A supplement to The Morning-exercise at Cripple-Gate, or, Several more cases of conscience practically…

But if any of you be offended at the outward meanness of the Ordinance ⟨p. 232⟩and be thereby tempted to neglect the observance; I wish you to remember, who they were that stumbled at Christ himself because of the poverty of his Parents, is not this (say they) the Carpenter's Son? ¹This was the introduction to their rejecting of Christ, and to that great plague that followed, viz. their being rejected of Christ. Certainly as the meanness of his Parents ought not to have prejudiced the glory of his person to those infidels: so ought not the seeming poverty of these elements of bread and wine any ways abate of the glory of that mystery of our Redemption that is shadowed out by them. I know our carnal reasonings are apt to suggest, that since Christ intended to leave behind him a monument of the greatness of his person, and of his gracious undertaking in redeeming a Church to himself by his blood, that it would have been more suitable to the honour of such an undertaking, if the monument had been more magnificent; as if he had given in charge to his Disciples to have erected his Statue of beaten gold, and set it up in the places of their solemn Assemblies, as the Roman Senate used to do for the honour of their excellent men, whose Statues they erected In their Capitols; or as the London Senate doth in honour of their Kings, they give them their Statues in their Royal Exchange.

But if any of you be offended at the outward meanness of the Ordinance ⟨p. 232⟩and be thereby tempted to neglect the observance; I wish you to remember, who they were that stumbled at Christ himself because of the poverty of his Parents, is not this (say they) the Carpenter's Son? ¹This was the introduction to their rejecting of Christ, and to that great plague that followed, viz. their being rejected of Christ. Certainly as the meanness of his Parents ought not to have prejudiced the glory of his person to those infidels: so ought not the seeming poverty of these elements of bread and wine any waies abate of the glory of that mystery of our Redemption that is shadowed out by them. I know our carnal reasonings are apt to suggest, that since Christ intended to leave behind him a monument of the greatness of his person, and of his gracious undertaking in redeeming a Church to himself by his blood, that it would have been more suitable to the honour of such an undertaking, if the monument had been more magnificent; as if he had given in charge to his Disciples to have erected his Statue of beaten gold, and set it up in the places of their solemn Assemblies, as the Roman Senate used to do for the honour of their excellent men, whose Statues they erected In their Capitols; or as the London Senate doth in honour of their Kings, they give them their Statues in their Royal Exchange.