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A60584
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A sermon about frequent communion preached before the University of Oxford, August the 17th, 1679 / by Tho. Smith ...
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Smith, Thomas, 1638-1710.
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1685
(1685)
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Wing S4248; ESTC R39556
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22,930
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42
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that a general decay of piety came in afterwards and luxury eat out the vitals of Religion and these holy duties which had been the great comfort and desire of their souls in the day of their afflictions became to be neglected and the pleasures and vanities of the World had dull'd their appetite that they no longer relished this heavenly food this bread of Angels and if they came to the Sacrament it was onely at the solemn times of the year as at Christmas and Easter out of respect to the Law of the Church and the custome of the place where they lived that they might not be guilty of a scandalous omission of a duty so necessary rather than out of a thirsty desire and longing after it But if we can have the patience to compare the forwardness and zeal of the first Christians with the dulness and stupidity of this age how ready and desirous they were to embrace all opportunities of commemorating the death of Christ according to his own institution and appointment and how willing most of us are to decline them and that upon very slight and oftentimes unreasonable pretences if we dare compare their mortifications and severities in order to a due preparation with our slight and perfunctory performances how we are forced to doe that twice or thrice in a year which they earnestly long'd for almost every day it will make us tremble to consider how much we are degenerated and are faln short of those glorious examples which those ancient worthies set us and how little of the power of Christianity is to be found at this time among Christians notwithstanding all that great noise and profession which is made of it Our Scholastical disputes and quarrels about the Sacrament have destroyed and swallowed up our devotion and our charity and that which was designed by Christ for an instrument of uniting mens minds together in Christian Communion and love is now become an occasion of difference and irreconciliation They were not troubled with those hot debates which have since so miserably distracted the Peace of Christendom they contented themselves with a simple belief of the mystery without busying their thoughts about nice and curious speculations whole Churches were not then excommunicated for not assenting to a monstrous opinion contrary to common sense and reason and the universal experience of Mankind they did not under a pretence of exalting the mystery destroy the nature of a Sacrament as now is done in the Roman Church It must now no longer be a representative but a real propitiatory sacrifice for the living and for the dead and Christ's natural body must be brought down from heaven upon a thousand Altars at once and there really broken and offered up again to God the Father and his Bloud actually spilt a thousand times every day and mixing it self with ours Nor did they on the other side degrade it into a bare empty sign and entertain slight notions of it or approach it without a due and becoming reverence or abstain from it upon frivolous excuses as the manner of some is For had we that high value for the blessed Sacrament as we ought did we believe it necessary to receive it often not onely necessitate proecepti but medii too did we believe seriously and consider of what great use and benefit it would be to our Souls we would be more diligent and conscientious in the use of it and think our selves under an indispensable obligation of frequent Communion which arises also from a consideration of the blessed effects and consequences of it which is my second particular And of these I shall name onely three 1. By it we gain a close and intimate communion and conjunction with Christ hereby we are one with Christ and Christ with us that is upon our humble and penitent and devout receiving of the Sacrament he descends into our hearts by the sweet influences of his Grace he is really present with us by his Spirit and the life which we now live in the flesh we live by the faith of the son of God who loved us and gave himself for us and still gives himself to us in these holy mysteries For we must not fansie an immediate and personal union he indeed was pleased by assuming the humane nature to unite the word to it whereby he became God and Man which wonderfull union is therefore called Hypostatical because he had the two natures fully with all their natural and essential qualities concurring in his own proper single person But the union of Christ with the devout soul is purely spiritual not an union of his personal excellencies and endowments but a communication of his Grace and Spirit whereby the soul is exalted above its natural capacity and is transformed from glory to glory and is made partaker of the divine nature that is filled with love and purity and such God-like qualities By this we are joyned and united to him as members of his body of his flesh and of his bones that is of his mystical body the Church as the Apostle explains himself Col. 1.18 and not of his natural body on account of a concorporation or assimulation or conversion of the Sacrament into our bodily substance Thus as the Apostle St. John speaks we have communion with the Father and with his son Jesus Christ. By virtue of Christ's pretious bloud shed upon the cross we are reconciled to God he has entred into a new Covenant with us which Christ has solemnly ratified by his death and is willing to receive us to mercy and favour upon the conditions of hearty sorrow for our sins wherewith we have offended the eyes of his glory and of a holy life and through faith in his Son we can put up our prayers to him with some assurance that he will hear us and communicate his favours and blessings to us so far as he in his infinite wisdom sees fit and give us of his Spirit and the same communion we have with Christ the soul is ravished with the contemplation of his infinite love and goodness to lost man and to it self in particular and is filled with astonishing reflexions of the merits of his death as much as if he were personally present upon Earth again This indeed is better understood than exprest words being too scanty and the imagination not able to reach and comprehend what the pious soul knows by experience And if this be the blessed effect of our devotion and meditation if when we are upon our knees and are employed in holy thoughts we then seem to be out of our bodies and rapt into heaven and there lie prostrate before the throne and the Lamb how much more when we are kneeling before the Altar and are admitted to the participation of the body and bloud of our Saviour and are performing the most solemn part of the Christian worship exerting with all possible vigour and intention of mind for so we ought to be affected acts of
A SERMON ABOUT Frequent Communion Preached before the UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD August the 17th 1679. By Tho. Smith D. D. and Fellow of St. Mary Magdalen College Oxon. LONDON Printed for Samuel Smith at the Prince's Arms in St. Paul's Church-yard 1685. REVERENDISSIMO in Christo Patri ac Domino D. GULIELMO Divinâ Providentiâ Archiepiscopo CANTVARIENSI Totius Angliae Primati Metropolitano Serenissimae Regiae Majestati à Sanctioribus Consiliis Ecclesiae CATHOLICAE Primaevae Antiquitatis ECCLESIASTICAE HIERARCHIAE Strenuo Vindici Adsertori ECCLESIAE ANGLICANAE Sub optimo benignissimo REGE Prudentissimo Moderatori Magno Literatorum PATRONO T. S. Hanc de frequenti Communione Concionem coram Academicis Oxoniensibus habitam humillimè cum omni debita veneratione offert A SERMON ABOUT FREQUENT COMMUNION 1 Epistle to the Corinthians ch 11. v. 26. For as often as ye eat this Bread and drink this Cup ye do shew the Lord's death till he come WHatever doth happen extraordinarily and above the usual and established course of Nature doth mightily affect our minds and fansies at first and surprize and fill us with wonder but as soon as we are grown a little familiar with it our thoughts are at rest and notwithstanding our former transports and heats we quickly grow cool and the impressions which it made upon us wear away by degrees and we care not to make any farther reflexions upon it And the like is to be said of great and extraordinary Favours in the moral state of things as well as of extraordinary events in the natural when they are first conferred they draw our minds hugely after them nothing doth or can insinuate it self more kindly into our affections Greatness may make it self be feared and respected too for who will dare to affront armed Power or chuse to be defective in those points of Ceremony and Honour which are due to the person oftentimes merely for the sake of his character But then there is a secret hatred mixed with that fear and the respect is outward and forced and if it be not it is but the effect of a civil and prudent behaviour and of a wise compliance Whereas we are naturally enclined to applaud to admire to love such as have done any publick good and especially if we have any share in it Interest and a particular concern for our selves heighten our esteem and our affections and our resentments hereupon become more pleasing and ravishing But all this for the most part is but a fit of Passion and a mere scene and representation of Fancy arising from the present sense of the benefit for the longer we enjoy it we become less and less sensible So forgetfull are we of every thing but our selves whom we could be content onely to love and admire for ever Whether this arises from an impatience of fixing our thoughts too long upon the same thing or from the natural Pride which every man carries about him as if the remembrance and acknowledgment of a favour were a tacit upbraiding us of our want and of the infelicity of our former condition yet so it is and we need continually to be put in mind of our Devoirs and Obligations It is but a piece of ordinary Justice for instance and what we cannot deny without the imputation of Rudeness as well as the guilt of Ingratitude that such as have sacrificed their dearest Interests for their Countrey as have out of an Heroick Principle of meriting of the Publick exposed themselves to all the Misfortunes and Hardships and Adversities of humane life and have redeemed the Lives of Thousands with the generous loss of their own should have their Names mentioned with honour they deserve at least as a reward of all their labours and sufferings that their memories be held dear and pretious by their surviving Friends and Country-men this common gratitude obliges us to do and especially if the benefit be perpetual the remembrance of it should be perpetual also Now what greater benefit could possibly be done to the Sons of men than the redemption of them from the slavery of Sin and Hell and from the wrath and indignation of an offended God by the Sufferings and Death of our blessed Saviour This Victory he obtained for us but not without much Sweat and Bloud whereby he has restored Liberty to the World and put an end to the Usurpations and Tyranny of the Devil who had enlarged his Conquest and spread his Empire far and wide and held the greatest part of Mankind in a dismal and miserable Bondage This certainly deserves everlasting Acknowledgments and an eternal Triumph This ought to be continually and for ever fresh in our Memories Who is not amazed at this new and strange way of Conquest that through death he should destroy him who had the power of death that is the Devil Heb. 2.14 that he should triumph over the evil Spirits in the Grave the place where they used to erect their Trophies over the ruines of Mankind and where the direfull effects of their Power and Malice and Revenge were most seen and lastly that the end of his Life should be the beginning of his Glory and Exaltation And then who is not equally or rather more amazed at the greatness of his Condescension and Love that he should come down from his glory and assume the nature of a Man with all the natural Infirmities and Imperfections of it undergo the Malice and Slanders and Fury of an enraged Multitude who by their restless importunity got him sentenced to die as an Impostor and Malefactor and submit to the Torments and Ignominies of the Cross and endure with so great patience the revilings and contradictions of these impious and unrighteous Men even while he hung upon the cursed Tree which must needs add to the anguish and pain which the violent extension of his Nerves caused in his tender Flesh and all this for our sakes who were the Enemies of God and lost to all sense of goodness and who deserved no pity This was the effect of his tender Compassion and Love to Mankind 't was this that made him even relish that bitter Cup and though as Man he had just apprehensions of the Horrours of Death and the Wrath and Justice of God which he as our Surety and as in our stead was to undergo and satisfie yet this alleviated his passion and made him submit willingly to the hard condition of dying This indeed which he hath done and suffered for us men and for our Salvation cannot be forgotten without monstrous baseness and unpardonable ingratitude and without making our selves unworthy of the blessed effects and consequences of his passion And our Blessed Saviour himself would have the Memory of it perpetuated to all Ages and Generations and to assist our Weakness and sustain our Faith which has need of such supports and to make it impossible that it should ever be forgotten He has instituted the blessed Sacrament of his Body and