4. Then again, it is a comfortable, a sweet and delightful thing, the
the sacrament we are as verily partakers of the body and blood of Christ, as we are of the bread and wine. Our souls have as much spiritual growth by Christ, and his benefits, as our bodies have by the outward elements. He feeds us with himself; he esteems and prizeth our souls that are bought with his blood, so that he thinks no food good enough but his own body and blood. What a gracious sweet love is this! He is both the inviter and the banquet, and all. He invites us to himself.
3. There is a loveliness likewise in all other ordinances that belong to the church; as in the good order and government of the church, in purging the church of offenders; the discipline that is in the church, which is as the snuffers in the sanctuary to purge the lights; so that there should be a casting out of persons that are openly scandalous.
The lights should be purged, the temple should be cleansed, scandals should be removed, that God's house might be the more beautiful.
They are blemishes of God's house, open swearers and blasphemers.
Those that live in scandalous sins, they are spots in the assembly, they are leaven, and this leaven should be purged out; and where there is the vigour of this, there is a great beauty of the church.
Where these things are looked to as they should be, they are the bonds, and nerves, and sinews that knit and tie a church together. It makes a church wondrous lovely, the neglect of which makes the church as a garden overgrown. So you see how, in respect of the ordinances of the word, and of the sacrament, and this government that should be, that the house of God is a beautiful place.
4. Then again, it is a comfortable, a sweet and delightful thing, the praises of God. It is a marvellous sweet thing, when all as one man hear together, pray together, sing together hymns, and spiritual songs, and praise God together, and receive the sacrament together, all as one man,—what a comely thing is this to a spiritual eye! Every
Christian hath a beauty severed in himself; but when all meet together, this is more excellent. As we say of the via lactea, or milky way in the heavens (we call it so), it is nothing but a deal of light from a company of little stars, that makes a glorious lustre. So if there be a