By Lewis Bayly
7. To bind all Christians, as it were, by an oath of fidelity, to serve the one only true God; and to admit no other propitiatory sacrifice for sins, but that one real sacrifice which, by his death, Christ once offered, and by which he finished the sacrifices of the law, and effected eternal redemption and righteousness for all believers; and so to remain for ever a public mark of profession, to distinguish Christians from all sects and false religions. And seeing that in the mass there is a strange Christ adored, not he that was born of the Virgin Mary, but one that is made of a wafer-cake; and that the offering up of this breaden god is thrust upon the church as "a propitiatory sacrifice for the quick and the dead;" all true Christians, upon the danger of wilful perjury before the Lord Chief-Justice of heaven and earth, are to detest the mass as the idol of indignation, which is most derogatory to the all-sufficient, world-saving merits of Christ's death and passion. For by receiving the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, we all swear that all real sacrifices are ended by our Lord's death; and that his body and blood, once crucified and shed, is the perpetual food and nourishment of our souls.
How to consider thy own Unworthiness.
A man shall best perceive his own unworthiness, by examining his life according to the ten commandments of almighty God. Search, therefore, what duties thou hast omitted, and what vices thou hast committed, contrary to every one of the commandments: remembering, that without repentance and God's mercy in Christ, the curse of God (containing all the miseries of this life, and everlasting torments in hell-fire, when this is ended) -is due to the breach of the least of God's commandments (Deut. xxvii. 26; Gal. iii. 10.) And having taken a due survey both of thy sins and miseries, retire to some secret place, and there, putting thyself in the sight of the Judge, as a guilty malefactor standing at the bar to receive his sentence, bowing thy knees to the earth, smiting thy breast with thy fists, and bedewing thy cheeks with thy tears, confess thy sins, and humbly ask him mercy and forgiveness, in these or the like words:-
