Fides Catholica, or, The doctrine of the Catholick Church in eighteen grand ordinances referring to the Word, sacraments and prayer, in purity, number and nature, catholically maintained, and publickly taught against hereticks of all sorts : with the solutions of many proper and profitable questions sutable to to [sic] the nature of each ordinance treated of / by Wil. Annand ...

Quest. 4. Whether the Sacraments of the Old differ from those of the New Testament?

As before this is not directly to be Answered, they differing and not differing in some points; they differ

• 1. In the matter and quality of their signs:* 1.1 theirs was a cutting off the foreskin, and in eating of a Lamb; ours are bread and wine.
• 2. In some external rites and ceremonies, they were to circum∣cise precisely the eight day, and eat their Lamb at such a time of the year; ours are tyed to no time, to no place.
• 3. In the easiness of the duties: compare our baptisme to their bloody Circumcision, and we shall be brought to bless God for our freedom.
• 4. In their duration: the Sacraments of the Old, were but to endure for a season: but those of the New Testament are not to be altered while the world endures.

They agree and are one

• 1. In their give: Christ the only Law-giver to the Church in∣stituted both the one and the other.
• 2. In their signification: what baptisme signifieth now, Circum∣cision signified; regeneration, or a being born again, and was by both held forth; Christ was signified by their Lamb, so he is by our bread.
• ...

• 3. In their application; they received theirs by faith, and our Sacraments are applied by the same grace.
• 4. In their end or effect; the invisible grace, goodness and mer∣cy of God were represented both to them and us, in the external and visible signs.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Syn. Trip. Pag. 864.