meal, or on any other occasion. If all therefore was not consecrated, it follows that none was actually consecrated, but what was then on the table before our Saviour; so that it is necessary some consecration of the same nature should still be used in order to restrain that to a holy use, which is left at large for all uses, by our Saviour's consecration. But our author will say, the receiving bread and wine in remembrance of our Saviour, is a sufficient and effectual consecration. If that were the case, how could the Corinthians profane the sacrament, since they did not apply it to the memory of our Saviour, but eat it as a common meal? Without such application, according to our author, there can be no sacrament, and consequently no profanation, because the bread and wine are still common and unconsecrated. Neither can the Test Act, by his way of reasoning, possibly occasion any profanation; because the taking bread and wine in remembrance of Christ, being according to him the only consecration, he that takes them in order to qualify himself for a beneficial post, takes them unconsecrated, and consequently cannot be guilty of a profanation. It is for this reason, that I cannot suppose the bishop of Winchester could have been the author of this book, because his lordship, if I remember right, in his incomparable performances against the Test Act, shews that law to be a profanation of the holy sacrament to worldly uses, which it never could be, unless the elements were supposed to be separated and dedicated to a sacred use before. But this author will have it, that they are never so dedicated, but when they are taken in remembrance of Christ, so that he who takes them with any other view or intention, does not receive the sacrament of the Lord's supper at all, because he eats and drinks not in commemoration of Christ, but for his own promotion, and therefore does no more than he who feeds on bread and wine for his nourishment.

The next doctrine I shall take notice of in this writer, is that which relates to the end of the Lord's supper. If the reader will please to lay proposition the 8th of our author, and all the pages from 153 to the end of the book, together, he will perceive that the proposition is fairly drawn from, not only the general tendency, but the express words of his treatise.

Secondly, The sacrament of the Lord's supper is a rite purely commemorative, so that the duty of receiving it is (strictly speaking) comprehended within the limits of eating and drinking with a due remembrance of Christ's death.'

Our author tells us, p. 54, that the nature and essence of this sacrament, consists in its being done in remembrance of Christ's death; from which we must infer, that where there is no remembrance of his death, there can be no sacrament. He argues from this doctrine against transubstantiation, and a corporal sacrifice in the mass, insisting, that to suppose a real presence when there is only a memorial instituted, would be absurd: from which we must infer, that in the presence of our Saviour this sacrament could retain neither its nature nor essence, i. e. could not be.

From which two inferences put together it appears plainly, by our author's way of reasoning, that our Saviour could not have instituted, nor his disciples received this sacrament, till after his death. For, says our author, p. 24, "The doing any act in remembrance of a person implies his bodily absence; and if he is corporally present, we are never said, nor can we be said to perform that action in remembrance of him; and again, p. 30, they (that is, our Saviour's disciples) could not do the actions here named (i. e. eat and drink the memorials of his body and blood) in remembrance of him, whilst he himself was corporally present with them, nor in remembrance of any thing done, which was not then done and past." All this is very true, and therefore the essence of this sacrament cannot consist in mere commemoration, according to our author elsewhere. To remember a future event is much the same with foreseeing what is past.

However, since St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. Paul, will needs have it that this sacrament was instituted and received before our Saviour's death, much to the discredit of this author, we must look out for somewhat else in the institution, on account of which it was consistent with the infinite wisdom of our Saviour, to ordain it before his death.

Let us in order to this consider the passages in Scripture that relate to the last supper. And here it is observ

able, that there is no mention made of commemoration in the account given by St. Matthew and St. Mark. It is not unlikely that their reason for so doing was, because they intended to state the nature of the sacrament, as it was before our Saviour's death. But as St. Luke and St. Paul have given us a more full account of it, by adding the precept for doing it in remembrance of Christ's death, we will suppose for the present, that St. Paul's account, in which the memorial is twice mentioned, is the only historical narrative of this affair extant.

Every one who reads St. Paul's words, must perceive, that we are always to commemorate our Saviour's death in this sacrament. The words therefore that contain the precept for commemoration, being agreed upon, may be set aside; after which we shall find these other words, 'this is my body which is broken for you,' and 'this cup is the new testament in my blood. These words cannot mean the same with those relating to commemoration, for if they did, the apostle must have been guilty of a tautology; and if they meanany thing else, then this institution must have something more in it than a bare memorial. But be their meaning what it will, it must be essential to the institution, not only because, as I observed before, these are the very words of consecration, but because in these words, or in none, we mustlook for the reason of celebrating this sacrament before our Saviour's death.

It must therefore be a matter of high import to all Christians, to know what is meant by these words. Our author has treated them with such contempt that he takes little or no notice of them. The most he vouchsafes is a paraphrase of them, in which he obliges them to speak according to the drift of his doctrines, without giving us any reason for so doing. The words 'body' and 'blood' must either be understood literally and corporally, or else in a figurative and spiritual sense. They cannot be understood literally nor corporally, because common sense is against it. A figurative or spiritual interpretation must therefore be found, before they can be rationally or rightly understood; because we may presume to say that they ought to be allowed some meaning. Now if nothing else is intimated to us by these words, but that the bread and wine are memorials of

Christ's death, then they signify only just the same thing with, 'This do in remembrance of me;' by which our Savour, and his historians, must be supposed guilty of multiplying words, without enlarging the sense, and that in the very form of a most sacred institution, when, if ever, both brevity and strictness are necessary.

Since then neither a bodily presence, nor a bare memorialis intended by these words; since the sacrament was fully instituted by these words alone, as appears from its being instituted before our Saviour's death, and consequently before the possibility of a commemoration; and since St. Matthew and St. Mark have given us an account of the institution, without taking the least notice of the commemoration, we must conclude, that to eat our Saviour's body and drink his blood, is to partake of all those benefits that were procured to us by his death, among which faith and grace are chiefly to be reckoned; for,

To what purpose do we eat and drink, unless in order to our nourishment? But as in this eating and drinking there is no bodily nourishment intended, some spiritual food must be intended. Now our souls can be strengthened, refreshed, or fed, no otherwise than by faith and grace, I mean in a religious or Christian sense; it follows, therefore, that if we eat, drink, or are fed at all by this institution, it must be by the most comfortable and reviving motions of God's Holy Spirit, that answer to the devout disposition of our hearts, as material food does to our bodily hunger. Our Saviour in the sixth of St. John, speaks of his flesh and blood in this very sense. 'I am the bread of life,' says he, 'I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except you eat of the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.' The Jews had cavilled at these expressions before, but as soon as our Sa

viour perceived that his disciples also murmured at them, he explained them to them, by telling them that it is the Spirit that quickeneth, that the flesh profiteth nothing, and that the words which he speak unto them are spirit and life.'

As in St. Paul's account of the institution, we are commanded to eat the body and drink the blood of Christ, so St. John tells us, that unless we do so, we have no life in us and lest we should either reject his doctrine with abhorrence at the thoughts of eating his flesh and drinking his blood literally or corporally, or to avoid that, should fix some other unworthy interpretation on his words, he tells us that we are to understand him in a spiritual sense, that it is the Spirit that quickeneth, and that the words which he speaketh unto them are the Spirit which quickens, and that life which is thereby quickened.

It is observable, that after our Saviour had often spoke of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, he comes in the fifty-seventh verse, to speak of eating himself; by which is meant according to his explanation at the end, his Spirit, as well as his flesh and blood, which without that could not be vitally called him, nor of any avail towards the procuring eternal life to us. What are we to conclude from eating Christ's flesh and drinking his blood, nay, from eating Christ himself, but that we are to feed on some representations of his flesh and blood, under which, to make them, in some sense, him, is conveyed his Spirit, which works in us by his words, and nourishes by his precepts to eternal life?

From this passage of St. John it appears plainly in what sense the bread and wine are called our Saviour's body and blood. Christ here, calls his flesh the food or bread of life, and in St. Paul's account, calls the sacramental bread his body; he tells us in both places that we must eat it, from whence we cannot but conclude that some kind of nourishment is to be communicated by it. What that is, he shews us by the opposition between manna, which could not prevent temporal death, and this meat indeed which secures to us eternal life.

Now if we suppose the two passages of St. John and St. Paul laid together, the sense of both may be expressed in the person of Christ, thus: "Endeavour not to procure to yourselves that perishable kind of food, which can only support you for a short time here, but endeavour to come