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XXVIII.

ART. WHEN these Articles were at first prepared by the convocation in Queen Elizabeth's reign, this paragraph was made a part of them; for the original subscription by both houses of convocation, yet extant, shews this. But the design of the government was at that time much turned to the drawing over the body of the nation to the reformation, in whom the old leaven had gone deep; and no part of it deeper than the belief of the corporeal presence of Christ in the Sacrament; therefore it was thought not expedient to offend them by so particular a definition in this matter; in which the very word Real Presence was rejected. It might, perhaps, be also suggested, that here a definition was made that went too much upon the principles of natural philosophy; which how true soever, they might not be the proper subject of an Article of Religion. Therefore it was thought fit to suppress this paragraph; though it was a part of the Article that was subscribed, yet it was not published, but the paragraph that follows, The Body of Christ, &c. was put in its stead, and was received and published by the next convocation; which upon the matter was a full explanation of the way of Christ's presence in this sacrament; that he is present in a heavenly and spiritual manner, and that faith is the mean by which he is received. This seemed to be more theological; and it does indeed amount to the same thing. But howsoever we see what was the sense of the first convocation in Queen Elizabeth's reign; it differed in nothing from that in King Edward's time and therefore though this paragraph is now no part of our Articles, yet we are certain that the Clergy at that time did not at all doubt of the truth of it: we are sure it was their opinion; since they subscribed it, though they did not think fit to publish it at first; and though it was afterwards changed for another, that was the same in sense.

In the treating of this Article, I shall first lay down the doctrine of this Church, with the grounds of it; and then I shall examine the doctrine of the Church of Rome, which must be done copiously: for next to the doctrine of Infallibility, this is the most valued of all their other tenets; this is the most important in itself, since it is the main part of their worship, and the chief subject of all their devotions. There is not any one thing in which both Clergy and Laity are more concerned; which is more generally studied, and for which they pretend they have more plausible colours, both from Scripture and the Fathers and if sense and reason seem to press hard upon

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XXVIII.

it, they reckon, that, as they understand the words of St. ART. Paul, every thought must be captivated into the obdeience of faith.

2 Cor. x. 5.

In order to the expounding our doctrine, we must consider the occasion and the institution of this Sacrament. The Jews were required once a year to meet at Jerusalem, in remembrance of the deliverance of their fathers out of Egypt. Moses appointed that every family should. kil! a Exod. xii. lamb, whose blood was to be sprinkled on their door-posts 11. and lintels, and whose flesh they were to eat; at the sight of which blood thus sprinkled, the destroying Angel, that was to be sent out to kill the first-born of every family in Egypt, was to pass over all the houses that were so marked: and from that passing by or over the Israelites, the lamb was called the Lord's passover, as being then the sacrifice, and afterwards the memorial of that passover. The people of Israel were required to keep up the memorial of that transaction, by slaying a lamb before the place where God should set his name; and by eating it up that night: they were also to eat with it a sallad of bitter herbs and unleavened bread; and when they went to eat of the lamb, they repeated these words of Moses; that it was the Lord's passover. Now though the first lamb that was killed in Egypt was indeed the sacrifice upon which God promised to pass over their houses; yet the lambs that were afterwards offered were only the memorials of it; though they still carried that name, which was given to the first, and were called the Lord's passover.

So that the Jews were in the paschal supper accustomed to call the memorial of a thing, by the name of that of which it was the memorial: and as the deliverance out of Egypt was a type and representation of that greater deliverance, that we were to have by the Messias, the first lamb being the sacrifice of that deliverance, and the succeeding lambs the memorials of it; so, in order to this new and greater deliverance, Christ himself was our pass- 1 Cor. v. 7. over, that was sacrificed for us: he was the Lamb of God John i. 29. Compare that was both to take away the sins of the world, and was Matt. xxvi. to lead captivity captive; to bring us out of the bondage 26. of sin and Satan, into the obedience of his Gospel.

Mark xiv.

He therefore chose the time of the passover, that he 22. might be then offered up for us; and did institute this memorial of it, while he was celebrating the Jewish pas- Luke xxii. cha with his Disciples, who were so much accustomed to 19. the forms and phrases of that supper, in which every mas- 23. ter of a family did officiate among his household, that it was very natural to them to understand all that our Sa

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1 Cor. xi.

ART. viour said or did, according to those forms with which XXVIII. they were acquainted.

There were after supper, upon a new covering of the table, loaves of unleavened bread, and cups of wine set on it; in which, though the bread was very unacceptable, yet they drank liberally of the wine: Christ took a portion of that bread, and brake it, and gave it to his Disciples, and said, This is my body which is broken for you: Do this in remembrance of me. He did not say only, this is my body, but, this is my body broken; so that his body must be understood to be there in its broken state, if the words are to be expounded literally. And no reason can be assigned why the word broken should be so separated from body; or that the bread should be literally his body, and not literally his body broken: the whole period must be either literally true, or must be understood mystically. And if any will say, that his body cannot be there, but in the same state in which it is now in heaven; and since it is not now broken, nor is the blood shed or separated from the body there, therefore the words must be understood thus; This is my body which is to be broken. But from thence we argue, that since all is one period, it must be all understood in the same manner: and since it is impossible that broken and shed can be understood literally of the body and blood, that therefore the whole is to be mystically understood: and this appears more evident, since the Disciples, who were naturally slow at understanding the easiest mysteries, that he opened to them, must naturally have understood those words as they did the other words of the paschal supper, This is the Lord's passover; that is, this is the memorial of it: and that the rather, since Christ added these words, Do this in remembrance of me. If they had understood them in any other sense, that must have surprised them, and naturally have led them to ask him many questions: which we find them doing upon occasions that were much less surprising, as appears by the questions in the 14th of St. John, that discourse coming probably immediately after this institution: whereas no question was asked upon this; so it is reasonable to conclude that they could understand these words, This is my body, no other way, but as they understood that of the lamb, This is the Lord's passover. And by consequence, as their celebrating the pascha was a constant memorial of the deliverance out of Egypt, and was a symbolical action by which they had a title to the blessings of the covenant that Moses made with their fathers; it was natural for them to conclude, that after Christ had

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made himself to be truly that, which the first lamb was in a type, the true sacrifice of a greater and better passover; they were to commemorate it, and to communicate in the benefits and effects of it, by continuing that action of taking, blessing, breaking, and distributing of bread: which was to be the memorial and the communion of his death in all succeeding ages.

ART.

XXVIII.

This will yet appear more evident from the second part of this institution: he took the cup and blessed it, and gave it to them, saying, This cup is the New Testament, or New Covenant, in my blood: drink ye all of it. Or, as the other Gospels report it, This is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. As Moses had enjoined the sprinkling of the blood of the lamb, so he himself sprinkled both the book of the law, and all the people, with the blood of calves and of goats, saying, This is the blood of the Testament Heb. ix. 20. (or Covenant) which God hath enjoined you. The blood of the paschal lamb was the token of that covenant which God made then with them.

The Jews were under a very strict prohibition of eating

no blood at all: but it seems by the Psalms, that when Psal. cxvi. they paid their vows unto God, they took in their hands a cup of salvation, that is, of an acknowledgment of their salvation, and so were to rejoice before the Lord.

These being the laws and customs of the Jews, they could not without horror have heard Christ, when he gave them the cup, say, This is my blood: the prohibition of blood was given in such severe terms, as that God would Levit. vii. 26, 27. set his face against him that did eat blood, and cut him off Levit. xvii. from among his people. And this was so often repeated in 14. the books of Moses, that besides the natural horror which humanity gives at the mention of drinking a man's blood, it was a special part of their religion to make no use of blood: yet after all this, the Disciples were not startled at it; which shews that they must have understood it in such a way as was agreeable to the law and customs of their country: and since St. Luke and St. Paul report the words that our Saviour said when he gave it, differently from what is reported by St. Matthew and St. Mark, it is most probable that he spake both the one and the other; that he first said, This is my blood, and then, as a clearer explanation of it, he said, This cup is the New Testament in my blood: the one being a more easy expression, and in a style to which the Jews had been more accustomed. They knew that the blood of the lamb was sprinkled; and by their so doing they entered into a covenant with God:

ART. and though the blood was never to be sprinkled after the XXVIII. first passover; yet it was to be poured out before the Lord,

33.

in remembrance of that sprinkling in Eygpt: in remembrance of that deliverance, they drank of the cup of blessing and salvation, and rejoiced before the Lord. So that they could not understand our Saviour otherwise, than that the cup so blessed was to be to them the assurance of a New Testament or Covenant, which was to be established by the blood of Christ; and which was to be shed: in lieu of which they were to drink this cup of blessing and praise.

According to their customs and phrases, the Disciples could understand our Saviour's words in this sense, and in no other. So that if he had intended that they should have understood him otherwise, he must have expressed himself in another manner; and must have enlarged upon it, to have corrected those notions, into which it was otherwise most natural for Jews to have fallen. Here is also to be remembered that which was formerly observed upon the word broken, that if the words are to be expounded literally, then if the cup is literally the blood of Christ, it must be his blood shed, poured out of his veins, and separated from his body. And if it is impossible to understand it so, we conclude that we are in the right to understand the whole period in a mystical and figurative sense. And therefore since a man born and bred a Jew, and more particularly accustomed to the paschal ceremonies, could not have understood our Saviour's words, chiefly at the time of that festivity, otherwise than of a new covenant that he was to make, in which his body was to be broken, and his blood shed for the remission of sins; and that he was to substitute bread and wine, to be the lasting memorials of it; in the repeating of which, his Disciples were to renew their covenant with God, and to claim a share in the blessings of it; this, I say, was the sense that must naturally have occurred to a Jew; upon all this, we must conclude, that this is the true sense of these words; or, that otherwise our Saviour must have enlarged more upon them, and expressed his meaning more particularly. Since therefore he said no more than what, according to the ideas and customs of the Jews, must have been understood as has been explained, we must conclude, that it, and it only, is the true sense of them.

But we must next consider the importance of a long John vi. 32, discourse of our Saviour's, set down by St. John, which seems such a preparation of his Apostles to understand this institution literally, that the weight of this argument must turn upon the meaning of that discourse. The design of

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