CXLV expository sermons upon the whole 17th chapter of the Gospel according to St.…

3. The corrupt Opinions about Sacraments as if they did convey Grace and Christ by the very work done; This is also to know Christ after a carnal manner▪ for it's not the Ordinances but the Spirit of God in and by them, that doth us any good, Joh. 6. The flesh profiteth little, but the Spirit, yet this hath been the universal disease of Gods Church in all Ages: In the Old Testament there they rested upon the Sacrifices, upon the Temple, upon their external Rites; Oh how often do the Prophets labour to convince them of this error! Hence Paul speaks of a Jew in the flesh, and in the Letter, and a Jew in the Spirit, Rom 2. and all the Jewish rites are called carnal Ordinances, and beggarly; They bring no real good to them that are exercised therein without the Spirit, and may we not say, that almost all Christianity is but a religious carnality, a resting and relying upon Ordinances so far as they are bodily and visibly performed; When the Apostle 1 Pet. 3. had said, Baptism serveth to prevent all mistakes, he addeth, Not the washing of the body but the answer of a good conscience; When a man upon good examination of himself can say, O Lord, thou knowest that I do in truth and uprightness keep to those duties I am solemnly by Baptism engaged unto; Thus for the Lords Supper, is not it the very receiving of it judged the very saving of men? Do not commonly people take it as if in the very bread and wine there were some Sacrificial virtue, as when they take Physic they judge some Physical inherent virtue in that to help them; Oh what Jeremiah hath his head full enough of water to bewail this carnal, gross, and ignorant Christianity that is in the world, which judgeth the very Sacraments, or any bodily worship in prayers or singing of Psalms, though they be but as Parrots in these things, to be great evidences for heaven; But as the body without the soul is dead and a loathsome Carcass, thus is all thy Religion, worship, and Ordinances a dead loathsome thing in the presence of God without the Spirit; This the Apostle calls serving of God in the oldness of the letter, not the newness of the Spirit, Rom. 7.6. And in this sense we may say the Letter killeth and damneth, but the Spirit giveth life; Oh then be afraid thou art not one of those that split their souls at this Rock; This is the common poison that devoureth most;