Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 1.djvu/239

 I am sure, from the beginning it was not so. For some ages after the Establishment of the Christian Religion by our Saviour, so long as they who embraced it gave themselves up to the conduct of that  which He sent down among them, and were inspired by it with true zeal for God, and enflamed with love to their ever blessed  so as to observe all things that He had commanded, whatsoever it cost them; then they never met together upon any day in the week, much less upon the  Day, for the Public Worship of  but they all received this Holy Sacrament, as the principal business they met about, and the most proper Christian service they could perform. And it is very observable, that so long as this continued, men were endowed with the extraordinary gifts as well as the graces of Holy Spirit, so as to be able to do many wonderful things by it; yea, and suffer too whatsoever could be inflicted on them for  sake. But in process of time men began to leave off their first love to Him, and turn His religion into dispute and controversy; and then as their piety and devotion grew cooler and cooler, the Holy Sacrament began to be neglected more and more; and the Priests who administered it, had fewer and fewer to receive it, until at length they had sometimes none at all. But still they mistook themselves to be obliged in duty and conscience to consecrate and receive it themselves, although they had none to receive with them. And this mistake, I suppose, gave the first occasion to that multitude of private masses which have been so much abused in the Church of Rome; where the priest commonly receives himself, although he hath never a one to communicate with him; and so there can be no communion at all. And as that abuse, so the disuse of the Holy Sacrament, sprang first from men's coldness and indifferency in religion, which hath prevailed so far in our days, that there are many thousands of persons who are baptized, and live many years in the profession of the Christian religion, and yet never receive the Sacrament of Body and Blood in all their lives. And but very few that receive it above once or twice a year; which is a great reproach and shame to the age we live in; but none at all to the Church: for she is always ready to administer it, if people could be persuaded to come to it. But that they cannot, or rather will not be; they have still one pretence or