suited for fulfilling the duties of the office: This fitness consists in the knowledge and approval of things true and necessary, in probity of life, and a facility of communicating to others those things which he knows himself, (which facility contains language and freedom in speaking,) in prudence, moderation of mind, patient endurance of labours, infirmities, injuries, &c.

XII. Election, or choice, is the ordination of a person who is legitimately examined and found [proba] good and proper, by which is imposed on him the office to be discharged. To this it is not unusual to add some public inauguration, by prayers and the laying on of hands, and also by previous fasting, and is like an admission to the administration of the office itself; which is commonly denominated" confirmation.”

XIII. 2. The primary efficient is God and Christ, and the Spirit of both as conducting the cause of Christ in the church; on which cause the whole authority of the vocation depends. The administrator is the church itself; in which we number the Christian magistrate, teachers, with the rest of the presbyters, and the people themselves. But in those places in which no magistrate resides who is willing to attend to this matter, there Bishops or presbyters, with the people, can and ought to perform this

business.

XIV. The object is the person to be called, in whom is required, for the sake of the church, that aptitude or suitableness about which we have already spoken; and, on account of it, the testimony of a good conscience, by which he modestly approves the judgment of the church, and is conscious to himself that he enters on this office in the sincere fear of God, and with an intense desire only to edify the church.

XV. The essential form of the vocation is, that all things may be done according to the rule prescribed in the word of God. The accidental is, that they may all be done decently and suitably, according to the particular relations of persons, places, times, and

other circumstances.

XVI. Wheresoever all these conditions are observed, the call is legitimate, and on every part approved: But if some one be deficient, the act of vocation is then imperfect; yet the call is to be considered as ratified and firm, while the vocation of God is united by some outward testimony of it, which, because it is various, we cannot define.

COROLLARY.

The vocations, or calls, in the Papal church have not been null, though contaminated and imperfect: And the first Reformers had an ordinary and mediate call.

DISPUTATION LX.

ON SACRAMENTS IN GENERAL.

We have thus far treated on the Church, her Power, and the Ministry of the Word ; it follows that we now discuss those signs or marks which God appends to his word, and by which He seals and confirms the faith which has been produced in the minds of his covenant-people. For these signs are commonly called “ Sacraments,”—a term, indeed, which is not employed in the Scriptures, but which, on account of the agreement about it in the church, must not be rejected.

I. BUT this word, "Sacrament," is transferred from military usage to that of sacred things: For as soldiers were devoted to their General by an oath, as by a solemn attestation; so likewise those in covenant are bound to Christ by their reception of these signs, as by a public oath. But because the same word is either taken in a relative acceptation, (and this either properly for a sign, or by metonymy for the thing signified,) or in an absolute acceptation, (and this by synecdoche for both,) we will treat about its proper signification.

II. A sacrament, therefore, is a sacred and visible sign or token and seal instituted by God, by which [obsignat] He ratifies to his covenant-people the gracious promise proposed in his word, and binds them, on the other hand, to the performance of their duty. Therefore no other promises are proposed to us by these signs, than those which are manifested in the word.

III. We call it "a sign or token and a seal, both from the usage of Scripture in Gen. xvii, 11; and Rom. iv, 11; and from the nature of the thing itself, because these tokens, beside the external appearance which they present to our senses, faciunt aliud] cause something else to occur to the thoughts. Neither are they only naked significant tokens, but seals and pledges, which affect not only the mind, but likewise the heart itself.

IV. We call it "sacred" in a two-fold respect: (1.) Because it has been given by God; and (2.) Because it is given to a sacred We call it “visible," because it is of the nature of a sign that it be perceptible to the senses: For that which is not such, cannot be called a sign.

use.

V. The author of these signs is God, who alone is the Lord and Lawgiver of the church, and whose province it is to prescribe laws, to make promises, and to seal them with those tokens which have seemed good to himself: Yet they are so accommodated to the grace to be sealed, as by a certain analogy to be significant of Therefore they are not natural signs, which from their own

it.

nature signify all that of which they are significant; but they are voluntary signs, the whole signification of which depends on the will or option of Him who institutes them.

VI. The Matter is the external element itself created by God, and therefore subject to his power, and made suitable to seal that which, according to his wisdom, God wills to be sealed by it.

VII. As the internal form of the sacraments is ex Twу Tрos τI, of things to their relation, it consists in relation, and is that suitable analogy and similitude between the sign and the thing signified which has regard both to the representation, and to the sealing or witnessing, and the exhibition of the thing signified through the authority and the will of Him who institutes it. From this most close analogy of the sign with the thing signified, various figurative expressions are employed in the Scriptures and in the sacraments: As when the name of the thing signified is ascribed to the sign, thus, " And my covenant shall be in your flesh." (Gen. xvii, 13.) And, on the contrary, in 1 Cor. v, 7, "Christ, our passover, is sacrificed for us." Or when the property of the thing is ascribed to the sign, as, "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst." (John iv, 14.) And, on the contrary, "Take, eat: This is my body." (Matt. xxvi, 26.)

remote.

VIII. The end of sacraments is two-fold, proximate and The proximate end is the sealing of the promise made in the covenant. The remote end is, (1.) the confirmation of the faith of those who are in the covenant, and by consequence the salvation of the church that consists of those covenanted members; and (2.) the glory of God.

IX. Those for whom the sacraments have been instituted by God, and by whom they are to be used, are those with whom God has entered into covenant, all of them, and they only. To them the use of the sacraments is to be conceded, as long as they are reckoned by God in the number of those who are in covenant; though by their sins they have deserved to be cast off and divorced.

X. But these sacraments are to be considered according to the varied conditions of men: For they have either been instituted before the fall, and are of the covenant of works; or, after the fall, and are of the covenant of grace. There was only a single sacrament of the covenant of works, and that was the tree of life. Those of the covenant of grace are either so far as they have regard to the promised covenant, and belong to the church while yet in her infancy and placed under pedagogy, [the law being her schoolmaster,] as were those of circumcision and of the pass

over; or so far as now they have regard to the covenant confirmed, and belong to the Christian church that is of adult age, as are those of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. The points of agreement and difference between each of these will be the more conveniently perceived in the discussion of each.

COROLLARY.

Though in some things sacrifices and sacraments agree together, yet they are by no means to be confounded; because in many respects the latter differ from the former.

DISPUTATION LXI.

ON THE SACRAMENTS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT,-THE TREE OF LIFE, CIRCUMCISION, AND THE PASCHAL LAMB.

I. THE tree of life was created and instituted by God for this end, that man, as long as he remained obedient to the divine law, might eat of its fruit, both for the preservation and continuance of this natural life against every defect which could happen to it through old age, or any other cause, and to designate or point out the promise of a better and more blissful life. It answered the former purpose, as an element created by God; and the latter, as a sacrament instituted by God. It was adapted to accomplish the former purpose by the natural force and capability which was imparted to it; it was fitted for the latter, on account of the similitude and analogy which subsist between natural and spiritual life.

II. Circumcision is the sign of the covenant into which God entered with Abraham to seal or witness the promise about the Blessed Seed that should be born of him, about all nations which were to be blessed in him, and about constituting him the father of many nations, and the heir of the world through the righteousness of faith; and that God was willing to be his God and the God of his sced after him. This sign was to be administered in that member which is the ordained instrument of generation in the male sex, by a suitable analogy between the sign and the thing signified.

III. By that sign all the male descendants from Abraham, were, at the express command of God, to be marked, on the eighth day after their nativity; and a threatening was added, that it should come to pass that the soul of him who was not circumcised on that day should be cut off from his people.

IV. But though females were not circumcised in their bodies,

yet they were in the mean time partakers of the same covenant and obligation; because they were reckoned among the men, and were considered by God as circumcised. It therefore was not necessary that God should institute any other remedy for taking away from females the native corruption of sin, as the Papists have the audacity to affirm, beyond and contrary to the Scriptures.

V. And this is the first relation of circumcision belonging to the promise. The other is, that the persons circumcised were bound to the observance of the whole law, delivered by God, and especially of the ceremonial law. For it was in the power of God to prescribe, to those who were in covenant with Him, a law at his pleasure, and to seal the obligation of its observance by such a sign of the covenant as had been previously instituted and employed: And in this respect circumcision belongs to the Old Testament.

VI. The Paschal Lamb was a sacrament, instituted by God [obsignandum] to point out the deliverance from Egypt, and to renew the remembrance of it at a stated time in each year.

VII. Beside this use, it served typically to adumbrate Christ the true Lamb, who was to endure and to bear away the sins of the world: On which account, also, its use was abrogated by the sufferings and [immolatio] the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, as it relates to the right; but it was afterwards, in fact and reality, abrogated with the destruction of the city and the temple.

VIII. The sacrament of the tree of life was a bloodless one; in the other two, there was shedding of blood: Both suitable to the diversity of the state of those who were in covenant with God. For the former was instituted before the entrance of sin into the world; but the two latter, after sin had entered, which, according to the decree of God, is not expiated except by blood; because the wages of sin is death, and natural life, according to the Scriptures, has its seat in the blood.

IX. The passage under the cloud and through the sea, Manna, and the water which gushed from the rock, were sacramental signs; but they were extraordinary, and as a sort of prelude to the sacraments of the New Testament, although of a signification and testification the most obscure, since the things signified and witnessed by them were not declared in express words.

COROLLARIES.

I. It is probable that the church, from the primitive promise and reparation after the fall, until the times of Abraham, had her