"The participation of the benefit of his resurrection": A Hackney Phalanx sermon for Holy Communion on Easter Day

From A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year, Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - an extract from a sermon for Easter Day. Here we see the lively sacramental piety of the pre-1833 Old High tradition, with the Holy Communion received on this greatest of feasts being the means by which our participation in the Risen Christ is "sealed and effected":

They began to apprehend the special operation and effects of his triumphant resurrection, as it formed a demonstration of the life to come, and as it became the earnest and commencement of that living intercession by which men were invested with the benefits of Christ's death as a sacrifice for sin, and enriched with every other privilege of his glorious kingdom. It was then that the measures of divine grace, which had been before applied in secret streams, and by smaller currents, began to be poured out, and openly entailed upon that Church which was quickened as one body, together with its head, and which, as a living subject, was from thenceforth to exert its vital powers. 

Surely we cannot have to seek far for the full meaning of that phrase which is applicable to the body of the Christian Church, when we consider how the participation of the benefit of his resurrection, and the influences of his grace, or in one word, the privilege of our communion with him, are sealed and effected by his own peculiar blessing upon those ordinances and those means which he hath instituted for that purpose in his Church. We know well that his own performance of his own part is expressly promised, and never will be wanting where the candidates for such benefits and blessings, put no hindrance through their own default.

After a break for the Easter octave, laudable Practice will return on 25th April.  

A blessed Easter to all readers.