A FRAGMENT. -We come hither by appointment. This ordinance is an institution of Christ; and I verily believe that our attendance upon it will not be in vain. Let us come then that we may obtain mercy: we need it every sacrament; we bring new guilt. But let not that discourage us. It seems Christ was peculiarly concerned for our encouragement on this head, when he said, "Take, eat, this is my body which was broken for you: this cup is the new covenant of my blood, which was shed for the remission of sins." And let us come for grace to help in every time of need. Your necessities are various; you find yourselves weak, your duties difficult, your trials heavy. Well, grace will be an all-sufficient remedy, apply to it; earnestly seek it of God. Let us now do this. After prayer I alluded, in breaking the bread, to those words, we would see Jesus. Not so much by an eye of sense—many did so see him that rejected him -but by an eye of faith. Blessed is the womb that bare thee: nay, rather they that hear the word of God, and keep it. Let us look to Jesus with an appropriate view: my Lord and my God. (In pouring forth the cup.) Precious blood of the son of God—the Lamb without blemish -fit for a sacrifice-what transcendant love! How should we give ourselves up to him! My Lord and my God! REFLECTIONS ON THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW I SET apart the first day of the year to some purposes of extraordinary devotion, but did not prosecute them with sufficient resolution, in which undoubtedly I was much to blame. I found abundant matter of thanksgiving, and abundant cause of humiliation; nor was there any thing that lay upon my mind with greater weight than my neglect of the due attendance to secret devotion, on which so much of the life and power of religion depends. I have solemnly devoted myself to God for the ensuing year: and I have renewed my resolutions, in the divine strength, of supplying what has been defective, and regulating what has been faulty; and proposed to be more careful in self-examination, and in writing proper memoirs, as what may be very subservient to other things of great importance. I have not laid any very accurate scheme of business for the next half year; but, according to the transient survey I have taken of what lies before me, it is thus: I intend, by the divine assistance, to read three lectures of Pneumatology to my pupils every week, and two lectures of Anatomy till I have gone through it; and then will proceed to Mr. Jennings's Chronology; and after that to Jewish Antiquities. I propose to contract all the references in Pneumatology as I go along, but shall not end that this half year. We shall pursue the Greek, and French, and Latin lectures as usual; perhaps reading one play of Sophocles; with Seneca, and Pliny's Panegyrick upon Trajan. With Mr. Farmer I will go on in Hebrew, teaching him the sentences, which, therefore, I will endeavour to finish; and going through Algebra with Mr. Palmer and Mr. Wilkinson, I shall end Conic Sections and Mechanics. In the congregation, I propose to go on with my Sermons on Faith; and after that of the Knowledge of Christ. Besides other occasional discourses, I will prepare for the press my Sermons on Education, which will be a considerable piece of work; and will prevent my reading what perhaps I might otherwise despatch. However, I hope to read over Tully's Tusculan Questions, to end Chemenais's Works, to read Witsius's Egyptiaca, Stevenson on Miracles, Watts's Historical Catechism, Clarke's Discourses on the Being and Attributes of God, the fourth and fifth volume of Clarke's Sermons, first and second volume of Antiquities, the rest of Tillotson, all the Funeral Sermons of Howe and Bates, the rest of Baxter's Practical Works, with Allen's Reflections upon Scripture, and Rollins's Ancient History. I will throw my congregation into something of an order, and visit the chief of them in town every month; and in the country, if possible, every quarter. I propose to go on catechising the children every week while the lectures continue, and every fortnight when they are laid aside. As for Italian, I shall probably end the Testament, and perhaps read a little of the Grammar, or some very easy author, that I may not forget that which I have already learned. With Jennings I hope to end Justian, to proceed in the Greek Testament, and to read some of Ovid's Epistles. If to these I can add The Minute Religious Philosopher, and Pembroke's View of the Newtonian Scheme, I think I shall have done a great deal, and shall much exceed my present expectations. May I approve myself to the eye of my great Master in all, and in all receive a blessing from him! Saturday, Jan. 1, 1732. MEDITATIONS PREVIOUS TO THE TWENTY-FIFTH SACRAMENT. It is a very dissolute way of living into which I have fallen for some months; and an instance of it is, that I have kept no memoirs of what has passed between God and my soul; nor so much as a diary of my life, which I had not before neglected for at least fourteen years. I spent some, though too little, time yesterday in recollection; and I find that, besides this cause of complaint, I have very much neglected self-examination, secret prayer, religious discourse, and visiting my people in a pastoral view; and likewise that serious converse with my servants and my pupils that might have been expected. I would humble myself before God on these accounts; and as I am now going to the table of the Lord, I would renew my resolutions of new and better obedience, and of greater caution with regard to each of these heads. The Lord grant that I may be established in this determination, and may with full purpose of heart cleave unto him. O Lord, I would be found waiting for thy salvation. When wilt thou come unto me? MEDITATIONS AT THE SACRAMENT, OCTOBER 1, 1732. ན THOUGH my violent cold hindered me from speaking this day at the table with my usual freedom, yet, I bless God, it was a very comfortable ordinance; and in the midst of the weakness, and even the distress of nature, I had some delightful views of my everlasting rest. Having discoursed on the abundance of mercy in a strain which was very comfortable to myself in the preparation, and I hope in some measure to my hearers in the delivery, I proceeded at the table to some meditations on these words, "He that has wrought us to the selfsame thing is God." That is, it was the work of a God to bring us to it—he is God—none but he could have done it-to work us to it-to such a thing as a meetness for what we were naturally so very unfit for. O, think what it is we are wrought to-think who we arewhat opposition God found-how few are wrought to it—all may awaken our admiration as well as our joy. In breaking the bread there were some believing views of Christ; and in receiving the cup a deep submission to the determinations of Divine providence, and a readiness to receive any cup from the hand of God, since, through grace, I am well persuaded it cannot be a cup of wrath; therefore, O my God, I rejoice in saying thy will be done. I apprehended something of the beginning of a fever, and recollecting it might VOL. V. Y be fatal, yet I cannot say that I thought of it with any terror, but rather found a sweet willingness to be dissolved, and to be with Christ, which is far better than this present life. I adore God for it as his own work. Behold, O Lord, I am in thy hands. I would be waiting for thy salvation, and doing thy commands. October 1, 1732. MEDITATIONS AT THE LORD'S TABLE, WHICH WAS, I THINK, THE THIRTY-THIRD SACRAMENT. It has been a sad instance of my negligence and folly, that I have taken no more notice of what has passed between God and my soul on such occasions as this for many months; as well as that I have totally neglected my Diary for a considerable time. I began to be a little more careful towards the beginning of the year; and I plainly find that the time I have since saved from those memorandums has been lost in that carelessness consequent upon such instances of remissness and folly. I was this day at the table of the Lord, and I introduced the ordinance by some meditation on those words, "He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how should he not with him freely give us all things." I observed the title given to Christ, his own Son. I hope we are the children of God, else we have no business here. But he was so in a peculiar and eminent sense, such as no creature was, yet God did not spare him. He was so far from being excused that he was not favoured, that the cup might not pass away from him. Behold his severity as well as his goodness. He delivered him up. It was not merely a thing that happened in the common course of human events; but he was by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God given up; there was the order of God in it; there was the act of God in it; and he was sent into the world on purpose that he |