faction, but the destruction of his justice, and so to set his own unity at variance with itself. Mercy and truth, righteousness and peace, they were, in man's redemption, to kiss, and not to quarrel with each other: God did not disunite his attributes, when he did reunite his church unto himself. A price then was paid unto God's justice, and eternal life is a purchase by Christ bought, but still unto us a gift, not by any pains or satisfaction of ours attained unto, but only by him who was himself given unto us, that together with himself he might give us all things. He unto whom I stand engaged in a sum of money, by me ever impossible to be raised, if it please him to persuade his own heir to join in my obligation, and out of that great estate, by himself conferred on him for that very purpose, to lay down so much as shall cancel the bond, and acquit me; doth not only freely forgive my debt, but doth moreover commend the abundance of his favour, by the manner and circumstances of the forgiveness. Man by nature is a debtor unto God: there is a hand-writing against him 5, which was so long to stand in virtue, till he was able to offer something in value proportionable to that infinite justice unto which he stood obliged; which being by him, without the sustaining of an infinite misery, utterly unsatisfiable, it pleased God to appoint his own co-essential and co-eternal Son to enter under the same bond of law for us, on whom he bestowed such rich graces, as were requisite for the economy of so great a work. By the means of which human and created graces, concurring with, and receiving value from, the divine nature, meeting hypostatically in one infinite person,-the debt of mankind was discharged, and the obligation cancelled; and so as many as were ordained to life, effectually delivered by this great ransom, virtually sufficient, and, by God's power, applicable unto all, but actually beneficial, and by his most wise and just will, conferred only upon those, who should, by the grace of a lively faith, apply unto themselves this common gift. So then, all our salvation is a gift, Christ a gift, the knowledge of Christ a gift, the faith in Christ a

gift, repentance" by Christ a gift, the suffering" for Christ a gift, the reward of all a gift; whatsoever we have, whatsoever we are, is all from God that showeth mercy P.

Lastly, In that Christ gives his sacrament to be eaten, we learn, first, not only our benefit, but our duty: the same Christ it is, whom, in eating, we both enjoy and obey, he being as well the institutor as the substance of the sacrament. If it were but his precept, we owe him our observance; but besides it is his body, and even self-love might move us to obey his precept: our months have been wide open unto poison, let them not be shut up against so sovereign an antidote 9.

Secondly, We see how we should use this precious gift of Christ crucified, not to look on, but to eat, not with a gazing, speculative knowledge of him, as it were at a distance, but with an experimental and working knowledge; none truly knows Christ, but he that feels him. "Come, taste and see," saith the prophet, "how gracious the Lord is." In divine things, tasting goes before seeing, the union before the vision: Christ must first dwell in us, before we can know the love of God that passeth knowledge".

Thirdly, We learn not to sin against Christ, because therein we do sin against ourselves, by offering indignity to the body of Christ, which should nourish us; and, like swine, by trampling under foot that precious food, which preserveth unto life those that with reverence eat it, but fatteth unto slaughter those who profanely devour it :-even as the same rain in different grounds serves sometimes to bring on the seed, other times to choke and stifle it by the forwardness of weeds'. For as it is the goodness of God to bring good out of the worst of things, even sin; so is it the malignity of sin and cunning of Satan, to pervert the most holy things, the word of God, yea, the very blood of Christ, unto

evil.

n Phil. i. 29.

Acts v. 31. 2 Tim. ii. 25. • Rom. vi. 23. P Restat ut propterea rectè dictum intelligatur, Non volentis, neque currentis, sed miserentis est Dei;' ut totum Deo detur, qui hominis voluntatem bonam et præparat adjuvandam, et adjuvat præparatam. Vid. Aug. Enchir. cap. 32. q Nauseabit ad antidotum, qui hiavit ad venenum? Tert. cont. Gnost. cap. 5. Eph. 3. 17, 18. ⚫ Porcis comparandi, qui ea prius conculcant, ac luto cœnoque involvunt, quæ mox avide devorant: Parker de Antiq. Brit. in Præfat. + Matth. .3, 6.

Lastly, We learn, how pure we ought to preserve those doors of the soul from filthiness and intemperance, at which so often the Prince of glory' himself will enter in.

CHAPTER XIII.

Of the two first ends or effects of the Sacrament, namely, the exhibition of Christ to the Church, and the union of the Church to Christ: Of the real presence.

HAVING thus far spoken of the nature and quality of this holy sacrament, it follows in order to treat of the ends or effects thereof, on which depends its necessity, and our comfort. Our sacraments are nothing else but evangelical types or shadows of some more perfect substance. For as the legal sacrifices were the shadows" of Christ expected, and wrapped up in a cloud of predictions, and in the loins of his predecessors; so this new mystical sacrifice of the gospel is a shadow of Christ, risen indeed, but yet hidden from us under the cloud of those heavens, which shall contain him until the dissolution of all things. For the whole heavens are but as one great cloud, which intercepts the lustre of that sun of righteousness, who enlighteneth every one that cometh into the world. Now shadows are for the refreshing of us against the lustre of any light, unto which the weakness of the sense is yet disproportioned. As there are many things for their own smallness imperceptible,-so some, for their magnitude, do exceed the power of sense, and have a transcendency in them, which surpasseth the comprehension of that faculty, unto which they properly belong. No man can, in one simple view, look upon the whole vast frame of heaven; because he cannot, at the same moment, receive the species of so spreading and diffused an object: so is it in things divine; some of them are so above the reach of our imperfect faculties, as that they swallow up the understanding, and make not any immediate impression on the soul, between which and their excellency, there is so great disproportion. Now disproportion useth, in all things, to arise from a

u Heb. x. 1.

double cause: the one natural, being the limited constitution of the faculty, whereby, even in its best sufficiency, it is disabled for the perception of too excellent an object, as are the eyes of an owl in respect of the sun.

The other accidental; namely, by violation and distemper of the faculty, even within the compass of its own strength; as in soreness of eyes in regard of light, or lameness in regard of motion. Great certainly was the mystery of man's redemption, which posed and dazzled the eyes of the angels themselves: so that between Christ and man, there are both these former disproportions observable.

For first of all, man, while he is on the earth, a traveller towards that glory which yet he never saw, and which the tongue of St. Paul himself could not utter, is altogether, even in his highest pitch of perfection, unqualified to comprehend the excellent mystery of Christ, either crucified, or much more glorified. And, therefore, our manner of assenting in this life, though in regard of the authority on which it is grounded (which is God's own Word), it be most evident and infallible,—yet, in its own quality, it is not so immediate and express, as is that which is elsewhere reserved for us. For, hereafter, we shall know even as we are known, by a knowledge of vision a, fruition, and possession: here darkly, by stooping and captivating our understandings unto those divine reports, which are made in Scripture, which is a knowledge of faith, distance, and expectation. We do, I say, here bend our understandings to assent unto such truths, as do not transmit any immediate species or irradiation of their own upon them: but there our understandings shall be raised unto a greater capacity, and be made able, without a secondary report and conveyance, to apprehend clearly those glorious truths, the evidence whereof it did here submit unto, for the infallible credit of God; who, in his Word, had revealed, and, by his Spirit, obsignated the same unto them as the Samaritans knew Christ at first only by the report of the woman,—which was an assent of faith; but after, when they saw his wonders, and heard his words, they knew him by himself,-which was an assent of vision.

* Vide Aquin. part. 1. quæst. 62. art. 2. ad secundum.

y 1 Tim. i. 16.

с

Secondly, As the church is here but a travelling church, therefore cannot possibly have any farther knowledge of that country whither it goes, but only by the maps which describe it, the Word of God; and these few fruits which are sent unto them from it, the fruits of the Spirit, whereby they have some taste and relish of the world to come: so moreover is it even in this estate, by being enclosed in a body of sin (which hath a darkening property in it, and adds unto the natural limitedness of the understanding, an accidental defect and soreness), much disabled from this very imperfect assent unto Christ, the object of its faith. For as sin, when it wastes the conscience, and bears rule in the soul, hath a power like Delilah and the Philistines, to put out our eyes (as Ulysses the eye of his Cyclops with his sweet wine"), a power to corrupt principles, to pervert and make crooked the very rule by which we work; conveying all moral truths to the soul, as some concave glasses use to represent the species of things to the eye, not according to their natural rectitude or beauty, but with those wrestings, inversions, and deformities, which, by the indisposition thereof, they are framed unto;—so even the least corruptions, unto which the best are subject (having a natural antipathy to the evidence and power of Divine truth), do necessarily, in some manner, distemper our understandings, and make such a degree of soreness in the faculty, as that it cannot but, so far forth, be impatient and unable to bear that glorious lustre, which shines immediately in the Lord Christ. So then, we see what a great disproportion there is between us and Christ immediately presented and from thence we may observe our necessity, and God's mercy, in affording us the refreshment of a type and shadow.

These shadows were to the church of the Jews, many; because their weakness in the knowledge of Christ was of necessity more than ours, inasmuch as they were but an infant 3, we an adult and grown church: and they looked on Christ at a distance; we near at hand, he being already incarnate : unto us, they are the sacraments of his body and blood, in which we see and receive Christ, as weak eyes do the light

c Numb. xiii. 21. d Gal. v. 22. e Hom. Odyss. 1. 9. eiv Tov Kavóva, Arist. Rh. lib. 1. cap. 1. g Gal. iv. 3.