Reverence by bowing their Knees to the Holy Table and turning their Backs upon the Holier Sacrament their Aw putteth them to as great distance as Neglect can and this occasions others to cloak their real neglect under pretence of aw so the slothful joyn with the fearful to plead There is a Lyon in the way Many come only Once in a year as if our Lord intended to consecrate none but the Passover Others not until they are dying as if they were not to shew forth the Lords death but their own Others not at all as if it were the duty of the Priest only because Instituted in the presence of the Apostles only and upon one pretence or other the much greater part of the People never think of it at all no not to their very death In the mean time the most zealous Servants of our Lord lament that his last and therefore not least Command hath lost the Obedience due to it The greatest lovers of Piety that it hath lost one of its greatest supports in the time of greatest need The most affectionate Sons of the Church that she hath in a manner lost a Sacrament an indispensible mark of a true Church The tenderest Friends of Peace that she hath worse than lost her best Cement which is abused to an Instrument of Division And the most Prudent and Pious cry aloud that it is a shame to our Government and a wound to our Religion that our practice should give such a publickly to the Apostle when we read That we are therefor one Bread and one Body bieause we eat of that one Bread Since therefore the Work is equally necessary and Neglected he that shall labor in it will be secure from being blamed as troubling the World with repetitions of trite Discourses BUT then he shall be no less sure of the contrary censure as doing it with New ones and which is worse as vilifying the adorable Sacrament For the Temple of the Sepulchre however venerable for the Antiquity of its Buildings is much more so for the Place they stand on which though they do not so much Honor as Oppress yet whoever should endeavor to rescue it from them should be doubly censured as Sacrilegious both against the Holy Temple and Holier Ground Whoever will measure the Ground whereon the mistaking zeal of former Ages hath built so many and great Mysteries cannot avoid shewing it uncapable to bear them and consequently must run a severe gandelope lashed on one side in behalf of Antiquity and on the other in behalf of the Sacrament II. BUT once throughly convinced of the Fitness yea Necessity of the undertaking these Fears move me no otherwise than to set me forward From the Dignity of the Sacrament I conclude it worthy my service and from the Duration of the Error I conclude it to need it Did not Both these concur I should not have raised Work for the Learned or Game for the Censorious by opposing a popular error in so Sacred a subject Yet lest that which sets me forward to the Work should set me backward in the Success I think it requisite to take such notice of the double Objection as to justifie my self against both its parts 1. ONE part of the Objection concernerh the Dignity of the Sacrament who 's greatness I most heartily acknowledge I confess we may be guilty of the Body and Blood of our Lord in either sense That of the Institution or that of his preceding Doctrine Jo. 6. wherein he interpreteth eating and drinking by believing And therefor we ought to examine our selves before we Receive much mote before we Publish any Opinion concerning it as carefully as before we receive the Sacrament it self But this is so far from a reason against Examination that it pleads for it For as Both ways we may be guilty of Rashness if we Receive unworthily either the Sacrament or the Opinion so may we be of Neglect if we consider not what we are obliged both to Do and to Teach I know a Gentlewoman that hardly escaped falling into water because a poor neighbor that stood neer her and might easily have helpt her forbore that good office upon this reason as she afterward excused her self because she durst not be so bold Whoever accuseth me of boldness toward the Holy Sacrament let him consider whether he would be pleased with such reverence in a time of such need Whatever others do certainly none of those good men who so sadly complain of the neglect will blame him who labors the remedy No though he should abate somewhat both of Fear toward the Sacrament and of Reverence toward those former Ages which teaching men to Dread have by consequence taught them to Shun it Yet is there no such danger For neither will the Institution be a loser if in stead of the Superstitious Dread which contradicts it's Nature we pay it the Obedience which it requires and the Love which it deserves nor true Antiquity if instead of the Middle ages we venerate the First III. 2. TO that OTHER part therefor of the Objection I answer that we ought to take none but the first and best Ages of the Church for our guides in all such Controversies as are capable so to be determined That those which concern Matter of Fact are Such since the Practices of those Ages are visible but not alway their Opinions especially in such Modern Questions as never troubled them to declare their judgments That the publick Offices of Christian Worship are visible and therefor it must needs be a great crime for Later ages therein to depart from their Fathers All this I not only acknowledge but urge and I hope no man will deny that it was as true a thousand years since If therefor it appear that the Middle ages have departed from the First we must nor follow but reform the Error and whoever shall retrive the long lost truth ought not to be look'd upon as a Contemner but faithful Servant of Antiquity and so much the more deserving by how much longer the Error hath continued That this is the present case needeth no other proof than the Records of Matter of Fact never in any case more legible whereby we may easily discover by what steps we are go'n so far from the authentick examples of the Apostles and several immediatly succeeding Ages This though we shall meet another occasion to examine yet for preventing prejudices which perhaps might hinder some from reading so far I conceive fit here to offer in a more contracted Landschape THAT the Apostles and Primitive Christians for some hundreds of years were as constant at the Lords Table as at his House is so manifest that those who wanted not the Tentation ever wanted the Face to deny it And the Evasions whereby some have endeavored to shun the unavoidable Evidence are as plainly false as the denyal it self can be True it is saith the most excellent of them the Apostles did indefinitely admit the
cup you drink That whereof he said This is my blood And taking this for the sens of the 26th vers the necessity of the 27th and all that follow immediatly appears For if they be so Much and so Unavoidably concerned then whoever eateth This bread and drinketh This cup unworthily must needs be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord who hath so made Those the representatives of These that whether we receve them or no will make no difference in his imputation because the Relation dependeth not upon Our admittance of them for such but upon His own Commission constituting them for such So that in the recess by intending to Omit the Lords Supper you make your selves guilty of breaking his Command which obligeth you to Do it without escaping the other guilt of Unworthiness since his Institution hath made his body and blood concerned in all the abuses you put upon This bread and This cup. SINCE therefor this 26th vers cannot be Imperative because Grammar requireth the Indicative mode always to follow the causal FOR And since it cannot be Indicative if This bread and This cup in the whole comprehension signifie nether more nor less than the Lords Supper because then in their formal concept they will necessarily import setting forth his death and Logik requireth that the Praedicate in every Proposition should bring somthing of news concerning the Subject But if we fit the Demonstrative This with its necessary Object and the Relative 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with its necessary Mesure then will the Proposition carry Weight enough to lay it as a foundation for all the Deductions which the Apostl bildeth upon it and Light enough to shew the use of every syllabl in his Argument and Force enogh to convict the Corinthians beyond all possibility of reply To doubt now whether we will accept so Serviceable yea so necessary an Hypothesis is no other than to put our selvs into a very hard streight For we shall be obliged either to accuse the Apostl of transgressing the plain rules of Grammar and Logik yea and of Justice too in charging the Corinthians with the greatest Crime without sufficient evidence or else to produce som Other Hypothesis of our own which shall be at least equally serviceabl towards clearing his discours from such great defects And while the adversary deliberates upon so hard a choice I proceed to examin that Other Sens shall I call it which alloweth our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 No ground to Build or so much as to Stand upon CHAP. III. Concerning the Vulgar interpretation of As often as I. The Distinction between Suppositive and Absolute stated because made the mesure of obligation II. The words of the Author set forth and III. Examined IV. The merely suppositive sens enervates our Lords Command And V. The Apostl's own Argument VI. The two senses ballanced in order to Conscience THAT in so doing I may escape both the Task of setting a tolerable countenance upon an opinion so generally receved and the Suspicion of representing it disadvantageosly I conceve it most Convenient if not absolutely Necessary to exhibit it in the words of its Patrons Patron I should say For among the Many that entertein it I know but One that hath put himself to the charge of affording it any means of Subsistence by cloathing it with any proper Rules or nourishing it with any Proofs But it is Such an One as may pass for a Multitude One that may not be named without Reverence One of the greatest Ornaments and Pillars of our Church One who professeth to fit every subject with its proper Rules and Mesures and therefor One whom we may believe to have said the utmost in behalf of his Opinion This singular Person puts it to the question Whether our Lords words in This Institution amount to a Command And thogh his interest persuaded him to have Affirmed it yet the sound of These words and inadvertency to the Custom we suppose them to relate to engaging him for the Negative embarrased him in difficulties inextricable from which because he struggles to free himself by help of the distinction between Suppositive and Absolute I shall first state That distinction and Then try what service it can do in the present question A Suppositive Command Obligeth just so as a Suppositive Proposition Declareth viz. nothing else but a Connexion or Disjunction between the Parts An Absolute Proposition may be true though its Subject have no Being and so may an Hypothetical one though its Antecedent have no Truth And as a Hypothetical Syllogism Absolutely concludes Nothing without help of an Absolute Assumtion so doth not a Hypothetical Command oblige to any thing without the help of som Positive addition Hypothetical necessity is therefor consistent with Absolute liberty because the Obligation must derive half its power from the yet undetermined Position E. G. If my Father should have laid upon me this Suppositive Command As often as you go to London go by land This would not oblige me either to the Journy or the Manner By staying at home I should have be'n as obedient as by a hundred tedios Journies But if my Inclinations or Bisiness should call me to the Journy then by vertu of the Command joined with the Urgency of my Business wer I obliged to go not by Water but by Land Such a Command would by no means have amounted to Get you a hors and away Nor can a Suppositive Command amount to such an Absolute Precept as Let a man examin himself and so let him eat But the utmost that so civil a word could amount to is this If you are pleased to eat then is it necessary you examin your self This is the true state of a Suppositive Obligation It leaveth us at full liberty thogh it expose us to be rob'd of it by som Absolute Proposition following And how impossibl it is to reconcile the Wisdom of our Lords Institution with the Weakness of such an Obligation cannot better be discovered than by the succesless attemts of so habile an Undertaker whose words I com now to examin wherein I beg the Readers just charity to believ what I most seriosly protest that it is not without great reluctancy I engage in so unwelcom an office toward a person to whom I am so much obliged and nothing but faithfulness to so great a Subject should compel me to expose the words of him whom all good men are obliged to honor His Rule is The Institution of a Rite or Sacrament by our Blessed Savior is a direct Law and passes a proper obligation in its whole integrity This one would think is as plain as heart can wish but the Gloss quite mars the Text for thus doth he endeavor to bend his Rule to his Conceptions and Other Writings concerning This Holy Sacrament THIS Rule can relate but to one instance that of the Holy Sacrament of Christs body and blood for although Christ did institute two Sacraments yet that
to speak like one as not declaring rhe Doctrine of the Church but his own Private Thoghts and that how modestly how diffidently how contrary to his stile in other cases This is not the Only Doctrine wherein he took the boldness to depart from the Opinions of his predecessors and in those cases he expressed himself with confidence sufficiently why so timoros now The Reason is as plain as the change In the Other Questions they had not declared their minds plainly in this they had do'n it not only Plainly but Zelously St. Cyprian had said This bread we crave to have EVERY DAY given us lest we who are in Christ and daily receve the Sacrament for the food of Salvation by interposing of any grievos crime while restrained and not communicating we ar forbidden the Heavenly bread we should be separated from the body of Christ St. Basil had said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. To communicate the body and blood of Christ EVERY DAY is good and most profitable seeing himself plainly saith He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath everlasting life now then who can doubt but that often to partake of the life is nothing else but often to live St. Ambrose had said If the Eucharistical bread be daily offered why do'st thou receve it after a Year as the Greekt do in the East Receve That EVERY DAY which may profit thee every day So live that thou mayest deserv to receve every day He that deserveth not to receve every day deserveth not to receve after a year c. Saint Chrysostom complained 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in vain is the DAILY sacrifice c. So express and so earnest we see were the Exhortations of other Fathers both Before and In St. Augustin's time that as they gave him sufficient reason to be diffident in declaring his own contrary opinion so do they Us to except against it as singular and out-voted by his equals if it prejudice the Truth we have engaged to assert which whether it do or not we are to judge by his Determination wherein we ar to observ 1. His Design 2. His way of ferving it 1. His Design in determining this Question is the same with that of the whole Epistl which is to perswade compliance in matter of worship The Peace of Christ is dearer to him than his Supper it self which is to serv it and therefor oght principally to be regarded thogh with it's diminution Rectius inter eos fortasse quisquam dirimit litem qui monet ut praecipue in Christi pace permaneant And to This only purpose doth he bring his instance of Zacheus and the Centurion Neque enim litigaverunt inter se aut quisquam eorum se alteri praeposuit He doth not pretend by their Exampls to determin the Question but the Quarrel 2. His Way to serv this good end is by a toleration that every one should do what he thinketh best which he encorageth with This reason that nether of them dishonoreth the body of Christ if saluberrimum Sacramentum certatim honorare contendunt In which last words the good Father may seem to unty the obligation I have so much contended for For if every one may do what he thinketh best if He do not dishonor the body and blood of Christ who striveth to honor the Sacrament by forbearance in sens of his unworthiness then cannot our obligation to constancy be indispensibl but our selvs ar judges of what is best Upon This Authority of so great a Father so confirmed with pios reason have following ages proceeded to the modern way of honoring the Lords Supper Having learned to ballance Reverence against Performance to make the former the more weighty they have loaded it with so many doubts and difficulties that he must be both very good and very confident who will not prefer the Centurions safe and easie complement before Zacheus's costly and troublesom entertainment Thus while every one chuseth to excuse himself as unworthy that Christ should come under his roof He may complain that he hath not where to lay his head And All or at least much of this proceeding from the too much valuing and too little considering the good Fathers words I thoght to rescue both the Truth and Him from so great and unhappy a mistake For as These words will not Require so will not his other writing Permit that we should list Him among our Adversaries He that caled as loud as any other Father He that so earnestly expostulated with the desertors of the Holy Sacrament saying What is the reason O hearers that ye see the Table and come not to the banquet He certainly did not intend to furnish his hearers with an excuse that they did what they thoght best upon the same reason as did the Centurion Nor can we easily so mistake if we regard either the case or his very words Inter Eos and Neuter Eorum restrain his determination to Those two parties between whom he professeth to arbitrate who both of them might plead such good precedents as might entitle them to toleration at least One thinketh it best to communicate Every day Another thinketh it better to do it only upon som certain days The Former voucheth the Apostls and the Hierusalem Church who continued Daily in breaking of Bread as well as in Prayer The Later the Provincial Churches who met the First day of the week to break Bread But how wide is this from our Question wherein One thinketh himself obliged to receive the Holy Sacrament as often as it is offered and another thinketh himself free to take or refuse it as often as he thinketh fit Whether the good Father would have determined This Question Inter Nos in the same manner as he did That Inter Eos is not so apparent as it is that his Instance can here have no place Zacheus had a Command from our Lord to come down and entertene him at his house he did so and honored him by the forwardness of his Obedience The Centurion had no such command and he honored Him by the humility of his excuse Had Zacheus receved no such command who knows but he might have excused himself as did the Centurion Had the Centurion receved such a command who knoweth but he would have receved our Lord with the same alacrity as did Zacheus Had he not his own instance of his servants obedience must have condemned him Both of them honored our Lord but Both cannot be imitated by Us. For either with Zacheus we have a Command or with the Centurion we have None That we have none to receve the Lords Supper EVERY DAY we willingly acknowledge and thereby submit to St. Augustin's determination But whether we have one to receve it as often as it is celebrated that we may understand we must proceed to examin The word of Command DO PART III. Concerning the word DO CHAP. I. We must answer such a Command no otherwise but by Performance I.
his Design would have Required him to have raised his voice Higher He must have said he that Eateth this Bread and Drinketh this Cup eateth the body and drinketh the bloud of the Lord and not have com'n off with a Cold Indefinite Ellipsis which not expressing in What Measure maketh nothing plain but this that it is in a measure much Inferior and consequently his own argument much Weaker than if he had declared them guilty of contemt to the body and bloud of Christ immediatly by Using Them in such manner as they did This Bread and This Cup. Those indeed who still believ This Bread and This Cup not to be our Lord's Representatives but Himself may justly fear the Unworthiness not only of their Persons however carefully Prepared but of their Worship too however carefully Performed But we who believ them no other than what the Apostl stileth them even Then when he most Studiosly Recommendeth them to our Reverence when upon due Self-examination we find how unworthy We ar to Receve our Lords body and bloud may check our fears by considering how Vnworthy This Bread and This Cup ar to Represent them not doubting but the same goodness which bestowed such honor upon the unworthy elements will pardon and accept of Us if we receve them in a Manner suitable to their Office tho not in a Degree worthy of his own Person Let me not be mistaken I deny not the Reality of Christs presence in the Sacrament When I call This Bread and Cup Representatives I mean not that our Lords body and bloud ar thereby no otherwise Represented than the Kings Person is by his Picture which ar the proper goods of the Possessor and may be treated according to his pleasure or than a King is by a Stage-player which only Imitateth but Shareth not his power But as the King is by his Officer who so Representeth his Person as to Execute his Authority with whom he is tho not Personally yet Politikly present Ratifying whatever he doth in his Name and stead This kind of Real presence our Lord himself promised not to Affright but Incorage us When two or three said he ar gathered together in my name there am I in the mids of them He meant doubtless no less than a Real presence which must needs be most Eminent in Such assemblies as ar gathered together not only in his Name but upon his Invitation And to make such a Promis an argument to fright men away is a strange way of honoring the Author From this dissection of the very words we find them fall very short of the force ascribed to them They no way barr any man from Obedience for want of Worthiness Require not a Legal Worthiness in the Person coming Make not the Person of Christ the Object of the Worthiness required in the Performance And upon the whole make not the guilt of the Unworthy Performance equal to that of Disobedience since This Directly affronteth our Lords Person in his Command That only Indirectly in his Representative III. VVE have said that the Anatomist is not only to vieu the Intrinsic Texture of the part dissected but it 's Serviceablness to the Life to what therefor we have seen of the proper sens of the word we shall add it's aspect upon the Apostls design which will be a Further Evidence that he meant not so much as is generally believed bicause such supposal of Personal worthiness would have be'n 1. very dishonorabl to our Lord 2. very Deferent from that Mesure himself stateth it by and 3. very Unfaithful to the Corinthians he requireth it of 1. It wer a great DISHONOR to our Lord to suppose it possibl that any one can be Worthy yea or com within any Neerer distance than Infinite Unworthiness For Worthiness is Relative signifieth if not Full Equality yet som Proportion between the Merit and the Reward the Fest and the Guest And take which of the Correlates you please you find a Saint reproving the concept To those that fear their Own Unworthiness thus speaketh St. Chrisostom Thou sayest thou art not worthy to Do this neither art thou worthy to Pray c. We may go on neither art thou worthy to Hear So far art thou from being Worthy to take our Lords Body that thou art not Worthy to take His Name into thy mouth so far from Worthy to injoy his Bloud that thou art not so to injoy the light of the Sun the fruits of the Earth or any of those sensual delights which Beasts may Injoy but not Abuse as much as Thou On the other side to those who fear the Greatness of the Sacrament thus speaketh another Saint Thou abstainest from the Blessed Sacrament bicause it is a thing so sacred and formidabl that thou not thinkest thy self worthy of it well suppose That But I pray' who is worthy Is an angel worthy enogh No certainly if we consider the greatness of the Mystery Let us well consider these two Sayings and their Reasonablness and then judge of those so frequent phrases A Worthy Communicant A Worthy Guest c. whereby many unwary persons ar more Scared than with any thing derived from the word of God which never taught us either to think so Slightly of our Lords Bloud or so Highly of our Selvs as to believ it possibl by any endeavors to becom Worthy of it 2. The vulgar sens is very different from that Mesure the Apostl stateth the reproved Unworthiness by He expresly caleth it a not discerning the Lords body 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 putting no difference between This which our Lord declared his Own Body and Common bread Our Learned Mede very well confirmeth the Jewish definition of Holiness that it signifieth Separation We Sanctify what we honor with Discrimination and on the contrary we Profane what we use as Common The heavenly vision confirmeth this warning St. Peter from an Error in opinion analogos to this Crime What God hath sanctified that call not thou Common To call Common and Unclean was all one in St. Peters sens and not to discern the Lords body from Common bread is all one as to Desecrate it in St. Pauls And this he so presseth upon the Corinthians as dubly to convince them What saith he Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in or despise ye the Church of God and shame them that have not Possibly he might urge this not as Another Crime but as an Evidence of their unexcusablness in the Former They might perhaps plead Ignorance in That but in This they could not For thogh possibly they might not understand that they were obliged to Discern This Bread as the Lords body yet must they needs know they oght to Discern the Church as his Hous If they knew it not to be Sacrilege to make the Lords Cup an instrument of drunkenness they could not but know it so to make his Hous a Tavern With what partiality do som for som others do not treat these two parts
half proved by the very first glance upon the Text. 2. That in All their Church Fests they honored some Special Bread and Cup with Special ceremonies the Cup ever closing the Fest This will require a fuller Examination Upon these two Suppositions the Apostles Argument otherwise unintelligible and All his Expressions whereof some must be otherwise impertinent will appear most Clear Rational and Unanswerable By their help therefore I shall make a duble dissection of the Words by a Paraphrase and of the Argument by an Analysis VI. THE Paraphrase must take in the 20th Verse bicause all the rest hang to it 20. When you come together therefore into one place this is not to eat the Lords Supper 21. For in eating every one taketh before other his own Supper and one is hungry and anothor is drunken 22. What Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in or despise ye the Church of God and shame them that have not Shall I praise you in this I praise you not 23. For I received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you that the Lord Jesus in the same night in which he was betrayed took bread c. 25. After the same manner also he took the Cup when he had supped saying This Cup is the New Testament in my Blood this do ye as often as ye drink it in remembrance of me 26. For as often as ye eat this bread This bread and drink this cup you do shew forth the Lords death c. 27. Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. 28. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But let a Man examine himself and so let him eat of This bread and drink of This cap. 29. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself not discerning the Lords body 33. Wherefore my brethren when ye come together to eat tarry one for another 34. And if any man hunger let him eat at home When you meet in that publik place appointed to Gods Worship your behavior is such that you cannot be thoght to celebrate the Lords Supper For whereas the whole Fest oght to be common to all the Communicants 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you on the contrary in that foregoing Supper which the Lords is to close eat every one his own Supper apart so that one taketh more than Temperance alloweth and another less than Nature requires If your debauchery be such that you cannot forbear drunkenness it were less intolerable to practise it in private in your own houses than thus impudently to affront the whole Church and insult over them who have neither houses nor such plentiful provisions I said indeed verse 2. I praise you that you remember me in all things and keep the Ordinances as I delivered them to you But in this which is an Ordinance of the first Magnitude I must make an exception In this I do not cannot praise you For this Tradition I received not as I did the rest from my fellow Apostles but from the Lord Jesus himself and since you seem ether to have forgotten or mistaken it I again repete it That the Lord Jesus in the same night wherein he was betrayed being a Festival one took Bread c. After that same Festival manner also he took the closing Cup in its proper time viz. after Supper saying As often as ye drink this Cup in this manner do it in remembrance of me and not as you have hitherto do'n it For by this Institution This Bread and This Cup is so advanced above its former dignity that it is consecrated to a representative of our Lords death and as such is to be honored and that to the end of the world so that neither you nor any other Christian Church shall ever be at liberty to use it otherwise Wherefore this bread and cup are now no longer your own but the Lords and who ever useth them in a manner unworthy of that Relation is guilty not only of Intemperance but Sacrilege as abusing not common Bread and Wine but the thereby represented Body and Blood of the Lord. But remember that it is the proper character of a Man to examin his own actions Do so in This consider what you do and act sutably to your rule Let not the fear of so great a guilt fright you from your Duty but from your Irreverence For he that doth it in a manner unsuitable to its relation provoketh our Lord to anger as leveling His Flesh with that of a Beast and His Blood with that of a Grape putting no difference but treating the one in the same rude manner as he doth the other Wherefore when you come together to your Church Fests entertain you one another 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you that are able communicate your meat to those who have none of their own But let no man either eat or drink immoderately in Gods House if he be given to appetite let him rather satisfie it in his Own By this Paraphrase well understood and duly heeded we shall not fail of the Apostles meaning in the whole and every Particle provided we handle them regularly which I shall now do by a Logical Analysis of the Argument VII BY the Rules of Reasoning we must First consider the Conclusion intended to be proved and Then the Media imployed to that End mesuring These by their serviceableness to That The Conclusion is the charge of Profaneness in the Corinthians relating to our Lords Supper This animates and This must interpret every word and therefore requires to be it's self most carefully heeded And one might think a litle heed sufficient since it seems impossible either to Overlook or Mistake it He doth not only plainly lay it down but thrice inculcate it And since in every proposition the Quantity is highly considerable we must carefully observe that he doth not accuse them as guilty of misdemeanors in Some more than Other meetings but in All alike Had he charged them as guilty in Some special meetings wherein the Lords Supper was more especially concerned we had then understood that it was not concerned in All assemblies as such Or had he charged them as Profaning the Lords Supper in All meetings without heeding whether it were concerned in them or no if in Those meetings they were at liberty to have celebrated or omitted it they might excuse themselves by saying they intended it not in those particular ones But because they Never met in the Church without Festing and in All such Fests they were obliged by Christs command to celebrate his Own he therefore blameth their Fests Universally and that in such language that thrice varying the Phrase he still further cleareth his meaning Verse 17. Your coming together is not for the better but for the worse Their coming together Indefinitly if it be not plainly enough equivalent to an Vniversal is more clearly made so by ver
no other That he designed to treat them as Kindly as possibl we may see in his entrance upon This Chapter Now I praise you brethren that you remember me in all things and keep the Ordinances as I delivered them unto you And again in his entrance upon this very Reproof vers 17 Now in This that I declare unto you I praise you not that you com together not for the better but for the wors And again by his close upon his description of their miscarriages vers 22. What shall I say to you Shall I praise you in This I praise you not How Unwillingly How Gently and if his thoughts wer like ours how Coldly doth he put in this calm exception against his late General Praise He had in a case far less scandalos said Now therefor there is utterly a falt among you And speaking of those Divisions which are here also objected as the first instance of their unworthy coming together saith I could not speak unto you as unto Spiritual but as unto Carnal Yet here when Divisions of the Rich among Themselves and their joint contemts of the Poor their Shismatical and Uncharitabl separations eating every one his Own supper and destroying the very Nature of a Communion and their Intemperance in Those Suppers affronting not only our Lords Doctrine but his very Person when such abuses of his very Body and Bloud in his Own Hous in the face of his Own Church cryed to his utmost zele and eloquence for a Reproof loud as the Crime in so clamoros a provocation what do we meet but a cold Negative much short of Eli's however condemned reproof Not so much as his This is no good report You make the peopl to abhorr the table of the Lord but only I praise you not We shall indeed hereafter find him lift up his now calm voice and loudly thunder both Reproofs and Threats vers 29. He that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself not discerning the Lords body But this in consequence of Conviction which by That time he supposeth his argument to have wrought in them After which if they should Willingly and Knowingly profane This Bread and This Cup now proved to be the Lords Body and Bloud their Crime would be uncapable not only of Praise but of Excuse The Gentl language therefore that Ushereth in the Argument compared with the Severe which Followeth it doth more than intimate a supposal that they knew not what they did and therefor were first to be Convinced of their Error by good Evidence and then Frighted with Threatnings lest they should continu in the now inexcusabl wickedness And we may perhaps yet better understand his judgment of their Disease by the Medicine he useth for its Cure which is no other but a re-minding them of what he had before Declared to them and they perhaps misunderstood in This subject wherin he seemeth thus to bespak them I am loth to believ you guilty of so horrid a contemt of our Lords Person as to drink his very Bloud in a manner so shameful as looketh more like the mockery of a contumelios Jew than the devotion of a faithful Disciple No I rather impute this to your Forgetfulness or Misunderstanding of what I declared unto you concerning this most holy Ordinance which therfor I now repete to you Then doth he proceed to recite the whole Institution so Particularly as at That time he might very well think Sufficient throghly to convince them in what he Supposed or would seem to Suppose them Mistaken I say it was at That time sufficient For it is most necessary that we distinguish between That time and Our own The Tradition where on we suppose our Lords Supper founded was Then not only in Memory but in Practice The Demonstrative had its Object not only Intelligibl but Visibl they did not more plainly Hear the Word than See what it pointed at and therfor our Lord might well think it superfluos to express How Often they wer to do This in remembrance of himself since the Tradition which That very Institution commended sufficiently declared it Do This said he This which you see Me do This which your Whole Nation in such circumstances constantly do in conformity to the Tradition Do This with the same Matter Bread and Wine In the same Order First Bread and Then Wine at the same Season After Supper and is it not equally plain with the same Frequency when Three or More fest together This mesure of Frequency might our Lord well suppose at That time in Those circumstances sufficiently plain by that known rule Exceptio firmat legem in non exceptis But it seems the Disciples wer either less Able or less Willing to understand than He had reason to expect And how the Corinthians might mistake we have made not improbable conjectures The Apostl therefor to Clear what now appeared to Need it telleth them plainly that what our Lord at the time of institution did Not Express he had since Reveled to be his meaning viz. That as often as they drank That Cup which he then consecrated after Supper they must do it in remembrance of himself Since therfor they closed or ought to close All their fests with the Same Cup his Bloud was concerned in them All. WHAT fairer account can possibly be desired of this Former part of the Apostles Process Of the Lenity of his Reproof of his Method in convincing them first of their Error and then of their Gvilt Of his Reciteing the Lords institution so to vindicate his Supper from Cheapness of his inserting the omitted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so to assert the Interest that his Supper had in Their publick meetings and of his authorizing this insertion so to avoid the objection that might be raised from our Saviors not useing it proved by the joint testimony of the three Evangelists WHAT need the Apostl do More than baffle All their Pretences and rectifie All their Mistakes and what could he do Less than prevent that most obvios Evasion whereby they might have pleaded for Those Meetings as unconcerned in the Lords Supper If any one of a contrary judgment can give a fairer account of this Former part of the Apostl's discours he will do a Great work but he will have a Greater yet to do For the Later part wherein the Apostl draweth his Inferences will not only Offer this as the Fairest but Urge it as the Only sens of his argument V. LET us now therefor carefully examin HOW and WHAT he bildeth upon his so solen recital of our Lords Institution He beginneth his deductions at the 26th verse wherein he resumeth the Last as the most Important clause laying it down as the Sum of our Lords mind in his Institution and the Foundation of all his own intended Inferences therefrom that As often as ye eat this Bread and drink this Cup ye shew forth our Lords death By This Proposition therefor must we mesur his
Design by This must we enquire whether he intended merely to prove that Reverence is due to the Lords Supper as is generally supposed or whether he mean to prove that Some determinate Bread and Cup was consecrate by our Lord to his Supper In This Inquiry we shall proceed 1. Negatively shewing that the Former cannot be his meaning 2. Positively shewing that the Later must be so 1. The FORMER cannot be This will appear whether we consider the Subject or the Praedicate of the Proposition 1. The SUBJECT of the Proposition is not the Lords Supper but This Bread and This Cup and therefor whatever the Praedicate brings must not belong to That but to These That the Lords Supper precisely and formally considered is not the true subject of the Proposition is plain both by the express words that have not a syllabl of it and by plain reason which requireth it to differ from the Praedicate For if the Subject differ from the Praedicate only in Syllables not in sense the Proposition will be no better than a tautology a mere repetition of the same thing in other words It is true the Lords Supper is concerned in the Proposition but Mediatly because of its intimate relation to This Bread and This Cup which for its sake are advanced above All other of the kind consecrated first to the Lords Supper and thereby to his Body and Blood And This is so much the more considerable because if the Apostle had no other design but only to assert the dignity of our Lords Supper he ought in all reason to have insisted upon the very Phrase which would go far in his way For the very Name of the Lord challengeth Reverence the very Sound is an Argument it carrieth Aurhority and Commandeth Aw into the hearts of the hearers whereas on the contrary Bread and Wine in their natural State are but poor beggarly creatures servants of our Appetites at best and too often of our Corruptions and need a Law to defend them from our abuses Now that our Apostle should have No other Design but to assert the dignity of our Lords Supper yet desert that stile which would Strengthen his Argument and take up another that would Weaken it is so much the more unreasonable because he had used That more potent stile in his charge ver 20. and thereby obliged himself to inforce it So that he must now desert not only the Reason of his Argument but the very Subject of his Charge if he had no other design in This Proposition but to prove that our Lords Supper oght not to be treated as he complained 2. The PRAEDICATE of This Proposition is utterly useless or worse to such a design The Argument would run more Clearly more Briefly and more Conveniently Without the Proposition than With it For the Institution having stiled this Suppor of the Lord his BODY and BLOOD the Inference is most Natural and Cogent therefore whoever celebrateth the Lords Supper unworthily is guilty of his Body and Blood So this whole 26th verse will at best be but impertinently troublesom good for nothing but to amuse our thoughts confound our minds and cloud the light of the Argument Yea the very Phrase of the Praedicate will conspire with That of the Subject not only to Darken the Argument but to Weaken it For to declare it our Lords Body and Blood must needs command our aw more than to say it setteth forth his death so that the interposition of This meaner office between our Lords Institution and his own next Inference in verse 27. in Both whereof That higher one is given it can serv to no other effect but to eclipse the Light and intercept the Influence which otherwise would stream more powerfully and directly from the One to the Other In a word let the Otherwise minded shew what Necessity yea what Use this 26th verse serveth what Light or what Strength it ministreth to the Discourse otherwise they must needs either suppose the Apostle to talk impertinently or accept of That service which his words offer which what it is will yet forther appear VI. POSITIVELY therefor This Proposition pointeth at some Determinate Bread and Cup declaring that Whoever eateth That determinate Bread and drinketh That determinate Cup doth Thereby shew forth the Lords death And now the lately disputed Particle THIS is no Less perhaps More considerable in the Apostl's mouth than we found it in our Lord's For the sake of This Demonstrative did he so solenly recite the Institution and resume That as the most important clause therein From This doth he derive All his Argument and to This doth he pay All his Service He observeth to what honor our Lord advanceth the Bread and Cup From His hand doth he take them cloaths them with the important Demonstrative as the Robe royal rendring them conspicuosly honorable in the beholders eyes Crowns them with the potent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as giving them power to prescribe mesures to our obedience leads them in pomp and proclaims before them THIS is the Bread and THIS the cup which the Lord delighteth to honor THIS Bread and THIS Cup hath he commissioned to shew forth his death THIS Bread and THIS Cup are the Supper of the Lord and therefor whoever eateth THIS Bread and drinketh THIS Cup of the Lord unworthily is guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord. The Process is Pompos yet withal it is Elegant he so inculcateth the important particl as to favor your ears he so indeavoreth to satisfy as not to surfeit you with nauseos repetitions and therefore having so shewed it as abundantly to fill you with his meaning he withdraweth by degrees still varying the phrase yet so as still to preserv the influence even when he quitteth the sound of the Demonstrative That you may see both his Art and Care I shall set down his very words Ver. 25. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 26. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 27. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 28. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 29. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In verse 26. he giveth the Bread honors before denied it Equaleth it with the Cup honoreth it with the same Emphatical Article and the same potent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 neither of which was given it in the Institution The reason will anon be plain he now describeth the complete Supper wherein the Bread is no less necessary than the Cup thogh not equally honored with it in the Institution as we shall see and understand why anon In verse 27. He keepeth the same stile for the Bread but varieth it in the Cup saith not now THIS cup but The cup of the Lord. And here we must pause lest we seem to contradict truth for I said but now that the Apostl mentioneth not the Lords Supper whereas here he stileth the Cup the cup of the Lord. But what I said but now I spoke of the 26th verse wherein he cut out work for his whole following process Again in this very
verse 27. it is yoked with This Bread and being thus secured from any danger of mistake might safely be clothed with That larger title more suitable for It than for the Bread because it doth not only Represent his Blood as the Bread doth his Body but Prescribe the frequeny for celebration which the Bread doth Not. In verse 28. The Demonstrative is laid aside and in the 29th not only the Demonstrative but the very Subject In both a manifest Ellipsis easily and necessarily supplied since we cannot apprehend the Action of Eating and Drinking without the Bread and Cup nor any other Bread and Cup but only THIS so earnestly inculcated in the same breath And now that I may bring the whole Argument to a closer vieu I shall from a disjointed examination of its scattered parts proceed to a reduction of All to Logik form in a Syllogism of the most perfect mode Bar As often as you shew forth the Lords death unworthily you are guilty of his Body and Blood ba As often as you eat This Bread and drink This Cup you shew forth the Lords death ra As often as you eat This Bread and drink this Cup unworthily you are guilty of his Body and Blood Of this Syllogism the Assumtion is set forth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 verse 26. The Conclusion thence inferred verse 27. But the Proposition which is generally look'd upon as the adaequate design the Apostle no otherwise proveth but by reciting the Institution which abundantly declareth the relation between the Lords Supper and his Body and Blood Since therefor it was necessary for him to convince them that the Lords Supper was concerned in All their meetings but not at all that the Lords Body and Blood were Represented in his Supper since accordingly he payeth All his service to This Bread and This Cup which was used in all their Meetings but None at all to the Lords Supper otherwise then by consequence therefrom Since the whole 26th verse must be utterly Impertinent and worse if it pretend only to assert the dignity of the Lords Supper but most Cogent if it intend to assert that of This Bread and This Cup since One way he shall prove a truth whose importance Deserved his service and whose Doubtfulness Needed it and the Other way one who 's Self-evidence superseded any Proof one might think the choice between them not very doubtful Yet ar we all this while no farther than the Entry For the very Life of the Argument is laid up in a Clause purposely inserted in the Close of our Lords Institution and resumed in the Head of his Own discourse as the strength of the whole yet so miserably mistaken that it is made the only Enemy to the Apostl's direct design Dispensing with the Constancy which he so industriosly laboreth to prove Indispensibl CHAP. II. Concerning the Clause AS OFTEN AS I. The unhappiness of this Clause II. The true sens of the words mesured by parallel precepts III. Serviceable remarks 1. With what care the Apostl recordeth this Claus IV. 2. With partiality he treateth the Cup. V. The justice he doth the bread joining it with the cup in his dedeductions VI. The Conclusion with an Objection answered HOW unhappy our Lords Supper hath be'n in All the means he used to indear it we have already noted He chose the Last night because the words of dying friends most forcibly affect the survivors and the horrors of the Tragical time dashed it out of the Apostl's thoghts He then made a contrary opportunity and by a Supper purposely contrived evidenced his care of This memorial of his Death equal to that of evidencing his Resurrection And then Joy and Wonder hindred them more from heeding This than from believing That Nor did Any other means prevail till the Holy Ghost broght it to their understandings But their Disciples had not the same mesur of This Spirit The Corinthians either mistook or soon forgot and St. Paul found it highly necessary not only to Remind them of their duty but further to Explain it And This very Explication suffers as much from the mistakes of Interpreters as did the Holy Supper it self from the profaneness of the Corinthians For St. Paul did no more intend to discorage our Obedience to our Lords Command than did our Lord himself to encourage Their profaneness in the Performance Yet in his Own words do we take refuge from his Reproofs as if he had taught us to place All our safety from Unworthiness in keeping distance from Obedience That we should run from One extreme to a Contrary thogh it be a great Error is no great Wonder thogh nothing be more Condemned yet nothing is more frequently practised But that Those very words whereby he indeavored to Prevent the Error should be made to Serv it That he should use his utmost care to prove Constancy indispensibl and we should take his words for a Dispensation from it is the Singular unhappiness of This Only clause perverted thereby to an utter Defaisance of our Lords Command and an utter Defait of his Own Design We shall therefor indevor to restore the Words to their due power First by shewing what must needs be their true meanang And Secundly by exposing the Absurdities of That which is vulgarly imposed upon them II. FIRST we are to enquire into the true sense of this Clause As often as And to this end we need not look back upon what we have seen in the word THIS For This Claus no less peremtorily requireth a certain Standard than That Demonstrative doth a certain Object And the Apostle plainly joineth them together in the same power as the dubl hinge whereon his whole Argument turneth These doth he jointly resume as the sum of our Lords institution These doth he fasten as a nail in a sure place and upon These doth he hang that chain of Consequences whereby he convinceth his Corinthians of their crime and discovereth the Need and Way to avoid it Let us first vieu the import of the Words and Then his care concerning them This 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is plainly Relative it imports Equality in point of Frequency and requireth that the new Relative should conform it self to the mesur of a Former Correlate Now it is plain that whoever is obliged to make One thing Equal to Another must certainly know the mesur of That Other which he is to conform to No Town can shew a Standard made of Air or Water but of Wood or Metal whose firm substance having a stable bigness of its own may certainly determin the Quantity of what is to be mesured by it The Apostl is very careful to prove and inculcate that Eating THIS bread and drinking THIS cup is the stable Standard whereby we must mesure our Frequency in the Lords Supper It must therefor be necessary that it self must have its Determined Frequency fixed by som praevios Law or Custom certainly foreknown and thereby capable to give mesures to any Other performance
any be will pass from the obediently negligent Subject to the impertinently busie Law-maker who having not Required but Supposed the Action neither Found nor Made any ground for the Supposition It forbids the benevolence it begs For thogh it threaten No guilt of disobedience to the Omission it doth to the Performance While we may ly safe in our Neglect we run a great risk in our Officiosness For he that Omitteth the Performance disobeyeth no command therefor cannot incur any guilt nor deserv any punishment but he that upon such terms approacheth the Holy Table is already gilty of contemt towards the threatnings denounced against Unworthy recevers bicause he needlesly exposeth himself to them and to com safely off had need of more Piety in the Performance than we can Yet discover of Wisdom in the adventure V. IF WE can suppose the Apost'l so regardless of our Saviors command yet sure he had more kindness for his OWN ARGUMENT than to use such solicitos endeavors to destroy it and for his own Credit than to furnish the Corinthians with a Plea whereby they might non-suit his Charge He was sure a better Disciple both to Gamaliel and our Lord than to use such endeavors as by the ordinary rules of reasoning must depose both his own Discours and our Lords Command from all power But such is the unavoidable consequence of the merely Suppositive sens of those important words For it is obvious that the Corinthians Might and therefor supposable that they Would plead thus for themselves We are sufficiently sensible that as often as we eat This bread and drink This cup we shew forth the Lords death and consequently that whoever eateth This bread and drinketh this cup unworthily is guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord. But in these our ordinary Fests which thou so severely reprovest we have nothing to do with This bread nor This cup. We Fest indeed as often as we meet in the Church but without any Intent and we conceve without any Need to eat This bread or drink This cup. We intend to do what all Nations agree to be the proper manner of worshipping God This is the Vniversal notion of mankind in that so common Rite of Sacrificing The Votary therefor offereth his beast that he may become a guest to his God thereby at once Receiving and Expressing a confidence that he is propitious to him And thogh our Lords great Sacrifice of himself have made it needless to shed any more blood by way of atonement yet is that so far from any reason that we should lay aside Festing with Sacrificing that it is a very good one why we should take it up if it had never be'n used before since now we have much greater reason to rejoice in the Communion to which God inviteth us But that in all our Fests we should be obliged to celebrate the Lords Supper since himself hath not expressed it we understand not For either he intended we should receive it only at the same Fest whereat he Instituted it which was the Passover or els he left it wholely to our discretion to receve it as often as we should think convenient Now that we intend not to do it in our ordinary meetings thy self seemest to understand For thou declarest when ye come together it is not to eat the Lords Supper Is it not we own it we plead it It is not to eat the Supper and how do we Profane it when we do not eat it When we do Eat it if our behavior be irreverent we must confess our selves guilty for we submit to thy rule As often as we Eat This bread and Drink this cup unworthily we are guilty but it thence followeth not that we are so as often as we Fest together in the Church It is hard to say whether such a plea were more obvios to the Apostl's Observation or Destructive to his Argument It was therefor infinitely necessary he should answer it and we find no other Answer to it but in these words nor any other Use of Those words but for such an Answer This is sufficient to perswade us so to interpret them that the Argument be not Defective nor Themselves Impertinent But to fasten such a Gloss upon them as shall make them not only Useless but Pernicios and the Argument not only naked of so necessary a defence but irrefragably retorted against the Author is perhaps a greater abuse to Them than the Corinthians profaneness was to the Lords Supper VI. FOR a close of this troublesom dispute let us impartially ballance the rival senses upon This enquiry which of all others is most important viz. which of them affordeth better satisfaction to a pious soul conscientiously enquiting how often he is obliged to receve the Holy Communion A question wherein there are many things doubtful but none more than This Whether it more Deserve or Need to be answered 1 The One sens offereth full satisfaction by shewing us a Certain Mesure to which we must conform And though the change long since made in the Manner of celebrating Church Festivals seem to have confounded it yet if we once know what it was at the time of the Institution we may and must so accommodate the never decaying Reason to the Change as still to answer the first Intention For if the Corinthians were therefor obliged to Eat the Lords Supper in All their Church meetings bicause they Fested in them All in One manner so are we bicause we also Fest in them All in Another manner Since the Manner of Publik worship the Church upon competent reasons may alter but the Institution of our Lord indispensibly closing All Church Fests with his own Supper No human power may abolish at least not in point of the Obligation though possibly invincible necessity may dispense with Actual performance at som times So by This account the clear answer will be That the Church must offer the Holy Sacrament as often as she can persuade the peopl to receve it and every person is so often obliged to receve it as the Church Officers shall offer it and Both the Church and every person oght to come as neer as possible to doing it every Lords day and every Holy day i. e. All days of Church Fests 2. But the other Sens for want of a Standard will pack us off with an answer more Delusory than the Collier's If we ask How often must I do this in remembrance of Christ it will answer As often as you eat This bread and drink This cup If we then ask How often must I eat This bread and drink This cup it will answer As often as you do it in remembrance of Christ This I say is more delusory than the Collier in two respects 1. Bicause it was possible to know what the Church believed Publik Confessions Canons of Councils c. All of them independent upon the Collier or his Faith and all know'n to the Catechist But Here we have No
be a Communion what do we more plainly than condemn the Private ones as carrying a Contradiction in the very Terms and the Publik ones as carrying One or More in their Performance For they plainly contradict both the word Communion when there are no Communicants and our Lords Command while in One Element they Dispense and in the Other Prohibit what He commanded Yet still they do well in the Thing thogh ill in the Manner in this very particular deserving to be owned a true thogh corrupt Church V. 3. AND what if we now reckon the Junior Fathers among our Adversaries yea Those very Fathers by name whom we but now found vouched as telling us That the custom of daily Communions continued in some Churches until their days What such Fathers or other credible Writers say of the Doctrines or Customs of the Churches of Christ in their own days we think our selves obliged to believe upon their credit And upon that account we doubt not but This custom of daily Communicating who 's foot-steps remained in Those times wherein they wrote was derived as Catholik from the preceding and if themselves Depart or Detract from what they have so witnessed to be Catholik what can we do better than distinguish the Doctor from the Father and judge his Opinion by his Testimony Whether St. Augustin have so do'n and consequently how far his authority is to sway us in the present Question we cannot take a better way to find than by transcribing his own words the consequences whereof were he alive to see he would doubtless lament His Discours is in his 118th Epistle in these words among others Som will say that the Eucharist is not to be receved every day If you ask why he tells you bicause som days ar to be chosen in which a man may live more purely and continently that so he may com to so great a Sacrament more worthily bicause he that eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks damnation to himself On the other side another says If thou hast received so great a wound and contracted so violent a disease that such remedies ar to be deferr'd every such man ought by the Authority of the Bishop to be removed from the Altar and put to penance and by the same authority be reconciled For this is to receve unworthily Then to receve when a man should be doing penance and not according to his own pleasure offer himself to or withdraw himself from the Communion But if his sins be not so great as to deserve Excommunication he ought not to separate himself from the daily Medicine of the Lords Body Between those possibly a man may determine the question better if he admonishes that men should abide in the peace of Christ But let every one do what according to his Faith he piosly believes ought to be do'n For neither of them dishonors the Body and Blood of the Lord if they in their several ways contend who shall most honor the most holy Sacrament For Zacheus and the Centurion did not prefer themselves before one another when one receved Christ into his house and the other said he was not worthy to receve him under his roof That by this Discourse we may undarstand what was St. Augustin's Opinion and how far we are to be determined by it it will be requisite that we consider 1. The State of the Question And 2ly His Determination of it 1. In Stating the Question we ar to observ 1. The Question it self And secondly The Practice of the Church at That time 1. The Question it self is extremely different from Ours So different that we may very well subscribe to the Fathers determination It is Whether the Eucharist be to be receved EVERY DAY or some days to be chosen wherein a man may live more purely c. Now we pretend not to EVERY DAY But believ that the Lords day was purposely consecrate and afterward other holy days were added and that every such day hath its 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 set aside to the purpose expressed by St. Augustine That a man may therein live more purely and continently that so he may come more worthily to so great a Sacrament If therefor This great Fathers Arbitration which was bounded to Every day be stretched to the modern Question which exceedeth All bounds nothing will be so questionable as This Whether the injury we do the Fathers Discurs or That we do our Lord's Institution be the greater of the two 2. The Practice of the Church for which the Question was calculated was extremely different from Ours and That in two respects 1. In point of Worship For at Thar time the Holy Communion was daily administred by the Priests at least in great Cities and daily received by the devouter part of the peopl Som saith St. Augustine himself Daily communicate in the body and blood of the Lord some receve upon certain days in some places it is offered every day without intermission in som only upon the Sabbath and the Lords day in some upon the Lord's day only 2. In the point of Discipline which in Those days excluded the most scandalous both from the Communion and publik Prayers but This by the sentence of the Bishop This as it is plainly intimated in St. Augustin's above-recited words so is it more plainly expressed by St. Chrysostom in These words Art thou not worthy of the Sacrament nor Communion thou art not then worthy of Prayer Thou hearest the officer standing and proclaiming Whoever of you are in Penance be go'n If thou be one of those that are in Penance thou must not communicate For he that doth not communicate is in Penance Why then doth he say Be go'n you that cannot pray and thou impudently standest by and art not such but one of them that can communicate In which words of St. Chrysostom two things appear very considerable 1. That those who were excluded from the Holy Communion were no less so from publik Prayer which by the above-recited account of Justin Martyr began at the Communion Service 2. That it was not left to every mans private Caprice or Conscience to Com or Forbear But every one must com if he were not under Penance by the Bishops sentence VI. HITHERTO we have heard St. Augustin as a Father discursing in the Early stile a uestion suitable to his own time We ar now to hear him as a Doctor determining the Question by his own Reason And we are to observ 1. The stile he speaketh in And 2. The Determination he giveth 1. His stile is not definitive Doth not give his Sentence but his Opinion yea not his setled Opinion but his staggering unfledged Sentiments Doth not Impose upon our Belief but Propose to our Examination Between these saith he possibly a man determine i. e. No man hath yet so determined nor can I say that any man may but I offer it to consideration In This he speaketh most like a Father that he confesseth himself Not
dishonoring the Lords Supper by their necessary connexion Either therefor we ar quite out of the reach of his Threats bicause we are free from the Character he Reproves or if we ar Not then are we most exposed to That now mentioned bent against their So Coming together as not to eat the Lords Supper since That and only That can literally be charged upon us And since his Cautionary precepts were also levelled against the Sin Reproved they must needs strike more directly upon That Omission wherein we are equally gilty than upon the Unworthiness wherein we cannot be so And that inseparabl connexion between the Churches meetings and the Lords Supper which he so industriosly proveth must needs concern us more than any such kind of unworthiness as he mentioneth Not since That is to continu till the end of the World by our Lords own Institution and This is not condemned but by Our own Reason in consequence of the Apostls reproving another kind of gilt whereof we are uncapabl V. IF therefor we must accommodate the Apostls Dissertation to the change so as to shun the Unworthiness Not expresly forbidden much more must we do so in the Constancy so Expresly and Industriosly enjoyned So that our concern must needs be this As often as the Corinthians ate that bread and drank that cup which our Lord had adopted to represent his body and blood so often they shewed forth his death and therefor whoever did unworthily celebrate That were gilty of profaning This The connexion between their Meetings and their Fests the Apostl did not bicause he needed not mention but That between Them and the Lords Supper he proved inseparabl both as to Intermission and Abolition The former connexion the Church hath changed the later she may not in either of its members We ar therefor and till the Lord com ever must be obliged in All our Church meetings to celebrate the Lords Supper and That in such manner as becometh his body and blood THIS is the Equitabl and Moral sens of the Apostls words which was so Long and Universally paid them by all Ages and Churches preceding and following the change as might create a right even by Prescription but on the other side it hath be'n lost so many Ages that the Contrary Sens pleads Contrary Prescription It is now no less impossibl to reduce the people to Constancy than it was in the time of the Laodicean Council to reduce them to Sobriety and therefor the Officers of the Church now find it necessary to yield to the hardness of hearts callos by time VI. BUT here we must carefully distinguish between Yielding and Justifying Our Church speaketh not one syllabl to Dispens with the strictest Constancy but on the contrary still recommendeth it as often as she can without exposing her Own Injunctions to the Same Contemt from which she endeavoreth to rescu our Lords She doth indeed forbid the celebration if there be not a competent number to communicate bicause if the Holy Table must needs be deserted it is less dishonorable that it be so Without the Supper than With it She therefore leaveth it to the Ministers Discretion how often it shall be offered but she intrusteth their Piety to exhort the peopl to com as often as possibl She is Both ways careful that neither the Willing may want a Communion nor the Unwilling an Exhortation She therefor complieth with the peopl's Neglect no otherwise than did the equally valiant and indulgent Captain with his Armies cowardize he Commanded he Intreated he Exhorted he Reproved but when he could by no means prevail to stop their flight he put himself in their head that they might seem rather to Follow their Leader than Flee their Enemy But as this compliance of the Captain did not justify his Disobedient Troops so neither do the Churches Rubriks justify either Ministers or Peopl that are wanting to the Constancy so plainly Urged by the Apostl Practiced by the Best ages and Recommended by her Self The Sum of all is this Since the Church had no Authority nor no Intention to slacken the Power either of our Lords Command or the Apostls Argument we must therefor still own them to have the same Power now as ever and must accommodate them to our Present meetings as if they still were Festivals not only in Name or Spiritually as we acknowlege them still to be but in Reality and Sensually as at the time of his Writing they were and in the Recess the Obligation is no less indissolubl against the teeth of time and the constitutions of Governments than against any evasions of singl persons But All this the More it Obligeth the Less it Persuadeth It may perhaps Compel us to submit to the Duty but cannot Invite us to Embrace the Favor And our Lord doth not use to Drive us like Beasts we know not Why nor Whither But to Lead us with the cords of a Man with bonds of Love with strong Reason and sweet Allurements the savor of his sweet ointments which so draw loving souls as to make them not only Follow but Run after him And This duty above All others is That way most attractive The Command made Reasonabl by a good End and the End made Amiabl by Relation to our Lord 's own Person as we now com to see in the remaining words In remembrance of me PART IV. Concerning the End In Remembrance CHAP. I. It is the badge of a Christian I. This the only rite whereby we honor our Lords Person Three Considerations 1. Every Religion distinguished from Every other by som proper rite This Nature taught the Heathen and Gods Law the Jews II. The New Testament contracteth the multitude of Jewish rites to two whereby Christians ar known as ar the Knights of the Garter 1. By a rite of admission III. 2. By continual wearing the badge IV. Those distinguishing rites must be highly valued It was mortal to a Jew to omit any of them and to a Heathen to wear them V. 'T is wors in a Christian upon several accounts 1. The Law-giver 2. The Rites VI. 3. The Obligation HITHERTO we have seen nothing but Dry Law the rough Issu of Authority and Will haling us to the unrecommended performance by chains of Compulsion without any gentler Attractives that may Invite our Affections or Persuade our Reason And as the Country hath be'n dry and barren so have the Ways be'n craggy Troublesom to the Best and Unpassable to the Most understandings The Reader must understand the Rules of Reasoning and must be ar no litle pains to mesure the Apostl's discurs by Those Rules We now com to a pleasanter Country and smoother ways From the Apostl's Argument to our Lords which is full of endearments to our Affections and free from difficulties to our Understandings thogh we never sate at the feet of Gamaliel or any other Tutor but Love For whoever loveth our Lord's person can no sooner hear that He is concerned but he findeth abundant
his Divine we enjoy not only his Representative but his very Body and Blood In Sacrificeing said Plutarch we convers intimately with the Gods These things saith St. John we write unto you that your joy may be full that you may have fellowship with Us and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ St. John probably in those words compareth Our God and Lord with Those in whose fellowship Plutarch placed his greatest joy We may make another comparison between the Fellowships themselvs yea between the several kinds of fellowships that a Christian may have with his Lord. Several kinds of fellowships No There is no other kind of visibl fellowship but This one Other kinds of Worship there are but no other Communion Whether we com to God with our Praises or our Prayers whether we com to Hear him or to call upon him we keep an awful Distance We Approach his Throne but do not Sit down in it It is boldly said by Plutarch In Sacrificcing Fests we even touch the Gods a Christian goeth Higher We do not Touch only but Eat we receve our Lord not Only in our Arms but our very Bowels We Fest not only With him but Upon him He mingleth Souls with us and is no more Two but One Spirit We Fest upon his Flesh and Bloud which himself saith ar Meat indeed and Drink indeed and St. John addeth Here is Fellowship indeed and what more Need or Can be added to make our Joy Full If therefor there be any joy in the spirit any comfort of love what ever the Voice of David could Sing or his heart conceve whatever the Light of the Sun or the Sweetness of Wine or the joys of festing can faintly shadow ar Here in the highest perfection earth is capabl to enjoy as much above the pleasures of Sens as the Firmament is Brighter than Earth or Sea and as much above other exercises even of Devotion as the Stars ar Brighter then the interstellary Firmament whose light while they Out-shine they Increas Upon which later account alone we heard Symnachus give the Sea preeminence over the Land as mother of Salt the Universal Sawce exalting the Gust of All meats But V. 2. SALT doth not so much improve the Gust of meats as doth This Sacrament the Power and consequent Pleasur of other Religios Offices 1. How the power of Preaching is thereby advanced we shall find another occasion to consider to which therefor we adjourn it and proceed to other Religios exercises 2. An Oath when duly used is One kind of Worship of That God when we thereby Invoke an end of All strife and all suspicions among mankind And its Obligations at generally supposed more Indissolubl when bound with This Sacrament or taken at the Altar The Kings of France and Spain and All Christendom with them agreed in This that the Pyrenaean Treaty could not be more Inviolably confirmed than by This Bond. And if it have not proved Security sufficient it is no exception against it's force but a proof of the invinciblness of That Falshood that will as litl be Slave to the most formidabl Oath as to a Word 3. HOW great pleasur there is in PRAYER we should better understand if we were better acquainted with it The Stoiks believed our Pleasur to consist in Freedom from Pain It is plain that Bodily Pleasur doth so and the Satisfaction is pleasant in exact Proportion with the Appetite which is thereby satisfied It is som Ease to a wounded spirit if it can but Bleed out it's troubles into the bosom of a Faithful friend but much more if That friend be as able as willing to help God is indeed of himself more willing to hear than We to pray for such blessings as conduce to our True Happiness but in Som Other kinds of Requests which thogh they com not up to the highest dignity we think worth asking he is Moved by Prayer and so much the more when it is Improved by the Manner and Season of the address Hester the more effectually to prevail with her great Ahasuerus endeared her petition with a Fest and This we com now from finding the Sens of mankind in that universal rite of Festing upon the Sacrifice Indeed God is to be laid hold on by either hand Fasting or Festing upon occasions respectively suitable exalt the power of Prayer the one that we may move Commiseration the other that we may obtain Bounty by the One we kill the Beast by the Other we hold communion with God If therefor Hannah found her grieved mind so much eased by having unburthened it in prayer improved by the holiness of the place we must have so much more title to the joys of Hope by doing it in this exercise as his Table is holier than was Shiloh And if Themistocles prevailed with Admetus by presenting him his litl Son how much greater confidence may We have when we obsecrate by the body and bloud of Christ For the young Prince was a perfect stranger to Themistocles came in his way and thence into his arms by mere accident without any thoght of becoming his Mediator but our Lord came and dwelt among us and was made sin for us and when we obsecrate by the mystery of his Incarnation by his Cross and Passion by his precios Death and Burial offering them to his Father not only by Words but Actions such Dramatical Actions as in a manner Repete them This do'n by his Own institution must needs add unspeakabl force to thc Petition so presented Again Admetus's child was wholely passive joined not the least token of consent with Themistocles's act for his Body was offered without any concurrence of his Mind But This Supper is of our Lord 's own providing We therein offer not only his Body and Bloud but his Love and his Soul Himself taght us this singular art of wrestling with his Father and having promised that he would grant whatever two or three should agree to ask in his Name taght us further to invigorate our confidence by adding his Body and Bloud HENCE it is that in the Primitive Church the Prayers ever were attended with This Sacrament as we found them described by Justin Martyr and Optatus upbraiding the Donatists for breaking down the altars of Churches told them that thereby they did what they could to hinder the Churches prayers for illac ad aures dei ascendere solebat populi oratio Hence is it that in the Communion Service we again pray for the same blessings we had prayed for in the first for the Church Vniversal the Kings Majesty the whole Nation c. Nor need we any other than our adversaries testimony The Papists in ordinary cases think ordinary masses sufficient but in their greatest extremities have recours to This as a more powerful mediator than any their Ora pro nobis's I instance in the case of the Duke of Montmorancy whom when the incensed King could by no intercession be
shew forth the Lords death by them This Consequence we have all this while be'n proving to be his aim 2. The Other Consequence argueth back again from the Reverence due to our Lords Person to Answerabl Reverence due to his Representatives Bicaus the Lords Body and Blood ar concerned in it therefor you must not eat This bread and drink This cup Vnworthily And this he presseth by two important inferences the Former setting forth the Crime in the 27 vers The Later prescribing the Remedy in the 28. Upon these two turn all the Interpretative Prohibitions which must revers our Lords Command to DO this and all his own forgoing argument inforceing it For by the Former All Unworthy persons ar ipso facto excommunicated and by the Later every one is bound therefor to examin himself that if he find himself unworthy he may execute the sentence It must therefor needs be worth our Labor seriosly to enquire into the true import of those two considerable words which I shall do in their Order CHAP. II. Concerning Unworthiness I. What Unworthy importeth 1. In it 's singl signification 1. In Grammar it is an Adverb 2. In Logik a Relative II. The degree of the Crime not expressed why We need not be so fearful as the Papists We deny not the Real Presence III. 2. The Aspect of the word upon the Apostls designe 1. Personal worthiness dishonourabl to our Lord. 2. Different from the Apostls mesure IV. The Apostl oght to have warned the Corinthians of it 1. For the Lord's Tables sake 2. For his own arguments sake V. 3. For the Corinthians sakes who were such as oght to have be'n forbidden THE Former is set forth in vers 27. He that eateth This Bread and drinketh This Cup UNWORTHILY is guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord. And again vers 29. He that eateth unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself In the 27. is declared the Guilt in the 29. the Punishment And Both of them incurred by doing this UNWORTHILY Our main business therefor must be to mesur the import of the word Unworthy And first we must view it in it's Singl Interpretation and then in its Aspect 1. It 's Singl import may be considered in Grammar and in Logik 1. In Grammar we ar to consider the Root and the Termination 1. The Root is Worthy which Rigidly importeth an Equality of worth but in a Milder sens is satisfied with som Proportion thogh short of Full value The Chancery of the Gospel abateth much of what Strict Law requireth Is satisfied with Suitablness for Worthiness This Allowance doth it perpetually give All such words as import Righteousness And with This Latitude doth our Apostl frequently use This very word E. G. Eph. 4.1 Col. 1.10 Thes 2.12 c. For if any one think he can in a Proper sens Walk Worthy of the Gospel Worthy of the Lord or Worthy of God That very thoght will make him Unworthy of the mercy offered by That Lord in That Gospel 2. The Termination speaketh it an Adverb qualifying the Manner of the Action Not an Adjective subjected in the Agent It is not He that eateth and drinketh being Unworthy but he that doth it Unworthily however his Person be qualified The Difference between These two is so Wide so Evident and in This place so Important that it could never escape such acute eys as som of our adversaries enjoy were they not muffled with that Proverbial partiality which maketh None so blind as him that will not see For the first sight of it will expose the impertinence as to This performance of all those Schemes and Directories for Self-Examination which are so carefully set forth as if it wer the same thing to do this in a Manner worthy of the Office and to make one's Self Worthy to be the Officer This can never be too carefully observed I again insist upon it that This Difference between UNWORTHY and UNWORTHILY duely considered will let in such light as will abundantly discover the many and great flaws in That hypothesis to which so many good and wise men have so enslaved themselvs that they ar somtimes as we shall anon see a pitiful exampl forced to offer violence to their ingenuity 2. In Logik it is a Relative wherein beside the now considered Relation and Subject is also considerabl the Correlate which is the Party concerned in the Worthiness or Unworthiness of the Action And this is Generally Grossly and Unhappily mistaken for our Lords Person whereas we have sufficiently proved it to be This Bread and This Cup. Bicause so much depends upon it I again desire is may be considered that the Apostl reproveth the Corinthians just as a sober person would a rude Bully if he should see him abuse a Justice of Peace in execution of his Office Sir might he say Take heed what you do you seem to take this Gentleman for your Equal or perhaps your Inferior but then are you mistaken for This Gentleman This plain Gentlman what ever you think of him represents the Kings person And therefor the Abuses you offer Him ar not private incivilities to an Ordinary Person but Publik Misdemeanors c. In such an Admonition Nothing is intended to be urged but what needs it viz. The Character of the Officer which once known the Nature of the Crime and the Kings concern immediately appears II. THE Nature of the Crime but it 's Degree is not so plain The Apostl in This place by a most unusual stile leaveth it to our Own Reasons to judge He is guilty saith he of the Body and Blood of the Lord but whether of Trampling it under foot or only of Contemning it or in what degree of Affronting it the strange Ellipsis hath left uncertain This is very Certain and no less Considerabl That the affront which passeth through the Officers person loseth much of it's force There and cannot strike so strong upon the Kings as if it were Directly and Immediately aimed at him The Character doth indeed dignify the Otherwise inconsiderabl Person But the Person hath it's Reaction upon the Character We make great allowances for the Meanness of the One even when we pay our Honor to the Other For we think not the same Aw due to the Justice's Worship as to the King's Majesty nor do we judge the Crime Equally great in the affront offered him As the Corinthians Crime had be'n much aggravated so had the Apostl's own Argument be'n much strengthened if he had not made This Bread This Cup but our Lords body and bloud the proper object of the abuse Had therefor This Bread be'n the Proper Body and this Cup the Proper Bloud of our Lord he was now obliged both to Declare and Urge it In a case so urgent an Omission is equivalent to a Negative It was his business so to set forth the Dignity of This abused Bread and Cup that by Proportion with it their Guilt may be Aggravated Would Truth have Consented
of the Apostls reproof With what Colossik strides do they reach both sides of Superstition On one side they dread the Lords Supper for want of worthiness in Themselvs on the other side they fear to own any reverence toward Gods Hous for want of worthiness in It How do they rob Peter and cloath Paul make the Lords Hous Common that they may dubly Sanctify his Tabl And all the while the Apostl makes This the Corinthians crime that they discriminated not the Lords Body from Common Bread and This either another Instance or an Evidence of their Profaneness that they discriminated not his Church from their Own houses But I may not now insist upon Any other error than That of the Corinthians which the Apostl saith consisted in This That they So used our Lords Body and his Hous as if they had Both be'n Common He chargeth them not Here thogh elswhere he do with any Other crime but such as Directly and Immediately desecrate the One and the Other and that in This very exercise Taketh no notice of their Other habitual vices confineth his charge to This performance in This place Forbiddeth not to approach either the Lords Table or his Hous bicaus they ar intemperate at their Own Yea he So expresseth himself as if he would even Compound with them indulge them their Domestik debaucheries provided they would forbear them Here. Not that indeed he Justifyeth what he elswhere plainly enogh Condemneth but to aggravate This incomparably Greater wickedness whereof the Sacrilege so Exceedeth as even to Hide the Immorality The Glutton is guilty of the Flesh of his Beast and the Drunkard of the Bloud of the Grape but the Unworthy Communicant of the Body and Bloud of the Lord. To be drunk with Common Wine in a Common Hous is to abuse both Gods Benefits and ones Own Body but to Desecrate the Lords Hous into a Tavern and his Bloud into a Cup of Drunkenness to make That the Instrument and This the Scene of Leudness is a wickedness not only above Drunkenness but even above Sacrilege it self As it hath no Match so it hath no Name If therefor you will not divorce your beloved debaucheries if you will needs be eating and drinking intemperately yet know your Place do not heap Sacrilege upon Lust make not the Lords Hous yea his very Body and Bloud Servants to the leudness they would Check This is the Utmost reach of the Apostls reproof It comprehendeth indeed not only the Lords Table but his whole Hous Yet breaketh not open any Private one Judgeth no Other unworthiness but of This Performance Requireth a Difference not between one Communicant and another but between This and other Places and Suppers and Consequently Forbiddeth not Any Person to Do This which we have found All indifferently obliged to Do but forbiddeth Every one to Do It in such a Manner as shall make That Common which our Lord hath Sanctified IV. 3. THE Apostl must be mortally unfaithful to his Corinthians if upon so urgent an Occasion he did not warn them in Terms as Plain as the Crime if any must be Great I say upon so Urgent an Occasion for a most Urgent one it is Whether we look upon the 1. Lords Supper which he professedly endeavoreth to rescu from Profanation 2. the Argument whereby he laboreth to do it or 3. the Persons to whom he addresseth all 1. He professeth to rescu the Lords Tabl from Profanation and to That End to Close it with such a Rail as shall Fence it from abuse If therefor he leaves that rail so wide as to Admit Such persons as he oght to have kept out he must be dubly and inexcusably unfaithful both to the Lords tabl which he shall so have exposed to dishonor and to All those souls which finding no contrary warning may com to it with as great Sincerity as Danger If I find this the Purlieus of the Corinthians guilt that they Distinguished not the Lords Body then may I be secure of One of those Two Either he who distinguisheth the Lords Body is free from This how full soever he may be of Other Crimes Or the Apostl must be More guilty than the most Unworthy Communicant since professing to shew the True Extent of the Danger he warned them not to distinguish between Persons Worthy and Unworthy but between This and Common Bread Were his words Ambiguos yet must they here cary a sens usual in a case so Important he oght to have Explained how much they must Now signify above what at All other Times and by All Persons is ascribed to them and which can Intend No more but This That every one is obliged So to Distinguish between the Lords Supper and his Own as to shun Those indecencies which ar ordinary in Private Houses 2. He must be no less unfaithful to his Own Argument bicaus contrary to all Reason he must have neglected to strengthen it with the most Considerabl and Obvios Corroboration For if the exclusion of Unworthy Persons wer as agreeabl to our Lords Institution as the Consequence would have be'n serviceabl to his Own Purpose he Might and therefor Oght to have urged it and so put the holy Sacrament at the Greatest and Safest distance from profanation For if none must com to This Table who abuse their Own it will be out of danger of any Other abuse than Desertion If none drink This Cup who is ever drunk with Common Wine it will be secure from Promoting the Drunkenness which it cannot Tolerate If none Partake This Bread who break not Their Own to the hungry there will be no more danger that any one shall be hungry than that any other shall be drunken And since the Apostl was now obliged to speak whatever Truth would permit we ar reduced to This choice whether He wer fals to the Lords Supper his Own Argument and his Disciples souls or whether it be Not Forbidden to every Unworthy Person but enjoined to every one thogh as unworthy as wer the Corinthians to Do this 3. The Persons to whom this reproof is addressed wer such as may induce us to believ that Gods Providence concurred with the Apostl's Words to prevent any possibility of believing what we now dispute against For they wer the Corinthians a peopl of all other the most Obnoxios Proverbially Infamos for debaucheries This City vyed with Sodom as for fulness of bread so for excess of Leudness and dismalness of Destruction Yea so strangely inseparabl was Luxury from every thing of Corinth so much more incurabl than that strange Leprosy of Jewish houses that the very Burning of the City did not Purge but Propagate it The confusion of Metals melted by the raging flames from her multitude of rich Statues made That famos mixture which by the luxurios Romans was preferred above Gold it self as a more precios mater for their drinking cups and to be Supremely Luxurios something of Corinth must contribute Yet was not Leudness conveyed
Seal 1. COVENANT This Notion we must not contemn bicaus it carrieth our Lords authority This saith He is the cup of the New Testament or Covenant in My bloud plainly ballanceing the New Covenant against the Old and his Own Bloud against that of the sacrificed Heifer which we find stiled the bloud of sprinkling This therefor must be so Sprinkled as That was upon the Whole promiscuos Peopl not to distinguish the Elect from the Reprobate but as Then the Jew so Now the Christian from a Heathen c. Even in the Old Covenant ther was Flesh and Spirit the Seed of the Loins and the Seed of the Faith He was not a Jew which was one Outwardly and Circumcision was not of the Flesh but the Spirit whose Praise was not of Man but of God Yet that outward Performance which had no Praise if unaccompanied with the Spirit was Necessary even without it sufficient to Condemn if Omitted thogh not sufficient to Approve it Naked Thus was it in the Old and thus is it in the New Covenant The Sacraments ar Outwatd badges every Visibl Christian must wear them that his Profession may be Visibl but No man may Rest in them as sufficient for Salvation For Those only have a right to the Promises of the Covenant who perform it's Condicions to All the rest the Covenant is lost and consequently so ar the Seals Yet doth This no more Prohibit or Dispens with a mere Outward Christan to receve the Sacrament than it did a Jew to receve Circumcision keep the Sabath or wear any other Cognisance prescribed by the Law And 2. TO SEAL a Covenant importeth an Obligation for the Future not an Account of the Past The Apostl tells the Galations that He that is Circumcised is a debter to keep the whole Law not that he is discharged as having Kept it We therefor most willingly grant what ever the Allegory demands viz. That by Doing This we new Seal the Covenant made in Baptism Repete all our Vows New tye all our Obligations which our Corruptions or Infirmities may have slackened since the last Sacrament But to say that bicaus This is the Seal of the Covenant therefor none may receve it who hath not already performed all it's Articls is to say that no man may seal an Indenture who hath not already do'n what thereby he Covenanteth to do i. e. It is not Lawful 'till it be Needless LET the otherwise minded be requested to consider Ar not all the congregations promiscuos obliged to make pubik profession of their Faith And doth not Faith import Holiness Where then is the Difference what the Reason why he who is not in Covenant in the strictest sens may not as well Communicate in the Lords Supper as he who hath not Faith in the strictest sens may Profess his belief I can shew a reason why he may Better do it but can imagin none why he may not do it as Well He that publikly maketh Profession of his Faith declareth himself to Have Faith and if he have it not he is a Lyar a notorios Lyar a solen Lyar in the face of God and his Angels But he that Receveth the Sacrament maketh no such bost Vaunteth not as the Young man in the Gospel All these have I kept from my youth up Saith not I have Paid but I am a Debtor to the whole Gospel and thankfully embrace it's gratios offers made by my Lord and purchased with his Bloud This is plain Sens and This is constant Practice If therefor it be a kind of Forgery to set this Seal to a Blank it is no less Criminal to Tear it off from our Lords Charter which giveth every Visibl Christian a Right to it III. AT OTHER times we ar told we ar not to partake our Lords Body if we be not his Members and his Members we ar not if we have not his Spirit Be it so This will not exclude Any Christian For St. John saith Hereby know we the Spirit of God Every Spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is com'n in the flesh is of God by which we perceive what Latitude the word Spirit is capabl of and what force there is in the Allegory That the whole Body and every particular Member must partake the same Flesh and Bloud the whole Crearion forbids us to deny That the Church is the body of Christ and every one of us Members in particular the Apostl hath expressly taght us The conclusion must needs be that the celebration of This Sacrament is the Duty both of every Church and every Member The Administration of Sacraments is generally acknowledged an essential requisite of a true Church and it must be very strange if the Reception of them should not be so of a true Member of such a Church BUT as it is in All Natural bodies so is it in This Mystical Every Member must have both Outward Frame and Inward Spirits answerabl to its place in the Body and its relation to the Head And every Member of Christ must answer it's relation both by an Outward Profession and Inward Life whereof thogh the Former be Insufficient without the Later yet is it Necessary in Order thereto For by outward Offices of worship we do not onely Exercise spiritual life when we have it but Dispose our selvs to Attein it So there is a Two fold Membership By the One we Ptofess our selvs Christians by the Other we Are so Yea by That very Profession we Ar so far So as to be both Intitled to all Priviledges and Obliged to all Duties which belong to Members of Christ IV. AGAIN we ar told That This is the Bread of Sons and must not be given to Enemies The Former claus if the Syrophaenician woman hath not answered our Lord himself hath For in directing us to call God Father he hath given as a right to the Bread as well as the title of Sons And to the Later the Apostl hath furnished us with an answer For if when we wer Enemies Christ died for us if our Enmity did not hinder him from giving us his Bloud it self much less will it from allowing us it's Representative Our Catechism teacheth us to say I was by Baptism made a Member of Christ a Child of God and an Inheritor of the Kingdom of heaven And though we know that the washing away of the filth of the flesh will be far from Saving us if we answer it not by a good conscience toward God Yet is every Baptised and Unexcommunicate person however unworthy admitted to the priviledge of joining with the Church in All such Offices as call God our Father and Christ our Head And All such persons ar honored by the title of Faithful in the writings of the Apostl's and Primitive Fathers Baptism is urged as necessary to incorporate into Christs visibl body even those who ar not capabl to understand it Hearing is pressed as a duty upon those who receve not the truth in the Love
make all possible advantage of the Bread This they say must be the Lords Body in the literal sense bicause he hath categorically said so and since it is as easie for him to Do it as to Say it there is no Necessity and therefor no Reason why we should quit the most Proper sense For Reason must not be balanced against Faith This must believe the Thing though That cannot comprehend the Manner But the Wine all this while is laid aside as Unserviceable All the regard paid it is but as an Attendent It is concluded that since the Bread is the Lords Body the Wine must needs be his Blood whether our Lord have said any thing at all or any thing to the contrary concerning it or no. Yet our Lord honored the Wine No Less and the Apostle More than the Bread There are no Valves that hinder the Reflux but we may with the same Authothority and Evidence interpret That by This as This by That Now if we believe the Apostle Our Lord said not of the Wine This is my Blood but This Cup is the New Testament in my Blood And the literal sense saith not more plainly of the Bread This is my natural Body than it saith of the Wine This is NOT my natural Blood If therefore They may argue Positively That the Wine must be our Lords Blood bicause the Bread is his Body we may upon the same evidence argue Negatively The Bread is Not his Body but only the New Testament in his Body bicause the Wine is Not his Blood but only the New Testament in his Blood With the favor therefore of our better Champions I conceive we ought to learn as of the Adder so of the Papist to direct our blow to That part they are so careful to fence and restore the Cup to its due office Possibly they have denyed it its right in the Peoples celebration out of pique for the ill office it is so apt to do to their beloved doctrine let us restore it to Both its Rights its honor due by our Lords Institution and its power of interpretation due by the Laws of Reasoning We cannot more effectually silence their importunity for the literal sense than by claiming it They who deny Sense and Reason worthy to be ballanced against the Letter cannot deny One Element to be so against the Other What therefore they have put asunder if we remember our Lord to have joined together we cannot but know our selves obliged to Receive both in the same sense whether Literal or Mystical If Both are to be Mystically understood the querel is ended between us If Literally we make a new one between the Elements If One must comply he that hath One grain of it will grant that Reason must turn the scale on that side where it shall be found Those who deny it weight enough to preponderate the the Literal sense cannot deny it sufficient to turn Aequilibrate Scales So that the defect lyeth not in the Scripture but the Doctors whose partiality to One side above the Other hath made a difficulty which an equal regard to Both sides would have prevented And it is yet further considerable that they carry the same Partiality toward that side they so favor For as our Lords Institution hath two equal parts so hath their favored Proposition This is my Body And whereas the Laws of Reasoning require we should first understand the Subject and then the Predicate the Former they wholely lay aside and employ all their endeavors upon the Later which I might now insist upon as another Butcherly abuse but I shall hereafter meet another occasion to call it to account and therefore hasten to what more nearly concerns our present bisiness wherein if I should prefer reverence to persons however worthy above the Truth I am engaged to serve I ought to be branded with a worse Character than that of Irreverence to my betters which I expect to be accused of 2. Our own Divines therefore I cannot avoid impeaching as guilty of the same Partiality To cut the Higher part from the Lower is Another but no less irregular way of dissection especially when the Lower depends upon the influence of the Higher for all its Life and Motion That the 27th dependeth as a conclusion upon the Premises is manifest by the illative Wherefore From the Forgoing discourse therefore ought all the Following to derive its Life and Power Yet who is there that takes any notice of Those Premises or their Influence Doth not every one pass by All the rest and begin his endeavors at the Conclusion And as if we gloried in varying our irregularities into all possible shapes We take the quite contrary way with the next the 28th verse for whereas the Apostle there makes the Former half the harbinger of the Later we employ All our care about That and wholely neglect This which That is to serve Yea as if it were a small matter to Neglect we Countermand the express Injunction and so dash One Precept against Another Let a man examine himself saith the Apostle and so let him eat c. Let a man examine himself say we with all possible caution and so let him beware that he eat Not that Bread Nor drink of that Cup if he find himself Unworthy whatever the Apostle have said to the contrary V. BUT it is easier to find faults than to amend them and I promised not only to shew the cause of the embarra's but the way out which sure must be by the same Light and by contrary steps If we Therefor miss the Apostles tru meaning bicause we miss the tru way to trace it then must we needs be obliged to search after it in that same way which we have so discovered to be the Right and Forsaken one We must therefore carefully Anatomise the whole Discourse First observe the Design then the great Limbs then the least Particles Their proper Textures their mutual Aspects their joint Serviceableness to That Design which animates them All to its own Use But as in Dead bodies especially such as have any considerable time layen so many Dâ—cts disappear which during life were as Visible as Necessary and the Artist many times is led by mere Reason grounded upon consent of parts to Find out if possible otherwise to Suppose those secret channels whereof he finds no other evidence but necessity So are there in This Discourse very observable Suppositions which though they were sufficiently evident when the Apostle wrote and will ever be necessary for the circulation of his Argument yet by Length of time and Forgetfulness if not worse of those who should have kept them open are now so lost that without careful Probing they are not discoverable Two such Suppositions I shall now take upon Trust pawning all my labor to pay good Evidence for them in a more proper Season 1. That the Churches of Christ at That time celebrated All their Religious meetings with Fests This is more then
18. When you come together in the Church where the more general coming together is so appropriated to the Church that the indefinite when must be equivalent to whensoever as yet more plainly appears by ver 20. When you come together into one place it is not to eat the Lords Supper This is the extract of the whole charge That when they came together into That holy place which was set apart for Gods worship they so behaved themselves that what they did could not be taken for the Lords Supper A charge which now adays we should not decline and why should the Corinthians more than we We acknowledg might they not say yea we plead it We cannot be said to Eat the Lords Supper and what then therefore we cannot be said to Profane it This might have be'n an evasion as Effectual as Obvios if the Lords Supper were not concerned in Those very same meetings which he so Described and Reproved i. e. in All. This therefore is the sum of his Charge and it must be the Design of his Reasoning to prevent any evasion not to be do'n but by proving That in All their meetings the Lords Supper was Therefore Abused because it was Concerned in them All. Let us now consider by what Media he proveth it At the 23d vers he beginneth his evidence appealing to our Lords Institution explained by a Revelation In recital whereof it is most considerable that in reporting the consecration of the Cup he addeth words not mentioned by any of the Evangelists nor by himself in That of the Bread For none of Them say that our Lord said of the Cup Do this as often as you drink it nor doth Himself say that our Lord said of the Bread Do this as often as ye eat it The Reason of this difference we shall have a fitter time to enquire hereafter At Present we must not neglect to observe That as he is very careful thus to Insert these words so is he immediatly to Resume them and settle them as the Foundation of his whole Argument For upon this Supposition that our Lord preferred This Bread and This Cup which was constantly used in All Church-meetings to such an Office that whether they Considered it or no yea whether they Would or no it must set forth his death Then and not otherwise will All his Inferences follow that the abuse of This bread and This eup reach That body and blood which they so represent And lest This should fright them not only from the Abuse but the Use too of This bread and This cup to prevent so great an inconvenience he is careful to warn them that it is no less crime to disobey our Lords Authority than to Profane his Supper They must first examin themselves to prevent the One and then Eat this bread and drink this cup to avoid the Other And having thus secured the duty both in the Thing and the Manner he binds it by Threatnings to the end of the Chapter These are the great Limbs of this Body This the Process of the Argument Thus doth it answer his own character The body is fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth Not one joint too little or too much not One loose Expression not One word Impertinent or Unserviceable every part hath its mutual consent with every other part and its office of Serviceableness to the whole which also is complete without any the least defect His Charge made good in its whole Latitude The Corinthians convicted All Evasions barred The Crime displayed rhe Danger discovered the Duty inforced the only Safe way set forth and the Fear of deserting it prevented And because some require not only Logik force but Logik form too This is the formal Process of the Argument Those who so come together that they cannot be said to eaet the Lords Supper com together for the worse You so com together ver 21 22. The Proposition which alone needeth it he proveth by words purposely inserted in his recital of our Lords Institution ver 25. and resumed ver 26. As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup ye shew forth the Lords death which Proposition signifieth nothing unless helped with this Assumption As often as you come together in the Church you eat this bread and drink this cup. And by assistance of this Assumption the whole is made unanswerable This fundamental Assumption then Deserveth and Requireth our utmost care I shall therefore most diligently observe it And for greater clearness shall transpose the Apostles words reading them Thus This cup as often as you drink do it in remembrance of Me. And so we find these considerables 1. A certain special cup pointed at by the Demonstrative THIS 2. This cup made a standard whereby we must measure our performance 3. The Performance which we must mesur by This standard 4. The end for which we must do it And having thus stated our obligation by examining the Apostles discourse I shall examine what is said to the contrary by our late Divines who not heeding the Standard and mesuring the duty by a good but unfit one have defeated both our Lords design and their own too CHAP. II. Of the Necessiâ—y to fit the word THIS with somâ— singular Bread and Cup. I. The difference of our Lords stile towards this Bread and Wine from That towards litl children II. This subject requireth the clearest expression III. The Particle THIS most considerable IV. Grammar and Logick In Logick it is considerable 1. As a singl word a Demonstrative must have somthing for its object praecedances Every word must be answered by som Idea V. 2. As the subject of a Proposition The meaning of the Praedicate must be mesured by the capacity of the subject Offers at the import of the word rejected 1. That Individual 2. The whole kind 3. Somthing indeterminate 4. The Action OUR Lord after his last Supper treated Bread and Wine with such kindness as at another time he did little Children He took them up laid his hands upon them and blessed them But with This great difference that of Those he favored the Whole kind Suffer said he little children to come to me Little children indefinitely i. e. Any little children whatsoever and gave a Reason comprehensive as the Precept For of such is the kingdom of heaven Whereas Here he preferreth not Bread and Wine indefinitely nor speaketh a word of their Fitness for the honor recommendeth not either of them as Such but as This i. e. Not the whole Genus nor any Other Species but only This i. e. This singularly Proper cup. So great a difference in his Expression must needs proceed from a suitable difference in his Intention In the Former case his Words plainly declare his meaning That as often as Any parents or other friends desired to bring Any Children to him for his blessing his Disciples should admit them whoever they wer And had he now meant as
Universally of Bread and Wine as then he did of Children he Easily Might and therefor Certainly would have declared such a parallel Intention with a parallel Expression saying As often as you desire to set forth my death by a visibl representative do it with Bread and Wine for such viands ar proper to That end Thus I say he Might and therefore Would have declared his meaning if he had meant no more bicause Thus it would have be'n best understood For as reason required it was his constant Practice to deliver his Practical precepts in the clearest stile that the dullest apprehension of the most illiterate Fisherman might understand his duty II. IN the Mysteries of the Kingdom indeed especially such as might have temted his yet carnal followers to forsake him he Hinted and Intimated more than he thought fit to Express and he gave his reason I have many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now He therefore spake only so much as might serv to prepare them for that Spirit of truth which as it brought all his Sayings to their Memories and all his Institutions to their Understandings so did it indue them with power from on high to bear such truths as were then too Big for their narrow Capacities or too Heavy for their sensual Affections Now this is a Practical Precept Therefore Injoined that it may be Performed and for that reason oght so to be Expressed that it may be clearly Understood especially in such Necessary points as are to be Mesures of the Performance Besides as it is a Practical precept so it is a Positive one too And such above all other require the Fullest and Clearest declaration of the Authors meaning For Precepts Moral if they be less clearly delivered may receve further light from the candle of the Lord which shines in every mans Reason But Precepts Positive having no other Mesur but the mere Will of the Law-maker can have no other Interpreter but his Words which therefor need be as Clear as his intentions to be obeyed can be Real Which in This case we cannot doubt them to be since it is appropriate to his own Personal honor and favored with many expressions of his esteem If ever therefore we must mesure our Lords Mind by his Words it must be Now and Consequently Now must we most carefully examin the Proper sense of Every word by such tests as are owned by all mankind III. AND among his Words this Particle THIS as it hath the first Place so hath it a principal Importance Our Lord made it the head stone of the corner thogh the bilders have rejected it and made it a stone of stumbling For what St James said of the Toung may be applied to THIS Particle It is very litle in Bulk but very great in Power and that Power it exerciseth in the same Manner too The Bridle determins the motion of the otherwise wandring Horse and the Helm That of the otherwise floting Ship and THIS the otherwise Undermined object If we go on with St James and complain of it's setting on fire the course of nature the unhappy sentence may appear more gilty than Any But our THIS is so far from the Incendiary that had not it's help be'n refused it wold either have Prevented or Quenched the flames For had the Doctors imploy'd some of That care in duly Stateing the power of the word THIS which they have worse than lost upon Exalting that of the word BODY the Cup of blessing could never have spent as it hath do'n more blood of Christians than of the Grape But those who resolved to Deify the word BODY must Sacrifice to it our word THIS That they might destroy the principles of Natural Philosophy they must begin with those of Grammar and Logick which concur to require our Special regard to the neglected Particle IV. GRAMMAR tells us that it is a Pronoun Adjective and Demonstrative As an Adjective it cannot stand without a Substantive and as a Demonstrative it must have a proper Object to point at And Logik saith the Same if we look upon it as a Simple word and More if we look upon it as part of a Proposition If we look upon it as a Single word Logik calleth it Syncategorical which is another expression of the same office which Grammar ascribeth to it It so points at some Singular object as to change the Vagum into Determinatum and put as much difference between This Cup and Any cup as there is between Hic homo and Quidam which is no less than what the Proper name can add to the Common nature For if Peter be pointed at and called This man he is thereby as much distinguished from all other men as if he were named Obj. If it be thought sufficient that there is a difference between THIS and other bread as soon as it is prepared for Consecration Ans I answer We ar not yet com'n so far We are not now enquiring into the Consequence of the Action but into the Meaning of the Institution which was the Caus of the then futur Action We know it to be no Common Bread when it is Separate or about to be so from Common use but we wold also know whether it wer not distinguished from Common bread before the Institution required us so to Separate it whether it had not some Praevios fitness above Any other Bread which might prefer it before All orher to the Office wherewith our Lord honored it in consideration of That singular Praevios fitness Now since our Lord pointed to it by the Demonstrative THIS before ever he had Consecrated it and thereby declared it Singularly capable of the Office either it must have some Praevious singularity or the Demonstrative must be vain as having Nothing to demonstrate FOR Words are but Images of Thoghts and as That Thoght must be vain which hath no Thing to answer it so must That Word be that is not answered by a Thoght the One and the Other must be verified by some Idea But of All words the necessity lieth heaviest upon THIS Others must Signifie some proper object This doth not only Signifie but Point to it and must be not only Vain but Abusive if professing to shew somthing it have nothing to shew This Priest must of necessity have somthing to offer I here challenge Any one to shew me in Any Author whatsoever any one example wherein This Demonstrative createth the first Difference without any Praevios disposition in the Object so to be pointed at And 'till That can be do'n we may very well receve our Lords word in the same Sense since it carrieth the same Sound as it doth in Moses's stile This said he of the Blood of sprinkling THIS is the blood of the Covenant That Blood receved not All its proprieties from what Moses said or did But it First differed from All other blood by its Proper circumstances of offering and Moses finding it so Predisposed honored it with a
as between These Which must double the probability of the relation seeing it carieth apparent marks not of Father only but Grandfather too not only of the Tradition but the Rite of Sacrificing whence that Tradition was derived LET us then consider The Institution-Supper as it was Festival so was it Sacrificial more particularly it was Paschal i. e. a Fest of unleavened Bread And Bread was and still is therein honored with a solen Distribution and these words This is the bread of affliction which your fathers ate in Egypt Do you not perceve the air of our Lords Form This is my body which is given for you If not observe that of the Cup. Moses when he sprinkled the blood of the sacrificed Heifer upon the Peopl recordeth himself to have said Behold the blood of the Covenant which the Lord hath made with us the Apostle reciteth it This is the blood of the Testament or Covenant which the Lord hath enjoined you The One of these Forms is not more like to the Other than Either of them is to our Lords This is the blood of the New Testament or Covenant that is shed for you And 〈◊〉 we doubt This to be a copy of That Can we doubt but This pointeth at That as its shadow now to disappear Neither the Jewish stile which caleth their Table an Altar nor the Christian which caleth this the Sacrament of the Altar can desire a more honorable approbation than these words of our Lord give them manifestly owning That Jewish Phrase for the Parent and This Christian one for its Issu This resemblance of the Sacrificial Form added to the other of the Festival Mater what is it but the Scripture-way of naming considerable persons that we may not know Joshua the son of Nun more distinctly than we may this Festival Ceremony the issu of that Sacrificial CHAP. V. I. A plainer proof from Chap. 10. From the sameness of names In the Cup the Greeks aped the Jews The Apostle stileth the Cup of the Lord the Cup of blessing which is a perfect translation of the Hebrew name II. The breaking of Bread a Jewish phrase III. Some Phaenomena not salvable but by this Hypothesis IV. He expresly telleth us that each part of the Jewish Tradition by name is a part of our Lords Supper V. An Illustration from our Grace-cup VI. A Sacrament What NEVER did Talies more exactly agree than do This Institution and That Tradition both in Substances and Circumstances Yet shall we be content to let all this pass for Accidental and the Evidence thence derivable for Incompetent if we confirm it not by a Demonstration as full and unanswerable as the Subject can bear or the most Sceptical person require Suppose a Prince had be'n long lost and his Friends had met with a person of Princely deportment carrying in his countenance all the features and in his voice the perfect tone of the lost Prince This must certainly make them full of hopes that it was the same and what greater satisfaction would they desire than This that som credibl person of his retinu should giv in his clear Testimony that it was so And what clearer testimony could any such person give or how could he more effectually express it than by naming him by his proper name and declaring that this Person â—â—â—med was the Prince they desired If therefor we find the Apostle call the Lords Supper in each Element by the very same names as the Jews did each Mater in their Tradition and then declare them to be the Communion the one of his Body and the other of Blood I might hope the evidence capable to silence all doubts Look we then back to the 10th Chapter and observe his motions and expressions His Design there is to dissuade his Corinthians from communicating with Heathens in their Idols Temples His Medium for this he there taketh from the same Topik as he doth here for the reproofs of their misdemeanors in the Church As Here the Lords Supper is inconsistent with Intemperance so is it There with Idolatros Fests There is saith he implicitely the same relation between the Church of Christ his Table and his Cup with Us as between the Temple of the Idol his Table and his Cup with Them These are the Characteristiks of an Idolater as Those are of a Christian and therefor you cannot use them Both bicause you cannot at once be of Both families In pressing this Argument he so manageth each part of the Lords Supper as may best answer the Customs of the Heathen from which he is to dissuade them That they used any benedictions of Bread is nether manifest nor probable because not so suitable to the Greeks humor which ran all upon Drinking But their Closing-cup is so evident that they who above all Nations in the World were excellent at Both Speaking and Drinking could not find a word more expressive of Drunkenness than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if it were the inseparable attendant of Sacrificeing And that in their other Fests they aped this Tradition as in their Sacrificing they did the Law appeareth by what we find in many of their Poets and other Writers I mention only the Scholiast who seemeth litle more than a Translator of the last claus of our Rabby 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The custom was to offer drink to the good daemon when the Table was about to be taken away This doth the Apostle so lay hold on as to express in their own abominable stile therein opposing Name to Name as expresly as he doth Cup to Cup caleth That by the Name themselves had given it the Cup of Devils for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is only the diminitive of their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And thereto opposeth the Cup of the Lord by the very same Name which the Jews in the above-mentioned Tradition knew it by For this I urge as most considerable that to this day they call their closeing Cup 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which it is not possible to translate into Greek more exactly than the Apostle hath do'n by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Strength or at least the Evidence of the Argument dependeth upon the Sameness of the Name whereby he here pointeth at the Cup no less yea perhaps more plainly than we have seen him do in the next Chapter by his Demonstrative This and I think it not easy to find a third way wherein he could have more clearly have do'n it No properer way of determining an Individuum than either to call him by his proper Name Peter or John c. or by pointing at him and saying This man Thus do these two Arguments mutually enlighten each other and Both concur to make it manifest that the Cup of Blessing in the 10th Chap. and that pointed at by the Demonstrative This in the 11th Chapter are the same with that which the Jews honored both in the same Circumstances and by the same Name too II. AND this will be yet
than what you have received let him be accursed When our Lord himself hath so reveled his mind All the inhabitants of Earth and Heaven should they combine are nether to be believed against the Revelation nor obeyed against the Command And to what purpose such a Revelation and such a Vouching If These words do not Streighten the obligation they will be but Impertinent if they Slacken it they will be Worse They can no other way answer the Care bestowed upon them but by inforcing constancy in the performance IV. 2. MY next Observation is the Partiality wherewith the Apostle treateth the Cup which alone is honored with these considerable words Somthing of This Partiality we have already observed in his Argument against the Cup of Devils which added to what we are now considering will duble the weight Describing the Institution he giveth the Bread its due Place but as cold a Treat as possible Affordeth it not so much as the common articl but without welt or gard speaketh in the slightest manner 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and describeth our Lord as equally slighting it not stiling it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but Indefinitely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 much less giving it the power to mesur the performance But coming to the Cup ver 25. He useth it with much more deference himself and reporteth our Lord to have used the same Partiality He saith indeed that our Lord took the Cup 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But the Equality must relate to the Tradition which it equally honored not to the Circumstances wherewith it self was honored not in Like but in Higher manner 1. He expresseth the exact Season After Supper and This in exact conformity to the Jewish stile which useth to fix a character of emphasis upon the Cup After Supper As we find most properly to our purpose Berach cap. 7. ver 6. Wine is broght to them in the midl of the meal they bless severally every one by himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For That After meal one blesseth for them all Where that prefix ל payeth deference the Wine After Supper as to Wine of note But this is not payed to Bread because none but the Paschal Cake was distributed After Supper and had our Apostle spoken of That in the same stile he had intimated that which he endeavoreth to confute viz. that our Lords Supper was successor to the Passover 2. He honoreth it with an emphatical Article 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 3. Then he describeth our Lords partiality who did not speak of it as of the Bread with a simpl 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but more emphatically 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 4. Nor Indefinitely This is my blood as of the Bread This is my body but with an Explication fixing his meaning This is the New Testament in my blood 5. And above All the important 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is industriosly put upon the Cup and denied to the Bread Let us now reflect He First reciteth the consecration of the Bread and he could no otherwise matter of fact obliged him to it as appeareth by the uniform testimony of all the Evangelists which spake any thing of it Yet he prefaceth the consecration of the Cup with the note of conformity In like manner also In which form of speaking it is Not unusual to omit in reciting the later what had be'n expressed in the former the very phrase excusing because manifesting the Ellipsis used merely to avoid the tediosness of repetition But it is contrary both to Reason and Practice that any thing should be omitted in the Former and understood in the Later and therein expressed by such a conforming Phrase when This cannot find in That any likeness What the Reason of this strange method is we shall the better discover if we observ Another care which seemeth to cross This. He is very punctual in reciting the difference of Time between the consecration of the One and the Other Our Lord took the Bread when he had given thanks and the Cup when he had supped His Argument wold have go'n more Smoothly thogh not so Strongly if in the common way of speaking he had made the later every way like the former But how could he avoid this cross Should he give the Cup the precedence he must then misreport matter of Fact Should he then apply these mesuring words to the Bread that he might speak of the Cup in like manner also He must then have confounded his Own argument For the mesuring clause must have signified either too much or too little too little if this should point at the Paschal Bread too much if to the Ordinary For since of All Fests the Passover was most prefigurative of our Lords Death and he delivered rhe Bread with such a form of words as manifestly alluded to the Paschal cake if to such peculiar suitableness with That Season and That Form he had added These words also Would not the Demonstrative have pointed to the Bread as Paschal and consequently would not these words have required us to mesure our performance of the Lords Command by that of God to Moses And would not this have cleared the Corinthians from any profanation of his Supper except only in the Easter Communion But if these words had be'n applied to the Bread as blessed Before Supper then must they have signified too much For they would have comprehended not only every Fest but every Private meal They would not be a Rubrike for Publik worship in the Church but Advice for Private manners at home they would neither require Fest nor Communion nor distinguish the Church of God from the meanest Parlor Possibly to Prevent certainly to Remove both sides of mistake and to convince the Corinthians of their obligation to close neither All their Private nor Only their Paschal but All and Only their Festival Suppers with our Lords he So describeth the Institution that it appeareth probable that our Lord distributed the Bread at the Beginning and more so that he did it before the End of Supper but manifest that the Cup he delivered at its proper time And since the Cup was the Adaequate character of a Fest to the Cup only must the power be given which these words import Let Any one giv Any other tolerabl account why the Apostl should thus deprive the First-born of the Blessing which naturally belongs to it and I must confess my self to have lost a great evidence of the Relation between our Lords Institution and the Tradition whence I endevor to prove it derived There are too many who have need to consider another honor to which our Lord preferred the Cup above the Bread He said not Eat ye All but said Drink ye All of this Whether This difference wer occasioned by Judas 's Presence when That was distributed and his Absence when this was so is not so plain as it is that it falleth very cross to the Laws of That Infallible Church which denying the people the Cup takes away
the better half of our Lords Supper and the Whole of the Apostl's Argument which cannot out-live this lose but would not have be'n wounded so mortally by That of the Bread V. 3. MY last remark is that in the Deductions which which himself draweth from our Lords purposly recited Institution he payeth to the Bread joint honor with the Cup which he had denied it for no other reason but only for its unserviceableness to his Argument Those Deductions ar ushered with ver 26. For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup ye shew forth the Lords death till he com 1. Here we see he applieth These relative words to Both elements whereas in recital of our Lords Institution he had not at all applied them to the Bread And this contrary to that know'n rule which forbids the Conclusion to infer more than was conteined in the Premises Hereof what other account can there be given or what better desired than the Tradition offereth In the former verse he was to state our Lords mind reveled to himself concerning Frequency And thereof the Cup was the only Standard because That alone distinguished Festival Suppers from Common But in This he is to describe the Supper it self wherein the Bread hath right not only to be joined with it but to be preferred before it Had he now excluded the Bread he must have intimated concerning It what som without any such color declare concerning the Cup that it were needless bicause the Supper were complete without it But by this care he preventeth any such concept 2. He addeth another Claus not mentioned in the Institution 'till he com thereby either to obviate an evasion in point of Duration if possibly the Corinthians might pretend to shift from his reproofs by supposing the Obligation worn out or to strengthen the command by shewing how great esteem our Lord had for it as extending it to all times future as well as present 3. But the most remarkable is this that the Imperative is changed to the Indicative A change so Considerable and otherwise so unaccountable that our glorios Dr. Hammond thinketh it not to be made The Greek is indifferent to both but in the Imperative there appeared a grain of sense and none at all in the Indicative For if in the Subject of the Indicative proposition we see no other difference between This Bread and Cup and and any Other Bread and Cup but what our own actual Consecration hath advanced it to if this stile be only a Periphrase of the Lords Supper differing therefrom only in Syllables then will the Proposition tell us no news at all Every child will without its help understand that as often as we eat This bread and drink This cup upon no other reason but this that we may thereby shew forth our Lords death we shew forth our Lords death And that the Apostl should so carefully bring a candl to shew us the Sun seemed no way probable to our learned Doctor But if the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be read Imperatively not ye do but do ye then may there be so much of reason in the Precept as there is of possibility to do otherwise For look how much danger there is that we may do this without shewing forth our Lords death just so much need there is of Caution and just so much reason will there be in the Command which hath no other use but to prevent such danger whereas in the Indicative as there can be no possibility of error since the very naming of the Subject makes the Praedicate self-evident so can there be no reason for the Proposition Yet all this while if there be Any at all there can be â—ut a very small difference for the Performance containeth the End almost as necessarily as the Subject doth the Praedicate it is almost as hard to do this without shewing forth our Lords death as it is to doubt whether we oght to do it or no And all that can be gotten by the change is this that upon supposition of the Reverence which every one will certainly pay our Lords Person the command enjoining an action in remembrance of our Lords death will by consequence mind them of doing it with such Intentions But be the gain litle or great we must quit it because the word FOR which ushereth the declaration necessarily requireth the Indicative mode Had it be'n an Illative wherefor or therefor the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 had be'n indifferent to the other mode Therefor do ye had be'n all as proper as Therefor ye do But the Causal FOR will by no means indure any other than an Indicative It s proper office is to confirm our Belief or instruct our Understanding not to command our Will No Author ever speaks so nor will our Ears indure such an incongruos sound so that our excellent Doctor must lose on one hand whatever he may seem to gain on the other and he will reap but small thank from the Apostle by delivering him from a supposed Solaecism in Logik and casting him upon a real one in Grammar I say it is but a supposed Solaecism in Logik and That supposition is grounded upon our inadvertency For grant once that our Demonstrative This and our Relative 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 point to some praeviosly singular Bread and Cup and immediatly we discover a sens so far from trifleing that probably it will appear too severe certainly most worthy of so great an Apostle most serviceable to his Argument and most worthy our utmost consideration For thus will it convince the Corinthians It is in vain for you to pretend that you do not celebrate the Lords Supper in Those your intemperate meetings FOR I have so recited our Lords Institation that you may plainly perceve it to be his meaning that as often as you drink This cup which he Then consecrated and which is the same with that wherewith you close All your Church Fests you must do it in remembrance of Him FOR he hath not left it in your power to make his Supper Concerned or Unconcerned by celebrating it as often or as seldom as you please in such meetings yea or to choose which way you will be guilty whether of Disobedience to his Command by Omitting the duty or of Contemt to his Person by Doing it unworthily FOR he hath inlayed it upon All such Fests so inseparably that thogh you would you cannot take Any of them without it FOR YOU DO whether you intend it or no whether you will or no notwithstanding any contrary Intention You Do you cannot but Do what he hath thus made not only Unlawful but utterly Impossible for you to Omit It is not only a Command obliging you but an Institution necessitating you and you cannot avoid the Actual doing it if you avoid not All Church Fests FOR as often as ye eat This bread you eat That whereof our Lord said This is my body and as often as you drink This
him by his Father with its counterpart which by I know not what means he had obtained out of the Scriptoire of another Family He applieth the One to the Other sheweth their exact agreement in every word of the Writing every turning of the Indenture and every stroke of the divided Letters and proveth this could not be the effect of any collusion bicause there had ever be'n and still continued a mortal feud between his own Family and That whence he had gotten the counterpart If this be our present Case we are to consider 2 things First the agreement of the Counterparts and 2ly the impossibility of Collusion 1. The Agreement of the Apostl's Argument with the Thus stated Custom we have fully discovered 1. In the Body of the discours in either Chapter In the 10th chap. both Bread and Cup caled by their proper Jewish names and under Those very names urged to be Body and Blood of the Lord. In the 11th chap. the Argument no other way Rational This way Unanswerable many words and Aspects of words no other way accountable This way Necessary the Charge otherwise to be evaded This way Unavoidable In the whole not one word or order of words impertinent deficient or superfluos 2. In the Indenting every reeling step exactly jointed with the answerably crooked process of the Argument No discours in the World so full of odd bizarreries every one this way rendered rational clear and convictive In the 10th chap. the names of Both elements industriosly so Varied as to answer the Jewish stile and so Transposed as to answer the Apostl's argument In the 11th chap. the Demonstrative THIS affectedly inculcated the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 inforcedly appropriate to the Cup thogh distributed in like manner with the Bread The Bread honored above the Cup one way the Cup above the Bread another way 3. Letters so cut in sunder that in the Apostl's discours we find but one half not to be read but by supplying the other half from the Tradition THIS without an object 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without a relative look like tails of Letters without heads but by application to This custom becom fairly legible So exact agreement in such strange variety one would think Gods providence here acted the Chirographer managing the Apostl's pen in such a manner that after the death of all Wirnesses and loss or embeazling of all other Evidences we might by this multiplied sutableness be armed against all doubt which either malice or carelesness of the Jews forgetting or corrupting their Tradition might bring upon us IV. 2. THE other part of my Assumtion is that This Agreement could not be the issu of the Jews conforming their practice to our Lords Institution Since the greatest Care maried to the greatest Wit Could not produce such an offspring and the Jews Would not employ ether the One or the Other to such a purpose 1. It were extravagant credulity to believ they Would employ such Care Their very differences concerning the Tradition of their Fathers is abundant evidence that they minded not its agreement or disagreement with our Scriptures And their known zele against our Lord and Apostle is a yet greater one that they would not be more careful to explain the Ones institution and the Others argument than all the Fathers of the Christian Church have be'n Shall we believ their esteem for their Gamaliel so much greater than their hatred of Saint Paul that they should he more than masorically careful to contrive a way whereby to make such a discours worthy the Disciple of their so famous Master Do they so glory in their ancestors crucifying the Lord of Life that they put themselves to great care and cost to adorn the Monument which himself raised to his own memory and That with such Figures as should blazon His great goodness and their great wickedness Were the Jewish Rabbins so much more careful of Christs worship than the Fathers of his own Church that when These had lost the key which must unlock his Oracles Those took the pains to make a new one Whoever can believ this shall never from Them receve the thanks which he shall deserv for such exorbitant charity 2. To believ their Wit capable of finding out such an invention is no less incredible So many wheels so many motions so smoothly and so strongly cooperating so remote from the common practice of All other Nations so suitable to the humor of their own so exactly fitting every titl of the Apostl's discourse and the circumstances wherein it was written was sure above all human Wit to invent Many discoveries appear obvious when made which yet for thousands of years escaped the sagacity of all mankind The very difficulties and odnesses of the Apostles discurs have be'n so far from Smoothed that many of them have not be'n Observed by any Critiks and Commentators and perhaps might not have be'n so now had not their agreement with This key occasioned it It is not to be believed that the Apostl should make the least fals step drop the least syllable that should be impertinent much less that should be mischievos to his design And the account that is to be given of them must equal the sum to a farthing Whoever will suppose the Discours worthy of a reasonabl man much more whoever will suppose it worthy the Holy Spirit if he reject what I offer Let him to his study let him summon together All his faculties let him use as much liberty of invention as he please and if he can find out any Hypothesis that shall so cleverly answer all the Phaenomena erit mihi magnus Apollo Since therefor chance Could not and the Jews neither could nor would conform their practice to our Lords Institution and the Apostl's discurse The conclusion must be That both This and That were conformed to the Jewish practice And I thank my worthy Friend for giving me occasion to confirm what I have said by this Reflection V. ANOTHER OBJECTION saith That if our frequency in celebrating the Lords Supper must be mesured by such a Grace-cup since there can be no such Grace-cup where there is no Fest no more than there can be an end without a beginning or an Adjunct without a Subject it will be as necessary that a Fest should alway usher the Lords Supper as that the Lords Supper should attend every Fest and so the revers of our Hypothesis will no less severely reprove the Universal Church of Christ for Not festing in All meetings than did the Apostl the Corinthians for not honoring the Lords Supper in them All but every particular member of Christ's Church will be blameless though he never communicate in such manner as by his Church-officers he is invited to do since he is to do it only so often as by That Practice whence Christ's Institution was derived he is obliged i. e. only so often as a Fest is to be closed with a cup of blessing To answer such an
Objection and withal to justifie our Ancestors for casting sensual Fests out of the Church I shall say sufficient Part III. Chap. 3. Besides these two Objections for which I am obliged to my Friends two others offered themselves to mine own mind which I also think fit to answer VI. IT may be further objected That the Jewish Custom concerned not Religious Worship but Domestik Fests as worthy of greater reverence saying What Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in or despise ye the Church of God Since therefor the Grace-cup was to be drunk in their Own houses and This in the Church how can the One be derived from the Other I answer This Objection by steps 1. It is not requisite that the Successor should answer the Predecessor in all Circumstances Yea the One may be opposed to the Other in very material Ones The Apostle even when he pleadeth Christ to be the tru Sacrifice opposeth his blood to that of bulls and goats as in other respects so in This of Frequency Those were offered often This but Once yet were Those types of This. 2. It is requisite that rhe Successor should be more perfect than the Predecessor The Antitype must excel the Type as the Gospel doth the Law the Body the Shadow 3. Difference of place the ground of the Objection is caused by difference of Dispensations That Gods worship is no longer confined to One Place is one of the great changes wrought by the Gospel and This makes it needless for Us to make out own houses Temples Gods House is so near our own that we need no Chappels of ease 4. This was the very design of the Tradition they took the Names and did what possibly they could to perform the Things caled their Table an Altar c. and so professing to do their utmost and com as near as possibly they could to the performance which could not legally be accomplished but only at Hierusalem This therefor is so far from an Objection against our deriving the Lords Supper from such a Tradition that it is a Reason for it It doth not in This respect contradict it as at first glance it may seem to do but comply with it The Tradition expressed their endeavor to offer their meat in God's house if possibly they could and since that which they so professed to endeavor is to us not only Possible but Easy we could not answer the very fundamental design of the Tradition if we did not make the Lord's House the place of his Supper 5. This difference of Place speaks the Lords Supper successor not only to the Tradition which was it self but a Succedaneum but to the Legal Sacrifices themselvs That hindrance being removed which induced the Jews to invent such a supply This Institution by a motion of refiliency passeth through rhe Succedaneum to the Principal Yea and the very Principal it answers not as an Inferior but a Superior and therefor required a Place Superior if possibl not only to their own houses but the Templ it self The Apostl maketh This an Instance of the greater dignity of Christ's Priest-hood that he entered into a Holier place than did Aaron or his seed Since therefor this Bread and Wine hath a better title to Christs Body and Blood than had the flesh and blood of Bulls and Goats and yet Those might not legally be offered but at God's House and since This very Tradition professed to do what possibly could be do'n to Fest before God in his own House it was not suitable either to the greater dignity of this Holier Sacrifice or to the very significancy of the Tradion that it should be celebrated except in case of necessity in any other than God's own House 6. As the dignity of the Sacrament so the interest of the Poor too Christ's body in another sens caled for This translation The Rich make as many Fests as Meals and were their own Tables the Altars might celebrate daily Sacraments But the Poor to whom our Lord bears as great affection as to his Supper seldom eat Three together which is the necessary Number or drink Wine which is the Necessary Mater and for this dubl defect must be excommunicate thogh guilty of no other falt but what they certainly repent their Poverty What therefor they must otherwise have lost they gain by the publikness of the Place which also gains the greater number So the Poor gain the Fest and the Table gains Guests and the Tradition gaineth greater perfection by being So answered as to be outdo'n by the Sacrament VII THE most Obvios OBJECTION or Prejudice rather which hath more force thogh less weight than an Objection cometh from the Universal silence of All ages in a Subject of such importance For it seemeth utterly incredibl that in so many hundreds of years and thousands of Books we should not meet one word that so much as intimateth what might justly require to be most plainly Manifested But This Objection however big it looks at first sight Will hardly stand a strict examination or reply upon what shall be answered For 'pray' Reader consider Whence will you expect such an account From the Primitive ages They thoght it needless From the Later They thoght it Prejudicial 1. The PRIMITIVE ages thoght it Needless to give such an account in their Writings bicause they constantly gave it in their Practice It would have be'n a disparagement to the Institution to have writen upon it as the bungling Painter did upon his rude pieces This is a Cock This is a Bull c. and it would have be'n a fulsom officiosness to inform a Reader of what he daily saw with his eyes The Reason of every Negative ceremonial Law was at the time of stablishment legibl as the Letter but in following Generations almost utterly lost till Maimonides discovered that most of them pointed at som Idolatrous Ceremony at That time practised by the neighbor Nations and therefor forbidden the Jews upon the same account as were their daghters And the same is the case in most Positive commands Generally som present custom declares the contents thogh afterward by degrees it wears into more and more obscurity and in process of time grows utterly illegible I instance only in the Other Sacrament Both Scripture and Antiquity have be'n altogether as silent concerning the Origination of That as of This. All that we read of it in the Gospel amounts to no more but This that John ministred it the People received it and the Pharisees questioned Why Baptisest thou if thou be not the Christ nor Elias nether that Prophet No Evangelist thought fit to expound the reason either of the Action or Objection bicause the Then knowen custom sufficiently manifested it which yet was lost as much as This to many Generations thogh now retrived and generally owned by the Learned and why should not This share the right of Postliminium as it hath do'n the loss 2. LATER ages desired to hide any such notice They
who com not So often At least must be punishee as Non-conformists those who com not much Oftner thogh they fall not under her Discipline do under her Reproofs as we com now from hearing We can no more infer Three times a Year sufficient for the Communion bicause the Church doth not punish those who come so often than Once in a month to be sufficient for Divine Service because the Law punisheth not those who com so often Rules of Government have mesures different from Rules of Devotion Our Church seemeth to have taken her mesures from the Council of Agatho and Eliberis which declare That those who do not communicate on the Fests of Nativity Easter and Pentecost are not to be accounted Catholik She manifestly declareth her judgment to agree with what we have all this while be'n proving Not every Sunday but almost for every other Holy day she hath appointed a preparative Vigil that we may examin our selvs with Fasting and Prayer and every Festival hath its proper Communion Service to be read at the Time and Place of the Lords Supper Just in the same circumstances as Justin Martyr hath described the practice of the Church in His days when the Reader and Preacher have do'n their offices when the Catechumens are dismissed with the Benediction of The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ c. Then doth the Priest go to the Holy Table accompanied in Collegiat Churches and Chappels with one or two assistants There to read the Communion Service every Holy day throughout the year V. LET us now suppose a Priest of ether party about to read the Communion Service at the Holy Table declaring what he believeth to be the Churches meaning in that office and it will not be hard to judge which of the two will best deserv her thanks He that will make her satisfied with his three times in a year must speak to this purpose Behold hither am I com'n in conformity to the Customs of the Primitive Church and the Constitutions of our own The first Churches celebrated the Lords Supper every Holy dry and Ours ordaineth the Communion Service to be read every such day in the same circumstances After the Benediction with an Offertory at the Holy Table Here am I and my brethren ready to assist me to communicate to you and with you If any Isaac demand Here is the fire and the wood but where is the Lamb Here are all other requisites but where is the Bread and Wine Know that our Church doth as litl intend a Communion as Isaac did to be Sacrificed She doth not indeed affront your sences by Consecrating the Elements without Communicating them as doth the Church of Rome but she is no less willing to withold them from you She is content you should communicate thrice every Year that the memory of the Institution be not quite lost but would have you mannerly and modest not constant and importure guests com by such intervals as may becom the awe due to so venerable a Mystery not with such constancy as may signifie familiarity with it For however our Lord intended and the Apostls and best ages of the Church conformed themselvs to his Intentions that his Supper should be the constant office in every Church meeting yet experience hath proved such Constancy prejudicial to its Honor and therefor our Church hath taken this midl away constantly to do somwhat in obedience to the Lords Institution yet to forbear the complete office in reverence to his body and blood that as plenty hath made it cheap so scarcity may advance its value To this purpose must such an one speak that will father such an opinion upon the Church But he that pleads for constancy may borrow a better speach from St. Chrysostom who complains Here we wait and none com or from St. Augustin who expostulates What cause is there O hearers that ye see the Table and com not to the Banquet Yea or from her Own Exhortation now mentioned which assisted with her Rubrik prescribing to the Priests once every week at the least will complain not only of deserting the Table when furnished but of Discoraging the Ministers from furnishing it as constantly with the Holy Fest as they do with the Office which supposes it For thus may such an one speak Here we attend in conformity to our Lords Institution the Practice of the Primitive Church and the Injunctions of our Own to communicate with you the Lords Supper We do not indeed bring forth the Bread and Wine bicause it is too manifest that in so doing we must either expose them to contemt by not using them at all or use them our selves alone The choice is hard and the Church of Rome hath chosen the Later but without escaping the Former For how can That be caled a Communion as by the Apostl it is where One takes all to himself or how is the holy Supper rescued from contemt when all but one are idle spectators not vouchsafing to be guests at the divine Supper Our Church hath taken the best cours that in so great a streight she could to avoid Both sides of the inconvenience That our Lords body blood may not be so exposed she forbids us to celebrate the Communion unless there be a competent number to communicate and to avoid loss of any opportunity she directs those who intend to communicate that they signifie their readiness by sending their names in convenient season to the Curate By the One she provides that the Fest be not dishonored for want of Guests and by the Other that the Desirous be not hindered for want of the Fest And lest this omission of bringing Bread and Wine should be mistaken for an intimation that it is not our duty to receve them she hath provided that upon Every Holy day we be put in mind of our Obligation Yesterday Eve was consecrate to Fasting and Prayer for This very purpose that we might thereby prepare our selvs to receve the Holy Supper this day And now that the Common Prayer is ended and the rest of the people who are not capable to communicate ar dismissed with their blessing according to the practice of Christ's Church in the best ages we com up to the holy Table in this its proper place and season to read the Communion-service that you may understand there oght to be a Communion joined with This Service if you would not be wanting to your duty in receiving it You know we dare not adventure to expose the holy Viands without giving you a weeks warning nor dare we give you such warnings as Frequently as we desire much less as Gonstantly as we ought bicause we sind you too backward to entertene even Those too rare Invitations which we give you But that you may see with what regret we submit to That necessity you thus put upon us Our Church is careful clearly to intimate how much more she Wisheth than she Dareth to Command What reason
hardness of the peopl's hearts In so corrupt an age we may not stand upon our Lords In the beginning it was not so but yield to his Suffer it to be so now I therefor urge no more but this That it is the duty of every Minister to labor with his people to com constantly and to offer the Holy Communion as often as he can prevail with them to receve it Against this so complaisant Assertion bicause St. Augustin's out-running followers have not only opposed his Let every one do what he thinks best but preferred the Centurions aw before Zacheus's reception therefor must this doubl Error be encounter'd with a doubl Question 1. Whether our Lords Do this take not away our liberty to forbear it 2. Supposing we had liberty to do what we believe best whether it were not better to do it frequently than seldom 1. Our first Question must be Whether our Lords Do this leave us any liberty to forbear when we think it better In this Enquiry we must distinguish between Laws Moral and Positive II MOral Laws ar written in the fleshly tables of the heart whose yielding nature may take impression from the various occurrences of life Those Laws as they ar Dictated by Reason so must they be Interpreted by it and bend to the several requires of the subject matter For the Philosopher cannot so fix the bounds of Vertu but that in many cases the Determination of a Prudent man is necessaty to distinguish it from Vice But God wrote his Positive Laws in Tables of Stone whose rigor was uncapabl of yielding Of such Laws the Will of the Law-giver was the Only Reason and must be the Only Mesure We must do Just so no less nor no more nor no otherwise Reason hath here nothing to do but to deny it self to have the least power to Dispens or Derogate or Commute or any way Decline from the express voice of the Law Uzzah could not then plead the appearance of necessity or the evidence of his good meaning when the danger of the Law was greater one way than that of the Ark was the other way To this surpose ler us reflect upon what we have already observed that our Apostl vouched our Lord's authority that so he might assert both the Truth and Importance of what he delivered For we cannot now deny the Truth without affronting the Apostl's veracity nor the Importance without disparaging our Lord's wisdom for the One must be said to take great care for a subject of no valu or the Other report a falshood We have seen som danger that our Lord's mind might be mistaken as if he either intended to consecrate none but the Paschal Supper or valued the whole office at no higher rate than he used to do outward performances We need no other evidence that the Corinthians might probably believ This than the commonness of This belief now notwithstanding the Apostl's indeavor to confute it in both its members by This declaration which plainly discovereth how much our Lord valued this office how often we must perform it and how litl power we have to abate any thing of it For these reasons he doth not plead here as before in another case of outward decency Doth not appeal to Their Judgments nor offer his Own saith not as cap. 10. I speak as to wise men judge you what I say nor as chap. 7. I give my judgment This say I not the Lord but quite contrary This say not I but the Lord and the consequence is Neither I nor an Angel from heaven must be believed against the Revelation Neither I nor an Angel from heaven much less a mans own humor can any way relax the Obligation Grant therefore now that the Observation be as Tru as the Subject is Unhappy suppose Frequence bring danger of Cheapness must we therefor presume to make it Scarce No doubtless If we will needs hear Reason it will tell us that our Lord knew this as well as We It was so Before and In and Ever Since His days as it is in Ours How then dare any one judge That a sufficient reason to hinder him from Doing this which our Lord judged not so to hinder him from Commanding it Doth not such an one declare himself both Superior and Wiser If thou judg the Law saith S. James thou art not a Doer of the law but a Judge I may add Thou art not only a Judge but an Unjust one if thy sentence rob the law of it's due so much more so by how much greater care our Lord took to have it duly paid III. HE therefor that breaketh This which is not the Least of our Lords Commandments and teacheth men so must be weighed in others scales than those of St. Augustine Not compared with the modest Centurion or forward Zacheus but with the most Disobedient Rebel and the most Unworthy Communicant and even so will be found more inexcusable than the worst For he that Doth This however unworthily payeth Somthing of obedience owneth our Lords Authority is easily Convinced of his Crime But he that saith he needs not do it doth not only deny the Law to have power over himself but assumeth to himself power over the Law and renounceth all Need and therefor all Benefit of Repentance He that Disobeyeth the Kings Law may be a Felon but he that setteth up an Opposit Authority is a Rebel and declaring himself as all Rebels do a most Faithful Subject is thereby the more Unpardonabl He that doth this unworthily is guilty of the body and bloud of the Lord he dishonoreth his Person and that in his Humanity but he that Renounceth any Obligation to do it is guilty of his Crown and Dignity Deposeth him from his Throne and affronteth the Majesty of his Divinity and his pretence of Reason for disobedience whether it be Reverence or his Teachers Authority or what ever els it be it is a Rival to obedience and it 's plausibl Pretences make it so much the more properly Rebellious This perhaps may seem too Severe I grant it nor do I believ our Lord judgeth according to such Rigid mesures but Rigid as they ar they ar Just and may be urged against the Doctrines thogh not against the Persons For if the Preformance be bound upon us by a Positive Law of Christ and Forbearance only by my Own or my Teachers Reason If I prefer This abve That and Justifie my doing so what is this but to say I will not have That but This to reign over me We may not therefor without manifest Deposing our Lord pretend any thing Equal to his Authority but if we will decline our obedience to This Command we must fetch our Warrant from That alone as dispensing with us in such cases as we oppose to our obligation IV. AND this Warrant must be as Express as his Command and it must be either a Countermand or a Dispensation 1. A Countermand may be either Express or Implicit If
it be not possibl to do this without breaking some Other no less evident Law This will amount to an Implicit Countermand For then will This Law lose all its weight by the equal Counterweight of That Other bicaus the Same Lord who said Do This will have said also Do Not That and when such a Counter-Law is Pleaded and Proved we must acquiesce But Where Where in the name of Christ is such a Counter-Law In what Book whar Chapter what Vers do we find him say Do Not This Pretences we find in abundance but where do we find them Authorised Where is it written Do not this if there be a Judas in the company Do it not if you may not do it without diminution of your liberty in things indifferent Do it not if you may not do it in such Manner such Forms such a Place such Company such Gesture c. as your selves like Best Do it not if the Form of Administration have any Mixture of humane Ordinances or the Assembly any mixture of Profane or Suspicios Persons Or which is the same Kind thogh not the same Color Do it not as Often as you have Opportunity if you believ your Often doing it will occasion your doing it Less Reverently If in any of These or any Other cases we find any such Express or Implicit Countermand as with equal Clearness of Words and equal Evidence of Sens and equal Absolutness of Command can ballance our Lordr Do this we must yeild but els whatever weight is Wanting in the Opposite Scale is Left in the Obligation V. 2. AND the same rule also holdeth in the Other kind of Warrant If we pretend our selfs not Countermanded but Dispensed wth we must have an Express Word declaring us so in That particular case I say we must have an Express Word For Consequences of Our own drawing unless they be so absolutely Unavoidabl as to be equivalent to an Express word may not be interpreted for a competent Dispensation since it is an undoubted rule That every Dispensation is a grievance to the law therefore to be avoided as much as possibl in defence of the Law There is indeed an Express word which hath too long and too generally be'n taken for an Vnlimited Dispensation not only to the Grievance but the very Destruction of the Law upon which Very account besides others I hope I h ve cleared it from that mistake and therefor shall now say no more concerning it Our future troubl will be with som Consequential defeasances draw'n from som cautionary expressions of the Apostl no less perverted against his meaning than Those other words are against both His and our Lord's He declareth it a great crime to do this Unworthily and for That reason warneth us to Examin our selfs and from hence some hastily infer That if we have be'n hindered from This Preparation and some others that if we have neglected it then ar we not only Excused but Prohibired from the Performance And whoever hath any kindness for his Sloth or his Sins very Plausibly perswades himself That the Indulgent Apostl hath left a wide door open to admit what he please for a Competent Hinderance from Preparation and consequently a Competent Excuse from the unwelcom exercise But This very Unpreparedness is it self a Violation of an Express Precept Let a man examin himself and so let him eat is a doubl Precept but so that Either Member is an Entire Precept by its self without retaining to the Other as it 's condicion It is not Let a man eat if he be prepared but without any If thogh not without an And they ar Both Absolutely thogh Jointly commanded He that Eateth not is guilty thogh he be Prepared He that nether Eateth nor Prepareth himself is Dubly guilty because he hath omitted a Dubl duty But that we may answer formally We Deny That Consequence whereon the Evasion is bilt viz. That If a Command oblige to do a thing and in due manner the Defect in the Manner thogh voluntary must be a Dispensation from the Thing God commanded the Jews to eat the Passover with their loins girt Wer it not ridiculos to think that if one be ungirt he is free both from the Obligation and the Threat so that notwithstanding them Both That soul shall not be cut off from his peopl The Girding of the Loins is often used as an expression of Preparation and the defect of That may as well excuse from the Passover as the defect of This from the Lords Surper VI. AND at This rate of pleading we may as well excuse our selves from All Religios Exercises whatsoever bicause we cannot in any of them make Any address to God unworthily without affronting him That our Partiality and Injustice toward This Sacrament may the more plainly appear let us for a minute or two suppose what probably the Corinthians believed that it was not concerned in those Meetings wherein they behaved themselves so irreverently and Then consider whether the same reproofs may not be transplanted into such Meetings upon as good grounds and with as good fruit Might he not have pleaded with the same Evidence of reason and even in the same words You come together not for the better but for the worse For first of all when ye com together in the Church I hear that there be divisions among you and I partly believe it When ye come together therefor into one place this is not to worspip God For one is hungry and another is drunken What have ye not houses to eat or to drink in or despise ye For I tell you that as often as you meet in Gods house to worship him you address your selves to Gods person For as often as you pray to God you address your selves to his Throne and to him that sitteth thereon Wherefor whoever prayeth to God unworthily shall be guilty of affronting his Majesty But let a man exawin himself and so let him address his prayer to God For he that prayeth to God unworthily prayeth for damnation to himself not regarding the Majesty of God What think you Were any of these reproofs too severe Any of those Warnings needless Any Precept for self-examination superfluos Or do All of them amount to a dispensation from worshipping God in his House May we not then take up the same Apostl's Language expostulating with a self-condemned Jew Thou that darest not take the Lords Supper in thy unhallowed lips darest thou take his Prayer Thou that darest not eat This Bread bicause thou art not one bread with thy offending brother darest thou use That Prayer which maketh thy forgiving or not forgiving thy brother the mesure of Gods forgiving or not forgiving thee Thou that fearest to bring an unclean heart to God's Table darest thou bring the same to his Throne Thou that fearest to be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord darest thou make thy self so of His Majesty and Purity Are not These as much contemned by
of their Meeting but in That of their Festing yet his in thrice repeated charge he doth not lay his accusation against These but against Those especially vers 20. When ye com together in one place it is not to eat the Lords Supper From which words especially if helped with the now mentioned clause of ver 26. it plainly appeareth that it Then was and Ever must be the duty of All Christian Churches to celebrate the Lords Supper when ever they meet in his House Otherwise the Corinthians must be unjustly arraigned as Criminal having broken no Obligation God forbad Perjury in This stile Thou shalt not take in the Hebrew it is Thou shalt not lift up the name of the Lord thy God in vain The Phrase is bilt upon their then Custom of lifting up the hand in the name of God Our form of Swearing is not by lifting up the hand above the head but perhaps by bowing down the head to the hand yet no man pretends the power of the Law abolished with the Ceremony it seemeth bilt upon since the Obligation dependeth not upon the variable Circumstance of Swearing but the indispensibl Connexion between our Oath and Truth Just so it is here This Institution relates to Festing as That Law did to lifting up the hand This requireth that our Lords Supper should accompany All our Church-meetings as That doth that Truth should accompany All our Oaths and the Church may be as Innocent and the Obligation as Firm after the One alteration in the manner as after the Other And 't is worth our observation with what temper she hath ever proceeded that in the Great Changes she found Necessary to make the Sacrament might not lose its right It seems not an Accidental but Substantial circumstance That This should be Instituted In and After Supper and consequently that it should be Celebrated in the same Season necessary both to answer its Title the Supper of the Lord and the Tradition whence it was taken Yet to celebrate it before day appeareth by the unquestionable testimony of Pliny to have be'n the practice in Trajan's time But That Persecution which Necessitated did thereby Justifie so Great a variation They wer denyed the use of their Public Churches if they had Any their malicios enemies watched all opportunities to mingle their blood with their Sacrifices Either therefor they must do this before day or not at all This was a great Change but no Robbery for the Sacrament lost not so much as its Name by it but still continued to be caled the Lords Supper That change the Emperors Persecution made necessary and a worse Persecution made a Greater one no less so The unbridled luxury of the people turned it from the Supper of the Lord to a Fest of Bacchus and it seemed impossibl to rescu it from that wors Metamorphosis but by turning it from a Desert after Supper to a Break-fast in the Morning III. AND thogh this seemed a Greater change than the Former as taking away not only the Season of the Supper but the very Nature of a Fest yet was the Church careful to save the Institution harmless The Day first consecrate to This office still enjoyeth the title of The Lords day and of a Fest Four Councils declared it heretical to Fast and many Canons forbad to Kneel upon That day it is honored with a Preparatory Vigil and a Communion-Service and every Other Holy day if they be not expresly consecrate to Festing enjoy the same honor and title of Festivals And why I pray' now why all this care Why so great a Soloecism to Fast upon our Lords day Was he indeed as the Scribes and Pharisees charactered him a riotos person and a Wine-bibber If He were yet certainly St. Michael and all Angels ar not nor wer All the Saints so John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking St. Paul was in fastings often and many other Saints are honored for their very Abstinence How can it be congruos that the Angels should delight in That whereof they are by Nature Uncapable or the Saints in that which by Grace they Shunned But granting this Why then must their Eves be Fasting-days What strange meetings of Contradictions are these That they who in their lives loved and practiced Fasting should after their deaths delight in Festing and yet their very Festing-days be honored by a Fasting Usher Suppose This be only a Preparative To what purpose such a bedel Must we Therefor Fast upon the Eve that we may have the better stomach to the following Fest There must questionless be som Better reason and what Better can there be than what we ar now observing viz. the constant Practice of All mankind and particularly of Christians celebrating the worship of God with Festing not abrogated but thus improved that the Supper of our Lord might be it self a Spiritual Fest attended with a Corporal one and ushered with a Vigil the One proper for its genuine Celebration the Other for our Preparation to it Nor hath the Apostls argument suffered more by this change than our Lords Supper the only difference is this That before it concluded by Enthymem and now by Syllogism While the custom continued of Eating this bread and drinking this cup in Every Meeting the conclusion without more ado followed Ergo He that eateth this bread and drinketh this cup unworthily is guilty But now it requireth the assistance of an Assumtion which Then was the Apostl supposed would Ever be self-evident viz. that as often as they met together they ate this bread and drank this cup. And thogh the 27th verse seemeth to have lost its force bicause we do not eat that bread and drink that cup as the Corinthians then did yet the 20th still retaineth its strength and we ar guilty of the same charge of so coming together as not to eat the Lords Supper thogh we are not to be convicted by the same medium IV. AND if any Claus in the Apostls whole Dissertation teach us That charge must needs do it None of the rest can teach us point blank but only compass and by Analogy with those sensual Debaucheries against which they were leveled It can not now be said one is hungry and another is drunken nor can any other of those Characters fit us by which the Apostl describeth the profaneness he impeacheth But we think our selfs obliged by Analogy to infer that as their Sensual unworthiness made them guilty where they abused a Sensual Fest so any Spiritual unworthiness will make Us so if by it we profane a Spiritual one and for this Analogical reason we must examin our selfs c Now if this seem obliging in point of Worthiness much more must it be so in the Performance it self For he disputeth for That not only by Analogy but Point blank We find no Reproof because no Mention of any but Sensual or Schismatical unworthiness in the Corinthians but Express and thrice Repeted inculcation of their Meetings as
Endeareth all other Lawes by new obligations proper to the Nature of a Man II. 2. Is it self a New Law upon a New account III. It is not only a Monument proper to our Lords memory but a Statu lively representing him IV. Our Lord expressed his esteem by his care in recommending it in the most advantageos circumstances 1. It was the Last night in his Life 2. The night in which he was and knew he should be bebetrayed V. The pervers returns many make to This care 1. The Profane make it their Last act as if it wer to shew forth their own death 2. Som make it their Last care by preferring every other before it Business unpreparednes uncharitablenes VI. The Scrupulos refuseing to receve bicause hindered by impossibl conditions blemish our Lords wisdom and goodness THIS and This Only is Appropriate to our Lords Person and Humane Nature and hath thereby a dubl singularity of power 1. It addeth a New inforcement to former Laws upon their Old account 2. It is it self a New Law upon a New account I. IT endeareth all Former Laws upon their Common account which well cast up amounteth to this End Total They promote Our happiness and that in all Kinds and Capacities Private and Publick Inward and Outward Temporal and Eternal They exalt us above the Troubles by putting us above the Cares and Pollutions of this world make us both Useful and Amiable in our generations Spiritual in our affections Godlike in our conversation Perfect as our heavenly father is perfect as much in Happiness as Goodness they promote not any other interest of God but his delight in our felicity And This is a great argument to invite our obedience twisted of Interest and Gratitude And the bonds of Gratitude which oblige us to obey God for Kindness of his Commands ar dubled by That of his Promises He imputeth it as a Service and promiseth Rewards infinitely greater than the best Service could pretend to if we will accept of the happiness he offereth us And what can Love do more Yes our Lord hath do'n yet More Infinitely More for us He hath not only taken Care but Paid for our happiness and the Price was great as the Love that paid it and the Obligation thence derived greater than Both the Other For his Laws and Promises shewed the Love indeed but mingled with the Authority of a Father His Power was thereby Governed but not Weakned they provide for Our happiness without robbing Him of any part of his own What the Psalmist says of his Works we may apply to his Laws and Promises He spake and it was do'n he commanded and they were created But rhe work our Redemtion cost him not onely a word speaking but strong cries and tears whereby he purchased to himself Another Right so much more Obliging to Us by how much more Costly to Himself than that of a Creator That our great Lawgiver should take upon himself the form of a servant and become Obedient yea that of a Malefactor and becom obedient unto Death even the death of the Cross That he should with his Own bloud purchase us a Pardon for breaking his Own so gracios Laws and Himself a peculiar peopl zelos of good works and thereby capabl of his so Promised Rewards leaving us an exampl that we should follow his steps which it is no less Shameful to Desert than Impossibl to Ourgo either in Active or Passive obedience This is indeed a most Admirabl and no less Powerful charm to constrain us to follow such a Captain These Things for their admirable Loveliness the Angels desire to look into and by such cords of Love Humanity must needs be Attracted No voice therefor of this Captain of our Salvation caled more loud upon Us to Follow Him than That whereby he caled upon God as forsaking him Never more a King than when Crowned with thorns Anointed with sweat and bloud and Enthroned on his Cross There There was he exalted on the throne of Love There did he stretch out his inviting Arms There did he open not his Arms only but his Heart who 's wide door let out his Bloud to make room for Us. This doth himself cal his Exaltation I when I am exalted will draw All men unto me All Men of All Humours and Complexions All Nations and Ages The stubbornest metal that will not be Broken by his Authority will be Melted by his Love which cannot be better Kindled or Fueled in our hearts than by the wood of the Cross Nor can That be better ordered than by This Sacrament which was appointed for That very End By This he is still set forth Crucified among Us as heretofore among the Galations however remote in time or place By this he is still Exalted to his Cross By This doth his Heart still open it self to send forth fresh bloud and his Mouth to utter new cries But oh those Cryes must be New indeed and to New but Sad purposes On his Cross he cried upward to his seemingly deserting Father My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me But at his Table he cryeth downward to his too really deserting disciples My friends My friends why do you forsake me Is it nothing to You Oh all you that pass by Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow which is do'n unto Me wherewith the Lord Once afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger for your sakes and which you still repete by your unkind neglects of the salvation I then so dearly purchased and now so lovingly offer Whether his Bloud by speaking more Sweetly do not also speak more Powerfully than his Commands yea or Promises can do I neither Dare nor Need to determin All that I pretend to I hope is plain viz. That This Sacrament by shewing forth his Death draweth us with a New attractive and bindeth us with New obligations to obey such a Lord so purchasing and so offering salvation II. 2. THIS doth not only add New Obligations to former Laws upon their Old account but is it self a New Law upon a New account This is therefor the Cord of a Man bicause it draweth and bindeth us to our Lords humanity He that said If you Love me keep my Commandments recommendeth them after the same proportion as they have interest in his Person to which therefor since This hath greatest Relation it must also have greatest Claim to our Obedience If you love me you will keep all my Commandments bicause they are Mine but This above All bicause it is not only My Commandment but My Monument It s Relation is so singular to our Lords Person that it is Incommunicable even to one part of his Nature In all the Rest the whole Trinity is concerned bicause they serv the whole Divine Nature In keeping them we obey the Father also from whom he professeth to have receved them If we partake his spirit the Holy Ghost is honored but Spirits have not Flesh and
Bloud which in this ar commemorated By the Rest we serv God By this we honor the Mediator between God and Man the Man Christ Jesus to whose Mediating suffering person this service is adaequately Proper All our founders as they have provided us Maintenance so have they such Statutes as they thoght most conductive to the enjoyment of their bounty and the service of God's Church And som of them have left us particular ones for commemoration of their own Persons Those we own our selves obliged to Obey but these to Embrace and ar ready to pronounce That man Unworthy the Benefit who should contemn the Person in such commemorative Statutes of the Benefactor This is the Sole Law of the later kind In the rest he speaketh as a Master a Shepherd a Lawgiver instructeth us in our duty to God our Neighbour and our Selvs Every one pointeth some Other way This Only pointeth to his Own body and saith Do this for My sake Do it in remembrance of Me of My Body My Bloud My Death The Death which I was willing to suffer for your sakes you cannot sure think unworthy to be remembered for Mine WHATEVER influence this may have upon Others one would think it could not fail to reach Those who 's whole Religion is employed in amoros passions toward our Lords Person no way so much or so distinctly concerned as in This duty To cloath our selves with His righteousness to lay hold upon him by Faith to be married to him by assurance to say None but Christ None but Christ He is Mine and I am His c. These and the like amorevolezzas cannot sit but with an ill grace upon such as neglect This office which himself hath appointed as the Onely one whereby we celebrate our Love to his Person as a Man and after the manner of Men Visibly and Solenly III. 2. THIS Sacrament hath not onely the Superscription of our Lord but the Image too Absalon built himself a Pillar for the same reason as our Lord instituted This Sacrament That wore Absalons Name but not his Likeness Lots wife became a Pillar of Salt i. e. an everlasting monument of Gods judgments We may for oght I know innocently believ as many do that she was turned to a Statu of Salt which in som sens might be called her Body thogh it reteined nothing of it but the Dimensions But This Sacrament is more than either Monument or Image It representeth not only his Body but his Soul not only his Death but his Benefits nor doth it onely Represent but Exhibit them All. Suppose we now it wer no more but a lifeless Statu Erected for no other end but merely to commemorate his Person The lowest Consequence of this lowest Supposition must be This that all the Honor or Contemt we shew it must pass on and reach his Person Bicause the Persons of the Caesars wer sacred therefor wer their Statues so too not onely Secure from violence but Securities to such as fled to them from it and on the contrary those who maliced the Persons shewed it to the Images either by casting dirt upon them or if they could by casting them down to the dirt Whoever prophaneth this Sacrament as the Corinthians did defileth our Lords Statu with dirt whoever wilfully neglecteth it giveth it a pull toward casting it to the ground To forget a Commemorative or Hide a Representative is no better than casting down a Statu who 's whole worth consisteth in it's Visibility Nor can it ever be more considerable than now that the affront to the Person riseth in equality with the Liveliness of the Statu and the Care and Cost imployed in setting it up When ever we see a piece exactly artificial we conclude both the skill and care of the Artist suitably great A great Artist gave This for the reason of his industry in Painting I paint said he for Eternity This is to shew fotrh our Lords death till he com and he was careful it's Perfection should be suitabl to it's Office and Duration What is it dear Soul what is it that thou wouldest contemplate in thy beloved His Passion Behold how the Bread is broken and the Wine poured out His Benefits Behold Bread that strengthens and Wine that chears the heart Wouldest thou melt in compassion Behold he suffereth for thee Wouldest thou be ravished with Joy and Thankfulness Behold he Feasts thee ctc. So Many and so Contrary motions and aspects All so lively represented proclame the Author to have imployed as great Care as Art and as great Affection as either in making a Piece so many ways Perfect IV. BESIDE these Intrinsecal endearments ariseing from the Beauty and Design of the Law it self we may observ our Lords care to honour it with the most advantageos Circumstances Our Apostl is very careful to mind us that it was the same night in which he was betrayed and good reason had he so to remark this Season since our Lord himself expressed a wonderful Esteem for it With a Desire said he have I desired to eat This Passover with you before I suffer And why such longing for This above All other Passovers Even bicause it came just before he suffered 1. It was the last night of his life And 2. The night wherein he was betrayed and foreknew he should be so and consequently as it was the Last so the Bitterest of his life 1. It was the Last Other Passovers Prefigured his death This both Prefigured and Accompanied it Had he do'n This in any Other Passover he must both more Incongruosly have commanded his Apostls to commemorate what was future and unknown and less Powerfully have recommended what was yet Distant and perhaps the intervening time would have Blotted the command out of their Memory before the meaning were Printed upon their Understandings which apprehended nothing of his intended death 'till That last night But now his Death being in a manner Present Give That Life to the Law which it Took from the Author For the words of dying persons Live longest and Reign most powerfully in the survivors affections Potent bicause they cary with them all the Powers of departing life and Venerabl bicause attended with all the Horrors of approaching death as coming not only From the Soul but With it too They contract into a point all the rays of dear affection in the Speaker and most powerfully enflame it in the Hearer A Truth more sensibly felt by such as have received the Last requests of departing friends than can be expressed in Any but such Dying Language I doubt whether All Augustus's living caresses expressed so much Love to his Livia or stamped so Deep and Lasting impression upon her Memory as did his dying complement Livia conjugii nostri memor vive vale What Expressions and Incentives of dear Affections did those few syllabls at Such a Season contein He thereby told her that he was now to leav Empire Life and Her But it was in
Her Power to preserv him in a great part of All Three especially That which of All was dearest to him He had Long made her heart his Throne and Now desired to have it for his Monument he therefor prayed both the Gods and Her to take care of That life wherein was preserved the remains of his Own To this purpose but infinitely more obligingly spake our dying Lord not in the language of a faint but quiet sickness but in the Agonies of a tormented Soul not in a few Complemental words suddenly offering themselvs to Augustus's mind and perhaps as suddenly flitting out of Livia's certainly dying with her but upon a premeditated Design to settle a lasting Monument whose firm durablness should Fix the fugitive impression and by constant returns perpetually Renew it so to keep his Bloud from Drying up and his Death from Dying His Last Command oght to be as powerful to work Obedience in his Disciples as wer his last Cryes to work Faith in the Centurion since These shewed no less the Strength of his Love than Those did the Vigor of Life at the very point of Death 2. But much more when we further consider that as it was the Last so was it the most Dreadful night This Passover had not onely the same bitter herbs with others but much bitterer Gall. He had the Devil for his guest and he that dipped with him in the dish was about to Betray him And he had his merciless enemies for his attendants waiting with swords and staves to take and destroy him This was That dreadful night wherin his Soul oppressed with horrors complained That it was exceeding heavy even to the death The same dismal night wherin the stabbing agonies of his tormented mind made every pore of his body a wound bleeding great grumos drops and those so plentifully as to run down to the ground The same terribl night wherin the dreadful prospect of his approaching sufferings so confounded his faculties that with dubled and trebled importunities he prayed to have That Cup taken from him for drinking whereof he came into the World The same amazing night wherin he was so near sinking that he needed an assisting Angel to support him under his burthen Even in That most hideos night did his care of This Institution so prevail over All Those Horrors which prevailed over his faculties as to bring him to a truce and he seemed almost to forget what night it was To Forget No but what was incomparably more to Long for it to Desire it With a Desire i. e. with a vehement desire with such a desire as outvoiced all the cries of his terrifying and tormenting passions Could we possibly understand the load that made him complain That his Soul was exceeding heavy even unto death and how much his Longings for This very season outweighed so great a load then possibly may we adjust the esteem he had for This his Dear Institution V. BUT if on the other side we compare the Affection wherewith We Receive it shall I say with that wherewith we find our Lord Recommended it we shall find Solomons words most perversly verified As in water face answereth to face so doth the heart of man to man For as the Reflex is directly Opposite to the Incident answering the Right side with the Left so doth our Obedience shall I say or our Performance no but our Neglect answer our Lords Care He chose the Last night of his Life for the Institution and many answer This by chusing the Last of theirs for the Performance as if appointed to shew forth not His Death but Their own When they have receved the Sentence of death in themselvs and ar immediatly to receve That of God Then first do they think fit to receve the Body and Blood of Christ as a kind of Charm somwhat better than the Sign of the Cross to fright the Devil from seising his own When the Physician hath declared or other Indications make it apparent that there is no hope of returning to Those sins which Therefor only they repent of bicaus they ar Past when the Will is sealed wherin they bequeath That soul to God whereof they had so long given the Devil possession Then in commutation for a whole life spent in contemt of This and All other holy exercises the Minister is sent for som good words spoken Absolution granted and Sealed with This Sacrament And now what uncharitabl Infidel can doubt but that the man is Pardoned in vertu of the One and receved into Eternal joys in that of the Other since our Lord himself promised that Whosoever Eateth his flesh and Drinketh his bloud hath Eternal life or how can This Bread and Wine possibly be imagined ar Any time fuller of Vertu than when so lately receved that the digestive faculty of the stomach hath not at all impaired it BUT others do not Thus put it off to the very Last Many own it if not a Duty yet an acceptabl act of Devotion Laudably thogh perhaps not Necessarily to be performed in the mids of life Yet even Those thogh not in the Same in Another wretched sens make it their Last Care When All other Interests and Inclinations ar served Then perhaps shall This have it's turn But if any thing els crave it however Slight or Trifling it be This Holy Office must yield it Precedence Pretences so Slender that a hundred twisted together shall not be sufficient to draw one from a Gossiping or any other Meeting shall singl be abl to draw him from the Lords Table With Solomons yawning Sluggard he cryes there is a Lion in the way a Lion in the streets when indeed he fears no danger But to his Lust or Ease I had business says one But pray Sir what was That Business Was it greater than what our Lord had in That last horrid Night wherein he forced all his dreadful crouds of griefs and fears to give way to This Care Was it so Importunate that it could not be Neglected or so Urgent that it could not be Delayed or so Suden that it could not be Prevented Didst thou use all indevors to Keep or Dispatch it out of the way Did it Surprise thee just in the nick when thou wert going to the Church and upon the very spot Disable thee from performing thy then fixed resolution Didst thou Wrestle against it with thy utmost Strength and yield to it no otherwise than as to an Invincibl Necessity If so thou art so far excusabl For Necessity hath This only of good nature that it Defends those most who have most Resisted it But if thou hast either Wilfully Draw'n this pretended hindrance upon thy self or Carelesly Suffered it to surprise thee or Tamely Yielded to it or be'n any way Defective in striving against it look how many grains the Hindrance falleth short of Insuperabl and thy Endevors of Perfect so many doth thy Excuse of Justifiable BUT the business which is too Slight may be otherwise Innocent
it If Not Pass it by To examin our selfs To repent To be in Charity c. ar therefor our Duties bicaus in our Power But to Make Alter or Take away ceremonies To Exclude whom we judge Unworthy either to Give or Receve the Sacrament cannot therefor be our Business bicaus they ar not in our Power Those cannot hinder us becaus we can Master them nor These bicaus we can neither Master nor Avoid them Those who plead the Former condemn Themselves as not having do'n their endevor and These who plead the Latter accuse our Lord as requiring what no endeavors can make Possibl And both the One and the Other may find their sentence in Those Difficulties which our Lord therefor thoght Seasonabl for his Institution that Thereby we might understand he would not admit Any for Excuses from his so highly favored service HOW unhappily now doth the Image out do its office How doth our Lord suffer more in This Representative than he did in his Body By their agreement in delivering up his Person Herod and Pilate were made friends But the Profane and the Scrupulos thogh they jointly neglect the Sacrament cannot be said to Agree since their mutual Opposition is not thereby Abated but Encreased What strange Antipathy is there in our Nature more against This than any Other of our Lords Commands that Both extremes meet not onely in Practising but in Justifying Disobedience to it and That upon pretence of honor to the Author And what luck hath This One Error that it should be countenanced with the livree of Truth the Concurrent assent of Opposit parties Were the case put in Other names how plain would the truth appear to the first glance of the unprejudiced ey It is said that Tib. Graichus finding two Serpents in his chamber consulted the Sooth-sayers and being by them told that if he let the male escape his wife must dy if the female escape himself must dy let go the female so to preserv his Wives Life with his Own Death Suppose we now he had employed great care and cost in procuring an excellent Picture most lively setting forth his so great kindness and had on his death-bed recommended it to his Cornelia praying her to keep it as a token and remembrancer of his love manifested by his voluntary death for her sake What would gratitude have obliged Her to do to cast it into som by-corner out of sight suffer it to be sullied with dust or buried under lumber neglected and forgotten Would it not have obliged her to hang it in her chief room where she might best honor it not only with her care to keep it from abuse but with her frequent looks still thereby renewing upon her heart the contemplation of the great love of her dear Gracchus No one certainly can doubt which of these two ways best savor of Love and Gratitude How then can we pretend to honor our Lord when we answer his so great care in providing and recommending This so excellent a Representative of his death by a contrary care in seeking pretences to lay it aside We read indeed that som heathen worshiped Mercury by casting stones at his image and som others worshiped Pehor by turning their back-parts to it Strange expressions of honor and worship and contrary to the universal ways of mankind Yet not so contrary to nature as Our way of honoring the Sacrament is to the express words of its author who doth not onely impose the duty by a peremtory Command to Do this but bind it upon our hearts by the obligations of Love and Thankfulness in Remembrance of his Sufferings and Benefits CHAP. III. Serviceable to our own interests I. The kindness of the Command as it regards our Interest 1. In point of Ease It is a sacrificial Fest not a Sacrifice Suffering an expression of Love exercised by many but not required in this duty II. 2. In point of pleasantness 1. Spiritual pleasures greater than Sensual thogh the Atheist cannot relish them We must believ the experienced not the ignorant III. 2. Pleasures of the Christian greater than of any other Religion IV. 3. Pleasures of This greater than of any other Office of Christian worship 1. It hath proper sweetness of it's own V. 2. It improveth all other Offices 1. Preaching 2. Swearing 3. Prayer This proved by the practice of those who in danger desire the Sacrament VI. 4. Thankfulness VII Other Advantages intimated but not insisted on bicause set forth by many other writers A brief Recapitulation of what hath be'n here said with a Transition to what remains THAT this appropriation to our Lords person may not more Prejudice than Advantage This Law as imposing upon us a duty Serviceabl to Himself but to Us both Troublesom and Unprofitabl we shall farther consider that in This as much as in Any of his Other Laws he was careful to twist our Interest with our Duty providing no less for Our Ease and Happiness than for his Own Memory We therefor com now to Another kind of Obligations derived from the Kindness of This Command which again pointeth at the so considerabl THIS And first let us see how EASY it 's yoke is For what is This whereby we ar So to set forth his cruel Death that thereby it may be said our Lord is crucified among us Must we Pledge him in his Bitter cup and so Do as to Suffer in remembrance of him what may in som kind make us Partakers of his passion Must we so Commemorate his Scourging as to Repete it upon our selvs yet call the season Good-Friday Or must our Purses be drained in som such â—oftly Offerings as shall That way represent the effusion of his whole stock of bloud Or at least must our eyes be afflicted and thereby our Bowels tormented with som such piteos spectacle as may at once represent the gastly countenance of our dying Savior and strike horror into our hearts No Our Lord was careful to deliver us not only from the Curse but from the Burthen of the Law and therefor shunneth whatever might have the least appearance of Costly or Troublesom adopting only the Joyful part of Type What was Festival he so retaineth as to leav out the Bitter Herbs yea the bitter spectacle The Type which prefigured This death was to a compassionate Ey a painful sight A poor dumb innocent Lamb slain the body hung up and flayed with legs spread'd just in the posture of a crucifix the bloud folenly poured out at the foot of the Altar must not the Commemorative exceed the Type and must it not be a more afflictive Spectacle The Former it doth but is not the Later For here the very Sacrifice Escapes the suffering which it Represents The Wheat and the Grape Represent the Benefits but not the Sufferings That is broken and This is bruised but they feel it not That Strengthens and This Chears but Neither of them Afflicts the heart SOME may do well to
Church exercising Punctual Obedience to such a sens We have found our Own Church laboring what she can to retrive the same From Obligations of Obedience we proceeded to the cords of a man Reason we find requireth that the Badge of our profession should be constantly worn and Kindness obligeth us to embrace an office so Endeared as we find This by all incentivs of Love In the whole journy we have not found the least Inconsistence or Impertinence of any One syllabl but every Word and every Order yea every Disorder of words combine to declare This the true Key to Our Lords and his Apostls meaning And I may Boldly Challenge any one of a differing judgment to match This so punctual Dissection with any other that may suit his own Hypothesis with equal exactness but whether they make the least pretence to it or no will clearly appear by the examination of what they pretend the Apostl to have said to the contrary PART V. Answers to the Vulgar opinion CHAP. I. Deference paid to the Former age and to the Sacrament I. Former ages excused for advanceing Reverence when there was no other danger but of Irreverence and stateing preparation in such manner as might best serv Piety Reason to believ that were they now living they would press the Performance as earnestly as they have do'n Preparation II. A Second Protest against robbing the Sacrament III. The Adversaries opinion set forth in his own words whereby almost all the World must be prohibited IV. A Warrant demanded A confession that a good Consequence is Warrant sufficient SINCE it will be very hard if not utterly impossibl to dispute against Doctrines without boldness toward their Authors or to plead against One extreme without seeming to abett the Other before I proceed to the ill-lookt work I think it necessary to enter a dubl Protestation against Irreverence either toward the worthy Persons whom I am to treat as Adversaries or the H. C. which I am to render less Dreadful 1. Concerning the Pios Learned Persons whom I am to oppose thogh Truth will not permit us to embrace their Errors Justice will require us to excuse them bicause they Yielded to the then present Necessity at a time when there was no appearance of danger on the other hand When a City is Inaccesibl on the One side and Assalted on the Other the defendants think themselvs concerned to leav That side which seemeth safe and run to This which needeth their help and thogh many an otherwise impregnabl place have This way be'n lost yet still have the inhabitants be'n rather pitied as unfortunate than blamed as unfaithful The Antient Fathers saw No danger of loseing Gonstancy in this duty but Much of loseing Reverence and ar therefor to be Justified bicause they applied their labors to what appeared most Necessary But the Later Fathers broght That into Question which their predecessors thoght above Any Constancy first was ballanced against Reverence and then made to Yield to it St. Augustin first put the question Whether it wer better to Communicate every day or omit som days that we might do it better upon som Others This question when it first appeared in the World was no bigger than a mans hand thogh now it have overspread the whole face of the sky It grew from days to weeks from weeks to month's and the Church of Rome claims thanks for having made it necessary Once in a Year This abuse was so gross that the Reformers could not but correct but they did it with such aw both toward the Later Fathers and toward the Sacrament it self that they seem to have be'n more careful to speak what they thoght Best than what they thoght Truest To preserv the Sacrament from being swallowed up by the incorrigibl luxury of Their times the Fathers by way of necessary defence asserted the Reverence due to it as the Body and Bloud of Christ and our Pios divines endevor to advance it to a Power suitabl to That Honor a Power of exalting the Spirit of Christ by help of such Examination as must in all reason be That way most serviceable Sure enough our Lord can not but be well pleased that This Representative of his Death should second it in That great and good design for which he suffered it Thogh therefor they saw nothing in Scripture nothing in Tradition yet seeing in Reason great hopes of advantage they thoght best to lay hold on an expression or two of the Apostl's which however otherwise intended might be made of excellent use This way He had spoken of the Danger of Unworthiness and the necessity of Self-examination for avoiding that danger These two well twisted together and well bound on may be of excellent use to draw men to repentance so much the more speedy by how much neerer the time appears of approaching the dread Table And how can this be better do'n than by persuading men that no man is fit to Communicate who is not fit to dye What injury to the Apostl if useful words be not Confined to his Particular intention in that One place but Extended to a greater serviceablness to the General design of All his Labors or what to the Sacrament if it be so Rescued from Danger as to be made Victorios not only over That Intemperance which it suffered at Corinth but all other Sins of what kind so ever Or what to our Lord if the Representative of his Death be made to promote the good ends for which he suffered it This could not seem more Rational than Safe The Commands of the Church made it Criminal Universal Practice made it Scandalous to fail of appearing at the holy Table at least three times in the year and in all appearance the condicions of Preparation might be strained to Any height with as great Safety as Rigor Our Gratios Lord justified Moses for compliance with the hardness of the peopl's hearts in a case which in the beginning was not so The Pios Fathers in former ages had cast Festing out of the Church thogh This Supper wer by our Lords Institution appendant to it and they had removed the Season from Evening to Morning thogh the very title of Supper contradicted And why should not such apparent Advantages on one side yoked with such Security from any Damage on the other make it reasonabl to press Preparation in such manner that those who wer not prevailed on with Other reasons might be awakened by the approach of the Sacrament to betake themselvs to That work which otherwise they would delay till the approach of death When therefor we read what was written twenty or more years since when the Church had not yet lost her Power nor the Peopl their Shame when neither Atheism nor Schism had taught it needless to Obey our Lords last command when that neglect was thoght Incredibl which we now find incurabl let us consider as well the Reasons as the Words of those pios Authors and we
understand our selvs and 12. more frequently convers with God and 13. oftener pray and 14. have a more heavenly conversation and in fine 15. be more fitted for a frequent and holy Communion By This time one would think the Question abundantly answered by the Proponent Himself Yet may we go on for 16. we shall stand in aw of our selvs and not sin in private Ps 4. and 17. we shall rejoice in our selvs and not in others Gal. 6.4 and 18. searching our ways turn to God Lam. 3.40 and 19. by seeing our progress already made take corage to go on and 20. Praise God for grace already receved c. Now I hope we may take breath It is not to Every question that we can give answers by the Score But This is so fruitful that none can better Furnish or Deserv a volum And it might better be proposed negatively if the answer be to be difficult To that good purpose doth it Not serv All Wise men agree that it is the proper exercise of Wisdom all Pios men that it is the greatest promoter of Piety It Weedeth out all wickedness Planteth and Watereth all graces Were there no other reason but it's excellent Usefulness had not our Lord injoined nor the Apostl pressed Constancy in a performance to which so serviceabl an exercise is annexed The very regard of the many Purposes to which it serveth would have sufficiently recommended it II. BUT the true question at This time is not Concerning it's Absolute Usefulness at Any time But it 's Pertinence to This particular office To what purpose Now Now above Other times Before This rather then Other exercises My swer shall be dubl 1. To shew the weakness of the consequence intended I answer Negatively 2. To clear the Apostl's meaning I answer Positively 1. NEGATIVELY I answer that to examin a mans self before he do Such or Such an action doth not import a Forbearance of That action if upon such Examination he do not approve himself And in the place now under ey there is not the least Intimation in the Words nor the least Reason in the Context to make it probabl that the Apostl So intended but much to the Contrary And here I take our worthy Author at his word It is a Relative duty and nothing of it's self for no man is the better for being examined if there follow nothing after it True but we have found it attended with so Large and Noble a train of good consequences that we cannot say Nothing follows it tho Forbearance from this duty make not One in the number Sure it is the Apostl hath here no service for This Forbearance but rather excludes it When Pythagoras again and again importuneth his disciples that before they suffer their eyes to sleep they thrice examin themselvs concerning the past days actions he was never thoght to forbid them to sleep unless upon such repeted examination they approved themselvs Do you now ask to what purpose it is So to examin he swears by the highest that it is the way to a divine life When Seneca giveth account of his own constancy in this exercise he expresly declareth the effect was to warn himself saying take heed do so no more for this time I pardon thee Do you now ask to what purpose You see not to Condemn but to Pardon and Admonish ones self What Is there no other fruit of Self-examination but Self-excommunication Doth Religion Doth the pardoning Gospel more disable us from Pardoning our selvs than Reason did Seneca But what need we look so far The Apostl is of age let him answer himself Doth he say Let a man examin himself whether he be Worthy or no and accordingly Com or Fearbear Yea doth he speak in Pythagoras's stile Doth he say Let not any man eat this bread till he have examined and approved himself This would sound so Like a Prohibition that He might be excusabl who should so understand it And wer we so to have be'n forbidden it had be'n necessary as we have already pleaded that the Prohibition should have be'n as express as our Lords Command and not so Ambiguos that an honest heart might miss it But here is nothing of such an aspect Yea He is equally positive for Both Performances Let a man Eat is no less Imperative than Let a man examin himself He Equally injoineth Both and therefor Both ar Equally Necessary and any man may as lawfully forbear the One as the Other and Both as Either What therefor he hath so Joined together no man may Put Asunder yea what he hath made Subordinate no man may make Opposite For it is further considerabl that Those two duties ar not Yoked together as Equals which yet had be'n sufficient to forbid the One to draw contrary to the Other but ar Subordinate as Lord and Servant Examination however excellent a duty hath Here no other Place or Business but to serv This favorite exercise and we may now take up our Saviors argument Eating was not made for Examination but Examination for Eating wherefor Eating is Lord also of Examination And that the Servant should drive the Lord out of his Own doors and estate is not more against Justice than it is against the Apostl's intention that Examination should barr a man from Eating If therefor any one persist in examining Examination it self urging To what purpose This may well be the first claus of the answer That it must Not be to so unreasonable a purpose as to Forbid the Performance it oght to serv and we may proceed to III. 2. OUR Positive answer to clear the Apostl's meaning His Purpose is to serv his main Design to prevent the Sin he Pleadeth against and the Error he Disputeth against If they knew not that thogh Lords Supper was concerned in Those their meetings he warns them of the danger of omitting the indispensibl duty by So let him Eat If they knew it and yet feared not to Profane it he warns them of that That danger by Let a man examin himself I ask not now to what purpose but Upon what Subject must we examin our selvs It is we ar told a Relative duty Whereto then must it Relate Relata must be aequalia and for That reason we must Mesure the One by the Other If a Murderer be brought to examination and the officer examin him concerning Adultery or concerning som School-probleme c. we might perhaps commend his Diligence but sure not his Wisdom That therefor we may duly perform This exercise we must first examin the Design and then Our Selvs in order Thereto The Design is apparently the Prevention of That sin whereof the Corinthians wer guilty That Sin was their not discerning the Lords body nor treating it with such Distance as oght to have be'n put between That and Common bread but abusing his Flesh and Bloud in his Church with the same rudeness as they did That of their Cattel and their Grape
in theit Own Houses This was the Sore and to This must the Plaster be fitted Why must the Plaster be so much larger than the Sore Why must we examin our selvs concerning such Actions or Worthiness whose knowledge hath no Aspect upon this Performance but only Opposit and Malignant Such an Examination as shall excommunicat if not the Whole certainly the Greatest part of mankind He that shall most carefully perform his examination first in That manner which the Apostl prescribeth by Discerning the infinite Distance of dignity between the Lords table and his Own and then in That Manner that our Worthy Author prescribeth between our Lords Body and his Own Soul tho he be the Best of his age yea the best our Lord only excepted that ever was will most clearly discover not only that he is Now Unworthy but that he must despere Ever to be Otherwise Since then the Best Examination of the Best Person will carry him not only Beyond but Contrary to the Apostl's Design Since it will put such an Inconsistency between the Two Precepts that Let a man examin himself will inferr Let him Not Eat and since the Apostl doth not in any kind Intimate that our Worthiness but plainly Declare that our Differencing This from Common bread and wine is to be subject of our Examination IV. HIS Meaning in the words now under vieu can be no More nor Other than This Let a man examin himself whether he well Understand and Consider what he is about to Do Whether he put the due Estimate upon what he is about to Receve Whether he put as great Difference between the Lords supper and a Common fest as there is between the vertues of a litl Common Bread and Wine and those of the Body and Bloud of Christ Whether he go to gratify his sensual appetite with Eating and Drinking or to comply with his governors or neighbors in communicating with them or to fest his soul with Thankfulness and Love toward his crucified Savior with Joy and Delight in Communion with him and such other acts of devotion as so Holy an office requireth Let a man well examin himself concerning this and So let him Eat with appetites suitabl This I say is all that the Apostl's Design can Permit or his Words Declare him to mean by Let a man examin himself He requireth us to look Forward not Backward upon what we ar Going to do in the Church not upon what we Have already do'n there or elswhere upon the Difference between This and Other Bread not upon That between Our Own and Other mens souls Yet to prevent misconstructions I add this Proviso That I neither pretend to disparage the most Severe self-examination as it takes account of our Past actions and Present state of soul For I dare swear with Pythagoras that it is the high-way to divine life Nor to deny that our approch to This holy supper is the Most Proper season for This most Excellent exercise For he that best performeth the One will undoubtedly best perform the Other All that I deny is this That the Apostl in This place setteth up Examining our selvs against Obeying our Lord so as to Forbid any one to Eat if upon examination he find himself Unworthy And I further add thohg I have no such need that if it wer Doubtful yea if it wer highly Probabl If he had so worded his precept that in a Plausibl appearance it might signify som such intention yet is not a Probabl Sound of any One expression worthy to be ballanced against so Express a command of our Lord and so industrious an Endeavor of the same Apostl to urge it as we have found in the Context For it is Good Law and Good Reason that no Law can be repeled but by Express terms and therefor I still insist upon my demand Where is that Express DO NOT which may Countermand our Lords DO THIS CHAP. IV. Answereth Reason Objecting Allegories I. A Transition from Scriptur to Reason and by the way notice taken of Allegories of a midl Nature between both II. The Allegory of Covenant and Seal answered and retorted III. The Allegory of Member likewise answered IV. The Allegory of Sons and Enemies V. A General answer to all objections of this kind I. I HAVE now do'n what I proposed as Necessary and all that I conceve Possibl for a full discovery of the Apostl's meaning in That unhappy discours which as it is the Only Comment we have upon our Lords Institution so hath shared it's sufferings somtimes Mutilated somtimes Racked somtimes Rob'd of it's due sens somtimes Laden with more than it can bear and by all ways Tormented that it may say somthing in Justification of That Omission which he designed to Prevent or Condemn I have given so regular and exact account of every Word and every Aspect of words that as I am sure no man ever Hath so I may boldly believ no man ever Will match it with any other I have acted Both parts Opponent and Respondent On That side I have traced the Process of his Argument Viewed every Design and every Medium and every Claus as it servs either in the One or the Other Office On This side I have reduced the Inferences from Contradicting to Serving the Positions they depend on I have shewen that as the Former half which conteineth Positions hath be'n so Robbed of it's due that it cannot make good the charge in the Universality wherein it is laid down So hath the Later half be'n Rack't that it may speak more than either the words can bear or the Apostl's designe suffer That he cannot intend to Forbid Every person that findeth himself Unworthy or to make Self-examination an Hinderance to the Performance which it is to Serv. And I may boldly say that in the Former half there is not a word which doth not Help in the Later half there is not any that Hinders the obligation of Constancy in Every unexcommunicate person obliged by Every word disobliged by None If therefor we will appeal to Scripture and take the regular way to Understand it we ar upon as Secure ground as any Rules can make us Yet shall we quit This place of Advantage and descend to the Plain field allowing Reason to plead what it can to the contrary But before we can reach the Plain we ar encountered with a Midl sort of Evidences shall I call them or Colors laid upon Scripture ground precarios Allegories improved to a pretence of Reason These since they ar mere Colors no better Subjected than in Allegories must for That very reason be Insufficient to Convince us of Any thing but This that Those who make use of Such arguments want Better II. SOMETIMES we ar told that This Sacrament is the Seal of the New Covenant and we ought not to see Gods Seal to a Blank c. In this Plea ther ar two terms by explication whereof we ar to understand its force 1. Covenant 2.
For that from the Godly there is no danger to the Sacrament and consequently that in Them Frequecy is commendable is not doubted The only question is concerning the Unworthy but we oght also to consider that concerning Them is a counterquestion no less important For when we inquire on One side Whether there be Danger that the Sacrament may suffer dishonor by such mens Unworthiness it is worth inquiring whether there be not SOM hope that it may Gain Honor by their Salvation I say SOME hope For if there be Any such Hope however Short of such Fear in point of Probability it will so exceed it in point of Valu as abundantly to outweigh it's defect in Bulk For 1. The loss of Many Sacraments will be abundantly recompenced by the gain of One Soul Be the odds so great as in a Lottery yet since One happy draught will more than answer a Multitude of Blanks especially when there is nothing to be Lost but the labor of Drawing it must needs more conduce to the honor of the Sacrament and its Author to adventure upon the Smallest Hope That way than to forbear upon the Greatest Fear the Other way 2. The Salvation of One impenitent sinner is more valuabl than the cherishing of Many already converted The good shepherd will leav ninety and nine to seek pasture rather then suffer one strayer to perish in the wilderness 3. The odds in point of number lieth the other way it wer a happier world than ever we ar like to see if there wer but ninety and nine sinners for one just person that needs no repentance Their very numbers wroght in our Lord compassion to the Multitude and it wer strange if he should intend to let the greater part of mankind perish for want of This food 4. Here is no need to leav the Flock for Salvation of the Strayer Wer there not sufficient for Both we might perhaps plead it unfit to take the childrens bread and cast it to Dogs but the Lords tabl is as capabl to receve All comers as was the wilderness to afford room for never so many thousands and the Bread is not like those two cours loaves but like That which came from heaven and covered the whole face of the earth it hath both plenty and vertu sufficient to answer All Palates and All Needs however different no less Salutiferos to the Sick then delicios to Healthy and where there is enogh and to spare it wer strange our Lord should intend any one should perish for hunger 5. Here is no adventure but of the troubl to Take and eat The shepherd needs not toyl himself with Wandering quest of the Lost sheep nor with shouldering home the Found Our Lord is not in danger to lose any more Bloud the greatest loss that can com must fall upon That already spilt which at worst takes no Life from our Lord thogh it bring None to the Recever No wounds or stripes can reach his Body The greatest danger is lest the shadow of his body passing by should now as in his life-time fall upon som Lepers and cleanse them without Hinderance to his Progress or Prejudice to his Better disciples So that if there be any healing saving vertu in This other shadow of his body and bloud to say he forbids Any to com within its reach for This very reason bicaus they Need it is so farr from honoring him as a good Physician that it represents him wors than his very Accusers of whom he asked which of You of You my envios backbiters Which of You having one sheep c. If therefor our Blessed Redeemer have any right to what David said of the Father His honor is great in Our salvation his Dishonor must be proportionably great if he deny so cheap a means of it as shall not cost him the troubl of a Journy to seek but only the Mercy to Admit such as need it III. 2. SECONDLY This Sacrament hath a converting vertu This ' thogh it need no other proof but only the application of That general rule that In Religion That is always Truest which is Best yet bicaus such a work cannot be overdo'n I shall further prove it 1. By the Authority of the Apostls and 2. By Reason shewing that Morally it must needs be so 1. If we consider what the APOSTLS thoght of This Sacrament we shall find they look't upon it as a Spiritual Panacaea for All distempers of Christ's mystical body a rich Treasure for All Arguments and All Characters When St. Jude would Character the worst men he borroweth his black from This Sacrament if not from This Discours These saith he ar spots in your Fests of Charity while they fest with you foeding themselvs without fear When the Epistler to the Hebrews would set forth the gilt of Apostacy most graphically he doth it by treading under foot the Son of God and That by counting this blood of the Covenant wherewith they were sanctified an unholy thing In This Epistl St. Paul seemeth to affect this Topik upon all occasions When he would admonish them to put from among them the Scandalos person Let us saith he keep the fest without leaven bicaus Christ the Passover is sacrificed for us When he would dehort them from fellowship with Idols he argueth from the inconsistency of the Lords table and the table of devils When he would exhort them to provide for the poor he appointeth the first day for the Offertory bicause consecrated to the breaking of bread and Here when he would reprove them for their debaucheries in Gods hous to set forth the hainosness of the crime he proveth that thereby they becom gilty of the Body and Bloud of Christ I say when he would reprove them for their debaucheries in Gods hous for I must now add to what I have already said that as those Debaucheries were the true Occasion of the whole discours so was the Lord's Supper employed as the best Argument whereby to convince them of the hainosness of That crime that whatever thoghts they might otherwise have had concerning such Profaneness in Gods Hous they might by This new Argument understand it greater than they wer aware of And what better argument could he have urged in such a case Should he have empleaded them at the Moral bar He knew them proof against such lectures of their own Philosophers strenuosly but unprosperosly declaming against them Should he have pleaded Natural Religion He knew that They and their Fathers had time beyond memory do'n the same in their Templs Should he then urge the great difference in purity between the true God and Divels This were proper but remote the impression might be sufficient Plain but not sufficiently Deep it might convince their Reason but not so powerfully move their Affections But This interest of the body and bloud of Christ as it was new and properly Evangelical so was it utterly unanswerabl upon any account either of reason or custom And that
to wash them The Necessity of the H. C. thus stated Let the condicions of worthiness be multiplied and enforced with what rigor you please Let them be more intolerabl than plucking out Both eyes and cutting off Both hands so they be indispensibl No reasonabl man will be thereby frighted from the Lords table but every one will be so from his sins since he every where carieth about him the same guilt and danger thogh he com not Nor will the Scrupulos be at all distracted with doubts whether it be best to com or forbear since this will be no other than to question whether it be best to be Singly or Dubly gilty Singly if he com with unworthiness or Dubly if he dishonor the Lords table both by Forsakeing and Profaning it the one in Reality the other by Imputation And this must needs be the opinion of the good Alms-giver above-praised who would not suffer the peopl to go away without the Communion but broght them back when they were already go'n out of the Church an importunity which he would never have used had he not believed it more sinful to Omit the duty than to perform it unprepared as they wer whereof no better account can be given than this that our obligation besets us behind and before and layeth such hand upon us that we cannot fly from it's presence but must necessarily fly from our sins bicaus this is the only way left us to escape the judgments threatened to unworthy Communicants and whether such an ordinance be a converting one or no I shall no further dispute from Scripture but proceed to consider Reason V. REASON will persuade that the Sacrament must be a converting Ordinance He that will deny this must impute the Defect either to the Unfitness of our Lords Death toward such an effect or 2. To the Insufficiency of the Sacrament to set it forth or 3. To our Lords denial of his ordinary Blessing In One or All of These must the Defect needs ly for if they All concurr Nothing is wanting to a saving efficacy 1. The defect cannot ly in the Death of Christ which the Apostl so often tells us he suffered to This very Purpose The Scripture speaketh I say not more Clearly but sure more Frequently of his dying for our Sanctification than for our Justification to redeem us from the Works than from the Wages of Sin If it sound ambiguosly when the Apostl saith he died to redeem us from all iniquity he cleareth it by an immediat explication to purchase to himself a peculiar peopl zelos of good works What can be spoken plainer than this That he died to redeem us from our vain conversation that he carried our sins in his own body on the tree that we being dead to sin might live to righteousness to leave us an exampl that we should follow his steps c. And had the Apostls be'n silent plain Reason would have taught it us For as in Law without shedding of bloud there was no remission so was there no need of more than the mere death of the Sacrifice so much the fitter for That service by how much more Pampered Why then must our Lord be so unhappily unlike his typical Oxen why might he not have be'n sacrificed like Them by One blow and No pain closing a Full and Easie Life with a Death as Easie What could the Law have expected from Him beyond what the Jews expect in their Messiah the Son of David a Life Victorios and glorios closed with a Death suitably glorios in the Bed of honor One Drop of bloud perhaps certainly the singl Death however Easie or Honorabl of a Person of infinit valu must in justice be sufficient to satisfie a Father so Willing to receve satisfaction To what purpose then All the this way Needless and to him incomparably more Grievos Other Sufferings Why a Life so Poor so Despised so Hated so Laborios Why a Death so Painful so Shameful so Intolerabl Why but for the Apostl's reason To leave us an exampl that we should follow his steps which as they shewed us the way so did they smooth it for us that no man might think much to take up his Cross and follow such a Leader SUCH a leader as Caesar who did not say to his Soldiers Go but Com make them follow him if not for Valor yet for Shame It became him who was to bring many Sons to Glory to make the Captain of our Salvation perfect by sufferings and such sufferings too that none of his followers shall ever be able to upbraid him as requiring More To deny therefor that such a Death is fit to Redeem us both from the Service of sin and Fear of suffering is to giv the Scripture the Ly and to take from our Lords death it's Vertu VI. 2. AND Secundly to Deny this Sacraments sufficiency to set forth our Lords death is yet if possibl a greater affront both to our Lord and his Apostl Both of them expressly declare This for it's Adaequate designe As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup ye shew forth the Lords death till he com What the Apostl said to the Galatians that Christ was evidently set forth crucified among them was not so much ascribed to Preaching as to This Sacrament which so evidently sets it forth to All senses that whoever consideringly receveth it may say not only we have heard with our ears but we have seen with our Eyes we have looked upon our hands have handled our mouths have tasted and our bowels have be'n strengthened with the bread of Life What Orator can com neer an ordinary Painter in setting forth a mans countenance By how much the Ey is tenderer than the Ear by so much is the Mind more affected by it Now This Sacrament setteth forth the Death of our Lord not to the Ear as Preaching doth but to the very Ey and that not as a Picture but as a Drama it so Commemorates as to Act the Tragedy so Describes as to Exhibite it's Benefits How much more potent such visibl Rhetorik is than the most powerful Preaching Antony made a memorabl experiment He imployed all his Eloquence to stir up the peopl of Rome to revenge the death of Caesar He magnified his Wisdom his Industry and his Valor he recounted his Victories celebrated his Vertues lamented the cruelty of his Death Then he recited his Testament and from the Legacies therein bequeathed proved the greatness of his Love to them in his life their Champion after death their Benefactor All this the peopl heard thogh with Grief yet with Patience But when he produced his Robe when he shewed the Holes and the Bloud wherewith the murdering Poniards had Pierced and Stained it then did those visibl Orators not only Move them to Anger but Transport them to Rage they snatched up Weapons and Firebrands and missing the Persons destroyed the Dwellings of the Conspirators Such is the Designe such the Rhetorik of
nothing of the due Metal not only pass for Current in the Kingdom of God but bear a greater Valu than such pieces as com out of his own Royal Mint can God be pleased with such performances as please not the Votary himself can he be so much Better pleased with them that One of them shall be reputed payment for Multiplied omissions of Duty Or which is more pertinent to our present enquiry can such an exercise destroy the kingdom of the Devil in the unwilling Soul c. I grant Somthing hath be'n do'n toward it The man hath be'n put in mind of his need of Christs bloud and the Love that first Spilt it and now Offered it and This hath somwhat awakened the sens of the Obligation he hath to Lov and Serv him which cannot but make som impression upon his mind which for som time and in som mesure may check his lusts and quicken his care All this I hope and for This very reason complain that the good sparks should dy away which by Repetition of the same exercise might be blowen up to such a vigoros Flame as might wholly Destroy those lusts which ar now a littl Disordered but not Subdued For the Litl that this hath do'n is a sufficient evidence how much More might be do'n if so hopeful an exercise were duly Prosecuted with such Constancy as we have found required by our Lord and comes now to be considered by Reason in counterballance to its rival Solennity and this we do by steps 1. Multiplied repetitions one time or other will probably hit the mark He who is missed by Many a Sermon and Many a Communion may happily be struck to the heart by the Next There was a time when One Sermon converted Thousands but miracles ar ceased and now Many perhaps Thousands of Sermons ar necessary to convert One Yet can we not charge God as wanting to Necessary means since the Miraculos efficacy is supplied by the Moral power of multiplied Repetition Too many of those who Separate These ordinances in their Practice do them the right to Join them in their Discourses pleading the same color of reason against frequency in Preachings and Communions and those who do Not but will have These rare for reverence sake and Those frequent for their effects sake need no other evidence of the Weakness of their Objection against Frequence in the Communion than it s too great Strength whereby it will cast down what they would keep up so that they ar reduced to This choice either that Preaching must be Less frequent for fear of the Objection or the Objection renegued lest Preaching should be rob'd of Frequency for preservation of Reverence And as the Objection is equally Deficient so is Frequency equally Useful to Both. Who knoweth but That Sermon or That Communion which he is forsaking may be the critical One which is to convert him When an Affliction hath bruised or a Blessing melted the heart When the man hath Lost a friend or Escaped a danger when a Neighbors unexpected death hath warned him of his Own frailty or a good Angel hath unaccountably stirred the pool and he is by som secret disposition 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 set in due order and almost perswaded to be a Christian then the Sermon or Communion coming upon him in his soreness prevaileth by nicking the critical Opportunity We know not the secret walks of Gods providence nor the advantages of Som seasons above Others by influences imperceptibl that therefor we may not miss the Proper but Vnknowen one it will concern Every man to say of Every one This is the day of the Lord This is That singular hour wherein I am to receve That flesh and bloud of Christ which must save me He that truly considers the valu of Salvation and his own need of it will not think much to ly in the way that Jesus of Nazareth Passeth by or rather wherein he Cometh on purpose to heal and save 2. Repetition both Preserveth the otherwise decaying Power of former acts and addeth new of its own The sturdiest oak is felled by Many of those stroaks whereof every particular one was inconsiderabl but if they com at such distance that the scratch rather than wound which the first made be healed up before it be secunded the tree may be a litl moved but not at all weakened If a man be but Litl yet if he be At all affected if he do but consider What he Doth or Oght to do if he think on the Death of Christ and it's Reason if he indevor to commemorate it in due manner or but consider that he oght so to do These Acts of Consideration and Reflection however weakly performed contribute their litl proportion toward the great work as every stroke of the oar doth to a long voyage but will soon be caried away by the contrary stream if it be not quickly renewed For as in Bodies so in Souls there is continual Deperdition and there needeth continual Reparation The Symbols do as truly represent Our Need as their Principals Vertu This Flesh is meat indeed and This bloud is drink indeed as in their Cherishing and Strengthening Vertu so in the Constancy wherewith they ar to be receved and Those who ar so easily satisfied with far Distant Communions seems to Betray the Weakness of their spiritual Life by That of their Appetite 3. Repetition will improve the power of Every Singl Act by making the Agent more expert No Tutor like Exercise It teaches us to do those things both Easily and Perfectly which to the inexpert appear not only Difficult but Impossibl And upon this account is Frequency so far from a hinderance that it is of all moral means most Proper to bring us to Worthiness That Self-examination which all Christians confess necessary before we com to the Lords table is by the best Philosophers prescribed before we go to sleep and Seneca incorageth his Lucilius to the practice upon This consideration that Exercise will make it as Easy yea as Pleasant as Profitabl For the same reason it is adviseable that we stablish several Periods the end of every Week for the past Week of every Moneth for the past Moneth of every Year for the past Year and every eve of the Communion for the Interval from the Last which Intervals were they left to our discretion we oght to shorten as much as possibl even for This very Reason that by Frequence we may learn to examin our selvs still Better so that if we have no other Obligation nor no other Design but to com as Worthily we must com as Frequently as Possibl So in the Result Worthiness must not be Opposed to Frequency as it's Rival but Proposed as it 's Encoragement For whether we ey the Honor of the Sacrament in the Abstract or the Vertu of it in Reference to the Salvation of mankind They ar Both promoted more by the Constancy of our Approaches than by the Awfulness of our
legacy so serviceabl both to his own honor and his Churches happiness yet so unkind as to clog it with such condicions as must render it Inaccessibl to the Most Tormentive to the Best Dangeros to every Single person Mischievous to the Church in general and Necessary to None whereas by a plain determination of his will inforced by his Command he might have prevented all Inconveniences and promoted all Good effects Had it not be'n better that the Christian World had never heard of it than suffered so many mischievs by it What Fires hath it kindled What blood hath it drawn What wounds hath it made in the authors Mystical body more grievos to him than those it commemorateth of his Natural What member which it hath not tormented What Church what Person hath escaped its mischievous influence And on the other side Where ar its good fruits Where is that Church Where is that Person that can in these last Ages boast of any so great benefits obteined by it as may in any proportion pretend to recompence so many and great mischievs The Conclusion reflecting upon the whole I. All reduced to three questions Qu. 1. By what Authority do we depart from Constancy By that of the Church of Rome II. No Doctrine hath so much Popery as This. III. Qu. 2. With what Success 1. By loss of Constancy we have lost tolerabl Frequency IV. 2. By too much advanceing Reverence we have made it mischievos 1. To the honor of our Lord 2. to the peace of his church V. Qu. 3. Upon what Need No such danger as is feared of loss of reverence or if there were any it is much outweighed both by prudential and conscientious considerations VI. The Reverence which is due to the Sacrament is not such as belongs to Gods Decrees which require our Forbearance but such as belongs to his Laws which require our Performance MAY not so many and great abuses make This holy Sacrament ashamed as the Prophet is described in Zachary of it's Commission May it not say of the wounds in its hands These ar the wounds wherewith I have be'n wounded in the house of my friends They ar indeed but in the Hands not in the Heart destroy not its Being but leave it such an one as Epicurus allowed God incomprehensibl in Majesty Glory and Idleness exalted as much above our Concerns as our Understandings but wounded in the Hands maimed and pained unserviceabl and troublsom to the Church in General and every member in Particular And This in the house of friends Reverence for it's mysteries Zele for it's honor Care for it's service by being wise overmuch and righteous overmuch Wise overmuch even wiser than our Lord himself and Righteos overmuch even more than can well stand ether with the nature of a fest or the frailty of mankind By spinning our Lords institution to such fineness as robbeth it of it's strength and straining the Apostl's discours to such rigor as maketh the duty impracticabl By practising upon the body of Christ as Empiriks do upon those of their patients against all Rules and often without any Need. Yes 't is even so The Sacrament they say was grow'n Plethorik it must therefor bleed away somthing of Constancy for preservation of Reverence and these ar the wounds it receved from the hands of Chyrurgeons exerciseing Phlebotomy But 1. By who 's Prescription 2. With what success 3. Vpon what need ar questions so important that it may be worth our labor to sum up all that we have said or can be said into those three enquiries 1. By who 's Prescription What Doctor durst presume thus to practise upon the Body and Blood of the Lord contrary to his own Institution Were we to answer by conjecture we should not long deliberate but we have better evidence than bare suspion even as good as can be wished the testimony of an Historian beyond exception who could neither dare to impose upon the world nor could himself be deceved in matter of Fact notoriously known even to the most ignorant We have already heard from Socrates who made an end of his History in the year of our Lord 441. and shall now again more heedfully take his report Whereas saith he All Churches over the whole world on the Sabbath days in every week celebrate the Mysteries they of Alexandria and Rome upon som ancient Tradition refuse so to do But the Egyptians who ar neighbors of the Alexandrians and the inhabitants of Thebais do indeed meet on the Sabbath but partake not the Mysteries after the manner of Christians for after they are filled with all manner of meats about evening they offer and receve the Mysteries And again in Alexandria on the fourth day and that which is caled the preparation-day the Scriptures ar read and the Teachers interpret them and all things belonging to a meeting ar performed except the celebration of the Mysteries As the first clause of these words speaketh the Holy Sacrament constantly celebrated every Sunday so doth the last witness the same for every other Holy-day for by observing it as a singularity in the Church of Alexandria that their weekly Lectures were defective for want of This he plainly supposeth it notorios that it was celebrated every where els in all Church-assemblies And concerning the Sundays-Sacrament we must observ 1. The Church of Alexandria was but Accessary and that of Rome Principal For as the former furnished the later with her Corn so was her self filled with the Wealth and Merchants of Rome for who 's sake she complyed with her customs But the voisinage who had no such tentations liked not the trade but refused to consent to their own Metropolis in so gross an innovation Yea they thence took such jealosie as to stand the more stifly to such other customs of their Ancestors as all the rest of the World thoght fit to be changed Nor indeed could they well justify the One without the Other For if they refused to reneg constancy for This very reason bicause their Ancestors practised it then could they not deny the consequence which was pressed upon them that they must upon the same reason stick to the ancient but now generally disused circumstances which made it the close of a Fest 2. The Evidence whereon This innovation was founded was not derived from Scripture or Reason or any other competent Topik but a pretended Tradition a private Tradition a Tradition whispered to the Church of Rome and her Zany of Alexandria so close in the ear that it could not be heard by any other Church equally Apostolik not more contrary to the practice of the rest of the World than to the very Nature of Tradition which cannot be but Universal 3. The vantage they have since made of This invention hath made it plain that they therefor wer thus industrios to advance this Sacrament obove all other offices of Worship that they might thereby advance both their own Church above other Churches and their Priests
unworthiness in Prayer as Those by unworthiness in Communicating Is our Lord Man only is he not God also Is he God of the Sacrament only is he not of Prayer also Is preparation therefor necessary for That only is it not equally necessary for This This were enogh But it is further considerabl that the case is very unequal on both sides For whereas unworthiness is more objected in bar to the Lords Supper the Scripture hath spoken much more against it in relation to Prayer For we shall hereafter find a more proper occasion to observ that the Apostl here reproveth not the unworthiness of the Person but only of the Performance Upbraideth not the Corinthians with any other sins but only such as are committed against the Lords Supper it self and in the manner of its celebration Doth not say the Lords Supper is turned into sin if the Communicant be guilty of Other sins But Solomon Prov. 15.8 saith expresly The Sacrifice of the wicked is sin and again chap. 21.27 The Sacrifice of the wicked is abomination David Psal 50. expostulateth in God's name that they presume to tread his courts and take his name into their mouths and the Prophet Isa 4. describeth God sick of his own Ordinances bicause unworthy persons celebrated them Jeremiah and Amos speak the same language So that if we take our mesures from Scripture we find much greater reason to examin our selvs and upon sens of our personal unworthiness to forbear Prayer than the Lords Supper Whence then this so gross partiality Why should we take That unworthiness as a Prohibition from This duty which we think not one from the other Were the truth duly considered it would appear that the difference lieth not in the greater or less sacredness of the Duties but our own greater or less Sens of their Benefits It is not Reverence but want of Appetite not Fear so much as want of Love that keepeth us at distance Pretendedly Reverential and Really Neglective Why do we not els use either the same Reverence or the same Boldness toward Both Both equally require Worthiness and Both equally require Performance with This difference that in the One we remember the Lord in the Other our Selvs But in Both we rob God of his due thogh in several kinds In the Lords Supper we own Preparation and There we deny Frequency In Prayer we own Frequency and there we deny Preparation so the One we Perform unworthily and the Other we Forbear unworthily and wipe our mouths and say we have do'n no wickedness Say not I plead now for Irreverence in the Communion or Forbearance of Prayer No! Religion is not to Compound with our Corruptions but to Destroy them will no more connive at Unworthiness in Prayer for fear lest Gods Throne be as much Deserted as his Table than at Unfrequency in Communicating for fear lest Irreverence should be as rude with his Table as his Foot-stool There is no necessity that we perish either by Poison or Starving By DO THIS we ar not Invited only but Commanded so to Honor our Lord as to Fest our own Souls CHAP. III. The Obligation ceased not upon the change of the Manner of the Festing in the Church but must be accommodated thereto I. The Apostle hath prevented such a consequence by saying our Lord appointed us to do this 'till he com II. The adequate mesure of our doing this is not Eating but Meeting in the Church As change of the ceremony hindereth not Perjury from being a sin Nor doth change of the season hinder us from stiling it a Supper III. The Church careful to preserve the memory and title of Festing IV. The Apostl's argument holdeth by vers 20. more for the Thing than for the Manner wherein we cannot now be guilty as the Corinthians were V. The Equitable and Moral sens of the Argument accommodate to the present manner of Church-meetings VI. Distinguish between yielding and justifying BUT there is yet another way Obligations without either Countermand or Dispensation from the Author may fall by the sinking of the Ground they ar bilt upon Upon the death of our Parents we ar no longer obliged to honor their Persons but only their Memories and upon this account all that we have said seemeth to free us from any other duty towards This Institution but that of speaking and thinking honorably of it For if This be bilt upon a Festival Tradition then will the Apostl's declaration of our Lords will oblige Us to do This as often as They did That His argument must be good against the Corinthians and All other Churches that might irreverently Fest in the Church But when the Council of Laodicea banished Festing thence they sent This Sacrament into the Same banishment with it This we cannot deny since the Apostl hath so declared it an inseparabl Adjunct to That but still an Adjunct which therefor must accompany its Subject whether in Life or Death We must do This as often but only as often as we do That which Now we never do This Objection deserveth our Answer not so much for its dangerosness as for the occasion it ministereth for a more clear stating our duty in accommodation to so great a change And to cut off at one blow all its power we must observe that the Apostl hath prevented it by an express claus added to vers 26. which shews This not to be Mortal as ar our Parents we must shew forth his death not only while Festing continueth an Ecclesiastical exercise but till he come Whereby he putteth it out of the Churches reach in point of Duration as before he had do'n in point of Constancy He had proved it to be our Lords Constitution not to be omitted in any of their Church Fests bicause They must do This as often as they drank That Grace-cup And that this humor might not fall upon another part he further tells them That thogh they should omit the very Grace-cup it self yea those very Fests which it must attend or what ever other way they should invent All must be unable to free them from the Immortal obligation which they had as litl power to Abolish as to Intermit since it must equal the World in Duration as well as their Fests in Constancy This therefor though a positive Law is no less Indispensibl than a Moral and the Church hath as much power to Dispens with the Law against Murther as with This whether by sapping the Foundation or battering it with a Contrary doctrine II. EITHER therefor That Council which forbad Festing in the Church was Heretical and then future ages must restore it by postliminium or else the adequate foundation of this duty was not Eating but Meeting in the Church And that This later is the case we have the Apostl's clear Intimation at least if not his express Declaration For however at That time their Festings wer as frequent as their Meetings and on the other side their Misdemeanors were not in the manner
This Sacrament When the Word hath prepared the Heart by the Ear when the Understanding is Informed and the Affections somewhat Moved with the recital of What our Lord suffered And Why Then doth the Sacrament complete the service by shewing to our very Eyes the Wounds not of his Garments but his Flesh and Those not as long since made but as now in making Represents his Sacred bloud not as dried up by time but as Now even Now streaming from his Heart It so Commemorates his passion as to Repete it and in the most inflaming manner presents to our Souls all those incentives against sin which our Lords death our Lords Present death can furnish He that considers how the little sens of Religion yet left in the world is derived from the Frequency of Preaching will find too great reason to bewail the invaluabl loss it suffers by want of so helpful an Attendant For if That maimed as it is do in Som however Littl mesure prevail by it's Singl and Deserted strength how much more might we hope from their united Forces if Jonathan secunded his Armor bearer To say that we might Then sing of them as the daghters of Israel did of their victorios Princes Preaching hath saved it's Thousands and the Sacrament it 's Ten thousands would be but a cold Eulogy We have no reason to doubt that as there is more than Ten to One difference in their Powers so would there be in their Successes Unless we will needs doubt of our Lords ordinary blessing upon his so beloved ordinance which we have far more reason to believe he would assist with the Spirit not only of a David but a Samson as being a Nazarite appropriat to himself Therfor THIRDLY I shall say but this litle to such a scruple That as it would look almost like a Miracle if an Honest Constant Communicant should miss a blessing so we may be sure that if there needed a Miraculos Power to bless such an one it would not be wanting For it is incredibl that he who promised that when ever two or three ar gathered together in his name there he will be in the mids of them should not be most Especially and most Graciosly present with those who meet not in his Name only but at his Table upon his Own kind invitation to fest not With him only but Upon him Of this I say no more bicaus Those whom I dispute with ar so far from denying our Lords especial Presence that they make it the Reason for Their Absence who most need it but how much they thereby honor our Lord and his Supper let what I have above said declare for I hasten to my third position VII 3. MY THIRD Position is that the Converting Power of the Sacrament is better Exercised and it's Honor more Advanced by Frequent than by Seldom Celebrations The question is concerning the Greater or Less probability of the Conversion of a Sinner whom we must suppose arrived to neither of the Opposit perfections neither Worthy on the One side nor Atheistical on the Other but in a Midl state sensibl of his duty both to our Lord and his Church Willing or rather Submitting to do what he shall be convinced to be required of him but Wavering between his Obedience to our Lords Command which seemeth to require Frequency at least and the Apostls indulgence backed with appearance of Reason which recommendeth Aw and Distance as necessary to preserv that Reverence which it is supposed will best advance both the Honor of the Sacrament and Benefit of the Recever For such an one may plead that if I ow any person Twenty shillings and pay him One Guinny I do better than if I paid him Twenty silver shillings So if One Solen Address be more worth then Twenty of the Constant it will be better to com One time for Twenty With such Solennity then Twenty times for One Without it And consequently our Lord will accept of That as more perfect obedience than This. At present we dispute not that in This Institution the Number of pieces is the very Essence of the Obligation but admit the supposed liberty of paying One Golden performance in lieu of Many Less valuabl and upon This Supposition require that the Pretence may be made good viz. That the One for Twenty may be Such as shall recompence by the greater Valu the defect in Number This One Solen address must have not only a plainer Stamp as every new Coin may have but purer Metal not only more Outward Solennity but more Inward Devotion For if a man bow the knee never so Solenly and give the title of King never so Formally yet if in So doing he put no better then a Dry Hollow Light Reeden Scepter into our Lords hand he acteth more like a persecuting Jew than a Loyal Disciple And in the present inquiry Those who ar to make the Address ar supposed to ly in a state of Enmity and Need of Conversion for concerning the Godly there is no doubt but the oftener the better What ever Outward deference such enemies bring if it have nothing of the power of Godliness it doth not honor our Lord with his Own Sceptre For the Sceptre of his Kingdom is a right Sceptre a love of Righteosness and hatred of iniquity What ever wanteth This wanteth That Divine life without which the most Solen worship is no better than a gay Pageant who 's Forced motions pass for Solen merely bicaus Unwieldy the Absence of inward life giving the Ly to them all That we may the better Compare them it will be requisite we bring to vieu both the Rivals And first let us bring forth that Shew wherewith our Lord is to be better Served and Pleased than with literal Obedience WHEN the Unwelcom season is now at hand which Indispensibly exacteth the painful task the Unwilling votary if he can deserv That name finding No way to escape it forceth himself to look Sadly upon his still Beloved sins Confineth himself for som tedios days to the Lothed conversation of that Troublsom stranger his Conscience wherewith he Communeth in such Awkward manner as plainly betrayeth his Unacquaintedness with it's language not to be supplied by the vainly courted assistance of those good Books which at such times only he taketh the Penance to read and after the appointed days languished away in this heartless Exercise which he calleth Preparation he receveth I say not the Lords Supper but the holy Symbols with great Solennity we grant but with as little Benefit or Relish as Appetite and goeth home with This only comfort that the Tedios work is do'n and the Stately Lifeless machin may be laid aside till the Revolution of another Solennity call it forth to stalk abroad again with the same Troubl to the same Little purpose Let our adversaries now deal freely can they suppose such Pageantry acceptabl to God can such Counters as have somthing of the due Image and Superscription but