above all, how dangerous, sottish, and irrational is it, to engage in any thing or action extempore, where the concern is eternity!

None but the careless and the confident (and few are confident, but what are first careless) would rush rudely into the presence of a great man and shall we, in our applications to the great God, take that to be religion, which the common reason of mankind will not allow to be manners? The very rules of worldly civility might instruct men how to order their addresses to God. For who, that is to appear before his prince or patron, would not view and review himself over and over, with all imaginable care and solicitude, that there be nothing justly offensive in his habit, language, or behaviour? But especially, if he be vouchsafed the honour of his table, it would be infinitely more absurd and shameful to appear foul and sordid there; and in the dress of the kitchen, receive the entertainments of the parlour.

What previous cleansings and consecrations, and what peculiar vestments were the priests, under the law, enjoined to use, when they were to appear before God in the sanctuary! And all this upon no less a penalty than death. This and this they were to do, lest they died, lest God should strike them dead upon the spot; as we read in Levit. viii. 35. and in many other places in the books of Moses. And so exact were the Jews in their preparations for the solemn times of God's worship, that every σάββατον had its προσάββατον οι παρασκευή, that is, a part of the sixth day, from the hour of six in the evening, to fit them for the duties of the seventh day: nor was this all;- but they had also Η προπαρασκευή, beginning about three in the after

noon, to prepare them for that: and indeed, the whole day was, in a manner, but preparative to the next; several works being disallowed and forborne amongst them on that day, which were not so upon any of the foregoing five: so careful, even to scrupulosity, were they to keep their sabbath with due reverence and devotion, that they must not only have a time to prepare them for that, but a further time also to prepare them for their very prepa

rations.

Nay, and the heathens, (many of them at least,) when they were to sacrifice to their greatest and most revered deities, used, on the evening before, to have a certain preparative rite or ceremony, called by them cœna pura; that is, a supper, consisting of some peculiar meats, in which they imagined a kind of holiness: and, by eating of which, they thought themselves sanctified, and fitted to officiate about the mysteries of the ensuing festival. And what were all their lustrations, but so many solemn purifyings, to render both themselves and their sacrifices acceptable to their gods?

So that we see here a concurrence both of the Jews and heathens in this practice, before Christianity ever appeared: which to me is a kind of demonstration, that the necessity of men's preparing themselves for the sacred offices of religion was a lesson which the mere light and dictates of common reason, without the help of revelation, taught all the knowing and intelligent part of the world.

I will wash my hands in innocency, says David, and so will I compass thine altar, Psalm xxvi. 6. And as the apostle told the Hebrews, Heb. xiii. 10. We also, we Christians, have an altar as well as

they; an altar as sacred, an altar to be approached with as much awe and reverence; and though there be no fire upon it, yet there is a dreadful one that follows it. A fire, that does not indeed consume the offering, but such an one as will be sure to seize and prey upon the unworthy offerer. I will be sanctified, says God, in them that come nigh me, Levit. x. 3. And God then accounts himself sanctified in such persons, when they sanctify themselves. Nadab and Abihu were a dreadful exposition of this text.

And for what concerns ourselves; he that shall throughly consider what the heart of man is, what sin and the world is, and what it is to approve one's self to an all-searching eye, in so sublime a duty as the sacrament, must acknowledge that a man may as well go about it without a soul, as without preparation.

For the holiest man living, by conversing with the world, insensibly draws something of soil and taint from it: the very air and mien, the way and business of the world, still, as it were, (rubbing something upon the soul, which must be fetched off again, before it can be able heartily to converse with God. Many secret indispositions, coldnesses, and aversions to duty, will undiscernibly steal upon it; and it will require both time and close application of mind, to recover it to such a frame as shall dispose and fit it for the spiritualities of religion.

And such as have made trial, find it neither so easy nor so ready a passage from the noise, the din, and hurry of business, to the retirements of devotion, from the exchange to the closet, and from the freedoms of conversation, to the recollections and disciplines of the spirit.

The Jews, as soon as they came from markets, or any other such promiscuous resorts, would be sure to use accurate, and more than ordinary washings. And had their washings soaked through the body into the soul, and had not their inside reproached their outside, I see nothing in this custom, but what was allowable enough, and (in a people which needed washing so much) very commendable. Nevertheless, whatsoever it might have in it peculiar to the genius of that nation, the spiritual use and improvement of it, I am sure, may very well reach the best of us. So that if the Jews thought this practice requisite before they sat down to their own tables, let us Christians think it absolutely necessary, when we come to God's table, not to eat till we have washed. And when I have said so, I suppose I need not add, that our washing is to be like our eating, both of them spiritual; that we are to carry it from the hand to the heart, to improve a ceremonial nicety into a substantial duty, and the modes of civility into the realities of religion.

And thus much for the first thing, that a preparation in general is necessary. But then, 2dly, the other thing imported in the proposition is, That every preparation is not sufficient. It must be a suitable preparation; none but a wedding garment will serve the turn; a garment, as much fitted to the solemnity, as to the body itself that wears it.

Now all fitness lies in a particular commensuration, or proportion of one thing to another; and that such an one as is founded in the very nature of things themselves, and not in the opinions of men concerning them. And for this cause it is, that the soul, no less than the body, must have its several

distinct postures and dispositions, fitting it for several distinct offices and performances. And as no man comes with folded arms to fight or wrestle, nor prepares himself for the battle as he would compose himself to sleep; so, upon a true estimate of things, it will be found every whit as absurd and irrational, for a man to discharge the most extraordinary duty of his religion, at the rate of an ordinary devotion. For this is really a paradox in practice, and men may sometimes do, as well as speak, contradictions.

There is a great festival now drawing on; a festival, designed chiefly for the acts of a joyful piety, but generally made only an occasion of bravery. I shall say no more of it at present, but this; that God expects from men something more than ordinary at such times, and that it were much to be wished, for the credit of their religion, as well as the satisfaction of their consciences, that their Easter devotions would, in some measure, come up to their Easter dress.

Now that our preparation may answer the important work and duty which we are to engage in, these two conditions, or qualifications, are required in it.

1. That it be habitual.

2. That it be also actual.

For it is certain, that there may both be acts which proceed not from any preexisting habits; and, on the other side, habits which lie for a time dormant, and do not at all exert themselves in action. But in the case now before us, there must be a conjunction of both; and one without the other can never be effectual for that purpose, for which both together are but sufficient. And,