a priest can preside and minister in such a sacrificial feast as he allows the Holy Sacrament to be. Who but a priest can receive the elements from the people, set them upon the holy table, and offer up to God such solemn prayers, praises, and thanksgivings for the congregation, and make such solemn intercessions for them as are now, and ever were, offered and made in this Holy Sacrament? Who but a priest can consecrate the elements and make them the mystical Body and Blood of Christ? Who but a priest can stand in God’s stead at His table, and in His Name receive His guests? Who but a priest hath power to break the Bread, and bless the Cup, and make a solemn memorial before God of His Son’s sufferings, and then deliver His sacramental Body and Blood to the faithful communicants, as tokens of His meritorious sufferings, and pledges of their salvation? A man authorized thus to act ‘for men in things pertaining to God,’ and for God in things pertaining to men, must needs be a priest; and such holy ministrations must needs be sacerdotal, whether the holy table be an altar, or the Sacrament a sacrifice or not.” {110} To what conclusion, then, can we come but to that of the learned Archbishop Bramhall? “He who saith, Take thou authority to exercise the office of a priest in the Church of God (as the Protestant consecrators do), doth intend all things requisite to the priestly function, and, among the rest, to offer a representative sacrifice, to commemorate and apply the sacrifice which Christ made upon the Cross:”{111a}—or to the brief but weighty saying of St. Jerome? “Ecclesia non est, quæ non habet Sacerdotes.” {111b} Once more, brethren, we must pause, and as we do so, let us pray to Him from whom “cometh down every good and every perfect gift,” {111c} that He may give us His grace more and more to realize, and more and more to thank Him for the great privileges which He has vouchsafed to us in His “holy Catholic Church.” “We have an altar” to which we may come, the same blessed feast, of which we may partake, the same blessed sacrifice, in which we may join, which has ever been in His Church from the beginning. As the Israelites were taught to remember, as to their land flowing with milk and honey, that they “gat it not in possession through their own sword, neither was it their own arm that helped them;” {111d} Oh, so let us ever say with heart and voice, “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy Name give the praise, for Thy loving mercy, and for Thy truth’s sake.” {111e} SERMON VII. The Christian Altar. HEBREWS xiii. 10. “We have an Altar.”