Page:Delineation of Roman Catholicism.djvu/252

 0.44 ?IANSIYBSTANTIATION. , [Boor II. sacraments God appointed among the Jews, circumcision and the passo-er; yet to both.of these the Holy Scriptures, and the Jews from them, gave the name of the thing to the sign which they signified. Circumcision, which was no more than the sign and seal of God's covenant with the Jews, answering to our baptism, /s in Scripture called the covenant iLself. Thus twice in one chapter Crod sa/th, "This is my covenant; every male child among you shall be circum- cised."And again, "My covenant shall be in your flesh," Gen. xviii. 10, 13. And every one know8 that circumcision was not God's cove- nant, but the sign of the covenant, or the sacrament whereby the)' entered into covenant. And as for the other sacrament, the paschal feast, in the place of which our Lord instituted the Lord*s supper, the very name by which it is called is an instance of that for which we contend. The sacrificed lamb with which the Jews celebrated this sacrament was not the passover itself, but only a sign or memorial of it; �or the pass- over itself, in its literal sense, was God's passing over the Israelites when he qlew the first-born of the Egyptians. Yet this feast is called the Lord's passover. "Th/s is the Lord's passover," Ex. xii, ! 1. And for ever ater when this paschal feast was kept, when the lamb was set upon the table, the master of the house spoke to his company in these words: "This is the passover, which we therefore eat because C. vod passed by our houses in Egypt." And we have every reason to believe that our Saylout used the same words when he kept this feast with his disciples. Every one present knew that the lamb was not really the passover, for that was a deliverance which God wrought for them but once; the lamb was only a memorial of that passover or deliverance. Now since God in Scripture first used the expression, and the Jew- ish rituals tell us that in all succeeding passovers it was continued, who can doubt but the apostles, when they heart1 our Saylout say ot' the bread, TA//s my body, would understand the words in the sense we have been declaring ? The apostles at that time were celebrating the puchal feast, which was a commemoration of the past deliverance; yet they heard our Saviour pay of the bread, "This is the bread of affliction which your fathers ate in Egypt." They heard him say of the flesh upon the table, "This is the Lord's passover." Having finished the passover, they saw our Saviour take bread, give thanks to Cod, and then bid them eat of it. He then says, T%/s i ;ny body broken for you. 1 might appeal to every reasonable man, if they would not understand this latter expression in the same sense that they did the former: that is to say, that the bread which Christ now blessed and brake was just as much his body broken, as the bread of affliction which their fathers ate in Egypt, or as the lamb they had before eaten of, was the Lord's passover. And we may as well imagine, that when these words of the Jewish ritual, "This is the Lord's passover," were spoken, the disciples understood that just then the destroying angel was passing over the houses of the Israelites, and slaying the first-born of the Egyptians, as we can imagine that when our Saviour said, "This is my body broken for you," they understood him of his real natural body, which was not then cqcified. From all which we infer, they took not his expressions literally, as the Roman Catholic8 do, I o,g,t,ze by Goodie

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