A14239:29
A sermon preached before the Commons-House [sic] of Parliament, in Saint Margarets Church at…A sermon preached before the Commos-House [sic] of Parliament, in Saint Margarets Church at…
A sermon preached before the Commons-House [sic] of Parliament, in Saint Margarets Church at Westminster, the 18. of February. 1620. By James Usher. Professor of Divinity in the University of Dublin, in IrelandA sermon preached before the Commos-House [sic] of Parliament, in Saint Margarets Church at Westminster, the 18. of February. 1620. By Iames Vssher. Professor of Diuinitie in the Vniuersitie of Dublin, in Ireland
London: printed by I.Dawson for John Bartlett, 1624London: printed by I.Dawson for Iohn Bartlett, 1624
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
Where if any man shall demand, (that I may now come unto the second point of our inquiry) How can this man give us his flesh to eat? 1He must beware that he come not pre-occupied with such dull conceits as they were possessed withal, who ⟨p. 18⟩moved that question there; he must not think that we cannot truly feed on Christ, unless we receive him within our jaws: (for that is as gross an imagination as that of Nicodemus, who could not conceive how a man could be borne again, unless he should enter the second time into his mothers womb:)2 but must consider that the eating and drinking which our Saviour speaketh of, must be answerable to the hungering and thirsting, for the quenching whereof this heavenly Banquet is provided. Mark well the words which he useth, toward the beginning of his discourse concerning this argument.3 I am the bread of life, he that cometh to me, shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me, shall never thirst. But I said unto you, that ye also have seen me, and believe not. And compare them with those in the end:4 It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you that believe not. Now observe, that such as our hungering is, such is our eating. But every one will confess, that the hunger here spoken of, is not corporal, but spiritual: Why then should any man dream here of a corporal eating? Again, the corporal eating, if a man might have it, would not avail any thing to the slaking of this hunger; nay, we are expressly told, that the flesh thus taken (for so we must understand it) profiteth nothing, a man should never be the better, nor one jot the holier, nor any whit further from the second death, if he had filled his belly with it. But that ⟨p. 19⟩manner of feeding on this flesh, which Christ himself commendeth unto us, is of such profit, that it preserveth the eater from death,5