THE STORY OF THE HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 381
In ver. 2 Charles Wesley wrote, And spreads salvation all around.
The hymn is based on Dr. Brevint s words, This Victim having been offered up in the fulness of times, and in the midst of the world, which is Christ s great temple, and having been thence carried up to heaven, which is His sanctuary, from thence spreads salvation all around, as the burnt offering did its smoke. And thus His body and blood have everywhere, but especially at this Sacrament, a true and real presence. When He offered Himself upon earth, the vapour of His atonement went up, and darkened the very sun ; and by rend ing the great veil it clearly showed He had made a way into heaven. And since He is gone up He sends down to earth the graces that spring continually both from His everlasting sacrifice, and from the continual intercession that attends it. So that we need not say, " Who will go up into heaven ? " since, without either ascending or descending, this sacred body of Jesus fills with atonement and blessing the remotest part of this temple.
Daniel Brevint was born in Jersey in 1616, studied at the Protestant University at Saumur, came to Oxford, and was elected Fellow of Jesus College in 1637. He was deprived of his fellowship by the Parliamentary Commissioners, and re turned to Jersey. He became pastor of a French Protestant congregation in Normandy, and chaplain to Marshal Turenne. In 1660 he returned to England, and received a stall in Durham Cathedral ; was made D.D. of Oxford, 1663 ; Dean of Lincoln in 1682. He died at Lincoln in 1695. His treatise on The Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice (1673) was written in Paris at the request of the princesses of Tourennc and Bouillon, who wished to see the subject of the Lord s Supper treated in a practical and devotional manner. Jerusalem, they said, is so flanked about with bastions that the temple can hardly be seen. The work was written without taking notice of con troversial matter, which the author had already discussed in The Depth and Mystery of the Roman Mass, and treated two years later in Saul and Samuel at Endor ; or, the new ways of Salvation and Service which usually tempt men to Rome, and detain them there, truly represented and refuted. Dean Brevint lives in Charles Wesley s Hymns on the Lord s Supper and Toplady s Rock of Ages.
Dr. Osborn points out how the instructions given in a
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