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
us and baffle our purposes and resolutions This drives us upon our knees again and we pray God not to leave us to our selves and by degrees we gain greater measures of strength and in some sort get the mastery over the inclinations of corrupted nature This holds much more in the Sacrament when we go to it with fresh desires and more vigorous resolutions of living a holy and truly Christian life and when we reflect upon our failings and miscarriages since our last receiving with deep humiliation and sorrow Thou O Lord God art full of compassion and mercy long suffering plenteous in goodness and truth O turn thee unto me and have mercy upon me give thy strength unto thy servant and help the son of thy hand-maid We need no invitations to satisfie the natural desires of the body which is nourished and cherished and oftentimes pampered by us Nature has laid upon us a necessity of daily food for the preservation of life to repair those decays which we daily suffer without this we consume and dye Now if we believe the blessed Sacrament to be the food of the Soul that we grow and are strengthened in grace by this bread of life the true spiritual manna that comes down from heaven that is designed by God for this purpose and conveys his blessing and sanctifying graces to all worthy receivers that by virtue of this nourishment we either retain or recover our vigour and healthfulness of mind and that without it we languish and decay in the inward man there would be no keeping us from this heavenly banquet at the Lord's table where there can be no fear of a furfeit where we eat and drink health and salvation and where Christ himself is the entertainer and the entertainment 100. For thou O Christ as the Greek Priest prays in the Liturgy of St. Chrysostome just before the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when they carry the gifts from the Prothesis to the Altar where he consecrates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thou offerest and yet art offered up thou receivedst the Elements into thy holy hands and yet at the same time thy body and bloud are distributed thou O Christ makest this bread in the Sacrament to be thy flesh mystically which thou still givest for the life of the World Can we eat too much or too often of this bread of life whereby we are nourished to immortality the holy Elements being the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for so St. Clement in his former Epistle to the Corinthians must be understood that is not of the doctrine of our blessed Saviour for that is mentioned in the following clause 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 much less of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or things pertaining to our bodily sustinance and things of this life as Junius thought fit to explain but of the divine viaticum of the Sacrament that we may not faint in the journey which we are taking to the other world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for it immediately follows 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to which there can be no other relative but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which express testimony of this Apostolical writer for the Divinity of our blessed Saviour I could not but observe by the bye to help to confound the arrogance and blasphemy of that profest Arian Sandius so that these words seem clearly to relate to the Sacrament where the sufferings of Christ are so livelily represented to our sight 3. By frequent receiving of the Sacrament we are more and more made partakers of the benefits and blessings and merits of Christ's holy passion and death It is the great artifice of the Roman Church to keep up the credit of their private Masses to which antiquity is a mere stranger to make the people believe that the Priest hath a power of applying the efficacy and merit of Christ's sacrifice to their particular benefit for whom he intends it so they contribute somewhat in the way of charity or gift and are but present in the time of the celebration But 't is certain that before superstition and corruption of Doctrine had overspread that Church and before they had perverted this most solemn part of the Christian worship into a mere piece of pageantry and theatrical shew all that was anciently designed by the mentioning the names of the living to say nothing at present of the commemoration of the dead at that time as is clear from the Canon of the Mass still in use was onely by way of intercession that God would be pleased for the merits of his Son's death which they were then commemorating to have mercy on them to forgive them their sins and to pour down of his grace abundantly upon them and not onely upon them but upon the whole number of Christian people throughout the world But this cannot yield such peace and quiet and satisfaction to my conscience as my own particular application of the merits of Christ's sufferings to my self what another does for me cannot be my act when I am obliged to do it in my own person and not by my representative I am to eat his flesh in the Sacrament and drink his bloud if I would live in him and by him Now Christ by his death hath satisfied the divine Justice and reconciled us to the Father who no longer imputes our sins to our charge and condemnation the bloud that he spilt upon the cross is the seal of an everlasting covenant for this cause he is the mediatour of a new covenant that by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant they which were called might receive the promise of an everlasting inheritance Heb. 9.15 So that now heaven and salvation are made over by God by virtue of this expiatory Sacrifice to all that truly believe in his Son's name This Sacrifice was made once for all upon the Altar of the Cross but the merit reaches backward to the first being and original of things and looks forward to the end of the world and to eternal ages It is as to the fruit and efficacy of it as present to God as if Christ were born every day into the world again and really every day offered up or as if it were but yesterdy or but just now offered it being all-sufficient and of infinite value and fully accepted by God as a just price and ransome Now that he suffered this bitter and cursed death upon the cross for me and that I may apply all the saving benefits of his passion to my self he assures me by giving me his body and bloud Every time we receive the Sacrament worthily there is a new confirmation of our pardon the spirit of God beareth witness with our spirit that we are his children and reinstated in his grace and favour 'T is an infallible pledge of our immortality and that he will raise us up at the last day as much as if his natural flesh and
bloud were eaten and drunk by us and converted after the ordinary way of digestion into our bodily substance We have this assurance in his holy word but much more in the holy Sacrament because here is a more lively sensible and particular representation of it that is though I acknowledge and believe this to be one of the fundamental truths of the Gospel that Christ died for our sins that he appeared once in the days of his flesh to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself and that at his ascension he entred in his humane nature into the holy place having obtained eternal redemption for us my faith grows stronger yet when I receive the sacred symbols into my hands and convey them to my mouth For then if I come with a due preparation it is as if I received from Christ himself and as if he still pronounced the same words to me as he did to the Apostles at the institution Now can we have too great too full an assurance of the favour of God of the pardon of our sins of our living for ever in the presence of God in the other world God knows we forfeit our hopes by our gross and scandalous relapses we lose the favour of God by our presumptuous disobedience we miss the sight of heaven by reason of the thick mists of our sins our onely comfort and support is that God upon our hearty repentance and amendment will be reconciled to us Here it is that we may recover our selves that God restores us to the joy of his salvation and upholds us with his free Spirit Here it is that the weary and heavy laden with the burthen of their sins may find rest and peace to their souls Here it is that Christ not onely commands but invites us to come and how can we but accept of such an invitation so that were the thing wholly arbitrary and indifferent yet the benefit and advantage is so great that this should prevail with us to come and to come often To draw to a conclusion with particular reference to this reverend and learned Audience If this obligation lies upon all in general how much more upon us who have the honour to wait at the Altar and administer in holy things and upon You who are designed to the same honour This was the pious intent of our munificent and glorious Founders and Benefactors in erecting and endowing these structures which are the envy and admiration of all foreigners and in providing so liberally for us several ages before we were born that being here trained up in severe exercises of piety and in the studies of sound and usefull learning we may the better be fitted to do God service in the Church defend the truth of our religion against all its subtile and malitious opposers keep up the belief and practice of Christianity in the minds and lives of the people be a credit to the Countrey and Age we live in and approve our selves not unworthy of the bounty and maintenance which we so happily enjoy Both God and man expect it from us that we especially should shew forth an exemplary piety to which nothing can conduce more than a frequent and devout receiving of the Sacrament This would take off our minds from idleness and vanity and confine us more to our selves and our studies and make us reflect on the true end of living in a College and the particular duty of the Priestly sunction This would confound all the scandalous imputations cast upon the Universities of late by Mr. Hobbs and his Atheistical Gallants by the Papists and Fanaticks in their scurrilous libels and Pamphlets who make it their business to bring a discredit and a disreputation upon us We cannot but be sadly sensible of the great contempt that is poured out upon Church-men and we justly esteem it as we have highest reason so to do an infallible mark and proof of the Atheism of the irreligion of the debauchery of the age But are we not too too much wanting to our selves would we retrieve and recover the honour due unto the Priesthood which seems in a manner forfeited at present there cannot be a better or more effectual expedient than this than to make others sensible by our example of this great duty of our Religion and of the necessity first and then of the blessed effects and benefits of frequent communion Such an exemplary strictness would help to re-establish and bring back the true Christian temper and spirit which are almost lost and shut out of the world I will not take upon me to prescribe precisely how often the blessed Sacrament is to be received Every one is best able to resolve himself in this case The Church of England out of the great care which she has of the souls of all such as live within her communion does oblige them to communicate three times at least in the year of which Easter to be one and this I find expresly determined in a Council held at Agatha a City in the south of France under Caesarius Archbishop of Arles in the year of Christ 506 with this farther addition that they who did not comply with this Canon should not be reputed Christians But this limitation respected secular persons onely and he is not generously pious that does but just come up to the bare letter of the Law which forbids that it should be longer neglected but is supposed to encourage the willing to more frequent approaches But we are under higher and more indispensable obligations The Persons concerned in the late disturbances and who by their furious preachments helpt to pull down the Hierarchy of the Church cannot but reflect one would think with shame and horrour enough upon the sad effects of their pretended Reformation how the giddy people whom they had insatuated were broken into many factions and sects and lost their reason and their religion and grew enthusiastical and mad It is but a sorry excuse to say that the hand of the Jesuite was in all this for they by their unreasonable schism and discontent and factious conventicling though coloured over with pretensions of godly zeal against the Papists as at this day wherein they are playing over the same game had created unjust prejudices in their minds had shaken them in their judgments from the established doctrine and service of the Church and had sitted them to be wrought upon by their subtile artifices and insinuations What a sensible decay was there of true Christian piety and devotion the blessed Sacrament being seldom administred Those Intruders who called themselves the University of Oxon. from the bloudy and fatal year of 1648 to the King 's happy restoration did not think fit so much as once to celebrate the communion together in this Church and a publick Sacrament was not seen in several College Chapels during the same space of time This was the holy discipline of those times and indeed men of such divided hearts and