Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/246

42 (Immediately after the Consecration.) We offer unto Thee, our King and our, this bread and this cup. We give Thee thanks for these and for all Thy mercies, beseeching Thee to send down Thy Holy Spirit upon this sacrifice, that He may make this bread the Body of Thy, and this cup the blood of Thy ; and that all we, who are partakers thereof, may thereby obtain remission of our sins and all other benefits of His passion. And together with us, remember, O, for good, the whole mystical body of Thy Son; that such as are yet alive may finish their course with joy, and that we, with all such as are dead in the , may rest in hope and rise in glory, for Thy Son's sake, whose death we now commemorate. Amen. May I adore Thee, O, by offering to Thee the pure and unbloody sacrifice, which Thou hast ordained by. Amen.

Whenever church discipline meets with discountenance, impieties of all kinds are sure to get head and abound. And impieties unpunished do always draw down judgments. The same, who appointed baptism for the receiving men into His Church and family, has appointed excommunication, to shut such out as are judged unworthy to continue in it..... If baptism be a blessing, excommunication is a real punishment; there being the same authority for excommunication as for baptism. And if men ridicule it, they do it at the peril of their souls.

In the first place, the commission of power to ministers to retain and remit other men's sins, in whatever sense we take it, is a great engagement on them to lead holy and pure lives themselves. For it looks like an absurdity in practice, and is too often really thought so, that men should be qualified to forgive other men's sins, who are loaded with guilt and impurity themselves. There is nothing so natural and obvious to us as, Physician, heal thyself: and, therefore, if it be not a real objection against their office, yet it is an unanswerable one against their persons. If it do not destroy the tenor of their commission in the nature of the thing, yet it certainly diminishes their authority and reputation in the opinion of men; when every