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

The third Action was the giving, or delivering of the Bread and Wine: which first, evidently expresseth the nature and quality of Christ crucified, with these benefits which flow from him, that they are freely bestowed upon the Church, which of it self had no interest or claim unto any thing save death. Secondly, we see the nature of Christs passion, that it was a free, voluntary, and unconstrained passion, for though it be true that Judas ^adid betray him, and Pilate deliver him to be crucified: yet none of this was the giving of Christ, but the selling of him. It was not for us, but for money that Judas delivered him, it was not for us, but for fear that Pilate delivered him:^b but God delivered the Son, and the Son delivered himself with a most merciful and gracious will to bestow his death upon sinners, and not to get, but to be himself a price. The Passion then of Christ was most freely undertaken ^c(without which free-will of his own, they could^d never have laid hold on him) and his death was a most free and voluntary explication, his life was not wrenched nor wrung from him, nor snatched or torn from him by the bare violence of any foreign ⟨p. 49⟩Impression; but was with a loud voice (arguing nature not brought to utter decay) most freely^e surrendered and^f laid down by that power which did after reassume it. But how then comes it to pass that there lay a necessity ^gupon Christ of suffering, which necessity may seem to have enforced and constrained him to Golgatha, in as much as he himself did not only shrink, but even testify his dislike of what he was to suffer by a redoubled prayer^h