If he had said, you shall eat bread and drink wine after I am departed, in remembrance of your Friend and Benefactor, the duty indeed had been indispensable, and would have formed a pleasing exercise of gratitude. But we might have done the same for any friend and benefactor, with no other benefit than the consciousness 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 sinners; of the Supreme Being propitiated; of atonement made; and all the benefits of Christ's precious blood shedding, emphatically pointed out, "to our great and endless comfort.”

To a people among whom sacrifices were familiar, the terms of eating the body of the victim, could not be repellent. The Jews, indeed, abstained from blood; but the institution of the Eucharist was not to be confined to the Jews, but extended to all people who should call on the name of Jesus.

SECTION XV.

Of the true Knowledge of Christ attained in worthily receiving the Sacrament, by the unlearned and well-disposed Christian.

THERE were two trees in Paradise, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life; and if there were

of the sons

two such trees in the present age, many of Adam, like himself, would be most anxiously, engaged in shaking 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 profession of divinity, not so much by an early study of the Scriptures, or by devotional exercises; not so much by the Evangelists and Apostles, as by the Rule of Three and Practice, by Euclid's Elements and Maclaurin's Algebra, by mathematics and metaphysics; as if religion, which alone they are to profess for life, were matter of science, whereas it is 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 science.

It is to be attributed to the early intellectual habits of some among the students in theology, who receive holy orders without having had time to attend closely to any thing but mathematics, that they are willing to assent to nothing but what is nearly demonstrable, and explain away every thing mysterious or irreconcileable to their pre-conceived notions of truth and rectitude. This tendency might lead directly to Socinianism or Infidelity, were it

not checked by a desire not to be thrown out of the secular benefits annexed to an established reli

gion.

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

"It may be hazardous," says Bishop Horne, "to assign the causes of error upon speculation. It is well known, that most of our enlightened reasoners, who take the highest liberties with the faith of a Trinity in unity, have been bred in those schools where the sciences, which are conversant about quantities, claim a superior, if not an exclusive excellence. In their place they are excellent, and give absolute certainty; but in religion, being out of place, they must of course turn into vain deceit. Let us, therefore, most humbly wish it to be well considered by those whom it may concern, that mathematicians, merely as such, have, in religion, no pre-eminence above other men; that mathematical analogies are not transferable to morality, theology, politics, nor to any science which is conversant only with the qualities of things."

Because this topic is tender, and seldom fails to irritate a very irritable sort of men, those who pride themselves on their high philosophical and mathematical improvements, I must beg leave not to speak in my own words on this occasion, but in those of an author whom the mathematical theolo

gians cannot but honour the author of the Intellectual System.

"I wish," says Dr. Cudworth, "while we talk of light, and dispute about truth, we could walk more as children of the light.

"There are many large volumes and discourses written concerning Christ; thousands of controversies discussed; infinite problems determined concerning his divinity, humanity, union of both together, and what not? So that our book-Christians that have all their religion in writings and papers, think they are now completely furnished with all kinds of knowledge concerning Christ; and when they see all their leaves lying about them, they think they have a goodly stock of knowledge and truth; as if religion were nothing but a book-craft, a meré paper-skill.

Many of the learned, if they can but wrangle and dispute about Christ, imagine themselves to be grown great proficients in the school of Christ.

"The greatest part of the world, whether learned or unlearned, think that there is no need of purging and purifying of their hearts for the right knowledge of Christ and his Gospel; but though their lives be never so wicked, their hearts never so foul within, yet they may know Christ sufficiently out of their treatises and discourses, out of their mere systems and bodies of divinity, which I deny not to be useful in a subordinate

way; although our Saviour prescribeth his disciciples another method to come to the right knowledge of divine truths, by doing of God's will:"he that will do my Father's will (saith he) shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." He is a true Christian indeed, not he that is only book-taught, but he that is God-taught; "he that hath an unction from the Holy One, (as our Apostle calleth it) that teacheth him all things; he that hath the Spirit of Christ within him, that searcheth out the deep things of God: for as no man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him; even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God."

"Ink and paper can never make us Christians; can never beget a new nature, a living principle in us; can never form Christ, or any true notion of spiritual things in our hearts. The Gospel, that new law which Christ delivered to the world, is not merely a letter without us, but a quickening spirit within us. Cold theorems and maxims, dry and jejune disputes, lean syllogistical reasonings, could never yet of themselves beget the least glimpse of true heavenly light, the least sap of saving knowledge in any heart. All this is but the groping of the poor dark spirit of man after truth, to find it out with his own endeavours, and feel it with his own cold and benumbed hands. Words and syllables, which are but dead things, cannot possibly