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Meditations on the holy sacrament of the Lords last Supper Written many years sinceMeditations on the holy sacrament of the Lords last Supper Written many yeares since
Meditations on the holy sacrament of the Lords last Supper Written many years since by Edward Reynolds then fellow of Merton College in Oxford.Meditations on the holy sacrament of the Lords last Supper Written many yeares since by Edvvard Reynolds then fellow of Merton College in Oxford.
London: printed by Felix Kyngston for Robert Bostock, 1638
MEDITATIONS ON THE HOLY SACRAMENT OF THE LORDS LAST SUPPER. › Chapter 13
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
CHAP. XIII.
Of the two first ends or effects of the Sacrament, namely the exhibition of Christ to the Church, and the union of the Church to Christ. Of the real Presence.
Of the two first ends or effects of the Sacrament, namely the exhibition of Christ to the Church, and the union of the Church to Christ. Of the reall Presence.
Having thus far spoken of the nature and quality of this holy Sacrament, it follows in Order to treat of the Ends or Effects thereof, on which depends its necessity, and our comfort: our Sacraments are nothing else but Evangelical Types or shadows of some more perfect substance; for as the Legal Sacrifices were thea shadows of Christ expected, and wrapped up in a Cloud of Predicting, and in the loins of his Predecessors: so this new mystical Sacrifice of the Gospel is a shadow of Christ risen indeed, but yet hid from us under the Cloud of those Heavens which shall contain him until the dissolution of all things; for the whole heavens are but as one great cloud which intercept the lustre of that Sun of Righteousness who enlighteneth every one that cometh into the world: now shadows are for the refreshing of us against the lustre of any light unto which the weakness of the sense is yet disproportioned: as there are many things for their own smallness ⟨p. 82⟩imperceptible, so some for their magnitude do exceed the power of sense, and have a transcendency in them which surpasseth the comprehension of that faculty unto which they properly belong. No man can in one simple view look upon the whole vast frame of Heaven, because he cannot at the same moment receive the species of so spreading and diffused an Object, so is it in things Divine, some of them are so above the reach of our imperfect faculties, as that they swallow up the understanding, and make not any immediate impression on the Soul, between which and their excellency there is no great disproportion. Now