they, duly received, fhall produce the fame benefits to you as you would have expected in your former facrifices, when you actually fed on a real lamb, the offered victim; and I call them, becaufe in VIRTUE they are the fame, my body and my blood. Do not fuppofe a moment, that this is not to all intents and purposes a facrificial feaft on the facrifice of myfelf; but take this bread, for given thus, it is and fhall be in effect, my body; drink this wine, and it fhall prove to you,' in its myfterious benefits, the real blood of the victim, that is, of my felf, to be offered up on the morrow, on the cross as on an altar. The bread and wine are still but created things, emblems only and fymbols, yet by my ordinance, they fhall conftitute, till my fecond coming, the feaft on this laft great facrifice, and convey the benefits of it to all faithful and penitent partakers."

Thus understood, there appears the greatest propriety in the words, «Ye

" fhall

"fhall eat my body and drink my blood." No mode of enunciation could have been fo forcible, none fo immediately adapted to point out their reference to an actual facrifice. If he had faid, you fhall eat bread and drink wine after I am departed, in remembrance of your Friend and and Benefactor, the duty indeed had been indifpenfable, and would have formed a pleafing exercise of gratitude.

But we

might have done the fame for any other friend and benefactor, with no other benefit than the confcioufnefs of grateful behaviour, and the pleasure of dwelling on the goodness of the departed. But by the words body and blood, we have the idea of a SACRIFICE for finners; of the Supreme Being propitiated; of atonement made; and all the benefits of Chrift's precious blood fhedding, emphatically pointed out, "to our great and endless comfort."

To a people among whom facrifices. were familiar, the terms of eating the body

body of the victim, could not be reperlent. The Jews, indeed, abftained from blood; but the inftitution of the Eucharift was not to be confined to the Jews, but extended to all people who should call on the name of Jefus.

SECTION XVII.

Of the true Knowledge of Chrift attained in worthily receiving the Sacrament, by the unlearned and well-difpofed Chriftian.

THERE

HERE were two trees in Paradife, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life; and if there were two fuch trees in the present age, many of the fons of Adam, like himself, would be most anxiously engaged in fhaking the boughs of the tree of knowledge, while, thus occupied, they would wholly neglect the tree of life.

It is, indeed, a great misfortune that many teachers are trained to the profeffion of divinity, not fo much by an early study of the Scriptures, or by devotional exercises; not fo much by the Evangelifts and Apostles, as by the Rule of Three and Practice, by Cocker's Arithmetic, Euclid's Elements, and Maclaurin's Algebra; as if religion,

religion, which alone they are to profess for life, were matter of science, whereas it is a matter of faith entirely; and science, or certain knowledge, is different in its very nature from faith, which can exist only when science, or certain knowledge, is unattainable.Faith is no longer faith the moment it becomes fcience.

It is to be attributed to the early intellectual habits of fome among the ftudents in theology who receive holy orders without having had time to attend clofely to any thing but mathematics,that they are willing to affent to nothing but what is nearly demonftrable, and explain away every thing mysterious or irreconcileable to their preconceived notions of trurh and rectitude. This tendency would lead directly to Socinianifm or Infidelity, were it not checked by a defire not to be thrown out of the fecular benefits annexed to an established religion.

Mathematics, and all the recondite fciences, are useful and honourable attainments; but they do not teach Jefus Christ.