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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 1
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. I
Mans Being to be employed in working: that working directed unto some Good, which is God; that Good, a free and voluntary Reward, which we here enjoy only in the right of a Promise, the seal of which Promise is a Sacrament.
Mans Being to bee imployed in working: that working directed unto some Good, which is God; that Good, a free and voluntary Reward, which wee here enjoy onely in the right of a Promise, the seale of which Promise is a Sacrament.
THE Almighty power and wisdom of God hath given unto his creatures, a triple degree of perfection, their Being, their Working, and their Good; which three are so subordinate to each other, that Working is the end and scope of Being, and ⟨p. 2⟩Good is the end and scope of Working. But no Being, can produce any Work, no Work reach unto any Good, without something that may be a rule of working, and a way to Good; and therefore Almighty God in the work of the Creation imprinted in each creature a secret principle, which should move, govern, and uniformly direct it to its proper work and end, and that principle we call a Law, which by assigning unto each thing the kind, measure and extent of its working, doth lead it on by a strait and in fallible line unto that Good, for which it worketh. All other Creatures below the sphere of reason, being not only in the quality of their nature of a narrow and strait perfection, but in their duration finite and perishable, the good unto which this Law of their creation directs them, is a finite Good likewise. But men and Angels being both in nature more excellent than all others, and in continuance infinite and immortal, cannot possibly receive from anything, which is a mere creature, and less perfect than themselves, any complete satisfaction of their desires, and therefore must by a circle turn back unto God, who is aswell the Omega, the end and object of their working, as the Alpha, the cause and author of their being. Now God being most free, not only in himself, but in the diffusion and communication of himself, unto