there can be no mistake in ascribing to his divine prescience of future abuse, his so positive injunction to them to do this, as he had then done before them for a perpetual example, so long as the use of that holy ordinance should continue in the church; that they might never vary from the form he then prescribed to them, of eating bread and drinking of wine,

as a memorial and emblem of his death suffered on their account.

St Paul not having had the happiness of being present at the Lord's supper, yet for the purpose of correcting some profanation which had crept into the celebration of it, in a very dissolute city, had an account of the exact manner of its institution conveyed to him by immediate revelation. No doubt his representation of it is therefore given with the utmost precision, and that he was supernaturally guided in doing it, that it might be guarded both against the present abuses, and those errors of still worse consequence which were hereafter to arise." The Lord Jesus (says he) in the same night that he was be

ment."

trayed, took bread &c. Likewise after sup per he took the cup, saying drink ye ALL of this, for this is my blood of the New TestaThe wine is as much sacramental of the divine and everlasting sanction of the new covenant, in the expiatory death of Christ, as the bread is, and therefore both are again expressly enjoined, as equally necessary to all." For as often as ye do eat of this bread, AND DRINK OF THIS CUP, ye do shew forth (after the perfect pattern) the sacramental representation of the Lord's death." (1 Cor. xi. 25.)

Well might Daniel make it a particular note of the ferocious little horn with three

crowns on his сар, and eyes of a man, that "be should think to change times, and laws; and should actually succeed in doing so,"for they should be given into his hand.” And it is with as good reason that St John and St Paul also endow him with an equally uncontrollable tyranny, and blasphemous authority of doing whatever he pleases, (as utterly LAWLESS,) against the ordinances of

God, and the laws of nature, and of all mankind. For what a presumptuous sacrilegious audacity is it in him, flatly to contradict God Almighty in his commandments, by cancell ing one of his laws, even the first and highest of them, to the setting up again of idolatry, which he has abolished? and in his positive institutions changing the ordinance of Christ, by abolishing one half of it, and transubstantiating the other half into a piece of flesh, to make it an object of idolatrous worship.!

I will close my observations upon the prophetic notice our Lord has taken of the great mystery of iniquity, with his parable of THE IDLE SERVANT. (Luke xii.)-" Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his Lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season?" To administer the affairs of his church. with that anxious solicitude for the advantage of his spiritual family, which constitutes the character of a good steward; and that wise economy in dispensing faithfully to all, what the Master has provided for them, without

respect of

persons.

"Blessed is that servant

whom his Lord, when he cometh, shall find

so doing.".

Here is the picture of a pious and holy christian bishop, indeed!-and such were some of the early bishops of Rome, of whom many suffered martyrdom under the pagan emperors. But when the pressure of affliction was removed, and affluence poured in upon the church with too sudden and copious a stream,-sævior armis, luxuria incubuit." Luxury, more fatal than arms, effected what persecution could not." Insolence of arbitrary authority, thirst of supremacy, and imposture to support unfounded pretensions, soon followed, and Antichrist grew up to his full stature and maturity in wickedness.

my

"But and if that servant say in his heart

Lord delayeth his coming, and shall begin to beat the men servants and maidens, and

Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur cum illis,-"Times are too,"-sogn became the ruling idea of the LORDLY PONTIFFS, a great many

changed; a change will be very requisite in us too,'

to eat and drink and be drunken." Here is as plain an intimation as the time and the hearers of our Lord could well bear, of the nature. of the change that would be introduced by state and grandeur, and of the infidelity and arrogance first, and next of the turbulent spirit and actual persecution, which succeeded more christianlike manners in "in the scornful men of Sion," the rulers of the catholic church. Last of all, the blood of christian martyrs began again to flow, in more copious streams, by the cruelties of a christian persecutor, than ever it had done before by the utmost fury of the PAGAN DRAGON. The wretch is drunken-(as our Saviour says in the parable, in allusion to the prophets which have described the same events)-but it is WITH BLOOD!— Stay yourselves and wonder,-cry ye out, (with horror!) and cry, they are drunken,but not with wine; they stagger,-but not with strong drink."* “And I saw the wo

of them construed their Lord's delay of his coming in deserved chastisement, into actual incapacity to punish, and adopted atheistical opinions, as most congenial to their execrable practices. * Isaiah xxix. 9.