THE FREE COMMUNIONIST: OR UNRESTRICTED COMMUNION OF THE LORD'S SUPPER AND OBJECTIONS OF RESTRICTED COMMUNIONISTS, IN FOUR ESSAYS. DOVER, N. H. PUBLISHED BY THE TRUSTEES OF THE FREEWILL BAPTIST CONNECTION. William Burr, Printer. 1841. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1840, by WM. BURR, Agent of "The Trustees of the F. W. B. Connection," in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of New Hampshire. S.C.R. BX 6577 F73 1841 PREFACE. supper as a sacrament he shall come to be To those who regard the Lord's to be observed in his Church until glorified in his saints and admired in all them that believe,'-it must appear a matter of much importance, that the conditions prescribed by the Master himself for admission to his Table, should be well understood. Such as are authorized and called by our Lord to participate the sacramental feast, and thus to show forth his death until he come,' should know their high privilege and fulfill their duty as their Lord enjoins-while those who have justly no lot nor part' in the holy ordinance, should be faithfully warned, that they profane not the sacred institution and incur destruction to themselves, by eating and drinking unworthily.' The Freewill Baptist connection generally, have conceived it to be our Lord's good pleasure, that all who truly discern his body' in the symbolical elements of the supper, and whose lives correspond with their Christian profession, should remember him' by partaking of that bread and that cup.' But in the exercise of this faith, they have been met with objections against their practice; and, in some instances, perhaps not a few, they have been urgently beset and pressed by those objections. The subject of a publication in defence of our usage in free communion, had come repeatedly before General Conference, and the call for a publication on the terms of communion, had become extensive, when the Conference, at its late session, voted the offer of a premium on such a Treatise upon this subject, as should be deemed, among the manuscripts that might be submitted, most worthy-the manuscripts to be examined and adjudicated by the Board of Trustees of the Printing and Book Establishment. |