than in any other way, is the death of our Master shewed forth "until HE come;" so certainly in it, more than by any other means, is communion with our only Saviour to be gained, and those gifts of grace secured whereby alone we can forsake sin, or grow in holiness of life. Let every doubtful soul weigh well this thought: Whither would it go for pardon for the past, for grace for the future, save unto the Lord Jesus? and where shali it go by a straighter or a surer road than by that which He hath here provided? In every such case, no doubt, there must be a struggle: the sense of guilt would always drive us from our Lord; but is not this to be driven to perdition? And is there not here His gracious voice bidding us to come? "Were it not so," says St. Bernard, "what should I do when I heard the Lord's approach—should I not fly as Adam did, who fled from His face, and yet escaped not? Should not I despair when I heard that He was coming, whose law I have so broken, whose patience I have so abused, to whose kindness I have proved so oft ungrateful? But what stay could be greater than that of His own word of consolation? Wherefore He says Himself that 'The Son came not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.' Now, then, I draw near with confidence, I pray

with filial trust; for why should I fear, when the Saviour hath come into my house? against Him only have I sinned; what He hath pardoned needs must be forgiven. 'Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect?'"'*

Nor need the harassing remains of sin, so that we truly strive against them, keep us from our remedy. Here it is that we are in a special manner, and after a heavenly sort, to be made one with Christ our Lord, and to receive therefore of His strength. The very provision of so great a medicine may assure us of our cure; for "no wise physician would consume his costliest drugs upon a hopeless case." And if we refuse the remedy, how can we escape the sentence of the slothful servant? Surely the Christian man, who lets his fear of offending keep him from the holy table, fills up, more than any one beside, that fearful character. Surely, above all men, he declares that he knew his Lord to be an hard man, reaping where he had not sowed;" and that therefore "he was afraid, and went and digged in the earth," to hide the talent wherewith he had been entrusted.

And if vain fears may not keep us from the

S. Bernard. Serm. in Epiph. Dom. i. § 3.
Id. in Nativ. iii. § 5.

holy eucharist, surely still less may an empty apprehension of formality teach us to think lightly of it. Means indeed are nothing in themselves, but they are the way to God; and as we have no right to choose some and neglect others -to hope, for instance, that prayer, or meditation, or God's word, can be blessed to him who refuses communion,-so, if we did choose, what could we choose before this holy feast? Surely it and Christian baptism bear a peculiar character amongst the other means of grace. Is it not, in an especial sense, the Christian's privilege ? is it not the aptest shewing forth of the Lord's death-the meetest instrument for our communion with Him? It were no true sacrament, if there were not in it greater blessings than in any of the ordinary means and opportunities of grace which men may at their will appoint, or at their discretion intermit. How, otherwise, would it differ from times of especial devotion, from seasons of especial prayer? and if it differs not, what is its essence as a sacrament? Because, then, its very nature has been overthrown in the idolatrous abuse to which the Romanists pervert it, let not Christian men fall into another error, and lower down into a mere commemorative rite that which Christ hath given them for a higher purpose. "For we take not bap

tism nor the eucharist for bare resemblances or memorials of things absent, neither for naked signs and testimonies, assuring us of grace received before, but (as they are indeed and in verity) for means effectual, whereby God, when we take the sacrament, delivereth into our hands that grace available unto eternal life, which grace the sacraments represent or signify. . . . . We receive Christ Jesus in the eucharist often, as being, by continued degrees, the finisher of our life.. we receive Him, imparting therein Himself."

Let no man, therefore, hope to maintain within himself the inner life of piety, whilst he neglects these evident means of sustaining it; for "it is not ordinarily God's will to bestow the grace of sacraments on any but by the sacraments." It is by them that Christ" deriveth unto every several member of His Church that saving grace which He originally is." The true guard against formality is no undervaluing of sacraments; it is the continual remembrance that the " grace which men receive by them, they receive it from God, and not from them. For that of sacraments, the very same is true

Hooker, Eccles. Pol. b. v. § 57.

+ Id., ibid.

which Solomon's Wisdom observeth in the brazen serpent: 'he that turned towards it was not healed by the thing he saw, but by Thee, O Saviour of all.'”* And to those who desire to approach the eucharist with such a diligent and earnest faith, this little volume may (with God's blessing) render some assistance. It differs from most works of the kind, in being wholly gathered from the writings of old divines of the English Church; and thus secures the presence of that raciness and strength which are so rare in modern books of devotion. Who has not felt this difference? Who can turn from the writings of St. Augustin, St. Bernard, or of Hooker and Leighton, to most of this day, without remembering the sacred words, "No man having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better"?

But this is not all: we must live with those around us; to the contagion of their errors we are always exposed. These we must meet with, in some measure, even in our teachers; for their minds will, more or less, be tinged with the prevalent opinions of the day. They, therefore, who would be in any measure free from this evil, must often retire from their immediate equals, to

* Hooker, Eccles. Pol. b. v. § 57.