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office of a priest as the other?" Regale and Pontificate. Works, vol. i. p. 665.

Brett.

"We may ask again, if it be not convenient, nay necessary, that all those who partake of this holy Sacrament should understand and know what it is they do? Ought they not to be instructed in the nature and design of it, lest they eat and drink unworthily, not discerning the Lord's Body? And how shall they discern the Lord's Body, if they are not taught that the Lord's Body is here present?" Sermon on the Christian Altar and Sacrifice, p. xii.

This is

"Verse 55. He says, My Flesh is meat indeed, and My Blood is drink indeed. That Flesh and Blood of Mine which I but now promised you that I will give for the life of the world, is indeed true life-giving meat and drink. He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood dwelleth in Me and I in him. He is in Me as a member of My Mystical Body, and I in him by imparting to him of My life-giving Spirit. As the living Father sent Me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me shall live by Me. As the Father (see John v. 26.) hath life in Himself which He received from no other, and has given to Me His Son to have life in Myself, so I will impart true life to him that feeds on Me. that Bread which came down from Heaven; not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead: he that eateth of this Bread shall live for ever. The Bread which I purpose to give you is true heavenly Bread, not like that which was rained down in the wilderness, which though your fathers eat plentifully of it, yet they died in their sins; but this Bread shall cleanse you from sin, and by the virtue of it those who feed upon it shall live for ever. These things said He in the synagogue, as He taught in Capernaum. Many therefore of His disciples when they heard this, said, This is an hard saying, who can hear it? can believe that we must become cannibals and feed upon this Man's Flesh and Blood? or without such feeding must be deprived of eternal life or happiness? When Jesus knew in Himself that His Disciples murmured at it, He said unto them, Does this offend you? Do you stumble at this? Does the faith you have pretended to have now fail you? What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where He was before? Will ye not then think the feeding on my Flesh more incredible than you do now? For how can you feed upon it when it is here no

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more? Therefore I will a little explain Myself and tell you, that it is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing: bare flesh and blood without life and spirit in them can quicken or give life to nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are Life. The promises that I have made you concerning giving you my Flesh and Blood to eat and drink, if you had attended to them, might have satisfied you that I spake of such Flesh and Blood as should have a quickening Spirit conveyed with them. For I plainly told you, that as I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me, shall live by Me; I will quicken or give him life by My Spirit, that Spirit by which My Body lives, and whose quickening or life-giving virtue I will impart to that material thing which I shall make my Body and Blood, when I give this natural Body and Blood of Mine for the life of the world, or the redemption of mankind. It is not Christ's doctrine that quickens and gives us life, but His Spirit, that Spirit which gave life to His own Body, and which together with His Body and Blood, or something which He dignifies with that name, which He has appointed to give us life. The Body and Blood then, or Flesh and Blood, which in this chapter He promised to give (saying, My flesh which I will give) for our food which should nourish us unto eternal life, can be no other than that Bread and Wine which He gave when He instituted the Holy Eucharist or Lord's Supper, at which time he dignified them with the name and virtue of His Body and Blood. And so the holy and most ancient Fathers (who lived nearest to the Apostles' days, and therefore best understood the Apostles' language and doctrine, consequently could best expound them) have interpreted this passage, as appears from St. Ignatius particularly, who being the disciple of St. John who wrote the Gospel where alone this discourse of our Saviour is recorded, is to be preferred to all other expositors; and he tells us, as I have before observed, that the Holy Eucharist is the medicine of immortality, our antidote that we should not die, but live for ever in Christ Jesus." Scripture Account of the Holy Eucharist, p. 113.

"Now by comparing these words (the words of institution) of our Saviour which He spake when he communicated this Bread and Wine to His disciples, and called those elements His Body and Blood, with those He before spake in the sixth chapter of St. John, which I have already proved were spoken with relation to the Holy Eucharist; for in that chapter, ver. 51. The

Bread that I will give is My Flesh, which I will give for the life of the world; we may thus paraphrase them; "you may remember that some time ago when I taught in Capernaum, and the Jews there told me of their fathers eating manna in the desert, which they called Bread from heaven, upon which I promised them, that if they would believe in Me, I would give them true Bread from Heaven, which should nourish them unto eternal life; and that this Bread was My own Flesh and Blood; they thought this a hard saying, thinking that I intended they should eat that natural Flesh they then saw, and that natural Blood then and still in My veins. I did not then think it proper to explain Myself any farther to them than to tell them, that what I had said was to be understood in a spiritual sense, That it is the Spirit that quickeneth; the words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are Life. But now I will make good that promise to you; here is Bread and Wine, which I have now offered to God, and have blessed them with My Spirit, and thereby made them My Body and Blood in power and virtue: these I now give to you, eat the one and drink the other, and you shall receive all the benefits and blessings you then heard Me promise to those who should eat My Flesh and drink My Blood, I will raise you up at the last day, and you shall dwell in Me and I in you." And that the Church of England (to whose Book of Common Prayer this author gave his assent and consent when he was first admitted to a cure of souls in London) believes the sixth chapter of St. John to relate to the Holy Eucharist, is plain, for it is upon the authority of that chapter only that she can say in her Exhortation to her communicants, that "If with a true penitent heart and lively faith we receive that Holy Sacrament, then we spiritually eat the Flesh of Christ and drink His Blood, then we dwell in Christ and Christ in us, we are one with Christ and Christ with us:" for there is no other place of Scripture but the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel where this doctrine is to be learnt." Ibid. p. 137.

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Wheatley.

"Hear us, O

In these words [of the Consecration Prayer, merciful Father," &c.] the sense of the former is still implied, and consequently by these the elements are now consecrated, and so become the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ." c. vi. s. xxii. p. 301. Oxf, ed. 1819.

"A Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, is what our Church frequently asserts in this very office of Communion, in her Articles, in her Homilies, and her Catechism: particularly in the two latter, in the first of which she tells us, Thus much we must be sure to hold, that in the Supper of the Lord there is no vain ceremony, no bare sign, no untrue figure of a thing absent;-but the Communion of the Body and Blood of the Lord in a marvellous incorporation, which by the operation of the Holy Ghost-is through Faith wrought in the souls of the faithful, &c. who therefore (as she farther instructs us in the Catechism) verily and indeed take and receive the Body and Blood of Christ in the Lord's Supper. This is the doctrine of our Church in relation to the Real Presence in the Sacrament, entirely different from the doctrine of Transubstantiation, which she here, as well as elsewhere, disclaims." 1b. s. xxxi. p. 330.

Bishop Wilson.

"We offer unto Thee, our King and our God, this Bread and this Cup.

"We give Thee thanks for these and for all Thy mercies, beseeching Thee to send down Thy Holy Spirit upon this sacrifice, that He may make this Bread the Body of Thy Christ, and this Cup the Blood of Thy Christ: and that all we, who are partakers thereof, may thereby obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of His Passion.

"And, together with us, remember, O God, for good, the whole mystical Body of Thy Son: that such as are yet alive may finish their course with joy; and that we, with all such as are dead in the Lord, may rest in hope and rise in glory, for Thy Son's sake, whose death we now commemorate. Amen.

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May I always receive the Holy Sacrament in the same meaning, intention, and blessed effect, with which Jesus Christ administered it to His Apostles in His last Supper." Sacra Privata, p. 93, 94.

"If therefore he ask how often he should receive this Sacrament, he ought to have an answer in the words of an ancient writer: Receive it as often as you can, that the old serpent, seeing the blood of the true Paschal Lamb upon your lips, may tremble to approach you."" Parochialia, ed. 1840. .p.

63.

86

Grabe. Bp. of Exeter.

Grabe.

"The English Divines teach, that in the Holy Eucharist the Body and Blood of Christ, under the species, that is, the signs, of Bread and Wine, are offered to God, and become a representation of the Sacrifice of Christ once made upon the Cross, whereby God may be rendered propitious." Daniel Brevint, &c. Jeremy Taylor. MS. Adversaria, printed Tract 81. p. 368. Bishop of Exeter.

"When any of us speak of this great mystery in terms best suited to its spiritual nature; when, for instance, we speak of the real Presence of Christ's Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist, there is raised a cry, as if we were symbolizing with the Church of Rome, and as if this Presence, because it is real, can be nothing else than the gross, carnal, corporeal, presence indicated in Transubstantiation. Now here, as with respect to Baptism, I will not argue the point, but will merely refer to the language of our Church in those authorized declarations of its doctrine to which we have assented, and in those formularies which we have both expressly approved and solemnly engaged

to use.

"It is very true, that none of these declarations or formularies use the phrase 'real Presence;' and therefore, if any should attempt to impose the use of that phrase as necessary, he would be justly open to censure for requiring what the Church does not require. But, on the other hand, if we adopt the phrase, as not only aptly expressing the doctrine of the Church, but also as commended to our use by the practice of the soundest Divines of the Church of England, in an age more distinguished for depth, as well as soundness, of Theology than the present-such as Abp. Bramhall, Sharp, and Wake, (all of whom do not only express their own judgment, but also are witnesses of the general judgment of the Church in and before their days; No genuine son of the Church of England,' says Bramhall, did ever deny a true real Presence;') if, I say, we adopt the phrase, used by such men as these, and even by some of those, who at the Reformation sealed with their blood their testimony to the Truth against the doctrine of Rome, (I allude especially to Bishops Ridley and Latimer-and even to Cranmer, who, when he avoided the phrase so abused by the Romanists, did yet employ equivalent

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