be but once offered to bear the sins of many Heb. 9. 28. And we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all Heb. 10. 10. Wherefore if the eating the Body of Christ in the Sacrament and the drinking of his Bloud which is the effusion of it be a renewal of his Passion a sacrificing of and a feeding upon the Passeover afresh then I affirm that no such thing is done or at least we must be reduced to this Dilemma Either the Scriptures are not true or the Doctrine of Transubstantiation is false Now whether the determination of the Author to the Hebrews that is of an inspired writer that is in effect of God himself and of S. Peter in his first Epistle Chap. 3. ver 18. where he tells us that Christ hath once suffered for sins the just for the unjust and a man would think he was every whit as infallible as any of his pretended successors I say which of these is most to be believed and stood to judge ye nay let our Adversaries themselves be judges Again Christ being our Passeover was for this very Deut. 16. 2 5 6 7. reason among others offered up at Jerusalem because it was unlawful to kill the Passeover at any other place after such time as the Temple was built Thus those three great and solemn Passeovers which we read of in the times of Hezekiah Jesiah and Ezra were 2 Chron. 30. 2. 2 Kings 23. 23. Ezra 6. 19 Luk. 2. 41. every one of them celebrated at Jerusalem and it is said of Joseph and the blessed Virgin the Mother of our Lord that they went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passeover Now if Christ suffered at Jerusalem because the Passeover was to be killed there if Christ be our Passeover and if the Passeover could not be sacrificed any where else nay if it cannot now be offered at Jerusalem its self because the City and Temple are demolished because God hath taken his name from thence because instead of being the Metropolis of true Religion it is now the seat of the grossest Idolatry and Superstition because the law of Moses is abolished because the meaning and intention of the Passeover is completed if all these things be true as most certainly they are then is it plain that if Christ be corporeally and substantially present in the Sacrament if his Body and Bloud be truly and properly eaten and drunk by us yet he is not present neither do we feed upon him as our Passeover Wherefore it is clear that either Christ hath ceased to be our Passeover and then it will be more easie than pleasant to pronounce what will become of us we are all in a very miserable condition or else it is not lawful to feed upon him since the Passeover cannot now be eaten in any part of the world and therefore we may assure our selves from this as well as from what has been said above that he could be offered up but once that we neither do nor ought to feed upon him if we will follow his own Institution and why he should enable any Romish Priest to work a Miracle such a strange Miracle as this of Transubstantiation in contradiction both to the Law and Gospel is a most Prodigiously strange and unaccountable thing I am confident it will puzle the Ablest person of Their Church to give a Tolerable account of this Lastly Christ is our Passeover therefore it is unlawful to Drink his Bloud for the bloud of the Passeover as of other Sacrifices could not by the Law of Moses be either Eaten or Drunk therefore we may boldly affirm that the Priest when he pronounces those words This is my bloud or This is my bloud of the New Testament does not by this means Transubstantiate the Wine into it therefore neither is the Bread changed into the Body of Christ by his saying this is my body for the case is the same in both and it is altogether incredible that such a wonderful power should accompany those words This is my Body when those other This is my Bloud which one would imagine in all reason should be considered by themselves of equal force and validity with the former have no such virtue or efficacy at all I take the confidence to affirm that all this is absolute irresistible demonstration if there be such a thing as Demonstration in the world for Christ was not truely and literally a Paschal Lamb no he was a man born of a woman as we are though after a more divine and heavenly manner by the Overshadowing of the Holy Ghost in the Womb of the Blessed Virgin but he is called our Passeover only in respect of the Likeness or Analogy which there was betwixt his Sacrifice of himself upon the Cross and the Sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb under the Law Now I beseech you where is the Analogy if those Paschal Lambs whose bloud was first sprinkled in that great deliverance upon the Posts and Lentils of the Jewish houses could be but once Offered and all succeeding Paschatizations were nothing else but Thankful acknowledgements and commemorations of this while all this while the same the very self same Christ may be offered every day in the Year and every hour in the day as often as ever we Receive the Sacrament and as many times told almost at the very same instant as there are people that receive it Where is the Analogy if the Mosaical Passeover could be Offered no where but at Jerusalem and cannot be Offered so much as there any more if one and the same Christ at the very same instant may be Offered in all parts of the world and all this as many times repeated as there are days and hours nay moments the most incredibly small parts the most exquisite subdivisions and as it were Atoms of time from the first Institution of the Sacrament to the end of the world Lastly Where is the Analogy if the Bloud of the Paschal Lamb were most strictly prohibited to be either Drunk or Eaten and yet there is a necessity of drinking the Bloud of Christ An Imputation which the Priest with all his Artifice and Sophistry cannot possibly avoid and the people also are affirmed to do it Collectively though they do not take the Elements in sunder and certainly this if it be not Eating and Drinking bloud yet it is at least Eating with the bloud which was as much unlawful as the other and this was the sin of the Israelites in the 14th Chapter of the first book of Samuel which I have formerly cited in what I have said elsewhere upon this subject So that it is manifest a man must have the impudence to contradict plain Texts of Scripture as well as common sense he must destroy the Analogy of Types to their Antitypes of Symbols to their Substance as well as the Agreement and Connection of things with one another before he can assert the doctrine of
continued in Aegypt accompanied with the last plague inflicted on the Aegyptians bating their being drowned and finally destroyed in the red Sea which red sea was likewise a Type of the bloud of Christ by which they who are not saved by making a right use of it will be more effectually and inexcusably condemned for having abused so great a mercy so the shedding of the Bloud of Christ upon the Cross is the last deliverance the last Atonement which God will afford his people it will likewise in the end prove the last plague of those who have not duly applyed it to themselves but living in a perpetual opposition to the Laws of God and the doctrine of the Gospel have slighted all the gracious offers of pardon and forgiveness and wilfully neglected so great Salvation And as the same red sea gave a safe and secure passage to the Israelites but executed the utmost of its rage and fury upon Pharaoh and all the Host of the Aegyptians so will the bloud of Christ give a safe and comfortable passage to all his hearty followers and disciples into the joys of Heaven while it will but serve more effectually to overwhelm and ruine the unbelieving world Again as that first Passeover of the destroying Angel passing by the habitations of the Israelites did but prepare the way for the second Passeover that is the passage of the Israelites through the red sea and wilderness into the land of Canaan so God's passing over us that is his pardoning and forgiving our sins and not imputing them to as many of us as heartily believe and obey the Gospel does but prepare the way through the wilderness and red sea all the troubles and difficulties of this life into the land of Canaan that is if we do not repine and murmur if we do not disbelieve his Word distrust his Providence and disobey his Laws as the Israelites did into the compleat and entire possession of Eternal happiness of which the land of Canaan was a Type Farther as the Paschal Lambs which the Jews fed upon for ever after neither were nor could be the same with those which were killed by the respective families the evening before the great deliverance of the first born but only a memorial a commemoration of them so neither is that Eucharistical Feast which we celebrate in the Christian Church a Feast upon the Body of Christ himself but only a memorial of our deliverance in by and through him and a Sanction of that Covenant which he hath purchased for us by his bloud Lastly as it was unlawful either to eat or drink the bloud of the Paschal Lamb so also it must needs be unlawful for us either to eat or drink the bloud of Christ for contraries cannot possibly be Types of contraries the bloud of the Paschal Lamb cannot possibly be a Type of the bloud of Christ if it be unlawful for us to feed upon the one and necessary to drink the other And this is enough to make out the resemblance between the Paschal Lamb and Christ and to shew that one was a Type of the other he that will have more than this before he will admit it to be a Type does not understand the nature of Types and Parables and Symbols nay not so much as of Metaphors in common discourse in which there is required no more than only some plain agreement in one or more particulars without any gross repugnancy or inconsistency in any But Jesus was at the same time our Paschal Lamb and our sin offering too wherefore being to fulfil two such different representations of himself under the Law it is not much to be wondered if the similitude do not hit in all points By being our Paschal Lamb he takes away the punishment of our sins which God passeth over and will not impute them to us by being our sin-offering he takes away the guilt of them too to as many as are sanctified by Faith in his bloud as the sin-offering under the Law did by the guilty persons laying their hands upon it truly and properly receive that guilt which was to be expiated by this way of atonement which by the way may be sufficient to shew us how bad Interpreters the Socinians are of the New Testament and how little they understand the nature of our Saviour's Sacrifice for sin when they deny him to have made a true and proper satisfaction to the justice of God for it for there can be no resemblance between him and the sin-offering but only in this particular for this reason it is that he is said to have born our sins in his own body on the tree to have been a Ransom for us to have been made sin for us who knew no sin and the like and from hence it was that Jesus that he might sanctifie the people with his own Bloud suffered Heb. 13. 12 without the gate as the sin-offering under the Law was to do without the Camp by reason of its uncleanness being polluted with the sins of those on whose behalf it was offered as the same inspired writer likewise takes notice in the same place for the bodies saith he of those beasts whose bloud is brought into the Sanctuary Heb. 13. 11 by the High Priest for sin are burnt without the Camp upon which account it was that if the bloud of these Sacrifices were brought into the Tabernacle to make reconciliation withal it was unlawful not only for God himself for that he never did in the sin trespass-offering but even for the Priests or any body else to partake of them to which the same Author in the same place manifestly alludes and brings the comparison home to the Sacrifice of Christ We have an Altar saith he whereof they have no right to eat that serve the Tabernacle for the bodies Heb. 13. 11 12. of those beasts whose bloud is brought into the Sanctuary by the Priest for sin are burnt without the Camp wherefore Jesus also that he might sanctifie the people with his own bloud suffered without the gate now it being unlawful for the people in all cases and for the Priest himself in this to partake of the sin offering and Christ being our sin-offering and having sanctified the people with his own bloud it is manifest that it must needs be unlawful for us to partake of this Sacrifice in that sence which the Papists would have that is we must not truly and properly eat his Body and so those words This is my Body must not be understood in the literal sence much less must we imagine that God will work miracles to contradict himself and his Apostles and destroy the nature of those Types by which the Sacrifice of his Son was signified under the Law But yet notwithstanding this nothing hinders but that we may celebrate an Eucharistical or a Mnemoneutical feast in both of these respects as well because he is our sin-offering as upon account of his being our
Passeover for by both of these taken together our deliverance from the jaws of Death and Hell is completed and we are delivered from the bondage of corruption from the intolerable servitude of sin and Satan into the glorious liberty of the sons of God a deliverance of so high a nature that though we had not been commanded to commemorate it by our Saviour himself who with his own bloud purchased it for us yet mere gratitude and good nature nay common honesty and common sence themselves would have prompted all hearty Christians not to sit down contented with a bare narrative a cold story of such a redemption but they would certainly have found out some symbols the better to represent it as much as may be to our outward senses and fix it deeper in our minds according to that saying Segniùs irritant animas demissa per aures Quà m quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus And there could not possibly better symbols have been found out than those of eating Bread and drinking Wine by which both the manner of our Lords Passion by the rending of his Body and the spilling of his Bloud is signified and the union of the Church by the participation of the same Table which was always accounted a symbol of the strictest friendship and which was another end of this holy Feast was intended to be inviolably maintained and preserved And thus the feeding upon the Paschal Lamb under the law is more than answered by our spiritual feeding upon the Body of Christ that is by our being more than nourished by our being saved and Eternally made happy by the merit and satisfaction of his Death After this the same Objector goes on to raise difficulties not so much against the resemblance of the Paschal Lamb to the Sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross as against the Sacrament its self which bears an Analogy with the Paschal Feast he demands therefore how we can be said to eat the Body and drink the Bloud of Christ in the Sacrament whether it were that he cut off pieces of his own Flesh and gave them to eat or whether his Body was made up of nothing but Bread and Wine instead of Flesh and Bloud animated with a humane Soul and the matter out of which it was taken being more than would suffice to make an entire humane Body whether the remainders of it were not that which he gave to his Disciples saying This is my Body and This is my Bloud that is it is a part of that substance or it is a substance of the same nature with that of which my Body and Bloud are composed I am pretty sure I do not wrong the Objector he that has a mind to be better satisfied may read him in his own words in the Notes of Munster upon the 26. Chapter of S. Matthew which suppositions of his the more frivolous and impertinent they are the more clearly do they show that nothing can be so absurd which a man let alone to make use of his own faculties would not rather pitch upon than this mysterious Doctrine of Transubstantiation But he goes on further to object that Body which the Disciples are said to have eat and drank whither did it go did it go through certain private passages of its own or was it mixt in the stomach and Intestines with the rest of their usual diet Which I confess against the doctrine of Transubstantiation would be no very weak or impertinent objection for upon supposition that the Elements of Bread and Wine are really and substantially changed into the Body and Bloud of Christ which cannot now be distinguished from his glorified Body it being the same Body which was once crucified and is now glorified one of these Four things must of necessity follow Either we do not really receive it in the Sacrament but only seem to do it and so there is a double cheat put upon our senses or else it passes out by some hidden and peculiar passages of its own or else the person of Christ is really united to the person of every Communicant which union is as often multiplied as we receive the Sacrament a thing not only absurd but blasphemous to suppose or else lastly which I abhor to think it is as he expresses it Mehouraf bekeebah him shear haochel and passes out by the infamis ductus into the common slime and saburra of the world The wit of man cannot think of a fifth thing I am sure whereas all this is easily taken off by saying that the true Elements taken in the Lords Supper are only a remembrance of his meritorious Death and Passion and of that blessed Feast of Happiness and Joy which all good Christians will partake with him in the world to come Whither God of his infinite mercy bring us all by the merits and mediation of the same Jesus Christ our Lord to whom with the Father and the blessed Spirit be ascribed as is most due all honour glory and praise from this time forward and for evermore Amen THE END