The Sacrament of the LORD's Supper has plainly appeared to be raised by our SAVIOUR from a Paschal supper.—p. 240.

The sacramental action, as hath been said, was celebrated after the morning prayer, beginning with the oblation of bread and wine.... For those creatures they blessed GOD the FATHER through JESUS CHRIST, and then, after some prayers and hymns, He is invoked to send down His Holy Spirit on the offered bread and wine, to sanctify it, and that it may become to the worthy receivers the Body and Blood of His Son: after which, it was distributed by the Deacons to the people, and sent also to the absent.

This was the Christian practice undoubtedly in the primitive Church; nor does it want a Jewish pattern. Our SAVIOUR, as it hath been premised, took occasion, from the Paschal memorial of the redemption of Israel out of their Egyptian slavery, to institute a commemoration of a new and far greater deliverance of all mankind from the eternal bondage of Satan and hell. And, whereas it has been observed that the first Paschal Lamb of the Jews was a Sacrifice of a mixed, extraordinary nature, being in part propitiatory, in part federal, and partly Eucharistical; it is likewise manifest, that the Sacrifice of our SAVIOUR was also of an eminent extraordinary kind. It was a Sacrifice for sin, taken in the most strict acceptation, being perfectly expiatory: it was also federal; for in that Blood the New Testament or Covenant was made; and, in that same respect, it was in some sort an offering of peace, obtaining not only pardon, but favour for men. And, further, as the succeeding Paschal Sacrifices, though commemoratory of the first, yet varied something from it, being chiefly of an Eucharistical nature, and not performed with the same ceremony; (for neither was the blood sprinkled upon the doors of the offerers, neither was the Lamb eaten with their staves in their hands, and in a travelling posture ;) so it is not to be wondered if the succeeding commemorations of our LORD's Sacrifice, though it was chiefly expiatory, were Eucharistical, and differing also from the manner in which the first was celebrated by our LORD Himself.-pp. 241, 2.

This, therefore, seems to have been the construction of the

primitive Christians, that the Sacrament of our LORD's Body and Blood answered to the Jewish Sacrifices of thanks.-p. 243.

For, 1st, The name which the ancients gave this Sacrament, seems to speak them of the same opinion. For they not only speak of it as of a "Sacrifice" and "oblation" at large; but call it determinately and expressly the Eucharist, that is, the "thanks" or "praise-offering," as by its proper name; the sacramental bread and wine being as much known by that style with Christians, as the "bread of the Eucharist" or "praise" was with the Jews. 2ndly, The leavened bread they always chose to use, as it evidently declares that there was no further regard to the Paschal Sacrifice, so it seems to import a just correspondence with those of the Eucharistical kind, in which leavened bread was singularly required. And, lastly, the bread, which was to represent, and in some manner to become, the Body of our LORD, did not unfitly succeed in the place of that "bread of thanks," which had been made use of before to stand for the flesh of an Eucharistical Sacrifice, and to make up the whole...

-p. 246.

Now, as this feast of our LORD was Eucharistical, so we suppose it was celebrated in a suitable manner. . . .

And so, when afterwards the Sacrament and Supper were divided, (about the time, I presume, when the legal Sacrifices were going to cease,) the Christian Eucharistical oblation, as the primitive Church speaks, began then more distinctly to appear, and was made after the morning prayer, just as extraordinary Sacrifices, with the Jews, were offered after the morning daily Sacrifice and as, under the law, what of the Eucharistical Sacrifice was offered at the Altar, the Muram, belonged to the Priest, so that part which had been offered by the Christian Priest, being more especially sacred, and his portion, was eaten in the morning sacramentally from his hands; the congregation being, as it were, his family; while the other residual part was kept for the provision of the Love-feast, to be held in the evening, its accustomed time.-p. 247.

It sufficiently appears, I presume, that the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our LORD was understood by the ancient Christians to be in the nature of an Eucharistical (not of a propitiatory) Sa

crifice with the Jews. But, further, that this kind of Sacrifice only should remain, when all the rest should cease; this also is consonant to the tradition of the Jews, as Kimchi tells us. For, upon this saying of the Prophet, (Jer. xxxiii. 11.) that there should be "heard again in Jerusalem the voice of joy, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that shall say, Praise the LORD of Hosts, for the LORD is good, for His mercy endureth for ever, [and] of them that shall bring [the Sacrifice of] praise [or thanks] into the house of the LORD:" he comments on the last words in this manner; "The Prophet says not that they shall bring sin-offerings, or trespass-offerings; because in that day there would be no wicked nor sinners among them for (as he before told them) they should all know the LORD. And so have our Masters of blessed memory told us, that in the time to come all Sacrifices should cease, except the Sacrifice of thanksgiving."

This saying of the Masters of Israel is a great truth, and better understood by Christians, who... know that the Sacrifices for sin are not ceased by the ceasing of sin, but superseded by the Sacrifice made for them by their LORD and High Priest; and that the "Sacrifice of thanksgiving," they are thenceforth to make, is the commemoration their LORD has instituted for that their most gracious redemption. This is the Sacrifice of that New Covenant of which the Prophet there speaks, and which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews from him alleges. And to this Sacrifice the same author, I suppose, refers, when he says, "We have an Altar, whereof they have no right to eat, who serve the tabernacle;" for they eat not of the oblation made for their sins, as we do of our blessed SAVIOUR; "by whom [by whose Body, and in whose Name] we offer the Sacrifice of praise [thanksgiving] to GOD continually, that is, the fruit [or oblation] of our lips, [or, which our lips have vowed to return, as well as what we do return with our lips,] ceasing not to do good, and to distribute, both out of our oblations, and the rest of our substance, for with such sacrifices [such offerings of our praise and goods in the general, and at the Eucharist in particular] GOD is well pleased."-pp. 248, 9.

DODWELL, CONFESSOR.-Discourse concerning the one Altar, and one Priesthood.

The unity of the Catholic Church, in opposition to the separate conventicles of schismatics, is (in the language of the most ancient and accurate writers against schism, especially Ignatius and St. Cyprian, from whom later antiquity has received the same terms) expressed as grounded on the unity of the priest and the altar. In which way of reasoning they conclude, that they who partake at the same altar, and of the same mystical Sacrifices offered thereon, and receive their portions of this sacrificial feast from the ministry of the same priest, whose office it is to offer those mystical Sacrifices on that same altar, that they, and they alone, are to be judged to belong to the same society, confederated by those Sacrifices. pp. 1, 2.

First, therefore, I observe, that this way of reasoning for unity from one altar and one priest, was not first taken up in the later ages of the Church, but deduced from the nearest and freshest memory of the Apostles.-p. 14.

Even these very terms are mystically applied to Christianity by authors of Ignatius's age, who, notwithstanding, wrote before him; and particularly so applied when they had occasion to reason from the Levitical patterns to deduce obligations under the Christian religion. Thus Clemens Romanus reasons to the Corinthians....

Yet not St. Clemens only . . . but the Apostle himself allows and observes the same reasoning, and in the very same instances for which I am at present concerned, of priest and altar. So he argues for the right of maintenance, that "they who minister about holy things, live of the things of the temple; and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar:" that even so hath the LORD ordained, that they which preach the Gospel, should live of the Gospel." Plainly supposing that our clergy answers the Levitical priesthood, our Churches their temple, our Communion table their altar and that what was

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thought equal in their case in the provisions of the Old Testament, is for that very reason to be taken for ordained in the case of the Gospel ministry. . . . But.. the Apostle ... allows a higher obligation to this way of arguing from the precedent of the Levitical priesthood. He reasons from the Aaronical to the Melchizedechian priesthood, from the priesthood of mortal men to the immortal priesthood of the Son of GOD. "No man took the honour" of the Levitical priesthood "unto himself, but he that was called of GOD, as was Aaron. So also CHRIST glorified not Himself to be made an High Priest," &c. And "every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and Sacrifices. Wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer." And as none had right to eat of the Jewish altar but Israelites, so when he is to prove that literal Israelitism is not the Israelitism that can challenge privileges, he does it by this argument, that " we have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle."

Thus customary it was, in those earlier times, to reason from Levitical precedents in these very instances.-pp. 21-24.

Thirdly, therefore, as this way of reasoning from Jewish precedents is solid in general, and solid in these very instances of priest and altar; so it holds particularly in such inferences as these are, for which they are produced by the ancients concerning unity;-That, as the one priest and the one altar were the characterisms of unity in the Jewish constitution, so that priesthood and altar among the Christians, which was shadowed by the Jewish priesthood and altar, ought now also, by the same parity of reason, to be taken for the characters of Christian unity.— pp. 28, 9.

For as it was not to be doubted, that God designed unity for the mystical as well as the literal Israel, so He would, certainly, have been more express in the signification of His mind, if He had intended any change in the principles of this unity. But seeing there appears not the least intimation of such a design, seeing He was pleased to continue a mystical priesthood, and a mystical altar, in the mystical as well as the literal Israel, who would not thence conclude, that He intended the mystical priest