CHAP. 3.-"That whole and entire Christ, and a true Sacrament, are taken under either kind.

"Moreover, the Synod declares, that although our Redeemer, as was before said, instituted in that Last Supper this Sacrament under two kinds, and so delivered it to the Apostles; yet that it must be confessed, that whole and entire Christ and a true Sacrament are taken under either kind; and, moreover, that they who receive one species only are not defrauded of any grace necessary to salvation, as far as belongs to the fruit (of this Sacrament)."

SECTION II.-Truths hidden under " Communion in One kind."

ON account of the negative character of this Trentism this section is necessarily brief: the denial of the cup, involves many evils and hides but few truths.

The cup is denied to all, priests as well as laymen, and is allowed to that priest only, who consummates the Sacrifice of the Mass, and this priest is supposed to transubstantiate the wafer and the wine into the Body and into the Blood of Christ. The truth herein hidden is, that he alone fully enjoys the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, who realises his own spiritual priesthood, who draws near with unwavering faith in the atonement of the one great Sacrifice, and in whom, one with Christ and Christ with him, his body made clean and his soul washed, the

true transubstantiation takes place of the bread into the communion of the Body, and of the cup into the communion of the Blood of Christ. In the Body of Christ offered up without the camp (without the gate of the Holy City) may be seen the redemption of the Gentiles also by the Sacrifice of Christ: here was the Shepherd seen laying down His life for those "other sheep,” as well as for the chosen flock of His own fold. This offering of the body of Christ, the Host for the sins of the whole world, is sacramentally allowed by Rome to all but the blood gathered up in resurrection and carried by the great High Priest in the sacred vessel of His risen body into the Holy City and the holiest of all, is only allowed to the Romish symbol of the true Priest, to whom the bread becomes the communion of the body, and the wine of the blood of the Lord Jesus, Bellarmine, like many other Romanists, forgetting, in the heat of controversy, the Romish dogma of concomitancy, alludes to this truth, when he answers the argument, that Christ instituted the cup for the many, by saying, "that Christ died for all men, even Turks, Jews, Infidels; and by this reason, if this blood should be given to all, for whom it was shed, even Turks and Jews also should be admitted to the communion." The true enjoyment of the blood of sprinkling by the Christian, loving to conform in every thought and word and wish to the Will of God, is indeed the distinguishing note of the royal Priesthood, the Elect "through sanctification of the Spirit unto

obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ."* That blood, now the blood of a spiritual and glorified body, is the exhaustless fountain of purification in that "Church of God which He hath purchased† by His own blood." While the Christian is living in imperfect communion and defective priesthood in Christ, his religion rises no higher than to a self-righteous obedience, however he may disguise that self-righteousness in a form of godliness. But when he sets himself as a priest unto God, drawing near through the consecrated and living way, to offer up all thoughts, and words and deeds as spiritual sacrifices, then he finds out the absolute necessity of the blood of Jesus Christ to cleanse him from all that unrighteousness which is only discovered by those who walk in the light:§ it is then that the union of obedience with the blood of sprinkling, stated by St. Peter, is practically understood. So that while the solitary Romish Priest, who ministers to himself the cup of the Sacrifice (for Harding and other Romanists admit that the cup is necessary for a Sacramental Sacrifice, though the unleavened bread is enough for the grace of recipiency of a Sacrament), may represent the Royal Priesthood, the non-administering priests and laity of Rome may represent those Christians, who, though re

* 1 St. Pet. i. 2.

+ Acts, xx. 28. Purchased faintly expresses the original, which is well worthy the student's investigation by the Greek Concordance. ↑ Heb. x. 20.

§ 1 St. John, i. 7.

deemed like the heathen, have no priestly enjoyment of the all-cleansing blood of the Son of God.

There is truth, also, hidden in the assertion that he who partakes of the body, partakes also of the blood of Christ, for that the risen and ever-living Christ is of body and of blood now inseparately united. True it is that in the days of His flesh the blood was in the body, and since His resurrection the Body and Blood are again one; but the distinctive meaning of the Eucharist is, that it symbolises the Sacrifice by death, that it shows forth the separation of the blood from the flesh, a Sacrifice which consummated the holiness of the days of the flesh, and dignified the life of the resurrection. By partaking of this Sacrament of a Sacrifice thus solemnly marked out, separately and symbolically, in bread as the broken body, and in wine as the blood shed, the Church feeds on the finished obedience of the Lord Jesus, renews her conformity to His death, which she began in Holy Baptism, and finds this food, though stamped sacramentally with the image of death, to be really and truly the communion of the Resurrection and the Life, for it was a death, which destroyed death, and its merit is infinite and everlasting.

Another truth, here again, as by Rome always, corrupted, is that of the right power of the Church. The Church Militant on earth has power to decree rites or ceremonies, and has authority in controversies of Faith: the Church may administer Holy Baptism by immersion or by sprinkling of water, and the Holy Communion to

her children, kneeling, or standing, or resting, at morning, or noon, or evening; but water and bread and wine in the Word must be duly administered. She has no more right to change the Lord's selection of these elements, than has any human being power over his own life to commit suicide. The Church of Rome herein would assert her vital power by destroying the ordained element of her vitality. There are deeper truths in the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven than have ever yet been sounded by the profoundest Fathers or writers of controversy; therefore it is essential to the Church to go on from age to age holding forth the Word of Life as she received it, and preserving the law of Christ's Sacraments as He ordained it. If the Lord Jesus would not Himself henceforth drink of this fruit of the vine,* until He drank it new with His Church in His Father's kingdom; yet left He that Church Militant on earth to pray for the coming of that kingdom, and in the kingdom of the Heavens (the mediatorial kingdom of grace, the kingdom where the citizens are prepared for the kingdom of the Father) He left them to show forth His death by eating the broken bread and drinking the poured out wine, until He again should come. Let the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God, keep whole and undefiled the faith once committed to the saints, and faithfully administer their ordained and visible part in those mysteries by such obedience of faith will the riches of

* St. Matthew, xxvi. 29.