrase  is used by the Apostle himself, Rom. xvi. 5. 1 Cor. xvi. 19.; that is, they did it either in some private house where there was a Church, or more probably in some of the houses or chambers belonging to the Temple, where they daily