Catholic communion defended against both extremes, and unnecessary division confuted in five parts ...…Catholick communion defended against both extreams, and unnecessary division confuted in five parts ...…

Some Object, That Christ's sitting at the Sacramental Supper, is a Law to us, forbidding any other gesture. But this Author professeth, that all the actions of Christ, or his Apostles, are not Laws binding us to do the like: If they be, we break many such Laws; as when we do not eat a full Meal before the Sacrament, when we do it not without women, only to a Family, or to Twelve, only to Teachers, in an upper Room, in an Inn, or Private House, and that we do not lie along, leaning, as they did; especially when we take it not at Supper-time, and turn the Lord's Supper to a Breakfast or Dinner. The Apostles brake no Law when they differed from any of these, which were but occasional Circumstances.

Some Object, That Christ's sitting at the Sacramental Supper, is a Law to us, forbidding any other gesture. But this Author professeth, that all the actions of Christ, or his Apostles, are not Laws binding us to do the like: If they be, we break many such Laws; as when we do not eat a full Meal before the Sacrament, when we do it not without women, only to a Family, or to Twelve, only to Teachers, in an upper Reom, in an Inn, or Private House, and that we do not lie along, leaning, as they did; especially when we take it not at Supper-time, and turn the Lord's Supper to a Breakfast or Dinner. The Apostles brake no Law when they differed from any of these, which were but occasional Circumstances.

It's said by some, That Christ's Example binds us to a Table-gesture: But 1. That may be convenient, and yet not necessary: The bare Example binds us not to it. 2. If it did, that were but like the general Law; Let all be done to edification, and in order; and binds to no one sort of gesture at all: For then when they eat standing, it would bind us to stand; and if they eat kneeling (as Labourers oft do at Harvest-work in the Fields), it would bind us to kneel; if they eat lying, as the Jews did, it would bind us to that: and so this would but tie us to the Custom of the Country. But in feasting with God, we may sometimes do it more lowly than in a common Table-gesture, and break no Law. When Mary was, it's like, on her knees, washing Christ's feet with her Tears, if he had offered her Bread or Wine, it's like it had been no Idolatry so to take it.