of Christ and his Members The Church of Christ taken specially for the Elect who shall infallibly be saved never visible But taken for true Professours of the Faith must alwayes be visible though not conspicuous in comparison of other Religions or Heresies Chap. XXVIII Of the outward and visible Form of Christs Church Christ ordained One particularly What that was in the Apostles dayes and immediately after The vanity of such places of Scripture as are pretended against the Paternal Government of the Church Chap. XXIX Of the necessity of holding visible communion with Christs Church Knowledge of that visible Church necessary to that communion Of the Notes to discern the true Church how far necessary Of the nature or condition of such Notes in general Chap. XXX Of the Notes of the true Church in particular Of Antiquity Succession Unity Universality Sanctity How far they are Notes of the true Church Chap. XXXI Of the Power and Acts of the Church Where they are properly posited Of the fountain of the Power derived to the Church Neither Prince nor People Author of the Churches Power But Christ the true Head of the Church The manner how Christs Church was founded Four Conclusions upon the Premisses 1. That there was alwayes distinction of persons in the Church of Christ 2. The Church was alwayes administer'd principally by the Clergy 3. The Rites generally received in the Church necessary to the conferring Clerical power and office 4. All are Usurpers of Ecclesiastical power who have not thus received it In what sense Kings may be said to be Heads of the Church Chap. XXXII Of the exercise of political power of the Church in Excommunication The Grounds and Reasons of Excommunication More things than what is of Faith matter sufficient of Excommunication Two Objections answered Obedience due to commands not concerning Faith immediately Lay-men though Princes cannot Excommunicate Mr. Selden refuted Chap. XXXIII Of the second branch of Ecclesiastical Power which is Mystical or Sacramental Hence of the Nature of Sacraments in general Of the vertue of the Sacraments Of the sign and thing signified That they are alwayes necessarily distinct Intention how necessary to a Sacrament Sacraments effectual to Grace Chap. XXXIV Of the distinction of Sacraments into Legal and Evangelical Of the Covenants necessary to Sacraments The true difference between the Old and New Covenant The Agreement between Christ and Moses The Agreements and Differences between the Law and the Gospel Chap. XXXV Considerations on the Sacraments of the Law of Moses Of Circumcision Of the Reason Nature and Ends of it Of the Passover the Reason why it was instituted It s use Chap. XXXVI Of the Evangelical Sacraments Of the various application of the name Sacrament Two Sacraments univocally so called under the Gospel only The others equivocally Five conditions of a Sacrament Of the reputed Sacraments of Orders Matrimony and Extream Unction in particular Chap. XXXVII Of Confirmation What it is The Reasons of it The proper Minister of it Of Unction threefold in Confirmation Of Sacramental Repentance and Penance The effects thereof Chap. XXXVIII Of the proper Affections of Repentance Compunction Attrition and Contrition Attrition is an Evangelical Grace as well as Contrition Of Confession its Nature Grounds and Uses How it is abused The Reasons against it answered Chap. XXXIX Of Satisfaction an act of Repentance Several kinds of Satisfaction How Satisfaction upon Repentance agrees with Christs Satisfaction for us How Satisfaction of injuries necessary Against Indulgences and Purgatory Chap. XL. Of Baptism The Authour Form Matter and Manner of Administration of it The general necessity of it The efficacie in five things Of Rebaptization that it is a prophanation but no evacuation of the former Of the Character in Baptism Chap. XLI Of the second principal Sacrament of the Gospel the Eucharist Its names Its parts Internal and External It s Matter Eread and Wine and the necessity of them Of Leavened and Unleavened Bread Of breaking the Bread in the Sacrament Chap. XLII Of the things signified in the Sacrament of the Eucharist the Body and Bloud of Christ How they are present in the Eucharist How they are received by Communicants Sacramentally present a vain invention All Presence either Corporal or Spiritual Of the real Presence of the signs and things signified The real Presence of the signs necessarily infer the Presence of the Substance of Bread and Wine Signs and things signified alwayes distinct Chap. XLIII The principal Reasons for Transubstantiation answered Chap. XLIV Of the Sacrifice of the Altar What is a Sacrifice Conditions necessary to a Sacrament How and in what sense there is a Sacrifice in the Eucharist Chap. XLV Of the form of consecrating the Elements Wherein it consisteth Whether only Recitative or Supplicatory Chap. XLVI Of the participation of this Sacrament in both kinds The vanity of Papists allegations to the contrary No Sacramental receiving of Christ in one kind only How Antiquity is to be understood mentioning the receiving of one Element only The pretended inconveniences of partaking in both kinds insufficient Of adoration of the Eucharist Chap. XLVII The Conclusion of the Treatise of the subject of Christian Faith the Church by the treating of Schism contrary to the visible Church Departure from the Faith real Schism not formally as to the outward Form Of the state of Separation or Schism Of Separation of Persons Co-ordinate and Subordinate Of Formal and Virtual Schism All Heresie virtually Schism not formally Separation from an Heretical Society no Schism From Societies not heretical Schism Heretical Doctrine or Discipline justifie Separation How Separation from a true Church is Schism and how not In what sense we call the Roman Church a true Church Some Instances of heretical Errors in the Roman Church Of the guilt of Schism Of the notorious guilt of English Sectaries The folly of their vindications That th Case of them and us is altogether different from that of us and the Church of Rome Not lawful to separate from the Universal Church The Contents of the Second Book of the First Part. Chap. 1. OF the formal Object of Christian Faith Christ An Entrance to the treating of the Objects of Faith in particular Chap. II. Of the special consideration of God as the object of Christian Faith in the Unity of the Divine Nature and Trinity of Persons in that Chap. III. Of the Unity of the Divine Nature as to the simplicity of it And how the Attributes of God are consistent with that simplicity Chap. IV. Of the Unity of the Divine Nature as to number and how the Trinity of Persons may consist with the Unity and Simplicity of the Deity Of the proper notions pertaining to the Mystery of the Trinity viz. Essence Substance Nature Person The distinction of the Persons in the Trinity Four enquiries moved How far the Gentiles and Jews understood the Trinity The Proof of the Doctrine of the Trinity from the New Testament and the explication of
defines it 1. Qu. 8. Ar. 1. 2. The communication of one thing with another so many waies as a Body imparts it self to another so many may it be said to be Present to it And these ways are commonly resolved to be two First by immediate contact and conjunction Secondly by a Virtual or Effectual communication with it the Substance it self continuing remote So that though Christs body should be determined to one certain place in Heaven yet may it by its vertue communicate it self to us in the Sacrament and be said to be Present really though not Corporally after the manner of bodies in their natural state by contiguity And what we now say of the Subject of this Sacrament will hold no less in the Case of Participation of Christs Body and Blood in the Eucharist For as Christs Body may be said to be really though not Corporally Present and immediately So may it be said to be received Really and not Phantastically only though not Corporally after the manner that other bodies are received For they that affirm that Christs body is Corporally Sacramentally received do say if not what they know not themselves yet what no body but themselves can apprehend For either these terms are really distinct or Not. If they be not then are they either superfluous or at most explicatory one of another but this latter cannot be said because Sacramentally is more obscure than Corporally and Corporally signifies a much grosser degree of Presence than the Framers of this distinction will admit to agree with these Divine Mysteries If they be distinct whence shall we fetch the nature of this Sacramental Presence whenas there is nothing to be found in Nature to resemble or explain it but it must be described by it self And Sacramentally Present is no more than to be present in the Sacrament But what it is to be present in the Sacrament or how a thing may be said to be present in the Sacrament otherwise than in other Cases we shall ever be to seek and consequently never learn Therefore we must be constrained at length to reduce this large and unintelligible Presence Sacramental to one of the two old sorts of the Presence of Influence only or Presence of Substance it self or Suppositum So that either the Influence only of Christs Body and Blood should be found in the Eucharist and the vertue of them be therein communicated unto us or the very natural Substance also We have hitherto spoken of the Presence it self precisely taken from its Causes and manner external For according to Philosophers there is a Modus Essentialis and a Modus Accidentalis The Essential manner is simply to be after the intrinsique natureof a thing as the intrinsique nature and manner of a Body is to be Corporally and of a Spirit to be Spiritually that is As a Body and as a Spirit But as a Body ordinarily and naturally palpable and visible may remain a true real Body and yet not be seen or felt so may a Spirit remain a Spirit in substance and yet appear as a Body So that it is possible Christs Body may be present corporally in the essentials and formal nature of a Body and yet not appear in the accidental or separable formalities of a Body which are actually to be seen and felt at a competent distance These I call accidental because they may be wanting as well by reason of the defect of the senses which should perceive them as of the sensiblenes of such objects For a Divine power may take away the one as well as the other by impeding the sense though seeing the very nature and essence of a Body consisteth in being extended and quantitative it cannot be conceived how a Divine Power can divide them which mutually constitute one another though it may render them imperceptible to outward sense And so Christs Body may be in the Eucharist so far corporally as to have all real and essential modifications of a Body but not so Corporally as to appear in the proper forms of a Body But granting or supposing rather that Christs Body were in this Latter sense present in the Sacrament there appears no great reason why this should be called a Sacramental Presence more than that presence when he was with his Disciples at Supper and as the Scripture saith Vanished out of their sight Luk. 24. 31. that is as the word and sense import not translating his Body suddainly to another place but disappearing in that place or ceasing to be seen by them answerable to the contrary power shewn in his sudden appearing without any previous Act and standing in the midst of them before they V. 36. could be aware of it or suppose any such thing which was occasion of their great Affrightment and amazement supposing him to be a Spirit 37. But it is one thing to be Possibly and another Actually so to be And yet farther Actually for Christs Body and Blood so to be present and to be so Present as there should remain nothing substantial or material besides them and the Signs to be changed into the things signified by them absolutely and totally the shew or Accident only excepted So that the Question is double First Whether those Substances of Bread and Wine remain after consecration really the same they were before or be totally abolished Secondly It is inquired not so much whether Christs Body and Blood be really present in the Sacrament but whether it be really the Sacrament it self as it must necessarily be if so be that they be in such manner really present as there remains no other substance besides them For the former of these the knowledge of the Real Presence of Signs Bread and Wine do exceedingly conduce to the understanding of the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ under or through those Signs And it should seem that the Roman Advocates of the New sense of a Real Presence of Christs Body and Blood proceed not in the proper and natural method rightly to found their Doctrine For as according to them there must be in order of nature though not of time a Desition or abolition of the Elemental substances before there can succeed those Divine substances so should they have first by sound and sufficient arguments proved the destruction of the preceeding Bodies and then have inferred the succeeding But on the contrary They first presume on the Second upon what grounds we shall hereafter see viz That Christs Body is so really subsisting there and then conclude that the Elements are not there subsistent For he that holds that the Sacramental Signs do not exclude the Body and Blood of Christ doth likewise hold that the Body and Blood of Christ are not inconsistent with the Real Presence of the Elements It must not be denied that those texts of Scripture which are commonly alleadged to Parallel Christs words and consequently to give a more favourable sense than that of Transubstantiation do not exactly
to P. 14â— which they have no just title themselves being out of Christ This is gross enough and dangerous 19. In the Article of our Creed Sitting at the right hand P. 174. of God signifieth the inferiority of the Mediator in respect of the Father This wants a lusty grain of Salt 20. The vow of single Life is a snare or as the noose in the On Gal. 1. v. 7. haltar to strangle the Soul 21. The third Succession is of Doctrine alone and thus our Ministers succeed the Apostles and this is sufficient It is sufficient for the Peoples not Gods Ministers 22. If in Turkie or America or elsewhere the Gospel should be Id Gal p. 196 197. received by the counsel and perswasion of private persons they shall not need to send into Europe for Consecrated Ministers but they have power to choose their own Ministers from within themselves Because where God giveth the word he giveth the power also 23. The Child of God falling into persecution and denying Id. Gal. 1. v. 22. Christ is not guilty to condemnation because c. 24. If as Eusebius saith in his Chronicle Peter sate Bishop of Rome twenty five years then Peter lived in breach of the express commandment of God for so long time because the Jews were his special charge Absurd and untrue 25. We are born Christians if our Parents believe and not P. 235. made so in Baptism 26. The Sacraments are said to apply Christ in that P. 242. they serve to confirm Faith whose office it is to apply c. 27. All the works of Regenerate men are sinful and in the P. 381. rigor of justice deserve damnation Well therefore may he say this of unregenerate men but neither is it true so far of one or other but the not doing of such good works is much more damnable It is true properly that they do not of themselves save but not so that they damn 28. There be three parts of Penance Contrition of heart Id. Papist cannot go beyond a reprobate p. 396. Confession of the mouth Satisfaction in the deed All these three Judas performed 29. As long as a man hath his Conscience to accuse him of Ibid. sin before God he is in a state of Damnation as St. John saith 1 Ep. 2. 10. St. John saith not so 30. The Church of Rome teacheth that Original Sin is done Ib. p. 397. Advertisement to the Roman Church p. 622. Vol. 1. away in Baptism This is called a damnable Error as if only the Ch. of Rome held so and it were not unanimously held by the Fathers 31. That we believe the Catholick Church it follows that the Catholick Church is invisible 32. We esteem of Repentance only as a fruit of Faith and Reform Catholick p. 615. the effect or efficacy of it is to testifie the Remission of our sins and our reconciliation before God 33. There is a twofold conversion Passive and Active Ib. p. 613. 614. Passive is an Action of God whereby he converteth man being yet unconverted These are the Heterodox Dogmes which Mr. Perkins suckt in from Calvins Divinity upon whose sleeve he seem'd to have pin'd his faith notwithstanding Scripture is so vehemently pretended which will warrant none of them And by these credulously assented to and preached contrary to the mind of our Church by vulgar and lazie Divines who would take no care or pains to look into the Scriptures or the Doctrine of the Ancient Church but through such mens Spectacles have diversity of opinions been bred in the common peoples mind to their dislike of their Governours and at last such a rupture as hath wasted and almost consumed us But here I am to give the curious Reader notice least I may seem to mis-report any thing quoted out of Mr. Perkins according to the pages that upon examining them and comparing them on this occasion I find what I took no notice of at first reading of his Works that I followed two several Editions of his Works in Folio the one of the year 1626 and the other of the year 1631 which not having by me I could not rectifie but doubt not but they are to be found in one of them And now because I perceive the Papists triumph when they can find such blemishes in our Church and charge it with all these and such like which they may find among dissenters I shall set down likewise their principal accusations as I find them collected and summ'd up by Fitz-Simons Henricus Fitzsimon Brittannomachia minist l. 2 c. 3. and the rather because he professes to have taken them out of a much more wise and learned Adversary to us then himself Alanus Copus otherwise called Nicolas Harpsfield and they are these following 1. The first Error he layes to our charge is that we hold There are only two Sacraments This we stand to as commonly explained by our Church 2. Infants belong to the people of God before they are Baptized This indeed is the opinion of Sectaries which Perkins before cited might have led them into but not of our Church nor the Ancient Church as may appear most evidently from the testimony of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theod. Haerer Fab. l. 5. c. 28. Theodoret who in the behalf of the Catholick Church absolutely disowns unbaptized persons as Sons of God though they believed and embraced the Catholick Doctrine telling us that the Church would by no means suffer such to say the Lords Prayer accounting it an horrible thing for any to call God Father before he was baptized speaking thus This Prayer we teach not such who are not initiated but such as are partakers of that Mystery For none that are not initiated into that Mystery dares say Our Father which art in Heaven c. not having received that Grace of Adoption 3. The true Body of Christ is not in the Eucharist nor any thing but the substance of Bread Sure this fierce Accuser forgets himself Do we not also hold the substance of Wine remains in the Eucharist as well as that of bread Nay do we not profess * Christs Church Câ—techism Body and Bloud are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lords Supper And can they there be received unless they be there but the art of such rampant ignorant and malicious Factors for the Roman Church ever consisted principally in wilful bungling and by false stating of the differences between us and them to beguile the weak and unwary 4. That the Communion under both kinds is necessary It is as necessary under both as under one The contrary is the Sacrilegious Error of the Romanists 5. A Priest may not communicate alone Another grievous Error that we cannot indure Non-sense nor to see Christs institution bafled by such a ridiculous Communion unknown to Antiquity 6. It is unlawful to reserve or elevate the Eucharist Not simply as the Ancient Church did
when it retains its nature not otherwise but cannot determine possibly when the nature first begins to change to a destruction What infinite and grievous suspitions and scruples must evermore afflict the minds of Communicants upon conceit that the matter they so receive may have suffered such strange kind and degrees of composition that the nature of Wine is really lost and an artificial liquor not much to the eye or vulgar taste discernible taken in its stead to the nulling of the effects of the Sacrament and much worse where such a specifical Conversion of the Elements into Christs Body and Blood is maintained and received with answerable Faith and worship The distinction of Material and Formal Idolatry of which we may hereafter speak little redressing that monstrous evil And if we are not so indispensably and absolutely tied to the natures of things in this Action much less ought there to be such warm and uncharitable contentions about the condition form or qualities of those Elements which in no manner change the nature of them as Leavening or Unleavening or forming the bread after the common use or in such manner as may be thought least subject to prophanation in making the Bread into several Cakes or Wafers which though it nulleth not the Sacrament yet it corrupteth the Institution and End both in some measure For First it is certain Christ celebrated on solid usual bread and why should we upon private imaginations next to vain Superstition introduce another order than Christ pitched on and amend by fine contrivances what he but rudely laid down as we irreverently must suppose Again It doth seem more than an indifferent Ceremonie which according to St. Paul and after him the Fathers signified the Unity of Christ and his Members and of his members one with another by that one Sacramental Body visibly representing and exhibiting invisibly Christ in that One Bread And lastly That Ceremony of breaking Bread so much practised by Primitive Christians even in this Sacrament and thereby expressing Christs own proper Body broken for our sins a very Fruitful Reasonable and significant Action is altogether laid aside to the great injury of Christs institution and Christians edification Surely if any thing this is to make our selves wiser than Christ and to be subtiller and more zealous for his Majesty than he would have us which cannot be wiped off by that common refuge and reserve at pinching objections viz The Power of the Church For the Church has no Right what ever Power it may have to make alterations at pleasure upon no better grounds than were at the first known and neglected in Sacramental things though the nature of the Sacrament may remain inviolate For seeing the Sacramental Signs were ordained by Christ to call to remembrance the particulars as well as general of Christs Passion and the manner as well as the thing it self to the intent that the more deep and lively impression might be made thereof in our Souls to pare off out of presumption of the Churches Power and more reverent ministration and participation thereof the Ceremonies so immediately and significantly expressing the End of it and used by Christ himself and for ought doth appear for several Ages after is to invade the Rights and call in question the Wisdom of Christ himself And surely then The Breaking of Bread signifying the violence offered to Christs Body and the Powring out the Wine intimating the shedding of his Blood for us nothing can be more useful and therefore to abrogate these and invent and impose others upon pretences not unknown but rejected at the first Institution argues more superstitious presumption than sober Devotion CHAP. XLII Of the things signified in the Sacrament of the Eucharist the Body and Blood of Christ How they are present in the Eucharist Sacrament ally Present a vain invention All Presence either Corporal or Spiritual Of the Real Presence of the Signs ' and things signified The Real Presence of the Signs necessarily inferr the Presence of the Substance of Bread and Wine Signs and thing signified always distinct BUT thus far of the Signs The things internal and signified are yet of greater importance to our Faith and worship viz. the Body and Blood of Christ The several Disputes about which we shall reduce to these two General Heads briefly to be explained First the manner of Existence of them in the Eucharist And next the manner of Participation which two do mutually illustrate one another For as to the Real Presence it self I find no such real difference which may deserve discussion For surely If Christ or his Body and Blood be at all Present in this Sacrament they are really present For imaginary fictitious presence is no better than a Mockery unworthy of any Philosopher to admit and much more Divine Whatsoever is Really is or not all according to this account And therefore to say We All agree in the thing though we differ in the Manner of Christs Presence is to say no more and to draw no neerer at all to the composing of this difference than we may have any common Philosopher to joyn with us upon this granted that Christ is Present there for that must needs be really So that no Christian can deny the Real Presence absolutely but must presently interpret himself in some peculiar sense to himself And they that do so are wont to begin with a distinction of Sacramental and Corporal or as some Natural Presence For Sacramental Presence it being not at all heard of or known in Logick or Nature nor to be explained by any thing parallel to it out of this Mystery it self who can be the better for it Who can understand what is meant by it before he be resolved of the thing most of all question'd viz What is Sacramental Presence For unless we be cut off here and must not at all enquire What it is to be Sacramentally Present but take the notion at a venture and presume we know what in truth we do not we shall be as hard put to it as before For Sacramentally to be present doth not at all express the manner unless as some seem to mean by it such a Mystical presence that we know not what to make of and in this acceptation every unknown thing should create a new kind of being but imply all senses possible to a Sacrament So that if a man holds Christs body to be in the Sacrament Bodily and naturally this is certainly a Sacramentally and If he holds it to be there Spiritually it is likewise Sacramentally and so whatever other way we can reasonably conceive to be in the Sacrament it must be Sacramentally Sacramental Presence being as is said no one kind of Presence but common to all possible to the Eucharist if not to nature it self It will be more needful to distinguish between Christs Corporal Presence and Christ Corporally Present and there is good ground for to do so For if Presence be as Thomas
fit the Case For when the Scripture saith Christ is a Door or Christ is a Vine or a Lamb it is not the same formally as to say that a Lamb is Christ or a Door or a Vine is Christ Yet if that rigour must be observed in Scripture Propositions to have them true that without a Trope or Figure they must be understood otherwise we must be reproached to deny Scripture the foresaid speeches must as necessarily inferr a Transubstantiation of Christ into the Nature of a Door or Vine or Lamb as his bare words at the Celebration do inferr a Transubstantiation of the Elements into his Nature And no apparence of disparity can be here shown if so be Christs Literal meaning must be here urged as they do Now That the Signs which were before are Really Present in the Sacrament after Consecration doth appear from the most-Essential thing to a Sacrament A Sacrament we have defined to be a Visible Sign with Austin and infinite others I say a Visible and Real Sign and not Visibly Apparently or Seemingly a Sign or a Sign of a Sign as the deluding Specieses remaining after supposed Transubstantiation are said to be And it is an Impossible thing as is before shewed in the general treating of Sacraments that the Sign should be the thing signified For if some Sign could be the thing signified then something signified should be a Sign and so both wayes the Relate and Cor-relate should be the same too and two should be one and one should be two and if this may be what may not be or at least said to be For as to the instances given That in some Cases a thing may be a Sign and the thing signified it hath been showed how defective they are in that they are a Sign of the same nature perhaps or rather some qualification of it and not of the same thing numerically as the individual Sign in the Lords Supper is believed to be of that it is Therefore from hence they are put to their choice Whether of the two they will suffer the loss of the Sacrament or the absence of Christs Body in their sense For not only the nature of the thing now expressed require Sacramental Signs as well as the thing signified but the manifold Autorities of the Ancientest of the Greek and Latin Fathers have for this reason called the Sacramental Elements Signs Figures Representations Types Antitypes of Christs Body and Blood as might at large be shewed our Adversaries not denying it But what answer do they make to them The Modern Greeks as Cardinal Bessario who is herein followed by some more modern than himself Latinizing answer confessing that the Fathers Bessario Do Eucharist Sacramento often so speak but say they they speak only of the Bread and Wine before Consecration and not after Here is some wit in this shuffle and evasion but no truth at all For before Dedication and Consecration they are not Signs or Figures or Antitypes at all They have no more relation to the Body and Blood of Christ than the like Elements at our Common tables and therefore they must be understood to speak of them after Consecration But the Answer of the Scholastical managers of this controversy in the Latin Church shows less modesty and no more truth For Aūg. in Psal 3. they say St. Austin who calls the consecrated Elements a Figure of Christs Body spake not of every empty Figure but of a Figure of a thing really present All this we grant willingly viz that the Signs Sacramental are not Signs of things future or Absent This is nothing at all to the purpose And the Second answer is notoriously and boldly false saying That St. Austin might there speak as Manichee who denied the Real Body Contra Adamant C. 12. of Christ For it was in confutation of Manicheans And of Tertullians words who likewise calls the consecrate Elements Signs they make non-sense joyning head and tail together that they may really signifie nothing least they should signify that for which we alleadg them Tertullian saies Hoc est Corpus meum Id est Figura Corporis mei Figura Corporis mei saies one after his greater Doctors is referred not unto Corpus meum as an Fisher Jes explication thereof but unto Hoc in this manner Hoc id est Figura Corporis mei est Corpus meum i. e. This that is the Figure of my Body is my Body If it be not sufficient conviction of their Errour and confusion that they are driven to such unnatural tossing of mens words against common sense and Grammar and having so done to affect nothing but what is directly false or unintelligible as this Scholie is making the Figure and the Body the very same thing I confess I have nothing to say For this is the subject we have at present in hand That the Sign and thing signified must by eternal necessity be distinct but this opinion of Transubstantiation destroys this and destroying this destroys the Sacrament For whereas they say That the remaining Species supply the place of the Substance abolished and are Signs This cannot consist with the impossibility of such Accidents without a subject in that contrary to their definition they should stick and not stick to a thing in that they are Accidents their nature requires that they should have a subject and the nature of this mutation requires they should have none And where as they argue That what any Creature can do the Creatour can much more do and therefore if the Creature can sustain Accidents the Creatour God Almighty can I answer If the Creature could sustain Accidents without a subject then doubtless could God the Creatour but doth it follow that because the Creature can be a subject to them therefore the Creatour can also All that a Creature can Do the Creatour can do but all that the Creature can Suffer I trow the Creatour cannot But to be the subject to Accidents is a Passion and imperfection and no Action and therefore nothing can be concluded from hence Therefore they proceed one strain higher not doubting to say That what the Creature can do by its Passive Capacity the Creatour can do by his Active which if it did not imply a contradiction in nature itself I should easily grant but this it doth For first it is to make an Accident a Substance For t is the nature of a Substance to subsist of it self without the aid or support of any other thing distinct from it Not that the Secondary being can subsist without the First God himself but without any thing Created And therefore seeing that Substance it self cannot continue in its Being without Gods omnipotent hand supporting it this doth equalize the nature of Accidents to that of Substance in that it supposeth that Accidents by a divine power may subsist of themselves as well as Substance For substance cannot subsist at all without a Divine power and thus Accidents by a
Divine power should be of the nature of Substance but such confusion and havock in nature to bring in an unnatural Dogm is no ways to be admitted not out of any defect in the Divine Power but an incapacity of the Creature to be so order'd against its nature And as this Condition of Species subsisting or existing separately of themselves is contrary to their nature So the significativeness of these Species is contrary to Christs Intention and Institution which were to make a representation of his death and passion by Bread and Wine and not by the Similitudes of Bread and Wine And this is to be noted That when the Ancient Fathers both Greek and Latin do affirm that Christs Body or Blood are present under the Species and Forms of Bread and Wine they do not mean such Species as the Schools of Aristotle have introduced for I find not that they took any notice of them distinct from the subject to which they relate but they took them in a more plain sense for the thing it self so affected and formed and Under the Species signified with them as much as Under the Kinds of Bread and Wine Christs Body was present And they never destroyed the Sacrament it self to give an extraordinary Being to the Body of Christ therein CHAP. XLIII The principal Reasons for Transubstantiation answered AND If this be once made good That there is a Proper Sacrament remaining after Consecration it will be much less difficulty to agree upon the manner of Christs presence in the Sacrament For the doubt will not be so much about the Concomitance and co-existence of it with the Sacramental Signs as Whether that which we See with our eys and touch and taste be properly and not denominatively and Figuratively only the Body of Christ And in effect Whether it be the very Sacrament it self or whether only in the Sacrament The Doctrine of the Church of Rome determines not only that There it is but directly and expresly This it is and this we deny as that which indeed must include such a Transubstantiation as is by them affirmed and the chiefest grounds whereof we are now to examine And First from Scripture they are wont to argue and that from the Old Bellarm Lib. 1. Cap. 3. De Sacram. Eucharist Testament where are recorded many Types and Figures of Christ and particularly his Passion which were no less if not much more clear than the representations in the Eucharist if Christ himself be not there otherwise than Figuratively For the Paschal Lamb slain seems to represent Christs Passion more Lively and expresly than the Sacramental Elements Therefore if that the Sacraments of the Gospel might exceed them of the Law it is necessary that what was done there Figuratively only should be properly and really performed in our Sacraments Answ But first supposing Transubstantiation is Christ more clearly in the Sacrament than if there were no such thing Or can the Sacrament of the Gospel be said to be more clear for this when in truth it is more Mystical and abstrufe But though it be not more clear to the sense or Reason yet it is in it self more really present For otherwise the Legal Sacrament must have been only a Figure of this Figure of Christs Body and not of the Bertramus Body it self But the answer of Bertram to this about eight hundred years ago is sufficient to this purpose that both the Paschal Lamb and the Sacramental Elements both Figured and represented Christs body The former Christs Body future and its Passion and the other Instant as at the Institution or Part and compleated So that in truth a great preheminence there is in the Sacraments of the New Testament above them of the Old which is the thing contended for But Christ was really received in both The next Argument taken from Christs words in the sixth of John where he saith amongst many other things I am the Bread of Life And again Verily Joh. 6. 48. 53. 54. Verily Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood ye have no life in you For my Flesh is meat indeed and my Blood is drink indeed Is answer'd two ways First from a consent on both sides by some of the Learnedest That Christ spake not of a Sacramental Eating and Drinking of him but Ordinary in receiving him by Faith preached But because as many on both sides affirm that he pointed at the Eucharist in these words therefore I think it most reasonable and equal to take in both senses and that Christ intended the receiving of him by Faith in the word preached and in the Eucharist too And though Christs Flesh be meat indeed and his Blood drink indeed it doth not follow at all that it is properly so For things Metaphorically such are really though not Properly And Christ doth not say Caro mea est verus cibus or Sanguis meus verus est potus i. e. My Flesh is true meat or Proper My Blood is true Drink but My Flesh is Meat indeed and my Blood is drink indeed that is verily and really And besides the difference before intimated between these expressions and that at the Celebration of the Eucharist when he calls the Bread his Body is very great especially with the precise stickers to the Letter For according to these Christ Transubstantiated Bread into his Body but here according to the same Rule of interpretation he should convert his Body into Bread the words being alike operative But if Christ did at no time make a Transubstantiation of his Flesh or body into bread though he affirmed his Body to be bread What reason is there we should believe upon no better grounds than he affirming bread to be his Body should thereby change it into his proper Body A Third principal Argument is taken from the words of Christ at the Celebration viz This is my Body and This is my Blood And upon the proper acceptation of these words they make no doubt to put to silence all seeming oppositions and contradictions and impossibilities in nature For be it say they how it will Christ saying it who is truth it self no doubt is to be made of it For as they teach the vulgar to speak If Christ should say that this stone were his Body we ought to believe it All which is granted But we must distinguish as all sober men do between Loquela and Sermo He that rehearses a certain number of Articulate words doth Loqui or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but he only who doth deliver the word conceived in his mind which is his meaning at his mouth doth Sermocinari or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Now if it can be proved by any certain Circumstance that Christ meant these words in a proper sense and not improper in which he delivered no small part of his doctrine in the Gospel we have done the Controversy is at an end we are to lay our hands on our mouths and
and to deny Luk. 22. 20. V. 17. their senses when he saith This is my Body And as reasonles and frivolous are their Answers to St. Augustine who 1 Cor. 11. 27. affirms it to be a Prophane and blasphemous sense to understand Christ of Aug. de Doctrina Christ his proper Body and to eat it For can any thing be more Elusorie and ridiculous than to Scholie on him with a That is As meat is bought and sold in the Shambles Nam Sacramentum Alâ—ptionis suscipere dignatus est Christus et quando circumeisus est et quando baptizatus est et potest Sacramentum adoptionis Adoptio â—uncupari sicut Sacramentum coâ—poris et sanguints jus quod est in pane poculo consecrate Corpus jus sanguinem diciâ—us Non quod proprie corpus ejus sit panis poculum sanguinis Sed quod in se Mysterium coâ—poris ejus et sanguinis ejus contineant Hinc ipse Dominus Benedictum panâ—m Calicem quem Discipulis tradidit corpuaae sanguinem ejus voâ—â—vit Quocirea sicut Christi fideles sacramentum Corporis sanguinis ejus accipientes Corpus et sanguinem ejus recte dicuntur accipere c. Facundus Hâ—rmianensts Pro. 3. Capitulis Lib. 10. Cap. 5. But if it be possible to express any thing more clearly Facundus Hermianensis and that as set forth by Syrmondus doth both expound St. Austins meaning and our Saviour Christs yet more irrefragably writing against the Eutichians in these words For Christ vouchsafed to take on him the Sacrament of Adoption both at his Circumcision and at his Baptism and the Sacrament of Adoption may he called Adoption as the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ which is the Bread and Cup Consecrated we call his Body and Blood not that properly his body is Bread or his Blood the Cup but that they contain in then the Mystery of the Body and Blood of him Whence our Lord himself called the Blessed Bread and Cup which he delivered to his Disciples his Body and his Blood Wherefore as Christian believers taking the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of him are said truly to take the Body and Blood of Christ So Christ when he took the Sacrament of Adoption of Children might truly he said to take the Adoption of Children Thus he and Syrmondus in his notes upon this place doth confess these to be very harsh expressions like unto some of St. Austins there mentioned And to our urging the name fruit of the Vine given to the Consecrated substance and thence concluding that the real nature of Wine remains they answer that it is not unusual to give the name to a thing as a little before it was or seems to be Which we deny not And by the parity of reason return upon them to their loss For we know it is not unusual for a thing to be called by the name not which is proper to its nature but which it represents And to the eye of Faith the consecrated Elements Heb. 5. are the Body and Blood of Christ and so may not unaptly be so called by those whose senses are exercised as the Apostle speaks to discern both good and evil though in nature they be farr otherwise Some indeed as I conceive have been but too free of the Figures in this question supposing that the very word Est or Is must not be taken in its proper sense but stand for as much as Significat Signifies but this is without ground in Grammar or Divinity For he that saith as St. Paul 2 Tim. 4. 17. is interpreted to speak Nero is a Lion doth not lay the agreement upon Est or Is but upon the subject Nero For the Verb Substantive is equally indifferent to Comparative and Proper Speeches and continues so applied to any thing The Signification or Similitude lies in the two Terms Nero and a Lion and Bread and Wine and the Body and Blood of Christ Now there being no difference between a Similitude and a Metaphor but that the one is at large and in many words what the other is in one To say Christ is a Lamb or This which is bread is Christ is no more than to say Christ is as a Lamb and Bread is as Christs Body For the many agreements between the natural and Spiritual senses The one and that principal is that of Sacrifice which ought here to be briefly explained CHAP. XLIV Of the Sacrifice of the Altar What is a Sacrifice Conditions necessary to a Sacrament How and in what sense there is a Sacrifice in the Eucharist GREAT contentions have been about the Sacrifice of the Altar and perhaps though with just Cause yet not so great as is generally believed For these two Terms do much illustrate one the other For neither is the Altar upon which Christians offer properly an Altar any more then as is said before the Lords-Day now observed is properly a Sabbath nor is the Sacrifice thereon performed properly a Sacrifice Some will have that only truly called a Sacrifice which consisted of living Creaturs slain and offered to God Dixerunt aliqui quia Sacrificium non est nisi de Animalibus et erraverunt in hoc c. Guliel Parisien de Legib. Cap. 3. and to this sence do I most incline For there must be in all things some one thing which is as a Rule and Law and gives denomination to others according as they agree with it Now if all offerings to God as fine Flower and fruits of the Earth be called a Sacrifice in an equal sence to the most proper then have we no Rule to go by in Judging of Sacrifices And therefore Gulielmus Parisiensis who rejecteth the former acceptation because we Read in Leviticus 20. of a Sacrifice of fine Flower and Exodus 31. Sweet Smell seemeth himselfe to erre as he saith others do in the Notion of a Sacrifice For either these things and such-like were more properly called Oblations than Sacrifices or when they were called Sacrifices they were so called because of the Proper bloudy Sacrifice as the principal thing to which they were adjuncts Five things are said to be required to constitute a Sacrifice 1 A Proper Lessius de Ju. Just it Minister who is the Priest Heb. 5. Secondly the Matter must be sensible 3. The form of that matter must be changed and that after the nature of it Thirdly It must be directed and devoted to a Good end God And fiftly It must be offered in a proper place But not all these are certain and constantly true For Cain and Abel and Noah and Abraham and the rest under the Law offered proper Sacrifices but that they had peculiar Temples or Altars is not true For until that injuction of God in Deuteronomie Take heed to thy selfe that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in Deut. 12. 13. 14. every place that thou seest But in the place which the Lord shall
Sanctified by the word and â— Tim. 4. 5. Prayer But the word and Sanctification there are no preaching or consecration but only signify that God by the Gospel which is his word proper removed the sentence of uncleannesse from things so judged to be under the Law and set them as free as other reputed Clean But prayer's proper Act and Office it is to bring down a special Benediction upon Sacramental and Familiar food On the other side the difference being so vast and Sacred between Common Creatures of bread and Wine and the Sacramental it was lookt upon as a thing of greatest use and concernment to all believers to know whether such consecration was performed or not But where the form was so loose and indetermined as it must needs be consisting in the various and Prolix office belonging thereunto how could it possible be diserned when the Host was consecrated and whether seeing neither the whole Canon could be said thereunto absolutely necessary nor could it be assigned what part thereof essentially and essectually performed he Consecration Hereupon the Latine Church hath taken upon them to define the Conversion of the Elements into Christ for that they make Consecration to a very few precise words used by Christ at the First Institution of his Holy Supper viz This is my Body and This is my Blood And I have not found how the Arguments on either side can be well answered while the Opinion of trans-elementation or such supposed conversion stands Good and is accepted but otherwise it is no hard matter to answer Both. For supposing not a change of the proper natures and substances of the Elements into the Body of Christ naturall What inconvenience would it be to be undetermined by a certain number of words when the mystical change was wrought granting that this change Relative is made by the word and Prayer as the change of water in baptism is made not by any special number or form of words but by the Office whether longer or shorter And therefore the necessitie of putting the whole virtue in those few words recited was received presently upon the doctrine of Transubstantiation which is an argument that the Greek Church never admitted it in the Latin sense however I know they would not in their Councels contend with them about that but kept themselves to the tradition of their Predecessors who restrained not the Consecration to such number of words but must have with the like prudence and necessity have done so had they so apparently and expresly received such a simple conversion as being true all Christians ought to be so punctually assured of and venerate that nothing in their Creed could be more necessary and not contented themselves with the Relative change only of the things themselves which precisely to know stood them not so much in hand seeing the Reverence given to the Visible objects could not exceed that communicable to Creatures It may be granted therefore that the words of Christ are so necessary that Consecration cannot rightly be performed without them but yet denied to be so operative that upon the plain recitation of them they should presently effect that great alteration of them as the Story I make no doubt feigned to beget belief of this new opinion implieth telling us That certain Shepheards while it was the custom to pronounce the Canon of the Mass openly having learned it Henorius in Gemma Animae 1. 103. and recited it over their bread and wine which they had before them in the field as they were at their ordinary Meal the bread was turned visibly into Christs body and the Wine into his Blood and that the Shepheards were struck dead from heaven Whereupon it was decreed in a Synod that from thence forward no man should rehearse the said Canon Audibly or out of Sacred Places or without Book or without Holy Vestments or without an Altar A tale as likely to be true as the thing they would prove by it And so let them pass together while we proceed to the CHAP. XLVI Of the Participation of this Sacrament in both Kinds The vanity of Papists allegations to the Contrary No Sacramental Receiving of Christ in One kind only How Antiquity is to be understood mentioning the receiving of one Element only The pretended inconveniences of partaking in both kinds insufficient Of Adoration of the Eucharist SECOND Thing formally necessary to this Sacrament which is Celebration in both Kinds or Bread and Wine In treating whereof we must do so much Justice to the Cause as to acknowledge a reasonable distinction between the Sacrament it self and the Communicants in it To the former I suppose it is agreed that indispensably both Elements are necessary and Essential and that there can be no Sacrament without them both whatever solemnity may be acted to the eye or ear For the Sacrament noâ— being a thing of natural force or vertue but instituted the very formality of the Institution consisting in the joint concurrence of both Elements the Removing of One is the Adulteration of the Whole and destruction neither can that be said to be a Sacrament of Christs Institution but if at all of mans devising Neither do I see how the argument should not hold in the Participation of that Sacrament as well as Consecration viz that as consecration in one Kind only maketh not a Sacrament so communication in one Kind where both are in being should be receiving the Sacrament For the natures of things as Aristotle hath it are like numbers which with the addition or Substraction of one change their kind We do not make Bread of the Nature of Wine or on the contrary but we make them both equally of the nature of that Sacrament which by Christs own Institution was an Aggregate thing constituted of both and therefore to withdraw or deny one is in effect to deny both And the Evasion to salve this is both ridiculous and prophane which saith The blood is contained in the Body of Christ and therefore in taking one both are received But 't is nothing so For the Blood of Christ in the Sacrament is no more contained in the Body than the Body in the blood And besides we say that he who not at all receives the Cup cannot at all receive the signified body of Christ but only the signifying Again How can this assertion consist with the opinion of an Incruent Sacrifice For either the Sacramental Body of Christ hath Blood in it or it hath not If it hath then is it a Bloody and not Incruent Sacrifice For I think there is no ground for a man to say a Sacrifice was called Bloody or Cruent because only Blood was shed before it was Sacrificed and not because even at that time it contained blood in it For Cruent and Incruent are the same in the Law from whence the Gospel borrows this Phrase as Animate and Inanimate Sacrifices If it hath not how can it be said to have the blood
such opinion of it as in truth agrees only to God He directly intends who really supposes falsly any Creature to be God and intends to worship it as God or certainly he who otherwise out of perverted affection desires to worship that which he well knows to be a Creature as God He intends indirectly who no ways intending directly to honour a Creature as God yet outwardly notwithstanding this doth bestow divine honor on the Creature as God So that in the judgment of sober men he may be thought to account the Creature for God as if any man through fear of death should sacrifice to Idols Therefore if actually a man worships that which is not God his intention to worship only the true God can relieve him no farther than his opinion and intention to accompany with his own wife excuses him from Casual Adultery in lying with another woman and that is but little unless circumstances be such as may render the ignorance of the Fact invincible as they say or unavoidable And the intention and opinion if they be against ordinary presumptions to the contrary do not excuse Now to apply it to the last Case of Christ corporally present in the Sacrament This is agreed upon by us that what Christ saith to be so is infallibly true seem it never so contrary to our outward senses But seeing the words of Christ according to the like expressions in Holy Writ where things that bear Analogy with one another are said positively to be one another as where St. Paul saith Believers are Christs bone and Christs flesh which is not true in the natural sense but Metaphorical for otherwise unbelievers might be said so to be which St. Paul never intended do not necessarily infer that sense and all the ends imaginable are attainable no less by the spiritual sense and metaphorical acceptation of the words than by the more gross and natural And lastly to suppose what is said above concerning this subject testimony of senses bear witness to the contrary as much after Consecration as before the upshot of the business will be this Whether there remains any such infallible inducements to produce an opinion of such a thing there being whether such gounds unresistible there be for to found such an intention that may excuse from errour And therefore I absolutely deny Spalatoe's opinion saying I answer I acknowledge no Idolatrous De Republ. Eccl. Lib. 7. cap II. num 2. crime in the adoration of the Eucharist so long as the intention is directed aright For they who teach that Bread to be no longer bread but the body of Christ c. For if they knew that the Body of Christ did not lye hid under the Species and his blood under those of Wine they would not so worship This I say satisfies not because they have no sufficient grounds that so it is or so Christs words are to be understood Secondly and as to this point principally because Idolatry is primarily a defect and errour in the understanding as their own men confess and only secondarily and by consequence in the will or purpose which altogether overthrows the moderate sense of Forbes likewise to Forbes ubi supra p. 439. say no more For as for that other evasion and purgation whereby they would fetch off Papists from Idâ—latrous worship in the Eucharist because there can be no doubt made but Christ may be adored as Austins known words are in the Eucharist with all outward and bodily as well as mental worship is much less to the purpose For This quite changes the question which is wholly about the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the ancients call them the objects appearing whether they be Christ and to be worshipped as Christ For Christ in the Sacrament we may worship without exceptions of any divine or corporal manner Christ's body and blood are really present in the Eucharist we grant and in a more eminent manner then in other places or divine ordinances but when we hear him say The faithful receive the body and blood of Christ in Forbes ibid. themselves corporally but yet after a spiritual miraculous and imperceptible manner we grant the manner to be wonderful and imperceptible but we cannot grant it to be Corporally and Spiritually in the same respect without a contradiction For What is corporally to receive a thing but modo corporali after a corporal manner and therefore to correct as it were that Expression with that which follows viz. Modo tamen spirituali yet after a spiritual manner is quite to destroy what he seem'd to say before For Nothing can be received Corporally after a spiritual manner And it is much more intelligible than that of the Romanists which saith That the Body of Christ may be received spiritually and bodily For the body according to them is taken into the mouth and so bodily received by the wicked and unbelievers and it is by the faithful besides received by Faith spiritually which may stand together But to suppose any spiritual way to explicatory of the corporal way of receiving Christ is to suppose contradictions But this belongs to another place Let us now touch the third exception I make against the distinction of Material and Formal Idolatry taken from the Novelty of it and singularity as never heard of before late dayes when extremities put mens wits to study for new forms of Speech to dress up the new body of Divinity framed to themselves Why did not the Heathen come off so For surely they might Why did not this enter into the head of the ancienter School-men who I dare say make no mention of it How comes it about that the aneient Fathers and Councils knew no other Idolatry than that which even moderner Papists approve of when the soberer mode is on them viz. The worshipping as God that which is not God without any notice taken of Material and Formal worship contenting themselves with the general distinction of Ignorance of the Law and Ignorance of the Fact or wilful Ignorance and unwilling Or vincible and invincible Surely this implies somewhat singular in this case which they either are ashamed to express or can not which latter is my case For I confess I see no reason why we may not distinguish two sorts of Heresie as well two sorts of Schism two sorts of Adulterie two sorts of Drunkenness and Murder Material and Formal as of Idolatry And yet we hear little or no mention of this distinction but only as it is applyed to Idolatry which besides what is abovesaid renders it more suspected and the coyners and users of it Fourthly and lastly The dangerousness of this distinction and apparent damage it doth to Christian Religion declares it to be wicked and intollerable while it both opens a way to all carelessness in worshipping we know not how nor what contrary to our Faith and then when we may receive competent information of our error and should repent it lulls us asleep
autority he had it was for the edification and not destruction 2 Cor. 10. 8. of the Church The argument therefore taken from an Hereditary Right in the Crown of England of being Governour and Defendor of our Church to the apparent ruine and destruction of it we know very well from whence it proceedeth and whether it tendeth but where it will end as yet God only knows This we know that Papists are mad when that scoff and reproach which they have constantly put upon both King and Church from that Title upon due enquiry makes so little to their purpose And therefore they will fight with us with the name only CHAP. XXXII Of the Exercise of the Political power of the Church in Excommunication The grounds and Reasons of Excommunication More things than what is of Faith matter sufficient of Excommunication Two Objections answered Obedience due to Commands not concerning Faith immediately Lay-men though Princes cannot Excommunicate Mr. Selden refuted NAture in all Bodies that have Life casts out of it what ever corrupts afflicts or oppresseth the same and by Struglings and contentions endeavours to deliver it self from such noxious humors as would destroy it And this is the reason men take Vomits Purges and Sudorificks that the deadly humour being expelled the wholesome may prevail and the Whole be preserved There can then be nothing more reasonable or Christian than to put this in practice in Bodies Political or Ecclesiastical We see how Thieves Robbers Murderers and such like malefactors who are enemies to humane Society be denied and that justly the benefit of that Society against which they have so offended by confinement in Prison or deprivation of Life it self forfeited justly in seeking or acting the ruine of another And can any that grants the Communion of Christians to be a Body knit together by its several joints and nerves and consisting of several Members deny but the like Evil may befal in its kind to it what doth happen to others in another viz that some noxious humor of Heresie corrupting the Faith in which as the Scripture saith of the Blood is the life of a Christian and the Church it self may poison it And some violence of Schism may dissolve or dismember it And shall not it be allowed the like remedy or means of Cure which are held necessary in like cases No opinion how heretical or immoral so ever is more pernicious to Christian Society than that which absolutely denyes power to the Church to eject unsound and tainting members out of it and to provide for the security of the Body even by the abscission and destruction of any one Part infesting it For this opinion strikes not at one part of the Body but all neither at one point of Faith but all though not immediately and directly but indirectly and by consequence For as upon the fall of the House the persons within must needs be crusht to death so upon the dissolution of the outward Frame of the Church the Faith itself must of necessity in a short time perish and be reduced to nothing And therefore those men of reason as they would be accounted give us but little cause to think them better men than Christians who affirm rawly and loosely without qualification or due explication of their mind that no man is to be cast out of the Church but for something which is necessary to salvation or which Christ doth not require or forbid absolutely either denying or not considering a man can scarce tell which by their works hereby that Christ and St. Paul and our Creed it self require conservation of the unity of the Church both as a thing admirable in its self and necessary to the Faith it self For any man therefore to broach or publish such an opinion as this That every man may use what Ceremonies he pleases in the publick service of God or if he pleases he may use none and this That the Church hath no power to command or forbid any thing which is not expressed in the Scripture when as Rules general and several Examples in Scripture justify the contrary These I say being contrary not only to some one Church but all even those they would by no means have touched thereby do no less in their consequence mischief to the Church than the denial of the Mystery of the Trinity it self or of Christs incarnation however I grant they in their form are nothing so foul And therefore I presume to conclude them matter of Excommunication and so I judge St. Paul doth where he advises nay commands in the name of the Lord 2 Thes 3. 6. Jesus Christ the Thessalonians to withdraw themselves from every one that walketh disorderly and not after the tradition he received of us These traditions were as it is here implied concerning orders of the Church and manners of Worship which in all probability are most of them lost to us St. Paul therefore requiring that whoever did not walk according to those prescriptions delivered by him should be separated doth not warrant the like proceedings now For t is the very same thing whether the Church withdraws it self or whether it expells another When the Israelites warned by Moses departed from the tents of the wicked Corah Dathan Num. 16. 26 and Abiram who only walked disorderly not erroneously in the matter of worship that we read of and their complices and touched nothing of theirs they Anathematized them no less than if they had set them packing into remoter parts from the Congregation Nay if now-adayes as lately Sectaries should prevail so far as to possess themselves of all the Publick and Lawful places of Worship and eject the true Church they might stand no less legally and Really Excommunicate than if they were thrust formally from thence themselves For'tis not the place but the Cause and the Body from which they are cut that makes the Excommunication just and valid This we are confirmed in by the same Apostle afterward And if any man obey not our word by this Epistle note that man 2 Thes 3. 14. and have no company with him that he may be ashamed Now St. Paul in this Epistle had delivered many things not essential in themselves to salvation And where the company of Christians was not great and their society not formed and their outward power little or nothing as in the beginning of all Churches there it sufficed in liew of Formal excommunication to withdraw themselves from such troublers of the Church And this we read further of in St. Paul to the Romans saying Now I beseech Rom. 16. 17. you brethren mark them which cause Divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned and avoid them St. Paul generally in his Epistles not only insists upon unity of Faith but unity of Charity and outward communion they therefore that were Authors of unnecessary divisions are they whom he would have noted and avoided which when it is done with Publick
are we to mutiny against the Constitutions of Eastern and Western Churches which in progress of time added some inferiour Orders to those most anciently received in the Church viz. of Bishop Priest and Deacon For I take it to be no invasion of Christs Right to call to the assistance of such as he had constituted such as he did not ordain to that end but to retrench of the number to dissolve that Order which he appointed that is sacrilegious What then may we call Orders but The Collation of an Ecclesiastical Faculty or Power to serve God and the Church by such as are authorized by God using the necessary Forms of Words and Rites thereunto required according to his order of Ministration Now we have already shewed That as no man can create himself a secular neither can he an Ecclesiastical Officer and as no man in that Politv can be created but by one in Authority rightly derived to him so can none in Spiritual matters be ordained to Ecclesiastical Ministration but he that is thereunto called by some in Lawful or at least real Power And therefore such who are chosen and appointed by the common people are but common people after such vainly affected callings and they who are of an inferiour Order were never acknowledged to have power to create one of a Superiour to them As it was never endured in the Church till of late dayes that Priests should appoint Bishops or Priests because though Power of the Keys were communicated to them in reference to the two Principal and necessary Sacraments yet never as to the whole complex notion of the same which consists of Jurisdiction as well as Knowledge and Intercession And the School argument which at least hath given occasion to confound the Order of Bishop and Priest is very false and frivolous supposing all Ecclesiastical Orders to be so denominated in or dine ad consecrandum from their relation to the Power of Consecrating the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist because they suppose that to be the supream Mystery and End of Priestly Office but the distinction of Power Political and Mystical in the Church quite overthrows that For the Power of Jurisdiction is greater in its kind than that of celebrating and therefore not so vainly to be taken Again the Orders of the Church are so called from the Relation they have to the Body Ecclesiastical or outward Form and Constitution of it which is made up of all of them by a gradual ascent from the lowest to the highest which make that Hierarchy without which a Church has but very little to show that it is a Church but is forc'd to shroud it self under the obscure priviledges of being an invisible Church though not visible Orders therefore thus duly administred though they be not a Sacrament for then must there be seven Sacraments subordinate to the other famous seven because generally seven sorts of Orders are administred in the Church yet are they Sacramental things that is Sacred and no less necessary to the constituting a Visible Body of Christ than are the others to the Invisible And though that cannot presently be concluded to be a true Church of Christ which hath them I do not see how that can be a true Church which hath them not And for that which is commonly called Extream Unction being the Anointing of the Infirm of Body or such as are despaired of as to this Life I see no great matter to be objected against it no more did Luther nor Bucer nor some other eminent Reformers for a good while after they left Rome provided it be done with that solemnity and soundness of invocation of God and Benediction of the deceasing Party as may comfort and strengthen him in his last Agonies It being ancient though not so old as is pretended nor ministred in the same manner as now For in the beginning not one but many Presbyters of the Church were called according to the advice of St. James to pray over the sick and to anoint James 1. 14 15 him with common not compounded or artificial Oyl and that not without a miraculous event But because the Miracle is now ceased it is no good reason the thing it self should be detested For Primitively a Miracle did accompany Baptism too which ceasing no man will declare the Sacrament it self ought to cease likewise The Superstitions of Prayer and some other Rites added of late whereby the simplicity of it hath been corrupted is a more reasonable ground of laying it down Neither is the want thereof in that formality to be charged upon a Church where there is commanded and continued due Ministration to the Sick answerable to the necessities of Body and Soul But though the use hereof be ancient yet the name Sacrament hath not so anciently been ascribed to it in the sense at this day Current And Innocent the first who is reported to have so called it doth permit others besides Priests to minister the same to the Sick the Chrism or Oyl being made by the Bishop CHAP. XXXVII Of Confirmation What it is The Reasons of it The Proper Minister of it Of Vnction threefold in Confirmation Of Sacramental Repentance and Penance The Effects thereof BUT of Confirmation much greater esteem hath ever been and ought still to be had though not so much as some of the Ancients and divers Modern Schoolmen would exalt it to unless a favourable interpretation be made of their judgments delivered concerning it For they make it more useful than Baptism it self and impute the efficacy of Baptism in great part unto this Sacrament To judge the better of which Opinion it is to be consider'd what this Confirmation is Confirmation may be said to be a solemn Act of Invocation of God and Benediction of a Person upon his publick Profession of that Christian Faith into which he was before baptized First It was required that the Person capable of this Ceremony should have first been baptized For he was not hereby made a Christian but as the word importeth confirmed in that Faith into which he had been baptized And the Reasons hereof were such then as do to this day commend exceedingly the use of it viz. Because some were baptized in their minority or infancy when wanting common judgment they could not discern the nature use and end of Baptism and therefore very requisite it was that they should after due and sober information in the mysteries and principles of Christian Religion make in their own person such a publick Profession of the same as they were bound to do at the time of their baptism according Catechismus Argentoratensis p. 36. D. Cum nos pueri instituti sumus in fide Christiana debemus eam palam aperte profiteri c. as the Church Catechism of Strasburgh since the Reformation well thus expresses it by Scholar and Master Schol. We that are children and instructed in the Faith of Christ ought to profess the
upon us it is evident that they are to be understood not of the ordinary Baptism by Water but the extraordinary of the Holy Ghost sometimes preventing Baptism as appears in the Acts more than once Other reasons out of Scripture Act. 10. 41. brought to this purpose do prove only that to repeat Baptism is needless but not damnable For the Ethiopians who are reported to Baptize Breerwoods Enquirit themselves once a year on the same day that Christ was Baptized do it as the History of them tells not so much implying an invalidity in one Baptism as a convenience to bring to mind the Baptism of Christ on Epiphany perhaps reckoning the precept of Christ given to Communicate in Remembrance of him might hold to the obliging them to repeat Baptism in remembrance of his Baptism CHAP. XLI Of the second Principal Sacrament of the Gospel the Eucharist Its names Its parts Internal and External It s matter Bread and Wine And the necessity of them Of Leavened and Vnleavened Bread Of Breaking the Bread in the Sacrament VVE now come to the Second most proper and necessary Sacrament known by several names as that of The Supper of the Lord in our Church Catechisms not because our Lord Christ made his Supper of it or ever intended we should but because at his Last Supper upon the Paschal Lamb and the conclusion of it he instituted this for his Apostles and all Faithful peoples spiritual benefit as a Spiritual Repast or Supper nourishing them to eternal Life In answer to which we read of the Promise of Christ in the Revelations Behold Rev. 3. 20. I stand at the door and Knock if any man hear my voice and open the door I will come into him and will Sup with him and he with me And St. Paul more expresly to the Corinthians When ye come together therefore 1 Cor. 11. 20. into one place this is not to eat the Lords Supper distinguishing hereby this Sacred Supper from the more ordinary communion which those first Christians had in their Charitable meetings to eat and drink together to their mutual edification and comfort From whence their Cavils seem to be groundless who with some scorn reject this name in use much amongst the Reformed fearing somewhat derogatory to those Sacred Mysteries And upon the same grounds likewise do they shun the name of the Lords Table lest the word Altar which seems to them more sacred should be less accounted of And yet without reason For surely where St. Paul calls those holy Mysteries The Table of the Lord he speaketh not properly but Metonymically 1 Cor. 10. 21. not of the Material Table on which they were placed but of the Adjuncts which were the Sacramental Elements Though it be plain that from this Supper of the Lord the Table furnished with it took its denomination of the Lords And that not only in Scriptures but amongst Primitive writers too And Altar of the Lord it was called only Metaphorically not properly by both no otherwise than the Lords day was called by way of Analogy The Sabbath day From the Form used at the celebration of those Mysteries it was called Eucharist which was Thanksgiving as Mathew 26. 26 27. From the Effect which was double Communion with Christ and with the Members of Christs Body the Faithful it was termed Communion 1 Cor 10. 16. From the Matter of which it consisted The Body and Blood of Christ Corin ibid. And many more less considerable appellations have been received in the Church to be passed over in this short view wherein we are rather to enquire into the Nature of it in these Particulars viz 1. The Author 2. The Matter 3. The Form 4. The Ends and Effects For the Author It is without controversy Christ himself the histories of the Gospels plainly so affirming Mat. 26. 26. Mar. 14. 22. Luc. 22. 19. And St. Paul to the Corinthians 1 Epist 11. 23. It having nothing herein peculiar to it it being necessary to all Sacraments so properly called that they be Instituted of God or Christ as is above proved The Greatest contention of all is concerning the Subject-matter of this Blessed Sacrament not in a few words to be opened or composed The clearest way to proceed in this disquisition is First to consider the External Part and then the Internal The External are the Signs or Elements appointed by Christ to insinuate and represent unto us his Passion or as his own express words are to bring to remembrance his death and Passion This do in remembrance of me And what is here only recorded by the Evangelists Luk. 22. 19. to have been said of the Bread St. Paul affirmeth to have been likewise spoken of the Cup Do this as often as ye drink it in remembrance 1 Cor. 11-25 of me declaring unto us the use and end of the Institution of these Signs But before we go any further it will be necessary in our way to distinguish the twofold most principal and common acceptation of the word Sacrament here For sometimes it is taken Complexly for the whole ministration of the Lords Supper and at other times only for the Material Part of it which again is sometimes taken for the External or signifying Part the Elements and sometimes for the Internal or things by them signified which are the Body and Blood of Christ and that not simply and absolutely but as under the consideration of his Bitter death and Passion and that for our sakes The Elemental and External parts of this Sacrament are to be considered two ways First before the celebration or consecration of the same and then after First then it is generally agreed to on all sides that our Saviour Christ took natural Bread and natural Wine most commonly in use in those Countreys and therefore in all reason this ought to be a constant binding prescription to all that minister and use that Sacrament and not to vary from the very kind used by him when ever it can with any tolerable care and cost be obtained But seeing that Christ in all probability without any scrupulous choice of Wheat or Rye or Barley or any one single Grain made use of that which was in ordinary use at Meals amongst them and there being no express word which of these he took there appears no reason why any one of which Bread may be made for the service and life of Man may not be taken to this purpose And especially considering that the end of the Institution which is said to be the representing of Christs death and Passion and the affecting us thereby may no less be performed by the one sort than the other Yet where the constant practice of the Church confirmed by positive Injunctions hath determined the kind it can be no ways free or safe for any unnecessarily to vary from that It is of much greater difficulty to determine What is to be done in the cases of such both extreme Northern as
choose c. it was free for the servants of God to offer their Sacrifice upon any place they Jacobus Bolduc de Ecclesia ante Legem Lib. 11. should think fit and make Altars at their pleasures though I am not ignorant that mystical Bolducius is of another mind without solid grounds But afterward the Altar as Christ intimateth in the Gospel Sanctified the Gift so far that it was not accepted but upon that which Mat. 23. 19. God had ordained for Sacrifices or offerings to him The case is not altogether so now under the Gospel that Christians should be absolutely confined to the Publique Altars as they may be called appointed to the Eucharist For we do not read that ever the Apostles so Celebrated but have great presumptions to the Contrary Nor doth it in like manner appear in the Gospel that those places on which they did Celebrate were preserved from all Secular uses as we do in the Law that Altars there were Yet so much ought all who are good Christans condescend to the immemoriall practise of the Church separating all such sacred things from common and vulgar uses and requiring to celebrate upon the Reputed and appointed Altar that I make question whether any Sacrifice not so offered through contempt or sullenness can be either so acceptable to God or profitable to our selves as in the other received way And there want not as learned men who denie that Consumption is necessary to a true Sacrifice And I am sure the Roman Cause so requires unless in this state they will make Christ passible and Corruptible though I know they have many a Sorry shift to evade this too Now for brevity sake to omit many things incident to this dispute and to apply the Notion of Sacrifice to the Actions in the Eucharist If we take Sacrifice in Melancthons sense from which Calvin doth not much vary Melanct. Loc. Com Calv. Instit Lib. 4. C. 73. For every act and thing devoted to God whereby we give him honour there are Sacrifices enough to be found in the Eucharist And there are many known senses of Sacrifice given to God admitted by Protestants But passing all them over the Question here must be stated concerning this Sacrifice as it was concerning the Body of Christ Not whether there Really it is but whether it really and properly be Predicated of the matter of the Sacrament and that in as proper a sense as Christs Body was offered upon the Cross This we deny acknowledging only these three things which fully satisfie the expressions of the Ancient calling the Host an Incruent Sacrifice First because here we call to remembrance Christs sacrifice upon the Crosse according as he Instituted and required that at our hands saying Do this in remembrance of me Secondly as it is a Sacrifice Luk. 22. 19. Rememorative so is it a Sacrifice Representative Insinuating and signifying unto as the death and Passion of Christ and not as common signes and advertences only to bring to mind or as Gulielmus Parisiensis hath it like a String tyed about the singer to put a man in remembrance and no more but also to informe the Iudgment and confirm and encrease the Faith of the Receiver Thirdly it is a Sacrifice Representative to God as well as to Man For though nothing can lie hid from him or be forgotten by him yet taking things as he hath been pleased to express them unto us after the manner of Men he by the offering of this Sacrifice and the devout worship there performed to God is moved to behold consider and accept the true Sacrifice which Christ made for us in offering himselfe for us As it was by Gods own appointment in the Rainbow put for a signe between him and Man of the Covenant for not drowning the earth And the Gen. 4. 16. bow saith the Scripture shall be in the cloud and I will look upon it that I may remember the everlasting Covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth In like manner and much more effectually may we say that the Action of the Eucharist presents to God the Sacrifice of Christs death and mediation made by him for mankind especially those that are immediately concerned in that Sacrament from which Metonymical Sacrifice what Great and rich benefits may we not expect Thus is the Host a Sacrifice but not essentially as the sacrifices of the Law or Christs offering himself but Analogically and Metonymically by vertue of the Sacrifice of Christ and through whose vertue the benefits of Christs death and Passion are made over unto the worthy Communicats agreably to Christs Institution and the Title given it by the Ancient and Holy Fathers CHAP. XLV Of the form of Consecrating the Elements wherein it consisteth Whether only Recitative or Supplicative AND to this duly communicating is necessarily required the proper Form of this Sacrament Which Form consisteth in two things principally The Proper Actions of the Minister of it and the Receiver of it The Action of the Minister or Priest consisteth in the due consecration and Dedication of those Elements designed for that end For as Augustin the father hath it The word coming to the Creature maketh it a Sacrament it gives being to it as such which before was but common bread and wine And that this is done by the Recitation of the historie of Christs Celebration and Institution of them all at first and Invocation of God upon the Elements is certain but it is not so certain what special form of words is only and absolutely required to this purpose nor whether they are only Recitative pronouncing the words of Christ at the Institution of this Sacrament as This is my Body Christoph de Cap. Fontium de Theolog. Scholast Reformat and so over the Cup This is my Blood or whether they must be also Supplicative The Greek Church and some of the Learnedest of the Roman hold the Latter to be necessarie and the Former insufficient The most common Opinion of the Western Church is That the Consecration by way of decencie and solemnitie ought to consist of Benedictions and Invocations of God but that essentially is required nothing more than the recitation of Christs words over the Elements for the real Consecration of them And each side doth rather well prove their own practise than answer the difficulties opposed to each other For as the Greeks well say There is no great probability that an historical narration of what was done by Christ should of it selfe be effectuall to the Conversion of the Elements from their Common use and nature to the divine For it is only expected from him that rehearseth what another said or did that he be a faithful reporter and not that he should effectually thereby make a thing true But on the otherside Prayer is not so much Indicative as Imperative and Impetrative We read indeed in St Paul to Timothie of things that are
of Christ also Must not they be necessitated here to slee to an unknown Concomitance the one of the other and not a coexistence And if thus the blood hath the flesh of Christ concomitantly as well as the â—lesh the blood and so for this reason might the Cup be received without the Bread But we positively deny both such Carnal Capernaitical Coexistence as is here presumed and such necessary Concomitance too that with the receiving of one alone the other should be necessarily taken also but hold rather where both are not Present both are absent and no Sacramental Receiving of Christ can possibly be hoped for And though I have been long of this opinion before I found any authority express to this purpose besides the very intrinsique nature of the Sacrament it self now touched Yet am I not alone For thus speaks a Reverent and Learned Father of our Church In all compounded things the moiety of the matter is the moiety of substance Bishop Whites Reply to c. pag. 483. And whatsoever Jesuited Romanists teach I see not how their Laicks can truly say that they have at any time in all their Lives been partakers of this Sacrament for if half a man be not a man then likewise half a Communion is not a Communion But were there more colour for nothing of reality do we find in their Offers to vindicate themselves in what is said for the possibility of a Sacrament in one Kind received What can be said for their gross abuse of their and our Lords Institution and their Relinquishing the unanimous practice of the Catholick Church for so many Ages together Did not Christ equally institute both Did he not equally communicate both to his Disciples Or supposing that they were then all Priests which may be well doubted of seeing they were not compleatly consecrated then by the descent of the Holy Ghost nor commissioned to Go teach and Baptise all nations until after this doth this give any likelihood that therefore it is the sole Right for Priests to receive in both Kinds Did Christ any where make two Institutions One For Priests and another for Laicks If but one Who should presume to alteâ— or adulterate his Prescriptions He said Drink ye all of Mat. 26. 27. this which is more than we find he said of the Bread And the shift is sad and pitiful which some who have nothing better to say yet must say something adde that Christ said This do as oft as ye drink it in remembrance of 1 Cor. 11. 25. Fisher against White me As if he excepted sometimes from drinking when he commanded to eat Ridiculous The meaning of Christ being as plain as any thing need be that there should so often be had a devout remembrance of him as we communicate and not imply as is most boldly insinuated that sometimes we may not communicate in the Sacramental bloud of Christ For it followeth As Often as ye eat this bread and drink this cupp ye do shew the Lords death 1 Cor. 11. 26. till he come Never are they separated in the Scripture No ground at all for the omitting of one rather than the other The Church hath power to denie one as much as the other The Church hath no power to denie either or any thing else of such divine Institution The Church of God for above 1200 years did constantly and universally practise both And until the Council of Constance about the year 1415 many in the Roman Church so received but then it was violently taken away But to this very day all Churches not subdued to the Roman continue the Ancient form And do a companie of paltry reasons drawn from possible inconveniences in Lay-mens taking the Cup countervail so great a cloud of witnesses and so strong arguments to the contrary What if sometimes the Ancients did permitt the exportation of the one without the other to such as were sick or unable to receive in Publique Does this come home to the Case which requireth that the Publique Ministration should be changed also And how doth it appear I am sure not by their demonstrations that such Persons so receiving in half were ever reputed to have Sacramentally received Christ Nay not half of the Autorities or Instances commonâ—y given of such Communications do concern this subject for most are to be understood of the Panis Benedictus or the Bread blessed by the â—riâ—â—â— upon 〈◊〉 offering of it by the People which was not all consecrated Sacramentally and so given unto Christians to be imparted to such as were of the same Communion in token that they were in Communion with them though absent This I grant was sometimes performed by the sending to such the Consecrated Element of Bread in the Eucharist Not with an opinion of the Fathers of the Church however possibly same vulgar and ignorant Christians might have too high a conceit of it that such receiving was tantamount to the receiving in both Kinds Sacramentally But to their inconveniences which are many of them more fit to make sport than to sway in so grave a Controversie we shall only reply that all they can alleadg was no newes to their and our Predecessours and yet never could it enter into their hearts to attempt so monstâ—ous a change upon such frivolous pretences But the truth is the Errour of transubstantiation being throughly received occasioned this by way of common prudence as well as Christian devotion For it being firmly and clearly believed the Consecrated Elements became Christs Bodie and Blood forsaking wholely their own Nature Common Reason required that all possible respect and Care should be taken as far as the wit of man could reach that no detriment or indignity should be done to them and that then became indecent and prophane which before was not To have the Least Crum fall aside must be accounted a grand prophanation though in voluntary and therefore humane wit invented Wafers and preferred them before bread according as Christ used it In breaking of the Host some possible waste might happen therefore though Christ and following Christians communicated of 1 Cor. 10. 17. one Bread according to St Paul For we are one Bread and one bodie and we are all partakers of one Bread undoubtedly literally meaning the participation by many of the same Loaf in the Sacrament now superstition hath better instructed us than the holy Spirit St Paul and there must be no more breaking of bread amongst Christians of which the Scripture speakes so often though I confess not alwayes meaning the Eucharist but yet that too many times and which is so lively and proper a Ceremony and signification of Christs passion lest somewhat should fall out amiss toward the supposed Body of Christ in their sense To give Respect to use reverence to it to take all convenient and devout Care about it is verie reasonable and pious for the Relation it hath to Christ and his Proper Bodie and the Virtue to
that as the case now stands as they speak in Acts 4. 12. sensu composito God having determined that no other name under heaven be given whereby men must be saved that there is no salvation in any other but in Christ Jesus But secluding that Decree it doth not appear why God out of the Abyss of his Counsels and Immensness of his Wisdome and absoluteness of his Free Grace might not have compassed Mans salvation some other way My Reason besides those I find used by others is that now intimated If God could entertain such favourable thoughts towards Man as to decree his Salvation without intuition of Christ surely he might have effected it without Christ For 't is neither just nor reasonable to imagine that God could decree any thing absolutely and not absolutely bring it to pass for we cannot so judge of Gods Counsels as we do of Mans who alwayes determines with supposition of means and ability to bring to pass what he determined but all causes out of himself being without exception subject to his will nay his will needing no outward means to attain its purpose or resolution it is sufficient argument that such a thing may be that God without consideration of any means decrees it and at his liberty chooses those means he pleases Neither upon this supposition is the advantage such as the Socinian Heretick expects to his cause It is one of his pernicious heresies That Christ satisfied not by his Passion he expiated not the offense of Man thereby but left him many a good lesson to direct and instruct him in the way to heaven set him an excellent and fair example to follow Makes now at last being in heaven not before intercession and mediates for man but his death was no satisfaction for the wrath of God conceived against the sinner And to make way to this opinion he says that God might without any satisfaction have freely remitted mans offence and therefore it was not absolutely and indispensably requisite that Christ should dye If we should yield all this which is here taken for granted which yet if it be not granted is not so easie to be demonstrated there appears no great advantage to their cause For if it be assured unto us out of holy Writ that God hath determined that no salvation should be attained no recovery had without the mediation of Christ and his satisfaction what availeth it them that possibly it might have been otherwise I confess the advantage to the other side would have been much greater if it could be proved that Gods justice of absolute necessity must have been satisfied by fulfilling the penal part of the Law but however there remains evidence enough from the conditional will of God which according to Scriptures admits of no other way now For so saith St. Paul to the Colossians It pleased the Father that in Col. 1. 19 20. him should all fulness dwell And having made peace through the bloud of his Cross by him to reconcile all things unto himself by him I say whether they be things in heaven or things on earth And Christ himself in St. Luke saith Luke 24 46. Thus it is written and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day And that repentance and remission of sin should be preached in his Name among all Nations beginning at Jerusalem And St. Peter 2 Pet. 2. 24. Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree that we being dead unto sin should live unto righteousness by whose stripes we were healed And what can be more plain than that of the Epistle to the Hebrews Without Heb. 9. 22 23. shedding of bloud is no remission And lest some may presume to restrain the Apostles words to the state of the Old Law it is added It was therefore necessary that the paterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these but the heavenly things themselves with better Sacrifices than these And what doth the Apostle mean by the better Sacrifices but the Sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross St. John declares so much exprefly where he saith If we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship one with another 1 John 1. 7. and the bloud of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin And in the fore-cited place of the Hebrews more fully and expresly making a comparison Hebr. 9. 14. between the expiations of the Law and Gospel sayes thus For if the bloud of Bulls and Goats and the ashes of an Heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh how much more shall the bloud of Christ who through the Eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God If therefore God under the Mosaical Law might have passed over the errours and uncleanness of his people Israel but never would remit them without expiations and sacrifices to that end ordained how can it be imagined that the moral errours and impurities of the soul of Man by sin should be expiated or passed over without that Sacrifice and shedding of the bloud of Christ appointed to that purpose Surely therefore a sense there is wherein it is impossible God should remit sins without due punishment for the same inflicted and the least and lowest is that which we call conditional supposing that God hath so decreed that no sin should be expiated but that way A way which besides the excellent agreement it hath with the Justice of God and Mercy also is full of pregnant advices and instructions to the Offender partly informing of the foul and mortal nature of sin which cannot otherwise be pardoned than by such satisfaction of bloud partly by humbling him and moving him to cry God mercy bitterly and heartily and lastly by possesing his mind with a dread and terrour of the nature of sin so as to avoid the same for the time future CHAP. XVI Of the Nature and Person of the Mediatour between God and Man In the beginning was the Word proved to be spoken of Christ and that he had a Being before he was Incarnate The Vnion of two Natures in Christ explained Christ a Mediatour by his Person and by his Office and this by his Sacrificing himself The Scriptures proving this THUS far of the necessity and use of Mediation between God and Man for the reconciling them at this great distance Now it remains to speak more particularly of the Person or Mediatour himself whom Christian Faith acknowledges to be Christ Jesus who as the Scripture tells us came unto the world to save sinners and to save them by his Mediation 1 Tim. 1. 15. And that this is a faithful saying that is a truth to be embraced by true Faith without which there is no Salvation But of the Condition of this Mediatour we find no small differences amongst such who are called Christians
made of being raised again and of a Resurrection which as is said must relate to the Body fallen And in the same Book He that offered Chap. 12. 43. for the dead is commended in that he was mindful of the Resurrection But none convince us more of a Catholick opinion amongst the Jews received doubtless as a Tradition from their Fathers and supposed to their more express prescriptions in Gods worship then that of Martha to Christ I know that he shall rise again in the Resurrection at the last day And now-a-dayes John 11. 24. the Jews are so well settled in the Doctrine of the Resurrection that they envie the faith of it to any but themselves saying as Buxtorf hath it Buxt Synag cap. 3. There are four things which the Isralites have from God in especial manner above other Nations The Land of Canaaenan The Law Prophesie and The Resurrection of the Dead But in my judgment St. Paul puts it out of all question that the Jews believed of old a Resurrection and that of the Body of which we now speak For thus in the Acts of the Apostles he Acts 24. 15. speaks And have hope towards God which they themselves also allow that there shall be a Resurrection of the dead both of the just and unjust And this Doctrine seemed so essential to St. Paul that without it all Christian Faith were lost as appears out of that most sublime and eloquent Chapter concerning it to the Corinthians where first he layes down his 1 Cor. 15. ground of Christian Faith Christs Death and Resurrection as that upon which all other Articles are founded and without which all preaching and v. 2. all Faith would be in vain And from hence he infers at least a possibility that our bodies being of flesh and bloud of the same nature shall also rise again And that Christs Resurrection was but as the first fruits to the harvest 20. or vintage which in order must necessarily follow And having asserted and confirmed the truth he answers the objections which may seem to disprove it which method we here choose briefly to imitate and follow 35 c. Tertul. Adver Marc. l. 5. c. 9. And first we argue from the term Resurrection which must needs imply somewhat fallen or dossolved as is said as Tertullian against Marcion doth affirm Secondly From the Example of Christ the exemplary cause of our Resurrection For according to St. Pauls disputation at large there is the v. 12 13. same reason for the Resurrection of us as of Christ But Christs body was raised up in that individual substance that was laid in the Grave and therefore must ours likewise And this is it which is affirmed and promised by the Apostle to the Thessalonians For if we believe that Jesus dyed 1 Thess 4. 14. and rose again even us also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him And no doubt can be made but Christ had flesh and bloud after his Resurrection the signs and marks show'd to that purpose convincing not only incredulous Thomas but all of like difficulty of Faith Luke 24. 19. John 20. 27. Thirdly It appeareth from the comparison made by St. Paul to the Corinthians As in Adam all dye even so in Christ shall all be made alive But 1 Cor. 15. 22 23. every one in his own order c. But in Adam all men died corporally therefore in Christ shall all be raised corporally or in their own bodies as Tertullian Tertull. ubi supra Fourthly If immortality be promised to this body then must this body arise and not another But to this mortal body is promised immortality therefore it must rise because there is no imaginable way to have that verified but by a Resurrection And St. Paul saith This corruptible must put on ib. v. 53. incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality And what can we suppose the Apostle aimed at in those words but his own flesh and others And how shall they that are in the Graves hear Christs voice as he saith in St. John unless they be raised by him John 5. 28. Sixthly An argument may be drawn from the truth and justice of God copiously prosecuted by the ancient Fathers and their Followers grounding themselves upon the word of God which saith We must all appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ that every man may receive the things done in his 2 Cor. 5. 10. body according to that he hath done whether it be good or evil But without Iniquuâ— enim Deus si non per id punitur quis aut juvatur per quod operatus est Id. Tert. cap. 12. the Resurrection of the body this distribution of Justice cannot be made And so what will become of those new and bold Philosophers and their Dogmes unchristian who liberally grant and this is more than we have reason to expect from them that there shall be a special time of Restitution of all things and so the soul shall enter again into a body but not that individual substance which before was united to it but yet one making the same individual Person which was before And how so Why the Form according to Aristotle is all and all as to the constituting the same thing and therefore it alone can denominate a man the same though the matter be various But how then can it be said with any truth that every man shall give an account for what he hath done in such a body when according to this sacrilegious phansie it is not the same but another body Lastly Such as was the Resurrection of men miraculously wrought in the Old and New Testament is to be the Resurrection in substance the last day But the child raised by Elisah and that other by Elisha And the 1 Kings 17. 23 2 Kings 4. 34. cap. 13. 21. Matth. 27. 52. man rising to life who was cast upon the bones of Elisha and all those raised by Christ in his life time and at his death When the dead bodies of the Saints arose out of their graves arose all in their bodies in which they dyed Therefore surely such is our Resurrection to be Now because there remain some sore objections to be cleared before Faith can have its perfect work on Christian minds I shall not expatiate contrary to my general purpose to answer all but only that which is all and that out of St. Chrysostomes words thus rendered But there are some Christ in 1 Thess Sern 7. Eth. saith he that disbelieve this thing because they are ignorant of God For pray tell me which is the easier of the two to bring a thing out of nothing or to restore again things that have been dissolved But what say they They say such a man hath suffered shipwrack and is drown'd and so fallen many fishes have devour'd him and every one hath eat some part of those fishes Afterward of those very
which themselves grant to be so viz. To worship that as God which is not God For first this is most generally believed by the Church of Rome that they have many small Remains of the bloud of Christ Next it is generally believed and required that Divine worship is to be given unto that blood in like manner as to Christ Now that this reputed bloud of Christ is not really the bloud of Christ not we only but the learneder of themselves teach directly yea Thomas proves it Thomas Sum. 3. Qu. 54. 2. corp ad 3. cannot possibly be because all the bloud that was shed from Christs body must of necessity be recollected and so was miraculously restored to his body again otherwise Christ had not risen again in that integrity of his human nature that he suffered in But it is manifest saith Thomas That flesh bones and bloud are pertaining to the human nature of Christ and therefore must all rise perfectly with him Now because the scruple is obvious to all Whence that reputed bloud presented solemnly as the very bloud of Christ should proceed if not from Christs body from whence we hear it cannot come He answers thus That bloud which in some Churches is preserved in Reliques of his did not flow from Christs side but is affirmed to have flown miraculously from a certain Image of Christ which was smitten Thus he And I could give an account of diverse Images which according to their own writers having been so smitten by spiteful Jews have bled in this manner And is it not as plain as can be that this is not Christs bloud And if it be not Christs bloud is it not also as evident that Idolatry is committed when divine adoration is given to it I make no doubt but there are innumerable in the Church of Rome who have more Faith and knowledg than to throw themselves thus heedlesly into such precipices of Superstition as are to be found there And therefore Grotius his design of a Reconciliation with the Church of Rome quite overthrown as he imagineth by holding it Idolatrous was not well laid For he that affirms that the Church of Rome is Animad in Animad Rivet Artic. 21. Idolatrous doth not say that all who hold communion with the Church of Rome are Idolaters as he supposeth Though they hold it unlawful upon peril if not of personal guilt of Idolatry very hardly to be avoided there of Communicative Idolatry which all true Christians ought to shun with greatest care and resolution CHAP. XVI Of the Fourth thing wherein the Worship of God consisteth viz. Preaching How far it is necessary to the Service of God What is true Preaching Of the Preaching of Christ wherein it consisteth Of Painful Preaching That the Ministery according to the Church of England is much more Painful than that of Sectaries The negligence of some in their Duty contrary to the Rule and Mind of the Church not to be imputed to the Church but to particular Persons in Authority VVE come now to speak of the Fifth General wherein the exercise of Gods worship consisteth and that is Preaching of which having so far already treated as to make discovery of the great error of Sectaries about it and the sacrilegious abuse of the true and proper Worship of God by Idolizing a Sermon and making the House of God and all acts of Religion void in comparison of it we may be here briefer in what remains of that subject For we find an opinion too prevalent amongst Christians which not only overthroweth the worship of God for Preachings sake but which is more to be wonder'd at overthroweth Preaching too for the Sermons sake For to that Superstition are they arrived in their opinions of teaching and hearing that if it be not performed without book if not out of the Pulpit if not a text formally taken out of the Bible If this text be not reduced to Doctrine and Use If there be not a formal I do not mean a Form of Prayer before and after it with the common sort it scarce deserves the name of Preaching And when all those conditions concur it is not only Preaching and a Sermon indeed but the Word of God without more ado and accordingly to be reverenced and valued And it were to be wish'd that were all and the Scriptures themselves not esteemed or not much listen'd to in comparison of them Thomas Cartwright the Great Church-wright as I may so call him of Schismatiques hath expresly affirm'd That the Scriptures avail little unless expounded by themselves surely and yet they also hold an opinion which no man can reconcile to this that the Scriptures contain all things necessary to Salvation and that plainly but let that go And let us know how a Sermon in its formalities now mentioned became the Word of God and in what sense and in what age and by what autority It is more than probable that Christ and his Apostles seldom used a Prayer before or after their Preaching It is most apparent out of Justine Martyrs second apology and Tertullians Apologetique that Preaching was used in their publique Assemblies and that principally as subservient to Prayer and Communicating and not set to domineer over them and be made the chief of Gods worship And so long as their Prayers were unprescribed was Preaching unstudied for and extemporary chiefly according to the manner insinuated in the Acts of the Apostles where it is said After the reading of the Law and Prophets the Rulers of the Synagogue sent unto them Acts. 13. 15. Paul and his company saying Ye men and Brethren If ye have any word of Exhortation for the People say on And by St. Paul to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 14. 29 30. saying Let the Prophets speak two or three and let the rest judge If any thing be revealed to another that sitteth by let the first hold his Peace These speeches were after the President of the Jewish Assembly had either himself read or caused the Law to be read and never without leave first obtained from him Which custom was for some time imitated by Christians When the Bishop only first spake to the people and then by his leave some other began an Exhortation to the People But this bringing certain inconveniences into Christian Assemblies in tract of time quite ceased and nothing was said but by the Bishop himself and that not every time much less in every place where Christians assembled to the Service of God there being for a long time after Christians were multiplyed and spread far not above one Sermon in a Diocess and that in the Principal City of that Country whither people that had a mind to hear a Sermon or communicate resorted for the good of their souls as men do now adayes to Market for the food of their bodies Which being there purchased the faithful Christian carried it home to his Family and dispensed to it of the same following herein the Counsel
Christians to such sort of Meats as are now allowed For it was rather her act of Grace and Lenity to remit the one half of that ancient Severity commonly submitted unto in the earlier days of Christian Religion And who but ignorant and ill natur'd and nurtur'd children could turn her Lenity into Tyranny and make her curtesie a matter of calumny Nay which hath more disingenuity and absurdity while they fret and complain grievously that the Yoke as it is lyes too heavy upon them and presses them too hard to invert their spite and malice against it by arguing from the lightness and contemptibleness of such Fastings as consists only in abstinence from flesh saying It is no Fast which abstains not absolutely from all Meat This were indeed somewhat to the purpose if so be that the Church did at the same time command any man to eat fish or so much as hearbs or bread when she forbids flesh to be eaten Or that they who were able and did wholly abstain from Meats at such seasons did not more fulfill the intention of the Church then they who took the liberty left them of eating in some manner What temper and spirit do these men discover to themselves to be of who are alwayes in readiness to charge their Superiours either with folly or tyranny or impiety upon the same occasion and never been able to prove any one them Scotus and Biel Scotus lib. 4. Distinct 8. Biel Lect. 8. in Canon Missae after him distinguish of a Fast of Nature which is a total abstinence from all eating and drinking and of a Fast of the Church when a man eats but once a day and that according to the precept and mind of the Church Now if the Church hath invented a favourable distinction and sense to gratifie murmurers at the rigour of her Laws do they not requite her ingenuously who turn that also to her reproach Nay if another distinction be found which makes a Fast a Toto a Tanto and a Tali from the Whole from the Quantity and from the Quality of the Meats eaten hereby willing to condescend and bring down her Rules so low that all men may have somewhat to exercise themselves in according to their ability in the graces of Abstinence and Obedience who but such whose Religion impels them to be the worse for good usage and resolve to hear of nothing but their own inventions would clamour against their Governours for such moderation But when they are disappointed in their arguments and expectations to reduce all men and things to their own model their last Effort is to humble this kind of Fasting into a civil Constitution only and for a civil End according as an Act of Parliament misconstrued as hath more plainly and fully been declared by others hath misled them conceiving that the Fastings of our Church tend only to the encrease of Navigation or are intended for the good of beasts not of men But what hinders that the Church may have one end in her decrees and the Common-wealth another and that which the Church designed for the exercise of Christian vertues may be embraced by Secular Politicians to promote Secular benefits to the Publick Nothing is so manifest to him that knows any thing in Church History as that such a reason was never dreamt of by the Propounders of such Fastings in our Church nor in any part of the Christian world before that Act. And if the words of that Act were intended for an ease to the tender Consciences as those of dissenters are mis-called and to draw them by little and little upon consideration of Civil ends which they less hated than the Ecclesiastical to some good order and submission this is not to be drawn to a perpetual Rule nor made the only universal end of such a Constitution For the Church still keeps to the most ancient and general sense received amongst Christians A third Precept of the Church is The Observation of the Ecclesiastical Canon 6. Preface of Ceremonies c. Customs and Ceremonies of the Church and that without frowardness and contradiction as appears from her Canons and the Preface before the Common-Prayer Of which obligation that which we have before spoken of the Power of the Church and even now of Fasting may here be applyed and suffice A fourth Precept is Constantly to repair to the Publick Service of the Preface to the Book of Common-Prayer Church for Mattens and Evening Song with other holy Offices at times appointed unless there be a just and unfeigned cause to the contrary And this we have before also treated of extending it to the worship of God in his House especially when there is an assembly of Christian people together to that purpose though there be no Sermon and also to the humbling a mans self and putting up his private Devotions there alone when occasion and opportunity shall be offered so to do according to the most ancient and godly custom of good Christians ever since there were Temples built for Gods Service For the disuse of which excellent acts not the least reason hath been or can be alledged by those that would be thought to be the only Rule of Reformation which we have not sufficiently refuted before Lastly To receive the blessed Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ Second Exhortation to be read before the Communion with frequent Devotion but at least Thrice a year whereof Easter is to be one And in order hereunto as occasion shall be to open our souls by due Confession and disburden and quiet our troubled Consciences by some learned and discreet Minister of God from whom Ghostly counsel and comfort may be received with the benefit of Absolution Of the use of which we have also before spoken where we shewed that such Confession was not of such absolute Divine Right either of Precept or Means that Salvation could not be otherwise obtain'd but as an Ecclesiastical Expedient very effectual as well for the bringing Impenitent sinners to repentance as for the due restoring of them that are Penitent to a comfortable assurance of Gods favour towards them and direction and encouragement in holy living which the foul abuses in those Churches where it is excessively magnified should by no means abolish For besides them above noted doubtless it is no mean abuse to make that which undoubtedly should be an act of Judgment in Gods Minister discerning between the hopeful state of some and desperate of others and accordingly suspending or applying the Free Grace of the Gospel and the Power left by Christ to his Church an act of custom formality and course or perhaps common civility which kind of rashness and profuseness the ancient Churches were altogether ignorant of When grievous offenders against God and the Church had fallen justly under the censures of the Church it was permitted to absolve them at the point of death so far as concerned their restitution to the Communion of