THE

PRIMITIVE CHURCH MAGAZINE

FOR

1841,

ADVOCATING THE PRACTICE OF STRICT COMMUNION,

AND BEING. THE CONTINUATION OF THE PRIMITIVE COMMUNIONIST.

PREFACE.

Ir is with devout gratitude to God that the Editors of the PRIMITIVE CHURCH MAGAZINE review the first year of its monthly publication. They rejoice to believe that the increased labour and expense which it has involved have been abundantly recompensed. During the past year they have been gratified to learn that several of their brethren-some of them ministers-have attributed to this work and the Primitive Communionist a considerable share in the assimilation of their views to our own. The meetings of the 27th and 28th of April may be referred to as one of the results to which, both directly and indirectly, it has contributed; the information which has since been received proves that a deep sympathy in its object exists in a great number of the churches and ministers of our denomination, and that it is only requisite that their zeal and energy should be combined, to maintain, to a considerable extent, the integrity of the body. The increased number of communications, and the many expressions of warm encouragement, with which the Editors have been favoured, animate them with the best hope as to the future. The sale also is advancing; it still, indeed, needs very considerable extension; and both the Editors and Proprietors entreat their friends to neglect no means of promoting it. In proportion as the field in which a periodical can be expected to circulate is small, and the sentiments it advocates unpopular, it has the stronger claim to the support of those who hold them. We have taken our stand on the sentiments of Strict and Calvinistic Baptists, the sentiments of OUR OWN BODY. We commend to the kind consideration of our brethren in the ministry the suggestions of our correspondent on the means of securing for this work an adequate circulation. We submit that the object has claims of the highest kind. The subject of Communion affects the very existence of our body-the existence of that constitution which Christ has