2. The time when Christ instituted it shews it not worthy of our
be thought contemptible after God's order, all the battering engines in the world shall prove ineffectual to gain the victory. If Jordan be appointed for the healing Naaman's leprosy, 2 Kings 5:10, the waters of Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, shall never be medicinal.
When God appointed lamps for the defeat of the Midianites, Judges 7:20, had Gideon slighted them as too weak, and assaulted them with his numerous host, he had received a rout instead of a victory. When
God orders any instrument of conveyance, all other means will be successless; and not only so, but God will be offended, because his institution is contemned; and what can then reasonably be expected from a slighted God?
2. The time when Christ instituted it shews it not worthy of our neglect. It was a little before his death: 1 Cor. 11:23, The same night in which he was betrayed he took bread.' Good men (much less would a good and bountiful Saviour) do not use to employ themselves in trivial concerns, when they are near expiring. That which was instituted, when wrath began visibly to march against him, Judas upon the point of betraying him, and is to continue till his second coming, is not without a desirable fruit. Had it been a needless ceremony, he would not have breathed out a word for its institution; had it been an institution of a light concern, some other time would have been chosen by him for the settlement of it. We may gather the necessity, as well as the value of it, from the time of its institution, which shews that there is something worthy in it of our esteem, and undeserving our neglect. The last words, actions, legacies of dying friends, are never thought matters wholly to be neglected. Joseph's brethren questioned not their pardon from Joseph for the injury they had done him, when they used so powerful an argument as the command of their dying father: Gen. 50:16, 17,
'Thy father did command before he died;' and shall we undervalue, by a wilful neglect, the commands of a dying Saviour, settled by him just before he went to remove the wrath of God from us upon himself?
3. The ends of it declare the unworthiness of neglecting it.