It is not therefore logical, historical, speculative remembrance of Christ, but an experimental and believing remembrance of him, which we are to use in the receiving of these sacred mysteries, which are not a bare type and resemblance, but a seal also, confirming and exhibiting his death unto each believing soul.

Secondly, We must remember the death of Christ with a remembrance of thankfulness for that great love, which by it we enjoy from him. Certainly he hath no dram of goodnature in him, who, for the greatest benefit that can befall him, doth not return a recompense of remembrance, which costs him nothing. Our salvation cost Christ a precious price, his own blood; and shall not we so much as lay up the memory of it in our minds, that we may have it forthcoming to answer all the objections, that can be made against our title to salvation? Consider with thyself the fearfulness and horror of thy natural estate, wherein thou wert exposed to the infinite wrath of Almighty God,-whom thou therefore, being both finite and impotent, wert no way able to appease, subject to the strokes and terrors, not only of thine own conscience, a bosom-hell,-but of that most exact justice, which it is as impossible for thee to sustain with patience, as with obedience to satisfy. The creatures thine enemies, thine own heart thy witness, thy Creator thy judge; eternity of expressless anguish, gnawing of conscience, despair of deliverance, and whatsoever misery the most searching understanding can but imagine, thy sentence: for according to his fear, so is his wrath: from this, and much more, hath the death of Christ, not only delivered thee,-but of a cast-away, an enemy, a deplored wretch, weltering in thine own blood, rotting and stinking in thine own grave, hath restored thee not only to thine original interest and patrimony, but unto an estate so much more glorious than that could have been, by how much the obedience of Christ is more precious, than any thy innocency could possibly have performed.

Consider the odious filthiness of sin, the pertinacious adherence thereof unto thy nature; so that nothing but the incarnation and blood of the Son of God, the creator of the

• Qui meminit, sine impendio gratus est. Senec. de Benef.

world, could wash it out. Consider the justice, and indispensable severity of our God against sin, which would not spare the life of his own Son, nor be satisfied without a sacrifice of infinite and co-equal virtue with itself. Consider that it was thy sins, which were the associates with Judas, and Pilate, and the Jews, to crucify him: it was thy hypocrisy which was the kiss, that betrayed him; thy covetousness the thorns, that crowned him; thy oppression and cruelty the nails and spears, that pierced him; thy idolatry and superstition the knee, that mocked him; thy contempt of religion the spittle, that defiled him; thy anger and bitterness the gall and vinegar, that distasted him; thy crimson and redoubled sins the purple that dishonoured him in a word, thou wert the Jew that killed him. Canst thou, then, have so many members, as weapons, wherewith to crucify thy Saviour, and hast thou not a heart wherein to recognise, and a tongue wherewith to celebrate, the benefits of that blood which thy sins had poured out? The fire is quenched by that water, which by its heat was caused to run over; and shall not any of thy sins be put out by the overflowing of that precious blood, which thy sins caused to run out of his sacred body?

Lastly, Consider the immensity of God's mercy, and the unutterable treasures of grace, which neither the provocations of thy sin, nor the infinite exactness of his own justice, could any way overcome, or constrain to despise the work of his own hands, or not to compassionate the wretchedness of his creature, though it cost the humiliation of the Son of God, and the examination of his sacred person to perform it. Lay together all those considerations; and certainly they are able even to melt a heart of adamant, into thoughts of continual thankfulness towards so bountiful a Redeemer.

Thirdly, We must remember the death of Christ with a remembrance of obedience; even the commands of God should be sufficient to enforce our obedience. It is not the manner of law-makers to use insinuations, and plausible provokements, but peremptory and resolute injunctions upon pain of penalty. But our God deals not only as a Lord, but as a Father; he hath delivered us from the penalty, and now rather invites than compels us to obedience, lest, by persist

ing in sin, we should make void unto ourselves the benefit of Christ's death, yea, should crucify him afresh, and so bring upon ourselves, not the benefit, but the guilt of his blood. Is it nothing, think we, that Christ should die in vain, and take upon him the dishonour and shame of a servant to no purpose. And disobedience, as much as in it lies, doth nullify and make void the death of Christ. Is it nothing that that sacred blood of the covenant should be shed only to be trodden and trampled under foot as a vile thing? And certainly he that celebrates the memory of Christ's death in this holy Sacrament with a wilfully polluted soul, doth not commemorate the sacrifice, but share in the slaughter of him; and receives that precious blood, not according to the institution of Christ, to drink it,-but with the purpose of Judas and the Jews, to shed it on the ground;-a cruelty so much more detestable than Cain's was, by how much the blood of Christ is more precious than that of Abel. In the phrase of Scripture, 'sinning against God,' and 'forgetting of him,' or 'casting of him behind our back,' or 'bidding him depart from us,' or 'not having him before our eyes,' are all of equal signification: neither is any thing called remembrance, in divine dialect, which doth not frame the soul unto affections, befitting the quality of the object that is remembered. He is not said to see a pit, though before his eyes, who, by star-gazing or other thoughts, falls into it; nor he to remember Christ, though presented to all his senses at once, who makes no regard of his presence.

Divine knowledge, being practical, requires advertence and consideration, an efficacious pondering of the consequences of good or evil, and thereby a proportionable government of our several courses;-which whoso neglecteth, may be properly said to forget, or to be ignorant of what was before him, though not out of blindness, yet out of inconsiderateness, as not applying close unto himself the object represented; which, if truly remembered, would infallibly frame the mind unto a ready obedience and conformity thereunto.

4 Ὥσπερ οἱ κεντήσαντες οὐχ ἵνα πίωσιν ἐκέντησαν, ἀλλ ̓ ἵνα ἐκχέωσιν, οὕτω καὶ ὁ ἀναξίως μετιών, καὶ μηδὲν ἐντεῦθεν καρπούμενος. Chrys. in 1 Cor. Hom. 27. • Verba notitiæ connotant affectus. August. de Gen. ad literam, 1. 7. c. 20. f Vide Casaub. Comment. in c. 8. Theophrast. Charact. p. 271.

Lastly, We must remember the death of Christ with prayer unto God: for as by faith we apply to ourselves, so by prayer we represent unto God the Father that his death, as the merit and means of reconciliation with him. As prayer is animated by the death of Christ (which alone is that character, that adds currentness unto them), so is the death of Christ not to be celebrated without prayer, wherein we do with confidence implore God's acceptance of that sacrifice for us, in which alone he is well pleased. "Open thine eyes unto the supplication of thy servants, to hearken unto all for which they shall call unto thee," was the prayer of Solomon in the consecration of the temple. What, doth God hearken with his eyes unto the prayers of his people? Hath not he that made the ear, an ear himself, but must be fain to make use of another faculty unto a different work? Certainly, unless the eye of God be first open to look on the blood of his Son, and on the persons of his saints, bathed and sprinkled therewith, his ears can never be open unto their prayers. Prayer doth put God in mind of his covenant", and covenants are not to be presented without seals. Now the seal of our covenant is the blood of Christ : no testament is of force but by the death of the testator. Whensoever therefore we present unto God the truth of his own free covenant in our prayers i, let us not forget to show him his own seal too, by which we are confirmed in our hope therein. Thus are we to celebrate the death of Christ, and in these regards is this holy work called by the ancients 'an unbloody sacrifice,' in a mystical and spiritual sense,— because, in this work, is a confluence of all such holy duties, as are in the Scripture called 'spiritual sacrifices.' And in the same sense, was the Lord's table ofttimes by them called an "altar," as that was which the Reubenites erected on the other side of Jordan, not for any proper sacrifice, but to be a pattern and memorial of that, whereon sacrifice was offered.

1 Kings viii. 52.

Jer. xiv. 8, 9, 21.

h Isai. xliii. 26. Psal. lxxxix. 49. Isai. Ixiv. 8, 12.

i Ambros. de Sacram. lib. 4. c. 6. et Chrys.-Deo litabilis

hostia bonus animus, pura mens, sincera conscientia; hæc nostra sacrificia, hæc

pia sæva sunt. Minut. Felix in Octavio.

CHAPTER XVII.

Inferences of practice from the several ends of this holy
Sacrament.

HERE then, inasmuch as these sacred elements are instituted to present and exhibit Christ unto the faithful soul, we may infer with what affection we ought to approach unto him, and what reverent estimation to have of them. Happiness, as it is the scope of all reasonable desires, so the confirmation of that happiness is the solace and security of those that desire it. "He," said the prophet, speaking of Christ, "shall be the desire of all nations;" inasmuch as, without him, that happiness which all do naturally desire, is but a meteor and fiction. So then we see, that even the light of our inbred reason, seconded and directed by divine truths, doth lead us unto a desire of Christ, who alone is the author and matter of that happiness, which is the true, though unknown object of all our natural desires. Now this happiness in Christ we cannot have, till we have actual fruition of him; enjoy this blessedness we never can, till we are united to him, no more than a dissected member enjoys the vital influences of the soul and spirits. Union unto Christ we cannot have, until it please him, by his Spirit, as it were, to stoop from that kingdom where now he is, and to exhibit himself unto those, whom it pleaseth him to assume into the unity of his body. Other way to enjoy him here, we can have none; since no man can, at his pleasure or power, lift up his eyes with Stephen to see him, or go up with St. Paul to the heavens, to enjoy him. Now it hath pleased the wis dom of Christ (whose honour ever it is to magnify his power in his creatures' weakness, and to borrow no parcel of glory in his service from those earthly and elementary instruments which he useth in it), by no other means to exhibit, and confirm the virtue of his sacred body unto us, with the life and righteousness that from it issueth, but only

* 1 Cor. i. 21. 2 Cor. iv, 7.