(3.) The language, employed at the Institution of the Eucharist and evidently borrowed from that which had already been used in the Discourse, still leads us to the very same conclusion.

Jesus brake the bread, and poured the wine into the cup: and, when this preparation had been made, he said of the broken bread, This is my body which is given for you; and, of the poured out wine, he said, This is my blood of the New Testament which is shed for many for the remission of sins. He added solemnly; Do this in remembrance of me: and the inspired comment of St. Paul upon the whole transaction is; As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come †.

Here, again, we are brought exactly to the same result as before. The subject of the Discourse at Capernaum is, not a Vague General Believing on Christ such as those may have who slight or reject the doctrine of the Atonement, but a Specific and particular and abiding and practically influential Belief in the Saving Efficacy of his Death.

3. Thus, I apprehend, we may now safely lay down the following determination.

* Matt. xxvi. 26-28. Mark xiv. 22-24. Luke xxii. 19, 20. St. Paul gives the words of Institution, This is my body which is broken for you. 1 Corinth. xi. 24. Probably our Lord used both expressions.

† 1 Corinth. xi. 26.

The Eating of the Bread from heaven, which Bread is identical with Christ himself; or the Eating of the Flesh of Christ and Drinking his Blood, as dwelt upon in the Discourse at Capernaum, and as afterward constituted by him the Inward Spiritual Grace of the Sacrament of the Eucharist this Eating ideally imports an Exclusive Dependence upon our Lord's Meritorious Sacrifice of Himself for the life of the world, practically associated with a Spiritual Dwelling of the Believer in Christ and of Christ in the Believer *.

III. With this key in our hands, the whole, both of Christ's Discourse at Capernaum, and of

* The true eating and drinking of the said body and blood of Christ is, with a constant aud lively faith, to believe, that Christ gave his body and shed his blood upon the cross for us, and that he doth so join and incorporate himself to us, that he is our head, and we his members and flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones, having him dwelling in us, and we in him. And herein standeth the whole effect and strength of this Sacrament. And this faith God worketh inwardly in our hearts by his Holy Spirit, and confirmeth the same, outwardly to our ears by hearing of his word, and to our other senses by eating and drinking of the sacramental bread and wine in his holy supper. Cranmer's Defence of the true and cathol. doctr. of the Sacram. book i. chap. 16. Works. vol. ii. p. 306. Edit. Jenkyns.

What need we any other witness, when Christ himself doth testify the matter so plainly, that, whosoever eateth his flesh and drinketh his blood, hath everlasting life; and that to eat his flesh and to drink his blood is to believe in him; and, whosoever believeth in him, hath everlasting life. Ibid. book iv. chap. 2. Works. vol. ii. p. 426.

his subsequent Institution of the Eucharist, will be perfectly intelligible.

1. In his Discourse, our Lord declares, that the Eating of his Flesh and the Drinking of his Blood are absolutely essential to salvation; and, as he makes no exceptions, so, in order to exhibit the true spiritual character of the action, he promulgates his declaration, before the Institution of the symbolical Sacrament of the Eucharist, and consequently when there was no opportunity of imagining that material bread and wine are transubstantiated into his material body and

blood.

From the unbending universality, therefore, of the declaration, we learn, in the way of a necessary result that the patriarchs and prophets and all godly men since the fall of Adam must, in our Lord's sense of the words, have eaten his flesh and drunken his blood; though none of them could have partaken literally of that material Sacrament, which he did not institute until immediately before his crucifixion. For, since Christ declares that the Eating his Flesh and the Drinking his Blood are invariably essential to salvation, and since he has also distinctly asserted that the patriarchs and the prophets and holy men from the four quarters of the world shall hereafter sit down in the kingdom of God: it plainly follows, that, in the real or spiritual sense of the words though not in their false or literal sense, all these

precursive individuals must have eaten the Lord's flesh and have drunk the Lord's blood *.

Accordingly, as the Church of England in unfigured language well expresses the matter, both in the Old and in the New Testament, everlasting

* Christ, in that place of John (chap. vi. 51.), spake not of the material and sacramental bread nor of the sacramental eating (for that was spoken two or three years before the Sacrament was first ordained): but he spake of spiritual bread, many times repeating I am the bread of life which came from heaven, and of spiritual eating by faith; after which sort he was at the same present time eaten of as many as believed on him, although the Sacrament was not at that time made and instituted. Cranmer's Defence. book ii. chap. 10. Works vol. ii. p. 338, 339.

The Papists say, that the fathers and prophets of the Old Testament did not eat the body nor drink the blood of Christ: we say, that they did eat his body and drink his blood, although he was not yet born or incarnated. Ibid. book iii. chap 2. P.

357.

Therefore saith he, The words which I do speak be spirit and life: that is to say, they are not to be understanded, that we shall eat Christ with our teeth grossly and carnally, but that we shall spiritually and grossly with our faith eat him being carnally absent from us in heaven; and in such wise as Abraham and other holy fathers did eat him, many years before he was incarnated and born. Ibid. book. iii. chap. 10. p. 378.

Dr. Waterland has very usefully summed up the particulars of the venerable Primate's explanation of our Lord's Discourse at Capernaum and I here subjoin his statement.

The sum, then, of Archbishop Cranmer's doctrine on this head is: 1. that John vi. is not to be interpreted of oral manducation in the Sacrament, nor of spiritual manducation as confined to the Eucharist, but of spiritual manducation at large, in that or any other Sacrament, or out of the Sacraments; 2. that

life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man*. For although the old fathers and martyrs and other holy men were not named christian men, yet was it a christian faith that they had: for they looked for all benefits of God the Father, Spiritual manducation, in that chapter, means the feeding upon Christ's death and passion, as the price of our redemption and salvation; 3. that, In so feeding, we have a spiritual or mystical union with his human nature, and by that with his Godhead, to which his humanity is joined in an unity of person; 4. that Such spiritual manducation is a privilege belonging to the Eucharist, and therefore John vi. is not foreign to the Eucharist, but has such relation to it as the inward thing signified bears to the outward signs. Review of the Doctr. of the Euchar. chap. vi. Works vol. vi. p. 141.

The same view of the Discourse was taken by Peter Martyr, who, about ten years after, engaged in the cause. He considers the general principles there taught, as being preparatory to the Institution of the Eucharist, which was to come after. Our Lord, in that chapter, gave intimation of spiritual food, with

the use and necessity of it. Afterward, in the Institution, he added external symbols, for the notifying one particular act or instance of spiritual manducation, to make it the more solemn and the more affecting. Therefore John vi though not directly spoken of the Eucharist, yet is by no means foreign: but rather looks forward toward it, bears a tacit allusion to it, and serves to reflect light upon it. Ibid. p. 142.

From what has been observed of these two eminent Reformers, continues Dr. Waterland, we may judge, how John vi. was understood at that time: not of doctrines nor of sacramental feeding, but of spiritual feeding at large, feeding upon the death and passion of Christ our Lord. Ibid. p. 143.

* Art. vii.