TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.
THE STANDING ORDINANCES OF RELIGION.
Most of us, perhaps, will find, upon examination, that we do not feel and act, as the Apostles and the early Church felt and acted, with regard to the Ordinances of our Religion. The reader is entreated to give this suggestion a fair consideration; not to hurry on, nor turn away from the recollection, that we shall all one day be judged, not merely by what we actually knew, but by what we might have known, respecting our duties to Christ and His Church. Let him consider, whether his own reason, and the Holy Scriptures, which were expressly written in order that we might possess full religious knowledge, do not say more on this subject than he has yet duly weighed and acted upon.
First, consider what Reason says; which surely, as well as Scripture, was given us for religious ends.
1. Can you possibly imagine any better method of perpetuating doctrines, than by ordinances, which live on like monuments? Consider, for instance, what is implied in Christian Salvation; remember whose property and subjects we are when we come into the world; and then endeavour, if you can, to estimate the value of those two Blessed Ordinances, which are the standing and definite publication, to every one of us, to our fathers, and our children, of the infinite mercies of God, as manifested in the Covenant of the Gospel. E.g. a generation of ungodly men (suppose) rise up and possess the earth; Satan, through their means, corrupts all that he can, in the world; but meantime, something is living on, in the very midst of them, independent of the variable opinions of the human mind; something, which they cannot spoil, and which, after they are gone to their account, and all their wretched folly has spent itself upon their own head, will come forth pure and unsullied, full of sweetness and edifying comfort to the remnant which shall then rise up, who will feed upon it by
