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"eaten was appointed to be the memo"rial of his body broken; and the wine to "be drunk was ordained to be the memo"rial of his blood shed." His intention in this appears commendable. It was to free the last Supper from superstition; whose untimely fruit is at best, but a lifeless rubrical piety. Yet in pursuit of this commendable design, he has gone, I presume, too far: He has taken away its specific nature, and left it nothing but its generic. He has excluded the idea of a feast after the Sacrifice, in which the celestial benefits of the giver are conveyed; and has confined us to the notion of a mere memorial, in which the gratitude only of the receiver is returned *."

* As I must often mention a diversity of opinions on the nature and end of the Sacrament, I here insert a salutary CAUTION from BP. TAYLOR.

"Let no man be less confident in his holy Faith and Persuasion, concerning the great blessings and glorious effects which God designs to every faithful and obedient soul, in the communication of these Divine Mysteries, by reason of any DIFFERENCE OF JUDGMENT which prevails in the several schools of Christians, concerning the effects and consequent blessings of the Sacrament: For ALL men speak honourable things of it EXCEPT WICKED PERSONS AND THE SCORNERS OF RELIGION."

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SECTION IX.

Though the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper be strictly a Feast on, or after, a Sacrafice; yet, in popular Language, and catachrestically, or by an allowed abuse of Terms, a common figure of speech,it has been, and may still be, called, a SACRIFICE. JESUS CHRIST ONCE OFFERED ON THE CROSS is the ONLY CHRISTIAN SACRIFIC.

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DIFFERENT names, we all know, may given, without absurdity, to the same thing, according to its different properties and effects: and use and custom will authorize a name not strictly appropriate. Convenience, indeed, may require, that the same religious institution should be always called by the same name; but if it has various properties and effects, several names may be applied to it at different times and places, which, however

diversified,

diversified, may all have some significancy and use, and cause no mistake. One name may have to encounter fewer prejudices than another; and for that reason, though, in a critical sense, less proper, it may yet be allowable. To call the Sacrament a Sacrifice is incorrect; yet it is so termed by many pious persons, whose language and ideas may not be accurate; though their meaning is perfectly right and their intentions pure.

But the truth is, that nothing is strictly and properly a Sacrifice, according to the practice and ideas of those who instituted Sacrifices, which is not brought to the altar, and consumed upon it, either in part or wholly; though in popular language, whatever is solemnly offered in the Eucharist, may be, as it has been, termed a Sacrifice.

Thus our excellent Communion service speaks of a Sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving a Sacrifice of our souls and bodies, a lively, or, in modern diction, a living, sacrifice. Oblations of money are also offered, in our service, for the use of the poor indeed, but which we pray God,

in the first instance, to accept as an offering to Him and as tokens of our charity *.

The schoolmen, however, say, the Eucharist is both a Sacrament and a Sacrifice; it is a Sacrament, so far as any thing is received; and it is a Sacrifice, so far as any thing is offered †. They say also, that any thing done to the honour of God for the purpose of propitiating and appeasing him, may be properly called a Sacrifice. The ancient heathens did not confine this term to an oblation; but sometimes comprehended under it, the whole of their religious ceremonies, (their gougyia), whether they offered a victim or not. Plautus uses the term sacrifice

more than once when he means wORSHIP only without an oblation.

Whatever was comprehended by the Jews under the word eorban, a sacred gift, it is supposed, by some, to have been

The Christian Sacrifice is properly Igor poga, but improperly Ouria, for via comes from Quw, macto, to slay; but in our Christian Sacrifice we stay nothing, but commemorate only Him with an Oblation of Gratitude, who was slain and offered on the Cross, as upon an altar, once for all.

† Vide Thom. Aquin. Sum. Quæst. 65. Partis 3 tiæ. considered

considered as a sacrifice; and this they divided into two kinds, the bloody and the unbloody, or the sacrifice of things animate or inanimate.

Any very solemn act of worship, says TURRETIN, in which something was consecrated to God for his glory, and for man's advantage, was called, in the style of the Old Testament, a sacrifice.

According to this latitude of signification, many pious and learned men have maintained, that the Eucharist itself is a sacrifice, and not merely a feast on a sacrifice; and when the term is thus comprehensively understood, there can be no sufficient reason for undertaking to refute them. From very early times, even from the Apostles, it has possessed this name with qualifying epithets, and has been denominated the spiritual sacrifice, the sacrifice of praise, the holy sacrifice, the mystical sacrifice, the unbloody sacrifice, and the reasonable, or intellectual, sacrifice.

The following passage from the prophet MALACHI was, in the primitive ages, understood to be predictive of the EuF 3 charistical

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