communion with Christ alone. I
mean, that it is quite conceivable that we should have had Christianity,
and a great number of Christians spread all over the world, but yet no
Christian Church. But, although this is conceivable, and, in fact, is
practically the case in some particular instances where individual
Christians happen to be quite cut off from all other Christians,--as has
been known sometimes in foreign and remote countries; and although,
through various evil causes, it has become, in many respects, too much
the case with us all; for our religion is with all of us, I am inclined
to think, too much a matter between God and ourselves alone; yet still
it is not the design of Christ that it should be so: his people were not
only to be good men, redeemed from sin and death and brought to know and
love the truth, in which relation Christianity would appear like a
divine philosophy only, working not only upon individuals, but through
their individual minds, and as individuals; but they were to be the
Christian Church, helping one another in things pertaining to God, and
making their mutual brotherhood to one another an essential part of what
are called peculiarly their acts of religion. So that the Church of
England seems to have well borne in mind this character of Christianity,
namely, that it presents us not each, but all together, before God; and
therefore it is ordered that even in very small parishes, where "there
are not more than twenty persons in the parish of discretion to receive
the communion, yet there shall be no communion, except four, or three at
the least, out of these twenty communicate together with the priest."
Nay, even in the Communion of the Sick, under circumstances which seem
to make religion particularly an individual matter between Christ and
our own single selves; when the expected approach of death seems to
separate, in the most marked manner, according to human judgment, him
who is going hence from his brethren still in the world; even then it is
ordered that two other persons, at the least, shall communicate along
with the sick man and the minister. Nor is this ever relaxed except in
times of pestilence; when it is provided, that if no other person can be
persuaded to join from their fear of infection, then, and then only upon
special request of the diseased, the minister may alone communicate with
them. So faithfully does our Church adhere to this true Christian
notion, that at the Lord