ADVERTISEMENT.

IT is intended that these Letters shall form three volumes, to be published under this title, "The Kingdom of Christ; or Hints on the Principles, Ordinances, and Constitution of the Catholic Church In Letters to a Member of the Society of Friends."

A Preface, explaining the Author's general design, and the connection of the future Letters with those already published, will be bound up with the first volume, which is now complete, and given to the purchasers of the separate numbers.

April 1.

LETTERS

ΤΟ Α

MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.

No. IV.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

IN In my last letter I endeavoured to show you how the other feelings and opinions of men in different ages, have been connected with their feelings and opinions respecting the Lord's Supper. There was, I said, a period in the history of the church, when all blessings were considered in reference to the giver rather than to the receiver of them. In this period ordinances were regarded with deep reverence and delight, as the appointed channels through which the mercy of God flowed forth upon mankind. To preserve them exactly as they had been delivered, was the great diligence required of those who were the appointed stewards of God's blessings,-humbly to partake of them, with an assurance of their mighty and mysterious

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PERIODS OF THE CHURCH.

efficacy, was the great qualification desired in the disciples. There came another period, in which men began to think much of their own nature, and to realize their own wants. Many clouds, raised by sin and ignorance, intercepted the views of Him from whom all good things come; but those very clouds led men to experience, more than they had ever done, their inward necessities. They began to be conscious creatures,-conscious of powers, of wants, most of all, of evil. Sin had presented itself to man, first admitted into the family of Christ, as the wandering of a child from its parent, to be wept for and forgiven, unless by repeated disobedience the privileges of the family had been forfeited, it presented itself now in the awful form of transgression against a positive irreversible law. Each man felt himself standing in the presence of a Judge; and the question began to be, by what means his anger could be propitiated, his favour restored? Ordinances now assumed a new aspect,-they were instruments for averting threatened peril and calamity, rather than thanksgivings for actual deliverance, and communications of present life. The understanding devised notions about them, to please the sinaccused conscience; but the one recoiled from its own inventions, the other found no peace in them.

The world reached another stage in its history. The delusions which the understanding had practised on itself were discovered; the conscience became more restless every day, under the impo