Justin*, Origen †, Cyprian ‡, Nazianzen §, Basil, Jerome ¶, Of all others, which I have not found pressed by former authors, that of our Albinus or Alcuinus, Beda's learned scholar, who lived in the time of Charles the Great, seems to me most full and pregnant: Hoc est, ergo, &c: "This is, therefore, to eat that flesh, and to drink that blood; to remain in Christ and to have Christ remaining in us so as he, that remains not in Christ, and in whom Christ remaineth not, without doubt doth not spiritually eat his flesh; although, carnally and visibly, he chew the sacrament of his Body and Blood with his teeth ¶¶: but, rather, he eats and drinks the sacrament of so great a thing, unto his own judgment; because he presumed to come unclean unto those sacraments of Christ: which none can take worthily but the clean." Thus he. Neither is this his single testimony, but such as he openly professeth the common voice of all his predecessors ***. And, a little after, upon those words, The flesh profiteth nothing, he addeth; "The flesh profiteth nothing, if ye understand the flesh so to be eaten as other meat; as that flesh, which is bought in the shambles.' This is the ordinary language of Antiquity: whereof we may truly say, as the Disciples did of Christ, Behold, now thou speakest plainly, and speakest no parable; John xvi. 29. At last, ignorance and misunderstanding brought forth this monster of opinion; which superstition nursed up, but fearfully and obscurely, and not without much scope of contrary judgments; till after Pope Nicholas had made way for it, in his proceedings against Berengarius (by so gross an expression as the Gloss is fain to put a caveat upon) anno 1060. The Lateran Council authorized it for a matter of faith, anno 1215. Thus young is Transubstantiation. son shew how erroneous. Let Scripture and Rea SECT. 2. Transubstantiation, against Scripture. WERE it not, that men do wilfully hoodwink themselves with their own prejudice, the Scripture is plain enough. For, the mouth, that said of bread, This is my Body, said also of the same body, My flesh is meat indeed †††, long before there can be any plea of transubstantiation; and, I am the bread, that came down from hea In Epitaph. Cæsarii, et ad Cives Nazian. De Cœnâ Dom. Isa. Ixvi. ** Lib. viii. de Trin. + In Joan. 1. iii. c. 34. §§ Lib. de Corp. et Sang. &c. bus premat, &c. ttt John vi. 55. Albin. in Joan. c. 6. [ In + Hom. 27. ¶¶ Denti ***Sicut etiam ante nos intellexerunt homines Dei. Ibid, ven; John vi. 51 so was he manna to the Jews, as he is bread to us. And, St. Paul says of his Corinths, Ye are the body of Christ; 1 Cor. xii. 27. yet not meaning any transmutation of substance. And, in those words, wherein this powerful conversion is placed, he says only, This is; Matt. xxvi. 26. not, this is transubstantiate: and, if, while he says, This is, he should have meant a Transubstantiation, then it must needs follow, that his Body was transubstantiate before he spake; for This is, implies it already done. He adds, This is my Body: his true, natural, human Body was there with them, took the bread, brake it, gave it, ate it if the bread were now the Body of Christ, either he must have two bodies there, or else the same body is by the same body taken, broken, eaten; and is, the while, neither taken, nor broken, nor eaten. Yet, he adds, which is given for you; Luke xxii. 19: this was the Body which was given for them, betrayed, crucified, humbled to the death; not the glorious Body of Christ, which should be capable of ten thousand places at once, both in heaven and earth; invisible, incircumscriptible. Lastly, he adds, Do this in remembrance of me remembrance implies an absence; neither can we more be said to remember that which is in our present sense, than to see that which is absent. Besides, that the great Doctor of the Gentiles tells us, that, after consecration, it is Bread, which is broken and eaten; 1 Cor. xi. 26 neither is it less than five times so called, after the pretended change. Shortly, Christ, as man, was, in all things, like to us, except sin; Heb. ii. 17: and our human body shall be once like to his glorious Body. The glory, which is put upon it, shall not strip it of the true essence of a body: and, if it retain the true nature of a body, it cannot be, at the same instant, both above the heavens and below on earth, in a thousand distant places. He is locally above: for, The heavens must receive him, till the times of the restitution of all things; Acts iii. 21. He is not, at once, in many distant places of the earth: for, the angel, even after his Resurrection, says, He is not here; for he is risen; Matt. xxviii. 6. SECT. 3. Transubstantiation, against Reason. NEVER did or can Reason triumph so much, over any prodigious paradox, as it doth over this. Insomuch, as the patrons of it are fain to disclaim the sophistry of reason, and to stand upon the suffrages of faith, and the plea of miracles. We are not they, who, with the Manichees *, refuse to believe Christ, unless he bring reason. We are not they, who think to # Aug. de Util. Cred. c. 14. 254 lade the sea, with an egg-shell; to fathom the deep mysteries of religion, with the short reach of natural apprehension. We know there are wonders in divinity, fit for our adoration; not fit for our comprehending: but, withal, we know, that, if some theological truths be above right reason, yet never any against it; for all verity complies with itself *, as springing from one and the same fountain. This opinion, therefore, we receive not: not because it transcends our conceit; but because we know it crosseth both true reason and faith. It implies manifest contradiction†: in that it refers the same thing to itself, in opposite relations; so as it may be, at once, present and absent, near and far off, below and above. It destroys the truth of Christ's human Body: in that it ascribes quantity to it, without extension, without locality ; turning the flesh into spirit, and bereaving it of all the properties of a true body; those properties, which, as Nicetas truly §, cannot, so much as in thought, be separated from the essence of the body. Insomuch, as Cyril can say, "If the Deity itself were capable of partition, it must be a body: and if it were a body, it must needs be in a place, and have quantity and magnitude; and, thereupon, should not avoid circumscription." It gives a false body to the Son of God: making that, every day, of bread, by the power of words, which was made once, of the substance of the Virgin, by the Holy Ghost. It so separates accidents from their subjects, that they not only can subsist without them, but can produce the full effects of substances: so as bare accidents are capable of accidents; so as, of them, substances may be either made or nourished. It utterly overthrows, which learned Cameron makes the strongest of all reasons, the nature of a Sacrament: in that it takes away, at once, the sign, and the analogy betwixt the sign and the thing signified: the sign, in that it is no more bread, but accidents; the analogy, in that it makes the sign to be the thing signified. Lastly, it puts into the hands of every priest, power to do, every day, a greater miracle, than God did in the creation of the world: for, in that, the Creator made the creature; but, in this, the creature daily makes the Creator. Since, then, this opinion is both new, and convinced to be grossly erroneous by Scripture and Reason, justly have we professed our detestation of it; and, for that, are unjustly ejected. * συναληθεύει. + Quod cùm affirmatur negatur, impossibile est, et implicat contradictionem. Cassan. in Implic. Contradict. + Spatia locorum tolle corporibus. Aug. Ep. 57. Nicetas, in Nazianz. Orat. de Pentec. Quidem ne cogitatione àæɛoniýac Dai, &c. Sic et Aug. Tolle ipsa corpora qualitatibus, &c. Nam si verè sectionem et partitionem Divina Natura reciperet, &c. Cyril, Alex. Tom. 2. Dialog. de Trin. lib. ii. Resp. ad Epist. Viri Docti. CHAP. IV. ON THE HALF-COMMUNION. SECT. 1. The Newness of the Half-Communion. THE Novelty of the HALF SACRAMENT, or DRY COMMUNION, delivered to the Laity, is so palpable, as that the patrons of it, in the presumptuous Council of Constance, profess no less*. Licet Christus &c" Although Christ," say they, "after his Supper, instituted and administered this venerable Sacrament, under both kinds of bread and wine, &c :" Licet, in primitivá &c : " Although, in the Primitive Church, this Sacrament were received by the faithful under both kinds :" Non obstante, &c. "Yet this custom, for the avoiding of some dangers and scandals †, was, upon just reason, brought in, that Laics should receive only under one kind; and those, that stubbornly oppose themselves against it, shall be ejected, and punished as heretics." Now this Council was but in the year of our Lord God, 1453. Yea, but these Fathers of Constance, however they are bold to control Christ's law by custom; yet, they say it was consuetudo diutissimè observala; "a custom very long observed:”— True: but the full age of this diutissimè is openly and freely calculated by their Cassander §. Satis constat &c: "It is apparent enough, that the Western or Roman Church, for a thousand years after Christ, in the solemn and ordinary dispensation of this sacrament, gave both kinds of bread and wine to all the members of the Church: a point, which is manifest by innumerable ancient testimonies, both of Greeks and Latins; and this they were induced to do by the example of Christ's institution." Quare non temerè, &c: "It is not, therefore," saith he, "without cause, that most of the best Catholics, and most conversant in the reading of ecclesiastica! writers, are inflamed with an earnest desire of obtaining the cup of the Lord; that the sacrament may be reduced to that ancient custom and use, which hath been, for many ages, perpetuated in the Universal Church." Thus he. We need no other advocate. Yea, their Vasquez draws it yet lower: Negare non c: "We cannot deny, that, in the Latin Church, there was the use of both Const. Synod, sess. 13. de Burgo. 4. partis cap. 8. Sacr. &c. ↑ Inter alia, propter periculum effusionis. Jo. Cassand. Cons. de Útrâque Spec. Ibid. kinds; and, that it so continued, until the days of St. Thomas; of God 1260." which was about the Thus it was in the Roman Church. year * But, as for the Greek, the world knows it did never but communicate under both kinds. These open confessions spare us the labour of quoting the several testimonies of all ages. Else it had been easy to shew in the Liturgy of St. Basil and Chrysostom "Vouchsafe, O Lord, to give us thy the Priest was wont to pray, Body and thy Blood; and, by us, to thy people:" how, in the Order of Rome +, the Archdeacon, taking the chalice from the Bishop's hand, confirmeth all the receivers with the Blood of our Lord: and, from Ignatius's ‡ êv TоTÝρION TOTS ORO, "one cup distributed to all," to have descended along through the clear records of St. Cyprian, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustin, Leo, Gelasius, Paschasius, and others, to the very time of Hugo and Lombard, and our Halensis; and, to shew, how St. Cyprian & would not deny the Blood of Christ to those, that should shed their blood for Christ; how St. Austin |, with him, makes a comparison, betwixt the blood of the legal sacrifices which might not be eaten, and this blood of our Saviour's sacrifice which all must drink. But, what need allegations, to prove a yielded truth? so as this halving of the sacrament is a mere Novelty of Rome; and such a one, as their own Pope Gelasius sticks not to accuse of no less than sacrilege ¶. SECT. 2. Half-Communion, against Scripture. NEITHER shall we need to urge Scripture, when it is plainly confessed by the late Councils of Lateran and Trent, that this practice varies from Christ's institution. Yet the Tridentine Fathers have left themselves this evasion **, That, "however our Saviour ordained it in both kinds, and so delivered it to his Apostles; notwithstanding, he hath not, by any command, enjoined it to be so received of the Laity :" not considering, that the charge of our Saviour is equally universal in both.: to whom he said Take, and eat; to the same also he said Drink ye all of this; so as, by the same reason, our Saviour hath given no command at all unto the Laity to eat or drink; and so this Blessed * Liturg. Basil. et Chrysost. In Ep. ad Philadelph. + Vid. Cassand. Cons. ubi suprà. § Lib. i. Ep. 2. Lib. de Cœnâ Dom. Quæst. in Levit. 57. Grat. Decret. de Consecrat. Dist. 2. chap. 12. Comperimus. Divisio unius ejusdem mysterii non sine grandi sacrilegio potest pervenire. **Etsi Christus Dominus &c non tamen illa institutio et traditio eò tendunt, ut omnes Christi fideles statuto Domini ad utramque speciem accipiendam astringantur, &c. Conc. Trid. sess. 5. sub Pio. anno 1562. cap. l. |