of sin, as makes us still to remove our thoughts from so pure an object. As, in the knowledge of things, many men are of so narrow understandings, that they are not able to raise them unto consideration of the causes of such things, whose effects they are haply better acquainted with than wiser men; it being the work of a discursive head to discover the secret knittings, obscure dependences of natural things on each other;-so, in matters of practice in divinity, many men commonly are so fastened unto the present goods which they enjoy, and so full with them, that they either have no room, or no leisure, or rather indeed no power nor will, to lift up their minds from the streams unto the fountain, or by a holy logic to resolve them into the death of Christ; from whence if they issue not, they are but fallacies, and sophistical good things; and whatever happiness we expect in or from them, will prove a 'non sequitur' at the last. Remember and know Christ, indeed, such men may and do, in some sort, sometimes, to dishonour him, at best, but to discourse of him: but as the philosopher a speaks of intemperate men, who sin not out of a full purpose and uncontrolled swing of vicious resolutions, but with checks of judgement and reluctancy of reason, that they are but half vicious' (which yet is indeed but a half truth), so certainly they, who though they do not quite forget Christ, or cast him behind their back, do yet remember him only with a speculative knowledge of the nature and general efficacy of his death, without particular application of it unto their own persons and practices, have but a half and halting knowledge of him. Certainly a mere schoolman, who is able exactly to dispute of Christ and his passion, is as far from the length, and breadth, and depth, and height of Christ crucified, from the requisite dimensions of a Christian, as a mere surveyor or architect, who hath only the practice of measuring land or timber, is from the learning of a geometrician. For as mathematicks, being a speculative science, cannot possibly be comprised in the narrow compass of a practical art; so neither can the knowledge of Christ, being a saving and practic knowledge, be complete, when it floats only in the discourses of a speculative brain. And therefore Christ at the last day will say unto many men, who thought them

a μróvпpos, Arist. Eth. vii. 10. 3. Zell, p. 326.

selves great clerks, and of his near acquaintance, even such as did preach him, and do wonders in his name, That he never knew them; and that is an argument, that they likewise never knew him neither. For as no man can see the sun, but by the benefit of that light, which from the sun shineth on him; so no man can know Christ, but those on whom Christ first shineth, and whom he vouchsafeth to know. Mary Magdalen could not say Rabboni' to Christ, till Christ first had said 'Mary' to her. And therefore that we may not fail to remember Christ aright, it pleaseth him to institute this holy Sacrament, as the image of his crucified body, whereby we might as truly have Christ's death presented unto us, as if he had been crucified before our eyes".

Secondly, We see here who they are, who, in the Sacrament, receive Christ,-even such as remember his death. with a recognition of faith, thankfulness, and obedience. Others only receive the elements, but not the Sacrament: as when the king seals a pardon to a condemned malefactor, the messenger that is sent with it, receives nothing from the king but paper written and sealed, but the malefactor (unto whom only it is a gift) receives it as it were a resurrection. Certainly there is a staff as well of sacramental, as of common bread: the staff of common bread is the blessing of the Lord; the staff of the sacramental is the body of the Lord. And as the wicked, which never look up in thankfulness unto God, do often receive the bread without the blessing; so here the element without the body; they receive indeed, as it is fit unclean birds should do, nothing but the carcase of a sacrament; the body of Christ being the soul of the bread, and his blood the life of wine. His body is not now. any more capable of dishonour; it is a glorified body, and therefore will not enter into an earthy and unclean soul: as it is corporally in Heaven, so it will be spiritually and sacramentally in no place but a heavenly soul.-Think not, that thou hast received Christ, till thou hast effectually remembered, seriously meditated, and been religiously affected and inflamed with the love of his death: without this, thou mayst be guilty of his body; thou canst not be a partaker of it. Guilty thou art, because thou didst reach out thy

hand with a purpose to receive Christ into a polluted soul, though he withdrew himself from thee. Even as Mucius Scævola was guilty of Porsena's blood, though it was not he, but another whom the dagger wounded: because the error of the hand cannot remove the malice of the heart.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Of the subject, who may with benefit receive the holy Sacrament; with the necessary qualifications thereunto; of the necessity of due preparation.

WE have hitherto handled the Sacrament itself: we are now briefly to consider the subject whom it concerneth, in whom we will observe such qualifications, as may fit and pre-dispose him for the comfortable receiving, and proper interest in these holy mysteries. Sacraments, since the time that Satan hath had a kingdom in the world, have been ever notes and characters whereby to distinguish the church of God from the ethnic and unbelieving part of men; so that they being not common unto all mankind, some subject unto whom the right and propriety of them belongeth, must be found out.

God, at the first, created man upright, framed him after his own image, and endowed him with gifts of nature, able to preserve him entire in that estate wherein he was created. And because it was repugnant to the essential freedom 2 wherein he was made, to necessitate him by any outward constraint, unto an immutable estate of integrity; he therefore so framed him, that it might be within the free liberty of his own will to cleave to him, or to decline from him.

Man, being thus framed, abused this native freedom, and committed sin; and thereby, in the very same instant, became really and properly dead. For as he was dead judicially in regard of a temporal and eternal death (both which were now already pronounced, though not executed on him), so was he dead actually and really, in regard of that spiritual death, which consisteth in a separation of the soul from

▾ Justin Martyr in Dialog. cum Tryph.

God, and in an absolute immobility unto divine operations. But man's sin did not nullify God's power: he that made him a glorious creature, when he was nothing, could as easily renew and rectify him when he fell away.

Being dead, true it is, that active concurrence unto his own restitution he could have none; but yet still the same passive obedience and capacity which was in the red clay, of which Adam's body was fashioned unto that divine image which God breathed into it, the same had man, being now fallen, unto the restitution of those heavenly benefits and habitual graces which then he lost: save that in the clay, there was only a passive obedience; but in man fallen, there is an active rebellion, crossing resistance, and withstanding of God's good work in him. More certainly than this he cannot have; because howsoever, in regard of natural and reasonable operations, he be more self-moving than clay, yet, in regard of spiritual graces, he is full as dead: even as a man, though more excellent than a beast, is yet as truly and equally not an angel, as a beast is. So then, thus far we see all mankind do agree in an equality of creation, in a universality of desertion, in a capacity of restitution.

God made the world, that therein he might communicate his goodness unto the creature, and unto every creature in that proportion, as the nature of it is capable of. And man, being one of the most excellent creatures, is amongst the rest capable of these two principal attributes, holiness and happiness: which two, God, out of his most secret counsel and eternal mercy, conferreth on whom he hath chosen and made accepted in Christ the Beloved, shutting the rest either out of the compass, as heathen; or at least out of the inward privileges and benefits of that covenant which he hath established with mankind, as hypocrites and licentious Christians.

Now as, in the first creation of man, God did, into the unformed lump of clay, infuse, by his power, the breath of life, and so made man; so, in the regeneration of a Christian, doth he in the natural man, who is dead in sin, breathe a principle of spiritual life,-the first act, as it were, and the original of all supernatural motions, whereby he is constituted in the first being of a member of Christ.

Acts vii. 51. Rom. vii. 23.

And this first act is faith, the soul of a Christian, that whereby we live in Christ; so that till we have faith, we are dead, and out of him. And as faith is the principle (next under the Holy Ghost) of all spiritual life here, so is baptism the Sacrament of that life, which, accompanied and raised by the Spirit of grace, is unto the church, though not the cause, yet the means, in and by which this grace is conveyed unto the soul.

Now as Adam, after once life was infused into him, was presently to preserve it by the eating of the fruits in the garden, where God had placed him, because of that continual depastion of his radical moisture by vital heat, which made nature to stand in need of succours and supplies from outward nourishment ;-so after man is once regenerated and made alive, he is to preserve that faith which quickeneth him by such food, as is provided by God for that purpose, it being otherwise of itself subject to continual languishings and decays. And this life is thus continued and preserved, amongst other means, by the grace of this holy Eucharist, which conveys unto us that true food of life, the body and blood of Christ crucified. So then, inasmuch as the Sacrament of Christ's supper is not the Sacrament of regeneration, but of sustentation and nourishment; and inasmuch as no dead thing is capable of being nourished (augmentation being a vegetative and vital act); and lastly, inasmuch as the principle of this spiritual life is faith, and the Sacrament of it baptism;-it followeth evidently, That no man is a subject qualified for the holy communion of Christ's body, who hath not been before partaker of faith and baptism.

In Heaven, where all things shall be perfected and renewed, our souls shall be in as little need of this Sacrament, as our bodies of nourishment. But this being a state of imperfection, subject to decays, and still capable of further augmentation; we are therefore by these holy mysteries to preserve the life, which by faith and baptism we have received: without which life, as the Sacrament doth confer and confirm nothing, so do we receive nothing neither, but the bare elements.

Christ is now in Heaven, no eye sharp enough to see him,

1 John v. 13.

e John iii. 5. Tit. iii. 5.

d Gen. i. 29.