known, even to school-boys, and wants not any confirmation in this place.

Here then are three kinds of facrifices, the Jewish, the Gentile, and the Christian; not comparable indeed in their dignity, but parallel, in the circumstance of a feast after each, and in the general purpose of propitiating the Deity. The eating of the oblation, after the Jewish and the Gentile facrifice, rendered (in the opinion of the facrificers) the partakers of the repast partakers of the benefits of the facrifice. The partaking of the feast, after the grand Chriftian facrifice, is alfo a participation in the one great facrifice, and confers all its advantages. The Eucharift is this feaft, this epulum facrificiale; to be repeated, while the world endures, after the facrifice, which itself is never to be repeated, but the benefits of which are to flow by means of the feaft upon it, as from a perennial fountain, till time fhall be no more.

It is very important that the Eucharift fhould be confidered, as it appears really to be, a feaft on, or after, a facrifice; for this idea comprehends in it a right notion

of our Saviour's death upon the cross; that facrifice which gave rise to the feaft, without which, according to analogy, the facrifice itself would be incomplete. It teaches that our Saviour himself declared his death to be a facrifice. The facrifice, however, is nothing to us till we partake in the feaft upon it. We are but idle byftanders, or uninterested spectators, till we eat of thofe symbols which are appointed to be in the place of the flaughtered victim, once offered; a view of the subject this, which should make every profeffed Chriftian fhudder at the idea of wilfully and entirely ne glecting, through life, the Holy Communion.

The facrifice, without participants in the feaft on or after it, is nothing more than a violent death inflicted on the Holy Perfon commemorated; and ceafes, indeed, to be a facrifice at all, or to confer any benefits, fo far as non-participants in the FEAST are concerned. They therefore can have no advantage from Chriftianity, but by the extraordinary interpofition of di vine mercy.

Divines

Divines have offered to the world Plain Accounts and Practical Accounts of the Sacrament, according to which the fcriptural expreffions of eating the body and drinking the blood of Chrift, are so far from plain or practical, that they appear monstrous and irrational in the highest degree. What has eating the body or drinking the blood to do with a mere act of the memory?

The plainest and most rational account of the Sacrament, that I know of, is that which defcribes it as a feaft after a facrifice. The eating of the body, and drinking of the blood of the victim, are expreffions, when the general nature of sacrifices is once explained, perfectly intelligible; and the feaft on the OBLATION is well emblematized by the bread and wine. The real victim could not in this cafe, without the horrid practice of cannibalism, even for once have afforded a real feaft, much less a feast to be repeated all over Christendom frequently, by all Christians, till the fecond advent of the Redeemer; when all figns, fymbols,

and

and fhadows, shall be fuperfeded by a perfonal prefence, by a fubftantial form, by a body glorified beyond all power, not only of description, but of imagination.

From the doctrine that we cannot enjoy the benefits of the facrifices, without being participants of the feaft after it, we may understand the awful words of our Saviour: "Verily, verily," (a most folemn affeveration,)" I say unto you, except ye "eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and "drink his blood, ye can have no life in "you*;" that is, I pofitively declare to you that unless you partake of the facrifice of myself, by partaking of the feaft that I fhall institute upon it, ye cannot share the benefits which that facrifice was intended to confer; even LIFE, fpiritual life, and life eternal. CL Except you eat of this bread and drink of this wine, ye have no life in you." Words too ftrong and too alarming to be lightly paffed over by those who are fincere in their profeffion of Christianity; and yet words of comfort to those who understand them of the euchariftical bread and wine.

* John, vi.

SECTION VII.

Though the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper be strictly a Feast on, or after, a Sacrafice; yet in popular Language, and catachreftically, a common figure of speech, -it has been, and may still be, called, a SACRIFICE.

DIFFERENT names may be given, without abfurdity, to the fame thing, according to its different properties and effects. Convenience, indeed, may require, that the fame religious inftitution fhould be commonly called by the fame name, but if it has various properties and effects, feveral names may be applied to it at different times and places, which, however diverfified, may have their fignificancy and use. One name may have to encounter fewer prejudices than another; and for that reason, though, in a critical fenfe, less proit may yet be allowable.

per,

Nothing