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A66401
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Sermons and discourses on several occasions by William Wake ...; Sermons. Selections
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Wake, William, 1657-1737.
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1690
(1690)
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Wing W271; ESTC R17962
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210,099
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546
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on that one most just and reasonable Method never to leave our own Faith till we can be clearly and evidently convinced that we have a better offer'd to us in the stead of it and then we shall either free our selves altogether from the Attacks of our Adversaries who seldom care to meddle with honest and understanding Men or I am sure we shall not run any great Hazzard by their Attempts But above all Thirdly Whilst we thus contend for the Faith that was once delivered to the Saints let us be Followers of their Lives as well as of their Doctrine This is that which must save us when all our Disputes will otherwise stand us in no stead To believe aright will do us but small service if we do not live so too And I am persuaded would we but be prevailed with to do this as we ought it would not only most effectually secure us in the Truth but be the most likely means in the World to draw over others to it And indeed what pity is it that a Chureh which has in all other respects so many admirable Advantages above its Adversaries that it is defective in no other mark of being truly Primitive and even in this is less defective than others should not be blessed with this too Consider I beseech you that we rely upon none of those broken Reeds which others lay so much stress upon to make you happy in another Life though you are not upright and holy in this If there be then any concern for your own or your Church's honour if any value for your Immortal Souls if you desire the Blessing of God now and the benefit of his Promises in the World to come if these Motives which one would think should be of all others the most considerable may be allowed to have any influence at all upon you think then upon these things and fulfil ye our Joy in the practice of that Piety whereunto ye are called Be as Good as ye are Orthodox as free from all Corruption in your Manners as God be thanked you are from Error in your Belief Accomplish that great Work which Heaven seems at last to have begun among us And as we are now apparently more concern'd for our Religion than we have perhaps any of us heretofore been so let us go on in well-doing more and more Let us grow in Grace and then we shall also grow in the Knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ till finally we all come in the Vnity of the Faith and of the Knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect Man to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. OF THE Nature and End OF THE HOLY SACRAMENT OF THE Lord's Supper A SERMON Preach'd at St. PAVL's COVENT-GARDEN Decemb. 30. 1688. 1 COR. xi 24 This do in Remembrance of Me. THese Words are part of that Solemn Form in which our Blessed Saviour first celebrated the Holy Sacrament of his Body and Blood anâ— establish'd it as a sacred Institution to be continued for ever in his Church in remembrance of that Death and Passion which he was just then about to undergo for it Whether our Apostle recounted the History of this great Institution according to what some of those who were present at the first Celebration of it had delivered it unto him or whether as seems most probable he had received the manner of it by some extraordinary Revelation from our Saviour Christ himself This is plain that what he here reports to them of this matter was no idle Story no vain Account of his own Invention but a true and exact Relation of what the Blessed Jesus then did when in the same night in which he was betray'd he took Bread and when he had given thanks brake it and gave it to his Disciples saying Take Eat this is my Body which is broken for you This do in Remembrance of Me. So that our Text then you see contains a positive Command of our Saviour Christ himself of something which he ordered his Apostles to do with reference to this Holy Sacrament And my business at this time shall be to consider what that was and how far we at this day are to look upon our selves to be concerned in it I shall reduce what I have to offer upon this occasion to these two general Considerations I. Of the false Construction and Application which those of the Church of Rome make of these words Which having done so far as may be necessary to the following Discourse I will then II. Shew what indeed it was that our Blessed Saviour here commanded his Apostles and in them All of us to Do in Remembrance of Him And by that time I have clearly examin'd these Two Points I presume I shall in some measure have laid open the whole Nature and Design of this Holy Sacrament and in that have answer'd the End of these Solemn and Extraordinary Assemblies And first I am to consider I. That false Construction and Application which those of the Church of Rome make of these words It is the Opinion of those of the other Communion That our Saviour Christ here spoke to his Apostles not as the Representatives of the whole Body of the Church but as those whom he was now about to consecrate to the peculiar Office of the Ministry in it And therefore that commanding these To Do This He did at once both command them to continue this Holy Sacrament for ever in his Church and also at the same time invest them with a Power to Consecrate and Take and Distribute it to others as he had done to them To which if we did add their other Notion of this Sacrament viz. that in the Celebration of it there is a true and proper Offering made for the Sins and Satisfactions both of the Dead and the Living we shall then find the full import of our Text according to their sense to be this DO THIS that is Receive the power which I hereby give you of consecrating i. e. of converting these Elements of Bread and Wine into the true and proper Substance of my Body and Blood and having so done Offer them up to my Father as a true and real propitiatory Sacrifice for the Sins and Satisfactions for the Punishments and all other the Necessities of all my faithful Disciples whether they be alive or dead whether they be yet on Earth or gone to Purgatory Such is the Account which those of the Church of Rome give us of these words And in this they are so very confident that they not only Anathematize all those who shall say either that Christ in this Command did not institute his Apostles Priests or that he did not Command that they and other Priests should in like manner offer up his Body and Blood but have also made it the very Form of Ordaining Priests at this day in their Church having delivered the Patin and Chalice into
come frequently too When you shall begin effectually to perceive the Benefit of your Communicating in the still new encrease of Piety and Holiness in all your Actions When being full with a constant Sense of the Love of the Blessed Jesus here set forth to us you shall find it to be the Desire and Longing of your Souls to come often to this grateful and pleasing Declaration of it When in a Word being accustomed to consider the Blessings and Advantages of that New Covenant our Blessed Master has sealed to us in his Blood and here offers to renew with us in this Sacrament you shall wish if it might be every Day to repeat it and think you can never enough declare your Desires of being admitted into the Conditions and Advantages of it And thus have I offered to you what I suppose may suffice for the full Explication of the Words before us And from the Account of which we may now easily see What is the true Nature and Design of this Holy Sacrament Namely that it was instituted by our Saviour to be a Sacred and Solemn Memorial of that Death and Passion which he underwent for us and of the great Benefits and Advantages which accrue to us thereby That as by the Paschal Feast among the Jews God perpetuated the Remembrance of his preserving them from the destroying Angel first and then delivering them from their Egyptian Bondage and engaged them to a constant annual Return of Joy and Thanksgiving to Him for so great a Blessing So by this better Passover should we in like manner keep up for ever in the Church a lively and affectionate Commemoration of that better and more glorious Preservation which our paschal Lamb the Lord Jesus has by his own Blood obtained for us and set forth to the whole World that grateful and vigorous Sense which we have of so wonderful and blessed a Deliverance Now this being the true meaning and Design of this Holy Sacrament we may from hence see How great and dangerous the Mistakes are which some have run into concerning it with reference both to Faith and Practice For 1. If this Sacrament as we have before shewn was instituted as a Memorial of the Death and Passion of our Saviour Christ It is then plain That it is not our very Saviour Christ Himself neither in the State of his death nor in any other that is here presented to us There have been in the Church since the time of Paschasius Radbertus one of the first considerable Innovators that we meet with in the Doctrine of this Holy Eucharist among others two different Opinions concerning the Real or Corporal Presence of Christ in this Sacrament and both maintained with no small contention at this day One That the Bread and Wine are converted into the very Natural Body and Blood of Christ so that nothing of the Bread and Wine themselves at all remain but only in shew and appearance which is what they called Transubstantiation the other That the true Substances of the outward Elements the Bread and the Wine do indeed remain but that the very Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in an extraordinary and supernatural manner joyned to them so that in the Communion of them we do together with the Bread and Wine receive the true Body and Blood of Christ into our Mouths truly and really present which they call Consubstantiation Now however the latter of these be much the more pardonable Error of the two as neither doing any Violence to our Senses which evidently tell us That what we see and receive in this Sacrament is certainly Bread and Wine nor contradicting the many Passages of Scripture which declare to us the same thing yet are they both very great Mistakes The natural Body of Christ being not capable of existing in more Places than one at the same Time nor to be divested of the inseparable Properties of a Body such as Extension of Parts Space Figure and the like in which the very Nature of a Body as it is distinguished from a Spirit does consist But these Opinions do not only involve a plain Impossibility in the very Nature of the Thing it self but moreover do carry a manifest Incongruity to the Nature and Design of this Institution For if the End of this Holy Sacrament were as our Text shews to be a Remembrance of Christ a Sign and Figure of his Body broken and of his Blood shed for us then certainly as in all other Cases the Sign must be different from the thing signified so here the Sacrament of Christ's Body is not his Body but the Memorial of it the Sacrament of his Blood is not his very Blood but the Figure and Representation of it And thus these latter Words Do this in Remembrance of Me become the best and clearest Interpretation of the former This is my Body which is given for you and shew that we are to interpret it after the same manner as when we read in the like kind of Speaking in the Old Testament This is the Lord 's Passover i. e. the Memorial of that Action when the Angel passed over the Houses of the Children of Israel and destroyed them not when at the same Time he slew the Egyptians But here it may be asked Do we then exclude Christ altogether from this Holy Sacrament and leave only an empty Sign a meer ceremonial Remembrance of him and no more God forbid Nay but I dare say We esteem Christ to be no less present tho' in another manner than they Inasmuch as in this Sacred Ordinance he communicates Himself in the Benefits of His Passion in a more especial manner to every faithful Receiver of this Blessed Sacrament and makes the Bread which he eats and the Wine which he drinks become not indeed by any such needless and absurd Change as we before mentioned but by Grace and Blessing by his divine Power and Spiritual Communication his Body broken and his Blood shed for us to all the Effects of Piety and Justification The Elements are not altered they continue not only after the Consecration but in the very receiving of them the same they were before Bread and Wine without any bodily Substance besides either veiled under those Appearances or received together with them But by Faith at the same Time that we take these into our Mouths we take Him also whom they represent into our Souls Not as bringing Christ from Heaven but raising up our Minds and our Hearts to that Holy Place where he is we unite our selves to Him and have all the Benefits of his Death and Passion communicated to us for the Forgiveness of our Sins for the increase of his Grace and Favour to us here and to be at once both the surest Earnest and the most effectual Means to bring us to everlasting Happiness hereafter This is that real but divine and spiritual Presence of our Saviour in this Sacrament which we firmly believe and which secures