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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 18
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. XVIII.
Of the subject, who may with benefit receive the holy Sacrament, with the necessary qualifications thereunto, of the necessity of due preparation.
WE have hitherto handled the Sacrament it self; we are now briefly to consider the subject whom it concerneth, in whom we will observe such qualifications as may fit, and predispose him for the comfortable receiving, and proper interest in these holy mysteries. Sacraments, since the time that Satan hath had a Kingdom in the World, have been ever notes, and Characters whereby to distinguish the Church of God from the Ethnic, and unbelieving part of men; so that they being not common unto all mankind, some subject unto whom the right, and propriety of them belongeth must be found out. GOD at the first created man upright, framed him after his own Image, and endowed him with gifts ⟨p. 171⟩of nature, able to preserve him entire in that estate wherein he was created. And because it was repugnant to the essential freedom wherein he was made, to necessitate him by any outward constraint unto an immutable estate of integrity, he therefore soa framed him that it might be within the free liberty of his own will to cleave to him, or to decline from him. Man being thus framed, abused this native freedom, and committed sin, and thereby in the very same instant became really, and properly dead. For as he was dead judicially in regard of a temporal, and eternal death (both which were now already pronounced though not executed on him) so was he dead actually, and really in regard of that spiritual death; which consisteth in a separation of the soul from God, and in an absolute immobility unto Divine operations. But mans sin did not nullify Gods power. He that made him a glorious creature when he was nothing, could as easily renew, and rectify him when he fell away. Being dead, true it is, that active concurrence unto his own restitution he could have none, but yet still the same passive obedience, and capacity which was in the red Clay of which Adams body was fashioned unto that divine Image which God breathed into it,