the custom of ancient nations who drank either blood, or wine instead of blood, for the ratifying of covenants, but directly from our Lord's own words; "this cup is my blood of the new covenant." The federal nature of the Eucharist may be further confirmed from the analogy between it and the sacrifices, both of the Jews and Gentiles, of which St. Paul takes notice. Eating the Lord's Supper was the same rite in the Christian Church, with eating things offered in sacrifice. Like them it is a sort of partaking of God's table, 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. Every worthy receiver, as often as he symbolically receives the blood, revives his interest in our Lord's passion, and in the covenant founded thereon; and he binds himself over to it, by more and stronger ties, which is what we mean when we say we renew the baptismal covenant in this other Sacrament. How insignificant and how comfortless in comparison with this statement is a bare commemoration, which corresponds not with God's method of dealing with his Church

in ancient times, and answers not to the force of our Lord's words, or the reasoning of St. Paul, 1 Cor. x. 16. who considers those who eat and drink as thereby partaking of the body and blood of Christ!

But some Protestants go not so far as this, and the Roman Catholics will not with us stop here. They maintain, that the priest in consecrating the elements not only commemorates the Saviour's sacrifice of himself, but actually offers him up again, and therefore they call the wafer (which they substitute for bread) the host, from the Latin word hostia. This doctrine, together with that of transubstantiation, with which it is nearly connected, has produced incalculable mischief. While, contrary to the genius of Christianity, it has brought many out of the glorious liberty of the children of God into the bondage of superstition and priestcraft, it has to others, who could not digest such absurdities, been the principal cause of infidelity. It has introduced the practice of solitary masses for the benefit not only of the living but of the dead, without any respect to moral character; thus professing that money can purchase the remission of

sins, and substituting the act of another for the believer's own; and even when he communicates himself, it makes the benefit to be received depend upon the priest's intention, and not upon his own disposition. It has unduly exalted the ministerial character to the injury of both clergy and laity. It is well known to the reader of history, that in consequence of the assumed and allowed power of converting a wafer into the Son of God, and offering him up whenever they pleased, the clergy of the middle ages obtained a higher degree of official reverence and of submission than man ought to render unto man. The ambiguity of language favoured the delusion, for the ministers of the old dispensation as well as themselves were called priests, and from a sameness of title, it was natural to infer an identity of office. A priest is defined in the Epistle to the Hebrews as one that has something to offer; and a perusal of that Epistle will shew, that Christ is in this sense of the word the only Priest of his religion; that his sacrifice offered once by himself can never be repeated by another; and that He, and not his ministers, is the successor

and anti-type of the high priest of the Jews. The English word priest is only presbyter or elder abridged; and if the latter has always been retained, and sacrificer or some other word of like meaning been used for the legs or priest of the heathens and Jews, in short, for all those ministers of religion who have any thing to offer, many superstitious notions, which prevail in a degree even among Protestants, might never have existed. Our own Church uses, it is true, this word, but clearly not in its sacrificial meaning; for she carefully avoids the word altar, always substituting communion table, lest her members should think she countenanced the doctrine that the Lord's Supper is a sacrifice. The Roman Catholics confidently appeal in behalf of this doctrine to antiquity; but this if successful would little embarrass Protestants, who know that errors have been sanctioned in every age by celebrated names, while they can prove, as they can from the Epistle to the Hebrews, that it is contrary to the Scriptures; but we deny the assertion. The limits I have assigned to this tract will not allow me to prove this, which could

only be done by a series of quotations from the Fathers; I will therefore merely repeat, on the authority of Waterland, that we allow that these authors apply the terms sacrifice, oblation, propitiation, to this Sacrament, but then it is in a figure, as they also apply it to prayer, and thanksgiving, and as the Bible set them the example, by applying it to a contrite spirit, to almsgiving, and to obedience, which St. Paul in sacrificial language calls "a rational worship,” (λ0yıxй Xargsía,) contrasting it with the victims that were offered up under the old dispensation. Celsus objected to the Christians of his time their want of altars; and if Origen had believed in the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, and even allowed, with some Protestants, that it was an unbloody sacrifice, he would have repelled this objection; whereas he is content to say, that the objector does not consider, that with us every good man's mind is his altar, from which the incense of perfume is truly and spiritually sent up, that is, prayer from a pure conscience. In fact, Christ himself alone

Romans xii. 1.