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the Apostle's account of them; and so must this be also, if it was in that very view that he formed the comparison, or parallel. I beg leave here to use the words of a very judicious and learned Prelate of our Church, who says; "In the ancient sacrifices, both among Jews and hea"thens, one part of the victim was offered upon the altar, "and another reserved to be eaten of those persons in "whose name the sacrifice was made: this was account"ed a sort of partaking of God's table, and was a federal "rite, whereby he owned his guests to be in his favour, "and under his protection, as they by offering sacrifices " acknowledged him to be their God.-The Lord's Supper was always believed to succeed in the place of sacri"fices Y.-Eating the Lord's Supper was the same rite in "the Christian Church with eating the things offered in "sacrifice among the Jews and heathens. It is an act of "communion or fellowship with God, at whose table we "are said to be entertained; and therefore it is declared "to be inconsistent with eating the Gentile sacrifices, "which is an act of communion with devils, to whom "these sacrifices were offeredz." From these plain and undeniable principles it directly follows, that the Eucharist is, at the lowest, a federal rite: I say, at the lowest, because more than that has been proved, as I conceive, in a former chapter, which treats of 1 Cor. x. 16.

A late Divine of our Church, in a little piece of his upon this subject, has a distinction worth the examining, which I shall here give the reader in his own words: "The Lord's Supper is not properly the federal rite, or "the covenant rite, but the memorial of it: the death of "Christ was the federal rite, and the Lord's Supper is "the memorial of Christ's death. But though the Lord's Supper is neither a proper sacrifice, nor the great, origi"nal, or primitive federal rite, strictly speaking; yet be"ing a feast upon a sacrifice, (or in commemoration of that

* Archbishop Potter on Church Government, p. 266.

y Ibid. p. 265.

2 Ibid. p. 269, 270.

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great sacrifice of the death of Christ, which was the "true and proper federal or covenant rite,) it may be "styled a federal rite, in the same sense, in which the "Jews eating of their sacrifices was or might be esteem"ed to be such a rite, viz. an open profession of their "being in covenant with God, and having devoted them"selves to his service as his peculiar people z." I said, this distinction was worth the examining. I judge it not accurate, nor indeed right upon the whole: but it appears to be well aimed; and it points out to us some difficulties which seem to want a clearer solution. The distinction would have answered better, had it been made to run between covenant and covenant, (than between federal rites, proper and improper,) or between covenant considered at large and particular stipulations. If the death of Christ is properly a federal rite at all, it is with respect to the covenant made between God the Father and Christ Jesus, in behalf of mankind collectively considered, and not with respect to the several stipulations coming after, and made between God and particular men. The Eucharist may as properly be said to be a federal rite with regard to these particular stipulations, as the death of Christ can be supposed to be with regard to the new covenant at large. But I much question, whether the death of Christ ought to be called a federal rite at all; which appears to be too low and too diminutive a name for it: especially considering the ill use which the Socinians have been apt to make of it. The death of Christ is really the price of our redemption, the valuable consideration, whereupon the covenant was founded, and in which it stands. It was submitted to, once for all, and is never to be repeated; which sufficiently distinguishes it from whatever has hitherto passed under the name of a federal rite, and shows it to be a thing of much higher consideration. Therefore, let not the name of federal rite be so improperly applied to what was no rite at all, nor can ever

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Mapletoft's Plain Account of the Lord's Supper, p. 138.

come under the common or proper notion of a religious or federal rite. But the sacrifices and sacraments of the Jewish Church were properly federal rites: and since the Christian Sacraments are allowed to be federal rites in as proper a sense as those were, that is sufficient to our purpose. They were ceremonious observances, made use of in stipulations between God and man; and so are these: not essential to the stipulation necessitate medii, but necessitate præcepti; not in themselves, but as required, and made necessary to us by free and voluntary appointment. However, they are more than an open profession of our being in covenant with God: they are covenanting rites, or stipulating acts, by which our stipulation with God either commences, (as in Baptism,) or is renewed, as in the other Sacrament, which we are now upon.

The author last cited allows the Eucharist to be a feast upon a sacrifice, and so of consequence a federal feast. This is a notion which may deserve a more particular consideration in this place; and the rather because it was very plausibly advanced by an eminent Divine of our Church near a hundred years ago, and long passed current among divines and critics of the first rank, both here and abroad, but has been lately disputed by several learned hands, with great acuteness, though perhaps not with equal solidity. It may be a piece of justice due to a great man, and to an important cause, to examine fairly, but as briefly also as may be, the strength of what has been objected to a prevailing notion, which for some time appeared, and still appears, to carry in it the features of truth. The notion, in short, is this; that the Eucharist, considered in its spiritual and mystical view, is a feast upon a sacrifice, (viz. the sacrifice once offered upon the cross,) bearing some analogy to the Jewish sacrificial feasts, which were figures or shadows of this true spiritual feeding. For as those were banquets upon typical sacri

Dr. Cudworth, True Notion of the Lord's Supper, A. D. 1642. first edit.

fices, this is a banquet upon the real sacrifice, to which they pointed: and as those banquets were federal directly, with respect to the legal covenant; so is this banquet federal with respect to the evangelical covenant, formerly couched under the legal one. This, I think, is the sum and substance of Dr. Cudworth's True Notion of the Lord's Supper. Next let us examine what has been objected to it.

The first considerable author that appeared against it, was a learned Divine of our own b, who had an hypothesis to serve, of which I shall say nothing here, reserving it for the next chapter, where it shall be examined at large. Most of his objections against Dr. Cudworth's notion belong to that hypothesis of a material sacrifice, and therefore may here be passed over. I shall only take notice of one thing objected, namely, that neither priests nor people ever feasted on any sacrifices, which they had not offered before; therefore Dr. Cudworth's notion suits not with the ancient sacrificial feasts c. But it is easy to reply, that one disagreeing circumstance, found among many resembling ones, is not sufficient to overturn the analogy: besides, in this very case, the Christian feast, or feastings, upon what was offered by the true High Priest Christ Jesus, very fitly answer, in the analogy, to the Jewish feastings upon what had been offered by their typical priests, or high priest: so that I see no force at all in the objection.

Another learned writer, some years after, expressed his dislike of Dr. Cudworth's notion, and argued against it as far as either wit or learning could supply: I shall here consider his objections.

1. He intimates, as if it were absurd that Christians "should feast upon something that is a sacrifice, and not "offeredd." But were not Christ's body and blood offered? That is the sacrifice which Christians feast upon in

b Hickes's Christian Priesthood, p. 165. I use the third edition of 1711. Hickes, ibid. p. 170.

d Johnson's Unbloody Sacrifice, part i. p. 338. alias 344.

the Eucharist, according to Dr. Cudworth: they feast upon the passion.

2. It is further pleaded, that Dr. Cudworth's notion seems" much of a piece with that conceit of the Calvin"ists, that we receive the natural body of Christ in the "Eucharist, though as far distant from us as heaven is "from the earth." But that conceit, as it is called, is a very sober truth, if understood of receiving the natural body into closer mystical union, as explained in a preceding chapter. However, Dr. Cudworth's notion of a banquet relates not to the body considered as glorified, but to the body considered as crucified, in which respect only it is eaten; so that this objection may be looked upon as foreign.

3. It is farther objected by the same learned author, that "upon this supposition our Saviour made a feast upon the sacrifice, before the sacrifice had been offer"ed.” And why might he not, especially when the time was so near approaching, and the sacrifice just going to be offered, that it might well be considered as a thing done? This objection however affects only the first and original Eucharist, not the succeeding ones: and the like objection might be as justly urged against the original passover, as differing in its nature and notion from the passovers that succeeded. It might be pleaded, for instance, that the paschal feast was no memorial, no passover, because the first passover (which was the pattern for the following ones) was previous 5 to the great transaction commemorated in it, previous to the passing over the dwellings of the Hebrews. But such kind of arguing in that Sacrament would be justly rejected as frivolous or captious, since there was no more difference between the original passover and the later ones, than the necessary difference of circumstances required. Such is the case also with respect to the original Eucharist, and the later

• Johnson's Unbloody Sacrifice, part i. p. 338. alias 344. f Johnson, ibid. part ii. pref. p. 3.

See Exod. xii. 21, &c.

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