Preface.

It is not because there are not many excellent manuals for devotion at Holy Communion, that I venture to add to a number already great; but because I have thought it desirable to put together something which may serve to shew those, who are distressed at any simplification of the Lord's Supper, that the mysteriousness with which they outwardly invest it, is by no means necessary to a proper and reverential feeling concerning it.

In the arrangement of the present Manual the words are, in general, my own, while the thoughts are those of others; nor have I scrupled to borrow freely from Augustine, Anselm, and similar writers.

The poem from George Herbert has been selected, not for its intrinsic beauty, but because it sets forth in a connected, and

PREFACE.

withal a striking manner, the several scenes of our Saviour's Passion.

Dr. Tilly, from whose work called The Acceptable Sacrifice several extracts have been given, was some time Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and Chaplain to Montague, Earl of Abingdon. This author in his preface opposes, with an indiscriminating zeal, Bishop Hoadly's account of prayer, as given in a sermon before the King's Majesty, in 1717; to wit, that prayer in all our Lord's directions about it, and particularly in that form which He Himself taught to His followers, was a calm undisturbed address to God under the notion of a Father, expressing those sentiments and wishes before Him which every sincere mind ought to have.' Dr. Tilly on his part defines Christian prayer, inclusive of praise, to be 'a rational and considerate address of our souls to God, expressing our apprehension of His glory and goodness, and making known to Him our requests * with fervent, earnest, and importunate desires and affections in the name and through the mediation of our Lord

* Phil, iv. 6.

Jesus Christ.' It would seem that, had the temper of those times permitted, both might have held their own without controversy, and both from their own point of view been right. But the battle was raging, and disputings had warped the judgment of the combatants. We, who from a distance can look back upon the strife, should learn not to condemn one another hastily, but calmly to consider whether there may not be differences of view, and degrees of feeling, with reference to religious concerns, according to the differences of individual characters and constitutions, without any necessary demerit or reprehensibility on any side. It is certain that with the very best intentions we cannot always present ourselves before God in the same frame of mind. We cannot, if we would, feel always the same feelings and think the same thoughts, in the same degree and with the same truth. Now if it be the case with each individual person that in several respects he is different from himself at different times, how much greater must be the diversity between many, whose minds, habits, education, powers of reflection, intelligence, and general

constitutions vary. It is probable that to some what I have set down will be uninviting, to others the reverse, and to the same persons at one time suitable, at another time less satisfactory: not, indeed, because the words themselves, or the truths they express, are changeable, but because their own tempers and characters are liable to change, and men's devotions have, as it were, an ebb and flow.

In consideration of which things I have endeavoured to make the following pages as simple and as generally applicable as I could, that there may be the less occasion for offence, though prejudice of course I cannot forecast. Should it please God to bless this effort, it will be entirely to His praise, and no way to the glory of the writer, who in composing it has felt, as all who may use it will feel, how easy it is to think and to speak with earnest devotion, but how hard to live accordingly.

In conclusion, I would observe to those who think that old times are best because they are old; that in the present age, when men are so anxiously inquiring into the foundations of the belief which they have inherited from the