A SERMON CONCERNING THE Eucharist.  
DELIVERED ON EASTER DAY IN OXFORD.  
jacobus SANNASARIVS. Mentem animumque Deo non thura aut exta parate.  
LONDON: Printed for Robert Allot, and are to be sold at his Shop at the black bear in Pauls Churchyard. 1629.   

A SERMON CONCERNING THE EVCHARIST.  MAT. cap. 26. ver. 26, 27, 28. 
And as they were eating, Iesus took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to the Disciples; and said, Take, eat, this is my body.  
And he took the cup, and gave thankes, and gave it to them, saying, drink ye all of it:  
For this is my blood of the new Testament, which is  shed for many for the remission of sins.  
YOu haue already heard enough for your belief, and the solemn mysteriousnesse of this day, from the gospel red unto you. To speak more, were to derogate from the reverence of the one, and the authority of the other: neither is it possible for me in this part, to speak any thing equal or second unto the nature of a subject so transcendent, which poses the conceit and language both of men and Angels. A God born man at Christemas, crucified on good Friday,& early this day in the morning again raised from death in our flesh, to far more glory and majesty, then if we should on a sudden see the sun in fullheate and lustre strooke out of darkness, and like a bridegroom rejoicing to run his course. I can onely say in astonishment, O the height, O the depth, O the vnsearchablenesse of Gods ways, judgements, and knowledge! Thus I must say when I begin; and when I haue done, I haue again nothing to conclude, but wonder.  
In the mean while therefore, since I must break silence, I haue made choice of a lower Treatise, neither vnsutable to the time, and agreeing to the present occasion, concerning the presence or Christ in the Sacrament: This is, saith he, my body; This is my blood of the new Testament. These, and the like sacramental words, when they fell first from the lips of our saviour, seemed strange: but they haue since that time in the mutinous projecting spirits of later age, grown up with more terrible effects; in so much as the history of the Sacrament is a history of blood, fitter to efferate mens minds unto a battle, then to invite them by the rehearsal unto a sacrifice of peace and thanksgiving. The Chapters are divided with so many schisms, and penned with swords and firebrands-slaughters, warres and rumours of war are the Antichristian news. So that when we cast back our consideration hereon, wee cannot be without horror; to see the curse of them in the Prophet fallen vpon the most woeful estate of christendom. Let their table be a snare before them, and their prosperity their ruin. Concerning this body and this blood of our Eucharist, myriad of mens bodies haue been torn and broken, and utterly confounded almost into no elements; and of mens blood hath been  shed enough to colour the Ocean: boundless herein I might be, if I had pleasure in remembrance of ruin; but for this present I shall deliver unto you something else: and especially, the meaning of Christs sacramental words from himself and his Apostles, who likely should be their own best Commentaries. What saith Christ unto the people, and unto his Disciples in the sixth Chapter of the evangelist Saint John: tis the most proper gospel for the Sacrament, and therefore I will red it in part unto you, beginning at the 24 Verse. Now when the people saw that Iesus was not there, neither his Disciples, they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum seeking to Iesus. And when they had found him on the other side of the Sea, they said unto him, Rabbi, when camest thou hither? Iesus answered them and said: Verily, verily, I say unto you; ye seek me not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye ate of the loues, and were filled. Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for the meat that endureth unto everlasting life, which the son of man shall give unto you: For him hath God the Father sealed. This is to you the work of God, that ye beleeue on him whom he hath sent. I am the bread of life, he that cometh to me shall not hunger, and he that believeth in me shall never thirst. I am the living bread, I am the bread that came down from heauent: the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. Then the Iewes strove among themselves saying; How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then Iesus said unto them, Verily, verily I say unto yau; Except ye eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, ye haue no life in you; whosoever eateth my flesh and drinketh my blond, hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, so live I by the Father; and he that eateth me. even he shall live by me. This is the bread which came down from heaven: not as your Fathers haue eaten Manna, and are dead. he that eateth this bread shall live for ever. These things spake he in the Synagogue as he taught in Capernaum: Many therefore of his Disciples, when they heard this, said; This is an hard saying, who can hear it? But Iesus knowing in himself, that his Disciples murmured at this, said unto them, Doth this offend you? What then if ye should see the son of man ascend up where he was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you are spirit and life. parallel unto this place are many others, which I will also repear, because they agree to make up the same catholic sense and doctrine. Thus we red in Saint Luke the 22. Chap. at the 19, 20. and 17. Verses: He took the Cup and gave thankes, and said; Take this and drink it among you. And he took bread,& when he had given thanks, he broke it, and gave to them saying; This is my body which is given for you, do this in remembrance of me. again, Saint Paul in the first to the Corinthians, the 11. Chapter, beginning at the 23. Verse. For I haue received of the Lord, that which I haue also delivered unto you; to wit, that the Lord Iesus in the night that he was betrayed, took bread: and when he had given thankes he broke it, and said; Take, eat, this is my Body which is broken for you; This do in remembrance of me; For as often as ye shall eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye show the Lords death till he come. And according to this institution and paraphrase, wee haue also the phrase of the same Apostle in the 3. to the Romans. To be justified by the blood, that is, by Faith in the blood, and Passion of Christs righteousness, saith he, by the Faith of Iesus Christ, unto all, and vpon all that beleeue, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Iesus, whom God hath set forth to be a reconciliation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness by the forgiveness of sins, that are passed, through the patience of God.  
And so this apostolical and Euaagelicall foundation being laid with firm and choice stones, from the most sufficient quarry of the new Testament; a shane it were to build vpon it a doctrine of stubble and uncertain superstition.  
But without proverb and Allegory, now briefly to resolve the doubt, that we neither murmur or strive amongst ourselves, as did the Iewes, or fall back from Christ with too much astonishment, as did they, and at that first time many of his Disciples. The bread and wine in which we Communicate, is in Spirit and Truth; and forth-shewing, and remembrance, and by faith in his Passion, to us the body and blood of Christ: if we beleeue and remember assuredly that 1624 yeares since Christ was born for our redemption, crucified for our sins, and rose again for our glory: This is the doctrine taught by Christ, by his Apostles, and peradventure by all the greatest Doctors of the Church in the first thousand yeeres after them. I am not willingly ouerbold of any assurance and thtrefore I say peradventure, though a hard task it would be for an ordinary man to convince us if we omitted the modesty of that adverb, excepting some divines, who in all ages are like those some Orators of whom Philo judaeus speaks in this manner, {αβγδ}. They blow up their vulgar readers and auditors into strange imaginations; they leaven their Treatise with phantafies, and obscure the truth in a heap and aumber of toils and muthologies. Take away these excesses of Eloquence and rhetoric; and again, take away some few Spiders who from the leaf and blossom of Scripture choose to gather poison where the Bee sucks hony: According to that of Tertullian: Nec periclitor dicere ipsas quoque Scripturas, sic esse ex Dei voluntate dispositas vt hoereticis materias subministreut cum legam oportere hoereses esse, quae sine scriptures esse nonpossent. And then the sincere primitive antiquity of the Church shall deliver the same simplo truth, which I haue before related from the fountain of the gospel. Let Saint Austen for brevity be heard in the name of the rest. Si flagitium aut facinus videtur jubere Scriptura ne dubites figuratam locutionem. If the Scripture( saith he) seem to command any crime or wickedness, doubt not but the speech is figurative. It saith, Except you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, ye haue no life in you. Here is horridneffe and impiety in show commanded; therefore it is a figurative speech willing us to communicate in the passion of our saviour, and remember with desire and profit, that his flesh was for our sake crucified and wounded vpon the cross. again, Non dubitauit Dominus. Our Lord said this is my body, when he delivered the sign of it; and this third place of his is most eminent. Huius sacrificij caro& sanguis ante aduêntum Christi per victimas similitudinum promittebatur, in passione Christi per ipsam veritatem reddebatur, post ascènsum Christi per Sacramentum memoriae celebratur. The flesh and the blood of this Sacrifice( saith he) before the coming of Christ was shadowed in offerings of type and similitude; in the passion of Christ himself was given in very truth of our flesh and blood: after the Ascension of Christ we yet still celebrate the same sacrifice in a Sacrament of remembrance. Should we from the times of Saint Ansten fall down unto Alfred the famous founder of our university. Here we shall find a Sainted and most learned man, johannes Scotus Erigena, writing two books in confirmation of the self same divinity: and in the reign of King Aethelrede, we yet red Abbot Alfric, though a man papal enough, still instructing his Saxon cure, that Christ is no otherwise corporally this bread of the Sacrament in the new Testament, then he was in the old, Manna, a lamb, a lion, or a rock: yea, and their later Scotus also, saving the authority of the Roman Church in Pope Innocentius the thirds new Lateranc reed, Confesseth our doctrine to be intellectum facilem& veriorem secundum apparentiam; the more apparently true and easy sense of Scripture. Besides if we go unto their traditional arguments of sleshy live apparitions in the Sacrament, Alexander de Ales, as a thing notorious to the whole world, cannot refuse to say that many of them were done, humana procuratione& sort Diabolica, by knaves imposture and devilish magic. From all which we may boldly say in the confidence of an old English treatise to this same purpose. Here ye may see that this new determination about the sacred Dost is nought, for it reuerseth and grieveth the faith and the tradition of the greatest and the best men that ever were: and also it is perverting of the customable belief continued generally in Christs Church into the vnbinding of Sathanas, and that continueth ghit in faithful men, and shall into doomysday.  
If the Romanists had ears to hear either God or good men, they would shane to play the Manachies with Christs body, and contract him to the creatures of bread and wine, to enchant him to a residence in every abject, sordid, and contemptuous Friets Oaste; to make him solid in wine, liquid in bread, to be together flesh and blood both in the one and the other. But tis not impossible for their fancy to conceive this and much more, who could spy out the traitor Garnets head and face in a straw. And for their impiety, their covetous and ambitious atheism, they dare more Tis but alchemy to transubstantiate Christ: they also divide him for lazy respect, as tis most probable, severing the blood from the body in the half Communion of lay men; with pretence lest their long beards should peradventure draw up some drop of a Sacrament: they having long since shaved away all the honour and reverence of a man from their own cheeks, in hatred and despite of their fellow Ministers in the greek Church, refusing to stoop under the tyranny of the western Babylon. Tra● substantiat bread and wine into Christs body? with what reason? nay by what miracle? Entities say the Philosophers are not to be multiplied without cause, much less miracles. We see bread& wine in the Sacrament after the consecration, we smell it, we taste it, we handle it, we digest it, and yet is it nothing else but Christ? the very same body in which he suffered, the very same substance in which he sits at the right hand of God the Father in glory? Where be his lin●aments, where appears his majesty and br●ghtnesse? His face in the transfiguration did shine as the sun on Mount Thabor, when he appeared talking with Moses and Elias, unto the three Disciples. Or if from the Tragedy of the cross the Eucharist receive him, why should not the same miracle make his side again sand forth an issue of water and blood, to wash away the murders, incests, rapines and blasphemies, which for many hundred yeeres all secular principalities did with grief, behold and for fear dared not reuenge on the necks of the papal Clergy. Must we of necessity deny our senses, by whom we inform our reason, or shall we be irreligious? How then shall we beleeue the Apostle from an argument of sense, proving the joyful resurrection of our mortal bodies? We see the corn die and rot, and then spring up again into a blade, and stalk, and ear, laden with increase; and thence wee would gladly say with S. Paul: So shall our dead bodies be raised up, and spread themselves into all varieties of livelihood: into arms, and legs, and veins, and sinews and arteries, and then this mortal shall flourish immortally, as well in bliss as being. But the monks, and Popes, and Cardinals haue stolen away or antiquated, by a new awe of superstition, all the trust of sense and reason. Should men haue continued in their senses, and their reason, perfect of their creation, as God made them, they would never haue suffered Religion to be made so costly unto their devotion, for the kissing of old bones, shirts, smocks, muckingers, pantofles and petticotes, or other such like raff and trumpery, with the gains of which, the Roman Antichrist hath now long since built up, and dressed the superarrogant 'vice of his triple Diadem. I may say unto them as Cicero saith unto the stoics: His praestigijs regna nata vobis sunt,& imperia,& divitiae,& tantae quidem, vt omnia quae ubique sint, vestra esse dicatis; With these new fangled tynsill Diuinities you haue established unto yourselves kingdoms and Empires, and with the divell you cry out, that riches and all is yours. We see with open eyes within distance, and yet we must confess that we are deceived; we taste bread in the Sacrament, and poor lay people, if they will give us the cup also, though never so much dashed with water, with such food in quantity we can live, and bless God both for a temporal and spiritual sustenance,& yet when we thus eat, we must say that we eat nothing. For so says their bishop Gwymundus scholar unto Lanfrancke archbishop of Canterbury, who after his false Masters example, wrought anciently against the learned, religious, and noble Berengarius defending our truth. If to make experience wee do live vpon the consecrate bread and both digest and bedraught it, as nature uses: if by chance we see it nibled with mice, putrefied with worms, or devoured by dogs, he will haue us say and beleeue that all this is onely an illusion of sense, such as Mary Maudlins was, when she took Christ for the Gardener, and that the sacred bread, free from all corruption, is by the service of Angels, or self power, taken up into heaven. Lord! in the negligence of doting and profane Priests, how many Sacraments then, how many thousands and millions are treasured up to divinity? Christ in this multiplication would himself fill up the greatest part of his heavenly Mansions. After this first great unbelief and denial of ourselves, what manner of gainful impostures haue not been thrust vpon Christian souls? Transubstantiating also the linen corporal of the acrament into the very body and blood of Saint Paul and Saint Peter, to increase their staple of relics. The supremacy of Rome over all Princes and Nations, besides the turk and Tartar, who will one day bring home to her doors the just vengeance of that strumpets rebellion. So many limboes, purgatories, Peter-pencd annates, indulgencies, merits of pilgrimage, unnatural impossible vows, and the infallibility of the Popes chair: God, if it be his blessed will, raise up some magnanimous Prince to rescue Christian people from such a senseless stupidity as hath for a long time astonished them: either Prince or Prophet for so great a work of reformation and restauration of Christian peoples five sound senses cannot be effected without a minghty power of sword or miracle. But here peradventure some men will wish us to take heed, lest we vie the assurance of our senses against the authority of Scripture. The evangelists say, This is my body, This is my blood: and must not we of force say the like? Is the bread consecrate, is Christs body and the wine, is his blood not consubstantiate nor transubstantiate, but Sacramentally, figuratively, and effectually to as many as haue a faithful remembrance of Christs incarnation, unto which wee are confirmed by the sensible experience of the Apostles. And the Word was made flesh( saith Saint John) and dwelled amongst us, and we saw the glory thereof as the glory of the onely begotten son of the Father, full of grace and truth. And again, in his Epistle. That which was from the beginning, which we haue heard, which we haue seen with our eye●, which we haue looked vpon, and our hands haue handled of the word of life. For the life appeared, and we haue seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you the eternal life which was with the Father, and appeared unto vs.] That I say, which we haue seen and heard, declare we unto you, that ye may also haue fellowship with us, and that our fellowship also may be with the Father, and with his son Iesus Christ.  
The Sacrament was ordained for other purpose then to pose our senses. To callvs still into a remembrance of our reconciliation unto God the Father by the birth, merits, and passion of the son. To call us to a reconciliation of ourselves, one unto another. As God forgave us, so should wee here mutually exchange forgiveness. Certainly this brief advice and intention of a Sacrament is far more holy, then the preparation of him in Wiclifs time, who for the practise of the Sacramenr against the ensuing solemnity of Easter, did fit at the request of some friends seventy two questions and answers, aecording to the number of Christs Disciples or the worlds languages. The questions, some of them are these. If an angel or the soul of a dead priest in another mans body assumed, or a Priest blessed already in heaven may confect Christs body. If a Priest may consecrate one part of the host and leave the other vnconsecrate. If it be better to consecrate with huge, lusty, strong wine, then with small and feeble. Whither all the parts of Christ glorified bee in the Sacrament. Whither all that is consecrated in the bread be also in the wine. Whither more then four words be required to the consecration of the body, and more then five for the blood. What a Priest must do, if after the consecration he find no wine in the Chalice. What a Priest ought to do, if after the consecration, he see flesh or a little young boy in the Sacrament. What man not given over to a reprobate sense will not easily understand the illusion of these men, stuffing their missals and ceremonial books with so many impertinent vanities, so many foolish and dark imaginations, refusing as the Gentiles did before them, to see clearly the invisible power of God in the visibility of his creation, changing the truth of God into a lie, and worshipping and serving the creature more then the Creator, who is blessed for ever: with these propositions I desire not to move laughter, but both in myself and you a sad disdain of the most foolish Cimmerian darkness, which the Roman tyranny had drawn over our senses, our reason, our iudgement, and all the intellectual faculties of the soul, which in the dayes of our Ancestors was at the revolution of this feast to combat with so many meteors of divinity. The irreligion, the violence, the presumption of the Roman Church in this part is infinite. Christ said at the Passeouer that he would no more drink of the fruit of the Vine, until the kingdom of God be come; And they at all adventures in their kingdom haue hurled him into the cup. He said he would no more eat the bread, and they make him devour it. He took bread, and he took wine, and said, this bread and this cup is my new Testament. And they say no, here is neither this nor that, but in visible sensible bread nothing is, but Christ invisible. Wee see not that which is, and what wee see, that is nothing Yes, in this nothing with them, Christ is fully as long& broad, and corpulent as at the day of his passion, received in whole, and every part and crumb entirely into the narrowness of our mouths. They red riddles, and not Sacraments. Christ took bread, and broke it when he had given thankes, and gave it to his Disciples, and they take bread, and by consecration make a Metamorphosis of substance, and then aduise in their lewd treatises how they may break the white round accident of their sacramental wafer without plucking and tearing asunder a leg or arm of Christ. These and the like blasphemies when to establish against our Wicklesse, the Friers and Bishops had gathered themselves together at Poules in London, hear of that reverend man what happened.  
For I dare truly say, saith he, that if these things were sooth, Christ and his Seints dyed hecetycks and tho more parte of holy kirk vileued now heresy. And therefore devout men supposen that this counsel of Freris at London was with erthdyn: 
Earthquake.  for they put an heresy vpon Christ and saints in heu●ne, where-fore the earth trembled, and Faylande mans voice) answered for God, as it did in t●me of his passion, when he was dambned to bodily death. The earth ever shakes when any violence is pretended to his body. After he had once yielded up the Ghost of our mortality, his body resurrectiue both of himself and us, by that sign leads capriuity captive. He cried with a loud voice, and yielded up the ghost, and behold the vail of the Temple was rent in twain, and the earth did quake, and the stones were cloven, and the graues did open themselves, and many bodies of the Saints which slept arose, and came out of the graues after his resurrection. joseph of Arimathea, an honourable senator, desires in love to conserve his body in a new tomb, which he had hewed out in a rock, and for that purpose rolled a great ston to the door of the Sepulchre. The Priests and pharisees assembled to Pilate, and to make all more sure, seal the ston, and gard it with a watch, but in the dawning of this day there was again a great earth-quake; The angel descended from heaven, and rolled back the ston from the door, and sat vpon it, and for fear of him, the keepers were astonied, and became as dead men. ask our Stories, and also a third time when the Friers at London will imprison his body in bread, or drown it in the Chalice, the earth shakes anew. Let us therefore rather hear the voice of the angel unto the women; Surrexit, non est hic. Iesus of Nazareth, which on good Friday was crucified on the cross at jerusalem by the Iewes; which is, so much as in them lies, still crucified by the degenerous Romans in their prostitute Sacrament: he is risen, he is not here, he is entred into heaven, he is made higher then the heauens, he sits at the right hand of majesty in the glory and bliss of heaven. Gaze wee must not any more after a vision of Christs body, until in a second fullness of time it shall please him again to descend and repair the ruins of this world into an eternal renovation. even at that time the powers of heaven shall be shaken, and wee shall see the son of man come in a cloud with power and great glory. For the Lord himself, saith Saint Paul, shall descend from heaven with a shout, and with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of GOD; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then shall wee which live and remain be caught up with them also in the clouds, to meet the LORD in the air; and so shall wee ever be with the LORD. Wherefore comfort yourselves one another with these words. And again, until the consummation of that day, rejoice in the mystery of this, from the words of the same Apostle: GOD is manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of Angels, believed on in the world, and received up in glory.  
FJNJS.