Answ.Though this might many Ways be answered, to wit, That Prayer then might as well be forborn, to which also the Saving of the Sick is there ascribed; yet I shall accept of it, because I judge indeed that Ceremony is ceased; A Ceremony ought to cease, its Virtue failing.only methinks, since our Adversaries, and that rightly, think a Ceremony ought to cease where the Virtue fails, they ought by the same Rule to forbear the laying on of Hands, Thus laying on of Hands.in Imitation of the Apostles, since the Gift of the Holy Ghost doth not follow upon it.
§. IX.
Object.If it be said, These under the Gospel have a spiritual Signification;
Answ.So had those under the Law; God was the Author of those, as well as Christ is pretended to be the Author of these. But doth not this contending for the Use of Water, Bread and Wine, as necessary Parts of the Gospel-worship, destroy the Nature of it, as if the Gospel were a Dispensation of Shadows, and not of the Substance? The Law has Shadows, the Gospel brings the Substance.Whereas the Apostle, in that of the Colossians above-mentioned, argues against the Use of these Things, as needful to those that are dead and arisen with Christ, because they are but Shadows. And since, through the whole Epistle to the Hebrews, he argues with the Jews, to wean them from their old Worship, for this Reason, because it was typical and figurative; is it agreeable to right Reason to bring them to another of the same Nature? What Ground from Scripture or Reason can our Adversaries bring us, to evince that one Shadow or Figure should point to another Shadow or Figure, and not to the Substance? And yet they make the Figure of Circumcision to point to Water-baptism, and the Paschal Lamb to Bread and Wine. But was it ever known that one Figure was the Anti-type of the other, especially seeing Protestants make not these their Anti-types to have any more Virtue and Efficacy than the Type had? Their Sacraments confer not Grace.For since, as they say, and that truly, That their Sacraments confer not Grace, but that it is conferred according to the Faith of the Receiver, it will not be denied but the Faithful among the Jews received also Grace in the Use of their Figurative Worship. And though Papists boast that their Sacraments confer Grace ex opere operato, yet Experience abundantly proveth the contrary.
§. X.
Nevertheless I doubt not but many, whose Understandings have been clouded with these Ceremonies, have notwithstanding, by the Mercy of God, had some secret Sense of the Mystery, which they could not clearly understand, because it was sealed from them by their sticking to such outward Things; and that through that secret Sense diving in their Comprehensions they ran themselves into these carnal Apprehensions, as imagining the Substance of the Bread was changed, or that if the Substance was not changed, yet the Body was there, &c. Calvin’s ingenuous Confession commended.And indeed I am inclinable very favourably to judge of Calvin in this Particular, in that he deals so ingenuously to confess he neither comprehends it, nor can express it in Words; but yet by a feeling Experience can say, The Lord is spiritually present. Now as I doubt not but Calvin sometimes had a Sense of his Presence without the Use of this Ceremony, so as the Understanding given him of God made him justly reject the false Notions of Transubstantiation and Consubstantiation, though he knew not what to establish instead of them, if he had fully waited in the [134]Light that makes all Things manifest, and had not laboured in his own Comprehension to settle upon that external Ceremony, by affixing the spiritual Presence as chiefly or principally, though not only, as he well knew by Experience, there, or especially to relate to it, he might have further reached unto the Knowledge of this Mystery than many that went before him.
[134] Ephes. 5. 13.