_Answ._ There is not the same reason for excluding wicked men from hearing the word, or joining in prayer with the church, as there is for refusing to admit them to partake of the Lord’s supper. For prayer, and preaching the word, are God’s appointed means for the working the grace of faith, instructing the ignorant, awakening the stupid and secure sinner, and putting him on complying with that method of salvation which God has prescribed in the gospel, and embracing Christ as offered therein: Whereas, on the other hand, the Lord’s supper is an ordinance which supposes the soul to have, before this, received Christ by faith; and therefore he is therein to feed upon him, and to take comfort from what he has done and suffered for him, as conducive to the farther mortification of indwelling sin; which supposes that he has had, before this, some experience of the grace of God in truth. Thus concerning the exclusion of ignorant or immoral persons, as being not qualified for the Lord’s supper. And here we may farther observe, that they who bring these and such-like objections, with a design to open the door of the church so wide, that all may be received into it, and partake of those ordinances by which it is more particularly distinguished from the world, are very ready, in defence of their own cause, to charge others with being too severe in their censures, and refusing to admit any into church-communion, unless they can tell the very time in which they were converted, and the means by which this work was begun, and carried on; and this they are obliged to do in so public a manner, as that many are denied the privilege of partaking of this ordinance, for a mere circumstance; which is an extreme as much to be avoided as the receiving unqualified persons to the Lord’s supper.