covered encircling thee upon Mount Tabor in thy transfiguration; and didst, by perpetual homilies and symbolical mysterious actions, as with deep characters, engrave humility into the spirits of thy disciples and the discipline of Christianity; teach us to approach near to these thy glories, which thou hast so covered with a cloud that we might without amazement behold thy excellencies; make us to imitate thy gracious condescensions; take from us all vanity and fantastic complacencies in our own per sons or actions; and when there arises a reputation consequent to the performance of any part of our duty, make us to reflect the glory upon thee, suffering nothing to adhere to our own spirits but shame at our own imperfection, and thankfulness to thee for all thy assistances. Let us never seek the praise of men from unhandsome actions, from flatteries and unworthy discourses; nor entertain the praise with delight, though it proceed from better principles: but fear and tremble, lest we deserve punishment, or lose a reward which thou hast deposited for all them that seek thy glory and despise their own, that they may imitate the example of their Lord. Thou, O Lord, didst triumph over sin and death; subdue also my proud understanding and my prouder affections, and bring me under thy yoke; that I may do thy work, and obey my superiors, and be a servant of all my brethren in their necessities, and esteem myself inferior to all men by a deep sense of my own unworthiness, and in all things may obey thy laws, and conform to thy precedents, and enter into thine inheritance, O holy and eternal Jesus. Amen.

DISCOURSE XIX.

Of the Institution and Reception of the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.

1. As the sun among the stars, and man among the sublunary creatures, is the most eminent and noble, the prince of the inferiors, and their measure, or their guide; so is this action among all the

instances of religion: it is the most perfect and consummate; it is an union of mysteries, and a consolidation of duties; it joins God and man, and confederates all the societies of men in mutual complexions, and the entertainments of an excellent charity; it actually performs all that could be necessary for man, and it presents to man as great a thing as God could give; for it is impossible any thing should be greater than himself. And when

God gave his Son to the world, it could not be but he should give us all things else.' And therefore this blessed sacrament is a consigning us to all felicities, because, after a mysterious and ineffable manner, we receive him who is light and life, the fountain of grace, and the sanctifier of our secular comforts, and the author of holiness and glory. But as it was at first, so it hath been ever since: 'Christ came into the world, and the world knew him not so Christ hath remained in the world, by the communication of this sacrament, and yet he is not rightly understood, and less truly valued. But Christ may say to us, as once to the woman of Samaria: 'Woman, if thou didst know the gift of God, and who it is that speaks to thee, thou wouldst ask him' so, if we were so wise, or so fortunate to know the excellency of this gift of the Lord, it would fill us full of wonder and adoration, joy and thankfulness, great hopes and actual felicities, making us heirs of glory by the great additions and present increment of grace.

2. After supper Jesus took bread and blessed it,' and made it to be a heavenly gift. He gave them bread, and told them it was his body; that body which was broken for the redemption of man, for the salvation of the world. St. Paul calls it

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'bread' even after consecration: The bread which we break, is it not the communication of the body of Christ?' So that by divine faith we are taught to express our belief of this mystery in these words: "the bread, which is consecrated and made sacramental, is the body of our Lord; and the fraction and distribution of it is the communication of that body which died for us upon the cross." He that doubts of either of the parts of this proposition, must either think Christ was not able to verify his word, and to make bread by his benediction to become to us his body; or that St. Paul did not well interpret and understand this mystery, when he called it bread. Christ reconciles them both, calling himself 'the bread of life' and if we be offended at it, because it is alive, and therefore less apt to become food, we are invited to it because it is bread; and if the sacrament to others seems less mysterious, because it is bread, we are heightened in our faith and reverence, because it is life. The bread of the sacrament is the life of our soul; and the body of our Lord is now conveyed to us, being the bread of the sacrament. And if we consider how easy it is to faith, and how impossible it seems to curiosity, we shall be taught confidence and modesty; a resigning our understanding to the voice of Christ and his apostles, and yet expressing our own articles, as Christ did, in indefinite significations. And possibly it may not well consist with our duty, to be inquisitive into the secrets of the kingdom, which we see by plain event hath divided the church almost as much as the sacrament hath united it; and which can only

1 1 Cor. x. 16.

serve the purposes of the school and of evil men, to make questions for that, and factions for these, but not promote the ends of a holy life, obedience or charity.

3. Some so observe the literal sense of the words, that they understand them also in a natural : some so alter them by metaphors and preternatural significations, that they will not understand them at all in a proper. We see it, we feel it, we taste it, and we smell it to be bread; and by philosophy we are led into a belief of that substance whose accidents these are, as we are to believe that to be fire which burns, and flames, and shines; but Christ also affirmed concerning it, this is my body; and if faith can create an assent as strong as its object is infallible, or can be as certain in its conclusions as sense is certain in its apprehensions, we must at no hand doubt but it is Christ's body. Let the sense of that be what it will, so that we believe those words, and (whatsoever that sense is which Christ intended) that we no more doubt in our faith than we do in our sense; then our faith is not reprovable. It is hard to do so much violence to our sense, as not to think it bread; but it is more unsafe to do so much violence to our faith, as not to believe it to be Christ's body. But it would be considered, that no interest of religion, no saying of Christ, no reverence of opinion, no sacredness of the mystery is disavowed, if we believe both what we hear and what we see. He that believes it to be bread, and yet verily to be Christ's body, is only tied also by implication to believe God's omnipotence, that he who affirmed it can also verify it. And they that are forward to believe the change of substance, can intend no more but

that it be believed verily to be the body of our Lord. And if they think it impossible to reconcile its being bread, with the verity of being Christ's body, let them remember that themselves are put to more difficulties, and to admit of more miracles, and to contradict more sciences, and to refuse the testimony of sense, in affirming the special manner of transubstantiation. And therefore it were safer to admit the words in their first sense, in which we shall no more be at war with reason, nor so much with sense, and not at all with faith.'

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Acceptum panem et distributum discipulis corpus suum illum fecit, Hoc est corpus meum, dicendo, id est, figura corporis mei. Figura a non fuisset, nisi veritatis esset corpus. Tert. lib. iv. cont. Marcion. c. 40. Quod si quicquid ingreditur in os, in ventrem abit, et in secessum ejicitur, et ille cibus qui sanctificatur per verbum Dei perque obsecrationem, juxta id quod habet materiale in ventrem abit, et in secessum ejicitur, &c. et hæc quidem de typico symboliceque corpore. Origen in xv. cap. S. Matt. Tà σύμβολα το σώματος το δεσποτικό και το αἵματος μετὰ τὴν ἐπίκλησιν ἐπιβάλλεται, καὶ ἕτερα γίνεται, ἀλλ ̓ ἐκ οἰκείας ἐξίσαται φύσεως· μένει γὰρ ἐπὶ τῆς προτέρας ἐσίας, και το σχήματος, καὶ τὸ εἶδες, καὶ ὅροτά ἐτι καὶ ἁπτὰ, οἷα και προτερον ἦν. Theod. Dial. 2. Idem disputando contra Eutychianos, docentes humanam Christi naturam conversum iri in divinam, eodem scil. modo quo panis in corpus Christi, ait, Certe eodem scil. modo, hoc est, nullo. O de Zwrnρ о ημÉTερos, &c Our blessed Saviour, who hath called himself the living Bread, and a Vine, hath also honoured the visible signs with the title and appellation of his body and blood, not changing their nature, but adding to nature grace.-See the Dialog. called "The Immovable." Sacramenta quæ sumimus corporis et sanguinis Christi, divina res est. Propter quod per eadem divinæ efficimur consortes naturæ, et tamen non desinit esse substantia vel natura panis et vini: et certe imago et similitudo corporis et sanguinis Christi in actione mysteriorum celebrantur. P. Gelasius libr. contra Nestorium et Eutychetem. Non quod proprie corpus ejus sit panis, et poculum sanguis; sed quod mysterium corporis ejus sanguinisque contineant. Facundus. Sign. Sacramenta quandam similitudinem non haberent earum rerum quarum sunt sacramenta, omnino sacramenta non essent: Ex hac a. similitudine plerumque ipsarum rerum nomina accipiunt. S. Aug, Epist. 23.