kiss of charity translated kissing the Pax Panis benedictus a mockery The Sacrament not only disabled from advancing Love but turned to a makebate 1. by taking away the necessity of the Supper we take away its power to make us One body Our Saviors precept of being reconciled before we offer our gift miserably perverted IV. 2. By our too great aw we not only disable the Sacrament from healing the least breach but make it an instrument of the greatest 1. This multiplieth questions 2. Invenometh them 3. Maketh them incurable V. Taketh away the very subject of the question ' better the Sacrament had never be'n instituted than so abused 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 of 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 THE INTRODUCTION Shewing it necessary to enquire how often we are obliged to receive the Holy Communion I. The seeming impossibility and real necessity to add to what hath be'n already written concerning the Lords Supper II. A double Objection slighted yet answered and turned to a double plea. The former concerning the dignity of the Sacrament III. The other concerning the deference due to Antitiquity A short retrospect upon the several stages of our departure from it How later Fathers departed from the first The Papists from the Fathers IV. The Reformed Churches from the Papists The Moderation of the Church of England blamed by the Non-conconformists who dissented heretofore in One extream and now in Another V. Our own Divines of the last age less justifiable than those of the present who do better yet not enough VI. The sum of the account A request for rigid examination and its reason An example of noble Ladies An advertisement to the Reader AFTER so many Treatises and Contentions concerning the Lords Supper it 's Nature and Mysteries the Duties we are to pay it and the Benefits we are to receive from it c. it may well appear not only needless to write any more upon so spent a subject but impossible to do it without troubling the World with Repetitions of what hath already and perhaps too often been said by others But the complaint which our judicious Sandys made in behalf of the devout Pilgrims who with great trouble and danger visit the Holy Sepulchre may well fit those pious persons who travel in search after our Lords mind in this Monument raised with great care by himself in memory of his death There the devout Pilgrim findeth the Grave it self buried out of his sight the herbs and flowers withered into costly but dead Marble and the glorious spatious Vault of Heaven contracted into a much duller and meaner one of a splendid magnificent Temple And here the conscientious enquirer findeth This Monument buried under so many incomprehensible Mysteries that the Sacrament of the Altar looks no more like the Lords Supper than doth the Temple of the Sepulchre like Joseph's Garden How much more had our learned and ingenious Writers advanced both the honor of the Sacrament and the interest of Souls if in stead of those Many Great and Fine Buildings wherewith they have endeavored to beautifie and really hidden it they had left us the naked Area a Plain Honest account of our Lords Meaning especially in such points as are therefore necessary to be known because otherwise we cannot conform our obedience to it Such are These Whether our Lord intended more than he expressed and how much Whether he intended to impose it upon us as a Command or no and how much and with what limitations Whether all Persons be obliged to perform it and how often Whether we may omit it in any case and in what cases Whether and in what cases we be not only permitted but obliged to forbear Whether it be best to perform it seldom or often or constantly c. These and such as these are questions so obvious yea so unavoidable ly so directly in our way so cross it and even block it up that it may be wondered how Any one much more how Every one that pretendeth either to guide others or follow his own light should I cannot say Neglect but Avoid them For they serve not to tickle the Fancy or scratch the Curiosity but to inform the Conscience they do not amuse us with impertinent Speculations but direct us in necessary Duty and that not in Collateral or Inferior but in the Principal Articles So that it seemeth no less than admirable that any should sincerely desire to keep a good Conscience yet neglect to understand his Obligations in the necessary points of Time and Frequency required For unless we can believe that our Lord most carefully established an Institution only to be talk'd of stared upon or fought for If we believe a word of the Imperative Mode must have an Imperative sense If we should think our selves ill served when having commanded our servants to do some useful work we should find them busie themselves in talking or perhaps quareling about the wisdom of the Command or the usefulness of the Work and so leave the applauded Command unexecuted and the magnified Work unperformed Then after so many Inventions yea so many Veines exhausted after so much profusion not only of Ink but Blood unhappily spilt upon this sole Subject it is not only Possible but Necessary to write yet more concerning a Subject so far from being spent that it is untouched in those Points which are most worthy our labor For while some imploy their zeal in Disputing or worse concerning the manner of our Lords Presence and the Adoration due to it and others who deny Adoration strain Reverence to such a pitch as turns it to Fear While they forbid us to approach the Lords Table upon any other terms than we may safely come to his Judgement Seat while our kinder Writers help us with Schemes for self-examination and Forms of Devotion that we may if possible come Worthy but press the Duty so coldly that it is questioned whether it be a Duty or no and past question that it is not one to come at all Times When so much is spoken to fright us from the Altar and so little to oblige us to approach it What other Fruit can we reasonably expect from such Labors but what we see Many pay their
THE Constant Communicant A DIATRIBE Proving that Constancy in Receiving THE Lords Supper Is the Indispensible Duty of Every Christian By AR. BURY D. D. Rector of Exon. Coll. in Oxford Canon Apostol IX 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Whoever of the Faithful enter and hear the Scriptures but stay not out prayers and Communion ought to be Excommunicated as disturbers of the Church Socrates Hist Lib. V. Ca. 22. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For whereas All Churches through the world on the Sabbath day in every revolution of the week celebrate the mysteries they of Alexandria and they of Rome upon a certain ancient Tradition have refused so to do OXFORD Printed by LEON LICHFIELD Printer to the University for STEPHEN BOLTON 1631. TO The Most Reverend Father in God WILLIAM By Divine Providence Lord ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY Primate of all ENGLAND and Metropolitan And one of His Majesties most Honorable PRIVY COUNCIL c. May it please your Grace MANY great miracles do the Romanists pretend to be frequently wrought By the Holy Sacrament of the Altar but none so admirable as what their ancestors wrought Upon it For what more wonderful than This that a particular Church by colour of a Tradition should prevail with All other Churches throughout the whole Christian world to reneg That Constancy which was universally practised as indispensible for more than 400 years That from Dispensing they should proceed to Discouraging and therein so prevail that those who have freed themselvs from their many other gross abuses cannot from This but still believ our Lord more honored by Forbearing his Table than by Frequenting it In opposition to this Vulgar error I have in my narrow Sphaere used all other endeavors but with so litle fruit that I must either sit down in despair or fly to the last remedy Writeing which beside the advantage of fastening conviction better upon those few that ly under My inspection may extend it to as many others as shall bring my papers under Theirs But here also I meet great discoragements I see that many worthy persons have of late be'n as careful to exhort to the Performance of the Duty as to Worthiness in it but with no better success than those first messengers who 's kind Invitations brought nothing to the Lord of the Fest but variety of excuses If therefor I would conform either to the Parable or to Reason I must proceed to rougher means compell by force of irrefragable arguments the unwilling and resisting world and by all cogent proofs assert a Truth which by Many ages was never Doubted by More generally Denyed by Ours somtimes Affirmed but never that I know clearly proved viz. that it is every Christians duty to be a Constant Communicant And this I have do'n with Such evidence that I fear not any mans confutation yet with litl hope to see the Table furnished with guests For alas what can a poor Enchiridion do toward subduing such an error double armed with Prejudice in the Vnderstanding and Partiality in the Affections fortified with long Possession defended by the Priests and beloved by the Peopl I must therefor be unfaithful both to the service I have undertaken and to Your Grace's right should I either expose it naked and unsheltered to a Cold Advers world or seek any other Patron than your Grace For as this Sacrament hath a double aspect so hath your Grace a double right to it's protection As it is the greatest exercise of Love and duty to our Lord by your Eminence in Piety As it is the Principal office of Church-worship by your eminence in Power Ecclesiastical By the former every good christian may claim common with your Grace in most of the following pages but by the Later your Grace hath a peculiar jurisdiction over some particularly a PART III. Chap. 1. Sect. 4. those wherein I have justified the Constitutions of our Church as doing what in such unhappy circumstances is possible for retriving Primitive Constancy Could I say as much for the Practice But be it never so defective it cannot hinder us from justifying our Church as well as St. Paul himself For his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is no less generally mistaken for a derogation from That very obligation to constancy which he employed it to prove indispensible than is the three times in every year which our Church defines as the Least that she can tolerate in the Peopl for the most that she expecteth from the Priests who therefor think themselvs exactly conformable if they minister it just so often and no more though without any care either Before-hand to exhort the people to Receve it or Afterward to reprove them if they Neglect it which yet they cannot avoid seeing them generally do being so taught and accustomed during our confusions and still biased by their sloth or worse What may be allowed for the untractableness of the people under our present Distractions is not for Me to determin But that those very Distractions which now toss us between two such parties whereof the One first robbed the Sacrament of Constancy and the Other strippeth it stark naked of All Performance ly on us as a just punishment for our compliance with them is plainly enough to be discovered without any rude intrusion into God's secrets For Constancy in This Office is apparently the most effectual means to unite us as being both by it's own nature most serviceable thereto and by its singular interest in our Lord's Person singularly intitled to his Blessing I therefor conceve it no impertinent disturbance of those great cares wherewith your Grace is too much molested if as a kind of Church-warden-general I make humble presentment of that defect in Parochial Churches especially which your residence in Cathedrals hath hindered you from discovering bicause those Officers who ought to be eyes to your Grace and our other Fathers in God are themselves blinded with the vulgar error Whereof we saw a pernicious experiment in the days of your Grace's immediate predecessor when a General enquiry made upon these Questions 1. How many inhabitants in your Parish 2. How many refuse to join in Communion with the Church proved abortive bicause those who refused to communicate in This Principal office were not noted as refusing to join in Communion with the Church which had they ben the necessity of compulsory means would have appeared so evident that we had not now be'n in danger to have our nineteenth Article urged against us to disprove our being a True Church I know my self chargeable with a double great boldness first in fronting these Papers with your Grace's name and then in the account I make for it But when I first engaged in the work I resolved not to do it by halvs and I think I might better have omitted the better half than This way of advantageing the whole And since your Grace is so well known eminent for zeal in redressing whatever you shall find to need it I have
thence taken encouragement to believ you would much more easily pardon such a Presumption than such an Omission I therefor humbly recommend not so much these Papers as their Sacred subject Our Lord's Institution and our Churches Constitutions to your Grace's protection as I do your Grace's Person and pious Labours to that of Almighty God who that He be pleased to make your Grace a glorious Instrument of His service in This World and a more glorious partaker of His rewards in a better is the hearty Prayer of Your Graces most humble and Dutiful Servant A R. BVRY THE CONTENTS Of the whole I. WE are not at liberty to Receive or Refuse the Lords Supper Proved by 1. Scripture which must be regulatly examined PART I. Chap. 1. 1. Our Lord's Institution wherein 1. The word THIS pointeth at som singular Bread and Cup. Chap. 2. This singular Bread and Cup hunted out and found in a Jewish Tradition Chap. 3. No dishonor to the Lords Supper Chap. 4. This origination more plainly proved from 1 Cor. 10. Chap. 5. 2. The word DO requireth Performance PART III. We may not omit it without warrant Chap. 2. Our obligation ceaseth not thogh Church festing be not the same Chap. 2. 3. The END PART IV. The Livree of a Christian Chap. 1. Appropriate to our Lord's Person with signal marks of his favor Chap. 2. Serviceable to our own interests Chap. 3. 2. The Apostl's Explication PART II. His primary design was not to assert the Reverence but the Constancy due to the Lords Supper Ch. 1. The Clause as often as examined by several Phaenomena Chap. 2. The vulgar interpretation examined Chap. 3. Objections answered Chap. 4. 3. The Examples of other Apostls and their Churches Chap. 5. 2. The Practice of Antiquity Chap. 6. 3. Answers to Objections PART V. Deference paid to former Ages and the Sacrament Chap. 1. Concerning Unworthiness Chap. 2. Concerning Self-examination Chap. 3. Allegories of a midl nature between Reason and Scripture answered Chap. 4. II. Were we at liberty Reason would perswade us to Frequency The very Being of the Sacrament must not be hazarded Chap. 5. Distant Communions Useless for Conversion of Sinners Too much Aw Vexatious to the Godly Pernicious to Peace and Charity THE CONTENTS OF THE CHAPTERS THE INTRODUCTION Shewing it necessary to enquire how often we are obliged to receive the Holy Communion I. The seeming impossibility and real necessity to add to what hath be'n already written concerning the Lords Supper II. A double Objection slighted yet answered and turned to a double plea. The former concerning the dignity of the Sacrament III. The other concerning the deference due to Antiquity A short retrospect upon the several stages of our departure from it How later Fathers departed from the first The Papists from the Fathers IV The Reformed Churches from the Papists The Moderation of the Church of England blamed by the Non-conformists who dissented heretofore in One extreme and now in Another V. Our own Divines of the last age less justifiable than those of the present who do better yet not enough VI. The sum of the account A request for rigid examination and its reason An example of noble Ladies An advertisement to the Reader PART I. Concerning the Particle THIS Pag. 1. CHAP. I. The Scripture cleared from the scandal arising from our contentions by shewing the true cause and cure I. The Sacrament of the Lords Supper highly esteemed by our Lord and all his Churches In later Ages many differences of Opinions concerning it II. Not the number only but mater of the differences scandalos to the Scripture both toward Papist and Jew III. The blame removed from the Scriptures to the Doctors IV. The Papists best perhaps silenced by our claiming the literal sens in the Wine as they do in the Bread Our own Divines neglect the former part which yet is the Head of the Apostl's discourse V. The regular way to understand his meaning Two Suppositions taken upon trust with engagement VI. The whole Discourse Paraphrased VII The whole Argument Analysed And reduced to Logik form The great Limbs more minutely to be dissected in four considerable Members And all to be closed with an answer to what is said to the contrary CHAP. II. Of the Necessity to fit the word THIS with som singlar Bread and Cup. Pag. 18. 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 precedences Every word must be answered by som Idea V. 2. As the subject of a Proposition The meaning of the Predicate 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 CHAP. III. The singular Bread and Cup hunted out and found Pag. 28. I. Customs of that time and place to be enquired 1. The Custom of Festing in publik worship fitteth the Apostl 's Argument but not our Lord's Institution II. 2. The Passover fitteth our Lord's Institution but not the Apostl's Argument Three incidental remarks upon the Jews Paschal form III. A Jewish custom pitch't upon exactly fitting both our Lord's and the Apostl's words IV. An Objection answered with a story CHAP. IV. Pag. 37. I. No more dishonor to This than to the other Sacrament to be derived from a Jewish Tradition This Tradition more worthy than That II. In what sens our Lords Table is an Altar Were our behavior at Table more pious the Sacrament need not be ashamed of such a relation III. Our Lords form of consecration derived from the Jewish Forms both Festival and Sacrificial CHAP. V. Pag. 44. 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 Heb ew 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 Lord's Supper V. An Illustration from our Grace-cup VI. A Sacrament What PART II. Concerning the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 CHAP. I. The Apostl's design was not to assert Reverence to the Lords Supper Pag. 55. I. The Apostl's proper design first to be enquired into II. Three steps 1. What might be the Corinthians case III. 2. What might becom the Apostl to do in such a case IV. 3. How doth the Apostl's procedure agree with such Suppositions 1. The former part very well agreeth with them V. 2. The later part necessarily requireth them Proved 1. Negatively He did not design to assert Reverence due to our Lords Supper precisely taken The subject of the
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
this the Jews in their Passover used our Important This in such a Form as did no less plainly prefigure this Institution than the Sacrificed Lamb did the death of the Author then must it seem reasonable that he chose that Form with the same affection that he did that Season and if so then must we mesure our Lords This by that of the Jews makeing the resemblance an evidence that the One was the issue of the Other Let us therefore to the Jewish rituals The Law of Moses requireth Unleavened Bread and for That reason to This day they honor Bread with many ceremonios solennities Before In and After Supper Particularly they break a Cake into two unequal parts The greater part the Master of the Fest hideth under a cushion there to be kept safe till the end of Supper Then doth he solenly bring it forth distributing it among the guests and saying This is the bread of affliction which your fathers ate in Egypt whoever is hungry let him come and eat of the Paschal Lamb. And have we not now found our so much sought for Singular bread exactly answering what This bread is more than any Other bread Do not All features exactly concur The Season the Mater the Form of words All Circumstances the same This is so plausible that to this very Day thogh not for this Reason many look upon the Passover as the Predecessor of the Lords Supper and consequently the Standard of our Performance Many think that women have no right to the Lords Supper because they had none to the Passover and which is more proper to our present purpose that we are not obliged to receve it but at Easter only because That was celebrated only at the same season And that the Corinthians were of this Later opinion the more we consider it the more probable will it appear but most manifest that the Apostle hath utterly confuted it For he first reproveth them as profaning the Lords Supper not in their Paschal only but their Ordinary meetings and then convinceth them that it is concerned in them All whereby the Former error is also destroyed unless its Patrons will exclude all women not only from the Lords Table but his House too The Paschal bread therefore ' though it exactly answer our Lords Institution yet can it by no means agree with the Apostles gloss and we must not rest till we meet an answer for All Phaenomena as well in the One as the Other YET have we not lost our labor For as the Chemist ' thogh he miss his great Secret often findeth his cost and labor well paid by some profitable Experiment so we ' thogh we meet not full Satisfaction in our main enquiry meet somthing worthy Observation 1. That since our Lord in the same Circumstances used the same Word we ought to understand him in the same Sens. And therefor This bread must be our Lords body just so and no otherwise but so as the Pascal cake celebrated to this day by the Jews is the very bread which their Fathers ate in Egypt 2. That since This in the Jewish Passover pointeth at a Singular remarkable piece of bread distinguished from All others of the Kind by its Proper circumstances wherein it is to be eaten therefore This in our Lords Institution must likewise point at some Special bread known by the Circumstance of eating it from All ordinary bread 3. Thogh we have not hereby found what are the proper Marks whereby we may know This from Common bread yet we have the Way wherein we are to seek it For since there is no other defect in the Paschal but This that it answereth not the Apostles dissertation which reproveth their Ordinary Fests it must needs concern us to enquire into the forms of their Common Fests if possibly we may therein find not only such a Special bread but such a Special cup too as may answer both our Lords design and his word This in his Institution and the Apostles explication too whereby he proveth them concerned not only in the Passover but generally in Church Fests III. 3. LET us therefore again to the Jewish Ritual Behold at the very first Step we receve such light as leaves Nothing unsatisfied but our Wonder that the Jewish Rabbins should be better Commentators upon our Lords and his Apostles words and discover more to us of the Original Nature and Design of our great Sacrament than All the Christian Doctors who so long and so much have labored to honor it with their explications Because they are short and full take the words of Leo Modena a modern Rabbin and to remove all doubt of his veracity you shall find the same said by Buxtorf in his Syn. Judaica so that you cannot doubt of matter of fact equally testified by two such witnesses as you are secure agreed not to deceve you After they are sat down they say for the most part the 23d Psalm and afterward the Master of the house taketh a loaf of bread and saith a benediction over it which having do'n he breaketh it and giveth to each person about the bigness of a great olive and afterward every one eateth as he pleaseth and so the first time that every one drinketh he saith a benediction When they have do'n eating they wash their hands and take their knives from off the table because say they the Table representeth an Altar upon which no iron tool was to come And if they be three or more that eat together then doth one of them command a glass to be washed and filling it with wine he taketh it up from off the table saying with a loud voice Sirs let us bless His name with whose good things we have be'n filled After this the master of the house blesseth it and prayeth for peace and having so do'n he giveth to each of them a little of That wine which he hath in his glass and he himself also drinketh of it and so they rise from the table The Necessity considered which lieth so hard upon us to find some Special Bread and Cup which may equally answer both our Saviors and Apostles THIS we may justly upon That single account require any Dissenter to admit of This or shew us a Better But the Resemblance considered we may challenge him not only to shew a better Tally to our Lords Institution but any Pictur better answering the life Yea upon supposition that we were allowed to Forge what we pleased we might challenge him to Invent any Hypothesis that may more exactly answer all the Phaenomena both in our Lords Institution and the Apostles Dissertation to the least tittle Mark I pray you After they are sat down the master of the house taketh a laaf of bread saith the Rabby Our Lord distributed The bread when he had given thanks saith St. Paul as they sat at meat saith St. Luke Then for the Cup. The first time any one drinketh he saith a benediction saith the Rabbi The Lord took the
Cup and gave thanks saith St. Luke But of This Cup because it concerned not the Lords Supper St. Paul taketh no notice When they have done eating he distributeth a little of the wine saith the Rabbi Our Lord took the Cup when he had supped saith St. Paul After supper saith St. Luke saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 THIS signal cup THIS closing cup c. Could we have Expected yea could we have Desired greater resemblance Are not the Mater the Actions the Seasons All circumstances the same And do not All these agree as exactly with the Apostl's Argument and All its Clauses as with our Lords Institution The very first sight discovereth such Resemblance as manifestly declareth Relation and rhe more exactly we vieu the more shall we discover nor would we doubt the One were the proper issue of the Other did not the Parentage appear too Mean and too long Concealed V. WHAT must the adorable Sacrament of the Altar which hath so long exercised the highest devotions of devoutest Souls must this inestimable Sacrament fall to so low a meanness as to own a poor ordinary Feasting-cup for its Original And must all the Admirable Mysteries which contemplative Souls have so Long and so Much venerated must they All dwindle into a mere Representative of That death which the Evangelists have as plainly set forth by Words as This can do by Figures And shall we believe that so many good and learned Men who have so carefully studied it should be so much deceived and the Christian world at last after almost 1700 years be obliged to we know not whom for information To such erronios purpose may Those declame who use to judge of the truth of the Sun-dial by their Watches and I shall answer them by a story Codrus or some such brave Prince the night before he sacrificed his life for his people delivered into the hands of his chief Officers a Cabinet telling them he therein bequeathed them his very heart and requiring them publicly to produce it in every Assembly as a lasting Monument of his death It contained his directions for its use legible enough throgh its Christal covering but much more if opened with its annexed key They receved it with all due reverence and while the memory of their so deserving King was yet fresh they constantly obeyed his command But after some ages as their love cooled toward his Person so did their regard to his Legacy Which the Officers lamenting and endeavoring not only to restore it to its due reverence but to advance it higher told the people That however incredible it might seem they must believe what their dying Lord told them viz. That in this Cabinet he left them his very heart which therefore they must adore as his Royal Person And lest by opening it any one might therein find the Kings plain directions they laid aside the key and then omitted the use of the Cabinet it self except only upon extraordinary seasons pretending that too frequent use sullied it When many considering and considerable Persons complained that they were brought the back way to the same contemt as former ages were condemned for a certain Officer of a midle rank knowing the Kings directions could not otherwise be legible sought about till he had found the forgotten key and upon tryal finding it exactly to answer every ward brought it into public vieu pleading that such a concurs of lock and key in so many wards could not be fortuit and seeing Some key must necessarily be had they who refused This must be obliged to produce a Better And because the metal was objected against as base brass or iron no way suitable to the richness of the Cabinet and the Jewels therein contained he fell to scouring it from that rust wherewith Time and Neglect if not Design 〈◊〉 covered it and finding it pure Gold turned that Objection Against its worthiness into an Evidence For is And thinking that All cavils must be abundantly answered by a duble ocular Demonstration he turned it round in the lock shewing that all its parts were as well suited to all the wards thereof as its matter was to the worth of the Cabinet it self What success this had with the people my Author doth not inform me but this proceeding seemeth so genuine that I shall follow it First I shall shew that the Jewish Tradition was fit for the honor of a Sacrament Secondly That it exactly answereth our Lords Institution And thirdly That it serveth every syllable of the Apostl's Dissertation CHAP. IV. I. No more dishonor to This than to the other Sacrament to be derived from a Jewish Tradition This Tradition more worthy than That II. In what sens our Lords Table is an Altar Were our behavior at Table more pious the Sacrament need not be ashamed of such a relation III. Our Lords form of consecration derived from the Jewish Forms both Festival and Sacrificial THAT it is a dishonor to This Sacrament to ow its original to a Jewish Tradition can ill be objected by those who make no such scruple against Baptism which yet deriveth its Institution from the same Author and its Extraction from the same Family That had lost its Key almost as long as This for an Age hath not past over us since it was found among the same Jewish rubbidge yet are we not ashamed to expound those Evangelical allegories Regeneration New birth New creature Old man and New man c. by the Jewish Rituals which speak them more than Allegorical effects of Baptism upon Proselytes NOR is This Sacrament barely Equal but much Superior to That both by Natural and Positive Law For the Jewish Baptism was a mere naked Ceremony Significant indeed of the purity required in the person which received it but neither Derived from it nor Effective of it But This Festival solennity did not only Represent but really Exercise and Improve and 't was its self the issue of true Piety Their affectation of Ceremonies might for ought appeareth in Scripture be all the reason which moved Them to Baptise their Proselytes but to bless God for his Benefits is a worship acceptable to God above all burnt-offerings and sacrifice though instituted by himself as appeareth in the 50th Psalm where he rejecteth Those and approveth This saying He that offereth me praise he honoreth me And if even under the Law much more under the Gospel must such a Service be acceptable which carrieth in its countenance such fair Characters of the Divine Nature And as it hath more of Gods Image so hath it of his Superscription more Authority from Positive as well as more Dignity from Natural Law That Gods people should Baptise their Proselytes the Law of Moses took no care but that they should acknowledge his Bounty in feeding them it made special provision For Lev. 17.3 we find it thus written What man soever there be of the house of Israel that killeth an ox or lamb or goat in the camp or that
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
this last Opinion seemeth fairly intimated in the Berachoth it self if well interpreted For in the eighth Chapter reckoning up the differences between the houses of Shammai and Hillel they thus express the last 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Which words may be thus translated There cometh to them Wine for the Poscaenium and there is there no other but That very Cup The house of Shammai say he blesseth first for the Wine and afterward he blesseth for the Meat But the house of Hillel say he blesseth for the Meat and afterward he blesseth for the Wine In which words is plain that all agree that there is Wine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as we observed them to stile that After Supper 2. That there is but one cup for the whole company and 3. That the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 blesseth for them All. But Zohar in Exod. p. 280. speaketh full to our purpose and nameth the Cup by his proper name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Cup of Blessing was not used unless when there were Three because of the mystery of the Three fathers which blessed and so there is no need of the Cup unless there be Three The Reason is most Rabbinical i. e. most ridiculous but the Authority is reputed great because most ancient and the words are most pertinent and conclusive to our purpose plainly expressing how much they stood upon the Cup of Blessing and what number it required II. UPON This account of mater of Fact it will not be hard to pass judgement which I shall come to by steps 1. WHETHER in our Saviors days they put such difference between Bread and Cup is not necessary for us to determin for the Apostl's Argument will go as strongly thogh perhaps not altogether as gracefully without it since his partiality to the Cup may otherwise be fairly accounted for 1. Because we have seen from other pens that the Greeks understood the use of the Grace-cup but we meet no such foot-steps of their Breaking of bread and it was reason the Apostl should rather bild his inferences upon a custom which they knew than upon One which they knew not 2. Because Bread was never distributed After any Other Supper but only the Paschal and was Then attended with a form of words sounding much like that which our Lord used in his Institution Since hence appeared som danger lest the Corinthians should mistake our Lords meaning it was fit the Apostl should clear it which he doth almost as plainly as if he had said You know the custom of closeing a Fest with a Cup of blessing and you may know the custom of the Jews distributing a Cake after the Passover and probably you may think our Lord intended that his Supper should be mesured not by the Cup which was used after All Fests but by the Bread which was so used only after the Passover But I tell you I have receved from the Lord himself that you must celebrate his Supper as often as you drink the Grace cup. Here is ground enogh for his Argument and all its turnings and we may safely spare the trouble either of enquiring or contending for the equal or unequal frequency of the ordinary Bread 2. WERE the Jewish Misna or Talmūd directly against us in som material particulars it were more reasonable to reject their Authority than so Necessary and so Exact a Key That we may see the reasonableness of This assertion it will be fit to ballance them 1. If the Jewish Doctrines in maters of their dearest Law be apparently changed from what they were in our Saviors days we oght to suspect their care not to have be'n greater towards a Tradition Let us then compare what our Lord said with what their Talmud now saith The Gospel informeth us Luke 14.5 that our Lord spake to the Pharisees and Lawyers saying Which of you shall have an Ox or an Ass falen into a pit and will not straightway pull him out on the Sabbath day And they could not answer him to these things Which yet they might have do'n if their then Doctrines had be'n agreeable to those of the Talmud which forbiddeth to pull him out but alloweth to carry meat to feed him and if need be straw to support him in the place And accordingly Munster furnisheth us with a pertinent story out of the Saxon Annals A Jew saith he fallen into a Jakes on the Sabbath would not be draw'n out but have meat brought him thither which the Bishop hearing of required that the same honor should be paid to the Christian Sabbath so the poor Jew suffered two days penance for the Talmud's swerving from ancient practice I pretend not to equal any evidence with the Gospel It is sufficient that I hence infer that we may not argu from their Present customs to their Ancient so as to reject any probable light especially when so confirmed as we are by som of their own Rabbies III. 3. SEEING so great a party of them so state their Tradition as most exactly jointeth with the Apostl's discours we have great reason to believe Them to be in the right This not as an arbitrator between the dissenting Rabbins but in defence of my Hypothesis from my worthy Friends Objection I thus confirm from the exact agreement which I found between the Apostl's Argument and That Custom so stated This Argument must proceed from Chance from the Jews accommodating their Custom to our Lords Institution or from our Lords accommodating his Institution to the Jewish Custom It was not from either of the Former Therefor it was from the Last That the Division is adaequate needeth no proof For Ether it must be by Chance or it must Not since there can be no midl between the two ends of a Contradiction If it were Not by chance then ether That Custom must conform to This Institution or This to That For they cannot meet unless Mahomet go to the Mountain or the Mountain com to Mahomet The Assumtion I thus prove by parts 1. It cannot proceed from Chance Such a concurs of so many and so crooked particls can be no more imputed to undiscerning chance than can the meeting of the letters in the discurs it self Chance may do one thing well as a blind man may shoot a Hare but he cannot shoot multitudes without missing one When a FINE is levied in Court the Chirographer writeth two Copies at a competent distance in the same Parchment In the space between them he writes two or three letters then he cutteth the Parchment in the middle indenturewise so as to divide those Letters leaving either indenture som part that upon any occasion the conterparts compared together may by so many agreements vouch either for the other There happened a question between three parties concerning the conditions of a Fine levied time out of mind Two of the contenders produce for proof of their pretences common Parchments attested only by their Fathers The third produceth an Indenture of Fine transmitted to
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
Remote Churches on the Lords day VI. The first Day of the Week consecrated to This office and for That reason stiled the Lords day dishonored by derivation from the 4th Commandment cannot be worse profaned than by neglect of This office to which it oweth it's sacreduess HITHERTO I have labored to serve the Learned and the Inquisitive the Able and the Willing to search both the ground of our Lords Institution and the Apostl's discourse concerning it which reciprocate such light to one another that I hope every such Reader is fully satisfied both in Conscience and Curiosity But there ar many other who ether understand not such work or will not suffer the fatigue whom I shall now endeavor to fit with less troublsom Discourses It is much easier both to Understand and to Attend the the process of an History than that of an Argument and the sens of Mater of Fact as it is more Obvious so is it generally more Potent than That of Mater of Right What therefor I have hitherto be'n proving to have be'n our Lord's and Apostl's mind concerning our obligation to constancy I shall now authorise by the suitable Practice of All the Apostl's and Primitive Churches In This Chapter I shall search the Scripture for the Former and in the following I shall look into humane Writers for the Later In This Chapter let us vieu the Scripture and see the strange unhappiness of This Subject We might well hope to ' scape all disputes concerning Mater of Fact when the witness is infallibl what can we need more but to hear him Yes we need understand him too and as in the Apostl's argument we have found difficulty bicause those expressions which were familiar to His age are worn out in Ours So the same difficulty still pursueth us in the very History We must not only vieu what is written but we must 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Search and Examin and that carefully too what is meant when report is made even of Mater of Fact But we have This comfort that as the troubl will be now less so will our discoveries be more various and at every step we shall meet somthing worth the no great labor of the inquiry Two things will be worth our observation 1. How careful our Lord was to recommend his Institution and how backward the Apostls were in Apprehending his meaning 2. How diligent the Apostl's were in Obeying his will when well informed concerning it 1. It is worth observing be it but for our own justification that notwithstanding our Lords care to instruct them the Apostl's themselves were as hardly broght to understand his mind in his Institution as we ar now And it is more particularly observable that Those endeavors which he used to recommend it to their affections met the same success as we have seen follow those very words of the Apostl whereby he endeavored to prove the necessity of constancy Our Lord's care to recommend it appeareth especially by two Actions 1. His timeing the Institution Secondly His care to mind them of it while fresh in memory 1. He chose the fittest Time for the Institution The Apostl observed it and we shall anon find another occasion more fully to consider how observable it is that it was the Last night and That wherein he was betrayed and the Evangelist is careful to commemorate with what affection he embraced That Passover for This very reason bicause it was the most proper for This Institution But That dismal night however seasonable to endear it to Future times was least so for it's publication to the Present It was natural that the dreadful Tragedy then impending should so confound both their Apprehensions and Memories as utterly to rob them of all other consideration but of their Lord's and their Own dangers leaving them no power to regard the at-such-a-time-scarce-considerable action To cure This inconvenience he applyeth a contrary remedy and that speedily II. HIS Resurrection was matter of as great Joy as his Passion was of Grief or Fear and he makes That an opportunity to remedy the Other After his Death they met together not to Fest but Fast bicause the Bridegroom was taken from them the news of his Resurrection must give them the garments of gladness for the spirit of heaviness and invite them both to turn their Fasting to Festing and to close their Fests with his Supper as he had both very Carefully and very Lately commanded He therefor contriveth a way whereby he may at once assure them of the truth of his Resurrection and the meaning of his Institution The story we meet in Luke 24.13 which bicause we as litle heed now as the Apostl's did then will require som Animadversion Finding Two Disciples traveling together to complete the necessary number himself makes a Third He joins himself to them discourses with them gives them sufficient opportunity and occasion to observ his countenance his voice his meen and whatever els he might be know'n by But these it seems were Disciples in extraordinary not such as ordinarily conversed with him and they knew him not so perfectly as to discover him in such circumstances He suppeth with them and having by his discourses manifested himself a Rabbin takes the office of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Breaker and performs it not in the Accustomed but his Own New form points not so much to the Bread as to his own Body and thereby so manifested his Person that immediatly they knew him This gives us an Hypothesis suitable to all the Phaenomena of the story otherwise unaccountable and if our eyes be withholden that we no more know his Meaning now than the Disciples did his Person by the way let us look how we shall answer these questions How came their eyes to be opened 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in or by the breaking of the Bread more than by all his other appearances You say he might discover himself When and How he pleased True but the question concerneth not his Power but his Will which governs that Power and is it self governed by his Wisdom We therefor further demand Why he that Could do it in what circumstances he pleased should Chuse to do it in These rather than any Other This say you is a saucy question we are not to call our Lord to account for his actions But may we not be bolder with his servants his Disciples and Evangelist Let us then inquire concerning them Why were the Disciples so careful to report This very Circumstance Why the Evangelist so punctual to record that they reported not only the Thing but the Manner 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 How or in what manner he was knowen to them by the breaking of the Bread Here meet an unaccountabl Will of our Lord choosing This very Manner of discovering himself the no less unaccountabl Care of the Disciples reporting This Manner and of the Evangelist recording both the One and the Other Must All this be imputed to a fortuit concurs without
but adaequately for this Duties sake which gave it both Holiness and Name nor as Successor but Superior to the Sabbath And this is worthy our consideration not only for the Sacrament's sake but the Day 's too VI. FOR to derive the LORDS DAY from the fourth Commandment as it is Inconvenient upon other accounts so is it Mischievous upon This that it looseneth its relation to This office for who 's sake alone it was dignified as with the assemblies of the Saints so with it's title of the Lord's day Nor is such an opinion consistent with the practice of the Primitive Church which for several ages celebrated Both the One for the Jews sake the Other for the Sacraments which therefor we ought to celebrate as constantly at least as we do That day which cannot be duly bicause it needs not all be sanctified without it Were this as carefully heeded as in Scripture it is plainly declared in Reason duly accounted for and in the Primitive times publikly practised both the Lords Day and His Supper would have escaped Those Losses which Both of them suffer by their separation the One rob'd of it's greatest Honor the Other of its very Being For as it is higher Honor to the Day to be acknowledged an Evangelical Substance than a Legal Shadow and to be celebrated with this office than without it so is it not only Less Honorable but More Destructive to this Holy office to be spoiled both of the acknowledgement due to it from the Day so preferred by it's interest and of Safety from that Neglect which could never have befallen it while the Day it self is sanctified if that Sanctification were acknowledged to relate to this Performance Those therefor who ar zelos for the honor of the Day are for it's sake obliged to consider whether any Sport or any Lrbor can be so pernicious a desecration of it as the Omission of this Sacrament who 's celebration was the sole reason of the sacredness both of the Day it self and of its Eve which of the two hath the greater interest in the Fourth Commandment as being the same Seventh day which Gods peopl celebrated as thereby consecrated yet had not retained any difference under the Gospel from common days but in order to the better preparation for the Sacrament to be receved the Lords day following and upon That account differenced not by Festing but by Fasting And since necessity may drive to Mean condescensions I beg now not only for the Lord's sake but for the Lord's day's sake for That day's sake in who 's behalf so many complaints ar made not only To our Governors but Against them I beg that those who ar so zelous to have the Day restored to its due honor would do their part to restore this Sacrament to its due celebration whereby the Lord's Day with his Person would be better righted than by Sabbatizing with Rigot more than Jewish but with Worship less than Christian Let us now spell all together The Exercises accompanying this constant breaking of Bread Were they not Holy The Phrase expressing This exercise Is it not proper The Place Was it not consecrated before The Time Was it not consecrated purposely What then can be answered to the Apostls demand The bread which they brake was it not the Communion of the body of Christ Or to Our inference that they were as constant in the Holy Communion as in Common Prayer CHAP. VI. The Practice of Antiquity I. The constant Practice of Christ's Church in it's best ages proved by one evidence of each kind viz. 1. Canon the 9th Apostolik II. 2. One Father Justin Martyr 3. One Historian Socrates The Church of Rome under pretence of Tradition innovated against the Church Universal III. 4. Enemies of each kind 1. Protestants IV. 2. Papists V. 3. Junior Fathers particularly St. Augustin whose words are recited wherein we must distinguish between Father and Doctor As Father he stateth the question The question and the practice of the Church both in Doctrine and Discipline very different beeween St. Augustin's time and Ours VI. As a Doctor he determins the question 1. His stile very different bicause his Opinion is opposit to all other Fathers 2. His determination reacheth not Our question Yet have later ages caght at his wonds and strained them beyond his intentions with unhappy success His Syncretism rectified FROM Scripture I am now to descend to Humane Writers to examin whether by Them we find the Practice of the Primitive Churches agreeable to That of the Apostls I. AND now I feel somthing like a Tentation to imploy my Servitor to collect what the Fathers the Eldest especially have writen on This subject and then stifling my Reader with a multitude of Quotations purchase my self at Both their costs the name of Well read in the Fathers and Councils c. But corage Reader I have no more such a Design than my Subject such Need Where none contradicts One competent witness of Each kind may very well claim the belief of any indifferent person and with More I will not troubl you I shall therefor produce but One ancient Canon One Father One Historian and One Enemy of each party 1. Of CANONS I account Those most Ancient which have usurped the title of Apostolical thogh many of them bewray themselves unworthy of it We have reasons more than enough to decline their Authority but None to except against Their Testimony concerning Mater of Fact such as is the Publik practice of the Visibl Church at the Time of their Date which is Therefor certainly Ancient bicause not certainly known since having no Councel to father them they must needs be elder than Any Of Those Canons the 9th thus briefly and plainly delivereth the opinion we ar pleading for All the faithful which enter the Church and hear the Scriptures but do not stay out the Prayers nor receve the Holy Communion ought to be excommunicate as disturbers of the Church To This so clear evidence I know nothing capabl of being opposed unless perhaps the word faithful be supposed to exclude All but such as deserv the highest sens of That title But it is sufficiently know'n that That comprehensive word conteineth All but Catechumens and Penitens All others as visibl Members of Christs Body being in Those days honored with That stile And that it signifies no otherwise Here the words themselvs sufficiently evince For This title is allowed to Those very Persons who at the same time ar censured as worthy of Excommunication Nor can the Last clause be taken so copulatively as if Those passed uncensured who stayed out Prayers thogh they receved not the Holy Communion For This was lookt upon as the greater crime of the Two The Councils of Antioch and Bracara required that such should be driven out of the Church and St. Chrysostom bitterly chides them saying If thou stand by and dost not Communicate thou art wicked thou art shameless thou art impudent And we shall presently
such but against total Apostacy from Christianity yet if we carefully examin we shall find the Reason yea the very Phrase reach the former For if we reduce the Rhetorical expressions to plain Reason we find the Christian Religion balanced against the Mosaical and advanced above it in a triple opposition the Law-givers the Rites and the Promulgation In the first both parties are expressed Moses and the Son of God In the other two One is expressed and the Other implyed 2. The Blood of the Covenant wherewith a Christian is Sanctified implicitely compared with the Blood of the Heifer wherewith a Jew was sprinkled 3. The Spirit of Grace in whose mirific power our Savior first and his Apostls afterward proclaimed the Gospel and whom to Blaspheme was unpardonable weighed against the Angel that proclaimed the Law at Mount Sinai 2. The Second is to Us most considerabl That whereas our Lord stiled This Cup the New Covenant in His Blood The Apostl pointeth at it in the Proper Phrase as That Character whereby a Christian Professor is to be Known viz. The blood of the Covenant wherein he was sanctified For he speaketh by Metonym of the Sign for the signified a Figure Elegant Emphatical and Common It is as if one should thus express a Knight of the Garter deserting his Order He hath torn off his Ribon Broken in peices his George Left off his Starr c. Every one seeth that the Laying aside these several peices of his Habit are so many Descriptions of his Apostacy bicaus the Wearing of them ar so many Cognisances of a Brother Since therefor this Supper Hath I should say Had the Same Office in the Christian Church as Those Cognisances have in That Fraternity therefor must the Desertion thereof be equally Expressive of an Apostate from Christianity There is only This and no disadvantageos difference That This One Singly signifieth as much in a Christian as Those Severals did Joyntly either in Knight or Jew He that kept not the Sabbath might retene other signes of a Jew he might be Circumcised keep the New Moons the Passover c. But at the date of this Epistl This Cup was Constantly celebrated by Every Christian in Every Assembly as an Indispensibl bicause Critical Rite of public worship so that it was the same thing to desert the Lords Table and his Church God forbid we should not allow for so Great a Change however unjustifieabl in our Publik worship but should charge such as Apostates from Christ who perhaps fear less to Shed rheir Own Blood in his Service than to Drink His at his Table yet were it to be wished that we would better consider that Moses's own Child was in great danger to be destroyed for want of Circumcision and he that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath day thoght as litl of Apostacy from God as any of us do from Christ Yea look we upon the words before us Who wer they that dyed without mercy as dispising Moses's law Wer they such only as Totally fell from Judaism Wer they not All such as neglected any One of those Rites that wer therefor Capital bicaus Distinctive When therefor all is considered we can plead nothing but the goodness of our Intentions or the greater goodness of Gods grace if upon the same reason we should be caled to account for our omission of This Rite no less Important and Indispensibl Yea as we have already seen if the Reason be the same the Crime is much greater not only bicause of the Better Law and Law-giver but bicause of the Greater Contemt There the Law was despised here the Person who 's blood is the mater of the Law That was the Law of Moses This the Blood of the Son of God That was despised This is troden under foot and therefor upon so Many and so Great accounts of how much sorer punishment shall he be thought worthy that is guilty of so much greater contumely But bicause we usually judge of the Price which the Law-giver puts upon his Law by the Penalty which he annexeth to it lest we be temted to think our Lords Supper not intended in the words we now com from viewing And its deserter so far from worthy of any sorer punishment that indeed he is worthy of None bicause None is threatned by our Lord in his Institution It is therefor necessary that Thirdly we observe IV. 3. VVITH What Obligation our Lord hath bound This duty upon us We ar here fundamentally to consider the difference between the Laws of Christ and Those of Moses and all Other lawgivers Our Lord declared his Kingdom not of this world and 't is plain his Punishments ar not For thogh the Apostl the more to prevail with the Corinthians speak no Less and perhaps More of Temporal than of Eternal judgments yet doth he herein rather speak his Own Reason than our Lords Revelation applying himself ad homines to their sensual apprehensions not to any declared threats of our Lord who hath not bound his Command upon us by any Chains of Fear but the much Stronger and more proper Bonds of Love And if the Prophet might make it a complaint against Ephraim I led them with the cords of a man with bonds of Love yet they knew not that I healed them it must not be Diminution but Aggravation of the crime if we break Such bonds asunder and cast Such cords from us The word used by the Prophet is the same whence our English Cable seemeth derived and written by the very same Letters But we need not contend with the Translation For rhose Bonds of Love ar Both Cables for Strength and Cords for Compliance Silken Cables whose Soft Smooth flexiblness twineth about the heart and whose Strength so forceth it that it cannot so much as wish either to Slip or Break the Obligation These ar called the Cords of a man they lay hold on our Humanity fasten upon our very Nature prevail on us by force of Reason And they ar the Bonds of Love no less suitabl to the Nature of the Gospel and more particlarly of This Institution than to Our Own The very Design of the Command is a Thankful remembrance of the Death of the Author and it had be'n most incongrous ro kindle the Spirit of Thankfulness with the blustering of Threats Do this or Dy may very well suit with the Spirit of Bondage But Do this in remembrance of my Death to an Evangelical Spirit is much more Potent as well as Proper than Do This for fear of Your Own As our Lord chose this more Obliging way so hath he Improved it with all such Endearments as may fasten it most Powerfully upon our Affections that so it may not be possibl for any despiser to impute his Kindness towards Us to Coldness toward his Institution CHAP. II. This is Appropriate to our Lords Person and recommended by signal marks of his favor 1. This Command appropriat to our Lords Person and Humanity And thereby I.
he the Best Manner for exalting it's Motions and Pleasures Such a Commemoration improveth the kindness even of the Passion it self He seemeth to have contrived how he might make the Remembrance of it as Sweet to Us as the Suffering was bitter to Himself Certainly shewed the same Love in providing for our Joy by This Communion as for our Salvation by the Effusion of That Bloud which we so Enjoy So that by Doing This we do not only Render Thanks for that Greatest Benefit his Death but Receve a New one and feed our very Thankfulness which acquireth a New Obligation and thereby new mater of Pleasure by endeavoring thus to answer the Old And we may still go on with Davids question What shall I render for this cup of Salvation By how much therefor the Joys of Thankfulness exceed All other Joys By how much our Lords Passion more exceedeth our utmost Thankfulness than could All Those other Benefits which so posed David By how much This Office is more Appropriate and Serviceable to it than Any yea than All other offices of devotion By so much More Pleasant must This be than Any other Exercise even of Religion yea even of Christian Religion And if there be any truth in what St. Paul after the Prophet professeth that ey hath not seen nor ear heard nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceve what God hath prepared for them that love him If there be any reason in his invitation to quit the satisfying pleasures of wine for the more raptures inebriations of the Spirit we must needs believ that our gracios Lord had the same design in This Institution as St. John professed in his first epistl which he ushereth with this declaration These things I write to you that you may have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ and these things we write unto you that your joy may be full Did Epicurus ever promis such Happiness Did Lucullus ever make such a fest Did Petronius Arbiter ever invent such pleasures That any one who hath I say not any spark of divine life but any sens or desire of Pleasure should slight such invitations is next to the Love that made them the greatest Wonder and next to That of the Jews the greatest Injury since this is in a manner to crucify the Son of God afresh and put him to an open shame in Effigie Do we not put This his representative and therein Himself to an open shame when we so slight it as to postpone it to our more esteemed lusts and idleness as unable to match them in its offers of happiness VII OF HAPPINESS Yes it serveth not only our Pleasures but our solid and durabl Happiness It is not our Flatterer but our Friend Flatterers often serv mens Pleasures to ill purposes and mischievos consequences This doth not more seek to Please than to Benefit As it is a Banket to delight so it is both Food to nurish and Medicine to cure The gracios Author caleth it Meat indeed and Drink indeed bicaus the guest hath not only present satisfaction to all his appetites but Everlasting life to his Soul This ' thogh most worthy I insist not upon bicaus it is not only generally acknowledged for a truth but by our adversaries urged as the principal if not sole encoragement to the performance They honor it as a most gracios Invitation thogh they deny it the authority of a Command and while they unty the force of the Obligation make part of recompence by motives of persuasion drawen from our own interest And no more than need For it must be wholely insignificant and totally deserted if unfurnished of all kind of arguments and if it have none other but such as plead our own advantages they had need outweigh all the difficulties we must encounter AND Now Dear Reader we are com'n to the Rode You cannot fail of good Company and good Guides Variety of good books both setting forth the Benefits of the Lords Supper and the Preparation requisite to capacitate us for them and Many also giving us their own good company in Devout Strains helping our devotions And since I promised not to repete what others have spoken I shall do as guides use to do leav you to Gods blessing and the Conduct of others into whose company I have broght you in a large and populos rode But Before we part we may do well to sit down a while and consider whether the way we have passed be as Right as we have found it Troublsom It hath be'n so Long and so Universally deserted so utterly Untroden for so many generations that there is not any appearance of a Footstep much less of a Path This is sufficient to make us Doubtful But if the Learned and Pios be not only Silent but Opposite If they not only neglect to Urge the performance as Necessary but warn us from it as Dangeros it will certainly behove us to hearken to Such Persons and consider their Admonitions and their Reasons After a brief Retrospect therefor upon the grounds we have passed we shall take a full vieu of what is offered on the Other Side that so weighing the rival evidences we may embrace what shall appear worthy WE have certainly taken the only Regular way to understand the Apostl's meaning not cut off some One or perhaps Two expressions neglecting All the Rest and the mind of the Author in the Whole but carefully examined first the adaequate design of the Whole and then every Part and Paricl with their Consent in serviceablness to it We have found it absolutely necessary ro fit the important Demonstrative THIS with its proper Object both bicaus in our Lords Institution it is the Subject of a Proposition not otherwise to be understood and bicaus in the Apostls Dissertation it is the hinge on which his whole argument turns We have found a Pios custom of the Jews very Fit for this honor and exactly Suited both to our Lords Institution and the Apostl's Comment in every syllabl In the Later I mean the Apostl's Comment we have met several odd phoenomena highly worthy our Best observation but never honored with Any No Other way accountabl but this way most Clear Pertinent and Necessary We have found This same Apostl in the Chapter immediately forgoing cal the Lords Cup by the Jewish name expresly saying This is the same with That By this Light we have taken a careful vieu of That important clause whence is vulgarly derived a supposed liberty to do this As Seldom as we please and found that the Apostl was careful to insert Those words upon a quite contrary reason proving it indispensibly required that we do it as often as we meet in Christs publik worship From This discours of One Apostl we proceed to inquire into the practice of All the Rest and found Them and All their Disciples and the succeeding best ages of the
sum of all is This He that is not freed from the dominion of sin he that is not really a subject of the kingdom of grace he in who 's mortal body sin do's reign and the Spirit of God do's not reign must at no hand present himself before the holy Table of the Lord bicaus what ever dispositions or alterations he may begin to have in order to pardon and holiness he as yet hath neither but is Gods enemy and therefor cannot receve his holy Son In These words and indeed in the Whole Book the excellent Person endevored to make the Same mesures of Repentance necessary for a Communicant as in another very Pios and Learned Treatise he had proved necessary for Salvation And thogh he Express it not yea ' thogh he Intend it not he must Imply such a Faith also necessary for This Supper of our Lord which every where els he denieth to be so for That in heaven viz. An Assurance that he is in God's favor For since upon these grounds no man can Otherwise be Assured of the Lawfulnes of this action and whatever is not so of faith is sin the want of such Assurance must be as strong a bar against the performance as want of Worthiness So Those Few only Those very Few who ar not only in Gods favor but Above all Doubt of their being so must presume to approach his Table Yea if we will follow the conduct of the Position as far as it will lead us we shall com to believ it less sinful to Dy in such an estate than to Communicate Bicause Death is Unavoidabl and however it be damnabl to Live in a state of Impenitency it is no New sin to Dy so But here we ar told that we may avoid the Lords Table without sin and therefor must incur a Distinct guilt by Coming and that not only if we be Really Unworthy but if we Doubt whether we ar so or no. And what a singularity it here In every other controversie the Rival Positions use to oppose one another as Positive and Negative in the same Question Our present question is Whether our Lords Do this amount to a Command We might in cours expect no wors than a Denial And That very Denial too we might hope so Tempered as to leav Something Answerable in Som sort tho not fully Equal to the usual import of the word An Encouragement or Recommendation an Invitation or Intimation Somthing of som savor as Fit if not Necessary At worst if it do no way Oblige us if neither Duty nor Kindness bind us yet at least we should be at full Liberty to do it if we please But behold We now find it a Command but a Negative one For every one is bound to Forbear it upon Such Suppositions as shall lay hold upon the far greatest part of mankind And if a Law be made for the Collective body then must This needs be a Negative one bicaus not one of a thousand can escape the Prohibition If it be said That This Prohibition is but Suppositive and between two such Propositions there is no Inconsistence That it may very well be tru that If we be not worthy we must not do it I confess it nor do I accuse this admirable person of Inconsistency with Himself but his two Suppositive Propositions of Conspiracy against our Lords Command Bicaus the Former if it pretend to contein the whole Command Derogateth from it and the Later plainly Countermandeth it That disableth it from Obligeing Any to Do this And This maketh it Oblige almost All men to Forbear it The One falleth unreasonably Short of our Lords Command and the Other more unreasonably Contradicts it IV. WE cannot now avoid the rudeness to demand a sight of the Warrant which may authorise any one not onely thus to Limit but Countermand our Lords Laws It is an undoubted rule Ubi lex non distinguit non est distinguendum And Those words which ar accused of it we have sufficiently cleared from any such Crime But to Countermand a Law is much more than to Limit it and for This we have not yet seen the least Appearance of a Warrant much less so Clear so Imperative so Express an one as may outvoice both our Lord and his Apostl Our Lords Command is Universal Drink ye all of this This Apostl's injunction is equivalently indefinite Let a man eat this bread c. It is probabl our Lord admitted certain he Forbad not Judas himself And it is plain the Apostl Prohibited not but Commanded the Corinthians themselvs bad thogh they wer And if Either of them did at any Other time either Repeal such unlimited Commands or Prohibit their performance to Any kind of Persons when we see it we shall submit Yea though we have no such Commission we will take the boldness to conform not only to an Explicit Prohibition peremtorily saying Do Not this but any such word as by Clear and Necessary Consequence must Infer it If I say either our Lord or This or any Other Apostl ever drop't a syllabl which is capable of being made a Medium to forbid not onely the Most but any One member of his Church to do this thogh I shall think it as great a Miracle as Either of them ever wroght yet I shall Admire onely not Oppose the Conviction But there is No such danger the wonder bloweth from another point even from the slightness of the Evidences shall I call them which ar brought against the whole weight of the Apostl's argument Two loos words cut off from their fellow members and miserably rack't that they may confess something against His or our Lords designe a few precarios Allegories and som shews of Probability that our Lords Supper would be more honored and his Service more promoted another way These are the whole force we ar to contend with and shall do it in the order now set down beginning with that which alone is worth regarding Scripture And here I deny not the truth of the Supposition if the Apostl hath said any thing which by necessary inference will forbid any one to Do this it is as much as if he had said in express terms Do it not But then the Inference must be Unavoidabl and the saying whereon it is grounded Uncapabl of any such sens as may Comply with That Command which it shall pretend to Weaken If once more we look upon the Apostl's dissertation we shall find it to consist of Two main limbs Positions and Deductions which Depending upon These Positions must by no means Contradict them The Positions we have found aim all at This That Our Lord hath so inseparably inlayed His Supper upon all Church-meetings that as we May not so if we would we Cannot part them The Inferences ar Two 1. From Constancy in the One he inferreth Constancy in the Other Bicaus in All your meetings you eat This Bread and drink This Cup therefor in All your meetings you
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
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
away with her Metals nor the Leprosy destroyed with her Houses when it had infected Rome her self it still stuck to the very Site of the place For when the most advantageos situation temted Caesar to rebild it New-Corinth soon vyed with the Old as in Riches so in Leudness Look we no further than This Epistl we find the Apostle endeavors to write as Obligingly as possibl yet constrained to take notice of more sins in Them than in any Other peopl Look we no furthar than This Dissertation we find such Supremacy of Prophaneness as may well be Yoked with their otherwise matchless Fornication Both of them such as ar not named among the Gentiles not to be found but at Corinth only This so Debauched peopl how doth the Apostl Reprove How doth he Warn them from the Lords table Now sure if ever must the sentence of Excommunication thunder Now must the Apostl plainly tell them that unless they leave their Riot their Factions their Fornication and All Other their Carnalities they ar not Worthy and therefor may not Presume to tast of the Lords Supper But behold the either Negligent or Ignorant Apostl droppeth not a syllabl of all this Unworthiness Urgeth No other Prophaneness but what terminated in This Performance as it 's Proper object What shall we now say Were the Corinthians such Worthy Communicants as partook no less the Lord's Spirit than His Supper Yea were Those very Persons Worthy to receve it who receved it so Unworthily Or was the Apostl so Careful to describe their Crime and to assert the Dignity of the profaned Sacrament and yet so Negligent as not to allow the least Mention or so much as intimation of what was so Necessary for the due Understanding of Both but on the contrary so Bold as to Urge them to com when so many must by so doing becom Guilty of the crime he reproveth Where now Where Where ar those clear Prohibitions that plain Counteâ—â—â—and which Now if Ever must silence our Lords Do this Why doth the Apostl take such Cold notice of their Notorios Domestik Leudness as if he seemed to Approve it Why did he in such Scandalos persons censure at This time No other sins but such as they cemmitted in the very Church at the very Altar Why did he not afford One poor word to warn them of the Danger which himself Betrayed them to if the Unworthiness of the Person could bring them any I say if there wer any such Danger as is now believed himself Betrayed his disciples into it For he was not only a silent Spectator did not only Permit but Command the most Debauched Corinthians whom he oght to have Forbidden without Warning them of any Other Danger than they might well have avoided not by living Alway Worthy but by performing This One Action in a worthy Manner not by such Constant Sobriety as might enable their Own houses to emulate that of God but by behaving themselvs so Reverently in the Church as to Discriminate It from their Own Houses CHAP. III. Of Self Examination I. How Self examination is usually pressed II. The questi is not indefinite but confined to the Present occasion and the answer is dubl 1. Negative III. 2. Positive IV. The true question concerning which we must examin our selvs HAVING thus upon full examination found that the Crime lieth not in the Unworthiness of the Person but of the Manner of his Performance the Constancy we plead for seemeth already free as well from the Second as the First pretended Prohibition For if in That the Apostl did not warn the Corinthians from Doing This by reason of the Unworthiness of their Persons but only from doing it in a Manner Vnworthy of the Lords Supper Then in This wherein Self-examination is prescribed as a Remedy he doth not Therefor require us to Examin our selvs that we may Forbear if we find our Selvs Vnworthy But Therefor that duly weighing within our considerations the dignity of This Bread and This Cup which at That Time did and at All Times oght to attend upon All Church Meetings we may Therein behave our Selfs with Reverence suitabl So that strictly speaking our Self-examination is not to work Backward upon what we have do'n that so we may know whether we be worthy or no but Forward upon what we ar now to do Yet bicause the Gramatical sens of the word Examining a mans self seemeth to import More and it 's Utmost importance is bound upon us with all possibl Rigor That we may leav Nothing unanswered let us hear how This is urged as an implicit Prohibition from the Duty who 's Dignity it is to secure And here according to my wont I shall give you the very words of the most Excellent adversary To what purpose is it but in case he find himself unfit to abstain and forbear to com For if he comes UNWORTHY he dies for it and therefor to examin must signify Let a man examin himself so that he be approved c. It 's worth both our Observation and Pity how hard this worthy person is put to it to bend the Apostl's Words to a compliance with his Own Opinion and at last to Break a stubborn one that will not be Flexibl UNWORTHILY is turned to UNWORTHY The Former was utterly Unserviceabl it must therefor necessarily be changed that with it the state of the Danger and it's Remedy i. e. the whole affair may be Changed also This Sole consideration is enogh to ruine the whole superstructure so that we might well supersede any further enquiry But we will leav nothing unanswered and therefor proceed to examin whether the Bilding be better than the Foundation I will not fence with the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let it for me signify as it is translated and the Most too that so it can import But what then To what purpose asks our author should a man examin himself I answer that whether we look Far or Neer we cannot miss of Purposes sufficient If we look far off to the days of old Both Philosophers among the Heathen and Fathers among Christians recommend This exercise as most useful to Excellent thogh Other purposes But we need not go so Far nor any Farther than the Same book which asks the question The end saith it of Examination is that 1. We griev for all our sins 2. That we resolv to amend all 3. That we actually watch and pray against all And further to recommend Frequency in this exercise he reckoneth several fruits of it The oftener saith he we recollect our selvs 1. The more weaknesses we shall observ and 2. more faults correct and 3. watch the better and 4. Repent more perfectly and 5. offend less and 6. be more prepared for death and 7. be more humbl and 8. with ease prevent the contracting of evil habits and 9. interrupt the union of litl sins into a chain of death and 10. more readily prevail upon our passions 11. better
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.
thereof Prayer is required even of those who by their actions shew themselvs not to be the Sons of God and therefor when they pray may not properly say Our Father This is no less a Sacrament than Baptism and more a worship of Christ than either Hearing or Praying Yea All other Offices put together do not so much advance his Personal honor as this One. And is it not strange that when All the rest ar required This alone should be Prohibited and That upon no other reason but what is common to All And being put home will no less rob Christ of All honor than his Members of all Priviledges V. THIS therefore is our General answer to All Objections of This kind Many ar called but few chosen Outward Offices belong to the Called Inward benefits to the Chosen The Former ar both ways condemned whether they neglect to joyn with the Church of Christ in open Profession or by the unsuitablness of their Lives giv the Ly to That Profession And This differeth no otherwise from Other Offices but in This That our Saviors Person is more honored by it and if it require so much the greater care in the Manner so doth it also in the Thing if we must be so much the more careful How we Do it so must we be That do not Omit it And this is sufficient not only to Answer but make Examples of all those Allegorical Objections which indeed I should hardly have taken such notice of did they not serv as Illustrations of our duty For to no other purpose do our adversaries produce them These ar but their Velites their main strength follows CHAP. V. Reason as the case now standeth forbids to hazard the very being of the Sacrament for advancement of Reverence I. A Descent from Scripture to Reason The case now different from what it was formerly II. 1. Bicause the very Being of the Sacrament is hazarded III. Every step from Constancy an approche to That danger At first the Prohibition lay onely against singl persons not qualities and against Persons by sentence of the Bishop IV. From sins grosly scandalos a pass made to All sins The moderation of the Church of England V. Motives to bring tepid persons to the Sacrament not potent VI. A comparison of such Doctrines as endanger the Being with such practices as profane the Sacrament 1. Somthing is better than Nothing More hope of reformation A Protest against encorageing irreverence Three good ends laid down which the Sacrament is fit to promote but disabled by disuse WHATEVER we have hitherto seen either of Scripture or Reason thereupon bilt hath be'n so short of worthy to be ballanced against our Lords Command his Apostl's Explication or his Churches Tradition that I cannot think it credibl any one hath thereby be'n induced to entertene a thoght prejudicial to them But rather that Pios persons finding the Sacrament to have lost much of it's honor and it's power by so Constant exercise conceving it might be both more Serviceabl to Godliness and more Esteemed it Self if it had more Aw with less Frequence and encoraged by the exampl of Former Ages who for the like reasons had made great alterations took Those Examples for their Guides and Those good Intentions for their Mesures and wer more industrios to interpret the Scriptures by such good Ends than to conform their Doctrines to the Scriptures now grown obscure and hardly intelligibl by loss of That Key which alone was capable to unlock them It is therefor now made a point of Discretion and that I may pay our Lord the Honor due to his Wisdom as well as the Obedience due to his Command I must from the undeniabl authority of Scripture proceed to consider what Reason will determin I must therefor now suppose what I have all this while be'n disproving that the Indulged sens of the disputed words is the True one that they give an ampl Commission to govern our Obedience I was wont to say I now say Performance by our Discretion I must further grant what I wish I could deny that we cannot be sure to preserv our Reverence to the Institution without quitting not only rigid Constancy but Tolerabl Frequency and upon These disadvantages com to this humbl question Whether the case standing as now it doth it will more conduce to the Service of the Sacrament and it's Author to receve it seldom if at all than Constantly or Frequently I say the case standing as now it doth For I think I can never too often profess that I exalt not my self against those Venerable persons whether of the last or former ages who wer they now living would doubtless change their answer to the question with the changed state of the Subject II. AND FIRST I take it for very considerabl that the difference between the State of the question Now and Heretofore is the same as Caesar declared between the battail of Munda and Other battails In Others he fought for Honor in That for Life And questionless Those who thinking it Secure from total Desertion thoght fit to Hazard somewhar of Frequency would not have Exposed the very Being of so great a Duty if they had imagined it in danger It is the singular unhappiness of This onely Office that it is laid aside upon pretence it cannot defend it self There is the same danger in Hearing or Praying as in Receiving Unworthily That is by the Apostl declared a Savor of death unto death and This by the Wise man is stiled an Abomination Yet is That still preached and This still practised Be they never so ill used by their Enemies they ar not therefor deserted by their Friends bicaus unprosperos If it be pleaded that the Sacrament is not Laid aside as Vseless but Lock't up as Precios I answer that I very well remember when to Secure a person signified to Imprison him and in This case whatever the Intention be the Effect is the same Action is the very Being of the Sacrament from which if it be lock't up it is lost both to it's self and all other purposes which By it and not Without it it is Appointed and Fit to promote Our Lord stamped it with his own Image and superscription not that it might be lock't up as a Medal but Used as Money whose Office and Honor it is so to represent the King as to answer all the needs and conveniences of the Possessor He therefor most honoreth ir who so employeth it as may best answer our Lords good Ends not he that locketh it up as the Miser doth his Gold We must therefor consider there is an Extreme on That side also if Prodigality be a vice So and perhaps more than So is Covetosness Suppose there be Danger that the more we Vse the more we Spend it there is another that the more we forbear the less we enjoy it And in This the Prodigal is justified above the Covetos that thogh he spend his money he doth not destroy
very Scandalosness of it in the eyes of the Peopl made it look like impossibl that Any Person much more that any considerabl Number of persons should sink into such non-conformity both to our Lord's Institution and the Churches Constitutions as to deny this poor Quitrent this slight Acknowledgment of Three times at least which however short of the full due might yet serv to keep the right alive and in som kind answer that indulgent law of Moses not indeed in the Caus but the Event For That upon pure Necessity commuted Constant offering every beast they eat into Constant journying thrice a year to Hierusalem thereby to recompence loss in number by improvement in solemnity And our Church upon another kind of Necessity derived not from the Impracticableness of the Law but the hardness of the peopls hearts was fain to admit the same commutation Our Former Writers lived in such times as never questioned the necessity of doing so much at least and suited their precepts to Their own times not to These Dregs of error and impiety wherein our Lords remembrancer is it self Forgotten his Monument it self buried and his whole Institution so demolished that we scarce see any Appearance of it but in Books and even in Them no appearance of Obligation to perform it It was indeed a very pios design So to manage Repentance and this Sacrament that by mutual circulation they might assist each other That the Requisites of Saving Repentance may bring men to worthiness of the Sacrament and the necessity of coming Shortly to the Sacrament may cut off the delay of repentance But towards the Later Part of the design it was necessary to assert the power of the Command That so the Sacrament may equal Repentance as well in Necessity as in Difficulty For it is incredibl that those who ar not frighted to Repentance by the indispensibl Necessity thereof should be so to this Sacrament by any Less potent motive if there ly the same formidabl Difficulties in the way V. I Say Less potent motives for I must not deny our worthy adversary This right that thogh he have loosened the Obligation of the Command whereby the Worst ar tied to the Performance as their Duty yet hath he Recommended it by such Incoragement as must needs prevail upon all such as himself i. e. all tru lovers of the Lord Iesus thogh to lovers of their Lusts and Ease they be useless or wors For to invite a Carnal App tite to a Spiritual Fest what is it but to fish with a jewel whose very lustre will Fright the fish it should Allure Tell the man of Bottels that he cannot drink the Cup of the Lord and the Cup of Bacchus but must be bound over to the languid dulness of Sobriety Tell the amoros Gallant That this Flesh of Christ will rob him of all strange flesh and either confine him To One or From All his Loves Tell the greedy Scraper that this Heavenly treasure must be purchased with som diminution of his Earthly and scatter a good part his heaps among the Poor and bind his hand ftom those Gainful exercises whereby he Gathered and might further Increase them What ar These and what ar All Other graces required to or promised in This Sacrament to a sensualist but so many Warnings to stand upon the gard against such Robbers And what could have be'n more do'n or desired by it's mortal Enemies toward a total extirpation of Any office than to render it at once Difficult Dangeros Needless and Damageabl All which concurr in the Honor to which our modern way of Reverence hath exalted the H. S. in the eyes of the farr greatest part of those who ar to receve it On the One side a formidabl Gandelope between the Great Troubl of Preparation that we may com Worthily and Greater Danger of coming Unworthily after the most Laborios Preparation On the Other side all Necessity of running it taken away by a Denial that we ly under any Command and the suppletory Motive which should encorage us is to the much greater part of the world rather an Affrightment than an Invitation When therefore we look upon the Advantages we may hope from streyning the condicions of Worthiness let us cast one eye upon the Danger of losing even the Sacrament it self When we hear the Opinions of Former ages let us hearken to the Experience of our Own The Apostl and Primitive Christians had Great need to contend for the Manner We have no Less yea we have Gr ater to contend for the Thing I say we have Greater for if the Thing be lost the Manner cannot but perish with it VI. IF therefor the Revers be unanswerabl Then must Those doctrines be more injurios to the H.S. which reach men to shun the Performance it self than were I say not the debaucheries of the Corinthians who so behaved themselvs as not to Eat the Lords Supper but Any such Less mortal Profanations as may leav it a Being thogh less Honorabl And there ar two great reasons at least to believ that as any Landlord would liefer have his rent paid in Base Mony than wholely Witheld so our Lord would liefer have his Supper celebrated somwhat unworthily than wholely Omitted 1. Bicaus Somthing is better than Nothing No mony so base as not to be Somwhat worth A Pepper-corn is somwhat in its self and so much more in its significancy as the Right which it acknowledgeth is greater The very presenting our selvs to the Lords table is an act both of Worship and Obedience whereas those who turn their backs upon it deny both Them and our Lords Title to Them 2. Bicaus there is more Hope to Reform any Corruption in the Manner than to Retrive the Lost Thing This is not so visibl in Any case as in the present Against communicating Unwhorthily the Apostl hath spoken so Much and so Loud that if Reason wer Silent yea if it wer Opposit we would not avoid the evidence But concerning our obligation to the Performance it self thogh in truth he spoke no less convictively to That Age yet doth not Ours so fully understand it His argument needeth more Strict and Skilful examination than most men ar able to make Yea his words their key being lost ar obnoxios to be perverted and that not only by the Vulgar but the Learned to a sens quite Contrary And therefor in This beyond Any case it is dangeros to let the duty fall into Disuse since the Lusts of the Peopl will most readily concurr with the Error of the Priest to bury it in deep forgetfulness whereas Unworthiness in the Manner may easier find Practice than Patronage since every one hath knowlege enogh to understand it uncapabl of Any THOGH I have already said sufficient to the Candid yet fully to secure my self even against the malicios I think fit more formally to protest against encoraging Unworthiness or Irreverence Should I say that it is a greater crime to Murder
it was upon This Occasian and to This End urged seemeth most plain from the very Text For their Coming together is twice complained of before the Lord's Supper is mentioned and in the third place This is imployed only as an Evidence of the Other Whereas by the Laws of Reason and Custom if This had had the chief place in the Apostls intention it must have had the same in his Discurs and not be'n put to wait behind to com forth only as a valet to perform service to it's principal This is worthy more observation than the world is aware of For as the thing it self is to a considering person very plain so ar the consequences very great and That upon an account already cast up For if the Apostl make use of the Lord's Supper as an aggravation of profaneness in Gods hous and That for This reason bicaus all the unworthiness which we bring thither is imputed to us as broght to his table then must it be the most potent argument that possibly can be draw'n ether from Religion or Reason to make us careful of our behavior in Gods hous and consequently every where els In Gods hous upon the Apostl's reason bicaus of the interest of our Lords table which possesseth the chiefest place there and consequently Every where els bicaus of the preparations which we must cary thither and the good impressions which we must receve there so much the deeper by how much better our self-examination hath prepared us AND This very argument do we find used by St. Augustin to the same Purpose and with the same Unhappiness in his 252 Sermon de tempore upon the Anniversary of the Dedication of the Church or Altar Beginning with the words of the Apostl The templ of God is holy which templ ye ar for a proof how necessary it is that we keep this Templ shut to the Devil and open to Christ he persuadeth every one to examin his conscience and layeth doâ—n This for an undoubted truth Qui enim agnoscens reatum suum ipse se humiliter ab Ecclesiae altari pro emendatione vitae removere voluerit ab aeterno illo coelesti convivio excommunicari penitus non timebit Rogo vos fratres diligenter attendite si ad mensam cujuscunque potentis hominis nemo praesumit cum vestibus conscissis c. and so goeth on throghout the whole Sermon arguing against unworthy coming to the Lords Supper in such a stile that I verily believ our divines take thence their confidence to write as they have do'n I answer not for his Doctrine but I do for his Argument as being the same with the Apostl's as above urged Nor could he have argued better for care of coming worthily to God's Hous than by urging the hainosness of coming unworthily to his Table seeing it was as true in His time as in the Apostl's that whoever came to the One came also to the Other But if we mesur his Argument by our own Customs then will it be as weak as the Supposition will be fals For the Conclusion will exceed the Premises and fall short of the Fathers Design since it will not fright any from unworthiness in the Templ but such as intend to com also to the Altar i. e. few or none Yet will not this Insufficiency be the worst of its falts it will be so far from prevailing with a profane man to quit his lusts that it tends to harden him in them For when such a man shall hear so much spoken against unworthy Communicating and so littl or nothing against unworthy Praying how plausibly may his willing mind infer that there is as littl need for Him to fear the later as for his teacher to warn him from it I therefor offer it to most serios consideration whether the almost general loosness of this age be not much incoraged by the agreement tripartite which we seem implicitely to have made between Prayer This Sacrament and the World whereby it is agreed that Prayer shall enjoy Frequency without Reverence This Sacrament Reverence without Performance The World it's Lusts without Disturbance from either of them Whereas were Worthiness pressed in the now mentioned figure with half the vigor that it is in the Vulgar Were half of that which our Divines speak of preparation for the Sacrament in the abstract applied to it in conjunction with Common-Prayer Did we believ our selvs to ly under the same Necessity and Conditions of worthiness for Gods hous as we do for his Supper then can we not doubt it necessary so to live that we may be capabl to com worthily to Common-Prayer even for it's companion 's sake IV. NOR is there any reasonable fear lest this should have the same malignant aspect upon the Whole as we complain of in behalf of the Common-service lest in-stead of bringing men to the Church with greater reverence it should drive them quite away from it This danger is sufficiently prevented by the Apostl's Indicative way of arguing which telleth us that Christ imputeth guilt to us not according to Our Performance but his Own Institution and This imputation will reach us at Any distance not only from his Table but his Hous too For if it be no less our duty to com to God's hous as often as the congregation is held There than it is to com to his Table as often as we com to his Hous and if God by his scientia media seeth and punisheth the unworthiness which we would have broght to his Table if we had com'n to it Then to what distance soever we cary it we ar by God reputed to have broght it both to his Hous and his Table as often as his Church meeteth at the One and oght to do at the Other bicaus we oght to have met it at Both. What the Apostl saith in another case of himself we may apply to our selvs in This I verily as absent in the body but present in the spirit have already judged as present and again When you ar gathered together and My spirit If the Acts of the Church might be authorised by the reputed suffrage of the Absent Apostl then may the Lords Supper be profaned by the reputed communication of the Unworthy Absent since every member no less concurreth with the Church in Worship than the Apostl did in Discipline And this is plainly enogh implyed in that practice of the then Church which we heard testified by Justin Martyr For sending to the Absent their parts of Communicated bread and wine they thereby owned them to have the same interest as if they had be'n present This rock therefor followeth us as it did the Israelites in the Wilderness to what distance soever we eloin our selvs He followeth us with imputation of Receving even when we Refuse him to condemn us if we receve him with unwashed hands and to condemn us dubl if we therefor refuse him bicaus we will not be at the troubl
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
a Duty I say a Duty and every true Lover of our Lord saith the same For whatever Latitude the disputed words may be stretch'd to they know our Lord did not So Institute and Recommend his Supper only to be Neglected But if he required Constancy then is every Omission a Sin by Disobedience to his Law If Not then it is if possibl a greater one against Greater obligations of love For to a Loving Generous Soul a Trust is a Greater Obligation than a Command and Thankfulness will pay More than is Due And then further considering the work it self and it's fruits they conclude Constancy to be Due if not to our Lords Institution yet to their own Interests which Interests reciprocally comprehend our Lords honor since they cannot neglect his Blessings offered in This Sacrament without contemt to That bloud which Once so dearly Purchased and Still so kindly Offers them In these things no Divine is silent All Concurr in setting forth the Blessings and by Encoraging Oblige every one that loveth our Lords Person or desireth his Grace to lay hold upon Every opportunity to Worship the One and Enjoy the Other III. BUT when on the Other side we ar told that the Lord is no less present as a Judge than as an Host no less ready to Condemn the Unworthy than to Bless the Worthy And that Those ar Unworthy who com in any other state of Soul than they may safely dy in They now need be not only very Good but very Bold that shall dare to com upon such Dangeros terms For if the Person be never so Worthy never so Safe yet unless his Salvation be as Certain to Himself as it is with God he may not presume to com bicaus he cannot bring with him a full assurance and every Distrust will put him at the same distance as real Unworthiness YET seeing such persons have Hopes mingled with Fears thogh they have no full Assurance that they ar Worthy they have a good mesur of Hope that they may be so These very Hopes beget Fears that if they should Forbear the Lords supper they should disobey his commands Bicause they have Doubts of their Worthiness they dare not Com lest they should com unworthily and bicaus they have Hopes they dare not Forbear lest they should omit a Duty by forbearing causlesly So they see danger on ether hand they dare nether Com nor Forbear lest they should do ether the One or the Other unworthily So their very piety and hopes of Salvation thereupon bilt which should be their greatest joy is to Them an occasion of falling into a most griping Snare which hath no hold upon such as have nether hopes nor fears Let us now consider by what motives the Generality ar Led shall I say no it is the Goodness of God that Leadeth but Haled to repentance even by chains of fear forged in Hell fire Since those who ar most Religios upon fear of damnation must needs be most timoros where can we hope to find I say not That Family or City but That Kingdom that can shew us the scant number Three which we have found Necessary to make up a Communion who can com with Confidence And what then shall That rare Phoenix do which wanting neither Worthiness nor Confidence must want Company I plead not now the danger of Solitude to the Table but That of Torment to the Communicant God be blessed som ar so Heroically pios as to trust their Saviors Goodness notwithstanding their Teachers Rigors or their Own Fears hoping their good intentions shall be Accepted and their unworthiness pardoned if they com with Honest thogh Unworthy hearts But upon every turn of the Wind what Storms ar such good souls tossed with When they look backward how do they fear lest they may have receved unworthily When they look forward how do they fear lest they should do so again if they com or as bad if they forbear How earnestly do they Labor both for such Worthiness as they ar told is Necessary to avoid guilt and for such Assurance of it as may make them no less Quiet than Safe How often doth the very earnestness of the later hinder them from obteining it And how much still do their flutterings intangle them How often doth this wrestling with the heart inrage the spleen how often is the bloud sharpened by this contending against it's cooruptions How often doth earnestness after Assurance kindl earnestness in Others passions and then how rigidly is This very effect of laboring for worthiness censured as a symptom of unworthiness I know an excellent Lady troubled upon this very account that none of the meanest of our Divines to say no more now prescribed This as One rule of preparatory examination that we examin the irregularity of our passions dissuading us from the Next communion if we find not our selvs to have gotten ground of them since the Last And doth not the Snare finely encircle us Our very Indeavors after worthiness the more Eagre they ar the more they sharpen our Bloud and consequently our Passions and make us more Unworthy and This sens of Unworthiness obligeth us to Contend with all possibl Earnestness to master those Passions which by That very Contention ar Strengthened We now need no less help of the Physician to sweeten our Bloud than of the Divine to comfort our Conscience and if the goodness of God help us not more than Both we must either live Excommunicate from the Lords table or Indanger our souls by approaching it And Either way must be Griped with endless fears as having either Omitted the greatest duty of Love or Performed it Unworthily But all this is so inconsistent with the very nature of a Suprer so contrary to the gracios purposes of our Lord and sentiments of best Christians that I am almost persuaded to say that Such preparation dishonoreth the Holy table as much as None The Mourning weed sure is no less unfit for a Wedding garment than the Souldiers Buff or the Laborers Russet It is tru our Lord will never interrogate such guests as did the King in the parable Friend how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment Himself knoweth that the very Uneasiness of the garment is abundant evidence that their Affections ar as Honest as Unsuitabl and their welcom shall be suited to their Intentions But whatever Reward they shall receve hereafter it is manifest that at Present they suffer More and more Grievos perplexities from This which oght to be the most pleasant than from All other the most mortifying duties For in those the greatest austerities ar sweetened by the pleasures of the spirit festing their consciences with this satisfaction that they ar doing Gods work whereas in This they ar not only rob'd of That Satisfaction which is More properly due to it but griped with Anxieties as intolerable as undue Which yet to Souls as considerative as pios is less Afflictive than the Scandal thence arising
above the Laity in their own The Former by exalting this their proper tradition above the joint practice of all other Churches and the Later by putting the People at distance from the Altar and consequently from the Priest who must needs appear more worthy of reverence by the privilege he had to Partake the Sacrament while the People must only Adore it II. I QUESTION whether All their Doctrines put together I am sure not any One singl hath so much of Popery both Form and Matter as our modern way of robbing the Lords Supper of due constancy 1. This is the Soul and Life of Popery To Equal Tradition with Scripture and engross to themselvs the power of declaring what is Tradition This is the Pope's tripl Crown by this he dominereth over the Conscience and Understanding of the whole Christian world And This Particular Tradition is the first-born of That invention and the most valiant of the whole race None like it in Boldness for it first durst openly affront the whole world none like it in Atchievments for it hath triumphed not only over the Church Universal but over the Apostl himself 1. With the Church Universal she hath hereby dealt as her Nero did with her Predecessor-city Among all his pranks none like That of firing the City and then enenlarging his House upon the ruines If a City be to the whole World as a singl House is to a whole City then to make a Private Tradition devour the Universal Tradition of the whole World was another kind of Neronian fire and the title of Roman Catholik an exact tally of Roma domus fiet c. 2. With the Apostl she hath dealt if possibl more rudely turned his own artillery upon himself baffled him with his own weapon For He that he might convince the Corinthians that our Lord required constancy pleadeth a private Tradition I have saith he receved of the Lord what I delivered to you The Church of Rome employeth the very same evidence Trueth only excepted in direct opposition to This very Tradition of the Apostl receved and practised by all the Churches of Christ for having no other pretence to rob the Lords Supper of This constancy I have saith she receved it by tradition that it is not to be celebrated every Sunday The Corinthians could not oppose any thing to the Apostl's testimony concerning His tradition without giving him the ly nor was there any other way for Other Churches to avoid This of the Church of Rome And who durst be so rude to the capital Church of the Empire If All the Christian World have so venerated that Imperial Church as to sacrifice to her authority their own eyes who but a race of impudent Heretiks will question her veracity after so many ages of possession And if in such a Question as This the whole Catholik Church yielded to her authority with what fore-head can any other Church much more any private Person oppose her in any Other For if after such a concession This same Church shall pretend a Tradition that it is the duty of every other Church to yield themselvs up to her conduct by implicit Faith and blind Obedience what is this more than is already granted He that hath given up his eyes so as not to discover the brightest evidence must contradict himself if he believ them in any less manifest For it is to deny his own concession viz. that the Church of Rome is to be believed against all contrary evidences whenever she shall declare tradition This therefor as it was the First and Greatest essay so it is the most Prosperos that that the Church of Rome ever made or can make of an unlimited power over the Word of God and the Understandings of Mankind 2. This is the most Material Articl the Greatest limb of Popery Both sides agree to make this Sacrament the adaequate Test whereby to distinguish a Romanist from such as they call Heretik and This was the first step whereby it mounted to the controverted adoration When once it was obteined that Other offices of publik worship might be celebrated without This it was not hard to gain one step more for if it be as Well in point of Duty it must seem Better in point of Prudence to make it Venerable by Distance than Cheap by Familiarity And if it be Best to make it Venerable then will it be best to speak the Most that can help to make it so and when once it came to This that he speaketh Best who speaketh Most what wonder if Alexander claim adoration But to Adore the Sacrament and Trample upon the Institution To pretend that This is but a Positive Law and therefor subject to the Churches power and then with an express non obstante not only to Universal tradition but to our Lords Command to forbid the One half to the Peopl exalting their own Authority in the One and their Wisdom in the Other against His This was a jump which even the Church of Rome it self durst not make but after long exercise of omnipotence And as she herein exceeded all her Former Ages so doth she in This All her Other Doctrines In Other Doctrines they cheat men of their mony by scaring them with Purgatory soothing them with Indulgences wheadling them with Merits cullying them with Absolution upon the Priest's own terms fooling them with Foppish ceremonies c. But by This they pull out their very Eys forbidding them to believe any of their Senses If countermanding that singular Law which is appropriate to our Lords own Person if tearing away that badge which himself made the cognisance of his Church if to affront him in Both his Natures his Divine by derogating from his Authority and his Humane by defacing his Image can deserv the title then must This above All Doctrines be most worthy to be stiled Antichristian In brief and plain Ether the Church of Rome is to be followed in opposition to the Church Universal or the Church Universal in opposition to the Church of Rome If the Church of Rome be to be followed why do we deny implicite Faith to any her Other traditions If the Church Universal be to be followed why do we forsake her in This point of Constancy which she paid the Sacrament 'till the Church of Rome out-faced her III. VVE have seen by who 's Prescription this Phlebotomy hath be'n exercised let us now enquire with what Success And this will occasion another Question viz. Whether of the two we have more reason to be ashamed of The Practice is two-fold and ether part is answered by its proper success On the One side the Sacrament is rob'd of Constancy and That is followed by loss of tolerable Frequency On the Other side That Loss is recompensed by Veneration and This is followed by as great Mischiefs as the Author designed Benefits 1. By loss of CONSTANCY we have lost tolerabl Frequency The Obligation ones untyed and Latitude allowed without any other limit