COSIN, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR.-Collection of Private Devotions. Prayers before the Sacrament.

I. ALMIGHTY LORD, who hast of Thine infinite mercy vouchsafed to ordain this dreadful Sacrament for a perpetual memory of that blessed Sacrifice which once Thou madest for us upon the cross; grant me, with such diligent remembrance, and such due reverence, to assist the holy celebration of so heavenly and wonderful a mystery, that I may be made worthy by Thy grace to obtain the virtue and fruits of the same, with all the benefits of Thy precious death and Passion, even the remission of all my sins, and the fulness of all Thy graces; which I beg for Thy only merits, who art my only SAVIOUR, GOD from everlasting, and world without end. Amen.

II. O LORD, our heavenly FATHER, Almighty and everlasting GOD, regard, we beseech Thee, the devotion of Thy humble servants, who do now celebrate the memorial which Thy Son our SAVIOUR hath commanded to be made in remembrance of His most blessed Passion and Sacrifice, that by the merits and power thereof, now represented before Thy divine Majesty, we and all Thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins, and be made partakers of all other the benefits of His most precious death and passion, together with His mighty resurrection from the earth, and His glorious ascension into heaven, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the HOLY GHOST, ever one GOD, world without end. Amen.

III. Be pleased, O GOD, to accept of this our bounden duty and service, and command that the prayers and supplications, together with the remembrance of CHRIST'S Passion, which we now offer up unto Thee, may be received into Thy heavenly tabernacle; and that thou, not weighing our own merits, but looking upon the blessed Sacrifice of our SAVIOUR, which was once fully and perfectly made for us all, mayest pardon our offences, and replenish us with Thy grace and heavenly benediction, through the same JESUS CHRIST Our LORD.

ID.-Notes on the Common Prayer1.

"A perpetual memory."] . . . It is peculiar to this celebration, that the death of our LORD is commemorated therein, not by bare words, as in other prayers, but also by certain sacred symbols, signs, and sacraments, which, according to St. Austin, are a sort of "verba visibilia." "Nam dum frangitur hostia," &c. (Lib. 19. cont. Faust. cap. 16.)

There is indeed a remembrance and a prayer, both within and without this most holy Sacrament; because the body of CHRIST, which was delivered to death, is exhibited therein; and besides, by symbolical or sacramental actions, the delivery of His Body, and the effusion of His Blood, are figured out; therefore the ancients love to call the commemoration peculiar to this Sacrament, a "Commemorative Sacrifice," and the prayer, an “ Oblation" both these words being taken properly, but in an improper and large or metaphorical signification. It is a known passage, that of St. Austin in his Epistle to Boniface, "Die Dominico dicimus." "Now by the same figure as CHRIST is said to have risen that day by which the remembrance of his resurrection is celebrated, so is He said to be sacrificed in the Eucharist, because therein the memory of His Sacrifice is performed:" and likewise that place in Fulgentius is remarkable, de Fid. ad Pet. cap. 19. Firmissimè tene, &c... Euseb. Demonstr. Evang. lib. 2. sub fin. Ejus Sacrifici memoriam, &c.

It pleased the Synod at Trent (not long after this Liturgy of ours was published) to lay their curse (their "Anathema") upon all them that held the "celebration of this Sacrament to be made a commemoration only of CHRIST's Sacrifice upon the cross; or that said, it was not a true propitiatory Sacrifice, but a Sacrifice only of praise and thanksgiving; or that taught any more, that this Sacrifice profited none but those who communicate of it, and was not truly offered up for the sins, pains, and satisfactions of the living and the dead." Sess. 22. For thus

MS. Notes collected by Bishop Cosin, and written in an interleaved Common Prayer Book, in the Bishop of Durham's Library, printed 1636. See Additional Notes, in Nicholls on the Common Prayer.

they declared themselves in ambiguous words, which, as they may have a right and true sense put upon them, so are they capable of a wrong and a false, if they intended them (as they did) against us. For we do not hold this celebration to be so naked a commemoration of CHRIST'S Body given to death, and of His Blood there shed for us; but that the same Body and Blood is present there in this commemoration (made by the Sacrament of bread and wine) to all that faithfully receive it: nor do we say, it is so made a Sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, but that, by our prayers also added, we offer and present the death of CHRIST to God, that for His death's sake we may find mercy; in which respect we deny not this commemorative Sacrifice to be propitiatory. The receiving of which Sacrament, or participating of which Sacrifice exhibited to us, we say is profitable only to them that receive it, and participate of it; but the prayers that we add thereunto, in presenting the death and merits of our SAVIOUR to GOD, is [are] not only beneficial to them that are present, but to them that are absent also, to the dead and living both, to all true members of the Catholic Church of CHRIST; but a true real presence and propitiatory Sacrifice of CHRIST, toties quoties, as this Sacrament is celebrated, which is the Popish doctrine, and which cannot be done without killing of CHRIST SO often again, we hold not; believing it to be a false and blasphemous doctrine, founding ourselves upon the Apostle's doctrine, that CHRIST was sacrificed but once, and that now He dieth no more.-p. 46.

"Do this in remembrance"-" Drink this in remembrance."] That is, of CHRIST put to death, and sacrificed for us upon the cross, which is the Sacrifice which He truly and properly once made, and whereof we only make a commemoration or representation, toties quoties, as often as we celebrate this His Sacrament, and observe the precepts which He gave us about it.

But as much as the breaking of bread or the pouring out of wine, or the mystical taking of the Body and Blood of CHRIST, is far different from being the true suffering and death of our LORD, and the separation of the Soul from our LORD's Body, so is the Sacrifice of the Eucharist far from being a Sacrifice of a proper and strict nomination; and this denominated from that only extrinsically as the image of its prototype.-p. 48.

"This our Sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,"] i. e. this Sacrifice of our Eucharist. In which regard, and in divers other besides, the Eucharist may, by allusion, analogy, and extrinsical denomination, be fitly called a Sacrifice, and the LORD's table an Altar; the one relating to the other; though neither of them can be strictly and properly so termed.

It is the custom of Scripture to describe the service of God under the New Testament, be it either internal or external, by the terms which otherways most properly belonged to the Old ; as "immolation," "offering," "sacrifice," and "altar." And, indeed, the Sacrament of the Eucharist carries the name of a Sacrifice; and the table, whereon it is celebrated, an altar of oblation, in a far higher sense, than any of their former Sacrifices did, which were but the types and figures of those services, that are performed in recognition and memory of CHRIST'S One Sacrifice, once offered upon the altar of His cross. The prophecy of Malachi, concerning the Church under the New Testament (" My name is great among the Gentiles, and they shall offer a sacrifice unto me, a pure oblation" Mal. i. 10), applied by the Doctors of the Roman Church to their proper Sacrifice (as they call it) of the Mass, is interpreted and applied by the ancient Fathers, sometimes in general to all the acts of our Christian religion, and sometimes in particular to the Eucharist; that is, the act of our prayers and thanksgiving for the Sacrifice of CHRIST once made for us upon the cross (as here we use in the Church of England), Hieron. in hunc locum, &c. ... The Church of England herein followeth the Holy Scriptures, and the ancient Fathers. Psal. 1. 14. Hos. xiv. 3. Heb. xiii. 15, &c. ...

"That by the merits and death," &c.] "Insigne admodum Sacrificii genus," &c. A very excellent kind of Sacrifice is this for to beseech and pray to God the Father by CHRIST's death and merits, is nothing else, but to offer CHRIST and CHRIST'S death and merits to God the Father; therefore, in the celebration of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, God's Son and His Son's death (which is the most true Sacrifice) is represented by us to God the Father, and by the same representation, commemoration, and obtestation, is " offered ;" and that (as will appear from what will be afterwards said) for the living and for the dead,

i. e. for the whole Church: for, as CHRIST Himself, now He is in heaven, does appear in the presence of God for us, making intercession for us, (Heb. ix. 20, Rom. viii. 34.) and does present and offer Himself and His death to GOD; so also the Church upon earth, which is His body, when it beseeches GOD for His sake and His death, does also represent and offer Him, and His death, and consequently that Sacrifice which was performed on the cross: for no one is so blind, as not to see the difference between a "proper offering," which was once performed by His death on the cross, and between an "improper offering," which is now made either in heaven, by that His appearance on our behalf, or here on earth, by prayers and representation, or obtestation, or commemoration, there being only the same common name for these, but a very wide difference in the things themselves. But if any one does consider the true nature of a Sacrifice, he will find, that to have a live thing which is offered to God destroyed, is not a Sacrifice properly so called, but improperly only, and by external denomination.

It appears therefore how this may be called a Sacrifice, and how it may not; which is to be observed; for if we take a Sacrifice properly and formally, whether for the action of sacrificing (as it is at this day taken by the Roman priests,) then truly, although, by the commemoration and representation, it be the same numerical Sacrifice with that which was offered on the cross, yet the action itself, or the oblation which is now made by us in the Eucharist, agrees neither in species nor genus with the oblation or immolation which was on the cross. For there is no form or reason of the oblation given, which can be unequivocally predicated of that; for upon the cross the oblation was made by a true destruction and death of the live thing, without which no Sacrifice properly, so called, can be; but in our Eucharist there is a Sacrifice, made by prayers a commemoration, and a representation, which is not properly a Sacrifice. But nothing hinders, but that the Eucharist may be accounted and called the commemorative Sacrifice of the proper Sacrifice of the death of CHRIST, which our LORD Himself hath taught us, when He said, “This do in remembrance of Me."

"That we and all Thy whole Church may obtain remission of