I think this rubric, in what I conceive to be its true meaning, a precious doctrine, as fully acquitting our Church of all Romish superstition, respecting the nature of the Eucharist, in relation to the whole scheme of man’s redemption. But the latter part of it—“he doth eat and drink the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ profitably to his soul’s health, although he do not receive the sacrament with his mouth”—seems to me very incautiously expressed, and scarcely to be reconciled with the Church’s own definition of a sacrament in general. For in such a case, where is “the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace given?”
XI. Sunday after Trinity.
Epistle.—l Cor. xv. 1.
Brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached unto you.
Why should the obsolete, though faithful, Saxon translation of εὐαγγέλιον be retained? Why not “good tidings?” Why thus change a most appropriate and intelligible designation of the matter into a mere conventional name of a particular book?
Ib.
—how that Christ died for our sins.
But the meaning of ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν is, that Christ died through the sins, and for the sinners. He died through our sins, and we live through his righteousness.
Gospel—Luke xviii. 14.
This man went down to his house justified rather than the other.