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if we hunger after Christ, he can refresh us: whatsoever fears oppress us, if, like men oppressed with fear, we thirst and gasp after his blood, it will comfort us: whatsoever weakness either our sins or sufferings have brought us to, the staff of this bread will support us: whatsoever sorrows of mind, or coldness of affection do any way surprise us,this wine, or rather this blood (in which only is true life "), will, with great efficacy, quicken us. If we want power, we have the power of Christ's cross; if victory", we have the victory of his cross; if triumph, we have the triumph of his cross; if peace, we have the peace of his cross; if wisdom, we have the wisdom of his cross. Thus is Christ crucified a treasure to his church, full of all sufficient provision both for necessity and delight.

Fifthly, Bread and wine, both of parts homogeneal, and alike; each part of bread, bread; each part of wine, wine; no crumb in the one, no drop in the other, differing from the quality of the whole. O the admirable nature of Christ's blood, to reduce the affections and the whole man to one uniform and spiritual nature with itself! Insomuch, that when we shall come to the perfect fruition of Christ's glorious body, our very bodies likewise shall be spiritual bodies; spiritual in a uniformity of glory, though not of nature with the soul. Sins, commonly, are jarring and contentious: one affection struggles in the same soul with another for mastery; ambition fights with malice, and pride with covetousness; the head plots against the heart, and the heart swells against the head; reason and appetite, will and passion, soul and body, set the whole frame of nature in a continual combustion; like an unjointed or broken arm, one faculty moves contrary to the government or attraction of another; and so as, in a confluence of contrary streams and winds, the soul is whirled about in a maze of intestine contentions. But when once we become conformable unto Christ's death", it presently makes of two one, and so worketh peace; it slayeth that hatred and war in the members, and reduceth all unto that primitive harmony, unto

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that uniform spiritualness, which changeth us all into the same image "from glory to glory'.'

Sixthly, Bread and wine, as they are homogeneal, so are they united together, and wrought out of divers particular grains and grapes, into one whole lump or vessel and therefore bread and blood, even amongst the heathen, were used for emblems of leagues, friendship, and marriage, the greatest of all unions. See the wonderful efficacy of Christ. crucified to solder, as it were, and joint all his members into one body by love, as they are united unto him by faith. They are built up as living stones through him, who is the chief corner-stone, elect and precious unto one temple they are all united by love, by the bond or sinews of peace unto him who is the head", and transfuseth through them all the same vital nourishment: they are all the flock of Christ reduced unto one fold, by that one chief shepherd of their souls, who came to gather those that wandered either from him in life, or from one another in affection.

Lastly, Bread and wine severed and asunder; that to be eaten, this to be drunken; that, in a loaf,-this, in a cup. It is not the blood of Christ running in his veins, but shed on his members, that doth nourish his church. Impious, therefore, is their practice, who pour Christ's blood, as it were, into his body again; and shut up his wounds, when they deny the cup unto the people, under pretence that Christ's body by being received, the blood by way of concomitancy is received together with it; and so seal up that precious fountain which he had opened, and make a monopoly of Christ's sacred wounds; as if his blood had been shed only for the priest, and not as well for the people; or as if the church had power to withhold that from the people of Jesus, which himself had given them.

r 2 Cor. iii. 18.

Convival.

1 Pet. v. 4.

Vid. Cyprian. 1. 1. epist. 6.—Vid, Gul. Stuck, in Antiq. t1 Pet. ii. 5, 6. u Ephes. iv. 16. 1 Cor. xii. x John x.

CHAPTER VIII.

Practical inferences from the materials of the Lord's Supper.

HERE then we see, First, Inasmuch as these elements are 80 necessary and beneficial to that life of man, with what appetite we should approach these holy mysteries, even with hungry and thirsty souls, longing for the sweetness of Christ crucified. Wheresoever God hath bestowed a vital being, he hath also afforded nourishment to sustain it, and an inclination and attractive faculty in the subject towards its nourishment. Even the new born-babe, by the impression of nature, is moved to use the breasts before he knows them. Now us which were dead in sins, hath Christ quickened, and hath infused into us a vital principle, even that faith by which the just do live2; which being instilled into us, Christ beginneth to be formed in the soul, and the whole man to be made conformable unto him ". Then are the parts organized and fitted for their several works; there is an eye, with Stephen, to see Christ; an ear, with Mary, to hear him; a mouth, with Peter, to confess him; a hand, with Thomas, to touch him; an arm, with Simeon, to embrace him; feet, with his disciples, to follow him; a heart to entertain him, and bowels of affection to love him. All the members are weapons of righteousness;' and thus is the new mand,' the new creature" perfected. Now he that left not himself amongst the Heathen without a witness', but filled even their hearts with food and gladness,-hath not, certainly, left his own chosen without nourishment", such as may preserve them in that estate which he hath thus framed them unto. As therefore new infants are fed with the same nourishment and substance of which they consist; so the same Christ, crucified, is as the cause and matter of our new birth, so the food which sustaineth and preserveth

Ephes. ii. 1.

Rom. vi. 19.

Hab. ii. 4. Gal. ii. 20. d Ephes. iv. 24.

Clem. Alex. Præd. 1. 1. 1. cap. 6.

a Gal. iv. 19. e 2 Cor. v. 17.

b Phil. iii. 10. f Acts xiv. 17.

us in it unto whose body and blood there must needs be as proportionable an appetite in a new Christian, as there is unto milk in a new infant; it being more nourishable than milk, and faith more vital to desire it than nature. And all this so much the rather, because he himself did begin unto us in a more bitter cup. Did he, on his cross, drink gall and vinegar for me, and that also made infinitely more bitter by my sins; and shall not I, at his table, drink wine for myself, made infinitely sweeter with the blood which it conveys? Did he drink a cup of bitterness and wrath, and shall not I drink the cup of blessing? Did he eat the bread of affliction, and shall not I eat the bread of life? Did he suffer his passion, and shall not I enjoy it? Did he stretch out his hands on the cross, and shall mine be withered and shrunken towards his table? Certainly, it is a presumption that he is not only sick but desperate, who refuseth that nourishment, which is both food to strengthen, and physic to recover him.

Secondly, The benefit of Christ being so obvious as the commons, and so sufficient as the properties of these elements declare; we see how little we should be dismayed at any either inward weaknesses and bruises of mind, or outward dangers and assaults of enemies, having so powerful a remedy so near unto us; how little we ought to trust in any thing within ourselves, whose sufficiency and nourishment is from without. There is no created substance in the world, but receives perfection from some other things: how much more must man, who hath lost his own native integrity, go out of himself to procure a better estate! which in vain he might have done for ever, had not God first (if I may so speak) gone out of himself, humbling the divine nature unto a personal union with the human. And now having such an Emmanuel as is with us, not only by assuming us unto himself in his incarnation, but by communicating himself to us in these sacred mysteries; whatsoever weaknesses dismay us, his body is bread to strengthen us: whatsoever waves or tempests rise against us, his wounds are holes to hide and shelter us. What though sin be poison; have we not here the bread of Christ for an antidote? What

hi Pet. ii. 2.

i Matth. xxvi. 39. xx. 23.

k1 Cor. x. 16.

though it be red as scarlet; is not his blood of a deeper colour? What though the darts of Satan continually wound us; is not the issue of his wounds the balm for ours? Let me be fed all my days with bread of affliction and water of affliction, I have another bread, another cup to sweeten both. Let Satan tempt me to despair of life, I have, in these visible and common elements, the author of life, made the food of life unto me. Let who will persuade me to trust a little in my own righteousness, to spy out some gaspings and faint relics of life in myself;-I receive, in these signs, an all-sufficient Saviour; and I will seek for nothing in myself, when I have so much in him.

Lastly, We see here, both from the example of Christ, who is the pattern of unity,-and from the Sacrament of Christ, which is the symbol of unity,-what a conspiracy of affections ought to be in us, both between our own and towards our fellow-members. Think not, that thou hast worthily received these holy mysteries, till thou find the image of that unity which is in them, conveyed by them into thy soul. As the breaking of the bread is the sacrament of Christ's passion; so the aggregation of many grains into one mass, should be a sacrament of the church's unity. What is the reason, that the bread and the church should be both called in the Scripture by the same name? The bread' is the body of Christ, and the church is the body of Christ too! Is it not, because as the bread is one loaf out of divers corns, so the church is one body out of divers believers : that, the representative; this, the mystical body of the same Christ? Even as the Word, and the Spirit, and the faithful, are, in the Scripture, all called by the same name of seedTM,— because of that assimilating virtue, whereby the one, received", doth transform the other into the similitude and nature of itself. If the beams of the sun, though divided and distinct from one another, have yet a unity in the same nature of light, because all partake of one native and original splendour;-if the limbs of a tree, though all several, and spreading different ways, have yet a unity in the same

I 1 Cor. x. 17. xi. 24. m Matth. xiii. 19. 1 John iii. 9. Matth. xiii. 28. • Aid THE σlykpaσiv kal dvaσtoixelwow. Isid. Pelus. Cyprian. de Unit. Eccles. • Jam. iii. 13. Rom. xi. 16.

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