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in which all who partake worthily shall be partakers of the benefits of the sacrifice ONCE made for you, and for all, never afterwards to be repeated.

"But in this feast which I now institute, there can be no real blood, no real flesh, as was the case when you partook of the slaughtered animal in the former typical sacrifices; for the victim, in the present case, is not one of the animals, is not literally a LAMB, but MYSELF, whose body will shortly ascend to Heaven, and become glorified.

"I THEREFORE ordain a feast, EMBLEMATICAL of my body and blood. I ap point the two great supplies of strength and nourishment, bread and wine, to stand in the place of the sacrificed victim; but they, duly received, shall produce the same benefits on you as you would have expected in your former saerifices, when you actually fed on a real lamb, the offered victim; and I call them, because in effect and VIRTUE they are the same, my body and my blood. Do not suppose for a moment, that this is not to ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES a sacrificial

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feast on the sacrifice of myself; but take this bread; for given thus, it is, and shall be in effect, my body; drink this wine, and it shall prove to you, in its mysterious benefits, the real blood of the victim, that is, of myself, 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 SYMBOLS; yet by my ordinance, they shall constitute, till my second coming, the feast on this last great sacrifice, and convey the benefits of it to all faithful and penitent parta kers."

Thus understood, there appears the greatest propriety in the words, "Ye shall "eat my body and drink my blood *."

* "The verily and indeed taking of what is called by our Church an inward and spiritual Grace, must denote that the devout communicant does actually receive the benefits understood in the Gospel by the Figure of eating the Flesh and drinking the Blood of Christ; that is, the confirming our trust and faith in his name, the quickening our remembrance of all he has done and suffered for us; which will naturally help and strengthen our DISPOSITION TO VIRTUOUS and GOOD ACTIONS, refresh our languid hopes in the administration of Providence, and rekindle our cooling Charity towards our fellow creatures." TUCKER. vol. vi. p. 113. No

No mode of enunciation could have been so forcible, none so immediately adapted to point out their reference to an actual sacrifice. 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 other 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 by it (according to the ideas then prevailing all over the world); of atonement made; and all the benefits of Christ's precious blood shedding, emphatically pointed out, our great and endless comfort."

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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 Eucha

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rist was not to be confined to the Jews, but in a short time extended to all people who should call on the name of Jesus; GENTILES as well as Jews, to whom sacrificial Feasts, without any prohibition from Blood, were familiar modes of conciliating the Deity, and of deriving protection and every other Blessing from Heaven; therefore the introduction of a Feast on a Sacrifice was the easiest and most probable method of introducing, to the Gentile world, the Christian Religion *.

* "Our Saviour did not institute a rite altogether new to the world: but accommodated this solemnity to the ordinary and vulgar apprehensions of all mankind, in THAT AGE.' PELLING.

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Certè non in hoc tantùm, sed et in Baptismi Sacra mento, videtur omnino Christus se non Hebærorum tantùm, sed et GENTIUM, in idem Foedus cooptandarum, Captui accommodasse. GROTIUS.

SECT.

SECTION XX.

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

THERE

HERE were two trees in Paradise, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life; and if there were two such trees in the present age, many of the sons 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 Cocker's Arithmetic, Euclid's Elements, and Maclaurin's Algebra; the only things studied by many, as prepara,

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