of God's worship but of those who pretend to the fear of God and care of their souls and yet live at ease in the gross omission of this duty Now amongst the many pleas or excuses with which men satisfy themselves in the neglect or disuse of this holy Communion that which most generally prevails and perhaps with some honest and well-meaning persons is the consideration of the words of my Text He that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself So dreadfull is the threatning and punishment here denounced against those who receive this Sacrament unworthily that men are apt to think it much the safer and wifer course never to venture on a duty the wrong performance of which is attended with so great mischief Damnation is so terrible a word and to be guilty of the body and bloud of Christ as it is said v. 27. Whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and bloud of the Lord is so heinous a crime that it may seem the most prudent course for a man to keep himself at the greatest distance from all possibility of falling into it Better never receive at all than expose ones self to so great hazard by receiving I hope therefore it will not be thought altogether unprofitable to entertain you at this time with a discourse on these words wherein I shall endeavour to give you the full meaning of them with the true and just inferences and consequences that may be drawn from them In order to which I shall shew you I. What is meant here by damnation II. What by eating and drinking unworthily III. How far this Text may reasonably scare and fright people from this Sacrament IV. What is the true consequence from what is here affirmed by the Apostle He that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself I. What is meant here by eating and drinking damnation to a man's self The original word which is here translated damnation truly signifies no more than judgment or punishment in general of what kind soever it be temporal or eternal So that there is no necessity of translating it here by the word damnation nay there are two plain reasons why it ought to be understood onely of temporal evils and chastisements 1. Because the judgments that were inflicted on the Corinthians for their prophanation of this holy Sacrament were onely temporal verse 30th For this cause many are weak and sickly among you and many sleep 2. Because the reason assigned of these judgments is that they might not be condemned in the other world v. 32. But when we are judged where the same Greek word is used which in my Text is translated damnation we are chastened of the Lord that we might not be condemned with the world That is God inflicted these evils on the Corinthians that being reformed by these stripes in this life they might escape that vengeance which was reserved for the impenitent in another life and therefore it could not be damnation that is eternal damnation that was either threatned or inflicted upon them for their unworthy receiving The sum of what the Apostle means seems to be this that By prophaning this holy Sacrament they would pluck down some remarkable judgment upon their heads Of this saith he you have notorious instances amongst your selves in those various and mortal diseases that have been so rise in your City and this God doth to warn you that you may be awakened to avoid greater and worse judgments that are future and eternal Now this punishment was extraordinary and peculiar to that time for there is no such thing found amongst us at this day namely that God doth suddenly smite all unworthy Communicants with some grievous disease or sudden death Nor indeed are men afraid of any such thing though it is very plain that this is the true meaning of the words of my Text that by such prophaneness they would bring down some remarkable temporal judgment upon themselves But I shall not insist any longer upon this but take the word damnation as we commonly understand it and in that sense to eat and drink damnation to a man's self doth imply that by our unworthy participation of the Sacrament we are so far from receiving any benefit or advantage by it that we do incur God's heaviest displeasure and render our selves liable to eternal misery and so proceed II. To enquire who those are that do run this great danger they who eat and drink unworthily Now this phrase of eating unworthily being onely found here in this Chapter for the understanding of it we are to consider what the faults were with which the Apostle chargeth the Corinthians and we shall find them to be some very heinous disorders that had crept in amongst them occasioned by their Love-feasts at the end of which the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was usually celebrated which disorders therefore were peculiar to those times and are not now to be found amongst us as v. 18. First of all when ye come together in the Church I hear that there be divisions among you they bandied into separate parties and v. 21. In eating every one taketh before another his own supper that is Whereas there was a custome when they came together to commemorate Christ's death to furnish a common table where no man was to pretend any propriety to what he himself brought but was to eat in common with the rest this charitable custome these Corinthians wholly perverted for he that brought a great deal fell to that as if it were at his own house and at his own table and so fed to the full whereas another that was able to bring but a little remained hungry With such irreverence and disorder did they behave themselves at the Lord's Table as if they had been met at a common feast this the Apostle calls not discerning the Lord's body that is they made no difference between that heavenly food and common bread they ate the Sacrament as if it were their ordinary meat What saith he v. 22. have ye not houses to eat and drink in ye may e'en as well stay at home and doe this there is nothing of Religion in this nor is this to celebrate the Sacrament according to Christ's institution whereby we ought to represent his death for the world and to commemorate his love and to devote our selves to him in new and better obedience and not to make it a merry meeting onely to fill our own bellies But this was not all for they were also riotous and intemperate in these Love-feasts They play'd the gluttons and were drunk even when they received the holy Sacrament Now this was so notorious and foul a prophanation of the holy Mystery to make it an instrument of debauchery that we cannot at all wonder that God should so severely threaten and punish such an high affront and violation of his sacred ordinance No
that they mean as they say And it being necessary for the government of the world in so many cases not proper now to be named that truth should be found out and the greatest certainty of it be given that can possibly and that men should by the strictest ties be obliged to some duties it thence also becomes necessary that oaths should sometimes be required especially when men cannot by other means well assure the sincerity of their intentions or secure the fidelity of their resolutions I confess amongst Christians in the first ages I believe oaths were not so commonly required in such little matters as now sometimes they are but the reason was because truth and honesty then prevailed far more amongst them and lying was then more scandalous than I fear perjury is now but perfidiousness and dissembling and equivocating and fraud encreasing have made the use of oaths more ordinary than otherwise would have been necessary For if Christians did generally observe the laws of their Religion in all other instances men would fly to this greatest security onely in extreme and highest cases and not find it needfull to require it in common and more trivial matters 6. Lastly I onely observe farther that what seems thus to be the doctrine of our Saviour concerning swearing was delivered by the Philosophers of old amongst the Heathens as agreeable to the light of nature and right reason that is to say they advised their Scholars to forbear all oaths as much as possibly they could never to swear but when it was necessary to reverence an oath as Pythagoras express'd it in his golden Verses not easily or lightly or want only to take God's name into their mouths I forbear to trouble you with the Authours or the Sentences themselves and I propound this onely to shew that the wise men of this world did agree with our blessed Saviour in this rule which he hath prescribed to us concerning swearing and I have been the larger in it that you might see what little reason any Enthusiasts amongst us have to stand out so stubbornly against the wholsome laws of our Countrey and the proceedings of the Courts of Judicature who though it were to save the King's life will not give their testimony upon oath because our Saviour hath said Swear not at all The sum of all is Our Saviour absolutely forbids swearing in our communication or ordinary discourse together and about the unlawfulness of this there is no dispute and strange it is that against such express words of our blessed Lord and Master men should so openly allow themselves in such a vile practice and yet have the face to call themselves his disciples and followers This evil of voluntary rash swearing hath prevailed amongst us even almost beyond all hope of cure and remedy That great Oratour St. Chrysostome made no less than twenty Homilies or Sermons against this foolish vice and yet found it too hard for all his reason or Rhetorick till at length he attempted to force his Auditours to leave off that sin if for no better reason yet that he might chuse another subject They are ordinarily men onely of debauched minds and consciences that freely indulge themselves in it and if any such now hear me I cannot expect by those few words I have now to deliver to dissuade them from it I had rather endeavour to offer something to your consideration who are not yet infected by it to persuade you to watch severely against it and resolve never to comply with such an impious senseless custome 1. Consider what an horrid affront it is to the divine Majesty All sin reflects dishonourably upon God but other sins do this by consequence onely this directly flies in his face and immediately impugneth his justice and power Other sins are acts of disobedience but 't is high contempt of God thus to toss about his excellent and glorious name in our unhallowed mouths and to prostitute it to so vile an use as onely to fill up the vacuities of our idle prattle That great and terrible name of God which all the Angels and host of Heaven with the profoundest submission continually adore which rends the mountains and opens the bowels of the deepest rocks which makes hell tremble and is the strength and hope of all the ends of the earth our onely refuge in the day of trouble the very thought whereof should fill all sober persons with a reverential awe and horrour how do men most impudently and rashly almost every minute pollute and tear without fear or sense or observing what they say as if God Almighty the Maker and Judge of us all were the meanest and most despicable Being in the universe What unaccountable boldness and intolerable sauciness is this to dare to invoke the dreadfull Majesty of heaven and earth to witness to every impertinent saying silly story vain fancy almost every five words we utter thus at our pleasure to summon our Omnipotent Creatour as if he were at our beck and a slave to our humour thus to play and dally with him who is a consuming fire and can in the twinkling of an eye make us all as miserable as we have been sinfull How shall we ever be able in the day of our fears to address our selves to the throne of his grace whom every time we speak we thus madly defy with what shame and regret and confusion must we needs appear before his Judgment seat whose honourable name we have thus foully prophaned and used so ignominiously Can they ever think to plead that bloud of our dearest Lord and those wounds made by the spear and nails in his most pretious body for the pardon and expiation of their most grievous sins who thus daily have made a mock of them Can they ever with the least hope of success pray God when they come to die to deliver them from that damnation that they have a thousand times before wished to themselves And yet this sin which argues such slight and abuse of the divine Majesty such rudeness towards him and draws so many dire consequences after it is now adays pardon me if I say it one of the fashionable accomplishments of too many of those that should be precedents of civility or good manners to others but this is so sad a consideration that I cannot endure to dwell longer upon it I proceed to other mischiefs of this vice though none need be named after this for those whom the awe of God and sense of his power and infinite greatness will not keep and restrain from such desperate profanations of his holy name it is not to be imagined that any less arguments should 2. This practice of common swearing must of necessity frequently involve men in the heinous sin of perjury He that swears at every turn in his ordinary discourse how often doth he call God to witness even to what he knows is false and as often forget to doe what before God he hath engaged himself
unmixt from the dust of other bodies be all disposed into the same order figure and posture they were before so as to make the very self-same flesh and bloud which his soul at his dissolution forsook This seems a Camel too big for any considering person to swallow he must be of a very easie faith who can digest such impossibilities Ezekiel indeed when the hand of the Lord was upon him and he was carried out in the spirit of the Lord thought he was set down in the midst of a valley full of dry bones and that afterwards he heard a noise and behold a shaking and the bones came together bone to his bone the sinews and the flesh came up upon them and the skin covered them above and the breath came into them and they lived and stood upon their feet This may pass well enough in a Prophetical Vision and did handsomely represent the wonderfull restauration of the Jewish People But that all this and much more should in truth come to pass that our bones after they are resolved into dust should really become living men that all the little atoms whereof our bodies consisted howsoever scattered or wheresoever lodged should immediately at a general summons rally and meet again and every one challenge and possess its own proper place till at last the whole ruined fabrick be perfectly rebuilt and that of the very self-same stuff and materials whereof it consisted before its fall that this I say should ever really be effected is such an incredible thing that it seems to be above the power of reason so much as to frame a conception of it And therefore we may observe that the Gentiles did most especially boggle at this Article of our Christian faith as we reade in the 17th of the Acts when St. Paul preached unto the Athenians concerning the resurrection of the dead the Philosophers mocked at him and entertained his doctrine with nothing but scoffs and flouts and indeed it was one of the last things that the Heathens received into their belief and it is to this day the chiefest objection against Christianity How are the dead raised up and with what body do they come In my discourse of these words I shall doe these three things I. I shall shew that the resurrection of the dead even in the strictest sense as it is commonly understood and explained of the very self-same body that died and was buried contains nothing in it impossible or incredible II. Since it is certain that the body which we shall rise with though it may be as to substance the same with our terrestrial body yet will be so much altered and changed in its modes and qualities that it will be quite another kind of body from what it was before I shall give you a short account of the difference the Scripture makes between a glorified body and this mortal flesh And III. Lastly I shall draw some practical inferences from the whole I. I shall shew that the resurrection of the dead even in the strictest sense as it is commonly understood and explained of the very self-same body that died and was buried contains nothing in it impossible or incredible Whether this strict sense of the Article be the true or not I think I need not determine it is sufficient for me to shew that if this be the true sense of it yet the Atheist or Sceptick hath nothing considerable to object against it but what is capable of a fair and easie answer However give me leave just to lay before you some of the principal reasons and Scriptures upon which it is built and established And 1. I think it must be acknowledged that this hath been all along the most common received opinion amongst Christians that at the last day we shall rise again with the very same flesh with which we are clothed in this state and which we put off at our death and that our heavenly bodies will not onely consist of the same substance and matter with our earthly but will be of the same consistency and modification perfect flesh and bloud though in some properties altered and changed Most of the ancient Fathers of the Church excepting some few that were of a more inquisitive temper and philosophical genius than the rest as Origen and some others did believe and teach that at the general resurrection men should he restored to the very same bodies which they dwelt in here and which at last were laid in the grave that their bodies should be then as truly the same with those they died in as the bodies of those whom our Saviour raised when he was upon earth were the same with those they had before that no other body should be raised but that which slept and that as our Saviour Christ arose with his former flesh and bones and members so we also after the resurrection should have the same members we now use the same flesh and bloud and bones And that this was the common belief and expectation of all Christians in the primitive times that they should appear again at the general resurrection with the very same bodies they lived in here on earth will appear from that spite and malice which the Heathens sometimes shewed to the dead bodies of Christians reducing them to ashes and then scattering them into the air or throwing them into rivers that thereby they might defeat and deprive them of all hopes of a resurrection of this Eusebius gives us an eminent instance out of the Epistle of the Churches of Vienna and Lyons in France to those in Asia and Phrygia under the Persecution of Antoninus Verus which gives an account how that the Heathens after many vain and fruitless attempts to suppress the Christian Religion by inflicting the cruelest torments on the Professours of it which they bravely endured looking for a joyfull resurrection at last thought of a way to deprive them as they fondly imagined of that great hope which ministred so much joy and courage to them under the severest trials which was by reducing the wrackt and mangled bodies of the several Martyrs into the minutest Atoms and then scattering them in the great River Rhodanus Let us now say they see whether they can rise again and whether their God can help them and deliver them out of our hands Now this is a sufficient intimation to us that it was then the known common opinion of Christians that the very same body and flesh which suffered and was martyred here on earth should be raised again at the last day And indeed those amongst the Ancient Christians who have undertaken to defend or explain this Article of the resurrection of the dead do it mostly by such principles arguments and illustrations as do suppose the very same body and flesh and members to be raised again which the soul animated here in this life 2. This hath not onely been the common received opinion of Christians but also the most plain and easie notion of