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MANUAL

FOR

YOUNG CHURCH-MEMBERS.

BY LEONARD BACON,

PASTOR OF THE FIRST CHURCH IN NEW-HAVEN.

Second Edition.

NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY JOHN S. TAYLOR & CO.
145 Nassau Street.

1841.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1833,

by STEPHEN COOKE, in the Clerk's Office, for the District of Connecticut.

B12

1841

PREFACE.

THE substance of the following chapters, was addressed to my own people, a few months since, in a course of Sunday evening lectures. The reason which induced me to attempt, in those discourses, a plain exhibition of the nature, design, and rights of christian churches, and of the duties and relations of church-members, was not any desire to waken the spirit of sectarian. controversy, but a conviction that church-members generally, need plain and practical instruction on these subjects; and that in my own church, to which about one hundred and fifty had then recently been added, such instruction was at that time especially appropriate. Every pastor has occasion to see how liable the members of the churches are to fall into serious errors of practice, through the want of distinct information. Every pastor knows that when new members are received into the church, and are

called to bear their part in its duties, there is peculiar need of instruction on these subjects. And there are few pastors, I believe, in New England, who have not at some time looked round for some popular exhibition of the principles of our church order, and of the corresponding duties of church-members, which they might recommend to their people.

There are several books in circulation which touch upon these subjects; but not one I think which occupies precisely the same ground with the little treatise now submitted to the public. Dr. Hawes" Tribute to the memory of the Pilgrims," is an eloquent vindication of the Congregational churches; but it goes into no details respecting the duties of church-members. Professor Upham's "Ratio Disciplinæ," is a guide for students, and ministers, and ecclesiastical councils, but probably was not designed for popular use. Mr. Harvey's "Obligations of Believers, to the visible Church," studiously avoids all questions about ecclesiastical order, and touches on none of the topics which I have attempted to exhibit, except in the able chapter

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