of the consecrated; not of the body and blood. He supposed no new sacrificing act in the post-oblation, but the representation only of Christ's sacrifice, made by what had been sacrificed before. So that some late notions of the eucharistic sacrifice can claim but very little countenance from Mr. Mede. What we call offering the ele ments for consecration, (like as we offer the waters of Baptism,) he called sacrificing; which was indeed calling it by a wrong name, and upon wrong principles: but, in other things, his notion of the Eucharist was much the same with the common one; and he went not those strange lengths, those unwarrantable excesses, which, I am sorry to say, some late schemes manifestly abound with. But I proceed.

The doctrine of a material sacrifice, first brought hither about 1635, barely subsisted till the Restoration, and afterwards slept, as it were, for thirty or forty years. But in 1697, two queries being sent to a learned man©, in these terms, "Whether there ought to be a true and real "sacrifice in the Church; and, Whether there is any such "thing in the Church of England," (both which might very safely have been answered in the affirmative, keeping to the terms wherein they were stated,) that learned person chose to alter the terms, true and real, into material, and still answered in the affirmative: which was going too far. Nevertheless, in his answer to the queries, he admitted of some spiritual sacrifices, as being true, and real, and proper sacrifices; which makes it the more surprising that he should think of any other sacrifice. For since it is self-evident that truth of excellency goes along with the spiritual sacrifices, and since he himself had allowed truth of propriety to go along with the same, or with some of them at least; to what purpose could it be to seek out for another sacrifice, not more proper, but certainly less excellent, than what we had before? It is an

"tical blood of Christ Jesus." Mede's Disc. li, p. 293. Comp. Christian Sacrif. chap. viii.

b Dr. Hickes, in Two Discourses, p. 51, &c. 61. printed 1732.

uncontestable maxim, that the value of a sacrifice can never rise higher than the value of the sacrificers d; and therefore if they sacrifice themselves, it is not possible that they should do more, because in the giving themselves, they give all that they have to give. What dignity then, or value, could it add to an evangelical priesthood, or sacrifice, to present the Divine Majesty with a loaf of bread, or a chalice of wine? or what practical ends or uses could be served by it? I shall only observe farther, that the same learned writer, afterwards, took material thing into the very definition of sacrificee: but upon the latest correction, he struck it out again, putting gift instead of itf; thereby leaving room for spiritual sacrifice (which undoubtedly is a gift) to be as proper a sacrifice as any. So that his first and his last thoughts upon the subject appear to have been conformable so far, in a critical point, upon which much depends.

Another learned writer (a zealous materialist, if ever there was one) laid it down for his groundwork, that nothing can properly be called a sacrifice except some material thing but to save himself the trouble of proving it, he was pleased to aver, that it was given for granteds. It might reasonably be asked, when given, or by whom? Not by the penmen of the Old or New Testament; not by the Christian Fathers, or Pagan Platonists, in their times: not by the Schoolmen down to the Reformation, nor by the Papists themselves, generally, before the Council of Trent: not by any considerable number of Protest

d Vid. Peter Martyr. loc. commun. p. 753, 895. Field on the Church, p. 209. Cornel. a Lapide, in Heb. vii. 7. seems to allow this maxim, when he says, In omni sacrificio sacerdos major est sua victima quam offert.

• Hickes's Christian Priesthood, p. 74. ed. 2. A. D. 1707. "A sacrifice is "a material thing solemnly brought, or presented, and offered to any God, "according to the rites of any religion," &c.

f Hickes's Christian Priesthood, vol. i. p. 159. A. D. 1711. "A sacrifice "is a gift brought, and solemnly offered by a priest, ordinary or extraor"dinary, according to the rites and observances of any religion, in, before, "at, or upon any place, unto any God, to honour and worship him, and "thereby to acknowledge him to be God and Lord."

* Johnson, Unbloody Sacrifice, part i. p. 5. ed. 1714, or p. 6. ed. 1724.

ants, till fifty years after, or more; never by the Divines of our Church, without contradiction and opposition from other Divines as wise and as learned as any we have had : not given for granted, even by Dr. Hickes, of the material side, in 1697 h; no, nor in 1711, as hath been already hinted. To be short then, that important point was rather taken than given for granted, by one writer who wanted a foundation to build a new system upon: and as the foundation itself was weak, the superstructure, of course, must fall, however curiously wrought, or aptly compacted, had it really been so.

But it is time for me now, my Reverend Brethren, to relieve your patience, by drawing to a conclusion. I have pointed out (so far as I have been able to judge, upon very serious and diligent inquiry) the original ground and source of all the confusion which has arisen in this argument. The changing the old definitions for new ones has perplexed us and now again, the changing the new ones for the old may set us right. Return we but to the ancient ideas of spiritual sacrifice, and then all will be clear, just, and uniform. We need not then be vainly searching for a sacrifice (as the Romanists have been before us) among texts that speak nothing of one, from Melchizedek in Genesis down to Hebrews the thirteenth. Our proofs will be found to lie where the spiritual services lie, and where they are called sacrifices. The Eucharist contains many of them, and must therefore be a proper sacrifice, in the strength of those texts, and cannot be other

b His words are: "Vocal sacrifices are commonly called spiritual.— "These are true, real sacrifices and therefore our Saviour is said to have "offered them up, Heb. v. 7. and they are expressly called sacrifices, Heb. “xiii. 15. and 1 Pet. ii. 5. Two Disc. p. 53. The sacrifice of praises and prayers unto God- -is a proper, but spiritual sacrifice," p. 61.

N. B. It appears to me, that Dr. Hickes's original scheme of the Christian sacrifice (though he called it material) really meant no more than an oblation of the material elements for consecration, (which certainly is no sacrifice,) and a commemorative service performed by the material elements, an external, manual service, as opposed to mere mental or vocal: both which points might have been granted him, as not amounting to the sacrifice of any material substance, the point in question.

wise. Here the primitive Fathers rested that matter; and here may we rest it, as upon firm ground. Let us not presume to offer the Almighty any dead sacrifice in the Eucharist; he does not offer us empty signs: but as he conveys to us the choicest of his blessings by those signs, so by the same signs (not sacrifices) ought we to convey our choicest gifts, the Gospel services, the true sacrifices, which he has commanded. So will the federal league of amity be mutually kept up and perfected. Our sacrifices will then be magnificent, and our priesthood glorious; our altar high and heavenly, and our Eucharist a constant lesson of good life; every way fitted to draw down from above those inestimable blessings which we so justly expect from it. Let but the work or service be esteemed the sacrifice, rather than the material elements, and then there will be no pretence or colour left for absurdly supposing, that any sacrifice of ours can be expiatory, or more valuable than ourselves; or that our hopes of pardon, grace, and salvation can depend upon any sacrifice extrinsic, save only the all-sufficient sacrifice of Christ. When once those foreign fictions, or fancies, of other extrinsic sin offerings or expiations are removed, there will be no error in asserting a proper eucharistic sacrifice; but many good practical uses will be served by

it.

Under the legal economy, bulls and goats, sheep and turtledoves, bread offerings and wine offerings, were really sacrifices: they had legal expiations (shadows of true) annexed to them; to intimate, that true expiation then, and always, must depend solely on the true sacrifice of atonement, the sacrifice of the cross. The shadows have since disappeared; and now it is our great Gospel privilege, to have immediate access to the true sacrifice, and to the true expiations, without the intervention of any legal expiation or legal sacrifice. To imagine any expiatory sacrifice now to stand between us and the great sacrifice, is to keep us still at a distance, when we are allowed to draw near: it is dishonouring the grace of the Gospel; and, in short, is

For the rule of

a flat contradiction to both Testaments. both is, and the very nature of things shows that so it must be, that all true expiation must resolve solely, directly, and immediately, into the one true sacrifice of expiation, namely, the grand sacrifice. If, indeed, we had now any legal or typical offences to expiate, then might bread and wine be to us an expiatory typical sacrifice, as before to the Jews; and that would be all. If we look for any thing higher, they have it not in them, neither by their own virtue, nor by any they can borrow: for it is no more possible that the blood of the grape, representing Christ's blood, should purge the conscience, and take away sins now, than that the blood of bulls or of goats, representing the same blood of Christ, could do it aforetime. The utmost that any material sacrifices, by virtue of the grand sacrifice, could ever do, was only to make some legal or temporal atonement: they cannot do so much now, because the legal economy is out of doors, and all things are become new. In a word, our expiations now are either spiritual or none: and therefore such of course must our sacrifices also be, either spiritual or none at all.