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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 2
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. II.
Sacraments are earnests and shadows of our expected glory made unto the senses.
Sacraments are earnests and shaddowes of our expected glory made unto the senses.
THE Promises, and word of grace with the Sacraments, are all but as so many sealed Deeds to make over unto all successions of the Church, so long as they continue legitimate children and observe the Laws on their part required, an infallible claim and title unto that Good which is not yet revealed, unto that inheritance which is as yet laid up unto that life which is hid with God, and was never yet fully opened or let shine upon the earth. Even in Paradise there was a Sacrament; a tree of life indeed it was, but there was but one; whereas Adam was to eat of all the fruits in the Garden: He was there but to taste sometimes of life, it was not to be his perpetual and only food. We read of a Tree of life in the beginning of the Bible, and of a tree of life in the end too; that was in Adams Paradise on earth, this in Saint Johns Paradise in heaven: But that did bear but the first fruits of life, the earnest of an after fullness. This bare life in abundance, for it bare twelve manner of fruits, and that every month, which shows both the completeness, ⟨p. 7⟩and eternity of that glory which we expect. And as the Tree of Paradise was but a Sacrament of life in heaven, so Paradise it self was but a Sacrament of heaven. Certainly Adam was placed amongst the dark and shady trees of the Garden, that he might in an Emblem acknowledge, that he was as yet but in the shadow of life, the substance whereof he was elsewhere to receive. Even when the Church was pure, it was not perfect; it had an age of infancy, when it had a state of innocence: Glory was not communicated unto Adam himself without the veil of a Sacrament: the light of God did not shine on Paradise with a spreading and immediate ray; even there it was mixed with shadows, and represented only in a Sacramental reflex, not in its own direct and proper brightness. The Israelites in the wilderness had light indeed but it was in a cloud, and they had the presence of God in the Ark,