to himself, and absolved from guilt: and it is so necessary to the Church as to be altogether indispensable. Therefore it will continue to be offered for ever, as long as the people of God shall exist; as we have already seen from the prophet. For so far are we from wishing to abolish it, that in that sense we are pleased to understand the following prediction: "From the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts." (r) So Paul enjoins us to "present" our "bodies, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is" our "reasonable service." (s) He has expressed himself with the strictest propriety, by adding that this is our reasonable service; for he intended a spiritual kind of divine worship, which he tacitly opposed to the carnal sacrifices of the Mosaic law. So "to do good, and to communicate," are called "sacrifices with which God is well pleased." (t) So the liberality of the Philippians in supplying the wants of Paul was "an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, and well pleasing to God." (v) So all the good works of the faithful are spiritual sacrifices.

XVII. Why do I multiply quotations? This form of expression is perpetually occurring in the Scriptures. And even while the people were kept under the external dicipline of the law, it was sufficiently declared by the prophets that those carnal sacrifices contained a reality and truth which is common to the Christian Church, as well as to the nation of the Jews. For this reason David prayed; "Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incence; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." (w) And Hosea called thanksgivings, "the calves of our lips, (x) which David calls "offering thanksgiving" and "offering praise." (y) In imitation of the psalmist, the apostle himself says, "Let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually;" and by way of explanation adds, "that is, the fruit of our lips," confessing or giving "thanks to his name." (z)

This kind of sacrifice is indispensable in the supper of the Lord, in which, while we commemorate and declare his death, and give thanks, we do no other than offer the sacrifice of praise. From this sacrificial employment, all Christians are called "a royal priesthood;" (a) because, as the apostle says, "By Christ we offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name." For we do not appear in the presence of God with our oblations without an intercessor: Christ is the Mediator, by whom we offer ourselves and all that we have to the Father. He is our High Priest, who having entered into the celestial sanctuary, opens the way of access for us. He is our altar, upon which we place our oblations, that whatever we venture to do, we may attempt in him. In a word, it is he that "hath made us kings and priests unto God." (b)

XVIII. What remains then, but for the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and even children to understand this abomination of the mass? which being presented in a vessel of gold, has so inebriated and stupefied all the kings and people of the earth, from the highest to the lowest, that, more senseless than the brutes themselves, they have placed the whole of their salva tion in this fatal gulf. Surely Satan never employed a more powerful engine to assail and conquer the kingdom of Christ, This is the Helen, from which the enemies of the truth in the present day contend with cruelty, rage, and fury; a Helen, indeed, with which they so pollute themselves with spiritual fornication, which is the most execrable of all. Here I touch not, even with my little finger, the gross abuses which they might pretend to be profanations of the purity of their holy mass; what a scandalous traffic they carry on, what sordid gains they make by their masses, with what enormous rapacity they gratify their avarice. I only point out, and that in few and plain words, the true nature of the most sanctimonious sanctity of the mass, on account of which it has attracted so much admiration and veneration for so many ages. For an illustration of such great mysteries proportioned to their dignity, would require a larger treatise; and I am unwilling

to introduce those disgusting corruptions which are universally notorious; that all men may understand that the mass, considered in its choicest and most estimable purity, without any of its appendages, from the beginning to the end, is full of every species of impiety, blasphemy, idolatry, and sacrilege.

XIX. The readers may now see, collected into a brief summary, almost every thing that I have thought important to be known respecting these two sacraments; the use of which has been enjoined on the Christian Church from the commencement of the New Testament until the end of time: that is to say, baptism, to be a kind of entrance into the Church, and an initiatory profession of faith; and the Lord's supper, to be a continual nourishment, with which Christ spiritually feeds his family of the faithful. Wherefore, as there is but "one God, one Christ, one faith," one Church the body of Christ, so there is only "one baptism," and that is never repealed; but the supper is frequently distributed, that those who have once been admitted into the Church, may understand that they are continually nourished by Christ. Beside these two, as no other sacrament has been instituted by God, so no other ought to be acknowledged by the Church of the faithful. For that it is not left to the will of man to institute new sacraments, will be easily understood, if we remember, what has already been very plainly stated, that sacraments are appointed by God for the purpose of instructing us respecting some promise of his, and assuring us of his good-will towards us; and if we also consider, that no one has been the counsellor of God, capable of affording us any certainty respecting his will, (c) or furnishing us any assurance of his disposition towards us, what he chooses to give or to deny us. Hence it follows, that no one can institute a sign to be a testimony respecting any determination or promise of his: he alone can furnish us a testimony respecting himself by giving a sign. I will express myself in terms more concise, and perhaps more humble, but more explicit; that there can be no sacrament unaccompanied - with a promise of salvation. All mankind, collected in one assembly, can promise us nothing respecting our salvation. Therefore they can never institute or establish a sacrament.

(c) Isaiah xl. 14. Rom. xi. 34.

XX. Let the Christian Church, therefore, be content with these two, and not only neither admit nor acknowledge any other at present, but neither desire nor expect any other to the end of the world. For as the Jews, beside the ordinary sacraments given to them, had also several others, differing acgcording to the varying circumstances of different periods, such as the manna, the water issuing from the rock, the brazen serpent, and the like, they were admonished by this variation not to rest in such figures, which were of short duration, but to expect from God something better, which should undergo no change and come to no end. But our case is very different: to us Christ has been revealed, "in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," (c) in such abundance and profusion, that to hope or desire any new accession to these treasures would really be to displease God, and provoke his wrath against us. We must hunger after Christ, we must seek, contemplate, and learn him alone, till the dawning of that great day, when our Lord will fully manifest the glory of his kingdom, and reveal himself to us, so that "we shall see him as he is." (d) And for this reason the dispensation under which we live is designated in the Scriptures as "the last time," "these last times," "the last days," (e) that no one may deceive himself with a vain expectation of any new doctrine or revelation. For "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath, in these last days, spoken unto us by his Son," (f) who alone is able to " reveal the Father,” (g) and who, indeed, "hath declared him" (h) fully, as far as is necessary for our happiness, while "now we see" him "through a glass darkly." (i) As men are not left at liberty to institute new sacraments in the Church of God, so it were to be wished that as little as possible of human invention should be mixed with those which have been instituted by God. For as wine is diluted and lost by an infusion of water, and as a whole mass of meal contracts acidity from a sprinkling of leaven, so

(c) Col. ii. 3.

(d) 1 John iii. 2.

(e) 1 John ii. 18. 1 Peter i. 20. Acts ii. 17. (f) Heb. i. 1, 2.

(g) Luke x. 22.

(i) 1 Cor. xiii. 12.

(h) John i. 18.

the purity of God is only polluted when man makes any addition of his own. And yet we see, as the sacraments are observed in the present day, how very far they have degenerated from their original purity. There is every where an excess of pageantries, ceremonies, and gesticulations; but no consideration or mention of the word of God, without which even the sacraments themselves cease to be sacraments. And the very ceremonies which have been instituted by God are not to be discerned among such a multitude of others, by which they are overwhelmed. In baptism, how little is seen of that which ought to be the only conspicuous object, I mean baptism itself? And the Lord's supper has been completely buried since it has been transformed into the mass; except that it is exhibited once a year, but in a partial and mutilated form,

CHAPTER XIX.

The five other Ceremonies, falsely called Sacraments, proved not to be Sacraments: their Nature explained.

THE preceding discussion respecting the sacraments might satisfy persons of docile and sober minds, that they ought not to carry their curiosity any further, or, without the sanction of the word of God, to receive any other sacraments beside those two which they know to have been instituted by the Lord. But as the opinion of seven sacraments has been so generally admitted in the common conversation of mankind, and pervaded the controversies of the schools, and the sermons of the pulpit; as it has gathered strength from its antiquity, and stillkeeps its hold on the minds of men; I have thought I should perform a useful service by entering into a closer and distinct examination of the five ceremonies, which are commonly numbered among the true and genuine sacraments of the Lord, by clearing away every fallacy, and exhibiting to the view of plain Christians the real nature of those ceremonies, and how falsely they have hitherto been considered as sacraments. Here, in the first place, I wish to declare to all the faithful, that I am